The Dustbin

[Tratmot]

Division E

Tratmot (andalusian) beat texanotedesco (khorasanian) 62-32

[edb1815]

Do you guys really believe cheating in FoG2 MP is common at all? Can be only a few players at most, I'd think. I mean, as someone else wrote above, it's not the Champion's League (not even DL is, sorry Pete! ), so the vast majority of us play for fun, right, and no money is involved (or is there a betting market? ), etc. And I agree that it shouldn't really be possible to cheat, but then that should be achieved through a technical improvement and solution, not through us players supervising each other. I have been around this forum very shortly, but I intend to continue assuming that my opponent/fellow players accept the RNG outcomes (even though they may, like I do, curse when it's to my disadvantage, and cheer when I'm lucky. Overall, it evens out, if not within a game then at least between games, that's my view.)

So give Slitherine some time to develop (and maybe present too) a solution, and then not only within the DL sub-forum, please.

+1

This is what happens when you go on holiday - fireworks. Now that I have read through everything, whew, I'll make a comment. I too thought there was a mechanism that recorded reloads and was very nervous when I had a crash. I do not believe that Ian and Slitherine are akin to a monolithic corporation that does not care about their customers. I believe their PBEM system is important enough that they will work out a better policing system. But remember this is not a giant MMO with multitudes of cheating issues and exploits to worry about. Nor can they easily place all the calculations server side for turn by turn essentially SP games. I will say that despite there being (almost) no money at stake some people will cheat. I have seen that in the miniatures world, someone cheats their movement distance or claims a rule applies but it doesn't, eventually everyone knows their tricks and the organizer will police it if necessary. Having said that in ancients gaming this was rare and most of the players were gentlemen.

Some people have taken a glass half empty approach here and have written what IMO amounts to angry, condescending screeds that are counterproductive and frankly better left to corporate litigation. FFS this is a game. Some people really should have a pint and give Slitherine some leeway to develop a better system.

[MikeMarchant]

Thanks for the kind words and to all my opponents for the interesting and challenging matches! We all know Arab Conquest to be a strong army list which definitely helped a lot!

Ehm, Div B.... Norwich or Sheffield Utd!?

Iain

More importantly will it be Arsenal tomorrow?

Don't be silly, Martin. It'll be Chelase 4-1.

And guess what? Spurs will be cheering us on.


Best Wishes

Mike

[MikeC_81]

Yes, I think it more likely than not that dkalenda started cheating before this season, but I cannot prove it. If Slitherine could tell me if he had been warned before then I would feel rather more certain about it. But either they cannot tell me this because they do not know, or they wish to keep certain things confidential. I am fine with that, actually. They are in the games business, I am just a punter.

But again you are making assumptions. How do you know it was the 225 excess downloads that triggered the system? Perhaps it was the 5, or the 18, or the 99? Or maybe it was all of them together? So your argument in the paragraph above is very weak. You have no evidence for "knowing" that 225 is the tripping point.

We have the evidence that he managed to get to 225 before he was temporarily banned. From Slitherine. The system is both the autochecker and Slitherine staff acting on it.

Yes, I do get it. But I get it differently to you. I don't think we are going to find out the detail of exactly how the system was working before. The technical side of it might not be too bad actually, as it did flag up dkalenda, but it seems to be the human component of the process where the problem really was. Obviously Slitherine cannot employ people to observe what happens on the server all day, so the technological upgrade has to take up that deficit so that whatever system we have in future it is a substantial improvement on what we have now. I am not expecting perfection though, and I accept there will still be some grey areas, but I imagine it should be possible to differentiate between a player who has an isolated excess download and players who are either "judiciously" save-scumming on a more regular basis, or not even trying to be discreet at all.

No one ever asked for perfection, I asked for transparency on reloads and Ian has basically stonewalled that on the flimsy excuse that it would generate false accusations. That is the frustrating part for people like me who believe there is no reason for that information to be hidden and that hiding information simply leaves a cloud in the air.

