Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

If they were constantly moving, it would be hard to catch them. You need to patrol the province they are going to. You cannot catch them in the one they are moving from (the one that got unrest increased).

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I agree with the rest of your list, but you consider these exploits? Err huh? Basically you don't like Pangaea that much then, do you? These are the standard tactics for Pangaea (raid with sneaky armies, block armies with maeanads, cast call of the wild before the main attack)?

If these would be considered exploits, I'd like to see someone explain how you can play with Pangaea. Using sneaky forces and maenads and remote spells *is* what Pangaea is about, at least in my opinion. Means Pangaea can recuit Minotaur commanders and Minotaurs trooper only, huh?

I am honestly quite baffled.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I doubt that Baalz thinks that anything on his list are exploits. He was using sarcasm I believe.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Yeah, quite a few people missed this:

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

You are correct at least on my part on that: I missed that totally. My jaw dropped when I saw the basic pangaen tactics on the list of exploits, and when my jaw drops my eyes and brain cease to function.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Trying to abuse the ability to cancel movement with attack+retreat orders seems like an exploit to me to be honest. It's incredibly irritating, the counters are far, far harder than what you need to do it (you only need a commander, maybe some troops) and a lot of the time it's completely unintuitive and feels buggy (like when a single commander and 10 troops with retreat orders attacks your advancing army of 100 guys turn after turn and they get stuck, unable to actually move over the border, for several turns).

I get that it doesn't work every time but that only makes it seem more random and unfair. It also introduces a lot of micro and deluges both players with battle report messages for basically 0 cost.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Personally I find the problem of gem burning much more irritating than movement cancel. Makes lategame castle storming much harder.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Yeah, and AI can execute whole script against 2-3 Ghost Riders, using all gems [I've seen people lose over 100 gems in one battle, because mages decided to spam living earth/fire].

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

The more I read this thread the more I find myself aggreeing with Baalz. Other than exploiting bugs, I don't think anything that is WAD by the engine is an exploit. So sickle farming may be obnoxious but isn't an exploit. Should it be banned in some games? Sure. Every game can have themes and methods of play.

Burning gems is just good strategy. If someone can afford to put 100 gems into an army you are probably desperately trying to stay alive. Again, it's annoying but that's the risk you take.

A real exploit would be the Admin looking at people's turns. That's clear cheating. Or an admin forcing host to make his opponents stale.

Or using a hack to generate gems or gold. Or running bots to automate the game to enhance the economy.

So far, from what I've seen folks here play like any good munchkins. They min/max the settings to the extreme and I that's what I would expect in a hardcore MP strategy game. This isn't a role playing game, but clearly house rules can be set up to play a RP scenario. However, I would expect good opponents to use every trick in the book. It's how I've always played hard strategy games. Finding that nifty rule that gives an edge is classic. Not exploit.

I clearly remember my first games of ASL and my friend teaching me pulling out hidden mines when I didn't even know they existed in the game. Annoying yes. Exploit? No.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Pardon my noobishness, what is the bot doing?

What is ASL and "pulling out hidden mines?"

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I mostly agree with Maerlande.

However, a few things seem to be unintended and may Work as Implemented, but not as Designed. Certainly the way Armor of Virtue works cannot be right. The returning effect is supposed to effect the wearer of the armor. Instead, it effects everyone in his square, and they *retain* that effect until discharged, even if the armor is moved to a different commander. Taking advantage of the way it currently works really does feel like cheating. How would you feel about an entire army of thugs/SCs that all had a returning effect on them? Because of an item working inappropriately?

Similarly, Life after Death/Ankh giving you upkeep free mages also feels like an exploit rather than something that works as it was intended. I don't feel nearly as strongly about this one, its just an annoying amount of micro to get a pretty obscene gold advantage.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I'm Oceania in an "anything goes" game, but I'm not blood hunting underwater, because it just seems lame to me. Breaks my suspension of disbelief or whatever.

I think Life ater Death could be fixed if all your zombies lost their magic paths when they came back to life. If you weren't using it, your guys would be dead anyway. Pretenders (and immortals) should just not be affected. Needs an application patch, unfortunately.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

WaltF4

I've not heard of any bots in Dominions. But I've seen lot's of other bots in games. The classic was Diablo II where folks built bots to kill the bosses 1000x an hour and grab the treasure. No human could do that. It broke the game.

