"MoD+Retreat" defeated w/o killing caster

[calmon]

Sorry K for me you're no longer trustworthy.

You bring up a test with an output which happens only in a rare case.
You missed completely to upload the scenario BEFORE the battle so everyone can test it. I'm sure you knew its rare.
I disprove your so called "test" and you still argue round and round.

Well, i'm sure i can do 100 more tests and you still write silly answers with more or less lies in it. You recall me on one person in dom2 who also denied all facts and was immune to arguments.

[Micah]

Hmm, I just ran Calmon's upload 4 times and 3 of the 4 times it went to defender rout, just to add some more data points to the scenario.

Regardless, check out my post about the risk vs reward factor. Even if you have a 50% success rate at killing off the phantasms the MoD caster really isn't out much more than a few mage turns and gems for each attempt if you're unable to kill off the casting mage(s).

Beckoning costs 20 gems, Shimmering fields has crappy range, and murdering winter is 50. Much like some of your proposed counters in the other thread I'm getting a bit suspicious of the claims you're making, K...

[MaxWilson]

K said:

Interesting. I ran it twice and since it worked I posted it.

FYI to Calmon and K both, the easiest way to run a battle multiple times is to insert some random militia or archer unit into it near the beginning of the battle (with Shift+U). That changes the random seed and gives new results without much affecting the battle itself. It's easier than saving the game and copying-and-running the turn twenty times.

-Max

[K]

calmon said:
Sorry K for me you're no longer trustworthy.

You bring up a test with an output which happens only in a rare case.
You missed completely to upload the scenario BEFORE the battle so everyone can test it. I'm sure you knew its rare.
I disprove your so called "test" and you still argue round and round.

Well, i'm sure i can do 100 more tests and you still write silly answers with more or less lies in it. You recall me on one person in dom2 who also denied all facts and was immune to arguments.

Wow. It's another thread that devolves into personal attacks.

I'll explain myself exactly once:

I put up a few test games to show that MoD could be beaten by killing the phantasms. That is proved beyond any doubt, and has caused the buglist to be altered to fit the truth.

I did not set up a fail-proof MoD counter for people to test and play with. I had no intention of doing so, which is why I ran exactly four games using four strategies and I posted three of them (the unposted one wasn't a win on the first try, so I ditched it rather than fiddle with the exact set-up I'd need to win).

I had no intention of dragging in the old argument of "is a BE + Retreat broken?" in this thread. I know that lots of people value it to an insane degree (much higher than I do) and they think it's an unbeatable tactic.

And I don't care anymore.

I've shown that small armies with a few mages can beat it. It doesn't matter if it happens rarely if you use the small army and a few mages in my test games and more often with a larger army and more mages.

It has been proved possible. My goal is accomplished, and fighting with you guys over whether you think BE/MoD + Retreat is broken is not worth my time because it's only a matter of opinion on both sides.

My only question is this: you can't disprove that it is not possible, so what exactly are you doing? At best, you can only prove that I should have used a few more mages.

[JimMorrison]

Personally I'd rather see a powerful late game army, than a small and intentionally crafted MoD strike force.

Take a nation and make a typical army for them. Not a fantastical dream of what you'd hope for on turn 100 if you got all the coolest sites and empowered your pretender to 9/9/9+ to cast all spells. A typical army, that you would have on say turn 40-50, with just one path at 9, and few others at 4-6. A couple end game summons, some other handfuls of whatever nice elite things.

Try not to pick a nation that you specifically think has an edge in this please.

Also, script them as if you expected to face an actual army of some kind. We are in agreement that attempting to defeat a residual spell from a fled caster, requires different tactics than needed in facing an actual combat force? Good, then if you can accept this challenge, please attach the previous turn file so that the setup and scripting can be examined and analyzed by those whom you intend to convince.


So far, all this seems like is you bringing in a video of a lion eating a guy with a rifle, to prove that lions are not endangered because they can defend themselves.

[K]

JimMorrison said:
Personally I'd rather see a powerful late game army, than a small and intentionally crafted MoD strike force.

Take a nation and make a typical army for them. Not a fantastical dream of what you'd hope for on turn 100 if you got all the coolest sites and empowered your pretender to 9/9/9+ to cast all spells. A typical army, that you would have on say turn 40-50, with just one path at 9, and few others at 4-6. A couple end game summons, some other handfuls of whatever nice elite things.

Try not to pick a nation that you specifically think has an edge in this please.

Also, script them as if you expected to face an actual army of some kind. We are in agreement that attempting to defeat a residual spell from a fled caster, requires different tactics than needed in facing an actual combat force? Good, then if you can accept this challenge, please attach the previous turn file so that the setup and scripting can be examined and analyzed by those whom you intend to convince.


So far, all this seems like is you bringing in a video of a lion eating a guy with a rifle, to prove that lions are not endangered because they can defend themselves.

I though that my Abysia game was a pretty good example of this.

The tactics are simple. Use mages. Focus on damaging magic with decent ranges. It's the same tactics I use on enemy armies unless some overriding tactical reason pops up.

I've attacked enemies on turn 40-50 with armies that had 20 mages and hundreds of elite troops. Is that what you want?

I don't think that that'll prove anything.


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P.S Do you know how hard it is to craft a decent late game army that won't kill any single MoD-casting mages on round 1?

[JimMorrison]

Okay, let me refine the challenge.

You have repeatedly claimed that the best way to avoid being affected by this exploit is to kill the MoD caster before they can retreat. So that's what I want to see happen.

Obviously you will send him in the way you would if you were running the other nation seriously, with bodyguards and such, so he's not just an easy target.

Part of my problem with this claim of killing him first, is that you like to reference fliers, but in most cases your fliers are shock troops. I can't imagine a normal scenario where they would be scripted to attack, rather than hold+attack, else they'll fly up and get slaughtered before the lines meet. If they hold, obviously they won't just dart back there and defuse the bomb, will they? That's what I'm getting at here.

Once we've established that the scenario is based around what you're actually expecting the army to normally be facing, then I want to see you actually able to kill the MoD caster before he escapes.

Making sure that he lacks SR, and then using Thunder Strike, doesn't count.

[K]

JimMorrison said:
Part of my problem with this claim of killing him first, is that you like to reference fliers, but in most cases your fliers are shock troops. I can't imagine a normal scenario where they would be scripted to attack, rather than hold+attack, else they'll fly up and get slaughtered before the lines meet. If they hold, obviously they won't just dart back there and defuse the bomb, will they? That's what I'm getting at here.

Yeh, that's how you use fliers. You sacrifice them so that enemy mages end up affecting their own army with missed spells and sometimes you jack up enemy mages. If they are shock troop fliers that can stand a few turns of that, then even better.

[Aezeal]

NONO let's not go there

apperantly K wanted to let us know that MoD + retreat isn't a 100 % win, personally I knew this could theoretically be done (never bothered to try) and I guess some more did but he proved it since his file has shown it. Considering the reactions it seems it was news for a number of pplz. Ok let's thank K for the info he brought some. I'm sure K agrees it's not EASY to beat MoD + retreat so no need for more challenges.

After that the fact wether you think it's abusing a bug remains the same as in about a 100000 threads and posts in the past (personally I think the fact the dev's say it's a bug enough but whatever) and I would propose we don't repeat all those 10000 posts.

The thread has been informational and now it should be left to die.

[Sombre]

It's good that some people learned something from this thread.