Dark Knight
 

if you see a Dark knight in a province with total 4 units... what is it.. I think I had that before and I recall it where 4 strong creatures.. I'm in the start of a game and can't decide if my lil army will be able to beat it or not... what will I be up against?

Re: Dark Knight
 

I have them in almost all my games cause I love to take misfortune(in SP).
If I remember well, there is a flying guy who will attack rear, usually right on your general, so give bodyguards to him(and your mages !). There are usually two mages with plenty of gems, so I recommend not to attack them without strong magic support.
One of the thugs has fear, can't remember if it is the flying one.
I usually wait until I have level 4/5 spells to take them down.(quite rapid to have normally)
Don't even think of taking them out with sheer number.
Use spells which allow no magic resistance, I think most of them are quite high on MR.
Good luck

Re: Dark Knight
 

clearly not an army I'm gonna attack now thanks.. I thought as much

Re: Dark Knight
 

That must be Bogus and his merry men.

If you want the surprise of finding out for yourself who they are, don't read any further...


Bogus the troll, very very deadly thug. He won't drop of fatigue because he has a wraith sword. he won't rout because he goes berserk. He will kill kill kill, and is very good at it.
The dark knight, and his ferocious griffin - he has the fear helmet plus other magic items, and usually flies straight at your commander
A troll archer who nearly alway hits (your commander generally). Your mages will fall like flies.
A human mage with rune smasher, the weakest of the 5 heroes
A troll mage with air magic, annoying but not very dangerous

Re: Dark Knight
 

Yeah the dark knight will attack your commanders.

Interestingly, if you can gain control of the Dark Knight or... i think the troll in the group w/ a bow, then you will gain access to the Attack Commander order. Incredibly powerful!

Re: Dark Knight
 

Bogus is a bit weaker than he used to be, now that the weapon-based life draining is capped. Still nasty, 'tho.

Re: Dark Knight
 

I have an irrational phobia of Bogus and company. If I see them I leave them alone. I have lost too many armies to that @##$%#

Re: Dark Knight
 

in MP, stealing the attack commander order would be thought an exploit

Don't attack them - they're tough, and its easy to be wrong on whether you have the right army for them...

Re: Dark Knight
 

Many people have done it thou...

Leave them until you have charm spell. Then put together a few mages with bodyguards(by bodyguards I mean a 20-40 strong army of), then charm them.

You gain them as thugs, with all magic items and can save the attack commander/fire at commander orders using ctrl-number. So all your forces can be scripted with that command.

You should now win easily... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Dark Knight
 

I hereby declare using the 'Attack Commander'/'Fire Commander' orders on any LlamaServer game to be cheating. Definitely an exploit.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Unfortunately there's no way to identify if someone is using the 'attack commander' or 'fire at commander'. Perhaps a future patch will change the orders of any commander after it's been stolen.

Re: Dark Knight
 

If they fly directly at the commander, or shoot at it, instead of at pd, its a pretty good indication, unless there is a special thing about the commander (only flier, very big). At that point, its worth investigating.

Re: Dark Knight
 

I am happy to hear this. I totally agree.

Re: Dark Knight
 

I suppose you consider it an exploit only when you copy-paste the "attack commander" order into some other unit that is not intended to do that.
If you managed to charm a Dark Night you sure earned the right to use him as he was intended. Or you think it's an exploit to use a charmed DK to attack commanders?

Re: Dark Knight
 

Using him as intended sounds reasonable. It's the copy-paste that is clearly naughty.

Re: Dark Knight
 

He's just a very, very naughty boy...err sorry.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Are they any other cheating / bug abuse rules on your server, llama? Maybe a list somewhere? I'm not a fan of bug abuse anyway, but a list would be nice.

Re: Dark Knight
 

It is an exploit to copy the attack commander command to other units. it is cheating the same as if you hack someone's turn and did something to it. Major bug, major exploit.

