End Game Slaughter Moves
 

So as I play more and see how the carefully crafted plans of the early to mid game can mean nothing against SCs and certain patented strategies (Chalice/Tartarians), I wonder what if anything can be done to counter. Here is what I just experienced in Capuchin:

TC attacks my huge Niefelheim army with just his Pretender, the Celestial General, who has cast Ritual of Returning upon himself and holds Unquenched (creates Heat from Hell).

His first action is to cast Mists of Deception, then I am assuming the Heat from Hell damages his pretender so the Ritual of returning kicks him home. There is a message that says TC is routed. Good riddance I say but then to my shock Niefelheim's entire army runs around fighting the illusionary warriors from the Mist for what seems like forever amidst the Heat from Hell. Oh the horror!

Even though TC's pretender vanishes, the Mist and Heat spells remain in effect. The battle goes so long I cannot even bear to finish watching it as my beloved Niefels drop like flies from fatigue and eventually get the message Niefelheim is routed.

Huge Niefel army is slaughtered.

What could I have done to stop this? Is this a well-known end game move?

It seems he can just do this to all my armies one by one...

Perhaps I am just a victim of not having researched and acquired the right artifacts. If the only way to counter these moves is to imitate them, then the game becomes a little less appealing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

The combo of Mists and a damaging battlefield enchant is pretty much just a flat-out bug exploit, and I wouldn't be keen on playing with someone that was abusing it as such.

That being said the only real counters would be hitting him before he casts, preferably with something nasty like soul slay (or magic duel if he has low astral)...failing that flyers would only need to do one point of damage to send him packing with returning and waste his time, but it's just a stall strategy...air elementals can stormfly as well (might also help in taking out enough of the mist spawn to end the battle)

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

I think using combinations of "mists of deception" + some battle enchantment damageing spell (like wratful skies) and then retreating the caster is considered as cheat in some games.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

From the shortlist :
"CBT Battlefield Enchantments Battlefield enchantments that affect the whole battlefield for the duration of the battle (e.g. Wrathful Skies, Darkness, Solar Brilliance etc) do not end when the mage who cast them leaves battlefield, even though they should."

I do consider that anything used in a game that is on that shortlist to be an exploit, but some people do not.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Even just casting a battle enchantment and retreating the caster is exploiting a bug in the shortlist:

CBT Battlefield Enchantments Battlefield enchantments that affect the whole battlefield for the duration of the battle (e.g. Wrathful Skies, Darkness, Solar Brilliance etc) do not end when the mage who cast them leaves battlefield, even though they should.

Using this in combo with Mists of Deception is abusive, and it's explicitly banned in some games for that reason.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Thanks, I would likely have lost the game anyway but up until turn 50ish I was in 2nd place by most counts on the score graphs.

With the slaughter move above and incessant mind hunts, I have basically been decimated in a few turns.

Not great ending to a game begun in November. Funny thing to was this was a Newbie game. Maybe some of the Noobs are doing a lot of research these days....

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Sorry, but what/where is the shortlist?

thanks.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

One of the sticky in this section :

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...art=1&vc=1

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

I feel the Mists combo is in a completely different league than just a cast-and-run, especially since the in-game spell descriptions say "Caster dies or battle ends" with no mention of retreat ending the spell...the Mists combo OTOH is clearly flat out abusive and much more unbalancing.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Wasn't it supposed to be fixed in a recent patch ?

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Not playing with bug exploiting players is an easy solution http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Short list and exploits
 

If the mist combo is clearly a huge exploit that should result in the ban of the user, I don't think being in the shortlist is a sufficient condition to be one.

There are actually too many things in the "short" list to make the use of all of them bannable.

Some theorical "exploits" are unavoidable without special micro-gestion (ie : communion slaves casting spells) and knowing how to use them is now part of many strategy guides (retro-communion).

As well casting a BE then retreating, when the combat ends normally (no mist) would probably be tolerated by most players (it's just saving a mage after all). And it may also be unavoidable in some cases (ritual of returning, or the mage failing a morale check).

The politic about some that may be seen as national advantages of some nations / units isn't clear either (things like twiceborn on demons are probably used by some players with particular nations but I never seen complaints about their immortal demons in MP threads). I personnally consider this one so powerful I'd include it in the bannable category (in case of systematic use with nations like Lanka) but not sure how the majority of MP players consider this kind of "niche" exploits.

So, perhaps a list of clearly forbidden things in MP should be made, separated from the general bugs list.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

That's surely a cheat and there is practically nothing you can about it. You should mention that in the game thread and talk with game host. If player repeats that he should be banned from that game. IF host think it is valid move then you know which games to avoid [and you know that host just found a new tactic he will also use next time, probably even build his nation strategy next time].

