I'm really just curious I guess about what people think about this. I've played all the civs and done all the SP things you justify to yourself i.e. reloading from saves when the luck is obviously ridiculous, thinking it's not that big a deal to start over when you know the map layout in 3000bc and stuffed your potential savagely, when in reality the advantage is incredible. All this kinda stuff that is obviously easy to do with GotM should you want to do it.

I'm pretty cynical, but I just expect a cheating rate of at least 25% and, I accept probably mistakenly, assume half the high scores come from people who justify just a wee little bit more 'milking' the score as being okay, including scouting and reinstalling or whatever you need to do to start over without being detected (it's prolly easier, I'm just assuming reinstalling guarantees it or some such).

I have run lots of gaming related setups for numerous games, and as a simple and direct result I am aware that more people than you might intuitively think are willing to go that wee little extra step further, even, dare I say especially..., for something so seemingly meaningless as a high score in a game like Civ. Many people can be truly unbelievably motivated by stuff like this. I saw it most clearly running a roleplaying server i built for NWN, but even on RTS games with ladders and the like such as AoK and SWGB you see the same effect. From these experiences, I would guess the rate of cheating is at least 25% with 50% minimum for the high scorers despite appearances to the contrary - that's solely just speaking from instict garnered from personal experience (my RL field is actually psych but the evidence for this kind of thing is varied, biased, and not fairly applicable when being specific).

I ask this cos I think about it a bit - when I think about GotM and the scores or debate them with friends. I never played any apart from this in Civ4, and I trully have enjoyed both and really look forward to the next one. I love the community feel of the challenge and mostly just reading writeups of how others found the map. But I'd like to here more on this specific issue. Especially anyone willing to admite they've cheated in the past (this civ or previous) and wanna talk about why or whatever? Or what others who put a lot of energy into a good score think about it? Or the GotM producers? Or anyone with something to say.

I played all the Civ's and I first saw (ever so briefly) Civ fan sites when I was playing CivII. I am a decent game player of any game, but back then I naively didn't think anyone would be able to compete with me cos back then (totally SP game) I was clocking the score 3 or 4 times and the population 2 or 3 times on every game of deity. I just figured I was best and leave it at that lol. Now I get that there are lots of obsessive people around, but playing a totally fair game am surprised I do so comparitively crap in these Civ4 GotMs. It (unreasonably so - I get that) makes me wonder about the cheating considering how much reasonable care I take in a game to play hard. Truly, just wonder. No serious implications - most certainly not at any individuals, high scoring or otherwise. So this post is just asking for opinions and discussion about thoughts on it, cos I'm simply very curious what others think about this?

(and killing time while waiting for GotM3 pre-game spoiler thread. I'm a gettin sick of checking this GoTM forum daily for nothing new to consider!)

I wouldn't bother getting into a discussion on cheating based on the reasoning you ended your post with. I saw that *all* the time in my younger days playing quake and those sorts, that no matter what someone did, and no matter how they won, someone is calling the winner a cheater or hacker. This seems to be a common sort of discontented person's response. Its just being a sore loser.

As to the original question any cheaters that get detected have their games removed and are admonished. There were cases of this in civ3 gotm.

Unfortunately this seems to be done in private and quietly, at least it had in the past, which means no feedback to the community at large which in turn is both bad and good. Its good because it doesn't concrete any cheater boundary which would make cheating easier. That is, knowing what doesn't work is a slight prod in the right direction. You can akin this to entrapment, if there are obvious holes but you never heard of anyone getting caught, its not an obvious hole and you may step into it. Its bad because since we never heard of any one being caught we might assume no one cheats, but this goes against the normal humans basic instincts so we really don't know what to think, and most assume there is some cheating, but really have no idea how much.

Now, if I were to guess I would guess somewhere in the same range you stated, 25%. I'd further disclaim this is isolated to only the top players, lets say the top 100. I'd figure its much lower if you take in all the community. I'd go a step further and bring in motivation and say that cheaters have to be isolated at the top, and any cheater will over time slowly progress to the top. But, this is the same trend you would see for a person increasing in skill.


Ultimately it doesn't matter, unless you are one of those play to win folk, in which case you are far more likely to view cheating as just another potential strategy that will enable you to win. Sadly, this is a fairly common life philosophy in our society.

(and killing time while waiting for GotM3 pre-game spoiler thread. I'm a gettin sick of checking this GoTM forum daily for nothing new to consider!)The pre-game thread is not a spoiler, as it should contain no posts by peple who have opened the save.. If it is then it's being wrongly used.

