Cheating in Multiplayer

[Geneberry]

Dear Community,

After spending hours without success on finding an answer I have decided to register here in the great hope that you can help.
We are playing CIV6 GS, 3 people and various random AI on steam.
Me and my brother have this friend and every single game, although he is fairly new, he is really extremely good. We think he might be cheating. We have asked him but he said no.
Why we think he is cheating:
- Every round, even in the early game and the very first rounds, he is taking ages for his turns.
- he always wants to be the host
- he is always the first one to complete wonders and tech trees. In the last game he was already having nukes while I didn’t even had developed jets.
- in the first games we played, he claimed to have crashed on several occasions and said he has to restart the game or the computer....

I know it seems like we are bad losers, maybe we even are and if so, I will post it here. But after researching on the internet I found out that there are trainers and cheat programs that also work in multiplayer. He is clever so he wouldn’t give himself ridiculous amounts of anything, so it’s hard to tell via stats.
We saved a game he hosted and played as him and discovered that he has a lot of science going on although he hardly has any science buildings, he does have a lot of rainforest tiles though.

Now the question is, can we find out via the save game if he is cheating? Is there something we can look out for, in the game or maybe in the save file itself, like an altered entry?
We love this game and we spend hours playing it and it would be very frustrating if we would have wasted all the time with someone who cheats. But it’s also frustrating to know that cheats are possible and maybe not discoverable...

Thank you for your inputs, very appreciated.

best regards

the losers

 

[frutiemax]

Hi Geneberry,

here is a checklist to verify:

• What is the map script? Is it a standard one?
• Are there any mods installed?
• With firetuner, load the game and check his city yields. Currently, there is a game breaking glitch called the "pantheon glitch" (search for it on Google). It basically allows you to pick more than one pantheon on the same turn (which could explains the long turn time and reloading the game if it fails).

 

[Tabarnak]

Can we have game speed and sci-cult generation from some checkpoint? Like 60 sci/turn 65 online speed for example.

The only known cheat i detected so far is the panthon exploit. Fortunately you can download a hotfix mod to solve it.

The pantheon exploit let the player use multiple times the same pantheon. With such power, the player can have ridiculous amount of faith or settlers, etc.

 

[Swissy]

One possibility is he is previewing the maps and using specific map seeds that work for the civ he plays. This will give him information on city state locations and city spots. He may choose to use a map seed that gives him multiple high food city sites, as high population cites are the winning meta for online speed games.

 

[Tabarnak]

One possibility is he is previewing the maps and using specific map seeds that work for the civ he plays. This will give him information on city state locations and city spots. He may choose to use a map seed that gives him multiple high food city sites, as high population cites are the winning meta for online speed games.

Not sure if host can determine which starting spot he can land on. From my experience it's completely random. But it doesn't erase the facts you mentionned.

 

[Swissy]

Not sure if host can determine which starting spot he can land on. From my experience it's completely random. But it doesn't erase the facts you mentionned.

If you pre-view the map seed, as host you will be placed in that spot. You get placed first and the map seed will spawn that same map. As long as you use the same civ you tested with, you will get that spawn.

 

[Geneberry]

Hi all,

it’s really tricky. I checked and he founded the pantheon where you have +10% city growth and a builder. i think he might have done that but I am not able to prove it. Is is possible to see the growth rate of a city?

Thanks for your help so far.
Best regards

 

[Swissy]

Using the pantheon glitch with that pantheon will give him a higher growth rate and multiple builders. Optimal would be to exploit the glitch ten times, giving him ten builders and a population growth just about every turn the city had surplus food. This would also explain his long turn times, as he probably micromanaged each city.

To test it, see how large the food surplus for the city is in the details tab of the city interface. A small surplus, but short time to next pop would indicate he used the exploit.

 

[Tabarnak]

If you pre-view the map seed, as host you will be placed in that spot. You get placed first and the map seed will spawn that same map. As long as you use the same civ you tested with, you will get that spawn.

I never tried it myself. That's kind of legal cheat.

 

[.iqqmuT]

It's possible to edit gold amount in the save file: https://github.com/iqqmuT/civ6-cheat

 

[HiRezAudio]

I read this with an almost 'why' thought in my mind - I mean, why cheat? The only person you are fooling is yourself.
Thing is, I can easily believe it because my other gaming vice is online Golf, and I had to give up playing in an online society simply because of cheats using things such as modified controllers that make it impossible to pull or slice a shot coupled with specific 'dial-a-distance' scripts - is it really so important to some people to see their name at the top of a board knowing full well they cheated to get there?
Why even bother playing in the first place!