It just will not happen in-game because some players reading in the chat box that their opponent has made an excess download in the last turn will automatically assume they are being cheated. I can guarantee it. From a tournament organisers' point of view I just ask myself, "What range of behaviours is such a system likely to produce?" and the answer is not a very pleasant one in a minority of cases. I cannot think of anything more likely to cause someone to withdraw from a tournament when they have had to put up with some paranoid silly-arse incorrectly accusing them of cheating without any real evidence.

Who is the one making assumptions on player behaviour now? Keep in mind that several people now have suspicions of their opponents and have refused to speak of it even in private. So what makes you think all of a sudden the doors for mass accusations are going to be blown open?

Excess downloads per turn were as follows:
Turn 4 (his Turn 2): 2
Turn 6 (his turn 3): 2
Turn 8 (his turn 4): 13
Turn 10 (his turn 5): 11
Turn 12 (his turn 6): 13
Turn 14 (his turn 7): 22
Turn 16 (his turn 8 ): 36 !!

So this sort of information is already generated by the system and could be made available to both players during the course of the investigation (provided Slitherine agree that it should be). If we do it along these sort of lines then you will avoid most in-game bust-ups, but the system will still be accountable to the playing community. A player who is shown, say, to have excess downloads in each of their first 3 matches is not going to survive in the tournament. Which, of course, is the whole point of the system.

The problem with a post-game summary is that it is impossible to match up the reloads with what happened in-game. But even a turn by turn breakdown is better than just a summary number at the end of a game. It's the same drum I have been banging on. Context. But right now Ian seems to be opposed to giving us even this. This stance is confusing.

I don't think for one minute Slitherine will be prepared to do that and, quite frankly, I think it would be a complete waste of time, because once you had taken dkalenda's games out then nearly all the others would be exactly the same showing no anomalies at all.

But consider another report, this time completely hypothetical, where a player has been flagged for 4 excess downloads in a game. All the zero tolerance people will be jumping up and down demanding that the player should be expelled, it's completely unacceptable blah, blah, blah etc , but the pattern of excess downloads is as follows . . .

Turn 4 (his Turn 2): 2
Turn 6 (his turn 3): 2
Turn 8 (his turn 4): 0
Turn 10 (his turn 5): 0
Turn 12 (his turn 6): 0
Turn 14 (his turn 7): 0
Turn 16 (his turn 8 ): 0[/i]

And when asked about them (without actually seeing the pattern we have) the player says something like, "my internet was bad the evening I started the game" or "there was a big thunderstorm when I started the game". What does the pattern of excess downloads actually show? It shows that were no excess downloads at the most important stages of the battle and that the explanation given for the early excess downloads is almost certainly a completely honest one. I would not want to expel a player on this basis, I would not even vote to give him a "yellow card" on our adjudicator's panel. Instead I would want to just give a verbal caution saying they had been flagged by the system for excess downloads; would they please try and avoid playing if climatic conditions are really bad; and please let me know if any other player is giving you a hard time about this so that I can put a stop to it.

I would expect any reasonable person to look at this log and give that person a pass as well. But you agree that 4 reloads in a game can be grounds for suspicion right? How did dkalenda get to 225? That's beyond me and that's why I have lost a lot of faith in Slitherine. Since we are doing hypotheticals and dkalenda was banned and his max reload on a game was 10, I wouldn't have even bothered posting anything other than an "I am surprised" post since he was caught at what I considered to be reasonable threshold. It is the fact that the reload sequence got to this absurd number that has me questioning what is going on.

Also, I dislike the fact that Slitherine continues to refuse to move this discussion to the main board which is more visible and thus show a sense of accountability.

[rs2excelsior]

Division D

rs2excelsior (Viking, Ireland 900-1049 AD with Scots 851-1051 AD allies) beat baldrick52 (Indian 546-599 AD) 46-21

The Indians deployed with a line of elephants between two forests. The Vikings, bringing along more huscarls than usual since they'd performed well against the Sassanid elephants earlier in the season, tried to close the distance as rapidly as possible to minimize exposure to the Indian arrows. The elephants did some work on the Viking shieldwalls and the Indians were able to exploit several flanks, but in the end Viking troop quality managed to win out. A fairly close game that I was very much not expecting to win - some of my units hanging on very well and Indian units collapsing tipped the balance.

