WWI Tournament

[Iron Ranger]

What's the next step ref? Mirror call to arms?

[Kommandant]

What's the next step ref? Mirror call to arms?

Nay, sorry guys, another fate of nations mirror game, after that, a mirror of call to arms... Ok, I will lay down a question, would you guys like a game of tripple alliance or fate of nations, or even call to arms at the quarter finals, which is next fase. :cool:

[Sapare]

Nay, sorry guys, another fate of nations mirror game, after that, a mirror of call to arms... Ok, I will lay down a question, would you guys like a game of tripple alliance or fate of nations, or even call to arms at the quarter finals, which is next fase. :cool:

Why would anyone play Tripple Alliance? Just asking btw.

[Iron Ranger]

It would be cool to use the entire list of senerios provided. That said right now we are at.

Finals - Call to Arms?

Semi - Fate of Nations?

Quarter - (now) .... ????

Ref; its up to you but I guess I'd vote triple alliance now or in the semi. Are there any mini maps we have not used?

[Sapare]

I am pretty sure Tripple Alliance won't be very balanced... at least it shouldnt be unless there is more changed then just Itally going to German side instead of entente(which should make it possible for Germany to win rather easily)

[Bill101]

The game balancer for Triple Alliance is that US entrance will happen a lot sooner, because they don't like the balance of power in Europe being so upset.

I have played it in PBEM and it's been very close, and certainly if you would like to see more of the US in the game than we tend to get in Call to Arms, then this is a good one to try.

[Sapare]

The game balancer for Triple Alliance is that US entrance will happen a lot sooner, because they don't like the balance of power in Europe being so upset.

I have played it in PBEM and it's been very close, and certainly if you would like to see more of the US in the game than we tend to get in Call to Arms, then this is a good one to try.

ALright, that explains it. I had never played Tipple Alliance,(well, once against AI but that was a long time ago) so I was unsure exaclty what was changed.

[Sapare]

Sorry for double post but as this is totally unrealted to my previous post I thought it was fair to do so.

Anyway, what is currently going on with the tournement, wasnt the cutoff date 15th? I have not yet heard any news since then and am kinda itching to play against whoever is my next opponent.

[Kommandant]

Email is sent, quarters are on, hope you guys have fun playing Tripple Alliance

[Sapare]

I just wanted to make a quick note here. The email I am using for the tournament(I am Lukas Stoll) is nwssbronies@gmail.com.

All emails can still be send to my old email due to them bein forwarded, I am just stating it here to clear up an confusion.

[Bill101]

Good luck everyone!

I had a lot of fun in the tournament and would like to thank my opponents and the Kommandant for organizing it.

[Glabro]

Alas, my experience in the tournament was not so great. I burned out during the prelims (didn't really enjoy the multiple games and scenarios vs. playing one big game), then when the semis came I was simultaneously having less playing time and more real life stuff going on, and having two of my most anticipated titles (Old Republic and Mass Effect 3) come out, which totally sucked me in. After several failed attempts I was able to get the turn sent a month late, but never received a reply from Walter, which I guess would have been at least nice.

So, unfortunately I'll have to retire with not so much fun had, but I'm still undefeated, so maybe I'll challenge the champion to get what's coming to me!

Shame, I was looking forward to SC2:Gold. But the rest of you, have fun! These are the scenarios I entered the tournament to play....

[AnonymousJoe]

Dear SC and tournament players,

It has come to my attention that a possible exploit has been found in Email games that may have been used by some of the tournament players both currently playing and not. I have had a discussion with some of the players(who wish to remain anonymous) and the topic arose that, while playing, some people observed others "Making perfect moves" each turn. In other words, it seemed as though these players knew exactly what the other was doing/planning at any given point. So we all got to thinking, how can one possibly cheat seeing as though you can't "Undo moves" and load the games twice as reloads are being counted.We all put our heads together and what we found seemed too simple to have been overlooked(So simple that we wouldn't be suprised if this has already been discussed, in which case,we apologize for bringing this up again). Allow me to explain. When sending a saved game file through email, it is of course attached to it so that if the reciever wanted to, he or she can download it as many times as they so wish. Lets say, hypothetically speaking, Person X is playing against Person Y. Person X sends a game through email, Person Y downloads it and puts it in the Email folder so he can play it. When playing, Person Y makes some major mistakes, so he quits the game and goes back to the folder and deletes the game file. He then goes back to the email, redownloads the file, puts it in the Email folder and Bam! Zero reload count on the file as if Person Y had never played the game(We tested this ourselves, try it for yourself if you so wish). Knowing this, Person Y is free to send units in all directions to discover where Person X has his units, deletes the file, redownloads it, then makes the best possible moves according to what he has seen of his opponent. This completely eliminates the strategic aspect of the game. This is a simple yet serious flaw which must be looked into. Seeing as though there is a prize involved in this tournament, we would all dislike seeing it fall into the hands of someone who is using this exploit, and now that eveyone knows this exists, not one person could completely use it to their advantage. Also, for the sake of keeping everyone's reputation intact(in the end, this is just a game), we will not name those accused. That is all, thank you for taking the time to read this.

