End Game Slaughter Moves

[Foodstamp]

Tuidjy said:
Foodstamp, how do you counter the Mists of Deception combo? Please share your
incredible insight with us! Being less knowledgable that you obviously are,
I do not know how to take a castle guarded by mages that cast Mists of
Deception, Quagmire, Storm, a mix of damage spells, and ritual of returning.
And are back next turn, of course.

And if you say, oh, just have a bunch of storm demons/air elementals, well no,
it is not necessarily enough. How many nations can really have that
available every time they storm a castle the late game, anyway?

Now, I am not even asking about killing every single teleporting attacker before
they unleash the combo on an army in the field. I know that a great player like
you will never have an army without storm demons whose orders are copied from
Bogusm, or walk an army through a province that has no nested domes over it.

> By the way, it would seem that unlike you said Tuidjy, the one you accused
> really didn't know.

Only if one believes he does not read the threads he posts to. I'm no electric monk.

Do I really deserve so much sarcasm from you? So many crybabies on these boards lately. It should not be my responsibility to reiterate some of the counters that were given just because I gave my perceived definition of an exploit.

Your tears sustain me.

[K]

I know that I'm in the minority, but I don't think anything should be banned.

Everyone can use these tactics, so there is nothing inherently unfair about them.

Considering that all of these tactics have a counter, I don't even know why people whine so badly. For example, if the Neiflehiem army in the first post had exercised a little foresight, they could have killed that pretender with some flying units on attack large monster, or cast spells like Petrify, Claws of Cocytus, multiple +penetration Paralyzes, or any number of other ways. Heck, a commander with a bow or someone with a damaging spell could have forced the guy's Returing to activate before he even got one spell off.

At the end of the day, I'm angrier that sometimes someone finds Echantresses or Wizards, or that a blood nation finds the Summoning Circle, and I don't find an equivalent despite doing site searches for all paths on my territory.

PS.

"how do you counter the Mists of Deception combo? Please share your incredible insight with us! Being less knowledgeable that you obviously are, I do not know how to take a castle guarded by mages that cast Mists of Deception, Quagmire, Storm, a mix of damage spells, and ritual of returning. And are back next turn, of course"

Thats actually pretty easy. You cast assassin spells on the home province and kill those mages.

This is the late game obviously, so if you expect force of arms and sheer numbers of units to win the day then you are sadly mistaken.

[Tuidjy]

> Thats actually pretty easy. You cast assassin spells on the home province and kill those mages.

Wow. Assassin spells on the home province. Thank you for your insight! Hey,
but are you saying that someone could actually teleport on top of my capital.
Woah! I would have never thought of that. And those assassin spells! Man,
they can really clear a lab, can't they? Well, I guess this game is just won by
casting assassin spells. Given that obviously no one could ever protect against
them, even in one specific, valuable province in the late game.

Or maybe I will just cast 3 air domes for 60 gems, and have a 99.2% chance
that my capital will laugh at assassination spells.

[Jazzepi]

Tuidjy said:
> Thats actually pretty easy. You cast assassin spells on the home province and kill those mages.

Wow. Assassin spells on the home province. Thank you for your insight! Hey,
but are you saying that someone could actually teleport on top of my capital.
Woah! I would have never thought of that. And those assassin spells! Man,
they can really clear a lab, can't they? Well, I guess this game is just won by
casting assassin spells. Given that obviously no one could ever protect against
them, even in one specific, valuable province in the late game.

Or maybe I will just cast 3 air domes for 60 gems, and have a 99.2% chance
that my capital will laugh at assassination spells.

I was under the impression that domes of the same type do not stack.

I do agree with Tuidjy that Mist + whatever is a clear exploit. Personally I think that BE spells not ending with mages retreating/returning is a general exploit. Obviously they end when the mage dies, so the fact that they don't end when they retreat/return is an oversight. I think it even mentions in a few of the BE spells that it's suppose to last until the mage leaves the battlefield.

That said, since it's impossible to enforce the idea of "no mage retreating" but it's simple enough to enforce "no mist + BE + retreating". And at least if the mage retreats and casts something like solar brilliance, there's still something to kill.

