Battlefield spell + retreating?

[Edi]

K said:
2.1 It it considered a bug by the devs? Yes, it does not work as they intended. The board moderator Gandalf Parker considers it a major bug, which is why it is red-listed in the Bug forum.
2.2 Is it important enough to the devs that they've addressed it in the last four patches? No.

I'll address these two points since they fall directly under stuff I deal with:

2.1 Yes, it is considered a bug. This has been confirmed by both KO and JK. The severity rating of the bug is my estimation of it as the modertaor in charge of managing bug reporting and the shortlist. Not Gandalf's. That obviously does not preclude Gandalf agreeing with me.

2.2 That's a false dilemma fallacy and a red herring. The devs consider it an important bug, but they have not fixed it yet for reasons known only to them. Perhaps it is a difficult bug to fix or perhaps there are other considerations. It is presumptuous of anyone on the forums to make unequivocal statements like that when they do not have access to all the relevant information. Even I do not (though I have access to more than is on the public forum) and I talk to the devs fairly regularly about stuff like this for obvious reasons.

[JimMorrison]

But you see, K's education is failing him right now, and he's not sure how to handle it, Edi, except soldier on.

The forms of rhetoric that he is taught, are meant to bully and impression the 90 IQ members of a jury into believing him. They are never meant to directly address reality, but rather to operate in that grey area between reality and perception.

He's just unwilling to admit that his jedi mind tricks won't work here. Also, he now must maintain that the primary reason the bug has not been fixed, is that our devs do not "consider it important enough", for if he capitulates on that point, his whole argument begins to deflate.


On the other hand, I claim unequivocal victory in this debate. You see, we have direct confirmation that MoD IS in fact a bug. Utilizing bugs for personal gain in considered exploitation - you are using something that is not working properly, to get results beyond what is intended. I think if you polled the Dom3 community on whether or not they support the exploitation of unfixed bugs in public MP games, your answer would be vastly, overwhelmingly, devastatingly -almost- unanimous. I would say it would be 100%, but you can vote however you like on the matter, K, it won't change reality, or anyone's perception of it. <3

[thejeff]

Personally, I suspect if you polled the Dom3 community on whether or not they support the exploitation of unfixed bugs in public MP games, your answer would be vastly, overwhelmingly, devastatingly -almost- unanimous: and the answer would be "Sometimes".

On MoD, you're probably right. On reverse communions, which are also considered a bug, the response would probably be the reverse.

[Edi]

Reverse communions are a bug that turned out to be a feature in the bigger picture. It is not working exactly as it was originally envisioned, but it is not really breaking any game mechanics or causing out of bounds errors, as it were. Plus it's available to absolutely everyone with astral magic.

But MoD, force marching, sneaking out of sieges with non-stealthy units, haven't really seen anyone but K advocating those as acceptable tactics. All three happen to be red or violet bugs.

[Gandalf Parker]

Maybe its just semantics but isnt there a difference between non-acceptable tactics and cheat? I dont have a problem with people saying its rude, or its commonly not allowed. But until Dom3 doesnt allow it, or the rules of that game by the runner or the host, then it doesnt seem like a cheat.

It does bring up an interesting thought though. Rather than every host coming up with a list of "not allowed" it would be easier to bow to Edi's judgement. IF the game-starter or the host were to say right at the beginning "nothing colored Red or Violet on Edi's bug list are allowed to be used in the game". That would create a better source for validation than a generic expectation that everyone reads all of the threads (or lives in IRC).

[Edi]

Gandalf Parker said:
Maybe its just semantics but isnt there a difference between non-acceptable tactics and cheat? I dont have a problem with people saying its rude, or its commonly not allowed. But until Dom3 doesnt allow it, or the rules of that game by the runner or the host, then it doesnt seem like a cheat.

With MoD, we have a statement from the developers to go on that it is a serious bug. With the two movement issues, the game is actually violating its own rules due to incomplete validation of orders. In the force marching bug (first in the BHV section), units with a limited stratmove can move an arbitrary number of provinces, limited only by the stratmove and terrain limitations that affect the commander leading them. In the non-stealthy sneakers bug, units without stealth are actually moving according too rules that require stealth in the move phase, but they behave normally at the end of the move phase and trigger combat if moving to an enemy province.

So these three examples are all, in my opinion, clearcut cases.

Gandalf Parker said:
It does bring up an interesting thought though. Rather than every host coming up with a list of "not allowed" it would be easier to bow to Edi's judgement. IF the game-starter or the host were to say right at the beginning "nothing colored Red or Violet on Edi's bug list are allowed to be used in the game". That would create a better source for validation than a generic expectation that everyone reads all of the threads (or lives in IRC).