The pre-game thread never appears much earlier than three or four days before the game starts. For GOTM 3 it won't appear until Ainwood returns from out of town, so there's not much point in checking in every day if it makes you sick :p

Re. your main point:

I don't cheat, and I've occasionally achieved top 20 results at Civ3, and I know there's a lot of room for my game to improve. Some people have more natural aptitude than others, at Civ, as with any activity. That means the others, including me, would have to work harder to achieve comparable results. I am confident that, if I spent enough time and energy on learning how to do it, I could achieve the level of play I have seen from the top performers without breaking any rules. it's a mathematical/logical pursuit which I'm potentially capable of mastering, but I have other priorites.

It would never occur to me to pretend to reach that level by cheating. What would it achieve?

Thanks for your opinion. The reasoning in my final paragraph wasn't meant to be the crux of a discussion or something. That part was just me trying to be honest in where those feelings were potentially coming out of. Trying to strike up this discussion is not a case of, "I can't suck this bad hence you must be cheating" - that part was merely ackowledging where my wonder might have stemmed from. Probably as primal as the cheaters in the first place.

Basically, I don't want to feel in the back of my head that the killer scores popping up probably are meaningless came from people cheating who checked out the map and started over, planning all placements and reloading when things looked grim. I just expect the worst cos I have seen so many times on so many games just how many people are driven to cheat for even something so meaningless as a fun community compeition for Civ4.

Being new to this community, this may not so much be the case here for all I know. I wonder about the history here, and how the higher scorers and people who take this competitively feel about this as well. I clearly suck, but if I kicked arse and played my game for 131 hours like some people seem to do, I'd be irritated if people thought I probably cheated and after so much effort appreciate some general level of respect on these forums when I give my opinion.

I tend to agree with you that privately is unfortunate. For reasons I don't get, political correctness or some other function my I can't grasp, admins tend to take this road everywhere for everygame as a rule, but for my forums and my servers I have always plastered cheaters loudly and ridiluled them making sure everyone understood how much respect each offender had showed for their community, detailing their offences. I forced them to abandon their name and any connection with it. Anything less and offenders always just make a new name and let those they want know who they really are, and take up where they left off. Exposed, they tended to lose everyone and had to truly start fresh. It lets the community know you are taking care of business too. But it's a personal thing and I guess sounds like not part of the policy here.

I can imagine in a closer community things might be different, maybe 10% or some other negligible rate of cheating, but with 600+ entries this GotM seems like a free for all community where no-one knows anyone for the most part. I can't imagine most people not going for a score for everyone to see like you would in the pinni parlour back in the eighties. Dun matter if you tilt cheat or luck out. Just peeing on your tree and making your mark. That's what I expect anyway.

Rambling... none of this post matters, just curious about others feelings. Hoping for a vibe to come out of this thread I guess.

Posted above before seeing Alan post.

Didn't mean to say pre-game threads were spoilers, just worded poorly. Didn't see the Gotm1 pre-game thread but did much better in GotM2 cos I did and thus knew the civ and map well in advance so got to try a game with the settings. Not a spoiler, but some solid preparation by comparison to going in with no idea what to expect.

RE rest. They're good points. Given enough time and energy a lot of people could prolly make top 5 if they really wanted so is true I guess. What difference does it make and what would be the point of cheating. That is a mature way of thinking but I just tend to presume most of the people playing are not quite so mature and the point might be pee on their tree. Doing wife, kid, job thing myself and it limits what you are gonna achieve obviously, compared to when I played CivII on dole and hammering away. I played one europe map game once for 18 hours a day for 2 weeks for what I confidently felt had to be the most obscene milking anyone bothered to do lol. I justified a lot of minor cheats though and if I played GotM back at that age (17-18), I woulda gunned hard for high score cheating however possible and justifying it all the way. Just to be at the top for it's own sake. It's pretty normal behaviour (going for top just to make a stamp, not playing for 2 weeks straight lol).

I have no interest in gauntlet, HoF seems as truly meaningless as is gets, multiplayer was my dream of Civ4 gaming but after 20 attempts found it extremely unsatisfying and instead utterly irritating. Hence, came to conclusion this is it for me from CFC. Gotm. One game of Civ4 a month for prolly next several years. Has been fun but just wanna get more of a feel for how I feel about that. While I like it, I dun wanna feel like a retard playing in a loaded pool filled with 1200ad domination victories by people of whom I end up with impression are just signing their name in pee while my role here is to fill lower spots on ladder. Those two replies are good already really.

Basically, I don't want to feel in the back of my head that the killer scores popping up probably are meaningless came from people cheating who checked out the map and started over, planning all placements and reloading when things looked grim.

Whatever the level of cheating, I'm firmly convinced that all of the results that we do see are achievable without cheating. It's just a question of how much effort one is willing to put into the game. At high levels of play, the amount of advantage one can get from looking at the map in advance really isn't all that great. A bigger difference is how carefully one manages the individual turns. One form of cheating is to avoid bad luck, e.g., if someone declares war on you when you don't want them to, back up a turn and do something to appease them. Or, if someone else settles in a location a turn or two before your settler gets there, go back and change your build order to get there sooner. But the overall difference this is going to make to your results still isn't all that much. And the net result isn't to create results that are otherwise unattainable; it's just to increase your consistency (i.e., instead of sometimes having good results, you'll always have good results).

