[Maerlande]

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.