The battlefield at the end:

20200731184549_1.jpg (628.62 KiB) Viewed 1913 times

Good game, well played to you!

[Cunningcairn]

Thanks for the kind words and to all my opponents for the interesting and challenging matches! We all know Arab Conquest to be a strong army list which definitely helped a lot!

Ehm, Div B.... Norwich or Sheffield Utd!?

Iain

More importantly will it be Arsenal tomorrow?

Don't be silly, Martin. It'll be Chelase 4-1.

And guess what? Spurs will be cheering us on.


Best Wishes

Mike

LOL now that is below the belt

[stockwellpete]

We have the evidence that he managed to get to 225 before he was temporarily banned. From Slitherine. The system is both the autochecker and Slitherine staff acting on it.

It is my understanding that all the four matches finished around the same time so most likely were caught in the same check (a batch of 40). You wrote earlier, "the excessive download counts that run up to 225 before being flagged" is not necessarily true because the threshold set by Slitherine may have caught the 5, 18 and 99 as well. We don't actually know exactly how it works.

No one ever asked for perfection, I asked for transparency on reloads and Ian has basically stonewalled that on the flimsy excuse that it would generate false accusations. That is the frustrating part for people like me who believe there is no reason for that information to be hidden and that hiding information simply leaves a cloud in the air.

Iain responded quickly and is investigating. I think most of us think that is reasonable.

Who is the one making assumptions on player behaviour now? Keep in mind that several people now have suspicions of their opponents and have refused to speak of it even in private. So what makes you think all of a sudden the doors for mass accusations are going to be blown open?

It is not unreasonable of me to expect a range of behaviours if a new feature such as an excess download count is introduced. I already have to mediate between players over certain things during the course of a season and then you have an incident recently reported by a new player like Thunderbird (not in the FOG2DL as it turns out). And then you have certain players writing as if the FOG2DL has lots of cheaters playing in it.

The problem with a post-game summary is that it is impossible to match up the reloads with what happened in-game. But even a turn by turn breakdown is better than just a summary number at the end of a game. It's the same drum I have been banging on. Context. But right now Ian seems to be opposed to giving us even this. This stance is confusing.

What I am suggesting is that a summary number at the end of a match might be the best way to start the process by which a complaint is made. It avoids in-game arguments and if a player reads that their opponent had 4 or 6 or whatever extra downloads then they can make a complaint in the first instance to the tournament organiser or a member of Slitherine's staff. Then they will get the full turn-by-turn breakdown. I am just suggesting this as an idea. Slitherine might have a better approach.

I would expect any reasonable person to look at this log and give that person a pass as well. But you agree that 4 reloads in a game can be grounds for suspicion right? How did dkalenda get to 225? That's beyond me and that's why I have lost a lot of faith in Slitherine. Since we are doing hypotheticals and dkalenda was banned and his max reload on a game was 10, I wouldn't have even bothered posting anything other than an "I am surprised" post since he was caught at what I considered to be reasonable threshold. It is the fact that the reload sequence got to this absurd number that has me questioning what is going on.

Yes, I agree that the checking system should flag a match with 4 extra downloads. The fact that dkalenda got to 225 may be because of the way the checking system is set up. I am not exactly sure how it works but if they do a check once a week and get the worst 40 examples then perhaps they caught the 5, 18, 99 and 225 at the same time. We don't know what the threshold for flagging a game is either so we cannot make any firm judgements about the current system other than the member of staff doing the check should not have re-instated dkalenda given the numbers involved. And if he had received a warning before (which is possible) then that should have prevented his re-instatement as well.

Also, I dislike the fact that Slitherine continues to refuse to move this discussion to the main board which is more visible and thus show a sense of accountability.

Obviously it is a difficult moment for Slitherine and it is more damaging to them if it goes in the main forum. I understand completely why they are keeping it here while the investigation is underway.

[SimonLancaster]

Well done, good show!

[MikeMarchant]

More importantly will it be Arsenal tomorrow?

Don't be silly, Martin. It'll be Chelase 4-1.

And guess what? Spurs will be cheering us on.


Best Wishes

Mike

LOL now that is below the belt

Yeh, I'm not too happy about the Spurs support either. My dad's a Spurs fan.


