Official - Bonus Bubble Resoures - GAME RUINER

[razeth]

This has become rather annoying over the short life of this game. I've completed about 3 games of CIV world; and in my first game the bonus resource contest a guy got 48. I thought that was insane. My second game; macroers most likely the guy got 240. (keep in mind this is in the first 15 minutes of a game so should that many resources really be spawning?).

In the latest game I just started; we have formed by far the best civ. We got stonehendge we all harvested and we've invaded the next biggest nation and have already bought most of the military units; so guaranteed win there.

Except a guy from this nation; the bubble resource contest came up; get harvested a grand total of 763 bubbles in the time of the contest. The guy sold all the resources and has fielded a massive army stack.

Seriously remove the bonus bubble resources; people are macroing the crap out of them and gaining a massive unfair advantage.

[Glinda]

How did that "officially" ruin your game?

[DanM]

If 763 production changed the course of a war for you, then you're doin it wrong :)

[Mareck]

If 763 production changed the course of a war for you, then you're doin it wrong :)

Keep in mind that the 763 bonus production he is speaking of is just during the contest.

This is not just a little bonus. This is many times the amount you get during the same time from harvest and trickle income!

Tbh I don't understand why they implemented it in the first place. Ofc people will abuse it by using macros or whatever.

[grandsavage]

Yeah I couldn't agree less, there is NO JOY aspect in harvesting bubbles, and it just opens the game wide up for cheaters to have an advantage.

[JingL]

I do have to agree, those bubble macro things are getting more and more abused. It's not bad if they pop 300 of them per hour, especially after the 1st few eras, it's even still OK when they were popping 1000 per hour.

In my latest game, someone in our team was getting 3000 production per hour from that, with 4 houses; or 3000 science per hour, that's a lot of maze moves. It's getting to the game imbalanced point. One day into the game, the guy already had 30k production ready for a huge army, so we started conquering everyone, they stand absolutely no chance. It's getting absurd, that 1 guy can totally solo science and production and win the game, through brute force. All by 1 mechanism: keeping his population at 4, no more. It seems like the less houses he has, the more bubbles he gets.

I usually think I understand the game, so I'm not one of those newer players who come in and say some mechanism is totally imbalanced. But it's getting to this point again. (Last time was mini wonders before the cap/2 gp min, thanks for fixing that!)

[Bobz12]

I do have to agree, those bubble macro things are getting more and more abused. It's not bad if they pop 300 of them per hour, especially after the 1st few eras, it's even still OK when they were popping 1000 per hour.

In my latest game, someone in our team was getting 3000 production per hour from that, with 4 houses; or 3000 science per hour, that's a lot of maze moves. It's getting to the game imbalanced point. One day into the game, the guy already had 30k production ready for a huge army, so we started conquering everyone, they stand absolutely no chance. It's getting absurd, that 1 guy can totally solo science and production and win the game, through brute force. All by 1 mechanism: keeping his population at 4, no more. It seems like the less houses he has, the more bubbles he gets.

I usually think I understand the game, so I'm not one of those newer players who come in and say some mechanism is totally imbalanced. But it's getting to this point again. (Last time was mini wonders before the cap/2 gp min, thanks for fixing that!)

ya there is something to that low population= more bubble thing.. i was bored a few days ago and had 4 houses and got over 600 resources for one of the contests manually and not even getting all the bubbles b.c i got bored towards the end. But now that i have 7 houses i was popping bubbles for maybe 30 mins gettings pretty much all of thema nd only got to 250ish so less than before.

[razeth]

You guys realize that the problem is not that this guy popped 763 bubbles in 1:30 minutes. The problem is he is doing it with a macro and is popping that many bubbles EVERY HOUR.

So assuming he rates of bubbles don't change; He will get 18,312 bonus resources today. If you think 763 production suddenly in the first 10 minutes of the game in addition to harvests is not setting you up for a MASSIVE advantage you haven't played this enough.

Furthermore; the point isn't about the contest or the 763 it is about the 18,312 per day; thats crap.

[Harry Gao]

How do you know, for sure, that he's popping the bubbles w/ macro? What if he IS bored enough to sit there and pop them himself? I have won bubble popping contests by putting the game on half of the screen, watch a movie on the other, and mouseover bubbles every couple seconds.

That said, the bubble mechanism is surprisingly odd. I'd argue to nerf it down about 50% on average. I assume it is in place right now because the devs want people to play this game constantly, and as a mechanism for weak players to catch up (since a small city would get more bubbles than a big one). The first goal is reasonable but not admirable, the second goal is quite agreeable. Maybe change the bubble mechanism so that it is linked to the difference between your fame and top players in the world?

