Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Lately there have been quite a few threads about what's abuse and what isn't.
Here are some that I think are the worst. Note that I do not consider all of
them abuse, but I have never used them against a player in multiplayer, mostly
to avoid bad feelings or gaining a bad reputation.

I am really curious what people think.

.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Out of all of the billions of polls recently this is the only one I've been interested in. Danke for posting it.

Jazzepi

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Damn. I forgot so many things that people consider abuse. Bogus's orders,
moving slow troops quickly, sallying into a neighboring province...

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Man this subject both stuffed sand in and twisted your panties. I've noticed you raving in at least 5 threads now.

While a topic worthy of discussion it's not worth frothing about. Heck people are quitting the game in Capuchin over this backlash. Relax dude, really.

You got my votes though!

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I think it is an issue. I mean if things like this make people not want to play anymore, and shrink the community, that is bad.
At the same time this poll shows how split people are on some of these things. So I mean, lets talk! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif I did not vote yes for all these being exploits, some like VoTD I really dont mind and think its fine. Others like mists of decept. + enchant + run would really be annoying. And hacking yourself orders you wouldnt normally have is obviously taking huge advantage.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I only answered no for the sickle thing, as fighting somewhere "without risk" doesn't exist in dominions (especially if you have to rely on a ally to provide you things to kill, he knows where is your SC and an artefact which means even more risk).

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I thought we had settled these issues in another thread. But to recap:

1. After much debate, in games hosted by velusion, myself, and maybe Llamabeast(cannot recall), if you cast a battlefield spell that causes damage, you cannot retreat the caster until the very last scripted turn(5 turns).

2. In games hosted by Velusion, Llamaserver, and me, you cannot copy orders to attack mage from bogus' friends to other units.

3. I see no issue with the sickle. If an ally lets you kill his troops, he recognizes he is aiding you and he will eventually have to kill you. Also, if a spy witnesses this,
someone could get a nasty surprise.

4. Vengeance of the dead-not abuse. if your sc has killed a lot of people, your best defense is high mr to resist the spell. Mind hunt kills you instantly if you fail the mr check, at least vod gives you a fighting chance.

5. Twice Born on Demons-not abuse. It costs 10d gems and if that is how you wish to spend 10d gems, that is your business. K did this to me in the Big game, and I had no problem dealing with it.

6. Filling lab with slave collars-abuse. And this is common sense.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Things on the bug list : the answer is obvious : abuse.

Filling lab with collar ? Abuse, obviously too.

Vengeance of the dead does not work as intended by the game mechanics (the attackers don't die when they lost) -> abuse.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

It does not matter if vod is working as intended or not, casting it is not abuse. It is a valid spell.

And it is only effective against sc's that have killed many units. So if you have such an sc, provide him with mr gear and the problem is solved. If your sc does not have mr gear, he will likely die to a mind hunt anyway-or some other spell.

Actually anyone who lets their sc's run amok with low mr has got it coming anyway.

Kid: "I guess they had it coming"
Clint Eastwood: "We all have it coming kid"

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

The problem with "Things on the bug list : abuse"
is that makes the game almost unplayable.
If you have to avoid anything on the bug list, then some strategies are tricky to avoid.

Do you have to carefully arrange your communion slaves so the masters come first and the slaves can't cast? That's on the bug list.

Most things on the list are bad for the user? Should they be considered abuse too?

Units with the wrong weapons or armor? Some better, some worse. Recruiting any is abuse?

Etc, etc.

Much better just to ban the few egregious problems that can be easily avoided. And if people want to play a game to exploit the Mists bug and send each other tons of slave collars? Have fun. I won't be in it.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Except for the BFE and retreat, those are pretty decisive results on the poll.

I've read a couple of mentions of this and i do not understand at all. What's the issue here?

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

The demons come back with afflictions, you know. Its not as good as immortality by far.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

> I've read a couple of mentions of this and i do not understand at all. What's the issue here?

Communion slaves are not supposed to cast spells, but currently slaves can cast their spells if they do it before the master does. Thus it might be considered unfair play to organize slaves and masters in such a way that the slaves benefit from the communion to spam empowered spells.

