Secrets of the Deep: Northstar (Lanun) vs. Mardoc (Svartalfar)

[Northstar1989]

Tested, you're wrong. The decision of what traits will change is affected by the random seed (as in, I pressed explore on a scout and the traits that the next player received were different), however, what these new traits will be is impossible to tell from the previous players save (it is triggered at the beginning of your turn, hence it is not visible in their save which shows only the end of their own turn) - it straight-up doesn't tell you that their traits have changed until after they see the event pop-up. (I can provide saves if you want, btw.)

Screenshots would be more useful, just to set my mind at ease. So, unless Mardoc is some uber-hacker and cracked my password, it just sound like he got very, very, mind-blowingly lucky...

So, unless he used technology to crack your password, and loaded up your save after each of his own ad infinitum to check what the result would be, there is no way for him to have cheated in this method.

See above. Yeah, I guess he's just one lucky-duck...

How did you see Bradeline's Well, sorry? If it's cause the sign is visible even if you can't see the tile it's precisely on, that's perfectly legitimate. (In general, there's no way for you to cheat in these games without pretty clearly intending to - very few people regard even flying camera tricks as dodgy.)

The edge of the text is visible on the map when I zoom out- in fact you can see it on the screenshot I posted earlier. I can make out "Bra" which can only mean "Bradeline's Well"...


Regards,
Northsttar

[Northstar1989]

This... this is satire, right? Like, you're parodying yourself?


Seriously, get a fucking grip dude. Sometimes, when things don't go your way, it's just bad luck (or your own damn fault) and not the machinations of a vast, sinister conspiracy.

Bob, don't be rude about it. When something mind-blowingly unlikely happens in a competitive game, it's natural to suspect cheating or sabotage.

The *helpful* response would have been to do what Q did, and see if there's any validity to my concerns (turns out they're aren't- Mardoc could technically change my results, but would have no way of knowing what he was changing them to) instead of automatically insulting me...


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

I think you're underrating charismatic. It's easy to forget how important promotions are in FFH. Arcane and Organized are useless for now, but you'll either lose them soon-ish or keep them long enough to get KotE and/or Military Strategy. If you keep these traits for awhile they could be quite powerful.

No doubt these traits become quite powerful in the long run, but they're worthless to me at this point in the game.

Even Charismatic has zero utility for me- as Orcs haven't started spawning yet to give me relatively safe XP for defending my capital... Normally the happy-bonus would be great, but it's useless at this point thanks to Remnants of Patria...

Furthermore, the RNG for the event actually takes place at the end of your previous turn, so any potential manipulation would have had to be done by the Insane player, who wouldn't be able to see the traits that resulted until the turn came back to them.

No- the suspected manipulation would have occurred through altering the seed- like Q talked about before. The RNG isn't actually random- given the same seed it will spit out the same result every time. So, the manipulation *would* occur during the other player's turn. HE just wouldn't be able to see the results until his next turn- making this an effectively useless way of cheating unless he also hacked my password, which I consider unlikely.

I can actually confirm the fact that Mardoc doesn't know how to do this, since he very recently asked for my assistance to crack one of his own passwords. I wouldn't suspect anything from him even if he did know how, either.

Ummm, if you just provided him with a way to crack passwords, why couldn't he have used it on my save as well? This actually makes me much more suspicious, just when I thought I had put my fears to rest- not less...

Mardoc definitely isn't somebody I would have suspected of it either, but it's always the quiet//nice ones that surprise you by turning into maniacs...

I would be extremely reluctant to suspect Mardoc of anything underhanded even if the evidence was better than this. The guy has extensive history on RB and is held in high regard. A LOT of people have played against him or spectated his games, and I don't recall anything even slightly suspicious ever being talked about. He's a very skilled player, and I've seen him go out of his way to do the right thing even when it's inconvenient and nobody would know otherwise.

But seriously... Stop assuming the worst of your opponents.

I'm not assuming the worst. I would have just flat-out accused Mardoc of cheating based on the 1 in 165 odds of what happened (which is enough to be considered statistically-significant on its own) if that was the case. I'm trying to rationally analyze the situation from an unbiased perspective, neither assuming innocence nor guilt until I have all the facts. True justice is blind man...


Regards,
Northstar

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah that's fine, everyone does that. I literally have signs in some games that go "Pool of Tears 1E" and so on.

Screenshots are annoying because I have to host them (generally forever) and I have to load the saves back up and repeat the moves etc.

Furthermore, the RNG for the event actually takes place at the end of your previous turn, so any potential manipulation would have had to be done by the Insane player, who wouldn't be able to see the traits that resulted until the turn came back to them.

Curiously, this is incorrect. The flag that says "Perpys traits will change" is triggered at the end of their previous turn, but the determination of which traits they will be only occurs at the start of the next, so actions by the previous player can change what these are, they just can't change whether or not this occurs.

[Northstar1989]

It's even worse than that when you consider that the odds of having a trait change at all is 2/100 each turn. So instead of 1/165 it's 1/8250. Or maybe cumulatively 11/8250 on turn 10.

Now, the simple answer is that improbable things happen. These odds apply to you getting any three specific traits. However, I think you're overlooking the fact that these odds actually exonerate Mardoc more than they create suspicion.

Why? Well, think about how he would have to go about giving you these traits intentionally. First, he would need a way to affect the RNG. The easiest way is by doing something that uses a random number, such as combat or telling a unit to explore. This only allows him to potentially get a couple extra RNG attempts per turn, and he would still have to jump through additional hoops before he could figure out what effect they would have.

