What is abusive ?

[KissBlade]

I use every dirty trick in the book above and beyond. =P

You think regular archer decoying is bad .. whoo boy, don't play a game with me if I have two hours to script =).

[jaif]

I have to admit, this subject has made me very hesitant to wade into the multi-player arena here.

I'm one of those who feels that as long as it's in the game, and not proscribed ahead of time, then go for it. Of course I know there are exceptions (you find a bug in the code mid-stream), but as a rule I just play and take my lumps.

But when I read the multiplayer forum, I see people lobbing accusations of "cheating" for very innocuous things - someone breaks a non-agression pact, or some tricky tactic.
This makes me very nervous about joining games. I'm quite happy to get smashed under by the pros, but I don't want to have to keep abreast of everyone's take on game etiquette.

-jeff

P.S. I think many people here would do well to play the board game "diplomacy" a few times. It builds character. :-)

[Baalz]

Heh, haven't been online long? You can't do much online without running into somebody calling you a dirty name, certainly don't let that stop you from trying MP. Play a fun game, be a good sport (by your own definition), and don't worry about it if somebody else gets aggravated at you. So long as you use a thimbleful of common sense and adhere to anything explicitly stated most people in this community are pretty tolerant, for the few that are loudly not there's a nice "ignore user" function of this forum.

[Edratman]

I agree with Jaif that there is a lot of bickering in this forum about MP tactics. I have never played MP in this game or any other and this is the first forum that I have participated in for any substantial period of time. (As an aside, I'm 56 and have been playing computer games since a week after electricity was invented.)

So I have a general question. Is this type of disagreement common in the forums of MP games?

I do like these threads because I do get a lot of cool tactics from them. Many, if not all of them, would never occur to me. So keep them up and keep the disputes cordial.

[Agrajag]

I have a question regarding the bogus commands trick/exploit/whatever.
If someone uses it against you, can you charm their troops that have the commands pasted to them and steal their commands for yourself?

[Baalz]

Agrajag said:
I have a question regarding the bogus commands trick/exploit/whatever.
If someone uses it against you, can you charm their troops that have the commands pasted to them and steal their commands for yourself?

Yes

[Potatoman]

Everyone is willing to tolerate the abuse of game mechanic quirks to some degree (the extent of which, I think, depends mostly on whether you are the absuer or are being abused), but an "anything goes" approach is unsatisfactory to me for a couple of reasons, which I will try to explain.

1. Not everything does go. By asserting that everything is permissible you sidestep having to make difficult and arbitrary judgements on what is or is not fair, but those judgements still take place. There are levels to which nobody (I hope) would stoop in order to win a dominions game... Running a political style smear campaign to besmirch another player's name or framing them for cheating, for example. Recognizing no rules does not mean that they do not exist- it just opens up a huge potential for misunderstanding when two people disagree on the informal rules while playing. Formal rules are better because they leave far less room for ugly personal disputes and misunderstandings in-game.

2. Exploiting game mechanics is only worthwhile if the gain is significant. If the gain is significant, and if the environment is competitive, then you cannot compete without exploiting the game mechanics. As more and more exploits are discovered, they become more central to the game and your experience playing the game will change. Some exploits are easy and take only moments. I consider these benign. Unfortunately some, as Kissblade boasts, can take hours of micromanagement each turn to perfect. Personally, I'd rather play Dominions than try to work out the optimal feng shui for my archer decoys for two hours every turn, but sometimes that's the reality of it. And it's another reason why I think any hypothetical fairness rules shouldn't be "anything goes". Some exploits are an education in tedium to do well.

3. Exploiting game mechanics reduce strategy. When exploiting the mechanics becomes as important as the other aspects of skill in a game, the other aspects become proportionately less important. You may have chosen foolish scales or made a couple of strategic blunders, but if you've got the perfect archer decoy formations then the extra volleys your un-targeted main archer group might just let you win anyway. And if so, then congratulations! Your micromanagement and extra time investment in exploiting the game mechanics just let you overcome superior strategy! This is, in many ways, the worst problem with game loopholes- playing becomes as much about exploits as anything else, and suddenly you're not playing the same game anymore.

These are just my rambling thoughts on this issue, which I cannot help but take very seriously. A slew of similar exploits split and drove a major part of the fan-base away from one of my other favorite games, Kohan:Ahriman's Gift, in the not-too-distant past. I'd hate to see Dominions travel that same dark road and share that game's same grim fate.

[Lord_Bob]

clam hoarding

Now, I don't see that as "uber", it does become insane around turn 70+, but really, by turn 70 vast amounts of unreal things are in play. Are clams uber compared with Tartinians for example? If you have Alt-9 for the wish, what are the chances you have Conj-9 for the Tartinians?

[Lord_Bob]

Here is where people really just aren't thinking. Yes, KissBlade is undoubtly doing some sort of wierd AI manipulation, but, and this is a big but, it doesn't Wreck The Game. Tolerance for exploits that Wreck The Game are far worse. For example, people tolerate the stupid "Slave Collar" trick only because most people have the decency to not go crazy with it. 5 blood and B1 is not hard to come by. You can, if you want, raise ARMIES of scouts with these collars. 20-30 scouts, easy. What is that, 100 blood, 400 gold, and 20 mage turns? That's easy. And then they dump it on your main army and wipe out half your mages. Heh, heh. Extremely abused, it would wreck the game. The only reason it hasn't is people understand how ridiciliously cheap it is, so they limit their use of it.

Or the "Vengance of the Dead" retreat bug, that allows any idiot who wants to kill an early SC to do so. Fortunately, not all races can cast it, so you don't have sleeping, defensive pretenders rendered useless. Cause that's what it does.

[vfb]

"Vengeance of the Dead" hurts SC pretenders, not defensive ones. I think it's okay to cast it once at an SC pretender, but if he survives it's unfair to recast it. I think the doubling of the kill count for killing units you already killed once doesn't make sense.