Now I just wanna know it...

Remember this is an anonymous poll! I can't see what you voted. If it appears a lot of people reload often, then we have to think of a way to deal with it. That is: allowing it, or trying to determine who cheat this way and kick him out of something like that.

Note that option 1, 2 & 3 are disallowed, but reloading when pressing the wrong button is, which should be obvious. ;)

Seems like the majority agree (on the older poll) that reloading is cheating on the GOTM. How about some of the other issues, such as early pop rushing, using Right of Passage to backstab and set up a smash victory, endless drafting in size seven cities?

Many of the top scorers seem to use these strategies as part of their game plan, discussing them on the spoiler threads. I am curious as to how the majority of players feel about these strategies? Are they good game play, are they exploits, are they in a vast grey area.

Seems to me that they are in a vast grey area. That a player certainly does better on scoring when using these strategies for early conquest. Drafting comes fairly late in the game so it is not that much use in pumping up score, but the other two, a big pop rush, and Right of Passage, can be used early in the game to great advantage.

It is tough enough to get any set of rules enforced using the honor system. Another effective "cheat" is to read the spoiler thread before starting the game. I would like to know how players that do use these effective strategies feel about them, and how those players that know these strategies, but do not use them, feel.

Those that do not know, of course do not use them, and their opinion is less meaningful. For those players, it is best to at least know the basics of pop rushing and Right of Passage backstabbing, because they are very effective ways to play the game. If you are losing the GOTM, I would go as far as say, use them so at least you can win the game and have some fun.

I did some when I first got the game to study certain things.Not in the 2 gotms I have submitted though.Once you accept the screwy combat system,you accept losses as it is purely a numbers game.Sheer numbers is the way to go.

I had to fork out $30 for a new mouse as a 3 vet sword attack on a spearman defended city failed without even cracking the spearman's health points.If only my mouse could have defended against my rage as well :rolleyes:

I watched as a Longbowman attacked a Modern Armour unit which had 2 health and won

The modern armour was in a newly captured city waiting for repairs. most of my army was forward advancing depeer.

That my friends is a joke 4:1 killing a 16:10

The following is of course just my opinion. I'll happily abide by a consensus decision on any of this! (Or a unilateral one if you so choose Matrix :) )

The no reloading rule seems clear-cut to me, and a good thing. As I understand it, its purpose is to disallow the use of foreknowledge and of trial and error. These two things are the same at heart but feel different. The most extreme use of foreknowledge would be by knowing the entire map in advance. The most extreme use of trial and error would be to replay a single turn different ways to win battles or leaders. In-between would be cases of going back a few turns to avoid a problem. All of the above are clearly disallowed and I feel should stay disallowed.

Reloading for an accidental keystroke seems to me to be a different subject. If we were trying to simulate multi-player then it would matter. But for the purposes above, disallowing this serves no purpose and seems unnecessary. To me it seems fine to reload after going OMIGOD I didn't intend to do that! The one that trapped me a lot early on is the darn Spacebar == Enter key, to end a turn. I'd hit space space space etc for a bunch of units and hit it once too often and DAMN, I was going to change my production/taxes/... before ending that turn! I sure do wish that only the Enter key would end a turn! I've gotten better at watching out for this but still. If it doesn't create foreknowledge or trial and error which is used to alter the outcome, a reload seems ok to me. The accidental keystroke/mouseclick seems to me to qualify in that sense, it doesn't have those effects.

Reading the spoiler thread before playing also seems clear-cut to me. Reading it would gain a lot of foreknowledge and is therefore disallowed.

BillChin, in response to your note, I know you want feedback from other players as well as top scorers but FWIW here are my thoughts. (I've missed some techniques no doubt, these are the ones I can think of which might be grey.)

1) Abusing a Right of Passage: Seems completely ok to me. Unless used with a rival who is not in contact with anyone else, the consequence is severe and appropriate, no one else will ever give a ROP again in the game. Quite a penalty, higher than I'm willing to pay. If used with the last rival, it doesn't really matter, the game is in hand anyway. (I view being able to renege on my last ROP as the prize for being good with everyone else :) And it still isn't free if you are milking the game and leaving a rival.)

