Why Don’t Cheaters Repent?

[guerringuerrin]

48 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Thats cool data to have on the summary.

How is percentaje calculated? tabasco has 280 seconds idle time and burrito has 573 seconds. and yet both has 54%

Edited July 18, 2025 by guerringuerrin

[Atrik]

13 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

How is percentaje calculated? tabasco has 280 seconds idle time and burrito has 573 seconds. and yet both has 54%

It's total idle time / total life time of buildings, while the time in seconds is just total idle time. So burrito had more buildings, or that were alive longer.

Basically it tells you the efficiency (or downtime) of your production buildings.

Edited July 18, 2025 by Atrik

[Atrik]

The % are high, but you can see on the graphs that it's a lot of it that come from when the game is about to end when often some players are full pop and some have no resources at all to continue producing .

As well the buildings taken into consideration are CCs and Military buildings: so forges, workshops, forts are taken into consideration if they aren't researching or training. (towers etc DON'T have the Military class so it's only really the ones listed above).

Edited July 18, 2025 by Atrik

[guerringuerrin]

14 minutes ago, Atrik said:

forges, workshops, forts

Maybe for a better perspective might be cool to exclude this

[Atrik]

16 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

Maybe for a better perspective might be cool to exclude this

You could. Basically you have a setting to customize the classes that are included. Since this use the trainer's functionalities, you can use its "Training Entity" setting in options.
I've just realized that means, for the experiment branch i pushed you need to have the trainer option on for it to work too.  (you can still toggle it off from the gui obviously and works when replaying, just need to have the option on for technical reasons).

Edited July 18, 2025 by Atrik

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

The % are high, but you can see on the graphs that it's a lot of it that come from when the game is about to end when often some players are full pop and some have no resources at all to continue producing .

 

Also probably makes sense to only clock idle time when a player is below max pop. 

Anyways, these are cool graphs.

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Also probably makes sense to only clock idle time when a player is below max pop. 

Anyways, these are cool graphs.

Yes there are some imperfections for sure. As well the graph smoothing make the first minutes inconclusive, since everybody will have a point at 100% and it takes until fcking min 5 for the smoothing to wear it away. 

[ffm2]

8 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Also probably makes sense to only clock idle time when a player is below max pop. 

Anyways, these are cool graphs.

Also the building type (temple, house with FF researched). Context always mattered reading stats and are most useful to read while looking at the replay or in the autociv summary.

 

11 hours ago, Atrik said:

I found no correlation between usage of autotrain and idle building stats.

On 13/07/2025 at 12:25 AM, TheCJ said:

That the autotrainer provides any statistically significant advantage remains to be proven.

Problems with the autotrainer are also discussed long by a post Feldfeld. Besides the adjusted batching at the right time the meta changes that you don't need to check your base for production but can focus on raids.

On quickstart it's very easy to see that it's better, but we shouldn't care because the advantage is small. I told Atrik before he should at least make it slower and emulate a good player. The discussion was derailed, that he didn't create quickstart. Then the oddity detector came out and he slowed his local quickstart down by one turn just enough down not to get detected by it, but not as slow as a real player.

[ittihat_ve_terakki]

In any competitive game where there is a winner and a loser, the fundamental expectation is that the conditions are equal for everyone involved. That’s the very foundation of competition. When two players sit down to a game of chess, neither side is allowed to use any hidden advantages. The same principle applies to online matches. Once the sense of fairness is compromised, the match itself stops meaning much. The surprising part is that we even have to explain something this basic.

What I’ve noticed is that the game’s easily moddable structure and the looseness of the rules are being exploited. And in all the years I’ve occasionally played this game, I have never seen anyone join a game and say: “Hey guys, just so you know, I’m using a mod that lets me do certain things faster.” Not once. I’m not saying these players are deliberately hiding it but they certainly don’t mention it unless someone asks.

Yes, some of the usual suspects are known to people who spend time on the forum. But not everyone spends time on the forum. Being active on the forum is not one of the fundamental requirements of this game (some players don’t even speak English.) Many people simply log in to play the game through the multiplayer lobby and that’s completely normal. They shouldn’t be expected to browse forums just to find out whether certain players are using advantage providing mods.

A player who simply joins the multiplayer lobby expecting a fair match has no way of knowing that a particular opponent is using a mod that provides an advantage. That player can easily walk into a game assuming equal conditions and end up losing under unfair circumstances without even realizing why.

Some people also seem to reassure their own conscience by saying things like “it doesn’t actually provide an advantage.” But if you ever run into a match where they’re forced to play without their mod (usually because a host insists on a clean game) you can quickly see how much they struggle without it. 

I won’t even get into a debate about why these mods provide an advantage, because that’s exactly the kind of discussion they want. Something that drifts the topic into ambiguity. I guess they expect something like laboratory results, but even if you somehow show them that, their response will just be to question the validity of the lab. I can’t even justify explaining it since anyone with a bit of common sense can see the inequality for themselves. 

Creating mods is perfectly fine, no one is against that. But if a mod gives you an advantage, then you should be playing against others under the same conditions and you should honestly disclose your mods to every new player you encounter (although, I’m afraid these mods could spread like a plague, as new players may be tempted to use them to succeed quickly.)

To be honest, I wasn’t even aware that things like this were happening in this game. Realizing that some players I thought were simply very skilled, were actually cheaters, was disappointing. I hope this issue will be addressed and that the community as a whole realizes how much these practices undermine the quality, integrity and spirit of the game.