Simple Sacking Exploit Solutions

[cybvep]

Apparently repeatedly sacking the same city over and over again is a good way of earning XP for lords. After the first battle, garrisons are crap (no time for replenishment), so you can just easily auto-resolve the battles and level up your lords. Anyway, IMO there are some simple solutions to this exploit. The game already recognizes when the place was sacked and applies the "recently sacked" penalty to money earned from sacking. This works very well and makes infinite sacking a waste of time. The player is encouraged to wait some time before sacking the same place again, which is exactly what should be happening. This can easily be extended to XP. Make it so that a place which was "recently sacked" gives no XP at all, no followers, nothing. It seems like an oversight that it doesn't work like that ATM. The other simple alternative is to prevent the ability to sack the city when it has the "recently sacked" modifier. Both can work.

I don't know whether it's moddable or not, but IMO the CA should consider implementing one of these simple solutions in the next patch.

[Gentlest Giant]

Is this a problem to begin with?
I think that the loss of campaign momentum alone makes this a suboptimal strategy. Better to just capture and get on with the conquest. Sacking in general is a pretty crappy strategic option.
I get that there will be fringe cases where you can't expand for various reasons, are not immediately threatened and thus has time to waste with a lord. Go ahead then, sack on.

Edit: That said, your suggestions all make sense. I just don't feel any urgency to nerf a bad strategy.

[cybvep]

Oh, it's not the biggest game issue at all. Just a random thought about fixing the exploit.

[dulany67]

Well, it is a single player game... just don't do it?

[Gentlest Giant]

Originally posted by dulany67:

Well, it is a single player game... just don't do it?

I don't like this line of argumentation at all. It's essentially saying game design with a balance perspective does not matter one bit.
If a game has a dominant strategy that I find very unenjoyable to use for any reason, I will use that to judge the game. Since players gravitate towards optimal strategies, the quality of them matters a whole lot for the experience as a whole.

Now, I don't think this sacking thing is neither optimal nor unenjoyable, but if somebody disagree on both accounts that would be a very good reason for them to propose a change.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Gentle Giant:

Originally posted by dulany67:

Well, it is a single player game... just don't do it?

I don't like this line of argumentation at all. It's essentially saying game design with a balance perspective does not matter one bit.
If a game has a dominant strategy that I find very unenjoyable to use for any reason, I will use that to judge the game. Since players gravitate towards optimal strategies, the quality of them matters a whole lot for the experience as a whole.

Now, I don't think this sacking thing is neither optimal nor unenjoyable, but if somebody disagree on both accounts that would be a very good reason for them to propose a change.

Literally no one would find this to be "fun." It's basically a cheat. There are much easier ways to level your lords using mods if that's the kind of thing the player goes for.

Making the suggested changes is not a bad thing, but is it worth the dev time that could be spent on something else? I don't know, maybe. But fixing an exploit really changes nothing when the fix can be made moot by pressing the subscribe key.

[cybvep]

If somebody makes a mod which fixes this, then I will gladly install it. However, this is still no reason why it shouldn't be included in Vanilla.

Cheat mods have nothing to do with this. They are not part of the base game and aren't relevant to this discussion.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by cybvep:

If somebody makes a mod which fixes this, then I will gladly install it. However, this is still no reason why it shouldn't be included in Vanilla.

Cheat mods have nothing to do with this. They are not part of the base game and aren't relevant to this discussion.

As Gentle Giant points out the strategy is sub optimal. My point is that if the player is inclined to cheat, the subscribe button is a much better way to do so.

I question how many players are actually sacking cities again and again to level their lord. And for those who do, meh. I'll never know about it or care.

[JODEGAFUN]

Originally posted by Gentle Giant:

Is this a problem to begin with?
I think that the loss of campaign momentum alone makes this a suboptimal strategy. Better to just capture and get on with the conquest. Sacking in general is a pretty crappy strategic option.
I get that there will be fringe cases where you can't expand for various reasons, are not immediately threatened and thus has time to waste with a lord. Go ahead then, sack on.

Edit: That said, your suggestions all make sense. I just don't feel any urgency to nerf a bad strategy.

