Longturn Forum

Terror sometimes uses forbidden auto-attack feature when he is not online. It has been witnessed by plenty of players over the time but nothing has been done against it -- except Terror himself usually stops using it when the topic is hot.

He calls it jokingly as "rock" on keyboard, pressing A key. He has also said it would be some kind of a hidden menu element in standard vanilla freeciv-client, that he says, makes it standard and approved feature to use.

Here is the most recent test we made on video:

http://www.freecivbook.com/videos/20120 ... rsRock.wmv

We have been recording tests like this for a while now. It always happens like this, until we make a noise of it, and Terror stops using it -- for a while at least.

Here is a discussion from one IRC channel:

cgalik wrote:last night on turn 121: city 1: Toledo unguarded spy was fine. city 2: spy to Madrid killed instanteously by terror's mech inf. (before I could even do dialogue). Then I brought mechinf to it with spy and it was fine. We then take Madrid and terror (who's says is online) doesn't have any resistance. Then other cities (3rd city: Zaragoza, 4th:Oviedo) with mech inf + spy was ok, but then go to 5th city Dallas and terror howie auto attacks my mech inf + spy

cgalik wrote:Then same thing happens today, on T121. twice we bring unguarded spies on rails slowly past Madrid towards Dallas and there is no reaction from terror. Then the split second the unit gets next to Dallas, the howizter attacks it.

cgalik wrote:10 minutes later terror starts fighting us back as we are taking over cities.

aloril wrote:and I add to above cgalik description: later terror came online: 2012-05-01T09:01:49 Howitzer lost when the Texan Stealth Fighter attacked the Slovakian Howitzer.

aloril wrote:that is 1h after auto-attack with howitzer

Terror is a great player, but in my opinion this is cheating.

I witnessed all of the above, and unfortunately it's quite true. The video doesn't quite do it justice, as 2 minutes before aloril's spy was auto-attacked, jhh's spy was auto-attacked, so we knew to record. So if terror was actively playing, we would have been ready for this a second spy and obviously killed an unguarded spy on rails.

Also, I've witnessed this earlier in LT30 when our alliance was approaching terror with spies, we did a coordinated spy attack to steal tech, and multiple cities he killed multiple spies at the same time. Although he stopped for several months before starting it up again.

Terror: Please stop doing this. You'll probably stop now that we are posting it, but please don't ever do this. It's unfair and drives people not to want to play with or against you. I know like last time we confronted you on it you'll bring up logging, or something which is fine to have a separate discussion regarding that matter too.

cgalik wrote:The video doesn't quite do it justice, as 2 minutes before aloril's spy was auto-attacked, jhh's spy was auto-attacked, so we knew to record. So if terror was actively playing, we would have been ready for this a second spy and obviously killed an unguarded spy on rails.

My record of the first attack on my own unit was affected by the application I was using to record it and by auto-center to another part of the world when the unit died. It looked much slower on record than in real, since I guess, the record was slowed down because of more frames changing etc.

Actually that video of aloril's spy has same kind of short delay -- it really hapens instantly in real client.

(I should find bug-free recording application.)

akfaew wrote: jheusala: what do you want to do about it? this situation i mean

akfaew wrote: i suggest after some discussion on the forum make a poll with a suitable punishment?

jheusala wrote: something like that

akfaew wrote: jheusala: obviously i'm biased here, so i'll try not to get too involved

jheusala wrote: I've done my part proofing it for the community, punishment ideas can be discuessed on forum or something like that

akfaew wrote: but i'll perform the punishment if it passes

So; the question is -- AFAIK -- how should this be punished?

you must be genius
first: I can attack when I want
second: you are cheaters exploting bugs
third: consider eg situation when eg. someone logs and unlogs every 3 seconds, and he will say the same bullshit like you, rules dont disallow me to do that ...

no more discusion with you.

terror wrote:you must be genius
first: I can attack when I want

Not with an automated feature. It's illegal in LT rules and because of it we cannot use it either.

terror wrote:second: you are cheaters exploting bugs

Can you elaborate this? Which bugs?

Akfaew, Terror & all,
I apologize, as I really don't remember rule #8, "It is common courtesy to log out and let your enemy do his moves in peace, after you have done yours." I wasn't doing that, and I will. (I read the rules way back in LT27.)

http://longturn.org/rules/

(This was pointed out to me in the game chat today.)