I suppose there is no real reason a person couldn't make a bot to scan everyone's turn files or hack llamaserver. My point is just that those are real cheats. Not just pushing the game rules.

ASL = Advanced Squad Leader The classic board game from Avalon Hill that spawned Steel Panthers and numerous other hex based wargames. I'm dating myself here but there are some still play it.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I think "exploit" might be a bit too pejorative, and this conversation should probably focus on *undesirable tactics* instead of "exploits."

Stuff like LAD conversion and gem gen production are extremely tedious and add very little to the game in terms of skillful tactical decisions.

Stuff like blocking movement with an army set to retreat is bad (IMO) because it infringes upon your opponent's orders without actually beating their units. It's extremely frustrating and just exploits a weakness in the game engine. Likewise with using remotes to bleed gems, because the gemuse AI is so atrocious. I suppose a good litmus test for this sort of thing would be asking if the decision would make sense without knowing the secondary mechanical effects that can result...IE, would attacking with this army that will be utterly crushed be a good choice? Obviously no. Would casting these ghost riders into an army that will crush them without significant losses be a good choice? Again, if the answer is no then it feels like abuse to just get the AI to burn gems. Both of these tactics are also unable to be countered or outplayed in any sort of reasonable manner (not casting gem spells late game is not an option...)

Saying stuff like these are "exploits" is beside the point...something doesn't have to be an exploit to make the game less fun, and maximizing fun and possibly skillful play should be the goal of house rules and mods.

also @Squirrel -I can't believe you rate the returning effect on the AoV as worse than the ankh, but whatever...an army of returning SC's would be pretty worthless, all it takes is a single scratch and they go home.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

ah yes, the Dzherjinsky tractor works.. my favorite scenario..
well except for the weekend ones we used to setup with 26000 pts to a side..

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I rate it as less likely to be intended.

I mean, LAD was specifically implemented to animate the dead mages with their paths intact. So there's an argument that said feature was intended. AoV is supposed to cause the wearer to return if 'scratched', not anyone who ever wore it, meaning the implementation is a poor for the stated intention and reasonable intention given its a worn item.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Micah

I'd rate these as viable real world tactics. Sending a sacrificial unit of infantry to cause the opponent to burn ammunition is perfectly valid. It may be a bit calous but it's not like human wave attacks are new or rare. Wave after wave of guys getting killed will eventually cause the opponent to run low on ammunition. Now, it's not quite the same, but frankly, Dom 3 is missing a whole bunch of movement restricting techniques. Sending fighter bombers to interdict movement is classic. Much like air dropping Ghost Riders. Much the same functionality. It is sad that there isn't a counter. You can't put up CAP.

But if a large dangerous army was moving to attack, a flanking probe is a classic maneuver to force it to turn and engage, providing time to reorganize your main force or collect the remnants. That's the functionality I see provided by the interception capability.

One of the things I really notice missing in Dom3 is zone of control. For a game of land armies, it plays much more like fleets. You can't hold a line with light skirmishers to allow the formation of a counterattack. Those tricks are the closest I've seen. And flank attacks do not cause significant disorganization in the armies. In reality they mess up formations and disturb plans.

But, I hope I was clear. I see nothing wrong with specific games setting specific house rules. Nor do I see anything wrong with modding out the truly annoying and enjoyment reducing problems. I am playing one gem gen game of my 6 games and I can see the problem with that.

I just don't think that you can set up a list of meta rules that can be broadly used. Unless it's through a mod.

Clearly if a game has house rules that I don't like, I have the choice to not play. There doesn't seem to be a shortage of games available at any time.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Yeah, but in real life you don't use up your entire stock of anti-tank weaponry on your opponent's sacrificial infantry, you use machine guns. The Dom AI skips straight to dropping nuclear weapons if they happen to be lying around. (Assuming the gemuse condition is satisfied, which isn't hard.) As it stands it's about 1 part valid tactic to 9 parts abusing the AI, and that's a pretty poor ratio.

Interception is provided by teleportation attacks, which will disrupt movement during the normal move phase, so I'm not sure what parallel you're trying to draw, but I'm not seeing it. Similarly, pulling back a province gives you time to reorganize your forces. I feel like you're digging for functionality that the Dom engine simply doesn't support, like flanking attacks and zone of control...the tricks that are described have nothing to do with them in my mind, but that could just be a difference of opinion.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I fail to see the problem of sending in chaff armies to slow down hostile armies. If you scripted commanders to burn hundreds of gems, then maybe the scripting wasn't that well thought out? I mean, it is not like only your opponent can do the Ghost riders attack, or? Do unto thy opponent what they do to you.