I would not feel like I really won a game where i cheated to win. just me. While I am only hosting the epic heroes game, if i saw a player's units attacking my commanders they would be set to AI.

You know it when you see it.

Re: Dark Knight
 

The American people already know that Meglobob is a bad boy - a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Meglobob is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.

... err sorry. Ignore the foot-tapping senator.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Heh! I have never used the attack commander/fire commander orders in MP. Only in SP. I know 2 people who have thou, 1 against me.

In future I will avoid telling anymore/sharing insights into the game. People always shoot the messenger.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Oh, I don't mind. I've just saw the opportunity to quote Larry "I am not gay" Craig. And I had to run with it, despite it being in poor taste.

Here in America, we don't shoot the messenger, we have them run our government...

Okay... that bit was weak. Sorry.
I'm barely restraining myself from other lame attempts at humor. I had one good line, and it wasn't off of a [self-censored].

...
...

And it appears the original question was answered. I guess there's no way to awkwardly transition back on topic. I'll shut up now.

Re: Dark Knight
 

This is quite absurd, the two are not remotely comparable. It is far more akin to for instance the accepted tactic of archer decoying, than hacking the game. Now, I have never personally employed the tactic in MP, but I would certainly not hold it against anyone that used it against me.

It takes a good amount of luck to get in a position to take advantage of bogus, and the orders are far from the overwhelming advantage that seems to be implied by most people. It would actually be fairly difficult to use in a gamebreaking way in the lategame where the issue usually occurs.

Re: Dark Knight
 

And I used to burn Bogus and his squad to cinders while playing an astral heavy faction....
I'm sure that now, I wont see them anymore.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Oh sorry, I missed WonderLlama's question.

The only things I can think of at the moment are the issue under discussion, and also casting Mists of Deception before retreating (the battle never ends as more and more misty things appear, until the opponent is beaten). That's also definitely naughty. I think that might be being fixed in the new patch though, although I'm not certain.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Once upon a time, long ago, KO explained the ability of the Dark Knight and the Troll Mage to teach your commanders to "attack commander".

From my memory (so maybe not literal): "I guess he is a great tactician"

Doesn't sound like a bug to me. Maybe an unintended consequence, but what on earth *isn't* an unintended consequence in Dominions? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

You are obviously free to make whatever house rules you wish, but to declare anyone who uses that trick as the equivalent of someone who hacks turn files is mighty high-handed.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Agreed, RonD. I'm declaring only rules I think should apply to games I host, but they are of course only personal opinions. Hacking files would be on an entirely different level.

Re: Dark Knight
 

It is cheating. There actually used to be an attack commander option, but it was overpowered and removed.

Cheating-or taking an unfair advantage of other players-is all the same. I would prefer that my files be hacked, rather than have someone use an exploit and kid themselves into thinking they were fighting fairly.

I guess in the end, what the goal should be in any competitive game is that the players all use the same rules.
It is common knowledge that you can copy the dark knight's orders. What I thought was equally well known was that it is an exploit in mp games.

remind me not to let some of you be the banker if we play monopoly! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Dark Knight
 

It's a slippery slope, if using such orders is cheating, how about archer decoying? What about GoRing tartarians (a non-obvious tactic that I would argue is actually a more potent one than Bogus's orders)?

As such, I'd say it's a tactic like any other: people find blesses and other strategies to be unbalanced in some contexts, and so often explicitly deny or restrict them when setting out rules for a particular game. It is certainly valid to do the same here, but to say it is by default cheating is to enter a quagmire of fuzziness about what is actually cheating.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Gor any unit is not cheating. There is a spell designed to allow this in games by the designers. Same with using a bless.

It is a far different animal to capture a unit that has a command that was SPECIFICALLY removed from the game as being overpowered, and using a scripting command put in by the designers for reduced micromanagement to put back into the game an overpowered feature just for your armies.

In any event, I have seen this exploit used against me in the big game. But I overcame it. It is surmountable-but it is cheating. If I see it in the Epic Heroes game that I am running-I will see it only once. Then that player will be set to AI.

