Dark Knight

[Baalz]

I think trying to "ban" "exploits" is generally an exercise in frustration and futility. With all due respect, what does it matter what the devs intended? We're not playing the game they intended, we're playing the game they made. The devs are not some infallible source of inspired wisdom, and I happen to like the many, many non-obvious tricks you can pull by leveraging combinations of things that in all probability didn't occur to the original designers. QM has laid out several good examples, but heck trying to define what is "good and clever strategies" and "exploiting unintended consequences" is absolutely inane - there is so much complexity to this game that I'd guess *most* of the more subtle interactions were not explicitly intended - they threw in every cool thing they could think of, then removed/tweaked stuff for balance. Voila, out comes a phenomenally complex and nuanced game that a bunch of hardcore strategy nerds can play for years and years *because* there are so many neat little tricks you can pull out of the millions of ways you can combine things.

I can see banning the mists of deception exploit not because it's unintended but because its game breaking. This Bogus thing is not even close. I'll also try to:

ritual of rebirth the genie
cast vengeance of the dead on SCs until they auto rout
deploy every kind of decoy I can to fool the targeting AI
leverage every forge bonus I can wrangle to forge gem producing items
teleport a thug in prior to a big battle to try and make the enemy expend their gems before the main event
set my raiders to hide rather than attack so that the stealth is resolved before any magic retaliation
use fear to get enemies to route from an assassination
slap boots of quickness on every banner of the damned I ever forge
Fire and flee with death blessed archers
use the fact that globals (AC, AN, etc) take effect one turn before anyone can react
double/triple bless rush
use diplomacy and trade to my advantage -leverage my allies to help with things like harvesting gems from the sickle, pool gems for globals, gang up on weaker nations, etc.
order my communions so that the slaves can cast spells and give them banners of the damned

I do that not because I'm a prick who will do anything to win, but because that's the game I'm playing. The whole point of this game is to find clever tricks (read strategies). If something breaks the game experience by being too exploitive, I expect the devs to fix that (and they do a great job), but pretty much if it's in the game its fair play.

[Reverend Zombie]

Baalz said:
I think trying to "ban" "exploits" is generally an exercise in frustration and futility. ... If something breaks the game experience by being too exploitive, I expect the devs to fix that (and they do a great job), but pretty much if it's in the game its fair play.

I'm firmly in this camp, but could not have phrased it as eloquently. Nice job.

[Meglobob]

Reverend Zombie said:

I'm firmly in this camp, but could not have phrased it as eloquently. Nice job.

I 3rd this!

[Ironhawk]

I 4th! If its physically in the game and not banned by a house rule, then its fair to use.

[Cor2]

My definition of an exploit is a little diffrent, i guess.
1 Does it greatly unbalance the game?
2 Was it NOT intended to be used that way?
3 Is it rarely used, usually by very experince players?
4 And most importantly does it signifigantly detract from the fun of the game?

To me the bogus "exploit" answers yes to all my conditions so it is an exploit.

The archer baiting, for me is
1 no 2 yes 3 no 4 no

So its not an exploit in my book.

Mists answers
1yes 2yes 3yes 4 yes
So mists is a exploit to me.

[Xietor]

I will add if you need to use exploits to win,"maybe poker just ain't your game."

Doc Holliday: Why Ike, whatever do you mean? Maybe poker's just not your game. I know! Let's have a spelling contest! ...

Tombstone

[thejeff]

The problem with house rules is: can they change during a game?

I don't believe either the Bogus exploit or the MoD were explicitly banned at the start of most of either llamabeast's or Velusion's games. Now both have said they are.
Is it fair to change the house rules part way through the game? Is it fair not to ban a newly discovered problem?

[Velusion]

thejeff said:
The problem with house rules is: can they change during a game?

I don't believe either the Bogus exploit or the MoD were explicitly banned at the start of most of either llamabeast's or Velusion's games. Now both have said they are.
Is it fair to change the house rules part way through the game? Is it fair not to ban a newly discovered problem?

Per my rules (not allowed):
• Exploit known bugs on Edi’s bug list (see main forum sticky) or obvious bugs that aren't on Edi's list.

KO's announcement that he recommends it not be used in MP play without everyone's permission is enough for me to label it an "obvious bug".

[Xietor]

It is my opinion that it was always improper to use them. shrug. I think this discussion just confirmed the general consensus.

As I mentioned previously the issue was raised in the middle of Alpaca. Many very experienced players in that game, and everyone said you could not copy the orders of the dark knight over to other commanders. Not 1 player argued that it was proper.

[WonderLlama]

thejeff said:
The problem with house rules is: can they change during a game?

I don't believe either the Bogus exploit or the MoD were explicitly banned at the start of most of either llamabeast's or Velusion's games. Now both have said they are.
Is it fair to change the house rules part way through the game? Is it fair not to ban a newly discovered problem?

As I am playing Caelum one of those games (Mongoose), I'm betting I'd be the one to benefit most from the MoD exploit. But I wholly support it being banned.

I'd suggest that the only time it becomes a problem to ban something mid game is if someone has already spent a good deal of resources under the assumption it was legal. Which is not the case about 12 turns into a game, as is about when this came up in the Mongoose game. If someone has spent a lot of resources that become wasted because of a closed exploit, I'd suggest it be up to them to demonstrate that. If they can, than leave the exploit open until next game.

<edited because I realised the point was less specific than I thought.>