Re: What is abusive ?
 

The Devs have patched this game several times. If they considered anything game-breaking or abusive, they can easy just take stuff out and not even worry about fixing it.

Heck, if you don't like Bogus's commands, you can just make a mod and change his unit so he doesn't have them. I could mod that in and I don't even program well.

There are a number of things that affect a game materially, but are left to randomness, and are not fair by any definition:

-finding a site that makes great mages like enchantresses or Wizards

-getting a starting province with very weak neighbors

-getting a starting province with lots of neighbors when you a resource hungry nation, or having a high resource province next to your capital.

-having the chance to attack an indie with a powerful non-craftable artifact like the Hammer of Cyclops

-getting amazons at all

-getting a crazy good event(3000 gold, or things like the time I got a Dwarven Hammer and a Ring of Sorcery as events).

-finding a bloodcost reduction site as a blood nation, or a conjuration site as a conjuration nation(like Bandar Log or Marignon).


Heck, I once seduced an indie commander Illusionist with Air 6 on turn 7. AIR 6!!!! For Free!!!

Considering how easy it is to mod things out, people have no right to talk about unfairness. If you don't like, something, take it out and see how many people want to play with you. For example, in Perpetuality the consensus was that Arcane Nexus would be too powerful in a 60 person game. It was modded out and we played our game.

The great problem with this discussion is that people often say in the middle of a war "and that tactic you used was abusive, so you have to stop or you are a cheater", and that often materially affects the war.

How about some of the other really mean stuff?

-Putting Lycanthropes Amulets and Slave Collars on junk commanders just so they get killed and get picked up by mage commanders.

-Destroying your own castles and pillaging own provinces rather than let someone take it.

-Pretending to be an ally and then attacking.

-Wishing away key artifacts or unique commanders before key battles.

-Casting spells that destroy the game (Burden of Time, Wishes for "Armageddon", Utterdark, Neiflewinter, Astral Corrpution)


At the end of the day, you just have to play the game as written. I have seen too many games end in acrimony and bad feelings just because someone decided that a particular tactic was unfair. Personally, I play for fun, and policing my peers is not fun.

Re: What is abusive ?
 

Are you actually comparing having a 450 gold, 1000 year old mage in a fantasy world strap a slave collar on his neck because "it seemed like a good idea at the time" with a military tactic that has been used repeatedly throughout earth's history?

Cursed items, good and bad, should have a 100% no pick up rate.

Re: What is abusive ?
 

K - "Heck, if you don't like Bogus's commands, you can just make a mod and change his unit so he doesn't have them. I could mod that in and I don't even program well."

Show me, because I have no idea how you'd do that.

Re: What is abusive ?
 

Some players consider any casting of Astral Nexus abusive.

Clams/hoarding behavior is sometimes considered abusive.

Re: What is abusive ?
 

Well, there is a large amount of fantasy literature where cursed items actually try to get people to pick them up or use them. Obviously the One Ring, but also Stormbringer, a book in one of the Harry Potter novels, etc.

Most of these abusive tactics pretty much pale in comparison to the strategy of ganging up on a weaker/equivalent nation through NAPs and secret alliances. (Which I've done in the past, but I have now come to see the error of my ways http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ).

Re: What is abusive ?
 

Well, now I know never to play in an MP game with K.

To my mind it is pretty obvious which mentioned "exploits" are just a bit of cunning which is valid in the context of the game (e.g. wishing away items at a crucial time - how is that an exploit?) and which are clearly just nasty abuse of imperfections in the code (e.g. the Mists of Deception exploit before it was fixed). I expect everyone will now disagree with me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

In any case, I find K's suggestion that the game is exactly as it was meant to be by the devs blatantly ridiculous. Also suggesting every possible exploit should be modded out is a bit silly to my mind. Apologies, K, for being rude. Clearly we just disagree on this point, which is fine - I'm not trying to be personally unpleasant.

I can see that there are many things which play within the rules as they were intended but can be annoying, e.g. clam hoarding or Utterdark. They're a case for house rules I think. If no house rules have been made, feel free to use them - they are part of the vanilla game.

To me perhaps the best measure of what is an exploit and what is reasonable is considering "Is this reasonable and realistic (in the context of the game)" - sort of a RP point of view. If you can imagine your tactics working in "real life" or rather "dominions life" - good! If it's blatantly taking advantage of flaws in the coding then it's just not a fun thing to do, and being as the whole point of the game is to have fun, don't do it.

Re: What is abusive ?
 

I think you got the wrong impression from his post. He did not personally use any bug/abusive tactics in any of the games I've played in with him.

Hordes of screaming monkey demons/undead, yes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Bug abuse, no.

You're missing out if you don't play with him, he's one of the best opponents I've had.

Re: What is abusive ?
 

My suggestion is that any "exploitative tactics" should be listed as banned EXPLICITLY before a game is started. A general "banned if it's a bug or exploit" will not do.

Everyone has a different perspective. We come from different cultures. Each of us are exposed to different fantasy/mythology sets. Each of us have read a unique set of books and have thus derived a different "set" of RP point of view.

While a very few set of actions can be generally agreed upon as exploits, there are many others that can go both ways.

In my games, I have only seen 2 that are generally regarded as exploits:

1. Stealing Bogus Scripts
2. Mist of Deceptions + Battlefield damage enchantment, then retreating. In this case, it was allowed that the mage can retreat as their very last order. (This I believe has more to do with enforcement. There is no way to tell if the AI retreated or the last script was to retreat)

Re: What is abusive ?
 

Yes, I think you're probably right. Apologies K, for an uncharacteristically grumpy post on my part. I guess I'm tired. I didn't really agree with what you said, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't happily play with you.

Re: What is abusive ?
 

I tried to do it this way:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
#selectmonster 647
#clear
#copystats 578
#copyspr 578
#descr "A witch turned Bogus and Co into Bog Beasts!"
#end
#selectmonster 648
... etc for the rest of the Company
#end
</pre><hr />

But I still ended up with a bunch of Bog Beasts with special commands, after charming them. Fadmargast the Bog Beast still wants to "Attack commanders" and Fang the Bog Beast would very much like to "Fire Magic Users".

Maybe the easiest way is to mod them to be mindless. I don't think Mindless units can be charmed. You could also crank up their MR.

Probably you could also mod them into underwater units, so they would insta-die when they appear without fish amulets.