EDIT: OTOH it is a mechanic that is achievable by anyone with a communion so it is more a matter for us on how to make the communion balanced. It would be much to demand that every user of a communion is forbidden to use slaves with lower ID numbers than the masters. So until the communion is fixed I would not hold it against anyone to use this quirk.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I've put my two cents in on this before, but in my opinion anything that can be accomplished through the basic game interface and is not specifically outlawed by the host is fair game. That said, a few things are simply so critically buggy hosts should almost always outlaw them, primarily just mist of deception + damage enchantment.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Tyrant:
The devs have said in several discussions that communion slaves shouldn't be able to cast spells while in a communion.
Any slave whose action comes before the first master casts can cast.
Thus it is listed as a bug.
It's not generally considered abusive though. People build strategies around it.

Edit: And he says it himself while I was typing.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

The reason I made the poll is that I wanted to see whether any issues are
clear cut enough so that one can assume that they are banned before
starting the game. It seems that short of editing the .2h file, every
trick has its proponents.

I guess one should never start a game before the host has listed the house rules.
Gods, I hate house rules. It may be helpful if hosts for ongoing games listed
what they consider abuse.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Hexedit: That's obviously cheating, and IMO is the only one on the list that should result in a ban. But a ban is probably unnecessary because the offending player will very likely disappear in a puff of humiliation.

MoD+BE: Abusive exploit. Probably good to mention that it's banned prior to any game that does not allow exploits.

BE+retreat: IMO this is an exploit, but obviously there are a bunch of people that don't agree with me. Probably good to mention rules for this one too at the game start, if you don't want to allow it in the game.

Demon twiceborn, stealing Bogus scripts, broken movement orders, etc: Same deal.

Communions, slaves casting: Did not know this was a bug! I always assumed reverse communions were intentional. KO says it's OK though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Filling a lab with slave collars: Get a life!

VoD: I consider the doubling-up of slain undead buggy. And it makes me start thinking about game mechanics instead of the game itself, so ruins my suspension of disbelief. I'll cast it, but if I succeed against a target, I won't cast it again on the same target if he doesn't die the 1st time.

Sickle: kind of unbalanced, but not illogical that it works the way it does. Make it cursed (cannot drop) and horror mark the bearer, please.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I personally think all the things in the poll are cheesy and see them all as abuse. I wouldn't much enjoy playing with someone who loved to pull stuff like that.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/j...wambulance.jpg

As was stated above. Anything you do within the confines of the game is not an exploit. I am even starting to soften my view on the slave collar thing.

The only thing I voted yes for was hacking the files.

As your crusade continues, be careful not to ruin our game by shouting at the developers until everything is fixed to be very uniform and straight forward. One of the appeals of this game is the wacky stuff you can do. The quirks and weirdness is what gives this game character. And if you do succeed here, stay away from the Dwarf Fortress forums please.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

That bit about communions has got me. Up until learning that I had the general opinion that using features not intended to be there to your advantage was in some indefinable sense wrong. But I love being able to use a reverse communion. They make sense to me as an option with the communion spells.

Perhaps there's a difference in that they don't provide a risk-reducing advantage over the way they were intended to work.

VoD gets better every time it gets through a SC's defences without costing the caster any more gems, and it doesn't risk the caster to use it. Repeat casting isn't abusive per se, but the pair of bugs that this spell invokes generate a benefit way beyond the cost.

Cast and flee on BF enchantments gets you a top-notch effect, and the caster (who may well be empowered, loaded with boosters or holding artefacts) gets a minimal risk exposure. The risk/benefit ratio feels wrong.

Sending 40 slave collars costs perhaps a turn's worth of slaves in the late game, and a bit of investment in (frequently cheap) B1 forgers who can hunt when they're not forging. And you can keep on sending 10 collars a turn forever, just to keep the opponent topped up. Benefits are pretty big, if you ask me. The cost isn't huge as a late game trick. And there's no added risk to the producers of the items.

Twiceborn provides a greater than intended benefit, but in limited circumstances and the benefit is of limited utility. It's quite possibly a bigger benefit to use Twiceborn to avoid old age on an exceptional recruited mage or a Crone. I guess I'd probably call it abusive, though.