2) Worker factories (size 6/7 city with 10 shields producing 1 worker/turn): I've only ever built one in two games. It sure is useful and does seem unintentionally easy. But I don't think it is a game-maker/breaker, it isn't that high on the scale of usefulness to be worth excluding. Although a worker factory can produce more than it should, there is still some cost - a busy city, and each worker counting toward one's military force count. The benefit of building these doesn't seem to me to change the game balance significantly, so I don't think we need a rule banning their use.

3) Drafting: I haven't used this so I am probably not the best person to comment on it. Perhaps I don't understand how powerful it can be. From my perspective it just doesn't look like a good thing to do. I know that I've drafted a bit in times of emergency, but don't even remember the last time I did it. I don't want conscript (2 HP) defensive units counting toward my military unit count. So from my perspective this need not be disallowed, I don't find it worth doing.

4) City-trading tricks: I'm not the best person for this either, I haven't used tricks based on city trading. But again, from what I've read, I don't feel it necessary to disallow them. Aeson posted a nice description of a neat one he found, taking advantage of a blind spot in the AI. It didn't seem to me like a game-altering technique. Although it can be used to gain advantage, it takes a lot of work, the gain doesn't seem huge, and there is some built-in cost in the territory one must dedicate to the purpose.

5) Pop rushing: I left this to last because it is to my mind the fuzzy one. I think most of us agree that pop rushing is powerful beyond the game's intent. It is definitely game-altering, my scores would be significantly lower without it. And many of us think that perhaps it alters the game negatively. Still, I'm not sure that it is important to disallow it. I think that the most important thing for GOTM is a level playing field. In that regard allowing pop rushing is fine. But also important is balancing the game if we can, reducing the military emphasis which goes with pop rushing. The big problem would be to have a simple and clear rule. Ideally pop rushing would just be less over-powering. I don't think we can do that, it would have to come from Firaxis. A self-imposed rule which tries to say "you can't over-use pop rushing" seems impossible, there would have to be a defined limit which everyone would interpret the same way. A rule like "you can rush at most X units from any city" seems too awkward to me. Would people have to (and be able to) keep track of whether and how often they'd rushed in each city? The only remaining choice I can think of would be a rule which simply says "no pop rushing". That's clear and easy to follow. I think it could be fun to try one GOTM with that as a rule and see how it works out. Does anyone else think that would be fun to try? I'd like to make the rule a tad more specific actually: "no pop rushing of units". I think that pop rushing of city improvements is not an over-powered technique, and should still be allowed. It can be very useful in quickly reducing the potentially rebellious population of a captured city. If it were not available that would just increase the already high incentive to raze and replace instead of capturing.

Finally, a note about reloading and Domination: My vote would be to make a special exemption to the "no reloading" rule for GOTM. To explicitly allow reloading after a turn which results in an unwanted Domination victory. It was sad to see the number of ruined (well, disappointed at least) games in the GOTM#3 spoiler thread caused by unwanted Domination victories. It was not skill, just dumb luck, that I wasn't one of them. To my mind it is a serious flaw/bug in the game that there is nothing in any of its windows showing one's progress toward the Domination goal. It should be possible to see any win or loss condition as it is approaching so that one can try to control the outcome. As long as Domination is enabled, the highest 2050 score in a GOTM is likely to be heavily influenced by luck related to this victory condition. I think that explicitly allowing a reload to avoid accidental Domination would be a good thing, it would level the playing field and it would remove the sad frustration/disappointment of players who get blind-sided by it.

I'm sorry but the way this poll is worded,it's a guarenteed victory for no re-loading.The author betrays his opinion that re-loading is cheating.

When I viewed the poll 7 of 14 respondants said never ever.
Jeez I was gonna give it a 50% liar weighting,seems that's a little low. the 7 who responded never ever are liars,my game crashes sometimes forcing re-loading and usually losing a whole 20 min+ turn.
Seems the liar factor fo this poll is 75%,so therefore 90% of the respondants do some form of re-loading.

Originally posted by marshalljames
I'm sorry but the way this poll is worded,it's a guarenteed victory for no re-loading.The author betrays his opinion that re-loading is cheating.
But it is! It is, damn it!

