Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I'll begin by confessing I've never had this used against me, however I wouldn't think it was a bug simply because of some sort of shock value or perceived unfairness. KO and Johan have made some very conscientious and well thought out decisions to have things works in a particular way. How you can wish for certain things but not others, how prophets come back from the dead with more holy power, how mindless commanders pop, how certain spells use no saves or are unresistable, how immortality works, how vengeance of the dead eventually kills through a game mechanic, etc.

There will always be some parts of the game that don't work exactly as you'd have expected, or wanted, or would have designed if you were making it up. That seems to be part of the nature of the beast when talking about anything with tons of magic.

Personally, I find the fact that there are combo's in this game, that are far greater than the sum of their parts to be a very good thing. These are the things which promote creativity and why strategies are still evolving and being developed as we speak, and why no tome will ever contain the total collection of things you could encounter when playing a game of Dominions.

Until KO specifically speaks up and says this is a bug, I'd wish everyone would stop making that assumption.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

How? Since it's not written, there is no way of knowing!

Even worse, there could easily be games where some of the players think it doesn't need to written and they are playing by it while the majority of players are playing as if there was no rule. That's not even counting the number of players who are OK with it, but have made concessions to the minority because they would rather play watered-down Dominions rather than no Dominions at all.

Considering that it takes seconds to write the rules down, I think the fact that 30 out of 37 games on the front page (meaning the most current games) don't have rules like that is pretty devastating evidence.

The community has spoken.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Questionable argument really. If I'd been more organised, I'd have written it down for all the games I set up. That's quite a few. I suspect many other game admins fall in the same category.

It's much the same as how a large proportion of the MP community consider NAPs binding, but that is rarely made explicit.

I do hope Illwinter are able to fix this bug soon anyway, so we can not have to worry about it further. It's probably the strongest "exploit" (depending on your viewpoint of course) left in the game, to my mind.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

(by the way and a little off-topic, mr. llama, are NAPs really binding? as i said i have yet to try an MP game, so I don't know how they are taken by the community, but i always thought that if a player wants to roleplay a bit and is playing crazy abisians lead by a moloch, it's not so strange to violate a NAP and attack his little neighbours of caelum before time to take them off-guard... and i wouldn't take it too badly if i was caelum, shame on me for having given trust to some insane flaming lil' bastards ^_^... but i ask to be sure)

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Arguably unfortunately, NAPs are often taken as binding, and many people will get really quite upset if you break them. My recommendation is either not to break them, or to make it explicit at the start of the game that you will be roleplaying, and therefore it is possible that your character may not hold to treaties. I think people cannot get annoyed at you if you let them know in advance that you may not be dependable.

I think it would be good if more games were started as "Machiavellian", where the understanding is that all diplomacy may be reneged upon, as in real life. Having said that though, I've still never actually organised such a game myself. (Though these days I don't organise that many games myself and much prefer it if I just act as host and someone else organises and admins the games - I'm always willing to host if someone asks.)

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

K is in law school!

Of course he plays the devil's advocate. All good law students do.

Unfortunately for K, Llamabeast did actually state in one the exploit threads that certain exploits were banned in all Llamaserver games.

But it is usually best when exploits can be spelled out on the game thread, as in Kingmaker's original thread, or in a stated set of rules like Velusion had.

Velusion's Rules, however, were so long, that I doubt anyone bothered to read them other than the few lawyers like myself.

I think a model for Llamaserver could be based quite simply on my post in the original Kingmaker thread, with whatever additions or subtractions Llamabeast feels appropriate.

But I think brevity should be a goal, as no one wants to read 4 pages of fine print before playing a game.

From Kingmaker:

Notable exploits banned;

1. If you capture Bogus and his friends, you can script those captured units to attack mages, but you cannot copy their "attack mage" orders to any other commanders or units.

2. You cannot cast battlefield enchantments that cause damage to enemy units, then retreat the casting mage before 5 rounds of combat passes. In other words, if you cast Wrathful Skies, you cannot order that mage to retreat before 5 turns has passed (your last available scripting order can be retreat). And this rule includes items that cast such spells.

3. You cannot overload someone’s lab with the purpose of maliciously filling it so they cannot receive or forge items.

*I consider VOTD to be a viable spell and working as intended. I know there are arguments to the contrary, but I would never remove a valuable SC killing spell from the game's arsenal of weapons. If you really hate VOTD so much, take an undead pretender, or put mr items on your pretender.

