First, I know it is a great deal of work to put on the GOTM's and for this effort Matrix and everyone else who helps should be applauded.

Things are getting big enough that we need to have a little bit better quality control.

I just fiddle faretd around for over a day to get the GOTM10 save files to download successfully and found several things that I think we can and should do:

First, the downloads are getting huge at 36MB and this is in someways self defeating. Fewer people will download and study the game results if the downloads are excessive. There should be one download file that contains the top 5 or 6 scoring finishes for the game plus the fastest three finishes by victory type. All the other game saves should be in the other zip file. There should be no overlap or duplication between the zips. Added together they should equal the total game package.

Game submissions that do not include a save file should not be included in the results in anyway. In GOTM10 there are a number of very notable games that are missing from the save files in the zip.

Games that wish to be eligible for Fastest finish awards of any kind must be able to submit an earlier save game file. We do not need 10AD or 1000BC save files on every game in order to learn something from the comparative play experiences but for the fastest finish games an earlier save game should be supplied. The 1000BC save file will work well for early conquest and domination victories prior to 200AD and then the 10AD file will continue to fill most other education needs.

It is very reasonable and expected to have spectacularly early finishes relative to all the other games fall into a category of "lets look at these games to see if we can learn something." Having the save files for these games easily accessible is very important.

As a final "good thing to do", the save files for some of the most spectacular games should be verified to be compressed and then just linked into the result table directly so that they can be individually downloaded. The should probably not be a lot of these games, but having them easily downloadable is very important to fulfill the learning mode objectives of the GOTM.

I agree with you, cracker. I think 1000BC save is very helpful for early finish analyse. I save control points for every of my games in 3000, 2000, 1000BC and further every 100 years. It helps me to discuss my game in the spoiler and to compare it with other. I'm ready to send these saves if it will be necessary.
And agree with that fact I want to download the leaders saves only.;)

I can't find the alain's .SAV in GOTM10.zip container.:(

What! Alain's .sav isn't in there? How can we be awarding fast finishes to people who don't have a save!?!

I hope this was/is just a mistake and Matrix has alain's .sav file around somewhere.

It should be, if there is no .sav file = no data entered for you.

I know of one case where someone lost their .sav file, but it was someone who has participated in many GOTM's and that was the only game where he failed to supply a .sav. And he didn't even get an award anyways. And he had well documented how his game was progressing in the spoiler thread and elsewhere.

Here is alain's game.

We already noticed alain cheated (very very likely). He will be removed by the next results. :)

I think it's a good idea to split the results into all savegames and the best games, instead of the current difference. ;)

By the way, I think the GOTM police is doing a great job right now. Due to ainwood's help we can already check how many times someone has reloaded his game (we won't tell you how :p) and furthermore they are simply smart!! :goodjob:

Also, in the future ainwood might be able to get the score from the savegame without actually having to end the game ourselves (which does require a savegame after the game has ended) which will also be very helpful for checking results...

In short, a lot is going on behind the scenes which is actually just because we don't want others to know how we check for cheaters. :)

Originally posted by Matrix
Due to ainwood's help we can already check how many times someone has reloaded his game (we won't tell you how :p) and furthermore they are simply smart!! :goodjob:


I don’t know how way you check the number of reloads but don’t entangle the number of reloads with number of saves. I often do the temp save because I don’t want to replay all turn if I do mistake click. It’s my old habit. I do it automatically.

Well Serg, in principle you have autosave for that. But I can comfort you: if you save, but don't continue from that savegame it does not affect that "counter". ;)

Thanks for that further clarification Matrix. I think there may have been a revolt by the "couple of hours every now and then" brigade.

We even have GOTM players who play during their lunchtimes at work. :cooool:

Hm. I can think of ways to count the number of reloads.
But I save and reload often solely because I play only a few turns at a time.
Would there be a way to count multiple restarts from the same savegames? Now that would be a somewhat useful indicator!

Wow! What a great development! I was actually hatching a plan to find out when the saves were reloaded but Ainwood and the lot of you beat me to it. Nice work! :goodjob:

Maybe you shouldn't yet change the notice on the GOTM Main which says something like "Because we cannot check this, we'll have to trust in your good honesty." You could really catch a school of fish. :lol:

Though it might seem cruel. Screw pity! ;)

Originally posted by Matrix

By the way, I think the GOTM police is doing a great job right now. Due to ainwood's help we can already check how many times someone has reloaded his game (we won't tell you how :p) and furthermore they are simply smart!! :goodjob:

Also, in the future ainwood might be able to get the score from the savegame without actually having to end the game ourselves (which does require a savegame after the game has ended) which will also be very helpful for checking results...

In short, a lot is going on behind the scenes which is actually just because we don't want others to know how we check for cheaters. :)

I'm sure there is alot of anxiety about this saving and loading.

The rules don't really explain how a player should end a turn and game session, then resume.

So:
You should have auto save on. When you want to end a session of civ you should finish the current game turn which then allows the autosave to save your game at the beginning of what will be your next turn.

To resume the game on your next session of Civ you have to load the last saved game in your auto save directory. If you play several other games, you would need to archive your auto save games and restore them before your next session.

That's it.

Probably 98% of all players are not doing this. The proper procedure should be added to the rules for next GOTM (please, someone with better literary skills write it up.)

I did this GOTM (12) using this procedure as a test/control to help verify the result with the testing procedure.

hmm... I saw alain's game and boy will he have a hard time explaining that sack of sh*t.

considering that he hardly has any SODs - the most units in a stack he has is 2, I for one think this was a game of "extreme-reloads." He sent one fast unit per city. By reloading much he got a lot of them easy (or not so easy - it takes quite a lot of patience to see one horseman win :lol: ). Could also explain why he lost a lot of captured cities along the way.

Also the first city he captured (Tenochtitian) was still finishing its barracks as the game ends. In fact he has no other barracks other than the ones he had on each of his 3 core cities. So he only had three cities to build his puny but highly successful army of veteran horsemen. :hmm:

The Iroquis also had swordsmen (road-connected iron). That would have been enough to deter any attack against them. Alain did not even concentrate forces to take Salamanca since he also took Washington at the same turn!!

I'd better stop now. It's pointless anyway. :lol:

CB,

Sounds like this counter could get thrown off by not swapping out the auto saves when switching between games? When I was playing GOTM's I almost always had 2 or 3 other games I'd switch to to break up the monotony of milking (especially the HOF games). Throw in the games I'd check for information for posts here and at poly, testing different game concepts in scenarios, and loading up other people's games to look at... it would seem this counter could get really out of whack. Of course I don't know exactly how it works... I guess what I'm wondering is if this is a foolproof checking mechanism? A few questions in particular:

If playing a game where you have been reloading (say testing a game concept like corruption which involves a lot of saving and reloading), does the counter reset if you open up a new save (say the GOTM) and start playing regularly? Or would it carry over?

Would game crashes have any effect on the counter? (I'm guessing not, but just to be sure)

Is saving to a non-auto save different than an autosave? I always liked to save before the end of turn, because I'd take care of diplomacy then, and the leader heads had a habit of crashing the game quite often. Also the end of turn phase was a bit prone to crashes as well. So saving before hitting spacebar just saved me from having to replay a turn if those crashes did occur.

Honestly, if the proceedure you describe had been necessary to play the GOTM's, I never would have played any of them. The games themselves (at least to score well) already provide enough micromanagement to drive a person a bit insane. Having to manage libraries of autosaves on top of that would just be too much.

---------------

As for alain's game, I looked at the replay and I don't think it's all that incredible. They didn't even get a settler from the first hut, which I'd think would be a no brainer if you were going to cheat. A 370BC conquest on Regent isn't impossible (a bit of good luck and it's doable without any form of cheating), especially on a Pangaea map. With massive reloading the date could be much sooner. Without knowing the reload counter specifics I couldn't comment on that side of things though. It does sound like the method isn't a sure thing though, and prone to error.

In short, I hope this doesn't become some sort of witch hunt, where players have to be afraid that they'd be branded a cheater for not knowing the proper way to load up their games, switch between games, or other things which could affect the counter. I also hope that the methods for avoiding false reload counts isn't as involved as it sounds like it would be for an avid civ player. The GOTM is a great competition, mainly because it is so casual and accessable. The focus on cheating seems to have really cut back on the 'casual' portion lately. The cheaters are supposedly the one's who are missing out on the whole concept (play for fun, to learn, to compare), we shouldn't let their possible existance ruin our view of it too.