I also think this idea of "oh, it has these extreme counters so it must be balanced" is ridiculous. Considering how easy it is to setup mists of deception + returning + any BE AoE spell there is a real asymmetry in the risk involved verus the potential gain. If you want to cast lots of stupid spells in a given battle, you generally need lots of chaff, maybe a communion, lots of mages to back up the communion / cast the spells, and probably some thugs either kited out to kill other thugs, or just hold the front lines. In any case, you have to commit resources and risk something. With the MoD + BE exploit you risk virtually nothing to kill an entire other army. In every other situation you have to risk /something/ to get into a fight, but when you're exploiting MoD all you're really doing is exposing your pretender, or a pair of mages to a possible single turn of spell casting.

Hell, if you're on defense like Tuidjy described, there is even less risk. Lastly, all of these counters take a lot more effort to setup and maintain then MoD + BE takes to setup and maintain, again contributing to the exploited asymmetry.

Jazzepi

[Kristoffer O]

Tuidjy, even if your views on the matter are quite correct, it might be hard to counter an mist of deception abuse, you could try to be a bit more civil.

There is a problem with the spell, but you should not attack players who try to find in game solutions to the problem. Attack me or JK instead.

[zlefin]

*teleports into kristoffer's house.
*casts mists of deception
*casts wrathful skies
*retreats

i've already attacked him, noone else has to.

[Kristoffer O]

Damn, I've been slain and imprisoned in Tartarus! Fortunately I know a helpful necromancer in Lund.

[thejeff]

Right, like Kristoffer's house doesn't have all the Domes up.

Where do think they test all these spells?

[Tuidjy]

KO: Attack me or JK instead.

Sure! As soon as I make all my programs bug free, I will come at you full of
righteous wrath... But it is so much easier not to cheat, or not to talk
nonsense. So it is simpler to pick on those who do.

There is NO counter to a lab full of collars except to abuse someone else.
There is NO effective counter to MoD/SoS + BE.

And it is not your fault, because bugs happen. There have been much worse
bugs in the years I've played Dominions... But people who insist that MoD
is not worse than hiding raiders disgust me. I have never been hurt by it.
The one time someone did it to me, he wrathed three Jarls with Air Picks.
Everyone else was set on retreat. I did not expect Mists, but I expected
Wrath. Had it been Heat from Hell, I would have been helpless.

But my uncle quit a game because of an _unintended_, similar abuse, then asked
the question loud and clear in his other games. Low and behold: one of the
players in one of these games claims he did not know, and just abused another
player. Yes, I enjoy sarcasm, and yes, I may be an [censored]. But I think that
the two abuses above should be absolutely forbidden, just as hacking the .2h
should be.

-----------

To K, I apologize. Maybe he really thought that assassination spells targeting
the capital work. I have to admit, I did so at some point myself. Hi, Xietor!

[Edi]

Being fire immune, I might as well post an opinion here.

I'm the one who has compiled the monster known as the bug shortlist and I have a fairly good idea of how many of these things behave and also what their impact on a game is.

In my opinion, there are three bugs that qualify as exploits that should be banned. Retaliation against a player using them could be considered, depending on how major it is.

The following bugs are, in my personal opinion, such exploits:

• SPELL Mists of Deception Keeps on producing phantasmal units even when all enemies are dead, causing combat to go on forever and autokilling all attacking units left on the battlefield
• SPELL Twiceborn: Grants immortality to demons with death magic. A demon with twiceborn in effect will respawn in capital like an immortal if it dies in friendly dominion.
• BHV Army Movement: Move & Patrol When a commander is selected to move into a province with a castle and the move order changed to move and patrol, adding units to his squads will not change the move order even if the units do not have sufficient map move. Thus units with strategic move of 0 can be moved from province to province and units with strategic move of 1 can be made to move farther than they should.

Out of these, the last one is situation dependent and the advantage gained may be major or minor as determined by other factors. It can also only be used if the commander and his fast troops are not slowed down by terrain, though I have no idea if the slow troops' lack of survival would ever be factored in wrt mountains or forests. It is non-trivial, but not as over the top as MoD.

The Twiceborn on demons problem is more of a hassle, but is mainly applicable to Lanka, which is generally tough enough to not even need it. Yomi can also exploit it, but given the Oni spirit forms, it may or may not work. I sure as hell would be pissed off if some thug commander just kept coming back after being killed several times even when he shouldn't have.

The Mists of Deception bug is such that if I were to run games, any player caught using the MoD/Damage BF Ench combo exploit in them would get turned instantly to AI, no mercy, no appeal and no exceptions.

Everything else in the buglist is a merely an annoyance compared to these three and can easily be worked around.