Exploit Allowing NPC's to Join a Player's Army

To be fair I didn't know this existed till I noticed it and started asking around. Thus - 

Edited by belargyle - 07 Jan 2014 at 09:17

I have never posted on the forums as yet, but as my 12 towns have got mentioned once or twice and there seems there are people curious about it I thought I should perhaps say something...

I recall many moons ago Dittobite successfully broke through the 10 town barrier for the first time. His #11 was short lived and was deleted by the Devs. It was achieved if memory serves me correctly by sending settlers while sieging someone at the same time. I believe this avenue was promptly closed by the Devs.

Months later, when I was going for my town #10 by sieging an inactive I also had a couple of other sieges open on abandoned towns I was clearing. I saw the opportunity to 'storm and capture' several towns at once - which I did, and it worked.

I realised that with 9 towns each with 5 commanders I could have sieged 45 towns simultaneously, when added to my original 9 towns would have made 54 towns. Had I done that I suspect I may have been suspended straightaway.

So I raised a petition (9000) there and then, stating I expected to lose the towns & explaining what I had done. Given that the same trick could get someone from 2 towns & 8 commanders to 10 towns very quickly indeed, I agreed with the Devs to keep this under my hat until a fix was put into place - Stormcrow made it clear I would not be able to keep #11 & #12 and we agreed the Devs would take them down.

From the issue being reported 14th May it was fixed in around 48 hours. I guess had this become common practice it would have spoiled the enjoyment of the game for many so it was fixed very quickly indeed, thank you Devs.

I have not encouraged or assisted any other player to follow my trick, but it looks as though people already knew about it if many have done it as has been said, unless of course there is another way.

I am moving one town out of the way (and would have gladly moved the other if exodus were researched). The Devs will remove the towns at their leisure. This is all agreed, no assistance is required.

Regards

Maccam

GM Luna wrote: If you truly know of "many people" using exploits, yes, I'm going to need to hear names so we can investigate. Put it in a petition please. Luna

filing now 

DeathDealer89 wrote: Since we have't seen any names of people with 12 or 11 cities I will assume its just one person thinking it wasn't cleared up.  If you can't give us a name for a problem  we can obviously check to see if its true, then we would have to assume that your just rambling. If it isn't, give us the name of the player with 11 or 12 cities then we can all siege their extra cities and fix the problem and the devs won't have to do a thing. As for the NPC bug, it seems those of  you who hunted all your nearby animals to extinction now have a very slight advantage over those who didn't.  4th school of beast magic it turns out is more powerful than you thought.

Im not 100% sure who they are referencing however Macaam of Aesir had 12 cities. Dittobite of Crows had 11 a long time back and even has a pic on his profile in memory of his "first to acheive 11 towns". I know of many many ppl who used this exploit to get to 10 cities. If Luna would like a list feel free to igm me. 

its pretty simple getting 10 castles with team work anyways and some find that having ten isnt always an idea situation