Are you so supernatural blind??! SirPleb does not ever reload, but he won! He's just plain good.

Man, can't you see how overwhelmingly spoiling reloading is? Only if no one reloads we'll get a useful ranking. If not, the results are totally utterly meaningless!!! We might as well drop the whole issue, delete the Game of the Month section and the only challenge that is left is a Hall of Fame score.

:cry:

To marshalljames:

Yeah sure! :crazyeyes

Simply because you don´t believe that some people could be far more skilled in playing Civ3 than you doesn´t give you the right to call all high scorers cheaters. :nono:
There are certainly quite a few who really believe in the CODE OF HONOR which is the basis for this GOTM. And there are surely those who never reload, either because they take their time for every turn or/and because they don´t want to.

I myself have voted that I only reload when pressing the wrong button, but this has only happened 2 or 3 times in my GOTMs. And my Civ3 runs smoothly on my computer, I only had one pre-patch crash, after the patch no more problems.
And there are many others who don´t have a problem either!

I disliked your way of posting from the first one I saw! :mad:
If you really think most of us are lying and cheating then please go somewhere else and do your whining there.
Unless you have some constructive arguments and ideas to improve the GOTM experience, stop writing these accusing and insulting posts!!!
Thank you.

And please don´t take this post as a reason to start a flame war here, we have more than enough of these in the main Civ3 forum.

Btw, the `author` of this poll is the GOTM administrator and moderator, so he surely knows what he is doing!

Originally posted by marshalljames
the 7 who responded never ever are liars,my game crashes sometimes forcing re-loading and usually losing a whole 20 min+ turn.

Because of the limited options presented, a person who only reloads because of a crashes, or not playing the whole game in one sitting, their best option would be "never ever". I may be wrong, but this is how I interpretted the responses. No poll is ever going to have all the requisite responses listed. One that did would be useless, as every person would have a slightly different answer. The whole point of a poll is to see where the general consensus is, not in having each individual response in it's own category.

Well Lucky,before you go shooting your mouth of I suggest you get your facts straight.
1) I never said I was In favour of re-loading,just that it is naive to think it doesn't happen and therefore should be considered to even the playing field.
2)there are 1000's of better players than me and higher scores does not equal cheating
3)Sorry but endles drafting at pop 7 is cheating not an exploit
4)If "Exploits" are to be allowed then Shift Bombard is a legitimate strategy.
5)my original post was to test the waters as I was about to wiped out,and had given the game up but after reading the pop rush strategy I started where I left off(last night) and have completely turned things around.From being just about to be wiped out I am now holding my own and might even win.what a simple game this is when you know a few "exploits"
And Matrix I think lucky 's post come close to a personal attack against me.I'll whine all I want.

Absolute power corrupts Absolutely

This was no personal attack, I just critizised your way of posting!
And of your so called facts I mentioned only nr. 2) in my post. Please read it fully before you jump to any conclusions!

And you are the one who is insulting in his posts:
Let me quote:the 7 who responded never ever are liars
...
Seems the liar factor for this poll is 75%And in another post:And to think that people do not take advantage of this is naive and ludicrous. I will call you a liar.Another:I had a bad feeling that SOME not all of the high scores were exploiting loopholes in thegame. I consider every trick you mentioned to be cheating.Their is obviously rampant cheating going on in this competition making the results meaningless.
In all 8 of your 9 total posts you openly accuse and insult anyone who tries to play the GOTM fair and square without cheating. That is what I consider personal attacks.
So don´t come me with "help, he spoke out against me".
Thank you!

Lucky, now you are starting a personal attack. Don't. It's just marschaljames' (perhaps for you irritating) way of posting.
Originally posted by marshalljames
1) I never said I was In favour of re-loading,just that it is naive to think it doesn't happen and therefore should be considered to even the playing field.
Lucky never said you said that. :p But it's not naive. Still you just can't believe some's this good.
Originally posted by marshalljames
3)Sorry but endles drafting at pop 7 is cheating not an exploit
That's your opinion. Besides, that is also not the issue here. We are purely talking about reloading.
Originally posted by marshalljames
And Matrix I think lucky 's post come close to a personal attack against me.I'll whine all I want.
Just let me be the judge of that. No one's flaming each other here. At least not anymore. That counts for the both of you!