Harassing attacks, even suicide harassing attacks, have been the norm through out the history of warfare. If the harrassers can destroy a supply-wagon or blow up a fuel dump or whatever, would that too be an exploit? "Forcing" (ie if the opponent so has wished to equip and script his commanders) an opponent to burn lots of gems are in my opinion the closest thing in Dom to harassing attacks used in real life.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

You can't ghost rider an army in a fort, and you can't effectively storm a fort in the late game without burning gems. "Not ever attacking" isn't an acceptable solution here.

Supply wagons and the like are able to be defended, it's not a good comparison. Stealth raiding on an opponent's lands IS supported though. Likewise, mages in the back can sometimes be massacred by flying or fast cavalry units.

Again, though, I think force-fitting comparisons to real life guerrilla tactics is disingenuous. If you can't GUARD your supply wagons because of a engine limitation it's a problem when your opponent can "raid" them.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

But aren't you basically claiming such attacks too should be considered exploits? If I send a sneaky army to attack your mages, but you wipe them out while burning your gems, you would cry foul game?

I don't think you want to claim any attack which fails but that burned your gems to be exploits, do you? If you don't, then where is the line? Who decides which attack are legitimate and which ones are not? I've seen Ghost Riders wipe massive armies (mostly because the opponent mages nuked their own troops which resulted in a rout), but should using Ghost Riders be always considered foul play if they do not wipe the army? What guerrilla attacks would be legitimate, should all remote spells that target an army be exploits?

Is using assassins an exploit? How many times have I, and I bet you too, used assassins from inside a besieged fort to attempt assassination as the last desperate move; but if the target is a mage and has scripted spells that burn gems, wouldn't that too be an exploit?

What about fires from afar or seeking arrow spam, they can kill many mages with lots of gems, isn't that an exploit too?


I am sorry, but I do not agree with your view.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

It's unrealistic to completely prevent forward movement of an entire huge army for possibly several consecutive months, by attacking it with some trivial force that immediately retreats. I can't think of how the developers could have implemented this differently. But it's still a lame tactic.


The game mechanics do not allow you to script for several different situations. The game mechanics do not allow you to limit the number of gems a mage can use from his supply, per battle. It's unrealistic that a mage in the backfield would really burn all his gems summoning up fire elementals in an easily winnable fight.

Edit: About Assassins: yeah, assassination targets can do some dumb stuff too. But I can write this off as caused by their surprise when attacked by the assassin. Does not break my suspension of disbelief.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Micah was really clear, I think. Sending attacks that have no chance of doing any harm. It's really obvious.

When you are about to storm any fort, he can just cast some remote-attack spells, so your mages execute the script meant for storming. And there is nothing you can do about it. And you can't do the same to your enemy, as he is in the fort. Good luck winning without BEs or buffs.

Sure, it's sometimes hard to decide when you want to really weaken someone before storming and when you want to burn his gems. But many situations are obvious. You don't send GRs to kill few chaff units. You don't send one weakly equipped thug to attack 30+ mages, without even scripting it.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Jarkko, are you deliberately being obtuse? Flanking attacks can be stopped by putting troops on your flanks. Fliers can be stopped with storm or putting decoys behind your squishy mage types so the attack rear hits them instead.

I admit that enforcement of a rule like this would be problematic, but I don't think it's a bad thing to put in an expectation that it not be done, at least as a potential house rule. If someone feels the need to cheat and do it anyhow, well good for them.

Additionally, as with many of the issues I've been bringing up of late the borderline cases do not break the game. If someone sneaks in 5 reanimating priests with LAD it's not a problem, but when they have 100 of them the game breaks. People continuously bring up borderline cases and point to them with a great deal of hand-wringing about unfairly persecuting people. I'm not advocating for anything of the sort, just house rules against clear cut abuse of the AI. The truly abusive cases will be visible as such, the borderline cases don't provide enough of an advantage to cause a major problem.

Assassins and remote spells both fall back into the obtuse camp, since those are clearly some of the intended uses for them, and they are, again, counterable with bodyguards or resistance items. (Though I REALLY wish the assassin AI script was better.)

I wouldn't agree with my view the way you're interpreting and presenting it either, so I guess there's not much of a problem.

