Hidden Capitals (Easy To Locate)

[Strongwill]

lol, wow, i never knew you could train at someone else's thieves guild, open borders and all i guess. that sounds fun. 

and yeah, i also don't judge anything folks do within the programming, it is just that the programming can never be absolutely perfect so we would occasionally agree not to do a specific something in the old days. for instance it is not in the rules to not attack newbies immediately but most veterans will wait at least ten turns before attacking a newbie and even then will offer advice on how to defend even while attacking that newbie.

Same, I never knew you could train an agent at another’s thieves guild. Too funny.

Just because I don’t doesn’t mean I look down on others doing it…totally cool with me. I know a couple of things to do too..

[Pine Needle]

You can ward a prisoner to determine if the capital the emissary is in is within the 10 range or not. Is this also frowned upon? It seems pretty odd I can ward a prisoner. I used this to narrow down a hidden capital to within eight possible squares; less once I learned where the non-hidden PCs were.

I don't think this is bad form at all. This is brilliant- and a reason to execute prisoners. I recently captured an immortal and was sweating profusely until it escaped.

[CosmicWizard]

You can ward a prisoner to determine if the capital the emissary is in is within the 10 range or not. Is this also frowned upon? It seems pretty odd I can ward a prisoner. I used this to narrow down a hidden capital to within eight possible squares; less once I learned where the non-hidden PCs were.

I don't think this is bad form at all. This is brilliant- and a reason to execute prisoners. I recently captured an immortal and was sweating profusely until it escaped.

I think it is bad form to move agent or emi to locations trying to find hidden capital purely because that is not how the rules are written you are circumventing the intent of the rules. yes its a programming issue. I refuse to do it and I have seen certain players use it a lot. I have dropped a couple games when I saw the other person doing it. To me its about ethics. The rules states you need to have a level 4 agent to find it. using a level 1 by moving it and getting lucky at a low cost and cheap way to do it bends the rules. Its just plain wrong. you should of had to invest in the orders and costs to get agent up too 4 thus you are circumventing rules and gain an advantage to those who wont bend the rules and use this method so its just plain wrong to me. Also gives kingdom with high agent costs a cheap way to find things. thats just plain wrong. finding loopholes in the game and taking advantage of it vs what is said in the rules is unethical to me. you can disagree but thats just what it is cheating that is allowed.

[Pine Needle]

You can ward a prisoner to determine if the capital the emissary is in is within the 10 range or not. Is this also frowned upon? It seems pretty odd I can ward a prisoner. I used this to narrow down a hidden capital to within eight possible squares; less once I learned where the non-hidden PCs were.

I don't think this is bad form at all. This is brilliant- and a reason to execute prisoners. I recently captured an immortal and was sweating profusely until it escaped.

I think it is bad form to move agent or emi to locations trying to find hidden capital purely because that is not how the rules are written you are circumventing the intent of the rules. yes its a programming issue. I refuse to do it and I have seen certain players use it a lot. I have dropped a couple games when I saw the other person doing it. To me its about ethics. The rules states you need to have a level 4 agent to find it. using a level 1 by moving it and getting lucky at a low cost and cheap way to do it bends the rules. Its just plain wrong. you should of had to invest in the orders and costs to get agent up too 4 thus you are circumventing rules and gain an advantage to those who wont bend the rules and use this method so its just plain wrong to me. Also gives kingdom with high agent costs a cheap way to find things. thats just plain wrong. finding loopholes in the game and taking advantage of it vs what is said in the rules is unethical to me. you can disagree but thats just what it is cheating that is allowed.

I think the ward thing is fine. The random move should be nerfed. Death to the agent, plus -.1 influence for failure?

i.e. I don't think the ward does not make sense from a fantasy would setting. A wizard should should be able to protect a prisoner from torture, etc. I think that tactic is smart

[mwigdahl]

You can ward a prisoner to determine if the capital the emissary is in is within the 10 range or not. Is this also frowned upon? It seems pretty odd I can ward a prisoner. I used this to narrow down a hidden capital to within eight possible squares; less once I learned where the non-hidden PCs were.

I don't think this is bad form at all. This is brilliant- and a reason to execute prisoners. I recently captured an immortal and was sweating profusely until it escaped.

I think it is bad form to move agent or emi to locations trying to find hidden capital purely because that is not how the rules are written you are circumventing the intent of the rules. yes its a programming issue. I refuse to do it and I have seen certain players use it a lot. I have dropped a couple games when I saw the other person doing it. To me its about ethics. The rules states you need to have a level 4 agent to find it. using a level 1 by moving it and getting lucky at a low cost and cheap way to do it bends the rules. Its just plain wrong. you should of had to invest in the orders and costs to get agent up too 4 thus you are circumventing rules and gain an advantage to those who wont bend the rules and use this method so its just plain wrong to me. Also gives kingdom with high agent costs a cheap way to find things. thats just plain wrong. finding loopholes in the game and taking advantage of it vs what is said in the rules is unethical to me. you can disagree but thats just what it is cheating that is allowed.

I wasn't involved in the original discussions years ago.  But in my opinion I can't take the rulebook seriously as a source of truth and ethical guidance given the flat out lie printed in it about a High Priestess in a Great Temple being able to cast Revelation.  I was very close to buying a Great Temple to try to do this before I decided to search the forums and found it was completely false.

My feeling is that if the consensus of players doesn't want this mechanic to work, the game programming should be altered to disallow it.  The game already keeps track of whether you've detected a pop center or not in a given square.  Add a rule to prevent agents and emissaries from relocating to a square that hasn't been detected by that player as a pop center (or isn't a fixed-position major city) -- regardless of whether there's anything there or not, it would fail.  This should be very easy to implement and would fix the problem simply.  With a touch more effort, you could have emissary and agent relocation treat an undetected hidden pop center as an empty square, which would stop you from finding hidden pop centers but still let you play Battleship to find unhidden ones.

You might have to work with the definition of "undetected", since an agent recon on a hidden pop center with agent counter-espionage could fail (speaking from personal experience  ) but you sure as heck know it's there...