*goes back to the hex editor to look for reload counters in save files*

CB, I don't know if I agree or even follow you save timing logic. I rarely if ever use the autosave files.

I tend to save at the end of my turn so that when I get distracted for the next day or two and don't get back to the game, then the first thing that happens is the game will be an opportunity for me to watch the results of any moves and production outcomes. Any player who has children under the age of 6 will understand my meaning here.

I know that many players turn all these features off but I find that some of the animations of AI moves give me some really strong strategic hints. Also, the position of the Autosave after the production cycle just puts it in a position where there are about 20 or 30 things I have just seen flash by that remind me of key things I need to do like alter production queues, alter happiness assignments, realign defensive or offensive troop positions.

Alain's rejected game provides no indication of support for the massive reload paranoia that I see in some of these discussions. That game was indicative of a number of other altered play features to gain position advantages that would be impossible under normal game conditions. 2 factor move units cannot attack, heal, and move the equivalent of 12 unroaded squares all in just a two turn sequence.

I do not use reload the back up and replay the active game but it is frequent that I will save a game and break after almost every turn. Complex multi-theatre war events may take me two or three bites at the apple to play the whole sequence. The game itself drives some of this complexity by virtue of its hardcoded unit activation sequence. You have units jumping randomly all over the world as the game presents them in the internal unit number sequence order instead of completing all the moves in a current focus area before jumping around like a flopping fish.

Aeson,

We don't want it to develop into a witch hunt at all. So I would assume some discussion will help clarify any issues. If some guide lines are provided to aid in fair play then we need to formalize them so that everyone is on a even footing. Having 100 loads for a 4 hour game is a bit different than having 400 loads for a 200 hour game. ;)

As for Alain's game I matched the game by playing it out almost exactly by recreation, up to the capture of the Russian capitol (I did get a settler from the very first goody hut just trying to match the exact placement of cites and build queue). However I doubt it is reasonable to know the exact location of each capitol before mapmaking (yes, emabassies will get you the info but you still need that info 30 (not an exact number but used for illustration) turns before you can get a unit from Paris to London), not impossible but... without that information it is pretty hard to direct forces to those locations to meet the capture dates. Hey, the best submission for conquest was something like 1650BC but well it was more humorous than skillful.

cracker,

I also have young kids, I know what you are talking about and what you describe is not the problem. Yep those messages flash by way to quick, wouldn't a log file be nice. I've tried to do screen captures on those suckers and it can take a few attempts to get the shot.

I'm not too happy with any kind of "how many times may you reload a game" guideline.

Some games I can play for a couple of hours at a sitting but recently I've only been able to play for maybe 10 mins then save the game. I continue from my last save each time but I may have up to a hundred saves for a game!

I routinely save anything I'm working on every five minutes! Its a habit that has paid off after years in computing and I'm sure not going to change that now. I rarely use autosave because I manually save so often.

If the discussion is around 'how many times has this particular save been reloaded', thats one thing. I agree that no-one should need to reload a save more than once or twice max.

If the discussion is around 'how many times has the game been reloaded from saves' - thats something else.

Its essential to try to root out cheaters but NOT at the cost of killing the competitions.

Originally posted by col

Its essential to try to root out cheaters but NOT at the cost of killing the competitions.

What would you think of reloading 74 times in a 370BC victory? (That's a game with about 108 turns or so).

As for saving, IMO it doesn't really matter how you do it.

I think that's not very often if you need to win every battle against the odds and get settlers from every hut .... ;)

I hit CTRL-S at least every 5mins. I dont reload most of those saves.

Are we talking about a counter that says this save has been reloaded 10 times or are we talking about a counter that says this game has been reloaded 10 times??

If someone has 74 separate saves in a short game, its Ok. I save every few turns in the early game and every turn later on.

If someone has reloaded a single save 10 times, this is NOT acceptable. It strongly suggests reloading to get a different result.

Can we differentiate between these two possibilities?

It is my understanding that the saves are not counted. You can save as often as you like and it does not change the counter. If you were to save every turn for the entire game and play all the way to the end iron man style with no loading of saved games then the counter would read 0.

What is counted is the number of times a game is loaded (reloaded) from a saved game. In the case of 74 reloads by 370 BC, the game was loaded from a saved game 74 times. It was probably saved quite a bit more than that. Only the reloads were counted.

Col, I agree with you on the saving. It is something I do an awful lot of after years of practice and getting burned with a PC lockup or power failure, etc. Towards the end of the game when I am milking I save almost every turn.

Because Preserve Random Seed is ON in most GOTMs replaying the battle gets the same result.

Serg, the battle results are the same if you only replay the same turn. If you go back 2 turns or reload and choose not to attack the turn you lost last time, by waiting one turn you get a whole new set of results and it is very possible to win. The same can be done with goodie huts. If you don't like the results reload, wait a turn and try again. Repeat as necesary to get what you want.

I think very few people do this, but it is very easy to do.

In GOTM 12 I've probably reloaded about 100 times!

That is I've saved my game and reloaded each save once and carried on later.

Reloading one save 10 times is unacceptable.

Its NOt the counter of how many times I've reloaded the game that matters, its how many times THAT save was reloaded.

If I understand, the counter being discussed tells how many times the GAME has been reloaded. I dont think this is useful information unless it exceeds the number of turns so far.

You can also change he outcomes by doing them in a different order either by attacking in a different order or moving in a different order.

I don't know exactly how many times I'm reloading while play the GOTM. 20-50 times I mean. Sometimes I do 1/2 units movements of the turn and begin thinking what to do further. If I havn't inspiration I quit the game and return some hours later (if have got time).:rolleyes:

Originally posted by col
If someone has 74 separate saves in a short game, its Ok. I save every few turns in the early game and every turn later on.

If someone has reloaded a single save 10 times, this is NOT acceptable. It strongly suggests reloading to get a different result.

Thats true, I think you must be allowed to save as much as you want. BUT reloading the same save more than once suggests that you are trying to manipulate the results by excessive reloading and that shoud not be allowed.

I think more important is to be able to provide more then the last savegame. For example, if you can provide 3000bc 2000bc 1000bc 500bc and 10 AD saves when asked to, if someone finds your game sucpicious, those usually show lot more reliably if someone has done exessive reloading in the start.

If the .SAV file contains all units movement history the GOTM Police could extract this info and check. If not contain the saves at 3000,2000,1500,1000,500BC and some other points may be helpful. But it is a big value archive. Do the moderators agree with this?

Originally posted by Serg
If the .SAV file contains all units movement history the GOTM Police could extract this info and check. If not contain the saves at 3000,2000,1500,1000,500BC and some other points may be helpful. But it is a big value archive. Do the moderators agree with this?

I dont think any gotm players hard disks get full if they store for example the mentioned saves.
Send only the final save and maybe 10 ad save when submitting, but it would be mandatory to keep these additional saves to yourself, incase moderators wish to see what you have been doing in the past and ask you to submit the whole save stack.

You cant check how many times 1 save has been loaded. (You load a file, you don't change it). But when loading and then saving it will remember you started off a load.

Col, I enjoy your posts a lot- straight to the point! :goodjob:

I agree with you: it is essential to understand if monitoring the number of saves-reloads is really effective.
If there is no way of checking the number of loads from the same saved game, we are only left with the total number of loads -which is of questionable value to spot potential cheaters.

As a side note, it might well be useless even to confirm that one has not cheated: if you check a savegame and only find 3 reloads in 400 turns, well, who tells you that those lonely saves were not made to change the outcome of a battle?

However, let's assume there is a way to obtain this information: I agree that several saves of the SAME game is suspicious (very suspiscious), but as Serg does, there may be legitimate reasons to reload twenty times the same turn.

So, we (ehm... I mean, the moderators...) would have to ask the "suspect" what happened in her game to make her reload so many times. Which means, back to the "honour" system... :confused:

Originally posted by Karasu

As a side note, it might well be useless even to confirm that one has not cheated: if you check a savegame and only find 3 reloads in 400 turns, well, who tells you that those lonely saves were not made to change the outcome of a battle?