I guess it is up for the host of the game to set what is and is not allowed. I am glad Llamabeast has clear rules on what is and is not permitted since he is hosting a ton of games on his server these days.

Hail to Llamabeast!

Re: Dark Knight
 

Yeah, I agree with QM. Since you arent breaking any rules of the game - the order is, after all, built in - you can't technically frame it as "cheating".

Which is not to say that I support its use - I've never used it in MP and I'm not sure how I would feel if it were used againt me. But in Dominions, all nations have advantages which are not available to any enemy player in the game... yet we do not hear anyone complaining that, for example, only Pyth/Mari get access to angels or something. The only difference there being that you know the advantages/disadvantages of each nation as you go into any given game, whereas gaining attack commanders via bogus would be something that would randomly happen and you (as an opponent) might or might not know about it.

Re: Dark Knight
 

The question is whether this is a bug or not. Explotation of bug is cheating.

Re: Dark Knight
 

I think that it is A-OK to use the order on Bogus and his companions. To copy
and paste the order on other units is using an unintended consequence - because
it is hard to believe that the developers wanted it that way. In all honesty,
while I have been doing the former ever since Dominions II, I have never done
the latter - as in, I was not smart enough to think of it... so maybe I am biased.

Re: Dark Knight
 

This is an interesting conversation. On a related note, Aezeal, you can save the reload the game in single player if you want to try your hand on Bogus and his allies. However, with all the subjective morality being tossed around I'm not sure I want to post how to do it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Dark Knight
 

Well, its been around since the Dom2 days and the devs are aware of it... but still no changes to how it works in all that time.

So what does that mean?

Re: Dark Knight
 

While I wouldn't call it cheating I know I'd be pretty pissed if this "tactic" were to cost me really big MP game battle.

It's a pretty lame tactic IMHO, but some people will do anything to win *shrugs*.

Re: Dark Knight
 

I consider the "Attack Commander" and "Fire Mage" to be the natural right of Blood and Nature nations.

Even then, I don't consider it even an exploit.

Consider:
1. You need bad luck to even get a Bogus event
2. You need to build a specialized posse of mages equiped with Penetration items to have a decent chance of getting Bogus
3. The commands aren't that effective in SP or MP since even with items boosting Precision the chance to hit a SPECIFIC target placed at the rear of an army with a Fire command is very small, just like attacking a commander with a small amount of chaff on Guard Commander means that you don't get near that commander before other units take them out.
4. The Devs could make it almost impossible to charm Bogus and get the command by simply adding some high HP chaff to the Bogus event, or just increasing Bogus's MR. This could have been done in any of the many patches they have done.

Thats not counting an actual patch that codes the command out of player hands.

Oh, and as far as I can tell its not on the buglist, so its not even an exploit or a bug despite being a well known feature

Re: Dark Knight
 

*rolls eyes* The devs could have fixed the other bazillion minor bugs easily too... I guess all of those are intended?

It's called prioritization. As you pointed out it is very difficult to use this strategy (you have to get lucky), so I'm sure they don't feel the urge to "fix" it when there are other, larger bugs to worry about.

...but saying it isn't an exploit because the devs never fixed it is faulty reasoning.

Now if you show me a post where the devs said something like "We want this to be a part of the game..." then I'll agree that there is nothing fishy about it and simply write it off as retarded game design...

Right now it smacks of a minor bug that was never fixed because because it was deemed that there are more important problems to address.

All that said I'll allow it in my games - simply because it isn't on edi's list and I'm too lazy to upkeep a separate list.

Re: Dark Knight
 

I don't think it's cheating, I just think anyone who uses a tactic like this is lame and I wouldn't be tempted to play more games with them.

I'm sure they realise how lame it is when they do it.

Re: Dark Knight
 

It means that it's a mechanic from the times of Dominions *1* that just hasn't been changed for one reason or another. Probably due to the priorization thing people have been talking about.