I'll admit, I didn't read the rule and din't know about the 24/7 rule. I use to play about 2 years ago and didn't think there would any significant rules I wouldn't know about.

In any case I only left it logged in out of convenience and my own rule was a few minutes per city.

But, it seems Terror hacked my account. That totally sucks, not because he ruined my nation of two cities but he adds a bad taste to the game. I don't mind loosing, in fact, I enjoyed the game. But what he did is just ugly.

My stance is that he should be removed from all games and banned. I certainly don't want to play in a game he plays in. Afkaew, forget about adding me to LTex23B.

If a totally new player joined LT and in their first game hacked account, I suspect they would be banned.

It doesn't take a genius to know you should hack someones account, whether there is a written rule or not.

akfaew wrote:I've compiled a list of various offences in LT30:
* auto attack (1.9)
* long time delegation of two nations (4.5)
* delegation for dubious reasons (4.3)
* staying online 24/7 (1.8)
* TC roads
* exploiting the game (teleportation)

Some are more serious than others. There is no predefined punishment for any of those, some are not even defined as illegal (teleportation). It is my suggestion that everybody just gives it a rest and keeps playing under these circumstances. Otherwise stop just saying "this sucks" and actually do something - write appropriate punishments for the offences and make polls, write a change to the rules - do something that actually takes us a step closer to more peaceful games and less forum and chat fighting.

Maybe I should add a rule: "Complaining without proposing a fix is strictly forbidden"...

Some thoughts:

* I do not think there is a rule against TC roads. It is not that different to moving then fortifying before TC. Were people teleporting in LT30.? If so, lame
* Maybe we should say it is frowned upon using air units to protect land units for ~20 hrs of a turn.
* There was quite a lot of idling/quiting that was quite annoying (rules 1.6, 3.2)
* I wonder if we should consider shifting to a 20hr turn system rather than a 23 hr turn system (+ some random factor) to even lessen the effect of turn changes.
* We should decide on minimum and maximum delegation lengths (this was discussed at some point during the game)
* It should be illegal/frowned upon for one "alliance" to delegate to another "alliance" (e.g., in this game kevin delegating to aloril - I am sorry if this is a bad example!). However I see no obvious way to police this.

Forum Wars!

The last time a serious infringement was reported on the site ("attack scripting") - 22.03.2012 14:40:26
It took 5 hours for the counter attack thread to get going - 22.03.2012 19:26:23

This time ("password hacking") - Today 00:20:33
Who is going to beat that 5 hour counter attack!
There is still time.

akfaew wrote:I've compiled a list of various offences in LT30:
* auto attack (1.9)

I know others think differently, but that rule can be removed as I see it. (And no, I don't use a custom client, I use Gentoo vanilla freeciv client. I have to admit it's more due to me not having time to do any such development than anything else).

Policing it is impossible (we cannot force a review of people's computers, can we) unless in those cases the feature is used in a very noticable way.

And no, the game would not detoriate into "who's got the best AI". Gaming skills, diplomacy etc will still be decisive.

akfaew wrote: * long time delegation of two nations (4.5)

I'm currently running North Korea and have done so for a few days. I seriously expected that to be pretty short (a country being R.I.P isn't exactly a country you can be considered runnig ) but to my surprise the country is still there. So if North Korea is killed fast enough, we don't have to fear I break the rule .

akfaew wrote: * delegation for dubious reasons (4.3)

Maybe it's me you are referring to. The guy running North Korea had problems getting time running LT ATM, hence the delegation.

akfaew wrote: * staying online 24/7 (1.8)

First, this is NOT strictly forbidden, it's just a recommendation using the word 'courtesy' etc. Second, with a madman like Wieder in ingame chat, you keep your client logged on only to see what madness he produces. Actually, the ingame chat is there and a good reason one stays logged in. And no, IRC channels on the internet is not the same. Not everyone in the game are on those, but everyone in the game is in the ingame chat.

And yes, having the freeciv client constantly humming is a convenient way to play the game when being in a hurry. A few moves there, some chat there, spending 30 seconds answering an occasional diplomatic meeting that pops up etc.

