Trading commanders, exploit or not?

[Squirrelloid]

I mostly agree with Maerlande.

However, a few things seem to be unintended and may Work as Implemented, but not as Designed. Certainly the way Armor of Virtue works cannot be right. The returning effect is supposed to effect the wearer of the armor. Instead, it effects everyone in his square, and they *retain* that effect until discharged, even if the armor is moved to a different commander. Taking advantage of the way it currently works really does feel like cheating. How would you feel about an entire army of thugs/SCs that all had a returning effect on them? Because of an item working inappropriately?

Similarly, Life after Death/Ankh giving you upkeep free mages also feels like an exploit rather than something that works as it was intended. I don't feel nearly as strongly about this one, its just an annoying amount of micro to get a pretty obscene gold advantage.

[vfb]

I'm Oceania in an "anything goes" game, but I'm not blood hunting underwater, because it just seems lame to me. Breaks my suspension of disbelief or whatever.

I think Life ater Death could be fixed if all your zombies lost their magic paths when they came back to life. If you weren't using it, your guys would be dead anyway. Pretenders (and immortals) should just not be affected. Needs an application patch, unfortunately.

[Maerlande]

WaltF4

Pardon my noobishness, what is the bot doing?

I've not heard of any bots in Dominions. But I've seen lot's of other bots in games. The classic was Diablo II where folks built bots to kill the bosses 1000x an hour and grab the treasure. No human could do that. It broke the game.

I suppose there is no real reason a person couldn't make a bot to scan everyone's turn files or hack llamaserver. My point is just that those are real cheats. Not just pushing the game rules.

ASL = Advanced Squad Leader The classic board game from Avalon Hill that spawned Steel Panthers and numerous other hex based wargames. I'm dating myself here but there are some still play it.

[Micah]

I think "exploit" might be a bit too pejorative, and this conversation should probably focus on *undesirable tactics* instead of "exploits."

Stuff like LAD conversion and gem gen production are extremely tedious and add very little to the game in terms of skillful tactical decisions.

Stuff like blocking movement with an army set to retreat is bad (IMO) because it infringes upon your opponent's orders without actually beating their units. It's extremely frustrating and just exploits a weakness in the game engine. Likewise with using remotes to bleed gems, because the gemuse AI is so atrocious. I suppose a good litmus test for this sort of thing would be asking if the decision would make sense without knowing the secondary mechanical effects that can result...IE, would attacking with this army that will be utterly crushed be a good choice? Obviously no. Would casting these ghost riders into an army that will crush them without significant losses be a good choice? Again, if the answer is no then it feels like abuse to just get the AI to burn gems. Both of these tactics are also unable to be countered or outplayed in any sort of reasonable manner (not casting gem spells late game is not an option...)

Saying stuff like these are "exploits" is beside the point...something doesn't have to be an exploit to make the game less fun, and maximizing fun and possibly skillful play should be the goal of house rules and mods.

also @Squirrel -I can't believe you rate the returning effect on the AoV as worse than the ankh, but whatever...an army of returning SC's would be pretty worthless, all it takes is a single scratch and they go home.

[chrispedersen]

ah yes, the Dzherjinsky tractor works.. my favorite scenario..
well except for the weekend ones we used to setup with 26000 pts to a side..

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Micah

also @Squirrel -I can't believe you rate the returning effect on the AoV as worse than the ankh, but whatever...an army of returning SC's would be pretty worthless, all it takes is a single scratch and they go home.

I rate it as less likely to be intended.

I mean, LAD was specifically implemented to animate the dead mages with their paths intact. So there's an argument that said feature was intended. AoV is supposed to cause the wearer to return if 'scratched', not anyone who ever wore it, meaning the implementation is a poor for the stated intention and reasonable intention given its a worn item.

[Maerlande]

Micah

Stuff like blocking movement with an army set to retreat is bad (IMO) because it infringes upon your opponent's orders without actually beating their units. It's extremely frustrating and just exploits a weakness in the game engine. Likewise with using remotes to bleed gems, because the gemuse AI is so atrocious. I suppose a good litmus test for this sort of thing would be asking if the decision would make sense without knowing the secondary mechanical effects that can result...IE, would attacking with this army that will be utterly crushed be a good choice? Obviously no. Would casting these ghost riders into an army that will crush them without significant losses be a good choice? Again, if the answer is no then it feels like abuse to just get the AI to burn gems. Both of these tactics are also unable to be countered or outplayed in any sort of reasonable manner (not casting gem spells late game is not an option...)

I'd rate these as viable real world tactics. Sending a sacrificial unit of infantry to cause the opponent to burn ammunition is perfectly valid. It may be a bit calous but it's not like human wave attacks are new or rare. Wave after wave of guys getting killed will eventually cause the opponent to run low on ammunition. Now, it's not quite the same, but frankly, Dom 3 is missing a whole bunch of movement restricting techniques. Sending fighter bombers to interdict movement is classic. Much like air dropping Ghost Riders. Much the same functionality. It is sad that there isn't a counter. You can't put up CAP.

But if a large dangerous army was moving to attack, a flanking probe is a classic maneuver to force it to turn and engage, providing time to reorganize your main force or collect the remnants. That's the functionality I see provided by the interception capability.

One of the things I really notice missing in Dom3 is zone of control. For a game of land armies, it plays much more like fleets. You can't hold a line with light skirmishers to allow the formation of a counterattack. Those tricks are the closest I've seen. And flank attacks do not cause significant disorganization in the armies. In reality they mess up formations and disturb plans.

But, I hope I was clear. I see nothing wrong with specific games setting specific house rules. Nor do I see anything wrong with modding out the truly annoying and enjoyment reducing problems. I am playing one gem gen game of my 6 games and I can see the problem with that.

I just don't think that you can set up a list of meta rules that can be broadly used. Unless it's through a mod.

Clearly if a game has house rules that I don't like, I have the choice to not play. There doesn't seem to be a shortage of games available at any time.

[Micah]

Yeah, but in real life you don't use up your entire stock of anti-tank weaponry on your opponent's sacrificial infantry, you use machine guns. The Dom AI skips straight to dropping nuclear weapons if they happen to be lying around. (Assuming the gemuse condition is satisfied, which isn't hard.) As it stands it's about 1 part valid tactic to 9 parts abusing the AI, and that's a pretty poor ratio.

Interception is provided by teleportation attacks, which will disrupt movement during the normal move phase, so I'm not sure what parallel you're trying to draw, but I'm not seeing it. Similarly, pulling back a province gives you time to reorganize your forces. I feel like you're digging for functionality that the Dom engine simply doesn't support, like flanking attacks and zone of control...the tricks that are described have nothing to do with them in my mind, but that could just be a difference of opinion.

[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.

[Micah]

You can't ghost rider an army in a fort, and you can't effectively storm a fort in the late game without burning gems. "Not ever attacking" isn't an acceptable solution here.

Supply wagons and the like are able to be defended, it's not a good comparison. Stealth raiding on an opponent's lands IS supported though. Likewise, mages in the back can sometimes be massacred by flying or fast cavalry units.

Again, though, I think force-fitting comparisons to real life guerrilla tactics is disingenuous. If you can't GUARD your supply wagons because of a engine limitation it's a problem when your opponent can "raid" them.