It basically all comes down to common sense and not remote possibilities. If someone had 3 loads in a 400 turn game it's less likely he reloaded for battle outcome than someone with a 108 turn victory and 74 loads. Especially if that particular game looks weird with taking many cities with a few units.
There has also a game been found with 567 loads. Don't know what type of game it was, but as of yet it's the record. I doubt anyone would have 19 playing sessions every day of the month. ;)

There could be lots of reasons why people reload. They could be suffering with Windows ME, taking screen shots, playing multiple games or what ever. The past is the past but in the future if reloads are to be inspected then you expose it to everyone, make a rule and move ahead.

I am afraid there will never be an "automatic cheater detector"...

Which means that the moderators and the "GOTM Police" will anyway have to do some (possibly a lot) of extra work to find them out. And I think they are already doing a lot -to be honest, more than I could do...

Of course, in this sense the loads-counter might be a useful tool in that it provides more information on a game.
But then, it may be more useful to keep a (possibly large) number of saves ready for inspection, as Green Light last said: I think this is an effort any player could be reasonably asked to make, certainly more than submitting to strange saving criteria that could hardly be checked anyway.

This way, If I submit a suspicious game and you want to check it, I have the additional saves to send and my participation to the forum to explain what happened. Failing these, you will mark me as a cheater and ban me from this place. Fair enough.

Checking, say, highest scores and/or fastest games and/or any strange submission would guarantee that the GOTM results are sufficiently "clean": all average players (or less-then-average.. ahem... like me :blush: ) would be sure that you can really be that good and set a hones target for our improvement, and the comparison between the best would be unbiased.

Other than that, I think it is not worth the effort. The game is based on having fun and being honest, as it should be. If someone cheats like hell, submits a low-ranking game and gets unnoticed, well, who cares. He's not making any major damage: just let him have fun his own mediocre way.

There would be a damage if people had to waste their time screening hundreds of save files for him, discussing over his cheats and spreading a spirit of suspicion over the entire GOTM.

GOTM Moderators!
Please, list the savegame rules before the GOTM13.
May be it will be needed to discuss.:)

Originally posted by EEKthedog
It basically all comes down to common sense and not remote possibilities...

You're absolutely right, EEK. My point in the end is we should stick to common sense: your experience (mine too, but yours is certainly greater :P) will tell you a game does not 'look' right, more and better than any tool.

This is why I am always a bit skeptical of new rules and new tools, even though it is tempting to try and solve problems that way...

Originally posted by cracker


Alain's rejected game provides no indication of support for the massive reload paranoia that I see in some of these discussions. That game was indicative of a number of other altered play features to gain position advantages that would be impossible under normal game conditions. 2 factor move units cannot attack, heal, and move the equivalent of 12 unroaded squares all in just a two turn sequence.



There are indications that under certain conditions that reload will allow a unit to heal the next turn when it was actually not entitled to. (That is a game flaw.)

I did not notice the 12 squares in 2 turns maneuvers that you speak of, could you provide a clue? I would assume any of these types of maneuvers were accomplished by separate stacks of units or single units.

There has not been a single game that has been precluded from the results based on the 'load count'. We let many games by based on actual possibility based on the rules as they stand.

Some may say that alain's game was possible without prior map knowledge, but I doubt that they have looked at the game objectively with fair play according to the spirit of the rules in mind.

How many people did not submit games because they cherish their integrity based on their interpretation of the rules?

If someone want's to play alain's result out (even with knowledge of the map) and provide the saves to back it it up, please do. [Except Aeson! :)]

CB their are many of us who play with good intentions. I did not submit a game last month after a crash prior to moving to another game and overwrote my autosaves. DOH! It was late at night!

The majority of participants use the GOTM to have fun and compare their games against others ie. winning isn't everything.

My concern is that a few players have spoilt the casual nature of the GOTM resulting in a air of suspision and doubt.

Please make all rules clear and simple.

It would be pretty hard to duplicate Alain's game. He in fact had to have gotten a settler from a hut. The 2nd city was built exactly 20 turns after the capital was built. For some reason he spent 2 turns moving the settler at the start of the game before building his capital (grabbing a goody hut and getting a tech when I tried it). 20 turns sounds right, because 20 turns is the fastest he could produce that first settler with no bonus resource. However, he needed 21 turns because the settler coming from the capital would take a minimum of 1 full turn to go to it's destination (it had to go 4 tiles, so even if he had roads in place the city wouldn't be created the same turn the settler was complete). So, if he did get a settler from a hut, he had to move it at least 2 tiles if he got it from the closest hut (which coincidently got him access to horses without having to expand it's borders). Some cities I can see him getting through peace treaties (after he had captured their capital), and then just re-declaring war (breaking the treaty of course, but who cares about reputation in an early conquest), but capturing two capitals in the same turn so early in the game is highly improbable, IMO.
It looks like his attacking 'armies' consisted of 1 or 2 units each. And sent 1 unit at each city.
-

Let's say I forgot to save at 10 A.D. and didn't remember until 30 A.D. If I save the game at 30 A.D., go to the autosave, load up the 10 A.D. and save it (without continuing from that save), then go back to my 30 A.D. save and continue will that be suspicious because I had 2 or 3 're-loads' in a short time period? Does the counter even know at what times you load from a save?

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
Let's say I forgot to save at 10 A.D. and didn't remember until 30 A.D. If I save the game at 30 A.D., go to the autosave, load up the 10 A.D. and save it (without continuing from that save), then go back to my 30 A.D. save and continue will that be suspicious because I had 2 or 3 're-loads' in a short time period? Does the counter even know at what times you load from a save?

:lol: Sounds like my normal GOTM routine.

Originally posted by EEKthedog

There has also a game been found with 567 loads. Don't know what type of game it was, but as of yet it's the record. I doubt anyone would have 19 playing sessions every day of the month. ;)

I probably have exceeded that in my HOF submission (took me closer to a month and a half though)! I'm not exacly sure as to the overall number of play sessions, but I would often save and go do something else 2 or 3 times a turn. At one point I had close to 1600 overall workers (700 captured) and for a while a couple hundred tanks in action each turn. Moving workers around was especially boring, and at the peak would take close to 45 minutes a turn. Add in the setting all the specialists by hand each turn, moving military units around and attacking (keeping in mind this was back when you couldn't use 'j' because it would empty your armies out), and setting build orders... and playing through a single turn becomes rather daunting. Then the game would crash half the time I went to diplomacy (so I had to save every turn before that stage, and reload of course if it crashed), and occassionally between turns. Could be 1000+ load count on that game very easily.

If a person were to spend 7 hours a day on their GOTM milking, I don't think that number of loads would be out of the question. That would be an average playsession of around 20-25 minutes, which while milking a game can be too long to deal with. Probably have to be a large/huge map to be likely though.

---------------------

It does sound like this reload counter should only be used to support other more evident claims to cheating. The first game it was quite apparent that something wasn't right, this one I'm not so sure of. The reload count seems high, but maybe this person only had a few minutes to spare at a time? Playing it at work and hiding from the boss... or playing it at home and hiding it from the wife... I was thinking about going through the map and seeing how early it could be beaten (default rules) with reloading. It seems I have been excluded from trying though. ;)

In any case, I think the benefit of the doubt should always go to the player. Better to let some cheaters slip by than to wrongly accuse someone who's innocent.

I find the place of "reload counter". My own is so big...:(

Bamspeedy,

To make this sort of strategy work you need to discover horsemen and writing. Moving the capitol to the sea facilitated making a discovery and moving closer to the prey. The 'slow' start is rewarded with a settler from the goody hut to the north. Items like temples and barracks were built while waiting to produce the first horsemen, a handful of warriors provide early exploration and the popping of goody huts. Temples aid in pop rushing when and if required. A number of cities were won through peace negotiation, that explains the size one cities that are acquired the turn they are founded. Hitting all the capitols first guts each target civ by taking what is likely the most developed city. The under lying skill and knowledge is excellent and I doubt that there are 3-4 people that could play the game to this conclusion even with reloading and having forgone knowledge of the final result.

Aeson,

My first milked game I had some turns that took two hours each. I was ferrying workers from one continent to the other, plus all the other things that one has to do. My initial reaction to the "loading" count was the same as most of the comments made by everyone because I know how long some of those milked games took. It is embarrassing to admit to the time it took to manage thousands of workers, military units, city inspections and micromanagement. I personally don't think it is fair to judge games based on how long each individual can play each session of civ.