You know, strangely enough, assassins *are* the counter to armies which intercept and then retreat, blocking your army movement. Since his commanders are scripted to retreat, they auto-die to assassins. So you can 'protect your wagons', or whatever analogy we're trying to make. The counter doesn't really fit the above metaphor, but it is a counter...

Is it an exploit to drop a remote attack spell on a fortress with sufficiently low PD that the remote attack spell will win, thus stopping any armies inside from moving?

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Ok, so my previous examples were not exploits. So who is the judge of what is obvious exploiting (as that seems to be agreed term, "obvious exploit") and what is not? Is the first suicide attack an obvious exploit, or the third, or fourth attack?

Is the usual Pan harassing tactics of Summon Lammashtas Retreat an exploit? Is it an exploit if 10 Pans does it? Is it an exploit only if done against a besieging army? If Lammashtas are not an exploit, then why is Ghost Riders an exploit (they are effectively the same thing, send in suicide troops to cause maximum carnage).

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Again, I'm not concerned with policing this stuff, if someone decides to cheat and violate house rules they can go ahead, it's not any better than busting out a file editor. Cheating is cheating, and I'd hope the community would be mature enough to not do it, at least the players that are good enough to really abuse such exploits, or play well enough in a larger context for abuse to win a game for them.

I still think "don't abuse the AI by casting spells to bleed gems without any chance at actually hurting the army you're attacking" is a good house rule, even if it's hard to prove. I'd like to play with people that can be taken at their word, is that so much to ask?

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Micah, I agree with you, but the point is that it has to be explicitly specified in game house rules, because otherwise it gives unfair advantage to players who exploit these tricks. So even if I dislike gem burning very much, when I see that someone in a game where I play goes that way, I will certainly use it myself (if house rules say nothing about it). However, as it's really sometimes tough to say if it was abusing or not, such rules may become too strict. So I see no good solution here.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

@Micah: No, it is not too much to ask.

But as people, maybe even some good players, see things differently, and you apparently have no desire to define *what* exactly you consider cheating, then it might be very difficult for others to know. To me it seems you are on a crusade against perfectly valid and reasonable tactics which work exactly as designed, and I find it very hard "the mature community" would accept those ideas without some blinking of eyes. Snarl as much as you want along your nose about cheaters, but it is a guarantee everybody won't be thinking similarily to you about some unwritten and undefined code.

And yet, if you have such good players who think as you do, then more power to you! :) I for one am not very good at this game, and I intend to use sneakers and remote summons in the future too, even if some good players would go pale of the thought. There are after all already games where the diplomatic agreements are binding (which I consider weird), and there are no-diplomacy games too (and they are even more weird to me) out there, so one more sneaker-and-remote-summons-are-cheating group (whome I would consider weird ;) ) won't topple the "mature community", or so I hope at the very least :)

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

@Jarkko - "you are on a crusade against perfectly valid and reasonable tactics which work exactly as designed" Please provide me a dev quote on that. Until then I'm calling BS on you attributing the ****ty AI gem use to intended design.

You also say you're not a very good player, and yet you insist on knowing which tactics are "reasonable" without a solid grasp on late game play at high levels of competition. Yes, I'm an elitist jerk, thanks for asking. =)

What I consider cheating is breaking the house rules that are set up in a game. I'm currently arguing in favor of certain rules being adopted on a widespread basis because they make for a better game, in my not at all humble opinion. Again, the hand-wringing comes out in force in your response. I'm not saying people that use these tactics in current games are dirty cheaters, I'm saying that *going forward* the game is better off if they are removed via house rule. No need to refer to an unwritten and undefined code, just a simple post by the admin. The whole point of this thread was to start a discussion so house rules can be made more explicit and easy to implement, since the current system of just leaving it unspecified has led to some nasty situations.

Maybe I didn't make it clear enough that I wasn't trying to accuse anyone of cheating for stuff that's in a gray area or undefined in a game. Of course people will be angling for whatever advantages they can find if they're playing competitively, and I do it myself. I'm not trying to insult anyone for playing as hard as they can, but I do think I'm in a good position to point out what feels to me like flaws in the game engine, since I've got a pretty good understanding of the game, and a lot of play experience in terms of what makes for a good game.

Just for a guideline, here are some rough guidelines in terms of what feels legitimate to me vs what feels like an exploit/tactic that is detrimental to the enjoyment of the game:
I feel like tactics that interfere with other players' units and orders without actually interacting meaningfully with them (retreating vs fighting a battle, or dying to artillery without doing a single point of damage to bleed gems) are problematic.
Tactics which break the economy (by getting something for nearly nothing or getting something which will pay for itself before long) in an open-ended fashion are problematic.

