Do you consider the following things cheating?

[Hoplite7]

Auto-resolving siege battles because the computer doesn't factor in walls or towers.

Placing spikes at the front gates against a faction like the Mongols

Blocking off crusades with ships near Byzantium so that the crusaders march in circles


These are things I do, not sure if anyone would consider them cheating. What do you think? Do you use cheap tactics in your game?

[sapi]

Exploitation rather than cheating, really.

As long as you're comfortable with doing it, it's not really a problem.

[Hoplite7]

Exploitation rather than cheating, really.

As long as you're comfortable with doing it, it's not really a problem.

Well I've always considered it to be compensation for the times bugs have given the enemy victory. (like when my front gate refuses to shut )

[Askthepizzaguy]

Ah, but one is unintentional and rare, and the other is intentional and common.

I consider cheating to be hacking the game files, changing the rules, modding the game in any way. Those are cheats.

The game has weaknesses that can be exploited, but that's not technically cheating. That's like using steroids at the Olympics if all drugs were legal. Sure, you are blatantly taking advantage of a game weakness, but you're playing by the rules, by the letter of the law if not the spirit.

Personally, I don't care if someone is cheating or exploiting so long as they make it clear to all involved that they are doing so. The only real cheating is when you cover it up. For example, doing a blitz run as the HRE using the crusade exploit. Perfectly legal, and ethical too if you make everyone aware of that fact.

Modding the game files to make your game more enjoyable: that's fine too, whatever floats your boat. Just don't claim any accomplishments publicly using a modded game unless you make it clear you have cheated.

Making house rules to avoid exploits and cheats, and limit certain kinds of gameplay, that's great too. Just make sure you mention your house rules and dont get mad if others don't follow your rules. For example, if you think that blitz rushing the AI and sacking their cities is an exploitative way to expand your empire, by all means restrict yourself from doing that. Just don't get you know, whiny if someone else doesn't play the same way.

That's the general rule here, since it's just a game, normal rules and ethics don't apply. The only real rule is don't tell others what to do, and if you're going to talk about your game publicly, let us know what version, mod, house rules, cheats/exploits you may be using.

Another example; using a spy. Spy gets killed on a mission? Reload and try again. It's cheap and exploitative, but it works. Entire family loaded onto a boat that sinks next turn? Reload and try again. I'm not going to blow a game that took me hours to play just because lady luck decided to decimate half of my family in a storm at sea. Especially true when doing a speed run.

It's cheap and exploitative, but I don't see any other way to have fun in this game if I can't even begin to train an assassin because it dies on it's very first mission every single time.

On all my threads where I talk about mods, blitz runs, and so on, I mention the version I am using and what my house rules are, so everyone is up to speed and they can't whine that I abuse the crusade function.

[The Badger]

Hoplite;

That you seem uncomfortable with these exploits -enough to ask -
is I think your own answer; to your question.

None of the exploits you mentioned applied to multiplayer -

Can you 'cheat' the computer?

You used the word 'cheap'; and again i think that is your answer.

Is it as rewarding to you to know you are winning on "cheese" as they say?
it's not as though the AI is a horribly competent opponent most of the time
( i saw a couple of tricks tonight that caught me by surprise- just by being unpredictable)

Anyway; you have to decide for yourself what is acceptable, since no one else is impacted by how YOU play YOUR single player game.

My opinion is -
I'm the kind of person that set kings purse to ZERO and wouldn't play england until the AI got more aggressive navally.
Last time I quit playing M2TW was because it drove me NUTS that the AI's mounted BigBads couldn't dismount (even before the battle) and were getting attrited by my on-wall units inside whatever fortress...

i try to avoid reloads -
I myself do it when the 'pathfinder' does things i consider inexplicable.

[Ramses II CP]

If you're playing against the AI you're only cheating yourself.

I would've said you're only exploiting yourself, but that phrase sounds curiously close to abusing yourself, which has a whole other meaning.

[Guyus Germanicus]

H7,

Computer games like RTW & M2TW don't have conventional rules like checkers or chess. You can't have a bug in a Monopoly board game.

You're playing within the physical constraints of the game. You can set up some artificial rules like - don't autoresolve any siege battles - so that you don't benefit from certain quirks in the game design. But what are you trying to accomplish when you do so - to imitate real life? And there's nothing wrong with that, certainly, if that's what you want to do. Bringing our imaginations to the game experience is part of the fun of a game like this. For me the game is a diversion. I'm not competing with anyone, and I'm not trying to accomplish anything for the sake of bragging rights.

And, it's not as if this game is a perfect imitation of real life. Is the ratio 2 years for every one game turn a valid imitation of real life?

In RTW I never used the programmed cheats (pressing the tilde button and altering the game's play.) But I'm doing that a lot in M2TW. But, in RTW I did make some mods to the game so I could get a public order benefit from academy buildings and scriptoriums and the like. As I understand it, that mod was something that CA had intended to put into the original game but never got around to it.