The pretty uniform opinion of people who have previously played with a lot of reloading, and who stop reloading, is that they are surprised how little difference it makes to their ultimate results.

The pretty uniform opinion of people who have previously played with a lot of reloading, and who stop reloading, is that they are surprised how little difference it makes to their ultimate results.
I think that may be true for good players. For lower level players, stopping reloading can make a dramatic improvement to their performance, as they think harder about what they are doing and learn from the mistakes. As a naive amateur psych I believe that remembered pain is a very powerful teacher.

My thoughts are re civ 3 since civ4 is an unknown quantity for me. I suspect the same logic applies. I disagree with DaviddesJ about the potential for reloads to affect game outcomes, even at top levels. A 4000bc reload, or a crucial couple of moves early on can make an immense difference.

Ultimately every player has to look into their our heart to know whether their game is honest. For others you can make a judgement based on their spoilers, their SGs, their posts on other threads etc. Over a series of games you can see players whose luck is tooo good. I would be surprised if all the games were legit, but (in civ3) I have always felt that the level of cheating was remarkably low.

I do agree with DaviddesJ that elite players can achieve magical results through honest play. Certainly many of the top scores in civ3 were produced by guys whose honesty I would stake my mortgage on.

Those guys who cheat in other games behave often retarded in forums or in chats. I dont see this kind of talking here at all. And this is exactly the difference to games like AoC, im with you that many people do cheat in those kind of games. Furthermore those people tend to be not the most intellegent often and they would certainly not take the time to learn a game as complex as civilization.
I think people cheating in the ongoing competitions is below 5% .

I think that may be true for good players. For lower level players, stopping reloading can make a dramatic improvement to their performance, as they think harder about what they are doing and learn from the mistakes. As a naive amateur psych I believe that remembered pain is a very powerful teacher.
I know I was tempted to reload at one point when I realized that I had two of my cities on no growth for a thousand years or so. Live and learn. This is one of the downsides of playing a long game. I set it one day and when I came back to the game a few days later I had forgotten. Two things stopped me. First of course the fact that I wanted to play by the rules of the GOTM. Second, even in a normal game I probably would not have because the thought of replaying all those turns was not something I wanted to do.

Making stupid mistakes like that can definitely make one want to go back and do things they would have if they had paid attention. But as stated, it makes you learn. I keep a much closer eye on my cities now.

Personally I do not care if people actually cheat or not. As I am one that plays to try new things and learn, someone getting a higher score by being dishonest is not going to affect me in tha least bit.

I think the incidence of cheating is very low for CFC GOTM and the rate of cheating is lower the higher up on the score charts you go. The atmosphere of the GOTM is very negative to any form of cheating, and very conducive to educating new and mid-range players in better strategies for better results. Good strategic play and having a sound plan from the beginning are two of the many differences between top players and mid-range players that don't require cheating to turn in a good game.

Suppose there are 100 crucial decision points during a game (the actual number is much higher). An average player might recognize 50 of them, and execute 35-40 of them well; typical cheating will still not render a very good result. A good player will recognize much closer to all 100 of those decisions, and make a good choice nearly every time. It is far more important to an individual's result to become better at recognizing and using game strategies than to cheat a small set of results.

Overall plan is also very important. Top players will have a good idea of what their goal for the game is and how well they are proceeding on that plan as the game progresses. I see players say things like "it's 1000 AD and I should decide what Victory I'm going for" and I just shake my head!

So I don't think casual cheating for a mediocre player does much to help that player advance, and will actually hold them back since they use cheating as a crutch for their play. A top player could make a difference of a place or two by cheating, but as AlanH said, of what value would that comparison then be? The top players here have played against each other a lot in Civ3 (8 out of the top 10 in CIV GOTM were participants in the Civ3 GOTM) and there is a respect and competitive spirit that I believe keeps cheating out of their playbook.

Didn't mean to say pre-game threads were spoilers, just worded poorly. Didn't see the Gotm1 pre-game thread but did much better in GotM2 cos I did and thus knew the civ and map well in advance so got to try a game with the settings. Not a spoiler, but some solid preparation by comparison to going in with no idea what to expect. I suspected you knew better, but I'm afraid I have to take every opportunity to bang the point home. People never seem to "get it" re spoilers.:)

