Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)

Edratman · #1 March 28th, 2008, 09:49 AM

Ich, thank you.

WOW, someone has to be a real turd to do this. They obviously promised to trade forgings of value and then actually sent slave collars. (I forged one, once. Couldn't figure out why such an apparently valueless item was on the list, tried it, and am still wondering.)

I cannot rate this nefarious trick as an exploit. I define an exploit as utilizing some deficiency in the programming that permits something that was totally unintended by the game designers. This slave collar trade is a seperate category.

thejeff · #2 March 28th, 2008, 10:15 AM

No, the slave collar trick has nothing to do with a trade.

You just send them unannounced. Tons of them. Enough to fill his lab and make him throw away anything he forged that turn. Wasting mage time and gems.

The deficiency in programming is twofold, restricted lab space and trades coming before your own forging.

Kuritza · #3 March 28th, 2008, 10:35 AM

Actually, I dont see how copying Bogus' commands may pass for a game quirk. There are some program bugs that become a feature, but then there are bugs. You cannot say that hex-editing a 2h file is a feature, can you?

I could've agreed that having a casting mage retreat after wrathful skies is a clever move too, but there's one notable exception to that rule. Wrathful skies + sacrificial fodder is something I'd call a feature; Wrathful skies + AQ or Seraph is unbalanced and thus its bug, imho.

Edratman · #4 March 28th, 2008, 11:07 AM

Quote:

thejeff said:
No, the slave collar trick has nothing to do with a trade.

You just send them unannounced. Tons of them. Enough to fill his lab and make him throw away anything he forged that turn. Wasting mage time and gems.

The deficiency in programming is twofold, restricted lab space and trades coming before your own forging.

Now I really get it. I was totally unaware that you could send things to someone else without both parties agreeing to a trade. Now that I think about it, you can send gems and gold as a gift, so items must also be on the list.

lch · #5 March 28th, 2008, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Edratman said:
WOW, someone has to be a real turd to do this. They obviously promised to trade forgings of value and then actually sent slave collars. (I forged one, once. Couldn't figure out why such an apparently valueless item was on the list, tried it, and am still wondering.)

Dominions has no concept of trading items. You can only send stuff to another party. Given that somebody would have to waste gems and mage time on forging items to send them away, the only possibility I see where this "exploit" would be feasible would be when an extremely important item, for example the Chalice, would get lost in the game and people would be racing to forge it. Somebody might get the idea to fill his opponent's lab with items so that he can't forge it. But then he would either need to have a full lab of junk himself so far, or he would need to draw similarly low quality magic items from his commanders, like const 0 magic weapons, sanguine dowsing rods etc.

Quote:

Kuritza said:
Wrathful skies + AQ or Seraph is unbalanced and thus its bug, imho.

See, this is exactly why I don't like overzealous hot topics like this. How is Wrathful skies combined with shock immunity unbalanced or a bug? It's quite an obvious combo, and can be achieved with any caster and a ring of tamed lightning.

triqui · #6 March 28th, 2008, 11:18 AM

Quote:

lch said:
See, this is exactly why I don't like overzealous hot topics like this. How is Wrathful skies combined with shock immunity unbalanced or a bug? It's quite an obvious combo, and can be achieved with any caster and a ring of tamed lightning.

I agree with you. Wrath of sky + shock inmunity is not unbalanced, actually it is *the* way to play wrath of sky in my opinion. It's like casting foul vapors when you have an army of poison inmune vine units, or casting heat from hell with Abysia, or casting darkness/rigor mortis with an army of undeads.

Casting the enchant, and retiring, sounds different though. The devs have said, afaik, that the enchant *should* finish when the mage retires or die. So it is exploiting a thing that does not work as intended.

Kuritza · #7 March 28th, 2008, 04:31 PM

Quote:

See, this is exactly why I don't like overzealous hot topics like this. How is Wrathful skies combined with shock immunity unbalanced or a bug? It's quite an obvious combo, and can be achieved with any caster and a ring of tamed lightning.

You dont get it. Its not shock immunity combined with wrathful skies. Its AQ combined with a mage scripted to cast WS and retreat. See? Now there's just a very hard to kill SC on the battlefield, and no way to end Wrathful Skies.
Now if it was AQ herself who has cast the spell, she'd get lots of fatique and probably die. Had the mage stayed, well, there's a fat chance you'd get him too. But with AQ and a retreating mage its a win-win, unless your enemy gets a lucky soulslay or something. Too cheap.

Foodstamp · #8 March 28th, 2008, 04:33 PM

Maybe I am inherently evil. All of this stuff sounds like strategy to me.

Kuritza · #9 March 28th, 2008, 04:40 PM

Maybe you just use all this stuff yourself against more maneered players, and thus enjoy it.

triqui · #10 March 28th, 2008, 04:43 PM

Quote:

Foodstamp said:
Maybe I am inherently evil. All of this stuff sounds like strategy to me.

Moving 3 provinces your movement 1 troops through "move+patrol" bug is "strategy" for you?