Sincerely,

AnonymousJoe

[Sapare]

To be honest, this whole exploid has been really obvious to me the whole time. The start you listed is just one of many ways you can exploid the whole reload feature.(personally I thought you could easily do it by just making a 2nd copy of the save file)

Obviously I do not exploid it,(and I am pretty certain my enemy isn't either, both of us have done some mistakes which neither would do in a perfect game) and I know no way to fix it. I did not really consider it a problem as i just assume people would play by the rules, but let's hear from Bill/Kommandant.

I still hope the final game will be played as a direct match though, just to make this less possible and anyone who relies on such tricks woul pretty quickly lose to someone who actully knows how to use gut feeling.

[Bill101]

It's true that someone could do this to help win current battles, but as it's long term planning and strategy that counts it will show up if they aren't a good player.

I have never minded my opponents doing an occasional reload if they made a very silly mistake during their turn, e.g. deployed a new unit adjacent to a resource rather than in it. But taking it too far would be unsporting.

One solution if you have some doubts is to play the same person via TCP if possible and see how good they are in that mode.

[Kommandant]

WOW :eek: ... that is serious sh*t.... I was hoping that players around here would not do such thing, honor lives in the heart of every true SC players, at least I never played any opponent that used such trick... Doing this in a tournament game is really bad sh*t... There is not much I can do, I can take a look in any acusation of cheating, but let's not make this a witch hunt guys, I will need good evidences to disquilify anyone...

I must admit I took a pick in the bug of the TCP/IP games... sorry Peter :( ... I was dommed anyway

[Sapare]

While I am here I might as well ask. What do we do if we don't get the games done in the given timeframe.(I can't say for sure if we will or not, but I think at the rate we are going we MIGHT not(we are like 20 turns into it, normally a game averages at bout 100 turns but it might be shorter with the CP being such a beast in TA(seriously, with that extra fleet and no good ports in entente control, also with france having yet another open side.. CP is such a beast)

[Kommandant]

Weel, you need to hold fast until america comes ....

Time limit, don't worry too mch, if no one ends the game until there I will remake the end date, don't worry much about it

[waltero]

Back in the day We did not have the option Fog of War.

Eliminate Fog of War if you are worried about it.

Problem salved!

Like Bill Said Quote: but as it's long term planning and strategy that counts it will show up if they aren't a good player.

[Kommandant]

I've been kind of away people, I had some heavy personal problems last month, I have no news from you guys, not even in the email, just checking if everything is ok here.

[Sapare]

I've been kind of away people, I had some heavy personal problems last month, I have no news from you guys, not even in the email, just checking if everything is ok here.

Everything fine here. Game is still going and not many turns are getting done each day... but the game still seems to be getting toward an end(rather soon at that, we are at end 1915 atm)

[Isnogud]

I think it is possible to avoid the re-load expoiled.

The game has to store somewhere hiden (maybe windows registry)

if a file with a specific name or checksum has alreay been loaded.

Maybe there is also an internal identification of a file.

If the same file is then loaded again the counter could be raised regardless

if it is the previous game file or a copy of the unloaded.

It has to be assured that the counter will only be set after the replay.

In rare cases the replay crashes, so you have to load the file again.

I think currently this is also not counted as reload.

[Kommandant]

I think it is possible to avoid the re-load expoiled.

The game has to store somewhere hiden (maybe windows registry)

if a file with a specific name or checksum has alreay been loaded.

Maybe there is also an internal identification of a file.

If the same file is then loaded again the counter could be raised regardless

if it is the previous game file or a copy of the unloaded.