... I just tend to presume most of the people playing are not quite so mature and the point might be pee on their tree. Doing wife, kid, job thing myself and it limits what you are gonna achieve obviously, compared to when I played CivII on dole and hammering away. I played one europe map game once for 18 hours a day for 2 weeks for what I confidently felt had to be the most obscene milking anyone bothered to do lol. I justified a lot of minor cheats though and if I played GotM back at that age (17-18), I woulda gunned hard for high score cheating however possible and justifying it all the way. Just to be at the top for it's own sake. It's pretty normal behaviour (going for top just to make a stamp, not playing for 2 weeks straight lol).
I haven't seen a recent poll, but I think you'ld find the regular GOTM players are actually a rather mature bunch, much more like your own current profile than your earlier mis-spent youth :mischief:

Sure, we attracted a whole new crowd with C-IV GOTM 1, but whether this will affect cheat levels in the future, only time will tell. The first game can't be used as a measure, as many new players didn't even bother to read the rules before playing, and when challenged they expressed surprise that they weren't supposed to reload. Actually, [Gross Generalisation alert] I think a poor player will also generally be a poor cheater, and won't hide for long.[/alert]

Everyone who had a score in 4OTM 1 higher than mine must have cheated. :mad: (That means that there are a lot of cheaters.) ;)

@Civ Steve: Well said. I agree on every point. Thank you for reducing my post from “epic” to lengthy.:)

Being new to this community, this may not so much be the case here for all I know. I wonder about the history here, and how the higher scorers and people who take this competitively feel about this as well.

I suppose I qualify as one of the "higher scorers" who has been around for a while. As for viewing the GoTM competitively, that is definitely me.:D

Occasionally, a new player will come along who makes me wonder if they cheated. Usually, it is someone who doesn't write a spoiler for an outstanding game(s), or someone exhibiting a ludicrous string of luck over several games, like Offa mentioned. But for the most part I never worry about cheating. Something you yourself said in your first post is one reason I don't:
I trully have enjoyed both and really look forward to the next one. I love the community feel of the challenge and mostly just reading writeups of how others found the map.
I am sure the players who feel this way tend to stick around, and those who don't tend to leave. That community feel/challenge/appreciation is a pre-installed mechanism of sorts that prevents lots of cheating. Those feelings also tend to grow stronger over time, or at least they did for me. Many of us have been competing against one another and debating the many aspects of Civ (and bugging AlanH and Ainwood) for years now, and as a result many of us have become friends and there is a lot of respect. Given this environment, it is highly unlikely that any GoTM veteran would cheat.

I don't worry about newcomers who may cheat in the GoTM either. For one, they probably will not enjoy it very much (due to their cheating), and will abandon our friendly little competition after only a game or two, thankfully. Second, if they are cheating they probably aren't very good. And it will not help them get better, as several others have mentioned.

Back before I joined the GoTM, I used to lurk the spoilers and then try to beat the games of the top performer (SirPleb, for those of you who have been around for awhile). I knew everything about the maps and could reload a hundred times, but I wouldn't even come close to his games. I didn't get better until I stopped reloading and made a serious effort to improve. Through a lot of effort and help from community members (especially SirPleb), I did.

Looking back, I realize that reloading can't have a significant impact. At least, not a positive one--a significant negative one maybe. A mediocre player can know the map and reload a thousand times, but he will still get demolished by a player who has an excellent understanding of the game and a sound strategy from the beginning. For example, I suspect most cheating occurs to change the outcome of battles, but in the long run, battles are not what decides how well you do against other GoTM players. Like Civ Steve said, you do well in the GoTM by setting an overall goal early, having a strategy to reach it, and then making the correct little decisions every turn in order to get there: do I irrigate the wheat first or chop a forest, do I build a library or a barracks? A really good veteran player doesn't guess at those decisions, he knows which choices to make because he has a plan from very early in the game. I doubt many players are reloading because they made the incorrect research choice or worker move, because they will not even realize they made a bad decision. Those choices, however, will actually have a much bigger impact on their game than one little battle.

Only in isolated situations, like an ultra-early conquest victory, can cheating improve a person's performance by a significant degree. But I don't worry about cheating in that case either: it would be a very poor strategic decision to reload a few battles with archers in exchange for a battle against Ainwood and AlanH. Only a settler/noob would make that choice. :)

So basically I think cheating in the GoTM is insignificant, at least for me. The guys who beat me 90% of the time, I know do not cheat. And as for a mediocre player cheating, it's like when my dog farts in the middle of the night: he's the one stuck under the covers with it, not me.

Edit: @AU_Armageddon: I appreciate the honesty and tone of your post. As a fellow gamer (NWN and many others), I want you to know that I think it very unlikely that the very top players in Civ cheat. I used to think my SP game was "elite" too, until I found this forum. SirPleb, DaveMcW and others showed me I was sadly mistaken. I initially thought they were cheating myself, but once I invested the time to learn their strategies, I learned that wasn't the case. Cheating will not net a surpassing game in this forum. Only great strategy and game knowledge will do that. I play an honest game, but there are many hours of reading strategy articles and practice behind it. I am sure that is the case for almost all the award-winning players.