Hm, that covers most of it actually. Breaking other people's units without actually fighting them, and breaking the economy. Might be something else I'm forgetting, but those are the big ones. There is some rhyme and reason to my crusade.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

But you are, in that very sentence. You claim some perfectly valid tactics (but not *which* tactics or game elements) to be "gray area". My mindreading capabilities are quite poor, and I will make a wild guess most people reading this thread have about same amount of PSI powers as I do.

You can't just assume people know what you think are cheats or exploits if you are unwilling to tell what you think cheats and exploits. Othewise you are just a person who basically reserves himself the right to after a lost game the right to say "Yeah, well, the others were cheating."

So if you cause my troops/commanders to die/rout while I am buffing up, and thus I was never able to do a single point of damage, then I am cheating? But if I had a single slinger up front doing 1 point of damage on one of your screening units I was not cheating?

You provide some general handwaving at "gray area" tactics; that is really insulting the intelligence of the people who read your posts, because nobody can know what you think, even though you make it sound like these things are obvious to everybody and no listing are needed. So please, could you provide a list of the tactics *you* consider cheating? I for one would be very interested in that, because so far I have got (the apparently very wrong) impression you don't like sneaking troops or remote attack spells.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I do not think that using a decoy army to force the enemy to use gems is an exploit. It is used in reality (canvas tanks anyone?). In fact I'd love it if the illusion spells just worked for that purpose.
What doesn't make sense is archer (especially when set to guard rear commander) and mage decoys (well, the latter do to some extend, but it can get ridiculous).
Blocking an army is an exploit imo, but in that sense also cutting of retreat routes is when the thing that cut of the retreat is not significantly stronger than the disorganized fleeing army.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Jarkko:

We are not advicating punishing people for doings things like that now. All we want is to CREATE a list of house rules, so game admin has a CHOICE to include them in a game. Of course it may be impossible to make sure they are not abused, but now most people consider copying Bogus orders as a cheat that is not allowed - and you need to look at turn file to spot it. Dominions multiplayer is played mostly by mature players, people that can respect things like house rules. We cannot count on devs to fix problems like that, surely not in dom3. And limiting some things make game more interesting and gives you more fun, freeing you from doing stupid strats that are necessary otherwise.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Zeldor, I understand very well the intention (or so I believe) of the discussion. What I do not understand is that people should be aware of what others *think* are cheating. Say the game admin writes that "Breaking other people's units without actually fighting them, and breaking the economy" are cheating -> that would be a masive can of worms, wouldn't it? I bet there are in any MP game dozens of battles where one side doesn't make a single casualty before they are broken, and apparently the losers should be thus considered cheaters if such a home-rule was in effect?

Also, I wonder who decided it is a stupid and un-fun strategy to use sneakers or remote summoning spells, and why the devs even *should* consider changing those? Orders of Bogus&Co I understand, and I would go as far as claim that any charmed/seduced commanders should lose their scripted orders and that would be nice to fixed in a patch. However, in this thread the discussion hasn't been about Bogus orders, but about perfectly valid tactics all of the sudden being declared "grey area" and even cheating or exploiting. *That* is simply something I have a very hard time to stomach.

Now if you set up a game where no sneakers and remote summons are allowed, then that would be ok to me. But to somehow try to forcefeed to the community the opinions of a couple people as the absolute moral truth is a bit little too thick, isn't it?

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Jarkko, please, try to hear what others are trying to tell before judging. Consider following scenario: you are going to storm a castle of another player in late game with all 9th in research. There are some 20-30 mages inside and tons of summons and whatnot. You have something on the same lines. You have a good battle plan involving playing on other player's race weaknesses: for example, he's vulnerable to cold, or fire, or whatever. He has the same against you. Now, you both need gems to realise your plan. You surely want to cast antimagic, some Army of, perhaps Mass regen etc. He too.
Now, castle storming goes after the magic phase. So he casts 3-5*GR on this castle. Your troops are perfectly capable of destroying all the horses in 10 turns without any magic at all. Still, your mages start casting all scripted spells and after that there are several possibilities: if you gave them just enough gems for their script (usual practice to stop AI from crazy things) you storm the castle without gems and lose. If you gave them many gems, they start doing crazy things and spend all their gems and storm and lose. If you gave them really many gems so they still have them after GRs are killed and the things they were doing were not crazy enough to kill them or your army, you finally have some chance to actually storm the castle, not taking into account that the opponent will be able to use much more gems in the battle.
And you have absolutely no way to do anythinng about it.
Have you experienced it, Jarkko?