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Yeah, cast and run is fine (even still I hope they change it), but it is fine for now.

But Mists of Deception is just plain sick and wrong!

DonCorazon, I feel your pain. The same thing happened to me, except with Wrathful Skies as the damage-dealer. It was maddening. It is not your fault, there is nothing that can be done to stop it. It's just an exploit that needs to be fixed.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Cast and run isn't fine either, otherwise it wouldn't be on the bug shortlist...

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Though it is not so bad cause it is enough to kill remaining enemy troops to stop it. But with mists there is no enemy to fight.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

is Danse of Morrigan works like Mists of deception ?

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Not true. Only if there was a list of said players, which there isn't and will never be. After 6 months of playing Dom3 I have a mental list of about 3 players to avoid, mostly for going AI and vanishing. And that is out of how many players? There is just no way to know a head of time unless you just pick a group of friends and always play with the same people.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Yeah, as you can see from the sample in this thread there's a pretty wide variety of opinions as to what's fair game around quirks in the game, but the Mist of Deception exploit is pretty much about the only thing virtually everybody agrees is essentially cheating. Breaks the game and theres not really anything you can do about it....

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

I think it is something you should state beforehand (just so there is no confusion, even though its true that everyone agrees already), that Mists of Deception is illegal when combined with killing spells like that, I have been stating this with games I host as a house rule.

If this happened in one of those games, I would use the master password to set the offending player to AI.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Who did this? I would set him to AI, and I will never play with him.
Please send me a personal message, if you feel uncomfortable posting
his name here.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Sigh...

That is the reason why a hall of shame is a bad idea. Mob-lynching and hasty judgements. The person who did it may just not have known.

In France, there is some thing that is called "présomption d'innocence". It means that until someone is found guilty of something, he is innocent. In that case, it seems to be a MP game, if, once contacted, he apologizes and agrees to rollback the turn, and use another strategy, there is no need to blacklist him, whoever it is.

If he doesn't, however... or does it again in another game... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

He did not know? Whom are you kidding?

This exploit was explicitly described in DangerPudding, when Fomoria, maybe
accidentally, used the sword of storms and the armour of virtue on the same guy.
I know, because my uncle asked my advice on that. And I gave him examples, which
he posted in the thread.

At that time, the Tien Chi player was a participant in the game, and posted after
the discussion. The discussion ended with three people posting that it is on the
short bug list, and should not be used.

So arguing that this is not an exploit is OK (albeit wrong) but saying that
Tien Chi did not know is ... naive?

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

There should be at least list of exploits so people know what is forbidden by community [and things like should be really blocked in game ASAP]. It could be especially good for newbies, so they can spot behaviour like that. In my latest game I made a rule that anyone that uses exploits will be either force subbed or set to AI. Though I wish llamaserver had a way to detect exploits, as you cannot spot many things [for example copying Bogus company orders].

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Hum, I didn't know that. If he had an occasion to see that it was an exploit directly and abused it in another game... that's abusive.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

I'd like to see, and would be willing to help on (though my knowledge pales in comparison to the vets), a stickied post that was called something like Standard House Rules. It would have a list like:
1. No Mist of Enchantment / damage spell / retreat
2. No stealing Bogus commands
3. etc.

Similarly, it could have a definition what is generally prohibited in a NAP with numbered items, e.g
1. No attacking w/o x# turns notice
2. Stealthy troops are allowed to pass through a NAP partners lands
3. etc.

Then when starting a game, you could say all Standard House Rules apply. Or, if there is something you don't want to follow, you could say for example, we'll use Standard House Rules except for #2, 5, etc. NAP rules except #2.

Maybe it is just the (ex-) lawyer in me's love of clarity but I think it would be useful and save a lot of time. I realize there is no consensus on anything, but that is why having numbers would let the host decide what to include / exclude. And would help noobs have a compiled list to refer to at the beginning of a game w/o anyone having to always re-type this stuff out.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

That would be a nice thing, yes

Re: Short list and exploits
 

DonCorazon:

Well, you need 1 sections with rules that you must obey ['do not exploit bugs' + list] and a list of definitions of common things [NAPs here, also words like thug, SC, etc.].