Ok, sorry. :o
I´ll stop now!

But I do feel a bit insulted by mj´s posts and I´m sure a lot of others aren´t comfortable with his insulting posts either.
I simply do not like to be called a liar!

Bye! :D

I never said you were a liar or that all high scores were posted by liars.What I did say was in response to this notion that everyone is honest and their is some kind of code of honor that keeps folks from posted re-loaded games.
Some adhere to this most do not that is my point,I'll say it again

ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY

Originally posted by marshalljames
ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY
I don't understand what you mean with this.

In any case, I'm convinced that the top players of the GOTM do not reload occationally. While some middle class players think everyone's cheating, like you marschalljames, so why not do it yourself? You only bring yourself in disadvantage if you don't.

I say again: if a lot of people reload on a regular basis, the ranking doesn't mean a sh*t. The whole idea is to compare the quality of different players, which is invisible if some people reload more often than others. Also, the GOTM is not about playing the most perfect game. It's purely about how you perform in relation to others.

Finally, the goal of this thread was not to convince you (and a few other readers) about why not to reload, but about how I can reach every GOTM player and convince him/her not to reload. Because it seems by the poll that a lot of people don't give a damn about what I just said.

Originally posted by marshalljames
I'm sorry but the way this poll is worded,it's a guarenteed victory for no re-loading.The author betrays his opinion that re-loading is cheating.

When I viewed the poll 7 of 14 respondants said never ever.
Jeez I was gonna give it a 50% liar weighting,seems that's a little low. the 7 who responded never ever are liars,my game crashes sometimes forcing re-loading and usually losing a whole 20 min+ turn.
Seems the liar factor fo this poll is 75%,so therefore 90% of the respondants do some form of re-loading.

I think that it is possible to get a high score without reloading; it just takes some time and effort. In my case I find that in order to maximize my score, you need to micro-manage everything (cities, workers, military units, other civ's). This along with a good military strategy (offensive, defensive or both depending upon your playing style) will help you to get a high score. Most important of all, is to come to the forums and read what other people are doing and give what works for others a try, it just might work for you.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely means that if you have the power and no one can stop you,you will use the power to your up-most advantage.
Seems the poll is bearing me out with now 40% re-loading because things don't go there way.
And adding a error factor of 10%(note lucky I didn't use that nasty L word),of the 85? People who submitted games 43 re-loaded.
It's to bad because the results are meaningless except for the top5(these players know better strategies than re-loading).
So all though I AM NOT IF FAVOUR of re-loading I think it should be allowed to make it fair for the honest player.Because you have no way of telling whether a person did or did not re-load.So if you allow it some players will re-load some won't but the scores will be more evenly balanced.
I am much more afraid that some players know some cheesy little tricks.An example would be using the letter b to bombard anywhere on the map.I have used this strategy on home games and it confuses the hell out of the puter when roads to their resouces start dis-appearing.

<<Finally, a note about reloading and Domination: My vote would be to make a special exemption to the "no reloading" rule for GOTM. To explicitly allow reloading after a turn which results in an unwanted Domination victory. It was sad to see the number of ruined (well, disappointed at least) games in the GOTM#3 spoiler thread caused by unwanted Domination victories.>>

perhaps it would be easier if whoever makes the next gotm simply disallowed domination victories from the beginning. would others be in favor of that?

No I am not.

It took hours for me to choose to grab an other city or not. It is part of the thrill to get much land and milk the map.

If you are to greedy it is your own fault.:lol:

So this is a comparison of skill; and if you are skilled enough you won´t win by accident.

And to all of you:

Don´t reload!

I am very proud of my #10 place in the global ranking. I don´t want to loose it to a cheater.
If I have to loose it I want to loose it to a better player and no one else.

@ MJ
"It's to bad because the results are meaningless except for the top5(these players know better strategies than re-loading)" - ????
Who do you think you are? Go and play Civ elsewhere if you don´t like the people around here.
I never had the feeling that anyone here is going to offend anybody. But you are going to give me a bad feeling with your allegations.
No one will trick you. Not me and not anybody out there.

