Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

I would say it is unfortunate rather than silly. As in it is unfortunate that you are forced to change your plans because something unwanted and out of your control happened. But that is the reality of a situation like this. It does not matter if the original plan of the player (when buying the merc at the sieged fort) was to leave it behind to assassinate when the army moved away. The realities of the situation, and the changed nature of the Terminus unit (due to the unwanted Soul Contract), meant that the player had to change their plans, or directly cause an exploit if they didn't. (although it would certainly have helped to tell the affected player how to break the fort-lockdown. But I'll come onto that later)

You can say it is silly that a single Scout unit can block an entire army. And it is silly. But silly or not that is what can happen unfortunately, and players need to accept the responsibility for not exploiting the flaws in the game engine. As if the players themselves do not accept the responsibility, then who will? Because someone has to or MP games could become highly disrupted by players using exploits (if it were not the players responsibilty to make sure they don't use them)

I think it would be difficult to get players to agree to that solution. As in many cases it would mean you would be telling your opponent your exact plans.

As in this example the Ulm player would have needed to be told that the sieging army was moving away (very useful info to know), and that there was going to be an assassin with a Soul Contract left behind.(always useful to know if there are hostile assassins in your provinces). I think a lot of players would be reluctant to give away such important strategic info to their opponent. But maybe I am wrong here and players will freely tell their plans to their opponent in advance, and the location of their assassin units. That is unrealistic I would say.


The only real solution is for players to be made aware of this exploit, what causes it, and then have the onus of responsibility placed on the players themselves to make sure they do not intentionally engineer situations where this exploit is almost certain to occur. Which is what happneed here, as the orders issued were unlikely to result in any other outcome, and I don't see how any other outcome could have been expected given the actions undertaken (those actions being moving the sieging army away, and leaving the Soul Contract assassin behind). Not unless the Ulm player did not ever attempt to break a token siege. Which sounds like it wasn't the case as the sieging army moved away, I guess because it feared a significant break siege attempt.

This exploit can be directly compared to move-blocking. As there the onus is on the player not to intentionally move-block other players, and I see no reason why this exploit does not fall into the same catagory, and so dealt with in the same manner. As both are based on a flaw in the game engine that allows a player to interfere with another players actions in a non-meaningful engagement, and at insignificant risk and cost. The only real difference is that with the fort-lockdown there is another exploit that can be used to counter it, which is not the case with move-blocking. (although that only applies if there is more than one commander unit in the sieged fort. As one has to break siege, and the other ordered to patrol. If there is only one commander, then AFAIK the siege can not be broken)

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

Good to see that this is now resolved.

Ragnarok-X: I understand that there may have been some ambiguity. For future reference, this is an exploit - even though it does notably reduce the use of the commander. Chalk it down to bad lack on your part.

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

As a curiosity, how do you people feel about the old "leave one soulless behind to hold up an entire fort full of mages and giants while leaving your sieging army elsewhere" trick? Clearly if the people inside the fort had any initiative, they would kill the soulless in seconds and retake the almost empty province. But it's not an exploit in the same way the auto-spawning stealth unit is. Is it unsportsmanlike to leave a single worthless unit to hold a fort down? It is somewhat like move-blocking, since you're using very few resources to hinder a huge part of the enemy army.

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

There's not really a problem with doing that, since you can just break the siege and kill the unit and you're good to go. I've never heard of anyone taking issue with doing that anyway.

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

I'm not aware of this being an issue. I do it reasonably often, and have had it done to me fairly frequently also.

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

Agreed, this is not an exploit, but a clever move.

Nothing stopping the army breaking siege at any time.

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

Good, I do it all the time, just wanted to check that it isn't considered a bad thing. :)

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

Isn't it the same thing with the soul contract? You leave one commander (who will spawn a devil) Then the guy inside the castle attempts to break the siege and then you order break + patrol. The off-side is loosing 1 turn of recruitment(since you might not have known that your opponent has a soul contract in that province. (which i guess in a war is quite big).

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

No because unless you know about the move and patrol hotkey you can't break it.

Re: ThePantokratorNeedsAWife - Intermediate CBM1.94 - Submit Pretenders
 

Thx BBZ, but I understand that already...did some research to find a resolution to the issue of Soul Contract.

My response was to leaving some dirt bag to besiege a fort whilst your main army moves off some where else.