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

[Dreylin]

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...

Possible does not equal probable, nor even likely; and you can always choose to take the detective hat off and stop investigating.

There's a level of trust that comes with playing these games; new players receive a degree when they arrive, which is built upon as they play longer. IMO if people who've been around for a while and have played multiple games with him tell you that Mardoc's whiter than white, then they're probably right.

(Or it's a giant conspiracy against you and just because you're paranoid doesn't mean it isn't.... )

[Northstar1989]

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.

Look, numbers don't lie- people do. It's perfectly rational to become suspicious when something ridiculously unlikely occurs that just *happens* to benefit a certain person. It would be like if somebody won a multi-milllion dollar lottery grand-prize, twice. You might start to get a little suspicious...

There are other possibilities, of course. Divine interventions anyone? A test in my faith in other people? Fate/Luck? All *sound* unreasonable- but really are no more unreasonable than the kind of luck I seem to consistently have in "random" probabilities like this (I remember when I went up for the housing lottery as an undergrad, for instance- the first time the chances of my getting a slot as bad as I did or worse were 1 in 142, and the next year were 1 in 71... There were 142 slots for my class each year, with dozens of people getting assigned to each slot, and I got the worst possible slot the first year and then the second-worst possible slot the next year in what was supposed to be an entirely "random" lottery. Possible- yes- but about as likely as getting struck by lightning twice...)

Past a certain point of the "rational" explanations for something becoming unlikely, the "irrational" explanations actually start to become the more reasonable explanations. Hit by lighting three times in one year while walking down Main Street of a big city? More likely divine intervention than pure dumb (bad) luck. Won the lottery 5 times in a row at less than 1 in a million odds? You can start to suspect some kind of a conspiracy was involved...


Regards,
Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Also, in case you guys see any inconsistencies in the city-growth between my last screenshots and my next turn:

Mardoc asked me to re-gen the save. He said he couldn't open the last one. I *tried* to replay it exactly as I did before, but I think I might have forgotten to switch the citizen-assignment up in my capital... This will only work to my disadvantage since some careful calculations normally go into my choice of city-tiles to work...


Regards,
Northstar

[Kragroth]

Northstar,

As others have said. There is neither evidence nor strong reason to suspect foul play. I hope you are not so paranoid in other aspects of your life ^_^

[Ellimist]

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.

Oh this is interesting. It actually means that cheating in this way is effectively impossible, since two different players have final "control" over the RNG involved.

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...)

I suspect you're mistaken. Our pbems use the "preserve random seed on reload" feature. Maybe you have some way to edit the seed in the save file, but I doubt that would work. I've attempted to edit passwords before(and I know where they're stored) and the file just becomes unusable, presumably due to a checksum hash of some kind.

I really don't think there's anything you can do to affect the RNG other than using it extra times. Ironically, I know of ONE method that can be used to ping the RNG indefinitely, but the Svartalfar don't have access to it and it leaves traces that can be investigated.

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.

Here's the email I received on Feb 22:

Ellimist,

I forgot what I set as my password for my duel with Bob.  Any chance you could work your magic and tell me what it was?  I'm sure it was something simple and thematic like 'horse', but I can't remember what I actually chose.

- Mardoc

I used the attached save file and replied:

Mardoc,

No problem. It's "REDACTED" :)

Ellimist

And then he sent me a quick thank you.

(If he'd instead asked for instructions on how to do it, I would have provided them without reservations.)

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.

This.

Possible does not equal probable, nor even likely; and you can always choose to take the detective hat off and stop investigating.

There's a level of trust that comes with playing these games; new players receive a degree when they arrive, which is built upon as they play longer. IMO if people who've been around for a while and have played multiple games with him tell you that Mardoc's whiter than white, then they're probably right.

And also this.

I mean... I'm not even sure what to say. I keep replying to this, btw, because Mardoc can't and I have 100% confidence in him.

Even if you never join another RB game and just play out the games you're in now, you're likely to see dozens more things happen that are unlikely. You have an insane leader in 41, are you going to accuse Kragoth of cheating if you lose an important trait at a bad time? If Saruman attacks you with Pyre Zombies are you going to investigate and find out whether he's getting more explosion damage than expected?