Could he edit a new RNG seed into the save itself? I doubt even T-Hawk knows how to do that. And even if that is possible, he'd still have to do trial and error to determine what effect a new RNG seed could have. So even in the unlikely scenario that Mardoc was willing to do it, capable of doing it, and wanted you to have those exact three traits, the odds are so wildly ridiculous that he'd have to make over 8000 attempts to pull it off.

Now THAT'S the most rational argument I've heard all day. And you're right- it does effectively exonerate Mardoc.

So, let's just drop this, shall we? It just seems that Mardoc is one very, very, very lucky dog... So much so, in fact, that I'm tempted to call it divine-intervention...


Regards,
Northstar

[Qgqqqqq]

Ummm, if you just provided him with a way to crack passwords, why couldn't he have used it on my save as well? This actually makes me much more suspicious, just when I thought I had put my fears to rest- not less...

Because Ellimist would've done it for him, rather then explaining it.

Tbh, he's tried to explain it to me in the past, and whilst I get the theory, I've still no idea how you actually plug it into the site.

And as Ellimist said, a) this is Mardoc - he'd be on my list of least likely to cheat if I had such a list, and b) it would still be an incredible amount of work to do so.

[Northstar1989]

Curiously, this is incorrect. The flag that says "Perpys traits will change" is triggered at the end of their previous turn, but the determination of which traits they will be only occurs at the start of the next, so actions by the previous player can change what these are, they just can't change whether or not this occurs.

Wait, so it was guaranteed that my traits WOULD change, but could be altered what they would end up as?

OK, now we're right back to it being plausible Mardoc could have manipulated it. He only needed to alter the RNG (Ellmist, I used to actually do this in Single Player a lot- it's only in Multiplayer that I have any qualms about cheating as it affects actual humans- so I can tell you from experience that it's a LOT easier to re-gen the RNG seed until you get a result that you want than you think. There are ways to do this involving re-loading saves again and again that allow you to basically get any result you want from the Random Number Generator...) and have a way to crack my password- the latter of which I would have considered highly-unlikely if I hadn't just been told he received assistance with cracking one of his own passwords very recently...


I feel like a detective here- only I don't actually WANT to be right. I'd much rather Mardoc were innocent, even if I keep finding clues and snippets of evidence that say that cheating was indeed possible from his end...


Regards,
Northstar

[Bobchillingworth]

How wonderful that Mardoc has been "exonerated" from your utterly baseless and contemptible cheating accusation. Perhaps some day Dave, Qg, me and whoever else will be fortunate enough to share his fate.


And Mardoc didn't get "lucky". You got unlucky, in the sense that you rolled a particular trait combination you dislike.



Oh whatever, why am I wasting time responding to you? You're hopeless. Welcome to Bobchillingworth's user ignore list.

[Northstar1989]

Because Ellimist would've done it for him, rather then explaining it.

Let's wait to see what Ellmist actually says- if he did it for him, or taught Mardoc how to do it. The difference is important.

Tbh, he's tried to explain it to me in the past, and whilst I get the theory, I've still no idea how you actually plug it into the site.

I think Mardoc's a very smart guy. I wouldn't hold it beyond his mental capabilities if that was all that was stopping him...

And as Ellimist said, a) this is Mardoc - he'd be on my list of least likely to cheat if I had such a list, and b) it would still be an incredible amount of work to do so.

He was on my list of least-likely to cheat too until I saw this trait-gen. It's not nearly as hard to cheat with the RNG as you think though- there are certain ways to re-gen the RNG seed that tend to bias the results to change by certain intervals, and the results seem to be grouped in such a way that it internally generates a number from the RNG seed and then uses it to decide results (i.e. 0-50 and Player A wins this combat, 51-100 and Player B wins it...) Like I said, I've actually done it myself in single-player when I got frustrated with the RNG consistently screwing me over- so I know it's entirely possible to twist the RNG's arm in a selective manner to get virtually any result you want with, oh, 15 or 20 save-scums... I would NEVER do this is Multiplayer, though.


Regards,
Northstar

[Qgqqqqq]

Wait, so it was guaranteed that my traits WOULD change, but could be altered what they would end up as?

OK, now we're right back to it being plausible Mardoc could have manipulated it. He only needed to alter the RNG (Ellmist, I used to actually do this in Single Player a lot- it's only in Multiplayer that I have any qualms about cheating as it affects actual humans- so I can tell you from experience that it's a LOT easier to re-gen the RNG seed until you get a result that you want than you think. There are ways to do this involving re-loading saves again and again that allow you to basically get any result you want from the Random Number Generator...) and have a way to crack my password- the latter of which I would have considered highly-unlikely if I hadn't just been told he received assistance with cracking one of his own passwords very recently...

I wish I'd just held my tongue...

Yes, it is possible. It still, however, requires opening another persons save ad infinitum. Besides which, there's only so many ways one can use to reroll the RNG at this point in the game - explore function on each non-worker unit...and that's pretty much it. That's what, 5 max ways he could reload? Even with doing that, the result generated is still very unlikely.

And I don't know what you do in SP, but in MP games here we don't use random seed.

To be entirely clear: No one else reading this thread or responding to you thinks there's a snowballs chance in hell that Mardoc has done anything wrong here. We're simply humoring you and trying to explain things.