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I've experienced what you described and it's a perfectly acceptable tactic. He fixed you to expend resources in his attack by putting a fairly significant chunk of his own resources into play.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Huh, have you ever really seen proper fort defences in late game? It's like saying that when you research GR it's fair that your opponents cannot storm your castles any longer. You call 10D for 2x GR fair tactics for making enemy lose 50-100 gems against them + lose his entire army when storming without gems?

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

If you can't take his castle without gems, then don't take it. Preach him out or jus leave a sigle unit there and move on to his other provinces. What you are asking for is for your enemies to give up as soon as they attack you. Burning 10-25 death gems to get your opponent to spend his own gems seems like a perfectly reasonable exchange to me. Next you'll be complaining that people shouldn't be allowed to play kingmaker, to throw the game, to trade gems or items or to donate their gems to the enemies of the person who just killed them.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Only one more thing about this I wanted to say. I agree that there appears to be no counter to some of these. That's what I meant by dropping GR on some one is like fighter bomber interdiction of movement. However, Dom 3 doesn't allow you to put up fighter patrols. So it's a tactic that can't be countered.

And you are right. I am wishing for some functionality that isn't in the game. It would be very nice if an army with flying troops could set up recon patrols to intercept interdiction tactics. I haven't seen some of these used to the extent you've discussed.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Using ghost riders or some such to spend gems when storming is a annoying, but making a house rule that forbids it is not good IMO, as there is too much gray area. Lets say I sent an AQ with the aegis and armor of virtue to attack your force before storming. Was the intention to do as much damage to you or was the intention to make you spend gems? How can you know? Say I knew you had mostly demon MR 15 troops and you had a mage in the army capable of casting antimagic, which would make the aegis totally ineffective. Maybe I am just a poor player and didn't realize I can't hurt you and you spending all gems was an unintended side-effect. Or maybe I am a good player and was counting on luck, body ethereal and mirror image on AQ to make her stay longer on the battlefield until your mages spend all their gems.

There are several solutions to the problem of gem spending:
1) Don't storm the castle if it's not that crucial to take it.
2) Put twice the amount of gems (or three times if you expect both a magical attack and a regular one before storming) and cast spells that will put your mages to 200 fatigue, so by the time they recover ghost riders are defeated. All the major buffs and BE fall into this category.
3) If you have time, don't storm at once. Let him waste several ghost riders. Make him think you won't storm at all and then storm.

Yes, it makes storming forts in lategame terribly hard. But, I like it that way. It should be easier to defend than to attack. And if your enemy is storming such a well guarded fort, then it is probably your capital and he has already won.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Zeldor, it appears I have played this game and Dom2 slightly bit longer than you have, so don't you go and think that I am a noob :)

But to answer your question: Yes, yes I have. Many times. And I don't see where the problem is. Which is exactly why I don't understand your eagerness to claim something cheating when it clearly and obviously simply is not.

If you don't know how to plan your strategies against your opponents, then maybe you should play some easier game, like Tetris for example?

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

History is full of examples of hugely-outnumbered armies suiciding against large enemy forces just to slow them down. Thermopylae, Wavre, Bastogne...and there are far too many examples of armies using the 'attack and retreat' order to list. That was how the Persians slowed the Romans down before Carrhae, pretty much the whole purpose of cavalry in the US Civil War, the Austrians' only successful tactic against Frederick the Great...I have no problem with this particular exploit for that reason.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

1) I'm not Zeldor.
2) I too played d2 and d3 from the beginning (no ppp unfortunately) so let's discuss the things that are appropriate for the thread. It's good that you have experienced the situation from my example. Now, you think it's perfectly OK and I think it's not perfectly OK but I will surely use this trick if it's not banned in the house rules. And there are other people that think like me and there are other people that think like you. So please, stop telling Micah that his arguments and examples make no sense, because they have enough sense for other people.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

My mistake, sorry Zeldor :)

Then why dont you people who do not like the integral parts of the game set up a MP game, discuss the settings in the game thread, test it out, and then tell with proof just how awesome the results were? If you had discussed these "rules" in a game thread I for one would not have interfered, and the only reason I can see for bringing this to general discussion is because some apparently have a desire to implement some hand waving as rules for fair games. Why try to forcefeed rules (which I still don't know what they are, apparently everybody else know what these obvious situations are except me, and I am pissed I don't figure it out from the handwaving represented so far) some (at least I) think are stupid and against the very essence of the game?