[Lauro]

Okay, after reading this I don't know if I will start another game. Even the nicest mechanism has to be removed if people can get this unfair advantage!

[TheQ]

Bubble poping sounds ok fun at first, but ofcourse ppl will abuse it any way they can to gain an advantage if the game is allowing them to do so.
Also, if a player visits another city they can pop bubbles for a player owning that city. This is evident from a contest for a specific resource. So this would mean, instead of poping for their city they can boost another players economy. This also opens a question in using a multiple fb accounts to boost certain player..
game breaking indeed?

[Sergey Boroday]

You guys realize that the problem is not that this guy popped 763 bubbles in 1:30 minutes. The problem is he is doing it with a macro and is popping that many bubbles EVERY HOUR.
....
Furthermore; the point isn't about the contest or the 763 it is about the 18,312 per day; thats crap.
Really?

I've tested this feature, the biggest one is about 500-700 resources per hour, and this will decreases with time or may be with a productivity of my farmers/workers

Another point i don't have so lot a time to spend it in such dumb way. If someone want to spent own time, then why not?
In addition a playing on market i've get a more bigger bonus (about 2k of prod or 10k of gold) during quarter of an hour

[bronzeager]

well I think the obvious fix for this is that the frequency of bonus bubbes should decrease in proportion to how long you've had the game window open. so if you've been in-game for over an hour, say, bonus bubbles should stop appearing. then it would take X amount of time to refresh to the normal rate.

seems like it wouldn't be hard to program in, and there's really no disadvantage for anyone, except cheaters.

[madden0001]

I say to get rid of the bubbles.

[vancian]

they are obviously meant to be a boost for new players - hence the link to population
the Devs just need to add a couple more reducers - time playing, number previously collected, date the game has reached.

then they would reduce to an appropriately trivial quantity quickly and no great advantage would be available

[John Headro]

I was in a game recently where a guy collected 100k+ resources in the contest. I have no idea how he did it. But he was owning the game as a solo player vs 16 player civs. It was just stupid. This game is too exploitable! Needs fixing.

[bronzeager]

if someone collected 100k+ it was almost certainly due to it being a harvesting contest, and he probably had a stockpile of harvests saved up. it is physically impossible for even a macro to collect that many bonuses in the span of 1-1.5 hrs.

[omnimutant]

it just opens the game wide up for cheaters to have an advantage.
Again, another post claiming cheaters. Look people it's not that hard to pop a ton of bubbles on your own. Why assume it was a cheat?

The people who are doing better then everyone else in this game, are the ones who put more time into it. Just because you may not be able to log on for more then an hour or so a day don't assume those that can are cheating.

[DevinS]

Again, another post claiming cheaters. Look people it's not that hard to pop a ton of bubbles on your own. Why assume it was a cheat?

The people who are doing better then everyone else in this game, are the ones who put more time into it. Just because you may not be able to log on for more then an hour or so a day don't assume those that can are cheating.


try reading the forums, plenty are openly talking about using macros to build up huge stockpiles of resources. they hopefully working on some sort of nerf for it.

[omnimutant]

I saw one guy. ONE! Explain on the forums that he made something the generate 400 pops an hour...and he was in my civ. That's hardly an exploit, and I don't think he even ended in the top 10 in fame points.

[JingL]

I saw one guy. ONE! Explain on the forums that he made something the generate 400 pops an hour...and he was in my civ. That's hardly an exploit, and I don't think he even ended in the top 10 in fame points.

If it's Grzeg you are talking about (the guy who started that post), oh he definitely finishes in top 10 all the time (but because he knows what he's doing, not due to those macro). And his rate is around 1k/h, I saw it many times (was in my civ too), and in bubble gathering contests too. As for the guy in my civ right now, yes he uses a macro too, he was using one since his 1st game.

[grizzlybair]

I've got +750 easily before with production between 6-10 population levels...it either slows dramatically after level 12 or they changed it in the update yesterday...i don't know where to find the patch notes...if there are any.

[Furiey]

Without a macro I have managed to pop around 690 worth of bubbles in 40 mins. I was getting very few bubbles in my city, I found a city with few techs and a population reduced to 2 by undefended barb attacks. He hadn't played for a week. So high scores are possible without macros, you just have to find the right town to pop bubbles in.

[Rulakoranor]

They should change the bubbles into something less "macroable". It's too easy to macro the bubble thing, making it easy for some players to gather extra resources 24/7 with their computer running.

[Ironsmack]

Does anyone else find it amusing to see such a deep discussion about "Bubble Popping" in a Civilization game?