I think that many of the "exploits" here like city trading can be seen as tactics. And we ´re here to discuss tactics...

@ Matrix
I feel a littel bit surprised that there are some reloaders.
But please don´t stop the GotM because of them.
It is so much fun.

Originally posted by Taé Shala
@ Matrix
I feel a littel bit surprised that there are some reloaders.
But please don´t stop the GotM because of them.
It is so much fun.
I sympathize, Taé. And I won't quit the GOTM, ever. But surely you can see as well how destructive reloaders can be?

Point that rests now is: how can we convince everyone not to reload? Should it be in big flashing bold letters on the download page "Do not reload ever!"?

Dear Spacecadet er spacegirl,
And who do you think you are little girl,maybe you should go back to your little dream world where everyone wears a happy face.
Assuming that you didn't cheat,you didn't get that top ranking by being nice to AI civ's.You, lied,theived and coerced the ai out of it's land.And if you didn't maybe you can explain how you get the ai the give you their land?Tell me it's because your such a wonderful person...

Hey Marshall,

don't you ever get tired of these kind of discussions?

ERIKK :D

(No offence, just asking...)

Betraying the AI is somewhat different than betraying fellow CivFanatics. :rolleyes:

You clearly miss the spirit of the game, marshalljames. You think cheating is a common thing. That everyone who plays the GOTM wants to prove himself with whatever means.

I don't know where you were grown up and what kind of evil world you live in, but we like to enjoy ourselves. The fact that you think that everyone cheats is simply flawed.

@MJ

:) :) ;) Look, I´m surrounded by people smilling at me.... :) :cool: :lol:

Typical.....Shoot the messenger.
MJ

Excuse me but exactly where did I say I submitted re-loaded games.In a democracy it's innocent until proven guilty.

No one agrees with you, marshalljames. And you're not a messenger as I and the top players know even more than you do. ;)

I suggest we rest this case. If people reload then there is nothing much we can do about it except to note specifically why you shouldn't, as I've stated on the rules page (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3gotm/civ3gotm_rules.shtml). But I have good faith everyone will read that and as a result listen to the call not to reload. :)

Marshalljames, you might think a lot of people are cheating. But you've also said you yourself do not cheat. Please keep it that way. ;) Don't become that wicked. Because then we don't care what your opinion is.

Let's hope we've convinced the few that voted they reload often by this thread and by the rules page.

Originally posted by marshalljames
Typical.....Shoot the messenger.
MJ

When the messenger brings their own opinion, they deserve the just rewards of their actions.

On a side note, anyone remember playing Castles II? I loved the "behead him" option regarding foreign diplomats! And then if you regained your composure and didn't follow through with the beheading, everyone proclaimed how self-composed a leader you were...

And you're not a messenger as I and the top players know even more than you do.


Sorry but until I mentioned re-loading,it was not a topic of discussion.This makes me the messenger.Also I never claimed to know more than anyone about this game,just a little about human nature.(yea yea I know a little knowledge....)
Also take note that all the exploits you have deemed legal are now patched out and therefore deemed illegal by firaxis.
What a bummer all that discusion just to have it patched out.
And please don't take any of my rhetoric personal it was not meant to be an attack on anyone.I think GOTM are great and well thought out.I would like to see a dip/cul/space victory only games.

Originally posted by marshalljames
Also take note that all the exploits you have deemed legal are now patched out and therefore deemed illegal by firaxis.
What a bummer all that discusion just to have it patched out.Ofcourse I never wanted that these exploites existed at all. But now that they did, I and others didn't want to bring the GOTM player into...too tight clothes. ("keurslijf" in Dutch http://www.straland.com/images/smilies/undecided.gif) With other words: I didn't legalize it because I thought it's a legal part of the game, but to make it easier to play. Otherwise you had to keep thinking whether your actions are legal during playing.

Ah well, I can't bring it in the right words. Be glad it doesn't matter now. ;)
Originally posted by marshalljames
And please don't take any of my rhetoric personal it was not meant to be an attack on anyone.I think GOTM are great and well thought out.Good to hear that! :)

Oh, reloading is OK when you press the wrong button? I didn't know that. I've hit the wrong button a few times and just lived with it. Thought that was the rule. Found out that wrong button mistakes aren't killer errors anyway. Not really worth the trouble of reloading anyway.:D

Originally posted by Matrix

We might as well drop the whole issue, delete the Game of the Month section and the only challenge that is left is a Hall of Fame score.
:cry:

Please don't think Hall of Fame is an escape for reloaders. The same rules apply there as well for reloading.

