What do you think the rate of GotM cheating is at? Does it matter?

The only "cheating" they really bugs the hell out of me is the way the AI can out produce me all the time. Especially how badly the barbarians swarm in epic length games.

The barbarian swarms should have been toned done a bit in epic and marathon games such that they appear at a rate equal to how much longer it takes to build anything.

I can manage to hold off the barbarians without having to rebuild much of my improvemnts on normal speed and raging barbarians. However, normal barbarians on epic and marathon come at me so fast that I can't keep enough forces around to slow them down. Thus I quickly fall behind on the techs from all the improvement pillaging the barbaians do.

Oh, I've read about posting units out in the wilds to eliminate the fog of war. However, when I try to build enough units to do this I also end up falling far behind on research, because I'm not able to build the city and landscape improvemnts needed to keep up.

This GotM I had my best ever score, over 8K, and first win at this high a difficulty. I thought, "wow, I did pretty good". Then I saw how high others have been scoring and think, "man I suck" and "how the hell can they score 4 to 5 times higher than I did" Of course, most of those were domination or conquest wins, while mine was a diplomatic win. I guess diplomancy sucks.
 
DaviddesJ said:
Whatever the level of cheating, I'm firmly convinced that all of the results that we do see are achievable without cheating. It's just a question of how much effort one is willing to put into the game. At high levels of play, the amount of advantage one can get from looking at the map in advance really isn't all that great.......

Hands down this is what I agree with the most. Although my spiler for GOTM2 is not up yet, (I know I need to get to it), I submitted my game very early in the month

I went back and replayed it a second time, but more importantly i played it from the turn before the game was over(where it ended because I wasn't paying attention to enough details :mad:) and tried to 'milk' according to many posts by Shillen....my result, the exact same score 100 years later and 10 hours later in the game :sad:.
Go back reload try again, similar result.
Finally on my third attempt with print outs of 'milking' techniques did I obtain a better score, but I wouldn't dream of submitting this game out of sheer respect for all of the other players that have been helping us newer members since day one.

In another thread I started,
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144352
I outline how I played and 'cheated' in ealier versions of civ, but how it wasn't until I stumbled upon Civ Fanatics and GOTM that I started to see value in playing honestly. It is through the vetran top players that I am certain don't cheat that one can really appreciate the complexities of this game.

So if there are players who cheat, wow, but overall it won't affect my game, I could come in last now it doesn't matter, for me reading about how other people attacked a similar situation is far more valuable, interesting and rewarding than acutally playing the game now :lol:

Edit: fixed quote
 
I used to cheat in Civilization I and II by reloading on every Goody Hut. My opinion at the time was "Hey, the computer cheats that much, then I should have some luck owing me!"

Since I joined CivFanatics, I have not submitted a save knowing full well that I have cheated. There are situations, like currently in Civ4, where the occasional computer reboot (due to graphic card glitches - which only happens when opposing AI Civs want to make a deal), makes it seem as though something 'dodgy' is going on (especially if I forget that an auto' save exists).

My efforts at completing a GOTM with a victory are generally wasted as 80% of the time, I get swamped by a bigger power or lose in the Space Race.

Ask me if I care? Too right, I bloody well do.
Do I want to win? Of course I do. You're damned right, I do!
Will I cheat to achieve it though? Hell, no. Never, knowingly.

A defeat, even a sorry-looking defeat where you wished you hadn't made a certain decision, is better than cheating your way to a win.

Who will benefit from 'a win by cheating'? I look back on my days on CivI and CivII with fondness, as they were ground-breaking times when computer games were starting to take shape - but I also look back at the cheating on those games as a bad practise that I wish could have been stamped out earlier.

Maybe I would have felt greater elation every time I won. Who knows? The point is, when you do achieve a victory without cheating, you know that you've earned it!
 
I personally feel that people should be able to do whatever they can do to score their highest aside from using third party programs to alter the game mechanics. The whole point of "I only have X hours to play the game" just isn't a reason to design the game to be only first time through. If you really want a "first time through" game, I say play some multiplayer, where there is obviously no reloading ever. I often times will replay old gotms several times for learning purposes - let's face it, repetition and comparison is how we really get better. It improves my ability to MP quite significantly. But then, since I am only using the GOTM to improve my MP ability, I don't really feel the urge to submit my games either, so I suppose it doesn't matter what I think :) .
 
AU_Armageddon said:
Thanks, lots of great points. I look forward to losing many very enjoyable GotMs to come :p

And I will be there right with you :), but sometimes it is the journey(in this case with so many players sharing a similar one) which is more important than the finish line.

On a completely seperate note has the ever been anything like a team entry GOTM? What I mean by this would be that for a GOTM teams of let's say 4 were created (this could be randomly assigned or as a team entry) at which point the game was played with all the same rules as the GOTM, but in that the game was played like a 'best ball' golf tournament.

In that at let's say 10 seperate points in the game 2000 B.C. 0 AD 200 AD... etc
you can look at all of the games of your team and choose who is doing the best and then all of you continue from this point on until the next exchange point.

As you can see many variations of this could be done.

:A swap GOTM at 0 AD (lets say two weeks into the month) everyone submits thier game and then they are randomly swapped with another player. At the end of the month both memebers submit thier game for an overall total score.
 
Some interesting ideas there.

On the team theme, are you aware of the SGOTM series? We've played 8 Civ3 Succession Games over the last two years, with multiple teams playing off the same start towards a defined victory objective. SGOTM 9 is in progress now. We are considering the possiblity of starting a Civ4 SGOTM, so watch this space.
 