I guess I would say to you - it's your game and your time, just have fun with it the way you want to. I couldn't do the save and reload thing that some players do when something goes horribly wrong in a battle. But that's just me. But, when I was a kid playing street games with the neighborhood kids, we used to have "do-overs" or "mulligans" and gave the kid who made the "claim" a second chance. (I'm giving my faction members superior administrative skills and trader skills. So sue me.)

The game pulls some "stunts" on me occasionally costing me time, money and soldiers.

Just have fun and do what you want. If you want to set some ground rules for yourself, to govern your relationship with the game. Go for it.

[Ars Moriendi]

The term "cheating" is meaningless outside a competitive context.

So don't do it in multiplayer (if it's even possible at all) and don't do it in single player challenges (as in "I'm so 1337 I pwnd the game in 0.5 turns, n00bs !"). As long as you don't hurt or mislead anyone, anything goes. Do you hate the economic aspect of the game ? Give yourself a billion florins and get on with the battles. You don't like battles ? "auto_win" is the word.
It's a game you bought, your toy, you can play with it any way you like. If pulling legs and poking eyes out of dolls turns you on, feel free to do it, just make sure is your doll you're having your way with, not the neighbour's.

For a more specific example : I played a Venice campaign trying to role play it as a "merchant domination" game - the Venetians were quite good at this sport in history. For this, I set the agent number limit to 100, in effect giving me unlimited merchants. Cheating ? Well, if it was in a competition to see who makes more money out of mobile traders, then definitely yes. But I wasn't competing against anyone : removing the shtupid limit was the only way I could have my trade empire. It made the game a bit too easy, but it's my game, my playing time, my mistake.

[icek]

1.I never autoresolve battles.
2.the biggest cheat about stakes is the fact that turkey have it. They are for balancing faction's weaknesses. England lack of good spearmen and poland - good archers, turkey have nice archers and spears and they have stakes also.
3. For blockading, it cost you 1000 florins to buy a mercenary galley and go for other other side of bosphor. Ai dont lose men in crusades so they can think all time how to go on the other side.

[ForgotMyOldNick]

Auto-resolving siege battles because the computer doesn't factor in walls or towers.

I knew there was something wrong. I hardly ever autoresolve unless against rebels, but noticed in a few sieges that I couldn't be bothered playing and autoed noticing that I hardly took enough casualties.

Crusader armies going around in circles would be fun to watch :)

[Eng]

Well I've always considered it to be compensation for the times bugs have given the enemy victory. (like when my front gate refuses to shut )

Your front gate refuses to close only because you put your men 2 close to the gate move them back and it will close.... (works for me)

[Ramses II CP]

Heh, sometimes the gate just gets stuck somehow, possibly from one man getting caught in an unmoveable position. For example in the current Ghazette Challenge siege Gaza on the first turn, and when they sally their gate will be stuck in the open position until you rout a unit through it, even if you sneak behind them and into the city. It's a bug, but it seems to be fairly rare.

[Zenicetus]

I use a few exploits that I know give me an advantage over the AI, but not many. For example, I'll use ships to block the "bridge" at Gibraltar while playing as Spain or Portugal, when I first take on the Moors in Iberia. It blocks reinforcing armies from Africa, and I know the AI is too dumb to quickly build a fleet to contest it. That particular bit of cheese also works at Constantinople, if you need to control troop movements. It's not completely unrealistic because Spain was a naval power, after all, but it is taking advantage of weak AI. Since there is at least a little rationalization for the tactic in terms of relative naval strength, I use it.

Actually, any intelligent use of fleets at all by the player feels like an exploit, because the AI is so bad at it. But what are 'ya gonna do. This is the game we have, and I'm not going to completely avoid the smart use of navies to expand my empire, and block the expansion of my enemies.

I do use house rules to avoid the more egregious exploits like auto-resolving sieges as the attacker, or the "merchant in a fort" to lock up resources, or insta-death by surrounding something with soldiers and dropping another one into the center square. Those tricks aren't as easy to rationalize (well, the soldier surround might be). Mostly it's just pure exploitation of weak chinks in the game design, and I don't need it to win.

[Budwise]

First, that blockkading wasn't implemented in MTW but they added it here. I think CA added it on purpose.

As far as cheating, if you have fun doing it, then there you go. Its more important to have fun in a single player game than it is to "play by the rules".

[Apostrophe]

They are cheap. But i always play sieges on auto simply because they are boring. As for stakes at front gates i really don`t see what is cheap or
cheating in that. What would you do in reality defending a city against horde of horsemen?

[icek]

you can put a 4. point to this cheating with "attacking the assaulting enemy with besiged troops in city/castle with cannon towers and juststand still and wait till cannons do they work".

[Philbert]

The soft answers like 'but what do you feel?' are besides the point. He is not asking us what he should do, but what standards we pose on ourselves.

I don't like the auto-resolving trick, though I have to confess that I have used it once or twice when I was in a tight spot.

I haven't played England yet (or another faction that can use spikes) but I don't see what would be wrong with this tactic. Spies would have seen the enemy army coming from far away, giving ample opportunity to place spikes in front of the door.

