Does Anyone Not Cheat With Generals?

i never exploit the idols, and theres no rules against playing your general like an assassin, thats not a expoit its a strat, theres alot of arguing on the generals and assassins being to much alike, but in retrospec i dont see anything that they can do to stop people playing there generals like assassins. simply because no player has to play the demigod how someone thinks they should.

Can someone explain precisely how the minion exploit works so I can get that to GPG?

I never do the idol exploit.  I've alternated between playing Oak as an assassin and using his minions -- both seem about equally effective in the games I've played.  It's worked out pretty well for me so far, but I might just have gotten lucky.

EDIT: Frogboy, as I understand it (haven't tried this myself) idol minions don't disappear when the idol is sold and they're only capped per idol level.  So since you get most of the gold back when you sell, you can work your way up or down the idol chains getting 2 minions for each level of idol, for a total of up to 2 * 3 * 4 = 24 minions (limited by how much gold you have to burn, of course).  I'm told it's especially effective with priests, since the different levels heal at different rates.

Frogboy:

The exploit that everybody is talking about is simple, as far as I understand it.

People simply buy an idol, summon the minions, then sell the idol.  The summoned minions stick around after the idol is sold, so the player can then buy other idols and stock up on minions.  Conceivably you could have something like 6-8 of each type of minion, but of course once they die they can't be resummoned unless you have the idol.

If the exploit has any other nuances to it, somebody speak up.  Heh.  Can't say that I've ever tried it myself, doesn't seem worth the gold to me.

Also, playing a General like an Assassin is far from cheating.

You pretty much got it down exactly Possibly. And no, I don't see a reason to use this exploit so I don't use it on my generals. It should be fixed regardless, but how effective it really is is up in the air.

As Erebus, I can buy Tier 2 archers, sell, Tier 1 monks, sell, then I can still have enough for scalemail and mana potions. I don't find it cheating personally but it IS annoying, if you know that he's doing it, focus on his minions instead of the Demigod.

One bug that I've noticed is that if you sell your idol while it's on cooldown the idol summon hotkey will still function correctly, yet it won't summon minions or use mana.

You've replied to a topic before that describes it perfectly.  There are a significant number of people, myself included, who do not consider it an exploit.  But basically the limit on minion summons is for each subtype.  As an example, you can summon two monks, sell the monk idol, buy the bishop idol, summon two bishops, sell the bishop idol, do the same thing with the other two priest types, and get 8 healers.  You can do the same thing with archers and minotaurs so you can get 24 minions instead of 6.  The downside is each minion you lose permanently costs you gold because you resold the idol that summoned it.  The whole set is a 3360 gold investment.

Here's another thread on this with more details:

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/346761

I've used the buy/resell trick every now and then. Just at the beginning, to get those two clerics. It works pretty well, but as I've only tried it on QoT, can't really say how good it can be. I'm mostly sitting at full health anyway. But when health does drop, having those clerics nearby is hand. The problem is, when the clerics die, they're gone. Usually they last long enough that I can afford to buy idol for real.

When I see generals with minions on the first few levels, I usually target them first. If they come back, he's got the idol and it's not worth bother, if not, he won't be getting them back.

As exploits go, it's a neat trick that can be helpful, but nothing special. I wasn't even sure if it is an exploit or not, which is why I used it. As for the other buy/summon thing, where you get an army of minions, haven't tried. Sounds like it could take a few towers, but usually at least some DGs have AoE anyway and can just burn them away. Not sure if it's worth the investment or not.

its an exploit

it gives a huge unfair advantage to generals

I don't really think its an exploit you pay gold for a few crappy minions, maybe if you did it later in the game and got 8 of each type it could get out of hand perhaps but I don't think its worth the gold

Yes, sinking 3k gold into an army that you can't resummon is a huge unfair advantage.  If you're playing against this, you have to target the minions.  It costs them gold for every minion you kill.  Take out the army or the player, and they'll be way behind you in equipment.  If you can't do AoE, do single damage.  It's not rocket science.

