Trading commanders, exploit or not?

[Baalz]

@Psycho - Sure, drop some guys with eyes of aiming in that cyclops' path, or black hearts for guys now sporting chest wounds. Of course, the gold standard is the slave collar, which seems to have no other purpose in the game...

[vfb]

Eyes and Hearts and Collars won't be picked up by the enemy side.

Trum is right: Lychantropos' Amulet can be picked up by the enemy. But he probably won't care. If your enemy is using a buffing SC, it's going to have the misc slots filled. If it's just a pathless thug, well I'd be overjoyed to have a Bane snag one of those. If it's a mage in the backfield, unless he has flight then he'll probably survive the fight, at which point you can retire him from battle and use him to research/forge.

There's probably a few more items that you can do this with. Dimensional Rod, at least. Nothing that's worthwhile that I know of.

Edit: Doh! You don't have to worry about items during the fight of course, since they are picked up after the battle. You'd need an enemy mage to pick up the Lychantropos' Amulet in a failed assassination or magic battle or the arena in order to force the enemy mage to be wearing it in a fight.

[AdmiralZhao]

Typically, sickles are used in farming. Therefore, Sickle farming seems to be WAD.

[militarist]

Hot discussion
I see games like "no Hinnom/Ashdod". Playing these nations becomes exploit as well.
I think the only real way to manage such "exploits" is through CBM author, or to make another CBM-like mod, is author of CMB is not active anymore, with several authors who can make chages to new vesions.
It is a big list of things that it would be nice to be changed in game balance, and I believe it would be a good idea if community could do it fast. through this mode, by simple voting of authors, for example. I don't think it's a big deal to create a mod which just changes some stats and some prices.

Or, better idea - to do additional mod, complimentary to CBM (though I don't know if it will work - if one mode can change something after it was changed by another mod).

[Trumanator]

problem being that none or nearly none of these "exploits" could be modded out even if it was warranted.

[Squirrelloid]

Ashdod is certainly still a balance problem, although CBM hit them with more nerf bat. Hinnom seems to have been dealt with for the most part.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by vfb

Eyes and Hearts and Collars won't be picked up by the enemy side.

That's why I asked. The only thing that sounds like an exploit on that list cannot be done.

[vfb]

Armor of Virtue has an exploit, but it's not as described:

At the end of round 1 movement, all friendly units in the square the Armor of Virtue started in gets Ritual of Returning. (This also means that if you move in the very first turn instead of buff when wearing Virtue, Ritual of Returning doesn't stick to you.) But you could stick 6 MARKATA in that square on 'Hold','Attackx4'. And they will ALL get Ritual of Returning.

If that exploit doesn't scare the pants off you, you're probably just already not wearing pants.

[Stavis_L]

@Zeldor - this is probably a good deal too late to save this thread, but if the intent is to generate a list of frequently applied house rules in one place for convenience sake, it might have been politically expedient not to use the term "exploit" even if some of them do apply to practices some consider to be so.

SO, here is a list of commonly applied "house rules" and settings in no particular order that someone starting a new game might wish to consider, as a starting point:

Settings
1) Use 'X' mod(s)
2) Use 'Y' map
3) Modified Hall of Fame limit
4) Modified resource/gold/supplies/site frequency/research settings
5) Commander Renaming on
6) Score graphs disabled
7) Victory conditions other than default
8) Turn timing

House Rules
1) Ban diplomacy
2) Random nation assignment
3) Ban commander trading or selling (via mutually agreed upon charm/hellbind/etc. swaps)
4) Ban item/gem/gold/other trading
5) Ban "sickle farming"
6) Ban particular nation(s), (Ashdod, Hinnom, LA Ermor, LA R'yleh commonly)
7) Ban water nations
8) NAPs - disallowed
9) NAPs - all players bound by implied NAP for start X turns
10) Use of Bogus and Co.'s default scripts disallowed.
11) Use of Bogus and Co.'s default scripts only allowed for Bogus and Co. (no copying)
12) No "mass sharing" of Armor of Virtue just to apply Returning
13) No blood magic / blood hunting

I'm sure there are others, but I feel this might be more helpful than continuing to debate whether such-and-such practice is an "exploit" or not.

[Zeldor]

Some things are clearly exploits and there should be a list of things like that. Some tricks can also be spotted by vets and newer players may have no idea what's going on. Many people had nothing against gem gens because they have not faced real clamming.

And it brings another question - should wishing for Armageddon really exist? Or be allowed? It may be a good strat, but messes things so badly... and requires insane amounts of micro when preparing for it.