CS Slingshot - Is it overpowered?

[ThERat]

I think there are a few issues that are now 'ruling' parts of the game so much so, that it's almost a must to play those in order to compete with the rest..

Slingshots such as Oracle -> CS or metal
or liberalism -> steel/astro etc

These slingshots are too powerful and rule the game too much, so that tech paths will tend to follow a predefined pattern to be able to run them.

Another issue is the overly complicated or to make it sound positive, sophisticated tech-popping.
It's almost impossible to memorize or remember which GP pops which tech in which priority. This turns the game into MM galore, which certainly wasn't intended. But for example a library -> 2 scientists -> philo slingshot is too powerful to be ignored.

This leads to another issue, that the AI even on high techs goes mostly for the same tech paths and we can easily exploit it. Techs such as alphabet are easy to use as great trading material.

Of course, I do not have a solution to this, but I do not like the facts as they are now.

[Blake]

So what DOES serve as a good example on the issue? Adventure Four! Adventure Four was a game where the Civil Service slingshot was clearly the right way to go, and sure enough uberfish's CS grab with the Oracle resulted in a 2nd place finish. Every early finisher in that game pushed aggressively towards Civil Service/Bureaucracy and an early Academy in the capital as soon as possible, including your winning effort, Zeviz. To say that the results of that game disprove the strength of Bureaucracy is misleading at the very least. If ALL of the fast finishers are pushing for Bureaucracy civic as fast as possible, doesn't that suggest that gambling on the Oracle is a no-lose solution?

(my underlining)

Civ4 is a strategy game, and part of that involves choosing the right strategy. The CS Slingshot is most powerful when the capital is exceedingly good, expecially in comparison with neighbouring terrain.
I guess when all the terrain is heavenly the CS Slingshot might be still worth doing, since to a degree the power of the CS Slingshot is dependent on the quality of the capital, but I think that's more in relative terms than absolute terms. I suppose it's worth noting that with some starts the CS Slingshot is simply impractical, without a certain level of commerce (or gpp generation) the research will prove too tight to get all the tech needed resulting in either a failed slingshot or successfully dying to barbarians.

Within the range of starts generated on normalish maps many of them will not be particulary suited to a CS Slingshot, you may be able to do it anyway, but you wont get the spectacular yields and in many cases it will be harmful.

I admit I may be biased here, if I roll a start which is too good I'm inclined to not play it, thus I may be inclined to prune out the good CS Slingshot starts leaving a skewed sample set of games. Certainly, my reaction when getting a start perfect for CS Slingshot is "you've GOT to be kidding me...", not that I believe the CS Slingshot will prove more powerful than jut playing normally from such a start. I think other people may also be biased here, they tend to do the CS slingshot on good starts and thus compare CS Slingshot on good starts with non-CS Slingshot on bad starts.

As a big fan of Fuedalism and aggressive warmongering I really don't care about CS all that much. I do agree that using great prophets is rather gamey and thus I would support some restrictions on propheteering - giving philo the middle finger really, but that's how it is. As for the old fashioned CS slingshot involving researching CoL, I really think it's fine, as long as the start is not unreasonably good and the difficulty is reasonably high - with an average start on Monarch difficulty CS slingshot is not a killer strat.

Now if there is something I'd really like to complain about it's worker poaching and choking the AI in the early BC's, it is in my opinion dastardly. I'm sure that everyone has learnt from Epic 6 that war makes AI's stupid (if they didn't already know that), the AI really needs a grace period to get on it's feet or it just folds like wet tissue because it's stupid - you don't need to be a tactical genius to break the AI early on (again: Epic 6, war makes AI stupid). Stealing the worker is particulary dastardly, the free worker is an AI bonus which is intended to overcome some of the tactical and strategic limitations of the AI, stealing that worker is effectively stealing the AI bonus which gives the human doing it an unfair advantage - not to mention that no sane human would ever lose a worker like that (except maybe to a double move), it's a result of AI stupidity and it causes more AI stupidity, it's also exceedingly easy to abstain from doing, unlike some other "exploits" of AI behaivour, such as killing it's pillaging units (aka "Experience on a silver platter") it's not like you can STOP the AI from trying to pillage you in the most braindead ways possible, even though it can be encouraged slightly with pillage zones and such.
But worker poaching pre 1000BC is a very clearcut thing, the AI wont force your hand to poach the worker, the rule could either be "no stealing workers outside of cities on the opening turn of a pre 1000BC war", or that all such captured workers must be disbanded (like if the worker happened to be really inconveniently in the way in the only possible route for your army, yeeeah right)

[theGrimm]

Given that RB is about variants and that, as Sullla pointed out, most variants encourage alternative strategy, it may be that the CS slingshot isn't worth banning outright, because for RB games it isn't always the best choice.