Originally posted by Serg
I find the place of "reload counter". My own is so big...:(

I believe that we will be able to determine if the field has been edited. ;)

That of course would be illegal tampering.

Far different from anything that most of you have said about playing Civ3, I actually am happy with the autosave feature and have grown to rely on it even more than manual saving. that is shown by the fact that I only have 17 manual saves from GOTM12. In my engrossment in the game, I even forgot to make that 10AD save and the nearest I have is 130BC. I actually did not save until 230 AD!

All in all that's 17 saves in 4 days and without writing a gamelog while playing it. Removes the boredom factor -- *snaps finger* -- just like that!

Another thing that surprised me was that my first manual save for GOTM12 was not until 630 BC. The cons, though, are that I will not be able to compare my game at, say 1000BC, to same-date screenshots posted at the spoiler thread.

Still, I may not be saying the same if I ever did 'milk' the next GOTMs although I could not think of a reason for doing so.

ps: I imagine that if you need to find that 'reload' key, you need to look for it in autosaves(uncompressed) and not the compressed 'manual-saves', right? ;) After what I saw 'inside' the autosaves you might even find out the build order of each civ (maybe). One thing's for certain though, the first few pages of 'text' in the savefile for each savefile is EXACTLY the same!

ps: i'll be submitting my game as soon as I can decide if I write a gamelog for it or not. looks like too much work for such a good game. :p

Hee Hee! This has really put the proverbial cat amongst the pidgeons, hasn't it! :lol:

I would make a few observations on the previous comments.

1.) We don't want to let people know exactly how the reload counter works, in case they try to edit it. However, I will say that from my testing it appears to be completely reliable. And its not as easy to "edit" as people may think ;)

2.) The counter DOES NOT count the number of saves. Only reloads. Save all you like; if it crashes, then reload. Crashes are infrequent, and it will make little difference to reloads.

3.) The reload counter is only one bit of information that can be used to identify potential cheaters. There are other ones, which I am reluctant to go into for now. ;)



I would suggest that if people find time limitations mean that they are having to play over many sessions, they should submit more saves. The turns at the start of the game are very short, so submit the save at the end of your first session (2000 or 1000 BC for example). If you are taking a long time over many sessions due to milking, then submit a save prior to the milking phase. Eg - if at 800 AD, you have 78% of the land and 10 reloads, and at 2050 AD you are at the domination limit and have 300 reloads, then submitting the 800 AD save will add a lot of credibility to your score, with little effort.


One other issue: When I first load up Civ from the desktop, then choose the save file and load it, the whole process takes around 3 minutes late-game on a reasonably fast PC (1 GHz, 256 MB SDRAM). 4 minutes if I have to boot the PC as well. If someone is making 100 "legitimate" save and reloads (ie starting a new session), then I estimate they are spending around 300 - 400 minutes (thats over 5 hours!) a month just waiting for civ to load and then to load the save game. Perhaps a rationalisation of the playing sessions would be beneficial? :lol:

Simple question if I:

save in 1000BC
go to bed
reload the 1000BC save
Save in 10AD
go to bed
reload the 10AD save
crash
reload the 10AD save
play until completion

Is that counted as 2 or 3 reloads?

Phillip,

For my own (twisted ;) ) reasons, I think that answering this will do more harm than good (I do know the answer FWIW).

Needless to say, crashes are now fairly irregular, and I would expect that a few crashes would not add anything like as many reloads to the count as malicious reloading does. If this has happened to you, then rest-easy.

What I would say though, is how much have you played after 10AD and before the crash? I think that trying to reload from a save-game would be more in the spirit of the game than reloading a save that is potentially 50 or more turns old. :)

My question was (without getting the source code) to see if it distinguished between a set of 'string' reloads (saved to continue later) and a 're-start' reload (same save used more than once). This would be a fair question that players would need to know prior to accepting the GOTM in which the checker is used.

I agree with the concern some players have that grabbing an hour of playing here and there may be seen as a high number of reloads.

I also agree that players should keep more saves in case questions are asked.

ainwood,

I've had several games that crashed about every other turn (mostly in 1.17f). GOTM7 was the worst for me, crashing several times a turn and eventually I just gave up and didn't finish. Just disregarding game crashes as insignificant when considering the reload counter isn't very sound. Crashes may be infrequent for you, but that doesn't mean they are for everyone. 1.29f is certainly more stable for me, I couldn't say if it's more stable for everyone though, just my configuration.

Also I wouldn't think it uncommon for people to be switching inbetween games played, especially when milking. I know I do, it's just too boring otherwise. That could easily account for hundreds of loads over the course of a game. Then you have to account for people's situation, they might not be able to sit down for hours at a time and play a game. If these things do affect the counter (as it sounds like), it doesn't seem very reliable to me. It's just as indicative of length of gaming session, and game stability as it is of reloading.

Firaxis put this counter in, it might mean something that they didn't tout it as an 'anti-reload'.

---------------------------------------

I played through GOTM10 trying to beat alain's conquest date tonight. I'm a bit rusty at early conquest, had so-so luck in combat, but still was able to finish off the last AI at 410BC. I did do some reloading, probably about 30, though I'm not exactly sure yet how the counter works and didn't keep count (partly cause I didn't know which would count ;) ). Most of my reloads were to get a good start, playing with city placement, tech path, and huts. I also tried to explore as though it was my first time on the map, sending warriors west as well as south and east. It certainly could be done without any reloading, although it would require a lot of luck. I'm not sure I believe that alain's game was played by the rules, but it is possible as far as I can tell.

If there is other evidence you guys are holding back, I understand. I personally don't think it's right to keep back that information, makes it impossible to explain or defend for anyone who really is innocent. Also, it really cuts back on the amount of testing that those methods.

Here's the final save.

It seems to me that what we're heading for is that the number of reloads is something to look at for games that have caused suspicion for other reasons and that seems reasonable to me.

Its just another piece of evidence that MAY be used to identify potential cheaters.

Similarly asking for more saves MAY be useful in certain cases.

I'd hate to see a rule about how many saves you're supposed to have, or how you're supposed to save and reload.

Most sports events test the winning competitors in any event. I dont anything wrong with checking out the leading games in each category a little more closely. It seems the early conquest games are the ones to look at most closely.

Not something that is likely to affect me!

Originally posted by col
Not something that is likely to affect me!

You and me both:D

Still I can't help but argue for a system which is clear and understood. If you then break the rules then you get no sympathy.

If rules are vauge and unclear (say, to protect the checking system) then I hope there is a good dose of "due process" before someone is publicly labeled a cheat. I still have not heard a clear ruling on Alain's game!

Originally posted by ainwood
One other issue: When I first load up Civ from the desktop, then choose the save file and load it, the whole process takes around 3 minutes late-game on a reasonably fast PC (1 GHz, 256 MB SDRAM). 4 minutes if I have to boot the PC as well. If someone is making 100 "legitimate" save and reloads (ie starting a new session), then I estimate they are spending around 300 - 400 minutes (thats over 5 hours!) a month just waiting for civ to load and then to load the save game. Perhaps a rationalisation of the playing sessions would be beneficial? :lol:

Takes 20-25 seconds for me (desktop to actually playing). 1.33GHz 512MB. Switching between games only takes a couple seconds...

And me - I like to switch between GOTM / Tournament / RBepic games - and some just for fun.

Takes about 10s to save and laod a different game once civ is running.

Phillip,

I may seek consensus of the GOTM police on releasing the details, although my feeling is that for a genuine player, it makes little difference whether its the same file reloaded again and again, or a continuous game reloaded. However, a requirement to submit an "early" save will help clear this up.

Aeson;

I was thinking of V1.29f with my comments. If people want to protect themselves from suspicion, they could simply keep a save from before the frequent crashes and submit that as supporting evidence.

In terms of the "other" evidence, I don't think you need to worry. Without giving details, the things I am looking for are direct signs of cheating - normal play simply won't result in these circumstances. Rest easy that no-one needs to be 'careful' about the way you play to prevent their game looking suspicious. :)






Aeson,

What I can say is that switching to other games will not confuse the reload counter directly. The reloads counted are game-file specific. The only thing is that when you reload your GOTM game file, the counter will be incremented by one.