*Things like hacking files are so obviously outside the game's scope, that i would not even bother listing it as banned. Suffice to say if proof of a hacked file was presented, the player should not only be removed from the current game, but the community as well.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I don't play MP but I am intrigued by the discussion.

Xieter, does your rules mean that retreating on turn5 after MOD is allowed?

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Yes.

Otherwise, there would have to be a statement before the game started that a high level air spell was banned. What I did in Kingmaker was use a clever Mod written by Twan that made the spell have a fixed duration.

Absent the mod, I did not want to ban Mists of deception completely. But the mod is the perfect answer. Keeps the powerful air spell in the game, and removes the exploit completely.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Oh no, MoD is another category http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif That 5 turn rule goes for Fire Storm, Wrathful Skies etc...

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Thanks for the replies. I presume that the mod still gives MoD 30 turns or more - otherwise it would be somewhat weak.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I think the mod gives something like 9 turns at an increased rate of phantasm production.

I think Xietor's list is a good one, and I will probably add it to the FAQ for the LlamaServer soon. Games on my server will have such exploits banned, unless the game admin says otherwise at the beginning - this saves the admin having to remember every time. I will also add that you cannot script a mage to casts Mists of Deception and retreat, even after 5 turns. Having watched a battle where an army was killed in this way I just think it's so unfair that it should never happen.

I think/hope pretty much everyone except K will be pleased to have these exploits explicitly banned. Sincere apologies K. However you are always welcome to run games on the LlamaServer, and of course I assume that the games you run will un-ban the exploits.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Now, now, I am a Law University student, but when I'm talking about any matter, I don't make "style exercises" trying to convince everybody else of what they don't think simply to prove the strenght of my words ^_^ And I hope K is not doing that to us too or it would be quite disrespectful. But I'm sure he doesn't.

@ llama,

Thanks for clarifying the NAPs to me, and for your authority opinion in our discussion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I don't know how this discussion got this far on just conjecture, especially with lawyers running rampant. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


MoD in in the bug thread, which you can argue is not maintained by a dev, but it IS checked often by the devs, and it has been there since February. Thus if the devs did not consider it a bug, they would have denoted so on the bug list.

MoD is in fact listed in red in the buglist, this says it is a BAD bug. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Utilizing the effects of a known and acknowledged bug, to gain advantage over an enemy is exploitation of said bug.



It seems to me that first, claiming the otherwise "silent" majority as your own supporters is beyond cheap as a negotiating tactic, but also that the fact this is NOT WAD, then your entire argument of community acceptance is moot - it is a bug, using it is an exploit. Unwritten rules about exploiting bugs exist because most reasonable people acknowledge that it is better to have a sense of harmony and camaraderie than to have the option to have full use of the little flaws in the dev's programming [i]that they consider flaws themselves, but have so far been unable to satisfactorily fix[i] in order to gain the upper hand on their foes.

Perhaps you were not properly congratulated, K, on discovering this bug and making it public. I'm sure when you first used it, you did not know or think of it as a bug, and just felt it was a brilliant use of mechanics. But now it is a known bug, and you just need to let go of the past. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Oh my lol, now everything makes sense ^_^

Ok, joking http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
This thread really seems to be close to its very and peaceful end now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif
That was the kind of ending I hoped for opening the thread: to understand how the community and expecially the most expert players were feeling about this. Accomplished! A mod solves the problem well IMHO and hopefully something will be implemented in the basegame as well. One million thanks to everybody who gave their contribution to the discussion, in one sense or another.
For me, I am satisfied and now call myself out and go seeking new docks to visit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I'd like to see someone post a game file showing them stopping MoD.

I was the victim in capuchin. I had a huge army of Niefel giants and faced a single caster who had cast ritual of returning on himself and held the sword that causes heat from hell. All he did was cast MoD and the heat from the sword damaged him triggering the ritual of returning so he instantly vanished. Then my giants spent 50 turns fighting illusions and autorouted. Whole army decimated with nobody to fight. It sure didn't seem like the way the game was meant to function.

Look, if there is a counter to this fine. Good for you for being such a master that you are prepared to deal with this. Iwas a noob at the time so didn't even know if this was legit. Since then, I have faced all sorts of other endgame tactics like enslave, etc etc. and nothing ever has bothered me - all is fair in love and war, but this move did. Maybe its like porno where you just know it when you see it but this move just feels wrong.