Personally, I think that abusing it is lame and completely out of the realm of D3. It's an ancient thing from the olden days when it was the norm which should've been removed ages ago, but hasn't been. This sort of reminds me of bugs (even exploits) for which people have been banned for that have been in Anarchy Online from nearly the start and are only now being fixed (after 6 years of the game being in existence). The major difference between Dominions and AO in this field however is that FunCom has a lot more people working on their game.

Yeah. It's a relic from a time when you could make limitless amounts of elemental kings and queens (sort of like Tartarians of those days, except you could make craploads of actually good freespawn stuff too), devils of all sorts, gem hoarding items were cheap, wishing for Doom Horrors and having armies of them was possible and when Arcane Nexus was truly awesome (those two were prolly in D2 still, though)... Ahh, those were the days.

/ramble

Re: Dark Knight
 

It's explotation of a but IMHO and in most games/settings/MPthingies that is not the same a cheating but it usually IS punished the same as cheating and frowned upon nearly as much.

Having said that I think one should not use it in MP games

Re: Dark Knight
 

I agree wholeheartedly with Aezeal.

It is an exploitation, not cheating. It is an action that is attainable within the game programming and not an external influence or prohibited by any rule other than consensus opinion. And since it is a known carryover from root/parent programing, it is difficult to consider it a bug, maybe a flaw in the programming, but not a bug.

As I read the thread, this exploitation apparently would only be known to Dom1/Dom2 veterans, and probably just a portion of them. It sounds devestating, but extremely unlikely and very difficult to achieve. It is available to only a few nations or specific pretender builds, but what powerful effect isn't.

Just my opinion.

Re: Dark Knight
 

I like the fact that the VIsitors, Bogus and his merry men, have the ability to target commanders.

I think it can be fun in an SP game to get hold of these ancient tactical skills. The older the better (in accordance with the creed of most new religious movements). These are dom-ppp survivals and ancient to boot.

I think it would be naughty to use these orders in MP, unless all players agreed to their eventual use.

I think it would be fun if assassins were given limited access to these orders.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Yeah, if it were made so that you can't copy orders into a unit unless he is actually allowed to do them (this would also stop yuo from accidentally scripting fire spells on a water mage.. etc), that would be extremely cool.

You know all those leadership 80-120 national commanders who really can't do anything that indie commanders couldn't do for cheaper (ferrying troops)? They're supposed to do be "tactical geniuses extraordinaire". Why not allow them to see with their tactical genius who are the opposing commanders/mages and challenge them in the battlefield?

Re: Dark Knight
 

We have speculated on the reverse. Disallowing some orders on lousy commanders, but that was a while ago, and will probably not appear in the forseeable future.

Re: Dark Knight
 

Sorry KO, but I cannot fathom the logic or reasoning behind the disallowing some orders on lousy commanders. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Dark Knight
 

Surely the reasoning is obvious...they are lousy commanders... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Dark Knight
 

Thats good enough for me to ban the practice on games that I host.

Re: Dark Knight
 

and right you are http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I guess you only mean the copying though.. using it with units that actually have the order themselves isn't morally wrong I think (and seems to be the general consensus)

Re: Dark Knight
 

You know, I was begining to support the "dont use Bogus orders" camp... But then I thought back to QM's point about archer decoying and there are some disturbing parallels. People are arguing here that you shouldnt use the Bogus commands because it was the intent of the devs to remove them from the game.

But clearly the devs did not remove those commands. And then you take the concept of archer decoying. The devs clearly tried to remove this tactic from the game by crippling the morale of small squads. But yet the tactic persists and no one really gripes about how it is an exploit of the archer targeting AI. How can you explain the imbalance? Will people start playing games with decoying banned?

Re: Dark Knight
 

Those aren't the only fuzzy areas either. For instance, abusing the sickle whose crop is pain with an ally, to result in a higher death gem income than well of misery. Or using quickness with magic items for double spell casting.