I haven't yet started playing the GotM, having had Civ3 a shorter period of time than most of you, thanks to residing in Central America. I would have played this month, but I thought I would play my first game on Emperor level on my own first, rather than having my first try at that level be on the GotM(rather chicken of me I know:crazyeyes ), but now that I am about to win the one I am playing, and feel fairly comfortable I know my way around enough to not embarass myself, I will be playing them in the future. Having said all that, I would like to weigh in on the no reload issue....

The rules are no reloading. Reloading is therefore a nono. While you may be able to run your score up higher by doing a reload, there is no satisfaction in gaining a score that way, and anyone who is reloading just to boost their score is making a mistake in that they are not improving their own play. If I am just enjoying myself playing a game where I feel the need to reload for some reason, I have no problem doing that, but that game isnt something being compared to other folks results.

Shame there isn't an IronMan setting in this game, like Alpha Centauri, eh?

("keurslijf"

I think the english equivelent would be straight-jacket.

Does this mean.."Oh jeezz that's right I was suppossed to move that cavalry unit there to protect those 33 workers before I wiped the Persians ooooooops......what a silly 'bunt' I am"

Originally posted by marshalljames
Does this mean.."Oh jeezz that's right I was suppossed to move that cavalry unit there to protect those 33 workers before I wiped the Persians ooooooops......what a silly 'bunt' I am"

For those :confused: :frog:, who do not understand/comprehend what pressing the wrong key (fat fingering) is here is a simple scenario, that maybe you will understand. :enlighten

In the pre 1.17 patch, you did not have the ability to move a stack of units as one ; you would have to move each individually. Example, moving a stack of 16 captured workers to a pollution site on a hill or mountain. While going through the repetitive process of moving the workers, you accidentally move the tank that was about to take one of your enemies' cities onto a mountain square. This is a valid reason to reload, as the only reason the unit was moved was by accident.:rolleyes:

"While going through the repetitive process of moving the workers, you accidentally move the tank that was about to take one of your enemies' cities onto a mountain square"

Well according to the way the rules are,that's cheating,and is not allowed.I suggest that your game of the month not be submitted as you have openly admitted re-loading therefore cheating.

Marshall is right! How about this one:

"When misclicking your galley, you loose your settler and galley but discover new land"

It's an accident but reloading would be cheating.... Just don't reload at all!

ERIKK

It should be NO RE-LOADING PERIOD,only if the game crashes.That's it.......'Cause someday this game will be multi-player and on-line and try that on me when your about to wipe me out the game and you know what the answer will be be.Same goes for the scout...dead.....instantly....

Or accept re-loaded games but rank them below defeat no-reloading.I think many would find this acceptable and re-loaders wouldn't have to feel guilty for falsely sub-mitting re-loaded games or excluded..my 2 cents

Originally posted by marshalljames
Well according to the way the rules are,that's cheating,and is not allowed. I suggest that your game of the month not be submitted as you have openly admitted re-loading therefore cheating.
That is allowed because you didn't mean to.

I'm not that harsh, marshalljames. That's just silly. The GOTM is a casual contest.
Originally posted by ERIKK
"When misclicking your galley, you loose your settler and galley but discover new land"
And that's an extraordinary situation. Good luck comes with bad luck. In such a case you should play on.

Guess what? In the current GOTM, I accidentally moved my galley in a wrong direction which would mean a pikeman wouldn't be in a city in that turn (with enemy at the city border). Therefore I reloaded. To your suggestion my game is now invalid. Bad luck I'm the administrator. :p Perhaps therefore you shouldn't play the GOTM anymore since it's corrupt. :rolleyes:

All I'm saying, give me a break here! Again: it's casual. Reloading all the time means f*cking up the ranking, but we do keep it fun.

I reload a lot and so therefore I dont submit a score to the GotM, but I really enjoy playing it and reading the spoiler threads to see how everyone else handled the game.

