How are exploits, abuses, and gameness handled?

[LM+]

As we all know, Victoria is a highly abuseable game. There must be a hundred and one ways to get ahead using completely in-game, no-cheat methods that are, nevertheless, a tad abusive.

An example:
"The bloodless warfare cheat". Have lots of Russian troops but no Russian soldier POPs. Watch your Russian troops take losses - but inflict no damage on your population.

Another example:
"He who owns the sea owns the coast". Declare war on Russia. Park a single dreadnaught outside St. Petersburg (after you've killed off their fleet). Conduct an amphibious landing. Watch the poor, helpless Russians (or Americans, or Italians, or...) suffer because they can't defend their capital.

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OK. How do people playing multiplayer handle this sort of thing? These are but two examples of many tricks that can totally upset game balance.

- Do you set up house rules?
- Care to share your list of such rules with me?
- What do you do when somebody springs an exploit that the rules don't cover?
- Where does one draw the line between "intelligent gameplay" and "abuse", anyway?

 

[Strategist]

It is usual that most of these exploits arent forbidden by the rules, however people suppose you dont use the real exploitive things, and if you would use them and the others find out the others will probably gangbang you. BTW: that land on the coast thing, do it against AI nations as often as you wish, but against most human opponents it wont work. For example: as Russia, in the Friday night game, I have at least 2 guards divs in each coastel prov to hold of most coast landings and have reserves to help in case thats needed.

 

[unmerged(34422)]

I think he's referring to the shore bombardment, correct me if I'm wrong, which is completely unrealistic as you once found out when you took Russia (remember all those satellites popping up) and Germany marched along the baltic coast with 50 BBs off the coast.

I also consider POP bug an exploit, like having overstaffed factories etc. But it doesn't seem to be that big a problem with the MP groups I play with, its barely mentioned.

 

[Lotus Lo]

I guess it depends on the group... FRI has virtually no rules... SAT has some rules... SUN has the most restricting rules...

The rules set up for both SAT and SUN are on the starting post of each thread... SAT also has punishments.

 

[unmerged(3155)]

We do have rules in sat, but not really for this type of thing. Our rules are more geared toward making the game run smoothly. The only thing we have a rule agaisnt that is even close to an exploit is col war with a human, grabbing a building and claiming it right away. Not really an exploit in the same sense, but still using game mechanics to get the upper hand.

For the true game exploits like you are saying, I guess I just havnt seen people use them much, if ever, and havnt seen much reason to bring them up. I think most players, regular ones at least, would recoginze this kind of activity as taboo and wouldnt do it. If you did im sure everyone would hate you and get a gangbang going on.

As far as things not covered in the rules, we have not been able to enforce anything not explicitly stated. Any major problems are generally handled by vote. I think the next game I play in I would like to try a true GM setup like you see in a lot of EU2 games. It seems to work a lot better.