Originally posted by Aeson


Takes 20-25 seconds for me (desktop to actually playing). 1.33GHz 512MB. Switching between games only takes a couple seconds...

Looks like I might have to invest in some more ram! :lol:

4 minutes for a save? I have 384Mb RAM with a 700mhz Duron and for me it also takes 20-30 seconds.

Originally posted by EEKthedog
4 minutes for a save? I have 384Mb RAM with a 700mhz Duron and for me it also takes 20-30 seconds.

Maybe it just seems like 3-4 minutes..... I really shold time it. But my PC does tend to spend an age actually loading up the OS, and then loading civ.

I am jealous of you fast booters though!

Personally, I'm not happy with someone being accused in public when there might be doubt. Just not cricket.

I appreciate the work the GOTM police are doing, especially as far as modified .bic files are concerned. Thanks.

The loading and reloading issue worries me. Like Aeson, I tend to switch between games. HOF, GOTM and Tournament. I do that to break some of the boring stages of the middle and end game.

I also enjoy writing my spoilers before I'm finished with the game. That sometimes involves going back to key stages in the game. I try to save these stages specifically for spoilers.

I also tend to perform detail city investigations. Unfortunately this involves screen capturing a city, going out, saving it in Microsoft Photo Editor and going for the next city. Alt tab results in an immediate crash. This will result in reloads for every city investigated. (Not saving and reloading will be cheating in reverse) I perform this detailed spying before engaging in any war and do it a few times during a game.

I will not even mention pressing the wrong buttons during the game. (Like when you are busy bombarding and suddenly you build a stupid colony.)

Nor the fact that my notebook's mouse button that gets stuck. Immediate save exit, swear words, opening of keyboard, further swearing and the reloading.

All these factors results in many reloads during a game, but all in good faith.


A few points on cheating, if I wanted to cheat:
1. I could play the game on two or three PC's. (I do have a few)
2. I could get the world map and start from scratch
3. I could use all kinds of illegal utilities!
4. I could read the spoiler before starting the game


Taking all the factors into account, these competitions cannot take place without a certain amount of trust and ethics. If the current competitions rules are going to become impossible to adhere to without the possibility of being labelled or accused as a cheat, I will no longer participate, but rather wait for PTW, where cheats will not last long…

These games are suppose to be fun…

Originally posted by thefrenchzulu
Taking all the factors into account, these competitions cannot take place without a certain amount of trust and ethics.

There are also rules set in this competition, and now that there are methods to verify if someone possibly might have broken the rules, we should definately use them.

We won't just put a label on someone as easily as you fear. But when someone has 70+ reloads on a (370) BC victory; already looking odd when loading it up yourself, it does not take a rocket scientist to conclude something is wrong. This example more or less came out because somehow it was not in the data the GOTM police reviewed. When the results were posted we first had a look at it. Someone else also saw it and posted about it and that way it became public. I doubt we'd even post our finds in the main forum. We'd simply keep it in private.

je vois que ma partie donne droit a beaucoup de discussion.....

a cela je repond 2 choses:

1) concerne MSGT John Drew reply
"So he only had three cities to build his puny but highly successful army of veteran horsemen"

et oui et alors en constuisant d'abord des chariots et en economisant de l'argent science et luxe à 0 pour les upgrade vous obtené une armée de 20 horseman pret au combat de plus ces 3 villes en produise d'autre tout les 3 tours ....

"Alain did not even concentrate forces to take Salamanca since he also took Washington at the same turn"

C'est juste pour terminer rapidement j'ai envoyer la moitié de mes forces au sud et l'autre à l'est.....

"The Iroquis also had swordsmen (road-connected iron)"

le fer etait connecter mais les iroquois n'avait pas de swordsmen uniquement des spearmen facile a battre....

2)concerne reload
il y a peut-être trop de reload selon votre police sur ma partie, mais que dire des excuse bidon de certains, quelques exemples très croustillants:
A)I don't know exactly how many times I'm reloading while play the GOTM. 20-50 times I mean. Sometimes I do 1/2 units movements of the turn and begin thinking what to do further. If I havn't inspiration I quit the game and return some hours later (if have got time).
B)We even have GOTM players who play during their lunchtimes
at work.

En conclusion et a mon avis être pointilleux sur le nombre de reload est une aberration quand on voit que 17 joueurs sur les 20 premier du dernier classement detourne complétement l'esprit du jeu en prolongeant leur partie jusqu'en 2050 (milking) pour améliorer leur score artificielement.....

PS: toutes mes excuses mais je rentre de vacances et j'ai vraiment pas la force de repondre en anglais.....

alain!
I also know english language very bad but please try to write your letter on english.:p

Ghengis or DOY could do this better, but here goes....

Originally posted by alain
je vois que ma partie donne droit a beaucoup de discussion.....

a cela je repond 2 choses:
I see that my part gives a lot of discussion.

I will respond with 2 things:


1) concerne MSGT John Drew reply
"So he only had three cities to build his puny but highly successful army of veteran horsemen"

et oui et alors en constuisant d'abord des chariots et en economisant de l'argent science et luxe à 0 pour les upgrade vous obtené une armée de 20 horseman pret au combat de plus ces 3 villes en produise d'autre tout les 3 tours ....

And yes there is then initially the chariotrs, and economically the gold, science and luxuries are 0 for the upgrade you obtain an army of 20 horsemen close to combat in addition these three towns are producing others all the three turns.


"Alain did not even concentrate forces to take Salamanca since he also took Washington at the same turn"

C'est juste pour terminer rapidement j'ai envoyer la moitié de mes forces au sud et l'autre à l'est.....
It is just for finishing rapidly I have sent half of my forces south and the other (half) east.


"The Iroquis also had swordsmen (road-connected iron)"

le fer etait connecter mais les iroquois n'avait pas de swordsmen uniquement des spearmen facile a battre....
The iron was connected but the iroquois had no swordsmen only the spearman easy to defeat.


2)concerne reload
il y a peut-être trop de reload selon votre police sur ma partie, mais que dire des excuse bidon de certains, quelques exemples très croustillants:
Concerning reloads: There is perhaps lots of reloading according to your police on my part, but that said the excuse can of some, some very crusty (????) examples.

Not sure about that bit - think he's saying that others have listed some vey 'crusty' excuses


A)I don't know exactly how many times I'm reloading while play the GOTM. 20-50 times I mean. Sometimes I do 1/2 units movements of the turn and begin thinking what to do further. If I havn't inspiration I quit the game and return some hours later (if have got time).
B)We even have GOTM players who play during their lunchtimes
at work.

En conclusion et a mon avis être pointilleux sur le nombre de reload est une aberration quand on voit que 17 joueurs sur les 20 premier du dernier classement detourne complétement l'esprit du jeu en prolongeant leur partie jusqu'en 2050 (milking) pour améliorer leur score artificielement.....
In conclusion and my opinion ???? on the number of reloads is an abheration when one sees that 17 players out of the top 20 in the last tournament results completed the spirit of the game by prolonging their until 2050 (milking) to increase their score artificially.



PS: toutes mes excuses mais je rentre de vacances et j'ai vraiment pas la force de repondre en anglais.....
P.S. all my excuses but I return from holidays and I have not really the strength to reply in english






And now my head hurts!

Hmm.. my French is rusty, but...

Moderator Notice: Please write in English on these forums.

Parle se vous ple English en CFC.


(I know I spelled it wrong... like I said.. VERY rusty)...

:lol: alain, english = anglais :p voulez-vous parler anglais dans cette forum si-vous-plaît?

Originally posted by Aeson
ainwood,

I played through GOTM10 trying to beat alain's conquest date tonight. I'm a bit rusty at early conquest, had so-so luck in combat, but still was able to finish off the last AI at 410BC. I did do some reloading, probably about 30, though I'm not exactly sure yet how the counter works and didn't keep count (partly cause I didn't know which would count ;) ). Most of my reloads were to get a good start, playing with city placement, tech path, and huts. I also tried to explore as though it was my first time on the map, sending warriors west as well as south and east. It certainly could be done without any reloading, although it would require a lot of luck. I'm not sure I believe that alain's game was played by the rules, but it is possible as far as I can tell.