Depends, if you have a near you crap red marked land (which you sack aigan and aigan) because you need time to build up border fortifications ore want to get reputation/LL traits (Poor Skarsnik in my Empire campaings, usually try to get his traits on several lord before finish him of). Train a low lv lord with only 5/6 units. And of course if it is the last city stupid Ai recruit every turn a lord, lordkill give at least 500 bucks+ often items.

So train (can even add low heroes)+ money if you get a lordkill+ reputation may worth it. Sure your real armies should not be use for this.

Otherwise, simply make a sacking rampage with every turn a new city is much more valuable.

[RCMidas]

The game DOES recognise that the place was recently sacked. It takes time for money to accumulate there again and even so, because you lowered its level, the settlement will not be nearly so productive as before.

You are also leaving an army on a single settlement by doing this, going nowhere, whilst the rest of your territory must then be guarded and expanded upon by your other forces now stretched more thinly. It's a valuable tactic for a few turns, especially when you come across a place that is basically Uninhabitable, but beyond that you are only hurting yourself.

[cybvep]

The game DOES recognise that the place was recently sacked. It takes time for money to accumulate there again and even so, because you lowered its level, the settlement will not be nearly so productive as before.

Yep. The devs clearly recognized that it would be too abusive to sack the same place turn after turn, again and again, and still gain the same amount of money, because that can hardly be called a strategy. That's why the fact that sacking the "recently sacked" city gives considerable XP seems like an oversight. All I want is for them to fix this. Nothing more :). There is no real reason not to do this IMO. It's like plugging a hole.

BTW this exploit is featured in many Legendary playthroughs, guides etc.

[DecayWolf]

Let's see.
You lose money for not making any and having to sustain a useless army stack.
You lose exp, because if you were expanding, you also would end acquiring exp from each next city, most cases they are 1 turn distance between, and you may also have armies to fight on the middle of the way, which if they retreat will net multiple battles which will net a minimal exp.
You let your enemy regrowth for absolutely no reason.

this 'exploit' is as inefficient as it can gets.

[DecayWolf]

Originally posted by cybvep:

The game DOES recognise that the place was recently sacked. It takes time for money to accumulate there again and even so, because you lowered its level, the settlement will not be nearly so productive as before.

Yep. The devs clearly recognized that it would be too abusive to sack the same place turn after turn, again and again, and still gain the same amount of money, because that can hardly be called a strategy. That's why the fact that sacking the "recently sacked" city gives considerable XP seems like an oversight. All I want is for them to fix this. Nothing more :). There is no real reason not to do this IMO. It's like plugging a hole.

BTW this exploit is featured in many Legendary playthroughs, guides etc.

Anyone whom would write this on a legendary is a complete moron.
Legendary is a very easy difficult, anyone can do it, even by playing not optimal, however, that does not translate into efficiency.

Besides, if someone needs to do this because otherwise they won't get levels (mostly likely because they can't win fights/expand), they shouldn't be playing on this level, whom are they trying to fool?

That being said, CA could implement this very well. it would make no difference for me, but I approve the overall concept of trying to make the game more competitive and strategical.

[RCMidas]

Again, it's a risk to do so. The XP it gives does not, in my opinion, offset needing to have your army stationed there all the time you are doing this, instead of expanding outwards elsewhere - and if you get war declared on you against which you need more defenses, you run the very real risk of losing a lot of territory before you can remobilise.

Honestly I don't see where you're coming from, and I don't even do this. I USED to with Chaos and Beastmen, before they were changed to only be able to raze settlements, because as hordes they were incredibly vulnerable at all times and needed to be as tough as possible as soon as possible - and they lacked the issue of needing to defend other places. For them, it was a viable method of powering up before going on the rampage, and you could still fall foul of mere chance.

[ChaosKhan]

The AI doesn't exploit it. If you as the player don't want exploit it, just don't. On legendary on the other hand, players need all the exploits they can get so there is no need to mitigate a problem that in fact doesn't exist.

[TVMAN]

You can basically accomplish the same thing by either sticking your army into ambush stance or raiding stance, op. Raiding gives your lord experience every turn. Is that an exploit?

Personally I've never bothered with just camping a single settlement because that's a waste of time better spent expanding or destroying enemy armies. You'll typically always be expanding or fighting off attacking armies, so there's really no shortage of experience to gain in the game. Even if you're at peace, a rogue army, a greenskin horde, or a beastmen stack will spawn in to feed xp to your lord.