A little better quality control on this month's GOTM

[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.

 

[Serg]

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.

 

[Yndy]

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.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

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.

 

[BillChin]

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.

 

[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.

 

[BoBtheBUILDER]

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

BoB

 

[ainwood]

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.

 

[col]

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!

 

[civ_steve]

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

 

[Phillip_martin]

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.

 

[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?

 

[ainwood]

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

 

[Aeson]

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.

 

[willemvanoranje]

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

 

[ainwood]

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

 

[Ribannah]

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.

 

[RedTopJay]

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.

 

[willemvanoranje]

I knew that...

 

[Gen. Maximus]

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.