Communion working the way it currently does, though... Slaves casting at the same time as Masters clearly adds to the risk of fatigue death. Reverse Communion alters the benefit, and I'm not sure how much it increases it.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Right. This has gone far enough. I'm off to bed right now, but if the tone of this discussion does not turn more civil, I'm going to start oppressing offensive posts and locking threads.

The thing is, despite the occasional flareups here, I happen to like this community because most of the time there is no need to break out the Modstick. The staff don't like to use them, but if we have to, we will.

I will refrain from giving out warnings for now, but if this crap persists in the morning when I get to work and log back in, these thing will look like somebody hit it with multiple castings of flames from the sky, gifts from heaven and rain of stones before I'm done. And that's before the admins step in. What they will do is an altogether different kettle of fish.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

So we shouldn't ruining the game by "shouting at the developers" about things that the developers say shouldn't work like that?

None of the things in the poll are there just because they're unbalanced. They're there because they've been acknowledged as bug or at least unintended features.

So please, lose the strawman of " until everything is fixed to be very uniform and straight forward." That's not what people are talking about here. This is about exploiting known bugs.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

You have misquoted me. I said "be careful not to ruin the game". I did not say "You are going to ruin the game" as you imply.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Every exploit listed except .2h file hacking can easily be fixed by altering the program code.

So the devs should either say that these actions are wanted, or fix them. (Or say they are not wanted, but they are not interested in fixing them [witch would suck]).

As for Battlefield enchantments --> why dont they just end if the casting mage is no longer around (death or routed). Or make just the damaging enchantments end, and let things like lights of the northern star and relief word even without mage.

As for sending slave collars --> why is the labspace limited, or just pool forged items to the lab before items from message, and add a way to dump items from labs without to have to equip them first (as slave collars are cursed)

VotD, twiceborn are minor glitches which are annoying, but not game breaking.

Communions, in my opinion the most difficult thing about communions is that they work until the slaves die from exhaustion, so if the slaves also cast spells, they will die earlyer. (but in exchange your army will have more artillery until the slaves faint)

So i just hope that KO says what is bug and what is WAD, and that the bugs will get fixed afterwards. *ommmmm*

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I think I can name at least three people that I removed from the playing community myself, and the actual number is probably even higher. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

+1

Don't hate the players, hate the game! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Several bugs have been fixed from 3.01 to 3.15. "shouting at the developers" is the way the community has to make them realize where the bugs lie, since illwinter is not a blizzard-like monster with millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of employees to make playtest (and even blizzard-like companies make bugs in their games, as programing bug free is basically impossible)

We point what *might* be buggy, they decide if it is a bug or WAD, and they squash the bug whenever it is possible. I dont see where the problem lies. Only crusade i see is your crusade for "give the game as it is, with all it's weird stuff that allow me to move 3 provinces my movement 1 troops and all that cool things i find funny". If KO decides that the way communion, VotD, MoD, twiceborn or the battle enchants work is the way it is intended to work, that's fine. _IF_ they realize it is not the way it is intended to work, then it is a bug, and should be squashed.

I have a suggestion, let KO to debug the game, and those who preffer a "cool" and "funny" game with "wicked things" to do with your movement order and whatnot, can keep playing the un-upgraded and bug-filled 3.01 version of the game.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

In my EH II Game, the rules on the 1st page state:

"Two notable exploits that will also be banned;

1. If you capture bogus and his Dark Knight, you can script those captured units to attack mages, but you cannot copy their "attack mage" orders to other commanders.

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

So it is always a good thing to set out what is banned before players sign up. If someone wants an everything goes game, they can look elsewhere.

While flooding a player's lab with slave collars etc is not listed, this is obviously abuse and if it occurred in a game I hosted the offending player would be removed for a sub, or his race set to AI.

Edit: Velusion's Rules:

• Using the copy/paste orders + Bogus to target commanders with non-Bogus leaders.
• Spamming items to another player with the intent of filling up their lab so that their forgings will fail.
• Casting a battlefield wide spell continuous spell with a mage and then immediately running away - causing the spell to last forever. This is on Edi's list but is difficult to avoid. The comprise: All mages that cast a battlefield wide enchantment need to stay on the battlefield for 5 complete turns. The very last order can be to retreat.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I'd thank him for the supply of slave collars, put it on indy commanders and send them against his mage-backed armies...