If there is other evidence you guys are holding back, I understand. I personally don't think it's right to keep back that information, makes it impossible to explain or defend for anyone who really is innocent. Also, it really cuts back on the amount of testing that those methods.

Here's the final save.

Thanks Aeson, I'll have a look at it tonight and see where you went wrong. :lol:

But seriously, I'll compare the games abit to see how they correlate. As far as I know we are not holding back any info, the case revolves around the actual logistics and realm of possibility under the rules. Did you use more than 2 SOD's? Did you rush chariots?

:) willemvanoranje, you also got it wrong.

ainwood: i'd edit your post but can't. You had a couple of important mistakes:
- he said that he built his army by building chariots every three turns in his three towns and then upgrading to horses with the money he saved.
- by rephrasing his words he said that he won't excuse himself but quote serg and other guy saying that many reloads cold be explained in certain situations
- he said that policing his number of reloads is silly while 17 of the top 20 milk the game thus clearly breaking the spirit of the game ( artificially increase their score).

Remembering the Valeri Kousnetsov incident, I have to notice that angry people tend to write in their native language. I wonder why? Maybe you could try call me cheater and see what language I am responding lmao.

I'm not defending alain but given the circumstances I would not be sure that he really cheated. If Aeson got to a similar result (even with reloading) than it is clear that what alain did is possible (maybe not probable). Alain should from now on get excellent GOTM results to make us sure he's not a cheater, and maybe try domination, culture, spaceship to show us that he is that good (if he did conquest that good he should be able to prove at the others as well).

Maybe i'm not coherent right now so I'll stop.

I think I used a much better city placement scheme than alain (second city at 3600 I think), and rushed a lot of Archers, along with a few 10 turn/rush Horsemen. No Temples at all, a nearly complete road network to all the AI's homelands (except for the Germans), and I think 7 luxuries hooked up. I built about 8 Chariots by the time I had researched Horseback riding, and had sent a couple of them out exploring.

I went for an early warrior gambit, 8 Warriors in all (most Elite from barbs by this time), all targetting cities which hadn't upgraded to spearmen yet. I timed the attacks for when they hit size 2. 2 of the 8 succeeded, and those two cities basically handled their respective civs (England/Rome) with rushed Archers. Winning in England was the best thing that could have happened, save taking a few more cities! The rest of my Warriors, and some of my Chariots were on Worker duty, stealing as many as possible from the AI. If the AI ran their Workers into their cities, I'd just wait around the outskirts of town, and then get the Workers for peace. Once the Workers were captured, they started building roads wherever they were at. An extensive road network is the only way that early of a conquest would be possible.

I got a bit unlucky with the respawns, they always seemed to pop up in the worst possible location. The American respawn was awful, on a hill with a river on 3 sides. Lost or had to retreat with 10 Horse attacks before it fell (some of which would have been avoided if I could have seen the river clearly). I actually hooked up Iron and rushed some Swordsmen in desperation, but the city fell a couple turns before they could get there.

I did get a Leader quite early with a Chariot (named Lucky). I built the FP with it, but it didn't make any real difference. I think 3 Horsemen from my FP core (basically 1 city) saw action. The rest produced from those cities were all pop rushed.

I normally only sent 2 or 3 units at each city, and just tried to flood the entire map with as many as I could. Each mini-stack would support nearby ones, but only commit to forming the SoD if absolutely necessary. The road network really helped here, as each stack could basically cover 12 tiles. As more stacks were produced, the others moved further and further out. The only exceptions were the last few cities after the respawns, everyone was concentrated as much as possible (mostly on the American respawn).

My largest stack otherwise was 4. Probably why I took so many casualties, but it's really the only way to cover that much ground.

---------------------------

The only doubts I have about alain's game being possible are that he built Temples, and the start he used. Building right where you start, roading to the southeast, then hitting that hut with the first Warrior gives a Settler much earlier than what he got. Maybe that's a point in favor for him though, as replaying the start a few times would have made that apparent. It's a bit risky of course, barbarians would sack the city, but your Worker could get out of the way because he's on a road. The slower start sequence makes me wonder a bit.

Temples are completely useless on Regent in a BC's conquest. Especially considering that the road network necessary for the conquest will keep everyone happy with luxuries, and no techs are needed past Map Making so every penny can go towards happiness. Temples are 60 shields a pop (2 Horses), and it's just too much offense to sacrifice for them.

Cut out 180 shields early that I put into units, and I probably wouldn't have broken into the BC's at all. I ate through about 60 Horses altogether (~35 surviving), along with another 30 Archers (~20 surviving), and 15 (mostly dead) Warriors to get the same result. I can't say how many Horses he lost of course, but it's just so much more efficient to pop rush Archers near the action. You can build the Warrior to take care of the unhappiness, wait a turn, and then rush the Archer. A Horse requires an extra 10 turns, or leaves the city defenseless and unhappy. Regular Horsemen aren't worth that much either, the retreat makes them almost like conscripts on the attack.

I did have rather high casualties on offense, so maybe he just had better attack rolls. That and only being able to play a turn or 2 at a time (for whatever reason) could explain everything in his game that I can think of.

Originally posted by ainwood
One other issue: When I first load up Civ from the desktop, then choose the save file and load it, the whole process takes around 3 minutes late-game on a reasonably fast PC (1 GHz, 256 MB SDRAM). 4 minutes if I have to boot the PC as well. If someone is making 100 "legitimate" save and reloads (ie starting a new session), then I estimate they are spending around 300 - 400 minutes (thats over 5 hours!) a month just waiting for civ to load and then to load the save game. Perhaps a rationalisation of the playing sessions would be beneficial? :lol:

Just took time with watch :)
59 seconds from boot-up to playing civ3
22 seconds just start civ and load
maximum of 15 sec load time inside civ if loading marlas map in late era, normal maps max 5 sec even in future tech times

1.5 ghz, 512mb.

This just to prove that youre wrong in the time issue ;)

And BTW if someone uses map-stat or apollo, they count as one load each time too, dont they.

No i dont think so, because it's read only and nothing is being altered in the savegame. Ainwood knows more about it. ;)
Aeson, what strikes me most is he hardly has any troops in the end, together with the temples he started with. And he did take cities fast with less units because he built temples, so the odds decrease to take cities that fast. That in combination with a ridiculous amount of 70+ reloads i can't believe anyone can take him serious. His reply also says enough; In defense attack others.
Just think of this: Play a civ3 game in which you start up civ3, load up the game, play one turn, and then save+close civ3 again. And that about 70+ times. I don't buy it and it would be naïve to think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Remembering the Valeri Kousnetsov incident

He did submit a game again in gotm10 in which he cheated again by file editing, but this time he tried to cover it up some by selling his temples he built 2-3 turns after founding his cities before the finish.

In Alain's game, Lyon's completed it's temple in 1325BC, so the main thrust of his military production came from the first two cites, Orleans never did build a temple. I'm not really sure about the translations (above) but this does not seem to coincide with the claim that the initial armies were built from the first three cities, yet the offensive drive began about three hundred years before Lyon's war production came on line.

If you look at the two power charts from the games you can see Aeson had a commanding lead based on the better start, but surprisingly Alain's power was ahead of Aeson's around 750BC.

Regardless, a lot of luck was required to produce either result, Aeson claims about 30 reloads and I'm not sure if those reloads were to produce better results to accomplish the demonstration or not. If Aeson required 30 reloads to enhance the game he produced, I doubt one could really claim Alain's game was produced solely on skill and luck. Both games provide alot great ideas on ways and means to accomplish fast conquests. If half of the exchanges on the boards had any where near the information that is demonstrated in these two games, we would all be the beneficiaries.

I'm glad to know you guys have better quality control now. But I doubt ainwood's job can cover every kind of cheat possible. i.e. I have two computers, I will play GOTM on one, every turn it will give me an auto-save, then I copy that auto-save to the other computer, and I play every possible way there, including save/load. Then I come back and play it. It's score won't be as well as pure save/load, but sure it's cheating.

I'm sorry that I can't afford play civ w/o save/load. But I love this forum. I learned lots of, lots of skills just reading those posts from spoilers. Those top dogs are really admirable. And you civ cops are great, too.

I just want to say: you may cheat, you can get higher scores, but please don't submit cheating save files. Keep here clean.

Note: This letter is written on 12th, but couldn't post then. :(
It seems too old now. sigh

Originally posted by Yndy
:) willemvanoranje, you also got it wrong.