I am not going to argue about it anymore but that is the story.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Actually, that's not quite correct.

The bug shortlist is not a list of bugs, but a list of 'potential bugs', which is organized to prioritize the receiving of the dev's attention to either fix or declare WAD. Red simply means it requires the devs attention before other less serious matters.

As for it being on the shortlist for so long and not getting any attention from the devs, actually argues the case that it is NOT a bug.

I'll point again to my previous post which seems to have been lost in many quick replies to the thread.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Read the other threads on the subject, you'll find some KO posts on the issue.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I would also have to make a nit-picky point about such lists.

Lists exist on 4 levels. Each of us listing the things that we feel are "wrong" with the game. A maintained list of such items in the public forums. The list of such items being discussed in the Beta Tester forum (which is not allowed to be posted or discussed in public forums or chats due to the NDA agreement each beta-tester signs). And finally the only real official recognized buglist which would basically be the alpha group (the devs talking between themselves). Please beware of listing things as being officially known and recognized bugs unless there is a post here by Johan or Kristoffer saying so. It is rare that such verification floats down to us and declarations of that type can serve the reverse effect of getting it worked on.

Personally I try to word all of mine as requests until the devs decide to call them bugs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I'll let this thread die semi-gracefully, but I'd like to summarize the main points on "battlefield spells + retreat" and MoD:

1.1 Is is a difficult/dangerous tactic to use? Yes.
1.2 Does it have counters that an experienced player can use and would likely be using as a matter of course? Yes.
1.3 Is it especially harmful to thug and SC armies and not others? Yes.
1.4 Does it anger players who fall for it? Yes. Like most effective tactics, it cheeses people off.

2.1 It it considered a bug by the devs? Yes, it does not work as they intended. The board moderator Gandalf Parker considers it a major bug, which is why it is red-listed in the Bug forum.
2.2 Is it important enough to the devs that they've addressed it in the last four patches? No.

3.1 Does the community as a whole believe it should be banned? Probably not, considering that only 7 of the 37 games running on the front page of the Multiplayer forum have any rules regarding it.
3.2 Is it an unwritten rule? There is no way to prove that, so that's an unfounded assumption. Since even the polls that have been done are self-selecting, getting valid data is extremely difficult. Final answer: the data says probably no because there is no supporting data other than conflicting anecdotal evidence.

4.1 Does it fundamentally alter game balance to keep it in? No, though it does take away some of the power of thug and SC armies and forces players to have a more balanced end-game strategy.

5.1 Is K a Devil's Advocate and/or argumentative jerk? Maybe. The jury is still out on both counts.
5.2 Is K a cheater who I can't trust to play with? No. I play by any rules that have been agreed upon at the start of the game. I do get very cheesed when someone who is in the middle of a war with me suddenly says "oh, we have these unwritten rules against the thing you're doing."

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Did you include AndeanZorro in your numerical analysis?

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Yes.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

So you knew he was talking about MoD / retreating?

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

A few points.

I dont maintain the sticky bug list on the forum. I think you mean Edi. I maintain the server list, the server commands wishlist, the map commands wishlist.

Importance isnt the best word when using the last 4 patches as evidence. What has been in the latest patches has been decided more by ease than importance.

I totally agree with you about hating unspoken rules. And I would be against any general decision that such unwritten rules carry much weight. It tends to require reading many different threads on a continual basis. I myself would be fairly likely to fail such unspoken rules.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

If anyone does wish to compile a list of unspoken rules then we can put them somewhere they can be linked to in the first post of game-starting threads.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Yup. It was counted as part of the 7 out of 37.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

So I guess the point I am trying to make is that most people who have played the game know that MoD is one of the cheap battlefield combos Omni outlawed in Andean, as evidenced by the fact K read it and included MoD / retreating in that category when he compiled his stats.

IMHO MoD is part of the community knowledge, just as Omni referenced in his guidelines for Andean. But I think it makes sense to point it out at the start of a game cuz you never know who knows what and an MP game is a big time investment.

Also, I don't think people get cheezed at every effective tactic. On the contrary, i am always delighted to get schooled by effective tactics. I may lose a battle but it adds an arrow to my quiver for future games.