With out a doubt I will keep my eyes open and will happily join as long as i pass the entrance requirements??:confused:

I guess i could always dig out my old copy of civ3...but as you stated it is already under way..and then that would take too much away from civ4 :lol:
 
@Memphus - there is a CIV Succession Game forum as well. You could check out the games there, pick up some real time tips and maybe play in one or two if you wished. This might tide you over until SGOTM for CIV is started.
 
I don´t think the top scores are cheating. But even if they all were, I wouldn't care as long as they write their spoilers explaining why they made their decisions and how that helped their game. If they are helping me to make better decisions, I am willing to worship them.

As for myself, in my private games I always reload. It helps me understand the "unwritten rules" of the game (like maximum carriover and things like that). I would reload a lot less if there was a warning when a city grows. Playing the GOTM with fully awareness that I will have to put up with all the mistakes a migth make, is a special experience. It makes me feel like the real historical leader, which didn't have a 2nd oportunity. I enjoy these games much more than the private ones, I even hold my breath sometimes.
 
JesusOnEez said:
/Thinks about starting one/

By all means, it's been done before, very successfully, with Civ3 GOTM maps. But to avoid spoiling a current GOTM, please don't do it with a GOTM map that's still being played.
 
AlanH said:
By all means, it's been done before, very successfully, with Civ3 GOTM maps. But to avoid spoiling a current GOTM, please don't do it with a GOTM map that's still being played.

/runs off to start JOE-02 SGOTM-01 OCC Variant/

BWAHAHA! :goodjob:
 
I think a lot of people that get high scores with Civ don't cheat, they just approach the game differently. I play to have fun and to win but I think I play more within the spirit of the game. Some players are very obsessive about maximizing score, milking score, and learning the game mechanics and scoring system inside out to optimize score. I don't think any approach to the game is bad if it's fun to the player.

I also think the scoring system for Civ IV is amongst the least thought out parts of the game and it's not that great of a system.
 
bradleyfeanor said:
And as for a mediocre player cheating, it's like when my dog farts in the middle of the night: he's the one stuck under the covers with it, not me.

:) . That's the funniest comparison I've read in a long while! But I guess it's not true for every dog. When my dog farts, he moves away from the fart, and therefore the next fart is 'launched' on a completely different place, so in a matter of minutes, the whole room is unusable:)
 
Littlewolf said:
:)When my dog farts, he moves away from the fart, and therefore the next fart is 'launched' on a completely different place, so in a matter of minutes, the whole room is unusable:)

:lol:
My dog Petey was fond of that "Fire and Move" tactic as well, but given his Potent Emissions, I came up with a strategy after the first (and only) time he rendered my bedroom uninhabitable. As soon as I would hear the telltale warning of escaping air, I would quickly throw my legs around him, effectively pinning him inside the incubation chamber. He would struggle a bit, and then go limp with a sigh. Oddly enough, I only had to do this about a half-dozen times before his nighttime gas problem mysteriously vanished. This is similar to how a top player pins a mediocre one, so the dog poot/cheating metaphor is still valid. I don't think we need worry about the cheaters stinking up the GoTM. Hopefully, most cheaters soon realize that if they can just quit farting, their fellow players will stop beating the crap out of them.
 
An amuzing anecdote. In all of this, however, I've had a modicum of concern about the "cheaters will all be low-scorers anyway" mantra that's been trotted out - the reason for my concern being that the only known incident of a GOTM cheating 'conviction' I am aware of, albeit from a couple of years ago, was a regular medal-winner and not a low-scoring player after all. (Those medals were stripped and reallocated, so checking back should not reveal their identity).
 
whb said:
(Those medals were stripped and reallocated, so checking back should not reveal their identity).

Yes I recall one during cracker's era. The name escapes me but a person that still actively posts seems familar. I'll refrain from any statement on that person since my memory is foggy.
At any rate while the theory that criminals are stupid by their very nature is true to some extent, only stupid criminals get caught.

But anyway its interesting to hear what others think about this subject it may be pointless to discuss as we may never know the extent.
 
Two instances that I'm aware of. One was very clumsy and obviously performing outside of possible game performance. For the other, the staff used a number of tools to identify this person's games as cheated; it occured over several games. I think the final straw was a game set up so that it was highly probable that only a cheater would uncover the optimum moves; when the player submitted a game with these moves, that was it. (That's my non-staff understanding; the staff do not reveal all the techniques available to them.)

In Civ3 GOTM there were many games with very close finishes; perhaps a handful of turns or a few points separated the top submittals. Those type of results indicate very hard fought games with little separating the players. Cheated games would tend to vary much more, and highly cheated games tend to stand out. I suspect that as the CIV scoring system is updated and the general playing skill goes up that the same will happen for CIV GOTM.
 
I have played many many GOTM, Civ 2 to Civ 4 now. I usually don't submit my games, I just enjoy playing them out. I enjoy playing the game not so much crushing it with strategies that no AI could be programmed to overcome. For example, would the ancient English run around hacking up every forest in sight to hurry the early wonders and build worker/worker/settler??? I know that strategy is allowed, because it's not cheating, just manipulating the game mechanics to one's advantage....

The point I'm making is that it's a game to be played for the fun of it, and if you have to cheat to have fun, then brother, please move on.

I do love to read about methods to manipulate the AI though, and the game mechanics, because one day, I may play against a human, who by nature will want to bend the rules. Best to fight fire with fire.

However, I see manipulating game mechanics like beating a baby. It just doesn't feal right.
 
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