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif This is the best answer so far! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Yeah, funny answer, except slave collars are never picked up in a battle. It's been tested.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Awww. And they're always so eager to ram a second Eye of Aiming in their head when they find one.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I find it interesting that people are against BF + Retreat. Perhaps it is the overall efficacy of the BF enchantments, but it is the only option for those who wish to fight 'elastically'; i.e., by giving ground and exhausting the enemy army.

I have never run into this myself, so I am not exactly sure what happens. From what people say in this thread, it sounds like the battle continues indefinitely. This is an issue with the game code, if so. If, however, the fight continues only until one side or the other is routed... I see no difficulty with this strategy.

Also, those who are against this strategy (especially the people who run the game and set house rules)... what happens if the caster breaks? Say I have a Caelian High Seraph who casts Wrathful Skies, and he is intended to stay in the battle the requisite amount of time. But the opponent causes him to break and run (flying) before that time. What happens in that situation from a game administration PoV? To throw it even more into a concern, what happens if someone deliberately puts this combo on a commander who has the Battle Fright affliction, thus making it more likely for said commander to flee?

As far as the rest are concerned... hacking files: bad! Abusing Bogus commands... bogus! Burying your opponent underneath a pile of useless items... pretty damn bad.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

> I'd thank him for the supply of slave collars, put it on indy commanders and send them against his mage-backed armies...

I know that you're a good player, so you shoudl be aware that:

1. On the turn it happens you will forge at best one item, possibly none.
2. The gems you paid will be lost.
3. Most players do not have 50 indy commanders standing around (75+gold per turn)
4. Slave collars can't be picked up post-battle, so all you'll do is give xpt.

If you want to thank people for that, you probably thank people for driving
over your foot.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I'd like to hear more about what is meant by quickmoving slow troops. I consider that abusive..

why not have a standard.. like velusions or llama's. Some games will be open.. some will not - if everyone knows in advance no harm no foul.

But I'd be more interested in games without exploits. Newbies have enough problems learning the game as intended without having to learn the bugs as well.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Quickmoving slow troops, sallying into a neighborhood province, reinforcing
through a besieging army, etc.. are ways of abusing unsufficient error checking
on the client, when the composition of a moving commander's army changes.

You send a commander somewhere where he can legally go. Then some sequences of
adding troops and changing his orders will result in impossible commands being
executed without a snag.

It gets much, much worse if instead of juggling troops you just edit the orders
in the .2h file. As far as I am concerned, morally, there is absolutely no
difference in the two approaches... After all, if the developers did not want
us to hack the .2h file, they would have kept the order validation on the server,
efficiency be damned. Right? Right?

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

This really shouldn't be a big deal.

If you are concerned about these exploits/features only play in games that have rules against them (like I do). I would say more than half of the hosted games implement a ban on the most notorious of these exploits.

The twiceborn, Sickle and VotD exploits/features are probably here to stay as most of the hosts don't consider them exploits. They might be slightly unbalanced but they should hardly have a huge impact on the game.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

No, I was joking. The slave collar thing is a purely theoretical construct. I doubt it has ever been encountered in any game, or ever will be for that matter.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Could someone please explain what is meant by "sallying in to a neighborhood province"?

Is that when you are under siege, and you give a sneaking commander non-sneaky troops so he attacks a neighboring province in one move from a besieged castle?

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

You are under siege. The enemy army thinks it has you surrounded. Your army
exits the castle, bypasses the besiegers and attacks a neighboring province.
This trick worked when I first started playing Dominions III, let me check
whether it still does.

-----

Yup. still works.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Ich, the slave collar was used back in Dominions II. Actually, it was done with
some other item... It was just remembered as the "slave collar trick" because
some people think that a slave collar is the best item to use.

