Battlefield spell + retreating?

[llamabeast]

I think the mod gives something like 9 turns at an increased rate of phantasm production.

I think Xietor's list is a good one, and I will probably add it to the FAQ for the LlamaServer soon. Games on my server will have such exploits banned, unless the game admin says otherwise at the beginning - this saves the admin having to remember every time. I will also add that you cannot script a mage to casts Mists of Deception and retreat, even after 5 turns. Having watched a battle where an army was killed in this way I just think it's so unfair that it should never happen.

I think/hope pretty much everyone except K will be pleased to have these exploits explicitly banned. Sincere apologies K. However you are always welcome to run games on the LlamaServer, and of course I assume that the games you run will un-ban the exploits.

[Tifone]

Xietor said:
K is in law school!

Of course he plays the devil's advocate. All good law students do.

Now, now, I am a Law University student, but when I'm talking about any matter, I don't make "style exercises" trying to convince everybody else of what they don't think simply to prove the strenght of my words ^_^ And I hope K is not doing that to us too or it would be quite disrespectful. But I'm sure he doesn't.

@ llama,

Thanks for clarifying the NAPs to me, and for your authority opinion in our discussion

[JimMorrison]

K said:

How? Since it's not written, there is no way of knowing!

Even worse, there could easily be games where some of the players think it doesn't need to written and they are playing by it while the majority of players are playing as if there was no rule. That's not even counting the number of players who are OK with it, but have made concessions to the minority because they would rather play watered-down Dominions rather than no Dominions at all.

Considering that it takes seconds to write the rules down, I think the fact that 30 out of 37 games on the front page (meaning the most current games) don't have rules like that is pretty devastating evidence.

The community has spoken.

I don't know how this discussion got this far on just conjecture, especially with lawyers running rampant.


MoD in in the bug thread, which you can argue is not maintained by a dev, but it IS checked often by the devs, and it has been there since February. Thus if the devs did not consider it a bug, they would have denoted so on the bug list.

MoD is in fact listed in red in the buglist, this says it is a BAD bug.

Utilizing the effects of a known and acknowledged bug, to gain advantage over an enemy is exploitation of said bug.



It seems to me that first, claiming the otherwise "silent" majority as your own supporters is beyond cheap as a negotiating tactic, but also that the fact this is NOT WAD, then your entire argument of community acceptance is moot - it is a bug, using it is an exploit. Unwritten rules about exploiting bugs exist because most reasonable people acknowledge that it is better to have a sense of harmony and camaraderie than to have the option to have full use of the little flaws in the dev's programming [i]that they consider flaws themselves, but have so far been unable to satisfactorily fix[i] in order to gain the upper hand on their foes.

Perhaps you were not properly congratulated, K, on discovering this bug and making it public. I'm sure when you first used it, you did not know or think of it as a bug, and just felt it was a brilliant use of mechanics. But now it is a known bug, and you just need to let go of the past.

[Tifone]

Oh my lol, now everything makes sense ^_^

Ok, joking
This thread really seems to be close to its very and peaceful end now
That was the kind of ending I hoped for opening the thread: to understand how the community and expecially the most expert players were feeling about this. Accomplished! A mod solves the problem well IMHO and hopefully something will be implemented in the basegame as well. One million thanks to everybody who gave their contribution to the discussion, in one sense or another.
For me, I am satisfied and now call myself out and go seeking new docks to visit

[DonCorazon]

I'd like to see someone post a game file showing them stopping MoD.

I was the victim in capuchin. I had a huge army of Niefel giants and faced a single caster who had cast ritual of returning on himself and held the sword that causes heat from hell. All he did was cast MoD and the heat from the sword damaged him triggering the ritual of returning so he instantly vanished. Then my giants spent 50 turns fighting illusions and autorouted. Whole army decimated with nobody to fight. It sure didn't seem like the way the game was meant to function.

Look, if there is a counter to this fine. Good for you for being such a master that you are prepared to deal with this. Iwas a noob at the time so didn't even know if this was legit. Since then, I have faced all sorts of other endgame tactics like enslave, etc etc. and nothing ever has bothered me - all is fair in love and war, but this move did. Maybe its like porno where you just know it when you see it but this move just feels wrong.

I am not going to argue about it anymore but that is the story.