Its an exploit. The minion caps are there for a reason. I don't care if it costs a million gold or if the benefit of the extra minions is debated.

It deliberately circumvents a balance mechanic.

Even laying that aside it is either worth doing or not worth doing. If its not worth doing then it does not matter. If its worth doing then every General player needs to learn how to juggle idols and all sorts of stupid crap to get 100% out of their DG.

If you want your teammates to be in the front lines helping you instead of messing around at the shop all the time then you have to agree this needs to change.

I don't use the exploit, and I play my General like an Assassin, one of the ways they were meant to be played.

Perhaps they should add a shop for purchasable one-time summons (compareable to consumables).  There certainly appears to be a market for it and it would add additional strategic options.

I love to see Idolators come down the lanes when I'm playing Regs.

That's what Shrapnel Mines thrown behind the Generals are for.  Gods above and below, it's worth it to cost them 2,500 gold or so.  It's a beautiful sight.  

/feedtears

/Wandofspeed

/cackle

Haha Idolators.

The minion caps are on subtypes though Silphius.  You aren't circumventing the caps, just the balance intent.  It's no different from using an attack or a spell in an unconventional way to significantly better effect than the usage that it was balanced around.  For example, mekboy mines in dow2 could until the recent patch, be used as ultra high damage grenades because their arming time was too fast(I think it may have been a bug, you never know with relic).  It wasn't an exploit, just an unintended usage.

I can definitely agree with your point about how it leads to sitting around at the shop instead of going out and fighting at times.  I think this and the clunky method of actually doing it are both reasons it needs to be made impossible.  I'd like to see what sleeper suggests though.  That would include the positive aspects of this(permanent investment in a unit that can be killed) without the negative aspects(standing around at the shop looking like an idiot, having to click 3-4 different buttons to make your "purchase").

whether or not its an exploit or intended behavior is something for Gas Powered to decide, not us. 

i expect any player right now to fully utilize the current behavior for idol summons. if its in the game its fair play in my opinion. 

whether or not it OUGHT TO be in the game is something we can debate (and i'm sure we will). 

my personal opinion is that its not overpowered at all, generals already pay for their minion abilities with worse stats. minions are slightly too weak right now in my opinion so this idol resummoning thing helps out a little bit in giving you a small bit of extra mileage whenever you go to the store. its a net loss of money to do it continously though so you can almost think of it as being a strange variation on a consumable item. 

Basically a general buys idols from the shop; said player then summons minions and sells the idol... The minions remain, and so the player buys a new idol and repeats this process for all 3 idols, of all 4 levels of each idol.

Its an exploit thats easy to beat if you play smart but no one usually sees it coming. Even without it I still play erebus as an assasin and I always did. Actually... Ive lost more games using the exploit then I did playing erebus as a general assasin.

EDIT: I dont condone it but ladders are getting reset and I dont gain anything out of it. So I am having fun with it while its there and hoping it will get patched.

yea, some demigods dont have great aoe, or stong enoughto kill it all. an oak running around with all these killing minons means they dont die

you dont lose much gold either, casue you buy, then sell, so you make far more than you lose, especially when you kill demigods with this

Umm what does "meant to be played" mean? i always thought they emphasized how much you could customize the demigods however you wanted to... does that mean if we want to make a powerhouse general that wasnt how it was supposed to work?

i can;t tell if you are serious or not...

lol i was semi serious. i mean whenever i watched any vids about the game the thing they always pointed out was how much you can "customize" your demi god. But i see a lot of people saying you shouldnt be able to use your demi god how you want and they should be more limited to being a minion master... i think i would be a lil dissipointed if they took that option away from me =\ sometimes im a total minon commanding general... other times i just wanna go out there and truely feel like i am the power house that leads the little bit of back up that i summon.

i think generals are not different enough, not enough of them, but i dont think giving them more of the current idol minions is a fix to that

I've seen the AI summon multiple minions of different levels.

How can you call it an exploit when the AI does it?