I disagree. Depending on your objective, it may be better to use a worthless
item that you can remove, i.e. store on your commanders until you need to flood
the enemy's lab. Otherwise, you compromise your own forging one turn before.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

There already is one. Go to item lab directly (not through commander's item slots). Click on item and it will bring up a list of the commanders in the province to give it to. Last commander in the list is "Throw it away". This Commander Throw-it-away is the same one that appears when you transfer items between commanders and is usually the subject of much hurled abuse when he is given a Ring of Wizardry, Staff of the Elements or similar powerful and useful item...

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Nice to know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Can someone explain "Filling lab with slave collars"? I'm a SP player and I can't even fathom the mechanics or how it would hurt an opponent.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Why not just send them all back to him next turn http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Does sound like abuse to me, but I am not sure how practical it would be?

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Messages are sent before item forging occurs, which includes transfer of gems and magic items between nations. If somebody fills another's magic lab with slave collars (or any other item), then any items that he might have forged that turn get lost. And maybe it wasn't possible to throw away items directly from the magic lab in the past, so you had to put it on some commander to get rid of them - which would be a pain if it were slave collars (gives feeblemind and is cursed, i.e. you need a new commander every time).

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

For the communion thing, making slaves passive will render many nice mages like Astrapelagists or LA Marignon's seafaring mages (whatever) semi-useless, and others like Celestial masters quite average. Also, the nice synergy betweeen communion and sabbath is gonna suffer.
So if this communion thingie is gonna be fixed, make it so that 'slaves dont cast if at least one master has cast anything the same turn', not 'slaves dont cast spells at all'. Thus communions will become more balanced, but still usable. Otherwise they will exist perhaps for casting heavy BF enchantments only.

Regarding VotD - this spell goes against the logic and normal game mechanics. This exception should be fixed if only because there's no protection against it (as against the Mind hunt) and its selective. MR *will* fail you sooner or later, most likely sooner.

Immortal demons - gosh, its not OK and it wont ever be. These who advocate it are either clueless or abusers themselves. Dakini, for example, are damn dangerous even naked; make them immortal and Lanka becomes undefeatable period.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

I'm a fan of reverse communions as well.

I think this possibility add to the game and isn't bad for balance of astral nations betwenn each others (nations with only S mages having other paths or good levels vs nations with ultra cheap S only professionnal communiants).

Alas it also adds a level of microgestion, which is never good, and strengthen an already (too?) powerful path even more.

I'd like if Illwinter can find a way to balance the reverse communion and reduce microgestion instead of simply making it impossible (ie : once the bug can be fixed, add a third communion spell to allow a mage to be an "active slave", with slightly increased requirements say S2 or 40 fatigue, allowing some form of reverse communion without the actual micro-gestion resulting from mages ID to consider).

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

The other option for communions, even if they worked as designed, would be to retreat the masters after they'd cast their buffs and boosters. Or to attack with them:)

A "Remove from communion" spell that took a mage out of communion, but left any buff effects in place could work.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Has anyone checked what the message limit is? It used to be 20 messages per turn total (so you could not get more than that even if more were sent to you). So far as throwing items away, it has always been there. As long as you go to the lab through F8, you can do it. Most of the time people go through a commander's item slots, in which case it equips the item and does not allow the option to throw away.

Re: Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)
 

Yes, the point about communions really illustrates my point that I think a lot of people don't really understand what I was getting at. We're playing the game as it is, not the game that was "intended" by the devs, whatever that means. Unintended does not mean broken, lots of times some of the most interesting interactions in games were probably unintended, the devs are not a perfect source of divine wisdom, they're just some cool guys who put together a bunch of stuff they thought would be cool and tweaked it until they felt like they had a fun game. Lots of people have commented they like the communion mechanic as it adds to the strategic depth and generally makes the game more fun. This is exactly how I feel about things like copying Bogus' commands and many other tricks that are arguably clever ways to take advantage of quirks in the game, do not unballance things and generally just add to the wonderful texture of this game. Game hosts should absolutely "ban" whatever they think will make a fun game from specific tactics to diplomacy to forging clams to casting Arcane Nexus. It's a pet peeve of mine that in most games people find the idea of using "exploits" abhorrent....yet basically this often boils down to after the fact trying to make up house rules of what is "intended" for the prefect version of the game.