Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)

[Edratman]

Ich, thank you.

WOW, someone has to be a real turd to do this. They obviously promised to trade forgings of value and then actually sent slave collars. (I forged one, once. Couldn't figure out why such an apparently valueless item was on the list, tried it, and am still wondering.)

I cannot rate this nefarious trick as an exploit. I define an exploit as utilizing some deficiency in the programming that permits something that was totally unintended by the game designers. This slave collar trade is a seperate category.

[thejeff]

No, the slave collar trick has nothing to do with a trade.

You just send them unannounced. Tons of them. Enough to fill his lab and make him throw away anything he forged that turn. Wasting mage time and gems.

The deficiency in programming is twofold, restricted lab space and trades coming before your own forging.

[Kuritza]

Actually, I dont see how copying Bogus' commands may pass for a game quirk. There are some program bugs that become a feature, but then there are bugs. You cannot say that hex-editing a 2h file is a feature, can you?
I could've agreed that having a casting mage retreat after wrathful skies is a clever move too, but there's one notable exception to that rule. Wrathful skies + sacrificial fodder is something I'd call a feature; Wrathful skies + AQ or Seraph is unbalanced and thus its bug, imho.

[triqui]

Tuidjy said:
sallying into a neighborhood province,

I dont understand this i think. What is the problem with sallying into a neighborhood province?. Isnt that exactly what is supposed to do?

[Edi]

It's the "sneaking out from a besieged castle and with non-stealthy troops to boot" bug, found in the shortlist under movement related issues.

[lch]

Edratman said:
WOW, someone has to be a real turd to do this. They obviously promised to trade forgings of value and then actually sent slave collars. (I forged one, once. Couldn't figure out why such an apparently valueless item was on the list, tried it, and am still wondering.)

Dominions has no concept of trading items. You can only send stuff to another party. Given that somebody would have to waste gems and mage time on forging items to send them away, the only possibility I see where this "exploit" would be feasible would be when an extremely important item, for example the Chalice, would get lost in the game and people would be racing to forge it. Somebody might get the idea to fill his opponent's lab with items so that he can't forge it. But then he would either need to have a full lab of junk himself so far, or he would need to draw similarly low quality magic items from his commanders, like const 0 magic weapons, sanguine dowsing rods etc.

Kuritza said:
Wrathful skies + AQ or Seraph is unbalanced and thus its bug, imho.

See, this is exactly why I don't like overzealous hot topics like this. How is Wrathful skies combined with shock immunity unbalanced or a bug? It's quite an obvious combo, and can be achieved with any caster and a ring of tamed lightning.

[Edratman]

thejeff said:
No, the slave collar trick has nothing to do with a trade.

You just send them unannounced. Tons of them. Enough to fill his lab and make him throw away anything he forged that turn. Wasting mage time and gems.

The deficiency in programming is twofold, restricted lab space and trades coming before your own forging.

Now I really get it. I was totally unaware that you could send things to someone else without both parties agreeing to a trade. Now that I think about it, you can send gems and gold as a gift, so items must also be on the list.

[triqui]

Edi said:
It's the "sneaking out from a besieged castle and with non-stealthy troops to boot" bug, found in the shortlist under movement related issues.

Ok. That one i knew. I thought he was talking about something different.

[triqui]

lch said:
See, this is exactly why I don't like overzealous hot topics like this. How is Wrathful skies combined with shock immunity unbalanced or a bug? It's quite an obvious combo, and can be achieved with any caster and a ring of tamed lightning.

I agree with you. Wrath of sky + shock inmunity is not unbalanced, actually it is *the* way to play wrath of sky in my opinion. It's like casting foul vapors when you have an army of poison inmune vine units, or casting heat from hell with Abysia, or casting darkness/rigor mortis with an army of undeads.

Casting the enchant, and retiring, sounds different though. The devs have said, afaik, that the enchant *should* finish when the mage retires or die. So it is exploiting a thing that does not work as intended.

[Velusion]

Baalz said:
Yes, the point about communions really illustrates my point that I think a lot of people don't really understand what I was getting at. We're playing the game as it is, not the game that was "intended" by the devs, whatever that means. Unintended does not mean broken, lots of times some of the most interesting interactions in games were probably unintended, the devs are not a perfect source of divine wisdom, they're just some cool guys who put together a bunch of stuff they thought would be cool and tweaked it until they felt like they had a fun game. Lots of people have commented they like the communion mechanic as it adds to the strategic depth and generally makes the game more fun. This is exactly how I feel about things like copying Bogus' commands and many other tricks that are arguably clever ways to take advantage of quirks in the game, do not unballance things and generally just add to the wonderful texture of this game. Game hosts should absolutely "ban" whatever they think will make a fun game from specific tactics to diplomacy to forging clams to casting Arcane Nexus. It's a pet peeve of mine that in most games people find the idea of using "exploits" abhorrent....yet basically this often boils down to after the fact trying to make up house rules of what is "intended" for the prefect version of the game.

I pretty much agree with everything your saying.

However, on the flip side, one of my pet peeves are players that say that "anything could go" but then don't really mean it.

Like QM:
"If it is in the game it is fair play!" but then goes on to say: "Well... except for that MoD thingy... that is totally an exploit!"

It's totally hypocritical to say that you think the game should be played as is and then give exceptions.

And yes... those aren't exact quotes - but the impression they give is the same.