It has to be assured that the counter will only be set after the replay.

In rare cases the replay crashes, so you have to load the file again.

I think currently this is also not counted as reload.

Well, I can't say much, or even do much about this problem. If any one think that the other player is cheating, send me an email in my private address wh40k.biffy@gmail.com I can think of a solution, if I really come to agree with cheating.

What I can say is, if anyone here is cheating, what can I say, we are all grow ups, we are playing, but I hope you guys know how to do it clean. You can't cheat life, why you going to cheat in a game?

For the good of everyone, if anyone is doing this, or thinking of doing it, please, stop for the love of all the gods, the old and the new.

[Winti]

I think at the moment the effect of cheating is fairly limited due to the reload exploit as:

Only one turn can be reloaded: it means long term strategy cannot be cheated (where invest and when on research, unit production...)

In the other hand what you can gain is to modify battle result (here is a good thing that luck factor is only between +1-1 which means roughly 20% randomness to influence but considering in one turn you have quite a lots of attack reload effectively can modify only a few in your favor but some others goes in the opposing way, so bigger maps with more units greatly reducing cheating effect.

The 3rd thing you can have is to uncover hidden positions by recon movement (here again bigger map helps and also even when you know unit is there you have to bump into)

The 4th is to influence end of turn event (eg research breakthrough and % based scripts) here again you can get 1-2 turn earlier or later which for a 100-200 turn game does not much matters.

What can be done to reduce the cheating effect I thing is goes 2 direction:

From player perspective for competitive play you might not considering small scenarios.

From developer perspective there is 2 things can be done:

- fix the random-sequence separately for research, scripts, intelligence etc. and bound to the save game meaning reloading the turn does not alter results there (it is might be already the case I'm not sure?)

- For the reload counter I believe the only option is to save&load files by the game engine from a 3rd party location where loading counters can be tracked, as in your own computer any files(even registry) can be backup-restored without any chance to a program to catch it. This option of course needs an online storage but might be easy to implement if there is an existing file service on the web with the ability to track download counters?

[MonsterClaude]

Hi buddies!

Whether we scream or not cheating has always been around in every computer games including Noble historical wargames among knigth:ps in our hobby. Triks are variable, you pinned point some here. Let's face it! Why not simply be smart and give the funny guy his own medecine! When I have a doubt I usually set a couple of traps ( juicy target, weird tactical moves) to see how my opponent will react. Even the most clever ones come to realize I'm aware something is going on and I'm dealing with it.

Example: I had a guy who would always set his naval units around my moving ones so, on my tun, I would bump unto his fleets and get destroyed the next turn. It may seemed like I was simply uncautious if not stupid. But the modus operandi repeated itself so many times in even the most unlikely context, I decided to test the matter out by sending an army on transport going nowhere but sailing around. The case was so obvious ( he could not possibly detect it unless he made some cheating scouting) He chose to let it go by fear of beeing unmasked. So the unmolested army landed in the Med many turns later! He then betrayed himself by telling me : Bold move Man !you passes through all my ships with your army ( he could not know it was an army unless he moved by and he had no spotting planes in this theater).

Another time a guy shift all his russians forces southward leaving wide opened the way to Leningrad and Moscow. My Barb had been devastating for him and he was about to loose Rostov with my 2 panzers ready to strike and 2 HQ behind protected by a screen of corps. Why not would you think? He did the right thing to prevent an eventual loss of the whole caucasus. Yes, sure!

He launched a suicidal attack with everything he had on hands to reach my HQs ( he had No air units left for spotting!) and destroyed both. Even though he lost most of his units afterwards, the fact is he planned his risky strategy on What? The vain hope to cut supply to my Panzers? Obviously he knew the 2 HQs were there, No one would have made such a daring gamble without knowing. So I said: Hey Pal, you were lucky to hit my 2 Hqs with your blind run! Oh yes! He replied, I was convinced you were to hit Leningrad to link up with the Finns! Sure! That's why he sent 4-5 units from the northern front to Kharkov! ( not to the threaten Rostov what would have been at least a more reasonable plan)

Then on my next turn I first check out where his own russian HQ hidded with some Cheating moves, Reloaded with a copy, Send out 2 dumb corps to bump on his HQs and then destroyed them. He wrote: We are on equal terms now!

You bet! He knew I knew! What a tasty moment!