Blocking crusades by ships I would not do, since the AI is apparently not clever enough to figure that it should send its own navy to unblock the passage. If it would be I don't see any problem with this tactic.


Another thing I am not proud of is that I have waited out some battles where I was outclassed by the Mongols but had a strategic position on a hill, which caused the Mongols to do their dance trying to lure me to attack them. I knew I would get slaughtered if I fell for it, so I just put the battle on fast and went and got me a drink downstairs and went to the bathroom.

[mor-dan]

i think you have to ask yourself things like this:


was it cheating the first time an army out flanked an opponent instead of just lining up face to face? was it cheating the first time someone launched a projectile at a wall from a safe distance instead of marching up to the door? was it cheating for the Chinese to build a giant freaking wall so no one could attack them from that side? was it cheating when Leonidas put his army shoulder to shoulder in that mountain pass and used it as walls to protect their flanks?

in battle the object is to out think, out maneuver, and out exploit your enemy. you search for weaknesses with the intention of exploiting them. you don't find them and then decide to ignore it because "that gives us an unfair advantage".

is this a game? yes it is. but the object is to win. plain and simple. if you aren't altering files to give uber money and uber armies then no, you aren't cheating. you are seeing how the program reacts to different things and basing your actions on what is most accurately described as its "personality" even though it's just a program. just as a commander would charge his men to hold a position and not be led into an open battle they cannot win, because he knows his opponent will not charge foolishly into a situation that will cost more lives than the battle is worth.

what i would say is, when you are ready for a more challenging game you already know where to start in terms of your own game play. when you stop doing those things it will make it more difficult, just as it would be more difficult for me to tell my horses to charge from the side rather than the rear. do i still have an advantage? yes. is it as good as i could make it? no.


(long rant here that i deleted about gaming companies and sub-par work)

[gardibolt]

I don't autoresolve sieges (well, except before the patch when there were crashes when besieged by Timurids with elephants, and there was no way to proceed). The only time I autoresolve is when I have a big stack against a tiny stack of rebels, late in the game, when it's taking me 4-5 hours to do a turn.

I do consider pausing to be a cheat, though.

[joe4iz]

I will sometimes put a merchant in a fort, more to keep him from getting knocked off the resource node than anything else. The trade nodes around Constantinople come to mind. Every guy who walks past the top node kept knocking my merchant off. It was very frustrating.

I love to fight seiges so I seldom autocalc them.

[Old Geezer]

Cheating is so realistic just like lying. It is what people do naturally? Has anyone had to teach a (normal) child to lie or cheat? I rest my case.

[Maelstrom]

I do consider pausing to be a cheat, though.

An interesting point - I had never even considered that.

I use pause a lot - on the grounds that:
- the battle camera is a little awkward to use (I think I need a better mouse)
- it is often hard to pick out your target when units are moving and intermingled
- the AI has the advantage of omniscience and instantaneous response.

So I don't loose much sleep over it.

However my house rules are:

1) Never reload - however painful (and it often is - loosing half your crusade due to poor rout finding, your king dying fighting peasants, none of your merchants ever surviving a takeover attempt). Coping and recovering from my mistakes is part of the challenge.
2) Don't use exploits you can avoid - by this I mean coding errors or omissions that clearly shouldn't be there and that the AI does not take advantage of (all documented above)

I would certainly go along with the view though that in SP it is none of my business how anyone else chooses to enjoy their purchase...

[gardibolt]

I use pause a lot - on the grounds that:
- the battle camera is a little awkward to use (I think I need a better mouse)
- it is often hard to pick out your target when units are moving and intermingled
- the AI has the advantage of omniscience and instantaneous response.

The last of these is why I consider it a cheat. The AI has little enough going for it, that it seems unfair that I strip it of its one advantage. So I don't pause, and I probably lose more battles than most people who do. But in a game where everyone's complaining that the AI doesn't offer enough of a challenge, I think it's silly to take away the one aspect that makes the AI more challenging for the human player.

But as you say, in SP, it's whatever floats your own boat.

[Garnier]

Auto-resolving siege battles because the computer doesn't factor in walls or towers.

Placing spikes at the front gates against a faction like the Mongols

Blocking off crusades with ships near Byzantium so that the crusaders march in circles


These are things I do, not sure if anyone would consider them cheating. What do you think? Do you use cheap tactics in your game?

All of those are things I never do. But I am a stickler for my own houserules, I make very strict rules and don't dare break them. I would definitely consider those to be exploits.

[Captain Pugwash]

Cheating is a reaction when something happens, you think thats not right its against the rules.
Thus,
1. AI towns can run at well below 80%PO and not rebel.
2. AI crusades can park outside your city for several turns without deserting awaiting you to complete the crusade so they can attack you.
3. Inquisiors always burn you generals whatever their piety, while the excomed pagan worshipping opposite gets left alone to enjoy drunken romps with little boys.
4. merchants, assasins spies etc never seem to be as successful as the AI when they have similar qualities.

If they AI can screw you then theres nothing wrong in returning the compliment. However thats different to modding the structure to balance out what you percieve to be imperfections.