Balance and Cheating

[Zapmeister]

Has there been any announcement about features of Dom3 that would affect any of these hotly-debated issues?

1) Watchtower spamming (or "Norfleeting")
2) Clam hoarding
3) Trusting the client program to validate orders

[Daynarr]

"3) Trusting the client program to validate orders"

Not sure what you mean. IIRC he was HOST when he was caught cheating. Don't think clients can do it.

[Gandalf Parker]

The devs were involved in those discussions so Im guessing that Johan took notes at the time. An announcement at this point would amount to little more than "something was done" which would generate a bunch of "what was done" posts.

But thanks for the reminder. I think this is probably a good time for people to post short-worded reminder lists that the devs (and I guess the beta-testers) can glance at then go back to what they are doing

I am getting SOOOoooooo eager for this release

[Graeme Dice]

Daynarr said:
"3) Trusting the client program to validate orders"

Not sure what you mean. IIRC he was HOST when he was caught cheating. Don't think clients can do it.

No, he wasn't the host, and was just running the client. It was quite trivial to give yourselves extra resources before the anti-cheating code was introduced. I haven't heard anything about how difficult it is now.

[Ironhawk]

Zapmeister said:
2) Clam hoarding

This was never a gameplay flaw, just a balance issue. QM resolved it by upping the path/cost for hoard items in CB.

[NTJedi]

Zapmeister said:
Has there been any announcement about features of Dom3 that would affect any of these hotly-debated issues?

1) Watchtower spamming (or "Norfleeting")

I'm not sure if anything has been done in DOM_3. I've recommended adding siege units as one way to address this issue. Siege units may or may not be in DOM_3... and could always be added via a MOD later. I've also recommended in the wishlist thread that some specific terrain should prevent castle building such as 'swamp' and 'mountain peaks'(new). I recall reading a suggestion from someone else for a strong water spell to also destroy fortifications.

One of the best suggestions I can recommend is that each player has a limit for how many fortifications they can build depending on the provinces. Example 1 castle type can be built or casted via spell for every 5 provinces on the map... this will result in players building more strategically preventing mass castling. Ideally this should be an adjustable variable before the start of each game.

[Wick]

If provinces will be richer then the castle admin value will be more useful which is likely to increase average cost of castles used which should reduce castle spamming.

[Nerfix]

Zapmeister said:
Has there been any announcement about features of Dom3 that would affect any of these hotly-debated issues?

1) Watchtower spamming (or "Norfleeting")
2) Clam hoarding
3) Trusting the client program to validate orders

1)I don't know...what were the advantages of i? Getting to churn out tons of mages?
2) Clams are Water/Nature now, I think
3) Hmm, no idea.

[Twan]

I think the best answer to castle spaming is to make a default fortress really worse than everything else, as well as slow to build (I suggest as the default castle to add the palace... a fortress with a cost of 400, needing 5 turns to be built -lots of artwork needed-, defence 25, food 100, admin 10 but takes 30 on surrounding provinces -courtiers living in a palace are corrupted persons-). The watchtower should have a cost of 40 or even 60 as it's the easiest to build and cheapest fortress, so castle spaming may be still a strategy, but with an initial cost.

Another good option is to delete Caelum.

[Oversway]

Personally I don't find castle spamming that big of a deal. I hope that castles will be moddable so that people who do care can eliminate/reduce it.