But if I were in a game where MoD-retreat was allowed, I would design my entire strategy to focus on it, including having a hard to kill pretender designed to teleport around and use that move. I don't think it would be fun and I guess the other guy would eventually use the same strategy.

Anyway, I am not going to belabor the point but I still look forward to someone posting a turn where they show how they stopped an MoD-retreat.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I wasnt all that "ware" of MoD till this thread.

But wouldnt assassins be considered one answer for that?
Sure the same set of orders would kick in for the mage, but during an assassination isnt retreat equal to losing the battle?

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I included it because it specifically said "battlefield spells" and I count MoD as a battlefield spell (The criteria I use is any spell that gets an icon on the top right of the battle screen when cast).

I was also being generous. For example, I included one game that said "no tricky stuff."

For whatever reason, only a small percentage of the community has a problem with it.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

K, It said "cheap battlefield" and I just don't understand how you can say only a small percentage of the community has a problem with it.
Most people who have been around the block know it is a game breaker.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

You used a rhetorical trick earlier and seem to have confused it into fact by this point. Quoted from earlier in the thread:

Therefore:

Or would you prefer to continue begging the question?

-Max

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Actually, the only way of knowing for sure is polling all the players of DominionsIII, both those playing in current games in the Multiplayer forum and those not. Just because the host of a certain game thinks it's bad doesn't mean that all of the players in that game think it's wrong.

That being said, based on the representative sample it is easy to draw a conclusion that the vast majority of players don't have a problem.

Arguing that there might be implicit or "unwritten" rules that support the opposite conclusion is exactly the same as saying "the available evidence doesn't support my opinion, but I'd like you to believe my position even though I don't have any evidence."

Heck, I'd be surprised if the majority of the players on llamabeast's servers even knew about his implicit rules, or are playing by them.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

No, it is not easy. All you can draw from your sample is that most players have not explicitly expressed a concern, or it has not been brought to their attention.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

It's a little hard to imagine that roughly 4 out of 5 Multiplayer players are uninformed or unwilling to express concern. MP players tend to be better informed about the game, especially the ones that frequent the forums.

As I said before, all the evidence points to a loud and very outspoken minority who are attempting to dominate the conversation, and there is no credible evidence supporting their positions. When someone points out the flaws in every aspect of their argument, they get louder.

Having proved my point, I'll exit stage left.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I agree. Personally my feelings are that the games that don't ban MoD + BE exploit don't do so because the creator hasn't experienced the awesome *** kicking that it can be. Just for the record, I'm 99% certain that the combo was abused during the first Megagame.

I know Micah used a QoA equipped with armor of virture + Shimmering Fields + a golem with 100% lighting resistance against me in Dolphin. That was pretty frustrating, but I deserved to get kicked around, and if I had a proper army I could have killed the golem, and at least made the QoA retreat, thus ending the shimmering fields.

It's pretty silly for K to say that people who don't explicitly ban an obscure combo that breaks the game implicitly support its use. I would say the vast majority of people who don't ban it explicitly don't know about the sheer game breaking potential, or even that the exploit exists at all.

Jazzepi

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

You have still not proven your point. Your argument of a vocal minority apply better to you than to the individuals who disagree with you. There are more people who are vocal about it getting banned than who are vocal about keeping it. In no way does that mean the people who have not said anything agree with you. If they did agree with you, they are more than capable of speaking up without your assistance. It requires an enormous lapse in logic to suppose that because they do not explicitly take oneside, they must be in support of the other. Which they haven't explicitly supported either, BTW.
Think about it for a minute, instead of simply getting louder when someone points out the flaws in your argument.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Great point, sum1lost. If you imagine that opposition, and support, for MoD was completely evenly distributed through the community you would see a bell shaped curve of distribution.

A few people would be really irritated on either end, but most people would fall in the middle.

Instead, you see one, maybe two, people defending MoD + battlefield enchantments, and a whole host of people saying it's clearly an exploit.

Talk as much as you want about the "silent majority", but examining where the tips of the bell curve are coming down is much more telling. It's clear that the bell curve of opinion regarding the usage of MoD + BFE is hugely shifted towards it being an exploit and not a viable tactic.

Jazzepi

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Isnt that a fallacy to define the split that way?
Those in favor and those against?

