Trading commanders, exploit or not?

[Jarkko]

I fail to see the problem of sending in chaff armies to slow down hostile armies. If you scripted commanders to burn hundreds of gems, then maybe the scripting wasn't that well thought out? I mean, it is not like only your opponent can do the Ghost riders attack, or? Do unto thy opponent what they do to you.

Harassing attacks, even suicide harassing attacks, have been the norm through out the history of warfare. If the harrassers can destroy a supply-wagon or blow up a fuel dump or whatever, would that too be an exploit? "Forcing" (ie if the opponent so has wished to equip and script his commanders) an opponent to burn lots of gems are in my opinion the closest thing in Dom to harassing attacks used in real life.

[vfb]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

I fail to see the problem of sending in chaff armies to slow down hostile armies.

It's unrealistic to completely prevent forward movement of an entire huge army for possibly several consecutive months, by attacking it with some trivial force that immediately retreats. I can't think of how the developers could have implemented this differently. But it's still a lame tactic.

If you scripted commanders to burn hundreds of gems, then maybe the scripting wasn't that well thought out? I mean, it is not like only your opponent can do the Ghost riders attack, or? Do unto thy opponent what they do to you.

The game mechanics do not allow you to script for several different situations. The game mechanics do not allow you to limit the number of gems a mage can use from his supply, per battle. It's unrealistic that a mage in the backfield would really burn all his gems summoning up fire elementals in an easily winnable fight.

Edit: About Assassins: yeah, assassination targets can do some dumb stuff too. But I can write this off as caused by their surprise when attacked by the assassin. Does not break my suspension of disbelief.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

I fail to see the problem of sending in chaff armies to slow down hostile armies.

Well it's hard to find fault with your argument there.


Regarding assassins being the counter, I'm afraid this simply isn't reasonable. The small force attack>retreat requires virtually no resources whatsoever and is available to everyone. Assassins on the other hand are far from commonly available and require more resources. They're also riskier, since they need to go do their thing in enemy territory and will quite often get ganked in the process.

Simple exercise - what are you likely to have more of - assassins or scouts/indy commanders?

You might also say fliers are the counter, but again they aren't commonly available, cost more resources and are riskier. They also don't prevent the tactic, they just make it very slightly more costly.

It's certainly true that in history small harassing forces have been able to slow and even halt powerful enemy forces. But I don't see what that has to do with dominions. We all know that you can justify anything if you try hard enough, taking examples from history, making up fluff to explain unintuitive game mechanics (like the explanations for poison arrows bypassing shields and prot),.. the fact remains that in dom3 it feels buggy when 10 militia with attack/retreat manage to stop an army of hundreds of elite troops turn after turn apparently at random (since eventually your army of hundreds will manage to attack, but no-one can work out why this happens). I'm sure that can be explained away with some anecdote from the battle of Stalingrad of whatever. That's cool, I'm glad people can explain stuff like that away and feel happy about it, I just don't like it in the games I play in, that's all.

Edit: Btw I strongly suspect, though I can't know for sure, that KO and JK did not intend this to be a usable 'tactic' in much the same sense that I suspect they didn't intend stuff like slave collar spam.