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Because one of the common complaints is that setting up a game takes months due to those discussions.
And some of the common arguments break out startingwith "everyone knows" or "all games tend to".

So IMHO we dont have to agree on what IS or ISNT an exploit (I dont think that will ever happen). Just what items are fairly often included in bans. That way we can smooth out both problems by having some posted common game settings so a game admin can start a thread with lines such as
"we will be playing with the limits in #4 with 2 added items" or something like that.
Much quicker, much smoother, much less of the drama (that we are seeing here)

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

In case anyone has issues w/the LAD/Ankh behavior and would like to restrict it in their next game, check the Brainless Soulless mod I just put in the mods sub-forum.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

I described one of the situations as fully as I can given my poor English. If it's still handwaving I think the discussion is useless. I don't have anything against stealth troops, GR airstrikes or anything else in general; rather there are some common scenarios that look like abuse of game rules to me (and perhaps to some others). Using *GR* during *castle storm* to *burn gems* is one of such situations. There are some others less annoying.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Hmmm, I don't know if I'd categorize it as there being no counter. Sure, it might slow your conquest, but I think that's perfectly valid. If you 1) expect it 2) Are in very late game and 3) Have a couple turns to feint then it's not that hard to set yourself up so that a couple ghost riders (or whatever) dropping before you storm is just an annoyance. It should be pretty easy to wipe out/route/enslave a smallish force in 1 or 2 turns, and script your mages to account for that - particularly if you hold off a couple turns and see what your opponent is likely to throw at you. If he's dropping ghost riders I think a single boosted undead mastery will stop any other gems from being cast (maybe? I dunno.)- or a couple life for lifes, or soul slays, or a few just man's crosses firing at large enemy monsters, or, well use your imagination. if you can manage to get an the appropriate mages up in your casting order you're golden...if not, you still only need to double up the gems for spells that need to be cast 1st round and push anything you can to the second round (where plenty of spells will be fine going off). If you're prepared for this tactic and you've got the type of army that you're burning that many gems you really shouldn't have much trouble ending this sort of maneuver by your enemy before it gets too expensive.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

A noble thought that. However, it will be called the "List of Exploits". Any valid and legal tactics put on that list (because a person once said they are in the gray area) would thus automatically be considered cheats and exploits, just because they are on the list.

However, if that is how it would be, then I would want to see a ban on astral and death magic added to the list. They are known cheats and exploits of the game engine in such a magnitude, that no MP game can be won without astral and/or death. Besides, *everybody* knows banning astral and death magic makes sense, and anybody claiming otherwise is a cheater and exploiter.

Re: Trading commanders, exploit or not?
 

Um, you know, you can give key BE mages a ranged weapon and double the gems, and script them to: cast spell X, hold x 4, fire closest (or some such). They'll ride out any irritating Ritual Attacks, and still be able to cast during the 'normal' combat phase.

Costly? Sure. First off, obviously you'll need double the gems. And those casters wont be able to do much more to help after casting the BE. Then they might do something stupid in the 'main' fight after running out of ammo, if the battle runs long. And they'll have at least one, and most likely both, hand slot(s) full, so no Elemental Staves, etc.. So you'll probably need lots of extra mages along to compensate, for that really important fight.

But it's doable, and in a fortress-storming situation, very fair - you should have to bring along a lot extra, if the ultimate prize (say, the enemy's capital) is worth it.

As far as 'CAP' goes, while it's not available in siege situations (you'll have to resort to the above or some other technique), it is available in open-field provinces, at the cost of time, money and gems: Build a lab, and throw up some Domes, before you move on. That'll keep the Ritual attacks at bay while you advance. Slow, but doable.

Of course, that wont help against "suicide squads". But don't you have options of your own to deal with that? Someone mentioned assassination. What about your own flying? Or flanking? How about your own Ritual attacks?

So I'm not saying anything in general about the whole meta-question of how to deal with 'exploits' and what not. I just don't think GR, etc., and 'suicide squads' are a valid to the argument though - sure, they're irritating tactics, but I think they're valid, and they can be dealt with.