This forum is continually full of people learning the game. And many of the MP games include people just getting into MP. So while it might be true that the majority of the vocals are against it, I think that would be one side vs the many people who are unaware of it. And therein lies the discussion.

While I am not against someone saying something like "its generally known that is an exploit", that would be different than something like saying "you violated an unspoken rule" and trying to declare cheating or something. If the person running the game does not specify it as a rule, or does not have a link to something like "the standard rules in the games I run", then I wouldnt be big on unspoken rules. I cant think of any that I would consider default.

But then again Im not big on defaults in general. I think the mp games are getting too standardized just to create bragging rights, and are ignoring many of the games most interesting settings.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Sorry Gandalf, if there was anything improper about that last post. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Judging by the number of items on the list that have cyan Dev text next to them, the amount of time it has been on the list, and my recollection of comments that KO made in the last thread I remember about MoD - it was all but written in neon. If it's not, I can only apologize for the misrepresentation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


In any case, Sum1 beat me to it. Since majority rules, those of us who are vocally against it, who greatly outnumber you, K, hereby claim the silent ones as supporters of our position, stealing them from you as their silence clearly shows that they disagreed with you co-opting their opinions.

7/37 game threads specifically ban the move, 0/37 specifically state that it is acceptable. How can you possibly claim that as devastating evidence that everyone who can't be arsed to post here, supports you?

This is fun. I like how when you talk circles around a lawyer (or law student), they continue trying to think that you are the one standing still. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

You points may be correct.
But I know that there are things on the lists that the devs consider important but the time consideration tends to decide it more. If it comes to many little fun things or one big unfun thing than the big thing can get unhappily set back. It doesnt make it not important.

On your other points, I was unaware that this had been discussed in the games thread. That does make a difference.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

How have you counted the games using my MoD fix ?

I think if games like the current mega one and 2 others use modding just to change this spell (and it's the *only* spell which get its effects changed in the whole spell list) it show people are very reluctant to see the vanilla version used in MP.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Good point. But I dont remember it coming up on my blitz server. So this would be something applicable to the larger longer running games?

On the other hand, are those games IRC driven? The IRC crowd tends to be an opinion group on its own.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Your blitz games tend to be around 4 players, right?

I'd guess a lot of them are decided before the serious end-game strategies come into play.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

true. Do the other servers have rules or mods about it?
Velusion? Llamabeast? lch?

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I don't have server rules, as I leave this to the game admins or the players. I just host. I haven't had an incident where people were abusive in any of my games that I know of, though.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

It is. Fallacy of the False Dichotomy.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Since the position of "nerf battlefield spells and MoD" is a change from the baseline rules, that puts you in the position of meeting the burden of proving that your position is valid.

Considering that I've dismantled all your arguments and provided some proof (though not conclusive proof) means that I won this argument around four pages ago. You neither met your logical burden nor provided any proof. In a sense, I actually won this argument twice.

I don't have to prove that a majority support my position. The mere fact that there is no proof that a majority do support you is enough to defeat your proposition. The result of no explicit rules to the contrary is to support using the baseline rules, either explicitly or implicitly.

At this point you are stuck with the Conceptual Balance guys and the "nerf all gem items" guys: a recognizable minority whose position is understandable but completely unsupportable. It is the position of: "the game doesn't support my play style, so everyone should support a change that will."

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

This thread makes much more sense if you assume that K is a time traveler.

It was probably a future-K who wrote this:
and it was probably some past-K who just wrote the above post about burden of proof. The above post doesn't make any sense in light of the bug status of MoD + Retreat, but since this was written by past-version of K, he isn't aware of that.


Now back to the _Time Traveler's Wife_ ...

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

Just because the devs consider it a bug doesn't mean that it adversely affects game balance and should become a rule people should follow. In fact, I consider it as an improvement to game balance because it reduces the importance of SCs and thugs.

The burden of proof is on you to show that people should follow this rule. I've given an affirmative defense (playstyles of MP players) and have dismantled all your arguments (see previous posts). Either would have worked.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

I suggest a simple new rule for MP games:

"Player K is banned"

I am sure I wouldn't want to play with cheater. And as game admin I'd ban all cheaters.

Re: Battlefield spell + retreating?
 

No, I've dismantled all of *your* arguments and have given an affirmative offense. Clearly, the burden of proof is on you to show that people shouldn't not disobey this rule.