Also, I think your fixation on things that have gone badly is a terrible way for you to improve at the game as well. If you read through my own threads carefully, you might notice that I have a tendency to omit those sorts of details, or to mention them very briefly and then dismiss them. The reason for this is that it isn't useful to dwell on what might have happened. It just distracts you from the things that did happen and also from things you can do to do better in the future.

EDIT:
Here's an example of what I'm talking about from an earlier game:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid271817
In the last paragraph of that post, I wrote about a highly promoted wolf rider named Lurbuk. After that post, I never mentioned that unit again because Weezel had managed to kill him. I literally just ignored the fact that I had had a plan for Lurbuk and he'd gotten killed unexpectedly.

Here's another example:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid447017
I had excellent odds in this one to eliminate the Hippus. DaveV and I both assumed that my lizard would win his battle. Instead, the lizard lost and I never even mention that in the thread. I just moved on and focused on what to do next.

And here's an example where I didn't ignore the bad luck event entirely:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid396285
I forget the exact number, but I had extremely good odds to win the griffon battle in that post. I think it was around 90%. I lost a 35 exp griffon the turn before a major invasion and all I said was "Scratch one griffon. Let's hope that's not a sign of things to come." I never mentioned the actual odds, nor did I post a screenshot showing them(which I probably would have if I'd won the battle.)

These are just some examples that I remember and was able to find. You probably won't see bad lair results very often either, and it's not because I never get them. There are a ton of negative things I leave out or gloss over.

[Qgqqqqq]

Ironically, I know of ONE method that can be used to ping the RNG indefinitely,

Sometimes I forget how many ways you've figured out how to break the game, but I always get a reminder


Also everything Ellimist said.

Especially this:

Even if you never join another RB game and just play out the games you're in now, you're Iikely to see dozens more things happen that are unlikely. You have an insane leader in 41, are you going to accuse Kragoth of cheating if you lose an important trait at a bad time? If Saruman attacks you with Pyre Zombies are you going to investigate and find out whether he's getting more explosion damage than expected?

Also, I think your fixation on things that have gone badly is a terrible way for you to improve at the game as well. If you read through my own threads carefully, you might notice that I have a tendency to omit those sorts of details, or to mention them very briefly and then dismiss them. The reason for this is that it isn't useful to dwell on what might have happened. Itjust distracts you from the things that did happen and also from things you can do to do better in the future.

There are so many times when luck matters in FFH. If you think it's possible people will cheat, you're going to find endless moments for them to have done so. Again, this community is built on trust and open reporting. If you don't trust players to play fairly and honestly, you won't get anywhere.

[Kragroth]

Guybrush Threepwood. His singing ability is supposed to do nothing but play music. Funny that it might alter the RNG.

[Ellimist]

Guybrush Threepwood. His singing ability is supposed to do nothing but play music. Funny that it might alter the RNG.

Haha! Very good!

(Yes, this was the irony, that the Lanun have access to an RNG manipulator but the Svartalfar do not.)

I discovered this exploit by accident in the Perpentach game, when replaying a turn for screenshots. I used Sing and found that the RNG results afterward were different. The key is that he has a variety of possible songs that are chosen at random and that his ability can be used an unlimited amount of times.

Fortunately, Sing is a spell and it is recorded in the event log. If there is ever suspicion of a Lanun player using this exploit, it will be trivially easy to determine innocence or guilt. Of course, before now I don't think anyone else even knew about the possibility.

[Qgqqqqq]

Guybrush Threepwood. His singing ability is supposed to do nothing but play music. Funny that it might alter the RNG.

Yup.

By the by, that would (presumably) be phenomenally easy to change. I don't think it's important, but I can do it if necessary.

[Ellimist]

By the by, that would (presumably) be phenomenally easy to change. I don't think it's important, but I can do it if necessary.

Something like cycling through the available songs in a predetermined order would preserve the feature but let it ignore the RNG. I agree that it's not important, though.