Originally posted by Bradleyfeanor
Back before I joined the GoTM, I used to lurk the spoilers and then try to beat the games of the top performer (SirPleb, for those of you who have been around for awhile). I knew everything about the maps and could reload a hundred times, but I wouldn't even come close to his games. I didn't get better until I stopped reloading and made a serious effort to improve.

That's funny I did the same thing. I found this sight a couple of months before I joined and I tested myself against the GOTM's. I was useless and I reloaded everytime something happened I didn't like. The exact reason I later found out to why I was useless. If you don't learn from your mistakes you never learn.

I really enjoy the civ community. I am not a forum person and this is the only place I ever post. I believe most of these people are honest, because of everything that is argued. Just lately an argument has been triggered about taking advantage of the scoring system by milking. I'm a youngster at 21 yrs old but I assumed the point of playing was to win. Many in this community enjoy the taking part and the debate in playing styles. It's really rare and I hope you have struck upon something that makes the civ franchise so fantastic.

I believe few people cheat and those that do are actually the lower end players. With reloading you do not learn how to react to different aspects of this game. Reloading then only makes you aware of say 30 of the situations that Civ Steve talked about. You are ignorant to everything else, because you have solved difficult situations by reloading and not found the better solution of learning and never making the mistake again!

I used to play a lot of Othello online, and there were some people who were obviously using computer programs; They spent hours each day there, cheating. Just bizarre. But it was only one or two who stuck around, and they weren't subtle about it. Completely unhinged, I always thought. I don't think CIV GotM would attract that type. Cheating is too difficult, and the sense of accomplishment is far more remote. They never played in ladders, for instance. I think the cheaters motivation is imagined humilation of others, and you don't get that with this sort of competition.

GotM did change how I play: There is no way I would have stuck with my GotM2 game after losing my initial settler otherwise, and after sitting through that, I'll never make that mistake again. It makes it a different game, even if you aren't a reloader, because you can't take the same risks early one as you would if there is the option to just start a new game.

Oddly, my two most satisfying games of CIV were both losses. Losses have better storylines than victories; they feel like history.

But I'd like to here more on this specific issue. Especially anyone willing to admite they've cheated in the past (this civ or previous) and wanna talk about why or whatever?


You'll notice that I don't have a GPR score for GOTM 40. I would have got the cultural shield that month.
I had an elaborate spreadsheet for my opening moves, and as I was following it through, there came a growth turn where the city governor didn't use the tile I had predicted he would. It was nothing major, but I was annoyed and curious; I wanted to know what had gone wrong. So I reloaded the autosave and tried replaying the interturn with a number of different tile assignments and governor settings, until eventually I found out what I should have done, to get the result I was expecting. Then I just kept playing from that point... I just didn't think about it. I guess subconsciously I was thinking "well that's what it said in my spreadsheet, so that's how it really happened."
Some weeks later, I was looking again at my opening sequence, and that's when it hit me: "but that's not how it really happened." In the end, the biggest disappointment that month wasn't the moment when I realised my spreadsheet was spoiled, it was the moment I realised that my 100 hours of play was going to contribute precisely nothing to my GPR. In fact, it left a two-game gap in my GPR, which has the peculiar mathematical effect of making one's ranking rise one fortnight, and then fall back the next: a little permanent reminder for me, of the lost history of the cultural Greeks...

That's why I agree with the administration's decision to keep these issues private. A player who cheats, and is named and shamed, has no real chance to reform. He will just leave the community. I also think that a constant string of public humiliations being paraded around the forums would be detrimental to the sense of community and fair play that (rightly or wrongly) we think we have here, and that belief in community and fair play is important to me.

[QUOTE]Losses have better storylines than victories; they feel like history.[/QUOTE

DAMN...That would make a fine sig :goodjob:

On gut feel I agree that probably most of the veteran top players (and that tends to be most of the top players) don’t cheat. They all tend to share too much information and are too willing to teach others to really get away with anything under the table on a consistent basis (i.e. they are decent types you would probably enjoy having a beer with in real life). I would suspect based on my experience with human nature in similar situations that between 10-15% of scores on GOTM 01 (60 – 100 players) were, shall we say, less than honest. It is just too easy to cheat if you want without being caught; the most obvious that I’ve never see mentioned here would be to simply have two unique accounts here and download two start files to two separate computers. Although, as others have correctly pointed out, that’s not that much of an advantage and certainly won’t let you consistently achieve top scores. Probably some of the less honest scores in each GOTM (of any Civ version) are “white lie” type cheating; one or two reloads over the course of a game or reading a few spoilers before starting. Some are deliberate, conscious attempts to “beat the system” or “put one over on the other players”. And sadly some are likely by players who are the type of people in real life that can rationalize away any sort of behaviour on their own part as justified and hence probably don’t even think they cheated. For the most part I don’t think it matters; people who consistently go to great lengths to cheat at something as innocuous as a computer game challenge against semi—anonymous opponents for nothing more than bragging rights and misplaced congratulations have far more problems than I care to deal with. I really enjoy the game, the forums and the GOTMs and love the sense of community; it is what keeps me coming back from brief love affairs with other games. In the end cheaters only cheat themselves out of that same pleasure.