Re: Short list and exploits
 

There's been a couple attempts at such, but as I mentioned the mist of deception exploit is unique (as far as I know) in that nobody really disagrees that it is a game breaking exploit synonymous with cheating. There's a fairly large camp (including me) who feel like generally quirks in the game are fair play. There was an exceedingly long discussion about this like a year ago but it boils down to:

1) What's an exploit? Lots of interesting things in this game seem to be possibly unintentional ways things interact.
2) We're playing the game as delivered, not some abstract perfect concept even if we could agree on what that is. Everything from archer screens to vengeance of the dead spamming to the way communion mechanics work *is* part of the game.
3) Strategy is always about being clever to avoid fair fights. Why is it "fair" to bring cavalry against your enemies archers, but not "fair" to copy Bogus' scripts? Is it "fair" to mind hunt a nation with no astral mages? Etc. etc.
4) With the exception of the aforementioned Mists of Deception I'm unaware of any exploits which are as powerful as things you can unequivocally do in game such as casting the forge of the ancients or being the first one to construction-8.

As for a standardized NAP, same problem again, no consensus as to what that means.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

A shortlist of exploits generally considered forbidden would be good, though I suspect there'd be much debate over what got included.

I'd rather not see NAP rules formalized, though. Maybe a clear statement that different people interpret NAP differently, so you should spell out what you mean.
Anything that reduces diplomacy further towards: "NAP-3?", "k" is a bad thing.
I'd much rather encourage a little more roleplaying and actual negotiation instead.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

My definition of an exploit is : something that doesn't work as intended. Items on a bug list do not work as intended (that's pretty obvious). When a doubt arise (VoTD comes to mind), ask the question of whether it's balanced and working as intended. If yes, nothing is to change. If not, it's a bug. Therefore using it is an exploit.

The scripting of Mists of Deception + battlefield wide spell is therefore obviously an exploit. That is only my opinion though.

By the way, it would seem that unlike you said Tuidjy, the one you accused really didn't know.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

1. No consensus but at least with a least you can choose to join a game based on rules. And I think there is some common sense involved.

2. Agree, archer screens and skelly spams seem fine based on common sense - these are things that are just effective tactical plays

3. Fairness is not necessarily the deciding factor. Getting mind hunted is fine, even though it is killing me. Now that I know to expect it, I can find ways to deal with it. Same thing with calvary with archers - that is just why it sucked to be an archer in medieval times. But scripting rules (something I don't even know how to do, nor have any desire to learn) seems clearly wrong - it is a strange technical move akin to hacking the game. Maybe its just me but the line does not seem so hard to draw, and again, at least with a list the host can select what rules they think make sense.

4. I guess every game has some strategy that is more powerful than others, that is just unavoidable. Hopefully there are tradeoffs though, so that by gunning for Con 8 you run the risk someone else gets there first or your early game is limited by lack of magic diversity.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

An exploit should be defined as an action that keeps an enemy from playing the game. An example would be flooding someone's item inventory with slave collars. You have eliminated the player's ability to forge items and the player has no recourse beyond doing the same to you.

I can't think of anything else in the game that should be considered an exploit, because everything else can be countered, even if it has to be thought about ahead of time in pretender design.

I 100% agree with thejeff concerning NAPs. Standardizing NAPs will cut down on conflict in the game which is a bad thing. NAPs already effectively eliminate some of the combat even though people interpret them differently. And as Jeff said, standardizing NAPs will cut down on communication, roleplay etc, once again a bad thing.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Foodstamp, how do you counter the Mists of Deception combo? Please share your
incredible insight with us! Being less knowledgable that you obviously are,
I do not know how to take a castle guarded by mages that cast Mists of
Deception, Quagmire, Storm, a mix of damage spells, and ritual of returning.
And are back next turn, of course.

And if you say, oh, just have a bunch of storm demons/air elementals, well no,
it is not necessarily enough. How many nations can really have that
available every time they storm a castle the late game, anyway?

Now, I am not even asking about killing every single teleporting attacker before
they unleash the combo on an army in the field. I know that a great player like
you will never have an army without storm demons whose orders are copied from
Bogusm, or walk an army through a province that has no nested domes over it.

> By the way, it would seem that unlike you said Tuidjy, the one you accused
> really didn't know.

Only if one believes he does not read the threads he posts to. I'm no electric monk.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

You're missing my point. By all means any game can and should have house rules as to whats allowable in that game based on what the game host thinks will make a fun game. Likewise obviously common sense needs to factor in (I just thought of another exploit fairly universally banned involving filling up another players lab). I don't like the fairly common statement though that the game rules are "no exploits of bugs on the short list" for a couple reasons. One, it's completely unenforceable and leads to accusations of cheating. Two, I have no intention of keeping up with the bug list and I think it's unreasonable to expect everyone to. Three, several of the bugs are unavoidable.