So I'm inclined to say thanks for the recommendation but I'll continue be logged in. I can tell you guys in chat when I go to work and when I'm back so you can overrun my nation safely .

(If it changed so this rule is phrased that staying online too much is prohibited, then I'll comply, but then, I think we should have a server side restriction on how much time we are allowed to stay online).

Personally, I would like this rule to go as well.

akfaew wrote: * TC roads

Akfaew, why do you even list this as an offense? There's no rule against it. It should not be. That this tactics is not an exploit, it is a tactic that naturally emerges from the fundamental mechanics of how freeciv works.

Being online a TC gives an edge, sure, but that's the way the game fundamentally works. But it's not a huge edge, the game is meaningful to play even if one does not always make TC (I'm in that category).

akfaew wrote: * exploiting the game (teleportation)

Care to elaborate? This is not a matter of someone actually spending time READING the rules, playing a little and then actually use their brains at the same time? So we don't list the fact someone just outsmarted the rest of us (which IMHO should be rewarded) as an offense, a tendency I think I can see in forums like these .

akfaew wrote: Some are more serious than others. There is no predefined punishment for any of those, some are not even defined as illegal (teleportation). It is my suggestion that everybody just gives it a rest and keeps playing under these circumstances. Otherwise stop just saying "this sucks" and actually do something - write appropriate punishments for the offences and make polls, write a change to the rules - do something that actually takes us a step closer to more peaceful games and less forum and chat fighting.

Maybe I should add a rule: "Complaining without proposing a fix is strictly forbidden"...

Well, many people proposes a fix, but it's coded in English and it's focused on adding rules and/or enforcing rules are in effect.


The only in the list above that really requires some rules is how we handle delagation, IMHO, but that simply because I find that feature generally problematic as we permit a player participating in the game to run another player's country. I would rather have a solution where we somehow delegate to a person who is NOT involved with any other country in the game. Implicit delegation by letting countries have multiple rulers at the start? But again, that's a fix by technical solution, and perhaps not a topic in a rules thread.


In my humble opinion: we should remove limitations on client side auto-attack, client-side login time (even if server side limitation of course can be configured). This brings down the number of informal rules to keep in mind and minimizes the amount of these kinds of discussions.

HOWEVER, there is one cardinal sin (which remotely, remotely touches my general uneasiess regarding delegation, in spite of using it myself).... hacking into someone elses account, especially if used to damage the player's position!

THAT should be addressed by removal from the game and even with removal/banning from longturn.org!

User accounts are sacred, and rules that it's forbidden to hack into them should be a high priority to get added!

Best regards

/IllvilJa

With 30 howziters mighty Navajo could take 50% cities of your allianze defended by warriors and spies.

cgalik wrote: Although he stopped for several months before starting it up again.

But you didnt stopped cheating and what do you expect?

monamipierrot wrote:With 30 howziters mighty Navajo could take 50% cities of your allianze defended by warriors and spies.

cgalik wrote: Although he stopped for several months before starting it up again.

But you didnt stopped cheating and what do you expect?

Also Navajo seven-springs-children like play Little Account Hacker. Funny game. We Navajo grown-ups like play "Get Scalp of Terror & Friends" game. One with many scalps wins.
Navajo will send one green warrior with brand new War Axe. Please friends no use howitzer. Let mighty warrior do job on Terror head.

Augh.

Using ofenssive units like fighters to defend stack is bug, even rehoming units to city with Shakespeare is considered as bug on freeciv-dev. You are probably exploting all such minibugs mentioned there. YOu are happily exploiting everything and don't even bother post proposition how to fix them in lext lt. What would happen in lt30 if there wouldn't be prefortress ? How many times you would build fortress in last seconds of turn?

Why most of you are unlogged now ? You told earlier that you enjoy keeping freeciv minimalized, or chatting there. Seems there is a lot to chat now. Even your chat is bug there cause logging players loose there messages from allies cause you make buffer chat full with your pathetic talk.

What are statistics killing spies you vs Terror ? You killed more! You just dont like when someone dont waste time on lt hunting spies, right?

