Bear Baiting 101 Tracking Thread

[smacksim]

Anyone trolling this thread amused? I hope it was worth something.

[Snowflake]

I did not know that Enigma used the former reactivation exploit or other exploits before he said it here, I have no way of knowing this. Enigma had not told me about them.

In ACDGIII Kody and I are both in the CMN forum and in a conversation Kody mentioned something to the effect that cheatings are found in this game. I do not know the exact nature and means of the offense and I have no way to verify it. However I feel that it is the CMN's responsibility to disclose any findings of cheatings to all players. While Kody was hesitating about what to do, I did not want to surpass him to declare to all that cheatings were found. However I didn't feel it is fair to all people who play the game to simply let it go. Thus the vague hyperthetical question.

It is not meant to be a troll. When ACDGIII is over all of you will have a chance to read what is written at the private forums. I hope this helps a little to clear the doubts of my previous post.

[smacksim]

I don't have any doubts about your post. Well, not until you now bring up this new information. I agree Kody should come forward with:

'There may be cheating in this. Do you want to continue and/or take further action?'

I dunno. something is very wrong here with the way this is being handled. I'm too tired from this damn off topic thread to try to work it out. And that is the point. Someone should be taking some kind of responsibility here. Trying to work things out.

-S

[Kody]

*sigh* Okay Honghu, I was making sure you understood all the consequences.

Enigma: You may not know this but I've been keeping count. This is your fourth and final chance.

If you don't know what needs to be done then, it's out of your hands.

[Darsnan]

The turn has been forwarded to SmackSim.

D

[Kody]

Forward the latest turn to me please too, or link it here.

[Chaunk]

I'm sending you my turns kody, so unless you want everyones turns, there's no major need?

[Enigma_Nova]

Kody: Where the hell do you get your numbers from?
No, I don't know what needs to be done.
What would you do in this situation?

[smacksim]

This game needs:

• At the very least, a re-start.
• A handling of the offense.
• The moderator to explain his actions and make suggestions because:
• The player in question has done nothing to this end, and the moderator is involved in some way

I am not going to play the turn. I will find a substitute if ALL other players want to continue without speaking to these issues.

-Smack

[Chaunk]

I'm not sure a restart would be actually fun... we now know many of enigma's tricks in this scenario, his "Kody special unit" for example. We also know the gaian's should call the council at the end of their first turn so as to remove that option for enigma - whether or not they've placed any bases.

To restart would therefore require a different map, and probably a different set of circumstances (No contact with enigma at the start perhaps).

I'm not quite sure I want Kody to explain his actions, nor what actions may or may not be cheating. He may not need to do so, and forcing him to do so would probably be a bad idea.

I do however, want a fair game, and also a fun game. Hopefully these are still achievable goals?

[smacksim]

Sounds reasonable. How about at least fixing the EC's that E_N took? I'll keep playing. What the heck.

-S

[smacksim]

Here's the turn that Darsnan sent me. I havn't played it yet. Perhaps Kody, you could try to fix things and send it back? No hurry on my end.

[Hercules]

I am for continuing but the ecs exchange with the AI needs redressed.

[Kody]

So far these are the actions I have taken to date.

* About a month ago I quietly commented to everyone that former reactivation was not allowed in the "Heart of Fire" and hinted that it was highly unusual for such pod pops to occur in the "You think you know everything" game.

The reason for that action was to give Enigma a small nudge hopefully towards not cheating. Nobody would have ever found out, and Enigma wouldn't even have to admit that he was cheating to me.

* Second warning was I started a rather long winded discussion about cheating in the Heart of Fire thread.

I didn't bring Enigma in at all, but the entire discussion was brought up simply for his benefit. I was hoping to show people's reaction and opinions towards cheating; however it backfired on me as people were fairly lenient in their judgement. I suspect that my actions made Enigma believe that cheat would simply get a slap on the wrist. I was hoping that Enigma would understand the logical reasons against cheating, but it was not the case.

I had some private discussion with him about the issue, we talked about cheating and morality. The conversation ended with Enigma saying my morality would mean I would always lose and the fact he was willing to do what was necessary to win would mean he would always come out on top.

* Third warning was when I started the Bear Baiting game, and directly confronted him with the issues of cheating.

I started bear baiting, because of Enigma. I tried to consider what the causes for cheating were and try and offset them. The two causes that I could figure out where that Enigma wanted to be in a position of power, and also that if he did fail to win he would want a good reason for it. I felt that by putting Enigma in a position of power in this PBEM and also giving him the excuse for failure (having 6 other players against him), he wouldn't have as much incentive to cheat. Furthermore, I was expecting him to cheat, but I hoped by confronting him with it and trying to dissuade him directly he might be able to break away.

The cheating occurred and I had a hard time trying to talk to him without being bogged down by him trying to defend himself. I lied to him saying I was only checking the bear baiting turn, because smacksim got attacked by mindworms. It was a half truth, as I was planning on checking the turn anyway. I managed to get him to promise not to do certain types of cheats. One of the cheats I accused him of that I thought he was using he wasn't actually using after I reviewed the save files.