I understand why you'd say copying Bogus' scripts is akin to hacking the game, but I think you're off base. What it is, like so many things in this game, is understanding the game engine, noticing how it works and taking advantage of it. How is this different from understanding the turn sequence and timing a teleport to catch an army trying to leave a castle? Killing somebody in an assassination attempt by frightening them off? Frightening an enemy army while cutting off their retreat so they all die? Trapping people so they can't auto route and eventually die (ala Vengance of the dead)? Using archer screens because you understand the targeting AI? Leveraging the fact that stealth resolves before rituals so your raiders can avoid retribution? Taking advantage of a global spell on the first turn so your opponents have no opportunity to dispel it? Using the communion mechanics to let some of your communion slaves cast spells? How about fooling the enemy communion into casting too many spells and killing their slaves? etc. etc. etc.

These moves all seem strange, unfair and technical if you don't know about them and your opponent unexpectedly pulls them off on you. Several of them are no less silly from a real life point of view than copying Bogus's commands (really, you died because an assassin said boo?). Likewise theres lots of stuff you could do "in real life" that is unavailable within the context of the game. That's because we're playing a game, not real life. There's things we can do inside the game, and things we can't. Strange and technical moves are part of the game.

All that being said, I don't personally use anything that I know irks most people. I'm just here to have fun and hope my opponents do to.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Do I really deserve so much sarcasm from you? So many crybabies on these boards lately. It should not be my responsibility to reiterate some of the counters that were given just because I gave my perceived definition of an exploit.

Your tears sustain me.

Re: End Game Slaughter Moves
 

Baalz, I never suggested using the bug short list. Just a simple list of key items that could serve as a concise menu for game hosts to choose from (hopefully most would be "consensus" but understand there will always be different strokes for different folks).

I see your point about game mechanics and there certainly are a lot of gray areas.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

I know that I'm in the minority, but I don't think anything should be banned.

Everyone can use these tactics, so there is nothing inherently unfair about them.

Considering that all of these tactics have a counter, I don't even know why people whine so badly. For example, if the Neiflehiem army in the first post had exercised a little foresight, they could have killed that pretender with some flying units on attack large monster, or cast spells like Petrify, Claws of Cocytus, multiple +penetration Paralyzes, or any number of other ways. Heck, a commander with a bow or someone with a damaging spell could have forced the guy's Returing to activate before he even got one spell off.

At the end of the day, I'm angrier that sometimes someone finds Echantresses or Wizards, or that a blood nation finds the Summoning Circle, and I don't find an equivalent despite doing site searches for all paths on my territory.

PS. Thats actually pretty easy. You cast assassin spells on the home province and kill those mages.

This is the late game obviously, so if you expect force of arms and sheer numbers of units to win the day then you are sadly mistaken.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

> Thats actually pretty easy. You cast assassin spells on the home province and kill those mages.

Wow. Assassin spells on the home province. Thank you for your insight! Hey,
but are you saying that someone could actually teleport on top of my capital.
Woah! I would have never thought of that. And those assassin spells! Man,
they can really clear a lab, can't they? Well, I guess this game is just won by
casting assassin spells. Given that obviously no one could ever protect against
them, even in one specific, valuable province in the late game.

Or maybe I will just cast 3 air domes for 60 gems, and have a 99.2% chance
that my capital will laugh at assassination spells.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

I was under the impression that domes of the same type do not stack.

I do agree with Tuidjy that Mist + whatever is a clear exploit. Personally I think that BE spells not ending with mages retreating/returning is a general exploit. Obviously they end when the mage dies, so the fact that they don't end when they retreat/return is an oversight. I think it even mentions in a few of the BE spells that it's suppose to last until the mage leaves the battlefield.

That said, since it's impossible to enforce the idea of "no mage retreating" but it's simple enough to enforce "no mist + BE + retreating". And at least if the mage retreats and casts something like solar brilliance, there's still something to kill.

I also think this idea of "oh, it has these extreme counters so it must be balanced" is ridiculous. Considering how easy it is to setup mists of deception + returning + any BE AoE spell there is a real asymmetry in the risk involved verus the potential gain. If you want to cast lots of stupid spells in a given battle, you generally need lots of chaff, maybe a communion, lots of mages to back up the communion / cast the spells, and probably some thugs either kited out to kill other thugs, or just hold the front lines. In any case, you have to commit resources and risk something. With the MoD + BE exploit you risk virtually nothing to kill an entire other army. In every other situation you have to risk /something/ to get into a fight, but when you're exploiting MoD all you're really doing is exposing your pretender, or a pair of mages to a possible single turn of spell casting.

