Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)

[Edi]

Right. This has gone far enough. I'm off to bed right now, but if the tone of this discussion does not turn more civil, I'm going to start oppressing offensive posts and locking threads.

The thing is, despite the occasional flareups here, I happen to like this community because most of the time there is no need to break out the Modstick. The staff don't like to use them, but if we have to, we will.

I will refrain from giving out warnings for now, but if this crap persists in the morning when I get to work and log back in, these thing will look like somebody hit it with multiple castings of flames from the sky, gifts from heaven and rain of stones before I'm done. And that's before the admins step in. What they will do is an altogether different kettle of fish.

[Hadrian_II]

Every exploit listed except .2h file hacking can easily be fixed by altering the program code.

So the devs should either say that these actions are wanted, or fix them. (Or say they are not wanted, but they are not interested in fixing them [witch would suck]).

As for Battlefield enchantments --> why dont they just end if the casting mage is no longer around (death or routed). Or make just the damaging enchantments end, and let things like lights of the northern star and relief word even without mage.

As for sending slave collars --> why is the labspace limited, or just pool forged items to the lab before items from message, and add a way to dump items from labs without to have to equip them first (as slave collars are cursed)

VotD, twiceborn are minor glitches which are annoying, but not game breaking.

Communions, in my opinion the most difficult thing about communions is that they work until the slaves die from exhaustion, so if the slaves also cast spells, they will die earlyer. (but in exchange your army will have more artillery until the slaves faint)

So i just hope that KO says what is bug and what is WAD, and that the bugs will get fixed afterwards. *ommmmm*

[thejeff]

So we shouldn't ruining the game by "shouting at the developers" about things that the developers say shouldn't work like that?

None of the things in the poll are there just because they're unbalanced. They're there because they've been acknowledged as bug or at least unintended features.

So please, lose the strawman of " until everything is fixed to be very uniform and straight forward." That's not what people are talking about here. This is about exploiting known bugs.

[Foodstamp]

You have misquoted me. I said "be careful not to ruin the game". I did not say "You are going to ruin the game" as you imply.

[triqui]

Foodstamp said:As was stated above. Anything you do within the confines of the game is not an exploit. I am even starting to soften my view on the slave collar thing.

Several bugs have been fixed from 3.01 to 3.15. "shouting at the developers" is the way the community has to make them realize where the bugs lie, since illwinter is not a blizzard-like monster with millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of employees to make playtest (and even blizzard-like companies make bugs in their games, as programing bug free is basically impossible)

We point what *might* be buggy, they decide if it is a bug or WAD, and they squash the bug whenever it is possible. I dont see where the problem lies. Only crusade i see is your crusade for "give the game as it is, with all it's weird stuff that allow me to move 3 provinces my movement 1 troops and all that cool things i find funny". If KO decides that the way communion, VotD, MoD, twiceborn or the battle enchants work is the way it is intended to work, that's fine. _IF_ they realize it is not the way it is intended to work, then it is a bug, and should be squashed.

I have a suggestion, let KO to debug the game, and those who preffer a "cool" and "funny" game with "wicked things" to do with your movement order and whatnot, can keep playing the un-upgraded and bug-filled 3.01 version of the game.

[Gregstrom]

That bit about communions has got me. Up until learning that I had the general opinion that using features not intended to be there to your advantage was in some indefinable sense wrong. But I love being able to use a reverse communion. They make sense to me as an option with the communion spells.

Perhaps there's a difference in that they don't provide a risk-reducing advantage over the way they were intended to work.

VoD gets better every time it gets through a SC's defences without costing the caster any more gems, and it doesn't risk the caster to use it. Repeat casting isn't abusive per se, but the pair of bugs that this spell invokes generate a benefit way beyond the cost.

Cast and flee on BF enchantments gets you a top-notch effect, and the caster (who may well be empowered, loaded with boosters or holding artefacts) gets a minimal risk exposure. The risk/benefit ratio feels wrong.

Sending 40 slave collars costs perhaps a turn's worth of slaves in the late game, and a bit of investment in (frequently cheap) B1 forgers who can hunt when they're not forging. And you can keep on sending 10 collars a turn forever, just to keep the opponent topped up. Benefits are pretty big, if you ask me. The cost isn't huge as a late game trick. And there's no added risk to the producers of the items.

Twiceborn provides a greater than intended benefit, but in limited circumstances and the benefit is of limited utility. It's quite possibly a bigger benefit to use Twiceborn to avoid old age on an exceptional recruited mage or a Crone. I guess I'd probably call it abusive, though.

Communion working the way it currently does, though... Slaves casting at the same time as Masters clearly adds to the risk of fatigue death. Reverse Communion alters the benefit, and I'm not sure how much it increases it.

[Velusion]

This really shouldn't be a big deal.

If you are concerned about these exploits/features only play in games that have rules against them (like I do). I would say more than half of the hosted games implement a ban on the most notorious of these exploits.

The twiceborn, Sickle and VotD exploits/features are probably here to stay as most of the hosts don't consider them exploits. They might be slightly unbalanced but they should hardly have a huge impact on the game.

[Edratman]

Can someone explain "Filling lab with slave collars"? I'm a SP player and I can't even fathom the mechanics or how it would hurt an opponent.

[lch]

Edratman said:
Can someone explain "Filling lab with slave collars"? I'm a SP player and I can't even fathom the mechanics or how it would hurt an opponent.

Messages are sent before item forging occurs, which includes transfer of gems and magic items between nations. If somebody fills another's magic lab with slave collars (or any other item), then any items that he might have forged that turn get lost. And maybe it wasn't possible to throw away items directly from the magic lab in the past, so you had to put it on some commander to get rid of them - which would be a pain if it were slave collars (gives feeblemind and is cursed, i.e. you need a new commander every time).

[Edi]

lch said:

Messages are sent before item forging occurs, which includes transfer of gems and magic items between nations. If somebody fills another's magic lab with slave collars (or any other item), then any items that he might have forged that turn get lost. And maybe it wasn't possible to throw away items directly from the magic lab in the past, so you had to put it on some commander to get rid of them - which would be a pain if it were slave collars (gives feeblemind and is cursed, i.e. you need a new commander every time).

Has anyone checked what the message limit is? It used to be 20 messages per turn total (so you could not get more than that even if more were sent to you). So far as throwing items away, it has always been there. As long as you go to the lab through F8, you can do it. Most of the time people go through a commander's item slots, in which case it equips the item and does not allow the option to throw away.