Reloading in GOTMs

[ainwood]

We have been going through setting up systems to allow us to publish GOTM / WOTM results in a timely manner. In parallel with this, we have been improving our systems to detect people reloading.

I am very sorry and very disappointed to say that I have just had to send out e-mails to a very significant number of players to advise that we will be excluding their submissions from the results when they are published. Further, a significant number of 'warning' e-mails have also been sent.

This thread is to reinforce to people that the purpose of this competition is fun, in a friendly environment. Cheating destroys our sense of community, and as such we will do everything we can to stop it. This applies to the WOTMs, the GOTMs and the SGOTMs.

I do not want to go into any specifics around these issues. I am not going to name-names, and I will delete any posts that do name-names, along with any that are speculation. Please do not do that.

Further, we are not going to go into details of what we can and cannot detect; to do so would be counter-productive. Make the assumption that we can detect whatever is done that is against the rules, and work within the rules.

Please be advised that we have little tolerance for people cheating in games. We have agreed within the GOTM staff that we will exclude these results, and try to put the issue behind us. We will allow those excluded players a chance to redeem themselves and play within the rules, but we may not be as tolerant going-forward.

To paraphrase what AlanH noted in another thread - you can put your efforts into trying to cheat 'better' so that you're not detected; but we'd prefer you put them in to trying to learn to play better. If you still continue to cheat, and get caught again, as I said, our tolerance only goes so-far.



Regards,

ainwood
On behalf of the GOTM staff, and I suspect also on behalf of the majority of the community who want to play in a fair competition.

 

[Airny]

Will you also send an email with the specific violation or some kind of proof?

 

[emes]

hahah, i received one of these e-mails

this was the first time i was playing GOTM and i just forgot to save game on last turn, so i replayed from the last save.

anyway, i lost the space race and this reload couldn't help me to win - it was too late.

even though my result is nothing good, it would be nice to see myself in the stats. but i understand that it's only my fault.

next time i won't do such a big mistake (and hopefully i won't lose the game too

 

[AlanH]

I recommend that players with specific issues take them up by PM. As indicated by ainwood, we do not want anyone to name names, or to get into public debates on a case by case basis.

 

[idiot_savant]

Sorry... just started playing these... and have enjoyed the previous very much (though past deadlines, etc.).

But, just so I'm clear (and hopefully other newbs to GOTM will need this info as well): We cannot restart in mid-game. Check. Do you get only one play period or can you restart from the beginning? Sorry, you've probably said all this before...

Thanks.

 

[Theoden]

But, just so I'm clear (and hopefully other newbs to GOTM will need this info as well): We cannot restart in mid-game. Check. Do you get only one play period or can you restart from the beginning? Sorry, you've probably said all this before...

You only get one play period and you're not allowed to restart in anyway. If you play the whole game through several times only your first attempt can be submitted. Hope that answers your question.

 

[civ_steve]

... We cannot restart in mid-game. ...

Saving the game then loading from the LAST save is perfectly fine!
Loading from any save other than the LAST save is not!
Saving the game, then playing a few (or several) turns, then loading from the last save or from an auto-save is not!

The ONLY exception is when the game dies on the computer and you didn't get a chance to save. In this ONE case you may load the game from the last Autosave and repeat your moves as precisely as you can remember to the point where the game crashed. You should set your Autosave frequency to 1 so it will save every turn; that way you only go back to the beginning of the turn where the crash occurred. Do this by editing \My Documents\My Games\Warlords\CivilizationIV.ini, and setting the line 'AutoSaveInterval = 4' to 'AutoSaveInterval = 1'

... Do you get only one play period or can you restart from the beginning? ...

You get only one start from the beginning. Restarting is NEVER allowed! After the game is done and submitted you can restart if you wish, to try different things and test the game, but that is your own exploration; do not submit that second (or third ...) game.

(edit - changed 'reloading' to 'loading')

 

[Murky]

I'm glad to see there is a stronger detection system in place. One of the things that always crossed my mind while playing is wondering if other players were cheating or not. Now we can be sure that even if they do they are less likely to get away with it.

 

[Ribannah]

The term 'reloading' is misleading. You can load a save for the second time and not be at fault, because the first time you did not make a move.
On the other hand you can be at fault without reloading, if you load (not: REload) a savefile that you created during a session.

The correct term would be 'playing over', IMHO.

 

[drkodos]

I recieved an email.

I openly apologize to anyone who felt my Red Ambulance award or other lame to mediocre attempts were acheived by cheating/replaying and also to those people who may have been taken some level of hurt or offense at the thought that such action may have occurred in one of my submitted games.


Good luck in those efforts to capture and punish those evil doers that threaten the underlying fabric of the sanctity of these events.

 

[ainwood]

The term 'reloading' is misleading. You can load a save for the second time and not be at fault, because the first time you did not make a move.
On the other hand you can be at fault without reloading, if you load (not: REload) a savefile that you created during a session.

The correct term would be 'playing over', IMHO.

That's probably a better description, but the key bit is that whatever its called, it isn't allowed.

 

[idiot_savant]

Thanks all. Guess I won't be submitting this time. Finished this twice (won both), but was not happy with my first attempt. I will definitely be posting next time and give it more thought this time.

