Trading commanders, exploit or not?

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by Ink

I really want to know though. I once had a situation where I was almost certain that Pan had those unrest causing sneaking units in a couple of provinces of mine, but despite patrolling with _hundreds_ of soldiers for almost ten turns, I never found a thing.

If they were constantly moving, it would be hard to catch them. You need to patrol the province they are going to. You cannot catch them in the one they are moving from (the one that got unrest increased).

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Exploiting sneak, attack, sneak, attack to avoid almost any retaliation?
Exploiting (potentially) blocking enemy movement by moving a large chaff force into them?
Exploiting moving a smallish force in on the magic phase to get your opponent to burn through gems before the main event in the movement phase?

I agree with the rest of your list, but you consider these exploits? Err huh? Basically you don't like Pangaea that much then, do you? These are the standard tactics for Pangaea (raid with sneaky armies, block armies with maeanads, cast call of the wild before the main attack)?

If these would be considered exploits, I'd like to see someone explain how you can play with Pangaea. Using sneaky forces and maenads and remote spells *is* what Pangaea is about, at least in my opinion. Means Pangaea can recuit Minotaur commanders and Minotaurs trooper only, huh?

I am honestly quite baffled.

[Tollund]

I doubt that Baalz thinks that anything on his list are exploits. He was using sarcasm I believe.

[vfb]

Originally Posted by Tollund

I doubt that Baalz thinks that anything on his list are exploits. He was using sarcasm I believe.

Yeah, quite a few people missed this:

Originally Posted by Baalz

If it doesn't break the game (and in fact everything discussed in this thread are examples of the quirks that make this game) I think it does far more harm than good to try and claim tactics available in the game are invalid.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by vfb

Yeah, quite a few people missed this:

You are correct at least on my part on that: I missed that totally. My jaw dropped when I saw the basic pangaen tactics on the list of exploits, and when my jaw drops my eyes and brain cease to function.

[Sombre]

Trying to abuse the ability to cancel movement with attack+retreat orders seems like an exploit to me to be honest. It's incredibly irritating, the counters are far, far harder than what you need to do it (you only need a commander, maybe some troops) and a lot of the time it's completely unintuitive and feels buggy (like when a single commander and 10 troops with retreat orders attacks your advancing army of 100 guys turn after turn and they get stuck, unable to actually move over the border, for several turns).

I get that it doesn't work every time but that only makes it seem more random and unfair. It also introduces a lot of micro and deluges both players with battle report messages for basically 0 cost.

[Dimaz]

Personally I find the problem of gem burning much more irritating than movement cancel. Makes lategame castle storming much harder.

[Zeldor]

Yeah, and AI can execute whole script against 2-3 Ghost Riders, using all gems [I've seen people lose over 100 gems in one battle, because mages decided to spam living earth/fire].

[Maerlande]

The more I read this thread the more I find myself aggreeing with Baalz. Other than exploiting bugs, I don't think anything that is WAD by the engine is an exploit. So sickle farming may be obnoxious but isn't an exploit. Should it be banned in some games? Sure. Every game can have themes and methods of play.

Burning gems is just good strategy. If someone can afford to put 100 gems into an army you are probably desperately trying to stay alive. Again, it's annoying but that's the risk you take.

A real exploit would be the Admin looking at people's turns. That's clear cheating. Or an admin forcing host to make his opponents stale.

Or using a hack to generate gems or gold. Or running bots to automate the game to enhance the economy.

So far, from what I've seen folks here play like any good munchkins. They min/max the settings to the extreme and I that's what I would expect in a hardcore MP strategy game. This isn't a role playing game, but clearly house rules can be set up to play a RP scenario. However, I would expect good opponents to use every trick in the book. It's how I've always played hard strategy games. Finding that nifty rule that gives an edge is classic. Not exploit.

I clearly remember my first games of ASL and my friend teaching me pulling out hidden mines when I didn't even know they existed in the game. Annoying yes. Exploit? No.

[WaltF4]

Originally Posted by Maerlande

Or running bots to automate the game to enhance the economy.

Pardon my noobishness, what is the bot doing?

Originally Posted by Maerlande

I clearly remember my first games of ASL and my friend teaching me pulling out hidden mines when I didn't even know they existed in the game.

What is ASL and "pulling out hidden mines?"