Best Wishes

Mike

[ggarynorman]

Division D

ggarynorman (Palmyran) beat Barrold713 (Roman) 60-48

Thanks for the game

[ggarynorman]

Division D

ggarynorman Byzantines beat grumpydaddy845 Arabs 54-29

Thanks for the match

[rs2excelsior]

Division D

rs2excelsior (Viking, Ireland 900-1049 AD with Scots 851-1051 AD allies) beat ggarynorman (Byzantine 963-987 AD) 41-7

The Vikings deployed with their shieldwalls and huscarls in the open, flanked on one side by a large wing of Pict/Irish auxiliaries hidden in the forest on their right and mounted huscarls to the left. The Byzantines hung back, forming a line just in front of the lakes, with cavalry to each flank, a unit of cataphracts in reserve in the center, and artillery backing the position up. The Vikings pressed forwards, trying to minimize the time they spent under fire from the Skoutatoi's archers, while the Byzantine cavalry fell back and the reserve infantry moved to refuse their left flank against the medium foot horde. For once, I actually managed at least local superiority in cavalry on my left flank, and managed to roll up the Byzantine horse there while my reserves extended the line to the left to prevent my main attack from being outflanked. Not many fancy maneuvers here - although my medium foot ran into trouble on the right, having very limited success in attacking the Byzantine skoutatoi and getting outflanked by cavalry, they managed to hang on long enough for the Byzantine center and right to collapse under the Viking assault.

The battlefield at the end, zoomed out a bit to show the woods I used to initially conceal my medium foot:

20200801091258_1.jpg (619.5 KiB) Viewed 1946 times

Good game to you, it was a tough matchup against the high quality Viking infantry.

[texanotedesco]

Division E

texanotedesco (Arab) wins vs grumpydaddy845 (Armenian) 65% to 41%

Thanks

[texanotedesco]

Division E

texanotedesco (Arab) wins vs gamercb (Lombard) 46% to 21%

Thanks

[batesmotel]

Division C

batesmotel (Bosporan w Roman Allies) beat MikeMarchant (Roman w Sarmatian allies) 63-44

Thanks for an exciting and tense game.

Chris

[hidde]

1/8

Themed Event, season 8- Final.jpg (225.08 KiB) Viewed 1473 times

[Stormcrow]

Division F

Stormcrow (Frankish w Visgoth allies) wins vs Blagrot (Breton) 60 to 55

Close run thing.

Thanks for the game.

Cheers

(3-1)

[nyczar]

Division A

nyczar - Roman 425-492 AD with Frankish 260-495 AD allies defeats XLegione - Roman 197-284 AD with Arab 312 BC-299 AD allies 41%-16%

[rs2excelsior]

Division D

rs2excelsior (Byzantine 551-578 AD) beat ggarynorman (Palmyran 258-273 AD) 61-32

This was a tough one that I wasn't really expecting to win. The Palmyrans were deployed with their archers on the left in a patch of rough ground supported by Roman auxiliaries, and their cataphracts and legions to the right secured on a small hill. The Byzantine infantry advanced against the archers into the rough, while the lancers and horse archers attempted to harass and work around the flanks. Despite an early lead, the Byzantine position felt fragile, with the cavalry suffering heavily to Palmyran arrows and the excellent Roman auxilia holding up well in the rough ground. However, a few things happened to tip things over - the Palmyran cataphracts were flanked and defeated, two of the legion cohorts got drawn out and flanked, and one of the auxiliaries autobroke before it could finish off the Byzantine heavy infantry it was facing.

The battlefield at the end of the game:

20200801143352_1.jpg (566.51 KiB) Viewed 1625 times

Good game, and a fairly good wrap up to my matches in this division! Thanks to everyone for playing, hope to see y'all next time around!

[Stew101]

Division E

Stew101 (Arab Conquest) beat Snooky51 (Ghaznavid). Score 48 : 20.

Love the adventure of my opponent to try something different - 8 elephants!
Not a good match for them I'm afraid and the Arab Spearmen stood their charges.
They could not all come at once and those flanking arrived a turn or two late.

Good agme Snooky, see you next time.