It would be nice if the developers would have had a built in program that counted everytime you reloaded IN the game, and ignored it when you started the game. Or at least, have a special game-level: Ironman game. You would only have one savegame, and the game autosaves for you at all times, and it's unallowed to reload and save, unless you start the game. They have that in wizardry8 for example. The only way one can reload in the game is to make a backup of the savegames everytime you want to save.

But sadly these are only civ3-dreams... there is no way of stopping people from cheating. That is why I stopped playing civ3...no wait, wiz8 was the big reason...

I actually feel quite annoyed when I look at the civ2 savegames too. There is no way people can have that much luck in combat. I know they don't use only diplomats to take over cities.

I haven't looked into the saved games folder very much but couldn't you tell if a game was reloaded by looking at the last modified date and time in windows explorer of the .sav file? This obvious requires the entire list of savegames for the GOTM be reviewed either by sending them all (not al all pratical) or by looking at a couple of submitted screenshots of explorer (subject to photshop edits). Both of these is against the whole spirit of the competition though in my opinion as it really isn't an honor code system any longer.

Has anyone tried to contact Firaxis and see if there is any help they might be able to offer the community? Alot of other game developers are pretty up on helping out the community from time to time and this seems like a noble cause. Sometimes it just takes a polite request from the right fan site people. Perhaps they could add some simpe no reload option that would overwrite the sav game file with each new save so that the most a person could do is reload the last turn. They know the code better than anyone and perhaps they could clue a code savy Civ player into how to write a special .bat or .exe file that would launch the GoTM and keep it "pure".

It never hurts to ask and see what we get. Even just some simple help could allow the community to fix the problem themselves without a tedious and probably illegal decompile of the software.

Considering Civ3 GOTM is meant to be ...
a very casual contest
... people are taking the reloading issue rather seriously ...

:p

btw I can't submit this month's GOTM (which was my first GOTM attempt) because I started again (from the 4000BC save) after losing the first time very early on.

I agree with the sentiment (don't reload) but I think you've just got to trust that people won't/don't ... it's (as you said) a casual contest, and in any case there's nothing you can do about 'it' in the first place.

So relax? :)

It seems that a flag in the saved game file that could disable the save game feature except as part of the Quit Game function would solve our problem. However, it would be a pain regarding fat fingers.

-Durendal

You will never eliminate reoladers. Some people cheat at anything ~ every game i have played from chess to MMORPG's has its share fo folks who want to win or be seen to ubah by others whether they possess skill or not.

The concept of milking a score is somewhat bizare to me but to each his own. I guess i can see that some folks want to complete a "masterpiece game", but to me the time spent isnt worht the reward. Similarly "exploitive tactics" are not something im fond of. I try to win the game as its design implies it should be played, not through exploiting the bugs in the ai. I think a reasonable approach is to look at a exploit and assess how reasonable this is in the context fo the game. Pop rushing carries its own penalties like rop breach. Now whehter the penalties are sufficiently severe is another question. Trading territory is not entirely unreasonable in concept, but the notion that these cities revert back is to some degree. It is a subject open to debate. I try to look at things in their political/historical context. Pop rushing has a rough equivalnet in slave/despotic states for example. Maybe pop rushed units should be of lower grade like conscripts.


The domination reload smacks of cheating to me perhaps more than any of the other things mentioned.

Anyway jsut my humble opinions. As to crashing i do find the game crashes occasioanlly, not frequently. Relaistically a game crash can be recovered on the same turn so this is hardly a significant issue generally. I found tweaking a few things on the pc reduced the crashes for me. But generally a reload to the same turn is hardly a major significance. Perhaps oif more cosnequence early in the game than later when the map is well known and u can more readily assess your opponent. On the other hand crashes more likely to occur later than ealrier. Cant see this si a significant point.

Oh well enough rambling :)

i never reload.why?
because i have honor.
in the world of games eveyone wants to be the best
and some players are cheating for that(in this case reloading)
but i think it will get you more satisfaction if you played it fair (no reloading) then you can say if you are good or not
and if you have a good result you will be happier then if you where cheating (reloading) that is my opinion and probably the opinion of many gamers