What is abusive ?

[K]

If the game allows it, its not abusive; otherwise the Devs would code it out.

[Tichy]

That confuses intention with execution.

At the very least, exploiting acknowledged but not yet squished bugs must be considered abusive.

At a second level, exploiting things like the Bogus copy command should be considered abusive because it is an undesired side effect to a desired feature that may just be too cumbersome to track down and rewrite. (Unless of course we hear from the devs that charming Bogus is supposed to net you a combat trainer who introduces new secret strategies in addition to his own bad self...)

[thejeff]

It also ignores bugs they haven't been able to track down.

And any house rules for a particular game should be honored, even if the game doesn't/can't enforce them.
I think the default, if informal, house rule for games on this forum includes "don't exploit bugs on the bug list"

There are also metagame abuse issues that can't be addressed by the mechanics. Host setting up a map to favor himself. Secret pre-game deals. Playing 2 position in a game. etc, etc.

[Torin]

amen

[Baalz]

Well, any discussion of abusive behavior must consider not just the very nebulous definition of "unintended" (unintended by who? The devs aren't an infalable authority, they're just some smart guys who threw together a bunch of stuff they thought would be cool. House rules, mods, etc. come up because ultimately it's the players in the game who should decide what type of game they want to play) but also its impact on the game. For example I consider grabbing the Bogus scripts to be no different than, say, capturing a unique artifact from a powerful indie commander. Its hard to do, requires luck, and is not generally overpowering. It's not exactly a secret at this point, but in theory this is something you need to be a bit clever to leverage and just adds one more interesting facet to the game. As I've posted elsewhere, the whole point of strategy is to use cleverness to make sure you're *not* in a fair fight so it's a bit ridiculous to complain that somebody used a tactic that wasn't fair. That being said, you have to also acknowledge that we're all just playing this game for fun so doing stuff that just breaks the game or is only effective because it annoys your opponent to death is a dickish thing to do regardless of what the explicitly stated house rules are.

[Tichy]

I was objecting to the claim in an earlier post, "It's there, therefore the dev's intended it." That seems transparently false, given the obvious possibilities of difficult to trace bugs and unexpected behaviors.

This leaves open the grey areas, instead of stamping them out, which is what I think you're saying as well.

[K]

The Devs have patched this game several times. If they considered anything game-breaking or abusive, they can easy just take stuff out and not even worry about fixing it.

Heck, if you don't like Bogus's commands, you can just make a mod and change his unit so he doesn't have them. I could mod that in and I don't even program well.

There are a number of things that affect a game materially, but are left to randomness, and are not fair by any definition:

-finding a site that makes great mages like enchantresses or Wizards

-getting a starting province with very weak neighbors

-getting a starting province with lots of neighbors when you a resource hungry nation, or having a high resource province next to your capital.

-having the chance to attack an indie with a powerful non-craftable artifact like the Hammer of Cyclops

-getting amazons at all

-getting a crazy good event(3000 gold, or things like the time I got a Dwarven Hammer and a Ring of Sorcery as events).

-finding a bloodcost reduction site as a blood nation, or a conjuration site as a conjuration nation(like Bandar Log or Marignon).


Heck, I once seduced an indie commander Illusionist with Air 6 on turn 7. AIR 6!!!! For Free!!!

Considering how easy it is to mod things out, people have no right to talk about unfairness. If you don't like, something, take it out and see how many people want to play with you. For example, in Perpetuality the consensus was that Arcane Nexus would be too powerful in a 60 person game. It was modded out and we played our game.

The great problem with this discussion is that people often say in the middle of a war "and that tactic you used was abusive, so you have to stop or you are a cheater", and that often materially affects the war.

How about some of the other really mean stuff?

-Putting Lycanthropes Amulets and Slave Collars on junk commanders just so they get killed and get picked up by mage commanders.

-Destroying your own castles and pillaging own provinces rather than let someone take it.

-Pretending to be an ally and then attacking.

-Wishing away key artifacts or unique commanders before key battles.

-Casting spells that destroy the game (Burden of Time, Wishes for "Armageddon", Utterdark, Neiflewinter, Astral Corrpution)


At the end of the day, you just have to play the game as written. I have seen too many games end in acrimony and bad feelings just because someone decided that a particular tactic was unfair. Personally, I play for fun, and policing my peers is not fun.

[Lord_Bob]

-Putting Lycanthropes Amulets and Slave Collars on junk commanders just so they get killed and get picked up by mage commanders.

-Destroying your own castles and pillaging own provinces rather than let someone take it.

Are you actually comparing having a 450 gold, 1000 year old mage in a fantasy world strap a slave collar on his neck because "it seemed like a good idea at the time" with a military tactic that has been used repeatedly throughout earth's history?

Cursed items, good and bad, should have a 100% no pick up rate.