[SCORE HS] Iliac Bay Score Hotseat - ENDED

[Jadli]

Well, responding to joe's question from discord here, whether I consider this an exploit.

Exploits in general are not listed in the OP, except the newest hotseats, which however doesnt mean they are allowed. It always depends on admin, I personally am more strict on exploits ...

Anyway, few turns ago it was allowed to move an allied bribed sharnhelm general if Im not mistaken (and maybe allowed due to not having 4 units in fort anyway from a part? Cant really remember details and it wasnt discussed on the thread it seems). However, I think this is another level of this issue, as those allied bribed units (that were put next to the fort on Sharn's turn, so they would be bribed more easily) were not just used to make a hole in fort wall, but to win a battle, Ventos would otherwise not win (correct me if Im wrong). And this is not just a battle, but probably might be the one that decides who wins this round it seems.

EDIT
So yea, I consider this an exploit...

[Ventos Mustel]

Again, as I said in the discord: why would an otherwise legal move become illegal just because of diplomacy status?

The bribe here comes at great cost, and is really just a workaround for the fact that Melon comes before me in turn order. Were things the other way around I could have just stopped at bribing your fort and Melon could use those troops to attack normally.

The definition of an exploit is not 'a move you didn't see coming', regardless of how important it ends up being to the result of the game An exploit is using mechanics that are broken either in the sense of having a bug, or leading to unbalanced gameplay. This is neither of those things.

Until such time as a rule is put into place that 'hostile' actions aren't allowed against an ally, I can't see what grounds there would be to ban this.

[joerock22]

I haven't read whatever was said about this on Discord yet, but I read the posts here and thought about it myself quite a bit. Thank you both for laying out your positions concisely and politely.

So every hotseat has a rule against bug/exploit abuse, and most have a provision that the decision on what is a bug/exploit rests with the admin. I tend to take a relatively conservative view of this definition. In other words, in order for something to fall under this broad view of a bug/exploit, it must be A) widely known, and B) commonly acknowledged as a bug/exploit. The naval fort bug is a perfect example.

There is another category of moves, which are moves that happen more rarely and may or may not be considered a bug/exploit, depending on who you ask. If these moves are going to be banned, they should be specifically added to the rules. An example of this would be luring an army out of ambush to bring it in range of more of your forces.

I just don't see Sharnhelm/Wayrest's move here (bribing an ally's forces to use them yourself) as falling under the first category. I don't think it happens very often, and it certainly isn't widely acknowledged as an exploit. Reasonable people can debate about it, like reasonable people debate about luring armies out of ambush. By contrast, nobody thinks that bypassing a fort's ZoC by stepping off a ship should be legal. So in my opinion, this move fits into the category of rare moves which should be specifically banned, not banned because of the general bug/exploit rule.

As always, if a majority of players want to add it, we can do so for next turn. I'm guess we don't have a majority though, since there are only four players left.

I will go fix my scores for adding in 1000 men killed points right now, so please take another look at those. Otherwise, we play on.

[joerock22]

This hotseat has been ended based on the discussion in Discord. Ventos Mustel has been declared the winner of the round, and therefore of the hotseat. Congratulations to him. It was a fun hotseat, while it lasted, and quite challenging (but rewarding) to admin.

[Ventos Mustel]

Yeah it was cool to have a different format than usual. GG everyone