Reloading in GOTMs

[wwassme]

My logic:
If a cheater smartly escaped our 'casual' detection (whatever it is for now) and get a good score/date, he/she will undoubtedly try to cheat better to get better scores/dates in the next games, that is human nature, the endless upward aspiration. And all these efforts will come to a point when he found out that by cheating, he can be close or better than the medal/award winners. Since he don't know what is the date that will win an award, and what is the score that will win a medal, he has two choices at the moment. The first one, try to play cleanly to win. In this way, we turn a cheater into a good guy. The second one, try to cheat as always and risk detection by the staff. If he chooses this way, we will have a pretty good chance to detect him and ban him from the GOTM.

[the Quote function doesn't seem to be working well for me]

Moderator Action: I fixed it. Your closing quote tag just needed a '[/' at the beginning

The cheater will eventually run into some well known principles of criminal detection. People who commit a small crime, get away with it and then commit additional and bigger crimes eventually get caught for several reasons. Each time they commit a crime, there is: (1) another opportunity to detect it, either through skill of the authorities or luck; (2) another chance the criminal will make a mistake and be caught; (3) a bigger crime usually has a greater chance of detection; and (4) the creation of a pattern which increases the chance of detection.

On that last point, a player who consistently exhibited an unusual knowledge of the map would raise suspicion. For example, a game would be highly suspicious if the player built a settler and settled by the nearest copper before discovering bronze working, built several axes and then sent them directly to the nearest AI capital without ever sending out a warrior or scout to find it. Several such games would raise a big red flag.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Yes, it does. You cannot tell me how to feel or think, sir. Nor can a feeling or opinion be incorrect to begin with, sir.

I can tell you that no "cloud of guilty-until-proven-innocent hangs over the community". This is simply not true.

It may be true that you, personally, are unreasonably suspicious, and view everyone as "guilty" of something. That is your fault. No one else's.

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

A quick question for the Hardworking GOTM Mods ( by the way)

I do tend to play CIV on both my Home PC and Laptop. Now as I have never made a GOTM submission I cant have broken any rules but am aiming to do the next couple so want to get things straight.

1. Is it OK for me to play on my Home PC and then if I am going away (happens a lot) transfer the game to my Laptop and continue playing from the last save like that?

2. If the answer to the above is yes would it make your lives easier in terms of monitoring if I just played on my laptop with no transferring as if so of course I will do that?

Ralph

p.s For those who wonder why I like to play on my Home PC when at home you need to experience CIV4 at Very High definition on a Dell 24" Widescreen Monitor to undertsand . It is truly beautiful

 

[AlanH]

A quick question for the Hardworking GOTM Mods ( by the way)

I do tend to play CIV on both my Home PC and Laptop. Now as I have never made a GOTM submission I cant have broken any rules but am aiming to do the next couple so want to get things straight.

1. Is it OK for me to play on my Home PC and then if I am going away (happens a lot) transfer the game to my Laptop and continue playing from the last save like that?

Yes.

2. If the answer to the above is yes would it make your lives easier in terms of monitoring if I just played on my laptop with no transferring as if so of course I will do that?

No. We don't want to restrict the logistics of the way people play. We just want players to live by a few very simple rules.

 

[ngraner42]

One possiblity is sometimes when I play I will load my current game just to check some things, not make any moves and quit without saving. When I continue playing I will of course be loading the same game again. I have not seen any posts about this practice and suspect this may be making my game appear as though it has been reloaded.

As has been stated many times, this is not a problem, and would not put you on our radar screen at all.

Sorry if I am beating a dead horse here, but last night I looked at my last save (the auto save on exit), did nothing and exited the game. The HOF mod created a new save on exit, with a new time stamp. I assume this is an identical save and that next session I should load it, since it has the most recent time stamp. Just checking, because the comment above seems to indicate that a new save will not be created.

 

[AlanH]

Sorry if I am beating a dead horse here, but last night I looked at my last save (the auto save on exit), did nothing and exited the game. The HOF mod created a new save on exit, with a new time stamp. I assume this is an identical save and that next session I should load it, since it has the most recent time stamp. Just checking, because the comment above seems to indicate that a new save will not be created.

Setting HOF Mod to autosave on exit will, of course, result in a save when you exit. If the position in that save is the same as the one you just loaded, apart from its name and any reversible changes you made while loking at it, then it is irrelevant which one you load when you resume.

 

[The Duff Man]

A lot to read here, I have never submitted a GOTM and might this time so I'll ask a question.

Can I open an old game to see where I was at to participate in the Spoiler discussion? Not replay it, just open the file, look around and then close it.

I am about 1000 years past the spoiler cutoff and can't remember details of what I had done up to 500AD.

 

[Lexad]

Yes you can as long as you do not make irreversible changes

 

[superslug]

The honor system is a fantasy and I have never bought into it.

Personally, I love honor systems. They save me and my staff a lot of work.

There have been times in both HOF III and IV that we've made a rule change and never had to bust someone for it, because CFCr's are by and large an honor abiding group, class act competitions. We developed warning flags and detections, rigorously tested them and never saw them go off. The simple act of making a rule generally means it's obeyed 99% of the time.

Here's a real fantasy for you: "There's things we can't detect." Everything can be detected in some form or fashion. Certainly not all are foolproof, but since 99% of the players play be the rules, the 1% usually stick out like a sore thumb, utilities or not.

Embrassing people will get them to change faster than any other factor.

In my experience, if someone's embarassed enough to change, it's enough to be embarassed in front of just the staff. Embarassing people publically would either encourage most to disappear and never compete again, rendering our existing efforts less worthwhile, or they would simply reregister under a duplicate login, thereby increasing the workload of those of us who are staff and moderator.

 

[GoodGame]

Going on the 80:20 % rule, probably 20% of the players will reload until they get their way at what they perceive to be crucial points. The other 80% of people probably won't significantly cheat---just one or two reloads. The cheating of the 20% does break the whole point of a HOF if some of the people cheat to the point that the game is completely warped (like they are are playing Las Vegas slots while everyone else is playing chess).

Reloading doesn't seem such a big deal and I'm fairly certain that most of the people here at one point or another reloaded a game (any game) for any number of reasons... That is all good and fine when playing for your own enjoyment but when said game is competitive (such as GOTM) and there are some pretty clear rules set for the would-be contestants (such as no reloading) then you cannot set said rules aside and still compete without being guilty of cheating. Furthermore, while results achieved while cheating can be compared to other results not involving cheating you cannot derive anything generally useful from said comparison.

 

[ainwood]

Going on the 80:20 % rule, probably 20% of the players will reload until they get their way at what they perceive to be crucial points. The other 80% of people probably won't significantly cheat---just one or two reloads. The cheating of the 20% does break the whole point of a HOF if some of the people cheat to the point that the game is completely warped (like they are are playing Las Vegas slots while everyone else is playing chess).

So you're saying that 20% reload a lot, and 80% reload a little bit?

The "just one or two reloads" is unnacceptable - the limit is ZERO reloads. I suspect that some people have been rationalising that 'just one or two' is 'ok' and that 'everybody does it'.

This is false.
Everybody does not do it.
Making one-or-two reloads at critical points can be as destructive as making many reloads.
The clear majority do not reload.
At all.
This is the standard we want for all players.

 

[Army Hooah]

I would just like to say to Ainwood and all of the staff. "Thank you for the great job that you are doing!"

All of the forums, tips, and hints have really helped to improve my game play.

For the players who accidentally mess up and forget to save a game or do reload just do what I have done the few times that happened to me. Just don't submit that game. Use that game to then really experiment and try different things to see what happens.