[DevinS]

well I think the obvious fix for this is that the frequency of bonus bubbes should decrease in proportion to how long you've had the game window open.


the other obvious fix would be to get rid of them entirely. civ is a strat game not a button masher.



Does anyone else find it amusing to see such a deep discussion about "Bubble Popping" in a Civilization game?


amused? not really. it will turn people off from the game if it becomes more and more common to be using bots to cheat to get mad amounts of resources to completely unbalance and destroy the game.

[stream_mm]

amused? not really. it will turn people off from the game if it becomes more and more common to be using bots to cheat to get mad amounts of resources to completely unbalance and destroy the game.

I think the better solution is for the game developers to check out the cheats, see how they work & see how they can determine who are using outside programs to cheat - and then just BAN the cheaters from playing.

I like the bubbles - when I have time, I'll watch some TV while popping some bubbles to help my game. So why take away game play because of cheaters - just get rid of the cheaters - just blanket ban all cheaters. Just removing bubbles will make the cheaters find other ways to cheat. Just get rid of the cheaters - make it known that if you cheat, you won't be able to play. Simple as that.

[Reason077]

if someone collected 100k+ it was almost certainly due to it being a harvesting contest, and he probably had a stockpile of harvests saved up. it is physically impossible for even a macro to collect that many bonuses in the span of 1-1.5 hrs.

You can't stockpile that many harvests. The rate they are awarded starts decreasing quickly once you have 25 or so.

[Kazper]

Honestly I think this discussion is way overhyped. Bubbles matters a lot early on when I've collected 400+ in an hour (manually), but they drop off sharply as your nation grow. Now I'm lucky to get 100+ at 16 population. Not to mention trickle income increases as bubble-frequency falls off making it even less important.

It does annoy me a bit that I have to waste some time early on to boost myself with bubbles - and whether this is a wanted gameplay element is an interesting discussion. But it's just not that great a boost to any cheaters. Remember they can't do OTHER stuff while their macro is running collecting bubbles - like playing the market or defeating a barbarian invasion.

EDIT: I will say though that if it's true that popping bubbles in another player's nation gives THEM the resources (I thought they just vanished doing nothing), then that is certainly exploitable through multiple accounts and need to be removed asap.

[gruzum]

Really?

I've tested this feature, the biggest one is about 500-700 resources per hour, and this will decreases with time or may be with a productivity of my farmers/workers

Another point i don't have so lot a time to spend it in such dumb way. If someone want to spent own time, then why not?
In addition a playing on market i've get a more bigger bonus (about 2k of prod or 10k of gold) during quarter of an hour

It's not about spending time. I can leave the game open on my laptop 24h with a auto bubble pop hack and go to the beach/work and so on. Zero time invested -> 12000 resources gathered. Got it?

[razeth]

I don't doubt people think these people are just popping the bubbles manually; it is possible to get several hundred bubble pops; especially early in the game as bubbles seem to pop more frequently the lower your production level is.

Let me update you on our game: We attacked the civ with the guy with bubble pops; our battle went down at like 9:30pm. He fielded a stack of 200 horsemen, the same guy has 9! population; I checked the top 10; everyone else has 5 or 6 pop.

Now that they won the battle they stole our 1 wonder; they won the age; and now are 3 techs ahead, have all wonders. The guy has been online continually 22 hours or something.

Totally doesn't affect the game at all....ZZZZ screw this game.

[VeliK]

And with these bubble popping contest a guy can easily climp up the rank tree in his civ to get to be the king which means he will be getting a lot more fame from era victories. With this you can also win the harvest contests since popping counts as harvest. Harvest don't count as popping though.

[razeth]

Further update; I login this AM and try to do a double swap puzzle contest; of course macro guy is winning it. I do 3 x5 double swaps and it pops up 125 culture yada yada; then it contributes it to the macroer on the contest.

Maybe this guy is just cheating or the game is bugged and it is contributing things to him i dunno.

[Ironsmack]

well if he is macroing every aspect of the game, bubble popping, minigames then why is he logged in? There isn't anything else to do. there is no point to even bothering.

[dkk]

The suggestion for bubble rates to decrease over time and based on bubbles already popped is an excellent one. It's an unfun, grindy aspect of the game...except early on, for new players at a loss for how to actually play the game, or when you need those last few points, etc. Keeping it in the game for the occasional, small uses is fine, and then nipping cheating (or overuse) in the bud is good.

Do bear in mind, though, that it's quite possible to get plenty of resources and beat 20 person civs solo without cheating. ;)

Also, the contest is dumb. :p It should just go away.

[Bleys]

Maybe bubbles could be limited to X resources per hour / day. Or perhaps they could provide diminishing returns (the more bubbles you pop that day, the less new ones appear).