The only "cheating" they really bugs the hell out of me is the way the AI can out produce me all the time. Especially how badly the barbarians swarm in epic length games.

The barbarian swarms should have been toned done a bit in epic and marathon games such that they appear at a rate equal to how much longer it takes to build anything.

I can manage to hold off the barbarians without having to rebuild much of my improvemnts on normal speed and raging barbarians. However, normal barbarians on epic and marathon come at me so fast that I can't keep enough forces around to slow them down. Thus I quickly fall behind on the techs from all the improvement pillaging the barbaians do.

Oh, I've read about posting units out in the wilds to eliminate the fog of war. However, when I try to build enough units to do this I also end up falling far behind on research, because I'm not able to build the city and landscape improvemnts needed to keep up.

This GotM I had my best ever score, over 8K, and first win at this high a difficulty. I thought, "wow, I did pretty good". Then I saw how high others have been scoring and think, "man I suck" and "how the hell can they score 4 to 5 times higher than I did" Of course, most of those were domination or conquest wins, while mine was a diplomatic win. I guess diplomancy sucks.

Whatever the level of cheating, I'm firmly convinced that all of the results that we do see are achievable without cheating. It's just a question of how much effort one is willing to put into the game. At high levels of play, the amount of advantage one can get from looking at the map in advance really isn't all that great.......

Hands down this is what I agree with the most. Although my spiler for GOTM2 is not up yet, (I know I need to get to it), I submitted my game very early in the month

I went back and replayed it a second time, but more importantly i played it from the turn before the game was over(where it ended because I wasn't paying attention to enough details :mad:) and tried to 'milk' according to many posts by Shillen....my result, the exact same score 100 years later and 10 hours later in the game :sad:.
Go back reload try again, similar result.
Finally on my third attempt with print outs of 'milking' techniques did I obtain a better score, but I wouldn't dream of submitting this game out of sheer respect for all of the other players that have been helping us newer members since day one.

In another thread I started,
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144352
I outline how I played and 'cheated' in ealier versions of civ, but how it wasn't until I stumbled upon Civ Fanatics and GOTM that I started to see value in playing honestly. It is through the vetran top players that I am certain don't cheat that one can really appreciate the complexities of this game.

So if there are players who cheat, wow, but overall it won't affect my game, I could come in last now it doesn't matter, for me reading about how other people attacked a similar situation is far more valuable, interesting and rewarding than acutally playing the game now :lol:

Edit: fixed quote

I used to cheat in Civilization I and II by reloading on every Goody Hut. My opinion at the time was "Hey, the computer cheats that much, then I should have some luck owing me!"

Since I joined CivFanatics, I have not submitted a save knowing full well that I have cheated. There are situations, like currently in Civ4, where the occasional computer reboot (due to graphic card glitches - which only happens when opposing AI Civs want to make a deal), makes it seem as though something 'dodgy' is going on (especially if I forget that an auto' save exists).

My efforts at completing a GOTM with a victory are generally wasted as 80% of the time, I get swamped by a bigger power or lose in the Space Race.

Ask me if I care? Too right, I bloody well do.
Do I want to win? Of course I do. You're damned right, I do!
Will I cheat to achieve it though? Hell, no. Never, knowingly.

A defeat, even a sorry-looking defeat where you wished you hadn't made a certain decision, is better than cheating your way to a win.

Who will benefit from 'a win by cheating'? I look back on my days on CivI and CivII with fondness, as they were ground-breaking times when computer games were starting to take shape - but I also look back at the cheating on those games as a bad practise that I wish could have been stamped out earlier.

Maybe I would have felt greater elation every time I won. Who knows? The point is, when you do achieve a victory without cheating, you know that you've earned it!

I personally feel that people should be able to do whatever they can do to score their highest aside from using third party programs to alter the game mechanics. The whole point of "I only have X hours to play the game" just isn't a reason to design the game to be only first time through. If you really want a "first time through" game, I say play some multiplayer, where there is obviously no reloading ever. I often times will replay old gotms several times for learning purposes - let's face it, repetition and comparison is how we really get better. It improves my ability to MP quite significantly. But then, since I am only using the GOTM to improve my MP ability, I don't really feel the urge to submit my games either, so I suppose it doesn't matter what I think :) .

Thanks, lots of great points. I look forward to losing many very enjoyable GotMs to come :P

Thanks, lots of great points. I look forward to losing many very enjoyable GotMs to come :P

And I will be there right with you :), but sometimes it is the journey(in this case with so many players sharing a similar one) which is more important than the finish line.