:lol: already expected so....it's been over a year since my last french class...ah well, I think he understood the mod in the first place. (btw, le or la forum) ;)

Despite the excellent job done by ainwood, he asked me to translate the post below and as a francophile I could hardly refuse.:D

Originally posted by alain & Translated by duke o' york
I see that my post gave rise to a lot of discussion.....

To which I will say 2 things:

1) with regard to MSGT John Drew's reply:
"So he only had three cities to build his puny but highly successful army of veteran horsemen"

Yes, by first constructing chariots and by saving money with the science and luxury rates at 0 to pay for the upgrades you can obtain an army of 20 horsemen ready for battle and these 3 cities can also produce 3 more every three turns.

"Alain did not even concentrate forces to take Salamanca since he also took Washington at the same turn"

It was only to finish quickly that I sent half of my forces to the south and the other half eastward....

"The Iroquis also had swordsmen (road-connected iron)"

The iron was connected but the Iroquois didn't have any swordsmen - only spearmen who are easy to beat....

2)Concerning reloading
There was perhaps too much reloading in my game according to your mods, but what can you say about the excuses some people use? A couple of particularly interesting examples being:
A)I don't know exactly how many times I'm reloading while play the GOTM. 20-50 times I mean. Sometimes I do 1/2 units movements of the turn and begin thinking what to do further. If I havn't inspiration I quit the game and return some hours later (if have got time).
B)We even have GOTM players who play during their lunchtimes
at work.

In conclusion, in my opinion to be fastidious about the number of reloads is a disgrace when you see that 17 of the top 20 players in the first and second levels completely ruin the spirit of the game by making their game last until 2050 (milking) in order to improve their score by this artificial means.

PS: Please accept my excuses for posting in French but I have just returned from my holidays and I simply don't have the strength to post in English...

I'm not entirely sure how necessary that was, as ainwood did a pretty good job, but I enjoyed it and if it gives rise to more discussion about alain's comments on the nature of reloading and milking and the potential they have to spoil the GotM then it was worth it. :D

Thanks Yndy for what you say, it's clear that my result is possible with a good strategy and luck....

..."I'm not defending alain but given the circumstances I would not be sure that he really cheated. If Aeson got to a similar result (even with reloading) than it is clear that what alain did is possible (maybe not probable). Alain should from now on get excellent GOTM results to make us sure he's not a cheater, and maybe try domination, culture, spaceship to show us that he is that good (if he did conquest that good he should be able to prove at the others as well)."

I'm already have good result with culture in GOTM 08 & 09....

Strategy answer :Why I built a temple in Paris???

Aeson say "The only doubts I have about alain's game being possible are that he built Temples"

I'm not remenber exactly my production but it was ~ that:
first 2 warrior to explor, after that a barraks and here I really want to built chariot but I need Horses before and It is not connected with a road in this moment so I decided to built a temple so I can have lux & science at 0 to spare gold for the upgrade (very important is to not discover horseback riding before you want to have your fisrt war so you can built a lot of chariot=horseman......

Ok I hope that you have no doubts more Aeson and when you try to play the game 1 time more with the strategy i describ here up and without Archer and more warrior you will have ~ the same result with mine...

The reloading I did was to simulate a 'lucky' start, along with undoing some stupid mistakes that normally I'd take the time to avoid in the first place. Things like letting a city go into disorder, not pop rushing right when a city hit size 2, ect. From the huts I wanted an early settler of course, a couple of Warriors, and then mostly Barbs. Took a lot of early reloading to get things right.

Reloading is the only way to guarantee the luck, which if I had had in the first place, I could have played the game with minimal reloads. I still didn't have very good luck overall, losing more Horses than I'd normally expect to. If I had reloaded combats, I could have won before 800BC.

I think alain's power jump had to do with him holding off on Horseback Riding longer than I did. You can pile up some gold, and produce 150% more Chariots in any given time than Horsemen. I got a much quicker start, but my upgrade to Horsemen wouldn't have been as strong. It may have been enough advantage to overcome the early Temple expenditures. Also there is enough time to produce roughly 80 Horsemen by 390BC (have to rush ~20 regulars though), so he could have had a much higher casualty rate than I did. If the save can show how many Horsemen he actually produced, that would help a lot. From what I can tell, he could have flooded with single Horses for the most part, losing about 50 of them in the process.

It's unlikely, but I've had a few unlikely games myself, luck happens. I'd say 1 in 20 or 30 games I get that kind of good luck that it would be necessary for me to play that sort of game without any reloading. As CB has noted, alain certainly knew what he was doing, so the skill level is there. Given the number of submissions, you'd expect a few to have gotten really lucky (and vice versa). If that luck strikes in a game where the player has the skill to take advantage of it, you get this sort of result.

The 70 reloads in the BC's is high. It might have been malicious reloading, it might have been situational. I don't see anything that says this game had to be cheated. Maybe it's 95% likely that it was, but who's to say if he was in the 5% or not? Valeri's game was certain, this one isn't. I just think we have to give the player the benefit of the doubt.

Reloading will always have this problem. Reloading doesn't give results which are impossible to obtain otherwise. Anything possible with just reloading is possible without it, however unlikely the result. So what we're left with is a reload count, which could be saying he had 70 playsessions, or that he was reloading between 70 of his saves, or a combination of the two. The counter can't differentiate between the two possibilities. As such, it's not proof of anything.

Reading Alain's french post i kind of read a small confession about reloading in there.

On the whole, and looking at other players something which really strikes me and worries me is that a majority of players who are competitive in early victory games have a huge reload count compared to players who don't play to win and submitted a 10AD save file with it. Especially in gotm11 the figures are quite clear. All i can conclude from this reloading happens a LOT, and i don't believe all those players are playing in short sessions.

That seems a sad but fair conclusion if the data is as you suggest.

Originally posted by EEKthedog
On the whole, and looking at other players something which really strikes me and worries me is that a majority of players who are competitive in early victory games have a huge reload count compared to players who don't play to win and submitted a 10AD save file with it. Especially in gotm11 the figures are quite clear. All i can conclude from this reloading happens a LOT, and i don't believe all those players are playing in short sessions.
The sessions need not be short in real-life time, just short in turns.

Personally, I make all kinds of calculations during my turns, and in addition I keep a full log. Further, I micro-manage everything, and each turn I check the entire map and do a full round of diplomacy.

So while someone else may play a hundred turns in one hour, sometimes I play only one!

I agree that a majority probably wouldn't play a lot of short sessions. The problem is that there is no way to differentiate between those who do play in short sessions, and those who are reloading. I would think those who are finishing well are the one's who take their time in making decisions, rather than rushing through turn after turn. That would result in more play sessions on average early on. There are those of us who go so far as to 'sleep on' a single move early in the game. To some extent that could explain the differences.

I think it's valid to assume there is reloading going on, maybe even widespred. But I can't think of a valid (or feasible) way of determining who exactly is doing it.

There are so many ways around the reload count that I dont think its worth getting too paranoid about.

I often play the game on different computers at home. It would be easy to play on both at the same time, trying things out on one which I then transfer across to the other.

Anyone with a moderate amount of smarts who sets out to cheat can do so with impunity.

Accept it and lets move on.

I think the hardest cheat is using some utilities changes the game rules. All players must be in equal conditions. Main thing is individual strategy but reloading make it more "ideally".

P.S. The very early conquest have a litle chance for success, but when it happens it is seen striking.

As I understand the issues debated here are nearing an end and the conclusion is that we can not deem Alain a cheater, nor delete his score from the hall of fame although there is a likelyhood that he had used reloads.

Alain I supported you a little as the evidence against you was not good enough IMO. Still, I am inclined to believe that you have used reloads in the early game. I also believe that many of the players use such reloads if only I consider how many post that were "lucky" to get a settler from the first hut.

Honestly, after documenting on what to do to get a settler from a hut, and playing a lot of emperor and deity games where I had less than average number of cities as long as huts were available, I have only got ONE SETTLER from 20 or 30 huts in my last 4 games. Needless to say that I didn't get that from my FIRST hut but probably the fifth one which was far away from my capital and the city founded was good only in terms of early grabbing and not production.

I have read a lot of posts citing settlers from first two or three huts and franlky I believe 90% of those guys cheated and then tried to hide their cheat by bragging about their "luck".