Hell, if you're on defense like Tuidjy described, there is even less risk. Lastly, all of these counters take a lot more effort to setup and maintain then MoD + BE takes to setup and maintain, again contributing to the exploited asymmetry.

Jazzepi

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Tuidjy, even if your views on the matter are quite correct, it might be hard to counter an mist of deception abuse, you could try to be a bit more civil.

There is a problem with the spell, but you should not attack players who try to find in game solutions to the problem. Attack me or JK instead.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

*teleports into kristoffer's house.
*casts mists of deception
*casts wrathful skies
*retreats

i've already attacked him, noone else has to.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Damn, I've been slain and imprisoned in Tartarus! Fortunately I know a helpful necromancer in Lund.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Right, like Kristoffer's house doesn't have all the Domes up.

Where do think they test all these spells?

Re: Short list and exploits
 

KO: Attack me or JK instead.

Sure! As soon as I make all my programs bug free, I will come at you full of
righteous wrath... But it is so much easier not to cheat, or not to talk
nonsense. So it is simpler to pick on those who do.

There is NO counter to a lab full of collars except to abuse someone else.
There is NO effective counter to MoD/SoS + BE.

And it is not your fault, because bugs happen. There have been much worse
bugs in the years I've played Dominions... But people who insist that MoD
is not worse than hiding raiders disgust me. I have never been hurt by it.
The one time someone did it to me, he wrathed three Jarls with Air Picks.
Everyone else was set on retreat. I did not expect Mists, but I expected
Wrath. Had it been Heat from Hell, I would have been helpless.

But my uncle quit a game because of an _unintended_, similar abuse, then asked
the question loud and clear in his other games. Low and behold: one of the
players in one of these games claims he did not know, and just abused another
player. Yes, I enjoy sarcasm, and yes, I may be an [censored]. But I think that
the two abuses above should be absolutely forbidden, just as hacking the .2h
should be.

-----------

To K, I apologize. Maybe he really thought that assassination spells targeting
the capital work. I have to admit, I did so at some point myself. Hi, Xietor!

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Being fire immune, I might as well post an opinion here.

I'm the one who has compiled the monster known as the bug shortlist and I have a fairly good idea of how many of these things behave and also what their impact on a game is.

In my opinion, there are three bugs that qualify as exploits that should be banned. Retaliation against a player using them could be considered, depending on how major it is.

The following bugs are, in my personal opinion, such exploits:

• <font color="red">SPELL Mists of Deception</font> Keeps on producing phantasmal units even when all enemies are dead, causing combat to go on forever and autokilling all attacking units left on the battlefield
• <font color="red">SPELL Twiceborn:</font> Grants immortality to demons with death magic. A demon with twiceborn in effect will respawn in capital like an immortal if it dies in friendly dominion.
• <font color="red">BHV Army Movement: Move &amp; Patrol</font> When a commander is selected to move into a province with a castle and the move order changed to move and patrol, adding units to his squads will not change the move order even if the units do not have sufficient map move. Thus units with strategic move of 0 can be moved from province to province and units with strategic move of 1 can be made to move farther than they should.

Out of these, the last one is situation dependent and the advantage gained may be major or minor as determined by other factors. It can also only be used if the commander and his fast troops are not slowed down by terrain, though I have no idea if the slow troops' lack of survival would ever be factored in wrt mountains or forests. It is non-trivial, but not as over the top as MoD.

The Twiceborn on demons problem is more of a hassle, but is mainly applicable to Lanka, which is generally tough enough to not even need it. Yomi can also exploit it, but given the Oni spirit forms, it may or may not work. I sure as hell would be pissed off if some thug commander just kept coming back after being killed several times even when he shouldn't have.

The Mists of Deception bug is such that if I were to run games, any player caught using the MoD/Damage BF Ench combo exploit in them would get turned instantly to AI, no mercy, no appeal and no exceptions.

Everything else in the buglist is a merely an annoyance compared to these three and can easily be worked around.

Re: Short list and exploits
 

What about casting Solar Brilliance on people reading your post?

Re: Short list and exploits
 

rotfl

Re: Short list and exploits
 

The best compromise would be to annoy the host of whatever game you're playing until they state before the game starts that these things are banned. That way, everyone is clear on what is and is not allowed.

All hosts who think these things are illegal should say so ahead of time, because apparently not everyone agrees (although it is mind-boggling that they don't).

Re: Short list and exploits
 

Whoops, sorry about that. Screwed up the color tags and then had to deal with a customer before I could go back and edit it.