Trading commanders, exploit or not?

[Benjamin]

What it is is that if you have a commander that is doing as written, sneak one turn, attack next, then sneak, then attack again, etc, they are very very hard to catch. The only thing that will catch a sneaking commander is mind hunt, or happening to patrol in the province he is GOING to. I'm a little shaky on that last point, but it's as I understand it.

So teleporting thugs won't catch him, neither will seeking arrows, normal armies have no chance, I don't think remote assassination spells work either. It can be a pain.

[Debaser8]

Couldn't you catch them if you were able to predict which province they had snuck to and were about to attack? Well you would have to move the troops in after they snuck to the province, but before they attacked.

[Tollund]

I doubt that Baalz thinks that anything on his list are exploits. He was using sarcasm I believe.

[vfb]

Originally Posted by Tollund

I doubt that Baalz thinks that anything on his list are exploits. He was using sarcasm I believe.

Yeah, quite a few people missed this:

Originally Posted by Baalz

If it doesn't break the game (and in fact everything discussed in this thread are examples of the quirks that make this game) I think it does far more harm than good to try and claim tactics available in the game are invalid.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by vfb

Yeah, quite a few people missed this:

You are correct at least on my part on that: I missed that totally. My jaw dropped when I saw the basic pangaen tactics on the list of exploits, and when my jaw drops my eyes and brain cease to function.

[Sombre]

Trying to abuse the ability to cancel movement with attack+retreat orders seems like an exploit to me to be honest. It's incredibly irritating, the counters are far, far harder than what you need to do it (you only need a commander, maybe some troops) and a lot of the time it's completely unintuitive and feels buggy (like when a single commander and 10 troops with retreat orders attacks your advancing army of 100 guys turn after turn and they get stuck, unable to actually move over the border, for several turns).

I get that it doesn't work every time but that only makes it seem more random and unfair. It also introduces a lot of micro and deluges both players with battle report messages for basically 0 cost.

[Dimaz]

Personally I find the problem of gem burning much more irritating than movement cancel. Makes lategame castle storming much harder.

[Zeldor]

Yeah, and AI can execute whole script against 2-3 Ghost Riders, using all gems [I've seen people lose over 100 gems in one battle, because mages decided to spam living earth/fire].

[Maerlande]

The more I read this thread the more I find myself aggreeing with Baalz. Other than exploiting bugs, I don't think anything that is WAD by the engine is an exploit. So sickle farming may be obnoxious but isn't an exploit. Should it be banned in some games? Sure. Every game can have themes and methods of play.

Burning gems is just good strategy. If someone can afford to put 100 gems into an army you are probably desperately trying to stay alive. Again, it's annoying but that's the risk you take.

A real exploit would be the Admin looking at people's turns. That's clear cheating. Or an admin forcing host to make his opponents stale.

Or using a hack to generate gems or gold. Or running bots to automate the game to enhance the economy.

So far, from what I've seen folks here play like any good munchkins. They min/max the settings to the extreme and I that's what I would expect in a hardcore MP strategy game. This isn't a role playing game, but clearly house rules can be set up to play a RP scenario. However, I would expect good opponents to use every trick in the book. It's how I've always played hard strategy games. Finding that nifty rule that gives an edge is classic. Not exploit.

I clearly remember my first games of ASL and my friend teaching me pulling out hidden mines when I didn't even know they existed in the game. Annoying yes. Exploit? No.

[WaltF4]

Originally Posted by Maerlande

Or running bots to automate the game to enhance the economy.

Pardon my noobishness, what is the bot doing?

Originally Posted by Maerlande

I clearly remember my first games of ASL and my friend teaching me pulling out hidden mines when I didn't even know they existed in the game.

What is ASL and "pulling out hidden mines?"