However, until proven guilty, alain you have my appologies and you should also have others appologise to you as well. I hope you will continue to play and submit GOTM.

Now GOTM police - find the cheaters and let's have a clean ranking.

Originally posted by Aeson


I think alain's power jump had to do with him holding off on Horseback Riding longer than I did. You can pile up some gold, and produce 150% more Chariots in any given time than Horsemen. I got a much quicker start, but my upgrade to Horsemen wouldn't have been as strong. It may have been enough advantage to overcome the early Temple expenditures. Also there is enough time to produce roughly 80 Horsemen by 390BC (have to rush ~20 regulars though), so he could have had a much higher casualty rate than I did. If the save can show how many Horsemen he actually produced, that would help a lot. From what I can tell, he could have flooded with single Horses for the most part, losing about 50 of them in the process.



Power was interesting, since you had about 5 times the units that he had at that time. ;)

I agree. Less checking, not more police is my suggestion to restore the spirit of the contest. Let the 20% of players obsessed with high scores, medals and milking, focus on policing and checking each other's files. Let the other 80% play and have fun and compare notes.

Again, I suggest doing away with game files for the 80%. I believe this will cut the time required to run the contest by 60% with no appreciable change in the percentage of cheaters! I believe a good cheater is not going to get caught. Especially now that they know some of the things that are being looked at. Only the inefficient cheater is going to be caught in the net.
- Bill

Originally posted by col
There are so many ways around the reload count that I dont think its worth getting too paranoid about.

I often play the game on different computers at home. It would be easy to play on both at the same time, trying things out on one which I then transfer across to the other.

Anyone with a moderate amount of smarts who sets out to cheat can do so with impunity.

Accept it and lets move on.

Surely if someone wanted to reload a turn 10 times till they got a good result what you would do is:

1. Quit Civ and copy the saved turn in question 10 times (or 15 or 20 or whatever).
2. Load each turn one at a time until you get required result.
3. Voila - you have reloaded 10 times but reload counter only shows 1 since the turn you end up with has only been reloaded once!

Say I did this 10 times in a 300 turn game.

Without it reload counter shows 100 reloads - either 1 every 3 turns or lots of loads on a few - dodgy?

With it, it shows 10 reloads - 1 every 30 turns - not dodgy?

Either way rely on the counter does not tell you much.

By the by, anyone who blithly maintains that Civ does not crash.... I am sure you are right on your lovely, bright shiny Athelon 1.2 Ghz, 512 Mgb RAM, 40 Gb+ HD, Firewire ports all round, etc. PC.

You should try running it on my 333 Mhz, 32 Mb RAM, so old that when I bought it ( as a 266 top of the range then, and I upgraded to 333 later!) USB was just a twinkle in somebody's eye and I could not possible imagine I'd be able to fill the uneccessarily huge 2 Gb HD!

Belive me, at the bottom end of the market - it crashes. Though 1.29f is better than previous versions..... somewhat. However I cannot really justify (to myself or my bank manager) a new PC just to play Civ III faster and more reliably.

Do you have a Pentium II processor or better? Isn't that the min req?

BoB

Originally posted by abla
Surely if someone wanted to reload a turn 10 times till they got a good result what you would do is:

1. Quit Civ and copy the saved turn in question 10 times (or 15 or 20 or whatever).
2. Load each turn one at a time until you get required result.
3. Voila - you have reloaded 10 times but reload counter only shows 1 since the turn you end up with has only been reloaded once!

Say I did this 10 times in a 300 turn game.

Without it reload counter shows 100 reloads - either 1 every 3 turns or lots of loads on a few - dodgy?

With it, it shows 10 reloads - 1 every 30 turns - not dodgy?

Either way rely on the counter does not tell you much.

By the by, anyone who blithly maintains that Civ does not crash.... I am sure you are right on your lovely, bright shiny Athelon 1.2 Ghz, 512 Mgb RAM, 40 Gb+ HD, Firewire ports all round, etc. PC.

You should try running it on my 333 Mhz, 32 Mb RAM, so old that when I bought it ( as a 266 top of the range then, and I upgraded to 333 later!) USB was just a twinkle in somebody's eye and I could not possible imagine I'd be able to fill the uneccessarily huge 2 Gb HD!

Belive me, at the bottom end of the market - it crashes. Though 1.29f is better than previous versions..... somewhat. However I cannot really justify (to myself or my bank manager) a new PC just to play Civ III faster and more reliably.

1.) Now that people know that their reloads can be checked, some may resort to this type of tactic. If it works as you claim ;)

2.) Things like this will actually take extra time. I hope that this is a discouragement.

3.) Checking the reloads is only one element that is checked.



In summary, If people really want to cheat, they can. They may not even be caught. But what I hope is that the checking doesn't find any cheaters, because I hope that the Police provide a deterent; something that makes people believe more in a level playing field.

Previously, I believe that a lot of people reloaded on the belief that 1.) Everyone else does it; and 2.) No-one will ever know.

Well, studying the results, I can tell you that not everyone reloads. In fact, its only the minority that we suspect do. Secondly, we do know.

Please people, the GOTM is a friendly competition. We shouldn't have to have discussions like this :(

All I want is for there to be sufficient deterent so that people can't be bothered cheating.

Originally posted by ainwood



Please people, the GOTM is a friendly competition. We shouldn't have to have discussions like this :(

All I want is for there to be sufficient deterent so that people can't be bothered cheating.

I think you've probably achieved this. Keep up the good work!

I echo col. Thanks for all the work put into GOTM!! It is a fun tournament, and the participation is incredible. Great Work!! :goodjob:

I now agree that the reload counter is a useful “tool” in addition to many other indicators to show that an extremely fast domination of a map is “suspicious” or not. The GOTM game checkers have been tasked with analysing games for what they consider suspicious and after allowing the individual to privately explain their game, may or may not accept the submission. It is a shame that a few people have meant the introduction of game checkers, but as the GOTM offers fastest finishing and highest score medals then this unfortunately needed to be done to protect the integrity of the competition side of the GOTM.

What I will suggest for all participants is that we should all keep good records of our games and more frequent permanent saves for game write ups and in case a question is asked. With your average game save around 300KB a few extra saves kept until after results publication should not kill the Hard Drive.

I just reloaded a game 8 times trying to get the forced labor not to take my people. Most of the time there is no problem but this time I just could not get the game to not take my people for forced labor. So, I just gave up and let the game take my people. I don't consider this cheating. Do you?

Originally posted by RedTopJay
I just reloaded a game 8 times trying to get the forced labor not to take my people. Most of the time there is no problem but this time I just could not get the game to not take my people for forced labor. So, I just gave up and let the game take my people. I don't consider this cheating. Do you? Forced labour? What do you mean :confused:

I think he means pop rushing.

RedTopJay,

It is because the government you are in. In Despotism and Communism, rushing takes population. In Monarchy, Republic, and Democracy rushing uses gold.

or maybe he means just building workers....or drafting for a military unit or something?

Or even trying to take workers off "automation". If so, then right-click and choose "activate unit".

That's probably it. I don't think it's a capital offense if you're reloading the end of the last turn because it appears all your units are on automatic and the game doesn't give you a chance to take them off on the new turn.

The following is a quote from the Civilopedia (you can also find info on forced labor in the Civ3 manual):

"Under Despotism and Communism you hurry production in your cities by forced labor."


In Civilization III you can rush production by using the "Hurry Production" button on the City Display. Under Despotism and Communism rush production is called forced labor. Under Monarchy, Republic, and Democracy it is called overtime pay. I think this web site (CFC) use the term pop rushing for forced labor.

I knew that...:p

I think checking on reloadings will only matter where it matter most, quick conquest/domination games. Alain is unable to explain his actions, ie making his achievement in doubt public that will help discourage other reloaders from submitting their cheated game. Say for top-ten high scoring conquest/domination, we can publish their reload counts. This is still not full proof of preventing unethical reloads but will help it from being overdone and hopefully discourages people from practising it.
I have not reload, even for mouse click mistakes. It demoralizes me when thinking how to compete with the best when the best may not be playing by the fair rules.

Don't be too demoralized! Once PTW comes out, no one using MP will be able to reload, whether to get a more favorable outcome, or because of a bad mouse click. :lol: