CHEATS (ver 2.0) Hosted by Ming

[Ming]

When it comes to building roads on the ocean, I think those were things you could do in civI but not civII.

But when it comes to terraforming ocean to land with a settler on a boat... HUH!
Never heard of that one before. Are you sure you can do that?

Any additional info would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Francis]

I have heard that you can activate an engineer on a transport and transform the sea into land, but this has never worked for me. I believe it must be a bug from an early version that has been fixed.

[mzilikazi]

You could be right... I am sure I've done it in the past, and have read of others doing it (have a look on page 4 of the short tips section of Civ2 strategy on Apolyton - which, incidentally, is unintentionally hilarious, quite possibly the funniest thing I've read all year... no offence meant)

I tried it again last night, but it didn't work. Maybe it was an older version, before I loaded up FW etc.

Nonetheless, I believe this kind of terraforming should be in the game somehow - though this probably isn't the thread for it.

[Mauddib]

Ming, I sent you an e-mail.


------------------
"And his word shall carry
death eternal to those who
stand against righteousness."

[Bird]

For what it's worth, I just noticed on the ToT forum that John Possidente (he's one of the development people) doesn't consider incremental buying a cheat, nor does he consider the bomber/unit stack a cheat.

[Theben]

Hopefully the Firaxis people will have more say than him. The bomber thing isn't a cheat per se, but it isn't realistic either.

[Ming]

While I agree with your opinion... My job is to point out these things to the designers.

It is their job to determine if it fits into the game. I hope some didn't realize what an advantage this can be, and decide not to do it in the next version.

[Ming]

New summaries are due at the end of August.
If anybody has any last comments or thoughts, now is the time to bring them up.
It seems lately, the MP community is really concerned about cheating... for good reason.
Nothing worse than trying to play a game for fun, and having somebody cheat. We've heard of programs that allow to you to hack in make changes, and people who modify the game between sessions.
What do people think. Is there a way to stop this? Maybe a feature that is incorporated in the game that automatically saves, and the host machine automatically checks the other players save files to see if there are any differences, and then alerts you if there is a problem. Any other thoughts or solutions that we can pass on to make civIII a lot safer from hacking?

[DaveV]

Ming,

Regarding MP cheating: I think it's a case where you can never stop someone with enough time and talent from hacking the game, but it should be relatively easy to make it a lot more difficult.

How about this: allow each player to turn on a "mirror save" button. Each time the host saves the game (including autosave), the save file gets sent down the pipe to each of the other players who want it. Then they can compare files when the game starts back up (maybe need a "verify save file" option here). If the host's connection mysteriously drops out, you go back to the last autosave. If you are really paranoid, it would be nice to have an option that saved every autosave file as a unique name. Then you could back and do a post mortem if you think you got hosed.

[DaveV]

Ming,

Regarding MP cheating: I think it's a case where you can never stop someone with enough time and talent from hacking the game, but it should be relatively easy to make it a lot more difficult.

How about this: allow each player to turn on a "mirror save" button. Each time the host saves the game (including autosave), the save file gets sent down the pipe to each of the other players who want it. Then they can compare files when the game starts back up (maybe need a "verify save file" option here). If the host's connection mysteriously drops out, you go back to the last autosave. If you are really paranoid, it would be nice to have an option that saved every autosave file as a unique name. Then you could go back and do a post mortem if you think you got hosed.

[DaveV]

(triple post!)
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited August 18, 1999).]</font>

[DaveV]

(triple post!)
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited August 18, 1999).]</font>

[Bird]

Ming: Even if this group is unable to come up with the means to prevent MP cheating (Lord knows I don't have a clue about this kind of stuff), at least we need to emphasize that it happens and that it is a big concern. As best we can, we can explain the known ways of cheating and at least hope the programmers can figure out workable solutions. That's certainly not to say the above suggestions, and those seen elsewhere, aren't good or won't work.

[Ming]

I agree.. some of the suggestions to stop it are good ones. And again, any that we can point out will give the designers a chance to think about them.

But nobody can stop the slick cheating programs. I would settle for a way to know that cheating is occuring.

Keep those suggestions going. Again, my next (and who knows, maybe last) summary is due at the end of the month.
Lets try to use these last few days to expand on any other ways to catch/stop cheating.

Thanks to all that have contributed to this thread. I've learned a lot, and I hope the designers do to.
Now, let's finish the job.

[Bird]

Mention the host tech advantage in MP games. I don't know whether that's endemic to Civ II and MP only, but it should be avoided if the Firaxis code is similar.