[Saulot]

JimMorrison said:
MoD in in the bug thread, which you can argue is not maintained by a dev, but it IS checked often by the devs, and it has been there since February. Thus if the devs did not consider it a bug, they would have denoted so on the bug list.

MoD is in fact listed in red in the buglist, this says it is a BAD bug.

Actually, that's not quite correct.

The bug shortlist is not a list of bugs, but a list of 'potential bugs', which is organized to prioritize the receiving of the dev's attention to either fix or declare WAD. Red simply means it requires the devs attention before other less serious matters.

As for it being on the shortlist for so long and not getting any attention from the devs, actually argues the case that it is NOT a bug.

I'll point again to my previous post which seems to have been lost in many quick replies to the thread.

Saulot said:
I'll begin by confessing I've never had this used against me, however I wouldn't think it was a bug simply because of some sort of shock value or perceived unfairness. KO and Johan have made some very conscientious and well thought out decisions to have things works in a particular way. How you can wish for certain things but not others, how prophets come back from the dead with more holy power, how mindless commanders pop, how certain spells use no saves or are unresistable, how immortality works, how vengeance of the dead eventually kills through a game mechanic, etc.

There will always be some parts of the game that don't work exactly as you'd have expected, or wanted, or would have designed if you were making it up. That seems to be part of the nature of the beast when talking about anything with tons of magic.

Personally, I find the fact that there are combo's in this game, that are far greater than the sum of their parts to be a very good thing. These are the things which promote creativity and why strategies are still evolving and being developed as we speak, and why no tome will ever contain the total collection of things you could encounter when playing a game of Dominions.

Until KO specifically speaks up and says this is a bug, I'd wish everyone would stop making that assumption.

[Twan]

Read the other threads on the subject, you'll find some KO posts on the issue.

[Gandalf Parker]

I would also have to make a nit-picky point about such lists.

Lists exist on 4 levels. Each of us listing the things that we feel are "wrong" with the game. A maintained list of such items in the public forums. The list of such items being discussed in the Beta Tester forum (which is not allowed to be posted or discussed in public forums or chats due to the NDA agreement each beta-tester signs). And finally the only real official recognized buglist which would basically be the alpha group (the devs talking between themselves). Please beware of listing things as being officially known and recognized bugs unless there is a post here by Johan or Kristoffer saying so. It is rare that such verification floats down to us and declarations of that type can serve the reverse effect of getting it worked on.

Personally I try to word all of mine as requests until the devs decide to call them bugs.

[K]

I'll let this thread die semi-gracefully, but I'd like to summarize the main points on "battlefield spells + retreat" and MoD:

1.1 Is is a difficult/dangerous tactic to use? Yes.
1.2 Does it have counters that an experienced player can use and would likely be using as a matter of course? Yes.
1.3 Is it especially harmful to thug and SC armies and not others? Yes.
1.4 Does it anger players who fall for it? Yes. Like most effective tactics, it cheeses people off.

2.1 It it considered a bug by the devs? Yes, it does not work as they intended. The board moderator Gandalf Parker considers it a major bug, which is why it is red-listed in the Bug forum.
2.2 Is it important enough to the devs that they've addressed it in the last four patches? No.

3.1 Does the community as a whole believe it should be banned? Probably not, considering that only 7 of the 37 games running on the front page of the Multiplayer forum have any rules regarding it.
3.2 Is it an unwritten rule? There is no way to prove that, so that's an unfounded assumption. Since even the polls that have been done are self-selecting, getting valid data is extremely difficult. Final answer: the data says probably no because there is no supporting data other than conflicting anecdotal evidence.

4.1 Does it fundamentally alter game balance to keep it in? No, though it does take away some of the power of thug and SC armies and forces players to have a more balanced end-game strategy.

5.1 Is K a Devil's Advocate and/or argumentative jerk? Maybe. The jury is still out on both counts.
5.2 Is K a cheater who I can't trust to play with? No. I play by any rules that have been agreed upon at the start of the game. I do get very cheesed when someone who is in the middle of a war with me suddenly says "oh, we have these unwritten rules against the thing you're doing."

[DonCorazon]

Did you include AndeanZorro in your numerical analysis?

Omnirizon said:
Cheats: no using the cheap battlefield spell combos (can't recall them off the top of my head, but I will spell them out if necessary; most people should know what they are and know better any way.)