Dark Knight

[Aezeal]

could I get the basics on archer decoying?

[quantum_mechani]

Very simple, take 1-2 units, put them in a group by themselves, in the very front and center. Put the rest of your stuff slightly behind and to the sides. Enemy archers will target the decoys until the decoys die or go out of range.

[Velusion]

Ironhawk said:
And then you take the concept of archer decoying. The devs clearly tried to remove this tactic from the game by crippling the morale of small squads. But yet the tactic persists and no one really gripes about how it is an exploit of the archer targeting AI. How can you explain the imbalance? Will people start playing games with decoying banned?

I've never thought archer decoying was unintended.

Could you point me to a threat where the devs said archer targeting isn't working correctly?

[Edratman]

quantum_mechani said:
Very simple, take 1-2 units, put them in a group by themselves, in the very front and center. Put the rest of your stuff slightly behind and to the sides. Enemy archers will target the decoys until the decoys die or go out of range.

What a brilliant idea! I can see how it works. Not a cheat by any means, but definately an exploit. I can't believe I have not even seen it mentioned in the 9 months I've been following this forum.

[Ironhawk]

Wow, seriously Velusion? Huh. I know players who have even quit dominions over the archer decoy exploit. I'm surprised to hear that you dont think it is one.

As for a thread about it, I don't have one handy no. It was discussed (along with several other tactics commonly used in MP play) during the beta. And IIRC the "small squads morale rule" was put in to try and address it. Tho I think the most popular option to address it was Fire Closest/Fire Largest. Unfortunately, that wasnt accepted.

[Ironhawk]

Edratman said:
What a brilliant idea! I can see how it works. Not a cheat by any means, but definately an exploit. I can't believe I have not even seen it mentioned in the 9 months I've been following this forum.

Heh. Thats because the tactic is SO COMMON in mp play as to not require mentioning What surprises me is that you havent seen someone use it against you.

[Shovah32]

Edratman said:

What a brilliant idea! I can see how it works. Not a cheat by any means, but definately an exploit. I can't believe I have not even seen it mentioned in the 9 months I've been following this forum.

It probably wasn't mentioned because (atleast for me) it was considered common knowledge - although I could be wrong.

[Xietor]

I do not think using exploits is common in mp games. In my 40 or so mp games, I have had the attack commander exploit used against me 1 time.

Some people on this forum remind me of players in WOW and EQ that exploited bugs to level their characters, then when caught, cried because their characters were deleted. Many of these players argued that they did not consider "whatever" to be an exploit. Those arguments fell on deaf ears.

Just because a bug exists within the programing of a game does not make it "right" to exploit it.

In any event I am glad the matter is resolved.

[quantum_mechani]

As nice as it is to be able to see things in black and white, the world, and even the dominions world, is a messy place. Even assuming the issue is 'resolved' (i.e., all future use of the tactic that has not been explicitly allowed is considered cheating), that doesn't really answer the question of what qualifies as an unacceptable exploit, and moves the line to much fuzzier place.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I thought the archer decoy was common knowledge as well.
It's one reason to break your archers into squads- you shouldn't always fire closest. The targeting of 'fire none' can be handy.

I sometimes put some tough units in the rear, instead of my mages, so attack rear commands don't quite go as planned. I often have to deal with short range spells, so sometimes I even have my mages in the frontline, with a small bodyguard. Not often, but sometimes.