On a completely seperate note has the ever been anything like a team entry GOTM? What I mean by this would be that for a GOTM teams of let's say 4 were created (this could be randomly assigned or as a team entry) at which point the game was played with all the same rules as the GOTM, but in that the game was played like a 'best ball' golf tournament.

In that at let's say 10 seperate points in the game 2000 B.C. 0 AD 200 AD... etc
you can look at all of the games of your team and choose who is doing the best and then all of you continue from this point on until the next exchange point.

As you can see many variations of this could be done.

:A swap GOTM at 0 AD (lets say two weeks into the month) everyone submits thier game and then they are randomly swapped with another player. At the end of the month both memebers submit thier game for an overall total score.

Some interesting ideas there.

On the team theme, are you aware of the SGOTM series? We've played 8 Civ3 Succession Games over the last two years, with multiple teams playing off the same start towards a defined victory objective. SGOTM 9 is in progress now. We are considering the possiblity of starting a Civ4 SGOTM, so watch this space.

With out a doubt I will keep my eyes open and will happily join as long as i pass the entrance requirements??:confused:

I guess i could always dig out my old copy of civ3...but as you stated it is already under way..and then that would take too much away from civ4 :lol:

@Memphus - there is a CIV Succession Game forum as well. You could check out the games there, pick up some real time tips and maybe play in one or two if you wished. This might tide you over until SGOTM for CIV is started.

I don´t think the top scores are cheating. But even if they all were, I wouldn't care as long as they write their spoilers explaining why they made their decisions and how that helped their game. If they are helping me to make better decisions, I am willing to worship them.

As for myself, in my private games I always reload. It helps me understand the "unwritten rules" of the game (like maximum carriover and things like that). I would reload a lot less if there was a warning when a city grows. Playing the GOTM with fully awareness that I will have to put up with all the mistakes a migth make, is a special experience. It makes me feel like the real historical leader, which didn't have a 2nd oportunity. I enjoy these games much more than the private ones, I even hold my breath sometimes.

Don't suppose there's any reason why someone couldn't start an SG game with one of the Civ IV GOTM maps just for the hell of it. Might be interesting to see how the final score stacks up with the official results.

/Thinks about starting one/

/Thinks about starting one/

By all means, it's been done before, very successfully, with Civ3 GOTM maps. But to avoid spoiling a current GOTM, please don't do it with a GOTM map that's still being played.

By all means, it's been done before, very successfully, with Civ3 GOTM maps. But to avoid spoiling a current GOTM, please don't do it with a GOTM map that's still being played.

/runs off to start JOE-02 SGOTM-01 OCC Variant/

BWAHAHA! :goodjob:

I think a lot of people that get high scores with Civ don't cheat, they just approach the game differently. I play to have fun and to win but I think I play more within the spirit of the game. Some players are very obsessive about maximizing score, milking score, and learning the game mechanics and scoring system inside out to optimize score. I don't think any approach to the game is bad if it's fun to the player.

I also think the scoring system for Civ IV is amongst the least thought out parts of the game and it's not that great of a system.

And as for a mediocre player cheating, it's like when my dog farts in the middle of the night: he's the one stuck under the covers with it, not me.

:) . That's the funniest comparison I've read in a long while! But I guess it's not true for every dog. When my dog farts, he moves away from the fart, and therefore the next fart is 'launched' on a completely different place, so in a matter of minutes, the whole room is unusable:)

:)When my dog farts, he moves away from the fart, and therefore the next fart is 'launched' on a completely different place, so in a matter of minutes, the whole room is unusable:)

:lol:
My dog Petey was fond of that "Fire and Move" tactic as well, but given his Potent Emissions, I came up with a strategy after the first (and only) time he rendered my bedroom uninhabitable. As soon as I would hear the telltale warning of escaping air, I would quickly throw my legs around him, effectively pinning him inside the incubation chamber. He would struggle a bit, and then go limp with a sigh. Oddly enough, I only had to do this about a half-dozen times before his nighttime gas problem mysteriously vanished. This is similar to how a top player pins a mediocre one, so the dog poot/cheating metaphor is still valid. I don't think we need worry about the cheaters stinking up the GoTM. Hopefully, most cheaters soon realize that if they can just quit farting, their fellow players will stop beating the crap out of them.

An amuzing anecdote. In all of this, however, I've had a modicum of concern about the "cheaters will all be low-scorers anyway" mantra that's been trotted out - the reason for my concern being that the only known incident of a GOTM cheating 'conviction' I am aware of, albeit from a couple of years ago, was a regular medal-winner and not a low-scoring player after all. (Those medals were stripped and reallocated, so checking back should not reveal their identity).

