Battlefield spell + retreating?

[Saulot]

I'll begin by confessing I've never had this used against me, however I wouldn't think it was a bug simply because of some sort of shock value or perceived unfairness. KO and Johan have made some very conscientious and well thought out decisions to have things works in a particular way. How you can wish for certain things but not others, how prophets come back from the dead with more holy power, how mindless commanders pop, how certain spells use no saves or are unresistable, how immortality works, how vengeance of the dead eventually kills through a game mechanic, etc.

There will always be some parts of the game that don't work exactly as you'd have expected, or wanted, or would have designed if you were making it up. That seems to be part of the nature of the beast when talking about anything with tons of magic.

Personally, I find the fact that there are combo's in this game, that are far greater than the sum of their parts to be a very good thing. These are the things which promote creativity and why strategies are still evolving and being developed as we speak, and why no tome will ever contain the total collection of things you could encounter when playing a game of Dominions.

Until KO specifically speaks up and says this is a bug, I'd wish everyone would stop making that assumption.

[K]

calmon said:
Well K maybe you should count the games where this rule is in effect as a unwritten law!

How? Since it's not written, there is no way of knowing!

Even worse, there could easily be games where some of the players think it doesn't need to written and they are playing by it while the majority of players are playing as if there was no rule. That's not even counting the number of players who are OK with it, but have made concessions to the minority because they would rather play watered-down Dominions rather than no Dominions at all.

Considering that it takes seconds to write the rules down, I think the fact that 30 out of 37 games on the front page (meaning the most current games) don't have rules like that is pretty devastating evidence.

The community has spoken.

[llamabeast]

Questionable argument really. If I'd been more organised, I'd have written it down for all the games I set up. That's quite a few. I suspect many other game admins fall in the same category.

It's much the same as how a large proportion of the MP community consider NAPs binding, but that is rarely made explicit.

I do hope Illwinter are able to fix this bug soon anyway, so we can not have to worry about it further. It's probably the strongest "exploit" (depending on your viewpoint of course) left in the game, to my mind.

[Tifone]

(by the way and a little off-topic, mr. llama, are NAPs really binding? as i said i have yet to try an MP game, so I don't know how they are taken by the community, but i always thought that if a player wants to roleplay a bit and is playing crazy abisians lead by a moloch, it's not so strange to violate a NAP and attack his little neighbours of caelum before time to take them off-guard... and i wouldn't take it too badly if i was caelum, shame on me for having given trust to some insane flaming lil' bastards ^_^... but i ask to be sure)

[llamabeast]

Arguably unfortunately, NAPs are often taken as binding, and many people will get really quite upset if you break them. My recommendation is either not to break them, or to make it explicit at the start of the game that you will be roleplaying, and therefore it is possible that your character may not hold to treaties. I think people cannot get annoyed at you if you let them know in advance that you may not be dependable.

I think it would be good if more games were started as "Machiavellian", where the understanding is that all diplomacy may be reneged upon, as in real life. Having said that though, I've still never actually organised such a game myself. (Though these days I don't organise that many games myself and much prefer it if I just act as host and someone else organises and admins the games - I'm always willing to host if someone asks.)

[Xietor]

K is in law school!

Of course he plays the devil's advocate. All good law students do.

Unfortunately for K, Llamabeast did actually state in one the exploit threads that certain exploits were banned in all Llamaserver games.

But it is usually best when exploits can be spelled out on the game thread, as in Kingmaker's original thread, or in a stated set of rules like Velusion had.

Velusion's Rules, however, were so long, that I doubt anyone bothered to read them other than the few lawyers like myself.

I think a model for Llamaserver could be based quite simply on my post in the original Kingmaker thread, with whatever additions or subtractions Llamabeast feels appropriate.

But I think brevity should be a goal, as no one wants to read 4 pages of fine print before playing a game.

From Kingmaker:

Notable exploits banned;

1. If you capture Bogus and his friends, you can script those captured units to attack mages, but you cannot copy their "attack mage" orders to any other commanders or units.

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). And this rule includes items that cast such spells.

3. You cannot overload someone�s lab with the purpose of maliciously filling it so they cannot receive or forge items.

*I consider VOTD to be a viable spell and working as intended. I know there are arguments to the contrary, but I would never remove a valuable SC killing spell from the game's arsenal of weapons. If you really hate VOTD so much, take an undead pretender, or put mr items on your pretender.

*Things like hacking files are so obviously outside the game's scope, that i would not even bother listing it as banned. Suffice to say if proof of a hacked file was presented, the player should not only be removed from the current game, but the community as well.

[Ming]

I don't play MP but I am intrigued by the discussion.

Xieter, does your rules mean that retreating on turn5 after MOD is allowed?

[Xietor]

Yes.

Otherwise, there would have to be a statement before the game started that a high level air spell was banned. What I did in Kingmaker was use a clever Mod written by Twan that made the spell have a fixed duration.

Absent the mod, I did not want to ban Mists of deception completely. But the mod is the perfect answer. Keeps the powerful air spell in the game, and removes the exploit completely.

[Zeldor]

Oh no, MoD is another category That 5 turn rule goes for Fire Storm, Wrathful Skies etc...

[Ming]

Thanks for the replies. I presume that the mod still gives MoD 30 turns or more - otherwise it would be somewhat weak.