Keep up all the good work! This series along with the challenge games on the Strategy & Tips boards have me hooked back in to Civ again. So, thanks.

 

[Staffa]

Well, I certaintly wouldn't want to hurt the community but I want to reassure you that for me, and probably others, the actions might have been deliberate but it was not cyncical.

I greatly enjoy playing and submitting the gotm games. It's a shared experience that I enjoy participating in and I apperciate the hard work you all do. I also have enjoyed the challanges of living up to the rules you set forth and have greatly reduced occurances of reloading the game as the months have gone by. There have even been a few games where I actually did manage to follow the rules to the letter and I am quite proud of them.

I understand the desire for a level playing field and in other games have advocated for such myself. The harm that I was causing to the community was minimal as I never won an award someone else should have won and if I was getting to the point that I was, I would stop, we all have a line where we wont cross and I know where mine is. I was getting enough joy in submitting the games to cross all the lines up to that one( I actually was never even close)

There appears to be two fundemtal questions here.

1. Why reload.

2. If reload, why submit.

The answer to 1 is simple, my background is rts, I simply play way to fast to catch everything that needs to be catched and once missed have no desire to continue playing. I only play about 1 game of civ4 a month and its always a gotm game. Im not going to play it out if I will not enjoy it.

The answer to 2 is not as simple but I think it has to do with wanting to participate with a community and a desire improve. I am constaintly trying to be more careful and not reload the game and if I were not going to submit the game I probably wouldn't bother trying not to reload. I feel a great amount of frustration when I get to the point where I feel I need to reload to continue enjoying the game and I think that is part of what I find enjoyable.

I also understand that you guys are overwelmed with work trying to get the results out while policing the submissions. A suggsetion might be to allow those who are like me to submit games but self police. Add a check mark to the submission that says we reloaded the games in violation of the rules and allow the submission to go through but flag the result as a reloaded game and make it inelligable for awards. This way you don't have to police the submission and I can still get all the enjoyment out of it and on the rare occasions where I do succesfully complete the games by the rules I can leave the checkmark off.

For the lifetime awards, only count the games not marked as reloaded for that player.

I believe that most of the players who have been reloading would willing submit the games as reloaded thus saving you a lot of time in trying to police them.

Cheers,
Staffa

 

[AlanH]

I see no point in submitting a "marked" game. It confuses the results listing, and gives no one any useful information. Its position in the list is not useful to anyone other than the player, since it was not played under the same conditions as the non-replayed entries. If the player feels it is of interest (why?), s/he can work out where it would have been in the list simply by looking for the legitimate entries with similar dates or scores.

PS. We would still have to police the unmarked games to the same level.

 

[Murky]

I think you can post the results of your replayed game in the spoiler threads you just can't submit it.

 

[da_Vinci]

After reading this thread, and the recent traffic in the SGOTM 3 maintenance thread, I have renewed appreciation for three things ...

1. The dedication and patience of our moderators

2. The workload of our moderators

3. The unlimited capacity of the human being for rationalization.


Again ... Wow!

dV

 

[Thrallia]

There appears to be two fundemtal questions here.

1. Why reload.

2. If reload, why submit.

actually, there's only one question there...why reload?
the second one is if reload, DON'T submit.

and seriously...why reload? 99% of the mistakes you think you've made are either non mistakes or not gamebreakers. So your background is RTS games...so? mine is too, that should make you more able to comprehend all the decisions needed to make each turn. RTS games require you to think quickly or you die...in Civ all you've got to do is think. If you think quickly you can obviously finish faster, but I don't see how having the luxury of relaxation would make you forget stuff. Sometimes you'll find what you thought were mistakes actually helped you, but if you change them you'll never learn from them

 

[BLubmuz]

Just an idea, that need to be discussed and developed if can gather some interest:
Why not have a "major league" where no reloading is allowed, with all the awards and lifetime awards, and a "minor league" where everything is allowed with its awards, without the lifetime ones?
In the submission form the player chooses his "league", so no needs for the Staff to check the ones in the "minor league".
In this way the community can grow, and people interested to improve their skills can try the "major league", and in the meantime keep the discussion flow, eventually declaring in their spoilers they're playing reloading, or restarting, or whatever.

Just to try to keep the discussion in a positive way, with all my appreciation for the Staff and his work and patience.

 

[Murky]

One thing that might help break people from reloading is for the HoF mod to display a red flag when you have reloaded to an illegal point in the game. This way if you did it by accident you can just go back to the main menu and reload the correct save.

 

[DaviddesJ]

and seriously...why reload? 99% of the mistakes you think you've made are either non mistakes or not gamebreakers.

I do find it that it takes considerably longer to play a GOTM than to play a "normal" Civ game, because I am much more cautious. I end up double-checking a lot, so I don't inadvertently overlook something. In a "normal" game, I would just play faster, and, if I realize the next turn that I overlooked some obvious issue, I can just go back and fix it. I get to the same ultimate result, but more quickly.

But, I entirely understand the GOTM rules. It's not practical to have a "competition" in which there is "some" reloading. How can you draw the line between correcting oversights, and previewing the map, or retroactively building up your forces to defend against an unexpected attack, etc.? I think the right answer is to do everything we can (like many of the features of the HOF mod) to reduce the problem of oversights and obvious errors, and then, to play by the rules.