I'd not go that far. The above-mentioned three bugs are the only ones I consider outright cheating. The dome spells have a redlisted entry because stacking domes of the same kind is cheesy, but nowhere does it say that a province could not have more than one dome of the same type. It is, in my opinion, implied, but it is never stated directly anywhere, so interpretation of whether or not it's an issue may vary. I consider it an important issue, but not an automatic cheat like the others.

There is an easy answer to the MoD issue as an interim measure: mod the spell to be unresearchable, use that mod and you're good to go.

[Zeldor]

Isn't dome stacking as we know it already fixed?

[K]

JimMorrison said:
But you see, K's education is failing him right now, and he's not sure how to handle it, Edi, except soldier on.

The forms of rhetoric that he is taught, are meant to bully and impression the 90 IQ members of a jury into believing him. They are never meant to directly address reality, but rather to operate in that grey area between reality and perception.

Actually, it's designed to convince judges who are trained in logical argument and have decades of experience.

But, it was unfair of me to hold random people on the internet to that standard. It seems to only enrage people.

My apologies.

JimMorrison said:
He's just unwilling to admit that his jedi mind tricks won't work here. Also, he now must maintain that the primary reason the bug has not been fixed, is that our devs do not "consider it important enough", for if he capitulates on that point, his whole argument begins to deflate.


On the other hand, I claim unequivocal victory in this debate. You see, we have direct confirmation that MoD IS in fact a bug. Utilizing bugs for personal gain in considered exploitation - you are using something that is not working properly, to get results beyond what is intended. I think if you polled the Dom3 community on whether or not they support the exploitation of unfixed bugs in public MP games, your answer would be vastly, overwhelmingly, devastatingly -almost- unanimous. I would say it would be 100%, but you can vote however you like on the matter, K, it won't change reality, or anyone's perception of it. <3

You see, that's a moral judgment with no basis in a logical argument.

The devs have no right to tell people how to play the game. I respect their work so much that I've bought this game twice, but it ends there. At the end of the day, they wouldn't be the first devs to not understand the intricacies of what they have cobbled together. Just because they created something they did not intent doesn't mean that changing it will improve gameplay or enjoyment. The fact remains that the "battlefield and retreat" tactic is a "bug" that only affects new players who don't have the foresight or experince to know that they should build balanced armies.

Considering the number of bugs that still exist in this game, everyone is guilty of benefiting from those bugs. Passing moral judgment on them is illogical.

And that is the crux of our disagreement. I've been making logical arguments and you've been making moral arguments. Logical arguments have winners and losers by determining who has the stronger argument, and moral arguments have two losers (since there is no criteria for strength of argument and which should prevail).

Thank you. This has been very helpful.

[MaxWilson]

K said:
And that is the crux of our disagreement. I've been making logical arguments and you've been making moral arguments. Logical arguments have winners and losers by determining who has the stronger argument, and moral arguments have two losers (since there is no criteria for strength of argument and which should prevail).

Logical arguments have the same criteria for "winning" as moral arguments: can you convince your audience? You're aware that there's no way to prove that a logical proof is correct without an invoking a shared metalogic. In practice nobody reasons about their metalogic, they just declare victory, as both you and Jim have done, or come to an understanding, as great men do.

One of the first interesting experiences I had in this project at Princeton was meeting great men. I had never met very many great men before. But there was an evaluation committee that had to try to help us along, and help us ultimately decide which way we were going to separate the uranium. This committee had men like Compton and Tolman and Smyth and Urey and Rabi and Oppenheimer on it. I would sit in because I understood the theory of how our process of separating isotopes worked, so they'd ask me questions and talk about it. In these discussions, one man would make a point. Then Compton, for example, would explain a different point of view. He would say it should be this way, and he was perfectly right. Another guy would say, well, maybe, but there is this other possibility that we have to consider against it.

So everybody is disagreeing, all around the table. I am surprised and disturbed that Compton doesn't repeat and emphasize his point. Finally, at the end, Tolman, who's the chairman, would say, "Well, having heard all these arguments, I guess it's true that Compton's argument is the best of all, and now we have to go ahead."

It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end, the decision is made as to which idea was the best---summing it all up---without having to say it three times. These were very great men indeed.

http://www.brics.dk/~danvy/lafb.html

-Max

[K]

MaxWilson said:

Logical arguments have the same criteria for "winning" as moral arguments: can you convince your audience? You're aware that there's no way to prove that a logical proof is correct without an invoking a shared metalogic. In practice nobody reasons about their metalogic, they just declare victory, as both you and Jim have done, or come to an understanding, as great men do.

Actually, that's wrong.

Logical arguments are supported by evidence, and thus the weight of the evidence determines who wins. I think you are talking about philosophical logic arguments, which are just pure arguments divorced from the rules of evidence.

Moral arguments merely have persuasive power. They can't be proved nor disproved because they neither need nor accept the use of evidence or other objective criteria.