(Those medals were stripped and reallocated, so checking back should not reveal their identity).

Yes I recall one during cracker's era. The name escapes me but a person that still actively posts seems familar. I'll refrain from any statement on that person since my memory is foggy.
At any rate while the theory that criminals are stupid by their very nature is true to some extent, only stupid criminals get caught.

But anyway its interesting to hear what others think about this subject it may be pointless to discuss as we may never know the extent.

Two instances that I'm aware of. One was very clumsy and obviously performing outside of possible game performance. For the other, the staff used a number of tools to identify this person's games as cheated; it occured over several games. I think the final straw was a game set up so that it was highly probable that only a cheater would uncover the optimum moves; when the player submitted a game with these moves, that was it. (That's my non-staff understanding; the staff do not reveal all the techniques available to them.)

In Civ3 GOTM there were many games with very close finishes; perhaps a handful of turns or a few points separated the top submittals. Those type of results indicate very hard fought games with little separating the players. Cheated games would tend to vary much more, and highly cheated games tend to stand out. I suspect that as the CIV scoring system is updated and the general playing skill goes up that the same will happen for CIV GOTM.

I have played many many GOTM, Civ 2 to Civ 4 now. I usually don't submit my games, I just enjoy playing them out. I enjoy playing the game not so much crushing it with strategies that no AI could be programmed to overcome. For example, would the ancient English run around hacking up every forest in sight to hurry the early wonders and build worker/worker/settler??? I know that strategy is allowed, because it's not cheating, just manipulating the game mechanics to one's advantage....

The point I'm making is that it's a game to be played for the fun of it, and if you have to cheat to have fun, then brother, please move on.

I do love to read about methods to manipulate the AI though, and the game mechanics, because one day, I may play against a human, who by nature will want to bend the rules. Best to fight fire with fire.

However, I see manipulating game mechanics like beating a baby. It just doesn't feal right.

Simply put, you cannot stop all cheating, and what little can be reasonably done has been done. In addition, without evidence no one can be accused of cheating. Therefore there will be cheaters and their identies will likely remain unknown. In my experience with most games, however, the best players frequently can outplay the best cheaters, and even if the cheaters come out on top it simply serves to add to the fun and challenge of those not cheating. What greater satisfaction could you have in getting the top score knowing you had beaten all of the cheaters, with pure skill (and some good luck!)

I would even argue that the cheater is themself often robbed of the same feeling of accomplishment, particularly in a game in which cheating is so easy. Extensive anti-cheat mechanisms can actually encourage cheating in a way, and I have seen that in certain games as well. Ironic, but the cheaters sometimes feel that bypassing the attempts at catching them is a feat among itself. In Civ 4 this is clearly not the case and cheating would simply signify a lack of ability or skill, and an inability to admit to loss.

There is actually a new problem in the MP community that may extend into this as well, that is hacks that definitely don't seem to be detectable by the ingame prevention. Check out this player on the civ4players ladder page in my info: "yumpak". 98 game win streak. I was in a game with this fellow and not only did he win 100% of battles he fought with me, but he actually said "gg please report" to another player who was about to die, without any prior information that that player was about to be defeated (the player was defeated at the beginning of the game without any defense in his initial city). Hopefully that hack doesn't find its way into this community - it could be a big problem. Blatent use of it would be easily detectable by the losses screen, but judicious use of it could be a major issue, as no reloads are required if you already know you are going to win. Hopefully the civ4 team releases a patch soon to alleviate this menace :( .

by the fourth or so LONG post, i got tired of reading and skipped ahead to the end. lol.

i didnt submit a game for 4otm 2 (one that just finished) cause i never finished it, cause i couldnt resist cheating and then felt like a piece of.... well, you know.
attacked a city (that had 2 wonders and a religeon founded) with like 10 swordsmen and axemen, and probably a dozen catapults. barely took it (lots of bad luck there), the only unit that hadnt attacked was a warrior with the medic promotion. so i left the one swordsman that took the city inside and the warrior outside to help heal the heavily damaged stack.
then lost the city a horse unit that came out of nowhere. none of my units were even close to being able to take the horsy out the next turn (they were all in the low 1.2 type HP range after 3 turns of attacking).

couldnt help myself, and reloaded an autosave to take the city again. second time around took it much easier. still had a viable attack stack left afterwards.
but then, saved the game and never felt the pull to go finish it cause i knew i'd cheated. i've played 2 other whole civ4 games since then (one being a marathon speed), so its not like i didnt have the time, but whenever i started up Civ4, i just didnt feel like loading the GOTM.
ruined the game for myself.

in civ3 on the other hand, i cheated ALL the time, i dont think i played a single game of civ3 without reloading for the goodyhuts to give me techs or settlers every time. never submited a civ3 gotm thought (i did play a couple of em). what's the point of seeing how well you did against others if you know you cheated to get your score?