End Game Slaughter Moves

[kasnavada]

1) What's an exploit? Lots of interesting things in this game seem to be possibly unintentional ways things interact.

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.

[DonCorazon]

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.

[Foodstamp]

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.

[Tuidjy]

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.

[Baalz]

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.

[Foodstamp]

Tuidjy said:
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.

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.

[DonCorazon]

DonCorazon said:
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.

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.

[K]

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.

"how do you counter the Mists of Deception combo? Please share your incredible insight with us! Being less knowledgeable 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"

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.

[Tuidjy]

> 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.

[Jazzepi]

Tuidjy said:
> 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.

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