News & Announcements - 01NOV15 - Commander exploit closed

SINGLE COMMANDER WITH MULTIPLE, SIMULTANEOUS ARMY/DIVISION DUPLICATION DEEMED EXPLOIT & CLOSED

An issue has recently come to light whereby some players have managed to assign the same commander to multiple divisions from the same town.

The only way this could be achieved was by 'tricking' the user interface into allowing multiple commander assignments, by

opening multiple versions of the same town army window, one for each division in each army
navigating each window onto each different division's assignment page, and then
assigning the commander to each division, by
submitting each pre-prepared page one-by-one, in order to assign the same commander to different divisional duties and bypassing the 'is this commander still available to be assigned' check

This is clearly not "working as intended".

If the user interface was used without this multi-page workaround, then it has always been clear that a commander - once assigned from the unit pool to a division - will not be available for any assignment to other duties, as he or she has left the town unit pool and is otherwise occupied.

When the user interface is used properly, either the already-assigned commander's name does not appear in another division's 'assign commander' drop-down list; or the text "No Commanders to Appoint" appears if there are no other commanders available to assign.

Even ignoring the crystal-clear signposts that this multi-window workaround is not how it is supposed to work, it is self-evident that once a unit is occupied (ie placed in a division and/or sent out on a mission), then that same unit should not be available for other duties elsewhere.

There are a few players who have managed to get commanders solely duplicated across a pair of divisions in the same army, and we have given these players the benefit of the doubt - as a single-occurrence duplication may have been accidental.

For these few 'single-occurrence' players, we have removed these commanders from their current posts (regardless of where they were or what they were doing) and have returned them to their respective town unit pools where they can now be reassigned singly.

However, assigning the same commander to five different divisions using the multi-window 'workaround' cannot credibly be described as 'accidental', rather only as 'deliberate'.

Egregious use such as this has been deemed a deliberate exploit, and a small number of players have been permabanned from Illyriad, with immediate effect.

An emergency hotfix patch has been deployed to further prevent the same commander from being assigned to or utilised by more than a single division at the same time, and this has taken immediate effect.

Regards,