At the time he claimed that he didn't know the terra-former reactivation was a bug. Although I already knew Jamski, Honghu and I had already stated it was a bug in the HoF at the start of the game and also during the second warning terra-former reactivation was one of the bugs that were discussed as a cheat.

When I asked him to stop reloading he said he couldn't promise that, instead I should give him time and I accepted that. At the time I promised that I wouldn't tell everyone that he was cheating and at that time I had every intention of keeping that promise. However, neither of us managed to keep our promises.

I promised that I wouldn't tell everyone because it would be forcing him to make the decision I wanted if I threatened him with it. He would need to make the decision himself without threats hanging over his head or it would be pointless.

* Final warning was the one posted in this thread

When I found out Enigma had broken the promises he made, I was upset, but I think somehow I believed he promised more than he actually had. Also
That when I noticed that he had cheated again reactivating terraformers. I decided to that it wasn't my duty to tell everyone what I had found out, as his level of cheating was so obvious to me I believed someone else would eventually bring him up on it. Telling myself that everyone knew I removed the html comment tags that were hiding my observations of his cheating in

Honghu quickly brought it up, actually much faster than I would have thought as the comments were in my older journal entries and I assumed it would be while before someone reread them if at all. We had a discussion about the issue on what were the consequences of telling everyone. I won't go into the details. She confronted me about it, but I didn't like the consequences.

So the final ultimatum was made in the Bear Baiting thread. I didn't specify what he had to do because he would get no redemption in other people's eyes if someone else led him to that decision. Also if I forced him to make that decision, it would be fairly meaningless. I hoped that he would come clean for real, this final chance wasn't so he could quietly change his ways. He had three previous chances to do that and it was too late for another go. This time I expected him to actually tell all of the truth and nothing, but the truth. Instead he spent his last chance talking to Honghu and convincing her that he could change and should be given another chance.

---

I also have compiled information on Enigma cheating in Heart of Fire, ACDGIII and Life is only a game (only up to 2108 for LIOAG, but gawd! it took me 1 hour just to track the series of unit creation pod pops for one of the turns).

When I finish LIOAG, I intend to go through Testalossa, which looking at the lastest save looks highly suspicious and I think I will find cheating in there too. I probably won't go Ytyke as I think it will come down to me showing the likelyhood of cheating through statistical analysis for that game.

So far Enigma's cheats that I have detected include, reloads lots of reloads, probe team retro-engineering, former reactivation.

Reload bug used to
* successfully move units without bouncing into fungus or due to being on partial moves.
* getting series of pod pops that are 1 in a billion.
* generating mindworms in fungus to kill them and get ECs.
* ensuring units don't take much damage when attacking mindworms.

The -50 ECs for the AI occurred in "You think you know everything", was probably a honest mistake.

Do people want to have to full turn by turn list of cheats I have detected or believe are likely?

I haven't completed it for LIOAG. I haven't started it for Testalossa and Ytyke. Completed for HoF, bearbaiting and ACDG.

---

Bear Baiting

* Turn 1,
starting money is 163 and he's completed a former in every city. Money per turn is 28.

From this we can deduce that.
163-28 = 135ECs left from last turn.

25ECs to rush each former in 9 cities = 225

Total money = 225+135 = 360

So he gained 350 ECs last turn.

He had 9 infantry, 4 rovers used up 2 moves each. 1 rover used up 1 move.
9+4*2+1 = 18 mindworms killed.

Another note that none of his units are at less than 20% damaged. Average damage is 10%.

Obviously looking closer at the turn it can be seen that he's rustled up one mindworm in fungus then rustled up an mindworm in adjacent fungus. Hence he alternated between killing each mindworm off one after another. So it was 17*20ECs +10ECs = 350ECs worth of mindworms.

Another thing to note is that a scout moved using 1/3 move which has a 33% chance (I'll also mention units that fail to move).

* Turn 2 of bear baiting.....

Of the 4 units of his move into fungus all of them succeed without mindworms or anything.

I made an scenerio, out of 10 scout units I'll write down how many manage to move into fungus.
(by the way I put high native life, so alot of worms)
1,2,1,0,3,2,3,1,4

1+2+1+0+3+2+3+1+4 = 20% chance to move into fungus without worms. (about 40% without worms)

Assume 40% chance for all four units moving into fungus successfully is .4^4=2.56%

So only a 2.56% chance of moving into fungus not including the possibility of worms. While there is a 0.16% chance that all units moved into the fungus without worms.

* Turn 3 of bear baiting no cheating detected.

[Kody]

Actually I don't really want to go through any more of Enigma's turns.

Testalossa and YTYKE are the only ones where I haven't specifically checked for cheating. I doubt I will be able to prove much in YTYKE, so that leaves Testalossa.

I looked at the last save of Testalossa and it looks wrong, especially since it looks like he got the weather paradigm before 2117.