Troop Bonus Exploit

During mCrow's siege of SIN's city of Timex we were attacked by an elite.   The elite had the wrong armor and weapon mix.   This was not new.   Many SIN attacks have used incorrect weapons mixes.   What was different this time was the result.   If exactly the right equipment mix is used then the combat result can be an increase in troops on the defending side.   Let me repeat that.   The defending side will gain troops.   If leaders are at reduced hit points the hit points will be regenerated.

To get this result the attacking army must have a negative attack value.  The whole army must be negative, not just the leader.  To do this the wrong type of armor, weapon and mount must be equipped on the leader and the troops.  In this instance the equipment was plains spear and plains armor used against a force on a small hill.  Plains spear on hill is -24%, plains armor on hill is -24%.  Total -48%.  Doubled for an elite army.  -96%.  They had done this before.  What they had not done was add Elven Thoroughbreds to speed the cavalry elite in time to hit our siege before Timex was razed.  Thoroughbreds speed any unit by 15% but the add a negative 20% penalty to any non Elven unit.  With these mounts added the human cavalry elite now had a -136% attack value and I got a very puzzling combat report.  It was not until we harvested the gear that was dropped and saw that it was the wrong terrain type that we had a good working theory.  Then it took another day to test it.

 This is not a recipe for infinite troop creation.  It has to be elites and it only works on one side.  If both the attacker and the defender have negative attack and negative defense values only one wins.

 I am sure there are some interesting variations that can be done with this but I am too lazy to test them all.  Best if the Dev's just fix this one.  One thing it can't do is create more harvesters.  A negative attack army still kills harvesters.

 - Lagavulin

That has to be the most cunning potential "exploit" (un)known in the game. Baldrick would be proud.  Once in (very long) while , a really illogical cunning plan actually "works"!

Lagavulin wrote: I know, right? After getting this result I felt silly for not having tested for it years ago.  After the gear stats change I found the teleporting army exploit right away.  (same idea, give your army a negative speed and it traveled to destination instantly).  It never occurred to me to test negative attack value.  Things hiding in plain sight.......

Taking advantage of a software bug is not cheating, it's showing initiative.

More importantly, has it been fixed yet?