YOu are making some bullshit agreement with some players against not killing spies. But why dont you make such agreemnt about adding units to city which is currently attacked ? How many cities have you defended in rts style ? Why you attack offline players, you are online all the time so play fair and attack only online players so chances would be almost equal? That's pathetic.

If you spend more time on learning rules instead exploiting them you would have stealth much before turn 100 and game would be finished long time ago. Also learning those rules would take probably less than 10% time which you spent on lt30.

I bet you chances playing on warserver vs standard player there, you 10 allied against 1 would be less than 10%, probably 0%. So learn how to play first.

First real shit you made was when paveq posted a poll to decrease allianze size to 8 and he and rest of his allianze voted no, just to pretend that you are smaller ally.

I'm sure calling you pussies would be disrespect for pussies.

IllvilJa wrote: HOWEVER, there is one cardinal sin (which remotely, remotely touches my general uneasiess regarding delegation, in spite of using it myself).... hacking into someone elses account, especially if used to damage the player's position!

THAT should be addressed by removal from the game and even with removal/banning from longturn.org!

User accounts are sacred, and rules that it's forbidden to hack into them should be a high priority to get added!

Should I copy and paste this once again? This is much worse than a cardinal sin.
Now no time for any more bullshit.
I don't know if other accounts have been hacked, but mine had been. Enough for me. I really CAN'T KNOW if any of any of you is somewhat guilty of some rule infringiment or if they are cheating or not nice with spies or of they're "pussies", as someone stated (well, det0r once killed a peacuful spy of mine in some like 1/10th of second, just passing by a city).
The only thing I'm sure is that I AM NOT GUILTY of anything (I've been the regent of almost-dead-and-not-willing-to-play-any-more Aczern - which was both ally and far from me - for some turns early in the game waiting for someone to take it over - which actually happened. Is this a rule infringement?)
While being completely innocent, I HAVE BEEN the (random?) target of a double hijack. If you don't think this is "pussy" behaviour, now I think I'm in the absolute right of asking for:

1. The hijacker to introduce himself (if complished, skip to point 4)
2. if the hijacker doesn't introduce himself, have a open investigation on him carried out by someone designated by me and with complete access to logs etc.
3. if there are enough proofs, have the scalp of hijacker for me, and kick him out od both game and LT.
4. I'll decide a proper (symbolical) war-crimes-ransom from the hijacker or from hijacker's account
5. let's continue play!

tom_watson wrote:Why most of you are unlogged now ? You told earlier that you enjoy keeping freeciv minimalized, or chatting there. Seems there is a lot to chat now. Even your chat is bug there cause logging players loose there messages from allies cause you make buffer chat full with your pathetic talk.

I fear some people have also decided to end playing here -- not just Terror. Of course everybody has that option to use, but I hope, you guys wait for a time and check how the world looks after the dust has settled down.

I was quite broken after my England was conquered -- as I am always in the end of the long Freeciv games -- but I actually found new spirit to play here as delegated to Koreans. You should take that aspect in consideration. These games should be fun and learning from the game should be made possible. Better have active player than idle nations.

tom_watson wrote: What are statistics killing spies you vs Terror ? You killed more! You just dont like when someone dont waste time on lt hunting spies, right?

I don't understand this killing spies thing. We -- Noobish Squad (named by Terror) -- actually didn't use that much spies against Terror. At least not more than he did until the last turn -- but that was still 11 spies against 5 spies, just simple standard attack, that Terror and co. would have used too, maybe. Nothing wrong about that.

It was also hard to use spies when Terror had auto-attack. Not impossible, but harder.

tom_watson wrote: YOu are making some bullshit agreement with some players against not killing spies. But why dont you make such agreemnt about adding units to city which is currently attacked ? How many cities have you defended in rts style ? Why you attack offline players, you are online all the time so play fair and attack only online players so chances would be almost equal? That's pathetic.

I don't think there is any limits about what can be agreed upon between players. So contact and make such agreement.

tom_watson wrote: If you spend more time on learning rules instead exploiting them you would have stealth much before turn 100 and game would be finished long time ago. Also learning those rules would take probably less than 10% time which you spent on lt30.

Actually if we had been able to organize our alliance better we could have had nukes also lot faster. It's not easy to ally so many -- you should try it too. There's a lot of mistakes done.

tom_watson wrote: I bet you chances playing on warserver vs standard player there, you 10 allied against 1 would be less than 10%, probably 0%. So learn how to play first.

