Moderator Game News

[Kody]

MY year 2101 (Data Angel Turn-restart)

Drogue:

I checked over the things foolish_icarus said. It's fairly reasonable and I also checked the time period it took him to do it. 4 hours is pretty much how long it should have taken.

So I inclined to believe that foolish_icarus has not done anything illegal.

[Drogue]

From Angel thread:

Originally posted by foolish_icarus
As for the map: I was under the impression that this had been done last game, in making "turn simulators". Certain landmarks have distinctive shapes. Garland Crater, Sunny Mesa, Unity crash site are easy to see. For the rest of the map, examine the slope-shape of the grid lines and land forms will be shown. Recreate the elevations in a map editor, and voila. I'm just glad we weren't using a huge map

turn simulator...
In clarification:
Any exploring, military trials or probe actions, is not allowed. Testing former orders and AI diplomacy (without accepting any deal) is allowed. For anything else, check with Drogue before hand.

Those are the rules. However, while I would like the use of turn simulators for exploration to desist, it seems you have just point and clicked, and as such, other than finding the base, it is not something you couldn't have done without a simulator. Therefore, no action will be taken for this, but as said, I would like the use of turn simulators for exploration to stop.

If you're not sure if something is allowed or not, please PM myself and ask.

He didn't mean to break the rules, and didn't need to either, but he did, by using the turn simulator.

[Kody]

MY year 2101 (Data Angel Turn-restart)

Umm Drogue what you said made no sense.

It's impossible to explore using a turn simulator, because the turn simulator only has land and enemy faction information you put into it. If there's a problem with getting illegal information it's with getting it from the real turn.

foolish_icarus basically said he was using the elvation map, which the gaians have already used, while spartans and morgans intend to use too. I believe that's a legal tactic.

[Drogue]

It is. However he specifically stated he used a turn simulator to do it. He didn't need to, but he stated that he did. Hence why I warned him from doing it in the future.

[Method]

All done the Gaian turn.

EDIT: Updated attachment. Originally played the wrong turn

[Drogue]

Many thanks Will check all turns played tonight.

[Drogue]

Re: Game Strategy Observations

Originally posted by Kody
Enigma seems to be following his lucky pod pop and associated habits strategy. His first set of pod pops was one in 200 chance maybe higher, even the restart pop are very lucky. It will probably win him the game. I can tell because he doesn't bother to deeply considering long term plans or possible problems. Rather he seems certain that he'll be able to deal with any issues long before they pop up and is fairly confident that pod pops won't cause any problems. Nobody thinks like that unless they've got more information than they should or they're not paying attention. I had a long chat with him, hopefully he'll listen to me. I'll should be able to tell if he changes his ways within a few turns of him doing so. So far it seems he's just gone deeper into hiding as I made him aware that is was so balant what he was doing.

You think he was replaying turns, or somesuch? What's you're thinking on this.

[Kody]

I think you need to wait and see, he might change what he's doing.

Things like an insistence to pop the pods rather than Malk doing so, and not getting any bad results etc.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Um.... large bug.

Hello. I am not a mod for this game or in any team ATM, and with this posting I am sadly unlikely to ever be suitable for a team (mod is different matter, but that hardly matters now). However I am posting in this thread. I have not managed to find any of you on IRC since I found this bug out. It is major, and we need to get it fixed.

I frequently use the 'View Last Posts' button on the main Poly forums. When I last did it, I found to my surprise the private faction forums' last posts showed up. I clicked on one to be sure, but it took me straight to the post! Thus anyone in any team can gain access to private team forums by doing this. Once in they can 'next thread' or 'previous thread' to see anything they want, edit posts or even post (as I am doing now).

I am PMing Mark about this as well, and we once had a similar problem with the start-up of the Civ3 PtW Democracy game, with separate team forums attached to a main public game forum. That was solved (in fact I was the one to notice and report this then as well!), and hopefully this can be solved quickly. I am posting this because I wanted you all to know about this in case there is a suspicion of cheating at some point - this may be/have been the cause. If no-one else has noticed this it could possibly be fixed before anyone notices, although that cannot be certain.

Hopefully if anyone is getting anything using this without telling anyone they will no longer be able to when the bug is fixed. However I know xxxxxCENSOREDxxxx so if someone has done this XXXXX then there would be no stopping them through this loophole.

We should probably keep this secret until it is fixed.

Your servant,

WIA.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Re: Um.... large bug.

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
However I know that xxxxxCENSOREDxxxx so if someone has done this xxxxx then there would be no stopping them through this loophole.

I just realised that if someone is using it already they could see this! PM me if you want to know what this bit was.

[Kody]

MY year 2102 (Data Angel Turn)

PM sent to MarkG

Dear MarkG

Someone who wasn't authorised to access the ACDGIII private forums was able to enter and post.

From what can be gathered it appears to be a problem for any apolyton plus members. As it does not appear to happen with someone on a normal account or someone without an account, it can be concluded that it may be something to do with the apolyton-plus showthread script being different.

The characteristics of the bug seem to be similar as the old private forum bug that plagued the ACDGII forums. Only this time the person doesn't need to first click "join" for the team, before being able to access without authorisation.

Furthermore, the bug reportably only works with the ACDG forums, and is not a problem with the civ forums.

It would be appreciated if this bug could be fixed, and when it is fixed notification given to either myself or Drogue so the passwords which were available in the private forums can be changed.

Thanks for your time.

Kody

[Snowflake]

Thanks MWIA for pointing this out. Since we all have access to all the private forums we wouldn't be able to discover this ourselves.

[Kody]

MY year 2102 (Morgans)

MarkG,

Thank you for fixing the problem.

I'll let you know if anything else comes up.

Kody

fixed

due to the mess that the vbulletin permission system is, an exact number of 37 users (not all plus members, some dg-mods and others) had access to the acdg team forums

let me know if there is any other issue

[Kody]

My suggestion is we need to change the passwords just as a safety precaution.

Drogue your thoughts on this?

[Kody]

It seems that Enigma is still cheating.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3119373#post3119373

GO TURN!
It's already here. I'm waiting for Makahlua to come online.

I should warn you that:
if a probe pops a pod and has some movement points remaining, it can run away from worms.
If it pops the pod with its last movement point, it will be eaten by worms.

Evidence of exploring ahead. He's obviously opened the turn noticed that the probe can move and pop a pod and made that comment to ensure Makahlua doesn't do so.

Makahlua then finds a pod, when she does the turn.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3120018#post3120018

Seems also what I've said previously is coming true. He's making sure that he's the one popping the pods.

I think you need to wait and see, he might change what he's doing.

Things like an insistence to pop the pods rather than Malk doing so, and not getting any bad results etc.

Grr I can't believe he's broken his promise to me so fast. My talk with him only made him more careful about his cheating, didn't stop him at all.

Edit: Actually thinking back, he didn't break his promise to me. He was a damn lawyer when he picked his words, I just wanted to think he was changing.

If we come across 50 or more ECs in a pod, what should we do?

Let see if he pops ECs he's thinking of in the next pod.