In fact, given certain starting conditions, it may even be a red herring. Especially for games where the victory conditions and rulesets are something off the beaten track.

Perhaps as a precursor to an outright ban we could apply it occasionally as a game-specific variant, which would also allow us to adjust it from game to game, and thus avoiding the need for explicit wording to cover EVERY situation. We have no rules about which rules can be used for a game.

Epic 6, 7 and 8, which are/were all rather open-ended in terms of strategy, could have used this variant. But other Epics, which Zeviz kindly summarised, showed that the restriction wasn't necessary. Indeed, the CS slingshot often enough the inferior strategy.

Okay, I realise there are flaws with my idea. There are flaws with all existing ideas too. But it's on the table now. Use it...don't use it.

[Rik Meleet]

What is "the CS-slingshot" ?

I have deducted that CS means "Civil Service" and it has something to do with the Oracle giving a free tech, but I don't know the ins and outs of it. Can someone explain ?

[theGrimm]

We could, but then we'd have to kill you.

Short answer: Get Civil Service for free using the Oracle or a Great Prophet. Do it early, and wwitch to the Bureaucracy civic, thus gaining (potentially) massive production and / or commerce in the capital.

There's a couple of tricks needed to get it right, especially with the prophet, most of which involve researching (and not researching) the right techs.

-Using the oracle, you need to time you build so that you get code of laws before the oracle completes. I think it's that simple.
-Using a prophet, I belive it's similar, but you need to avoid masonry so that you prophet will lightbulb CS rather than Organised Religion.

Have I got that right?

[mihau]

In my opinion CS slingshot with Oracle is perfectly fine gameplay. It is not always most effective in RB events (as it been mentioned) sometime it is Lighthouse + Colossus, sometime axe/sword rush, ....

Let's not check off the succesful techniques.

Now if there is something I'd really like to complain about it's (...) choking the AI in the early BC's,

having 3+ AIs on the map solves the problem
- 1 succesfull parking won't grant U winning as U have to deal with the rest.
- before U find the rest they usually launch a settler.
In my opinion it is a sure way to help yourelf during the game but depends on your ability to find the AI.

There are other flaws:
- U need to declare war = spoil relations, sometime with more than 1 civ.
- parking archer is not scouting.
- after U declare war U may face the foe's unit near your own capital that was scouting nearby.

[Swiss Pauli]

I do agree that using great prophets is rather gamey and thus I would support some restrictions on propheteering

I'd go along with this. I think it's been mentioned elsewhere that the No-Masonry CS lightbulb was a bit of a 'least-bad' solution to techs from Great Prophets. A 'straight' CS slingshot carries enough risk (barbs, AI builds first) to justify the benefits.

[sooooo]

If we are voting on this then I would vote not to ban it. But I would not be upset if it did get banned because I rarely attempt it.

I still think pyramids are stronger. 4 techs that you can't trade (monarchy, constitution, fascism, democracy) is better than 1 tech you can trade. It's not just the extra research (if you're in representation), and I accept Sirian's argument that early bureaucracy is more beakers. It's the extra happy (either +2 or +a lot) and the huge benefit of Police State when you're in a big war.

[LKendter]

I vote against the ban, as there are several other combos that can also be argued to powerful. While I didn't finish it, I was absurdly ahead in tech for Epic2. Reason - great lighthouse and colossus on a water map. That combination is insane.

[mostly_harmless]

I am currently at work and cannot check, but is there a tick box for "no wonders allowed" in the custom game settings? An adventure or epic with wonders ruled out altogether either for just the player or for all civs would be interesting I think.

As for the slingshooting, I think that GPs and Oracle/Liberalism should just give you a certain amount of beakers which will then be spent on the tech you are currently researching. This way you might actually decide to spent the beakers on a cheaper tech and getting some overflow carried towards the next in the queue.
In the current situation the player is almost "forced" by common sense to go for the most expensive free tech.

My personal vote would be to keep the exploit list empty for now as I feel exploitive strategies will wear down automatically in a community like RB.