I really think we know how to play. Been playing over 10 years anyway.

You should learn to play against different kind of players.

tom_watson wrote: First real shit you made was when paveq posted a poll to decrease allianze size to 8 and he and rest of his allianze voted no, just to pretend that you are smaller ally.

AFAIK His plan was to post them until it was 1. He was joking if I understood it right. Polls like that shouldn't be made when the game has started.

tom_watson wrote:I'm sure calling you pussies would be disrespect for pussies.

Is this Terror using hacked account? Sounds like it.

tom_watson has only 2 posts until now. He is surely a noob

pekka

IllvilJa wrote:

akfaew wrote: * staying online 24/7 (1.8)

First, this is NOT strictly forbidden, it's just a recommendation using the word 'courtesy' etc. Second, with a madman like Wieder in ingame chat, you keep your client logged on only to see what madness he produces. Actually, the ingame chat is there and a good reason one stays logged in. And no, IRC channels on the internet is not the same. Not everyone in the game are on those, but everyone in the game is in the ingame chat.

And yes, having the freeciv client constantly humming is a convenient way to play the game when being in a hurry. A few moves there, some chat there, spending 30 seconds answering an occasional diplomatic meeting that pops up etc.

So I'm inclined to say thanks for the recommendation but I'll continue be logged in. I can tell you guys in chat when I go to work and when I'm back so you can overrun my nation safely .

(If it changed so this rule is phrased that staying online too much is prohibited, then I'll comply, but then, I think we should have a server side restriction on how much time we are allowed to stay online).

Personally, I would like this rule to go as well.

WTF? Are you serious? You just choose to ignore this one, and say it doesn't really count cause it doesn't suit you?

No NOT everybody is in the game chat. Most people actually log out when they have done their moves. Most people don't want to see your crap on the chat line, we would rather see our messages and the messages from our own allies.

Looks like there will be a time limit for future games just for you. Enjoy.

IllvilJa wrote: The only in the list above that really requires some rules is how we handle delagation, IMHO, but that simply because I find that feature generally problematic as we permit a player participating in the game to run another player's country. I would rather have a solution where we somehow delegate to a person who is NOT involved with any other country in the game. Implicit delegation by letting countries have multiple rulers at the start? But again, that's a fix by technical solution, and perhaps not a topic in a rules thread.
/IllvilJa

The solution is we let people delegate to anybody with an account (even if they aren't in the current game). Oh yeah, that already works ... it is just that people just choose to delegate to people in the game, to give them the use of 2 nations at once.

akfaew wrote: * exploiting the game (teleportation)

I realize there's more important stuff going on in this topic, but I just wanted to address this one. If you're talking about my Fanatics, the teleportation was accidental on my part, and I didn't gain any advantage from it -- in fact, it left several of my allies' cities undefended.

Robodave wrote:

akfaew wrote: * exploiting the game (teleportation)

I realize there's more important stuff going on in this topic, but I just wanted to address this one. If you're talking about my Fanatics, the teleportation was accidental on my part, and I didn't gain any advantage from it -- in fact, it left several of my allies' cities undefended.

Can you please explain how you accidentally teleported?

mrsynical wrote:Can you please explain how you accidentally teleported?

This happened because we have been trying to form an alliance with all who want. That requires first to establish cease-fires, since alliance cannot be made if you are in war with one of the other in alliance.

We cannot use peace since it would not allow us to travel those areas on map and makes a lot of problems when the armistice runs out and units get disbanded (not teleported, as it was before). Actually just the same problem that hapens from cease-fire, but in cease-fire, it's not direct reason.

What we didn't take in account was that cease-fires running out would also make hundreds of units auto disbanded if some alliances would be turned to peace since some of the members were changed to war state and those treaties invalidated.

For example, for me, there was none units teleported (AFAIK). All disbanded. Including British partisan on the sea escaping from my old lands in an ally ship, when that alliance was broken, and peace doesn't allow units inside friends ship. If there would have been land, it would have moved there, but there was no land. So disbanded, not teleported.

I've heard that there is still some situations where the teleportation hapens but we have not used that on purpose.