On smurfing, ddos and malpractice in the multiplayer lobby

[Reyhan]

From the topic, you can guess this thread will be heavy. So @Stan` please feel free to lock this thread or ban me if you don't like it. Having been undercover with 20 different accounts over the past 2 alphas, I noticed some persistent issues in the multiplayer lobby (especially TGs). 

First, let's talk about smurfing. It is in violation of the agreement with Wildfire games to create second accounts without permission, however, many player often spam accounts; in the most extreme cases one person controls 30 accounts and share them with other like minded players. I myself am guilty as charged when it comes to spamming accounts. Why? You may ask. Well, these are the most common motivations for smurfing:

1. They find it funny, creating accounts with joke names or trolling unsuspecting nubs.

2. They regret their old name choice and a much cooler name came to their head after some time. They want to use the cooler name instead. ( This is totally me)

3. Looking for easy wins

4. One of their accounts has been banned or muted.

5. To escape bullying or targeting.

6. To test out new strategies without losing their rating.

7. Because they embarrassed themselves and wanted to assume a new identity.

I would like to elaborate on point 5. This is something that only exist in OP TGs, where 1 team has an extremely skilled player and all of the enemies are scared of him. As a solution, the 4 enemies agree to collapse all their troops onto the good player and kill him or annoy him enough to force him to ragequit. The pro player is often placed with 3 nubs for balance, so he can't get much help. The 3 remaining nubs are easy to kill so the game is won. However, from the pro player's perspective, he had no fun at all: it is a 1v4 instead of a team game. In addition, the mechanics of A25 made cavalry extremely speedy and agile, so that they can deal huge damage to the pro player and escape unharmed before the others arrive to help. 

Furthermore, targeting happens as well. For example, I gained a reputation of having poor defence against cavalry rushes, because I wasn't used to the new mechanics in early A25 after the boom/ turtle A24. But, my boom is very fast and I can field enough units to wipe out any single player in a battle, after the boom. Those who know this, once they play on the opposite team to me, they persuade all of their teammates to rush me at the same time. In early A25 this would have destroyed me. But now, thanks to coaching from Hamdich and berhudar, I am much better and defending myself against rushes in a 1v1. But all of this was useless when 3 players of the opposite team rushed me simultaneously today, even though I was the pocket player! Clearly one of them has convinced the other 3 to do this to me as it is very unnatural to have 3 players all going in on the opposite pocket at the same time. I don't think even the strongest players can defend against 30 cavalry in their base at minute 6 while having to sustain a reasonable boom to support their weak flank player against a much stronger enemy next to him. Surprisingly, I survived the rush today and did boom up eventually, but my flanks had resigned and mighty army of 160 units with cav and champs were crushed by 2v1. This made me write this on the forum to inform the developers and project managers that such issues exist. I am not the only victim of this; anyone above a certain rating has suffered from this before and although it is a strategy, it ruins the game and there is no fun in 4v1 at minute 6.  30 cav at minute 6 is fine in a 1v2 game because your enemy has to sacrifice their eco completely to field this many cavalry so soon, and you will have chance to defend and recover. But this does not happen for a TG. When one retreats the others can take turns to harass and you will never be left alone. Today, each of them only had 10 to 15 cavalry (not much impact on eco) but it added up to 30. The A25 alpha made it very difficult to fight outnumbered so 2v1 3v1 are almost impossible no matter how pro you are. And this is exactly why many good players started smurfing - to escape being bullied by 3v1. They even share accounts and make newbie errors on purpose to make it harder to tell who is playing behind them. I sympathize with these people even though the rules don't allow it. 

Points 1,2 are fairly obvious and not so malicious. Point 3 raises another alarm: the lobby is very unfriendly to new players, which is why you don't see the leaderboard change often. I will discuss this in the next post.

Point 4 is quite obvious... If they don't use profanity again in their new account then fine...

The reason I smurf is mainly point 2, occasionally point 5 and 6.

Point 7 exists; when some players make a mistake in a TG watched by many spectators, they feel embarrassed to play with them again, but they still like the game. So their solution is to create a new smurf identity and restart their 0ad career until they can redeem themselves in front of the specs.

 

[Reyhan]

Now let's talke about the second problem with 0AD lobby: it is very unfriendly to new players, for the following reasons:

1. Most team games only allow 'known players' to play. If someone new appears, the host will often displace them from the player slots, or kick them from the game. Sometimes the host will just immediately ban anyone who he has never see before. If a new player asks to play with them, the host will simply respond with 'I don't know you' then keep them as spec or just kick.

2. Smurfs exist and destroy new players before they get a chance to start enjoying. This is less of a problem since good players only want to play with good players.

3. Many quit without resigning. This makes many players underrated and is frustrating. Players with low ratings are never welcome in team games -> they never get a chance to meet the pros -> they can't improve. 

4. Profanity. This happens everywhere. 

 

Elaborating on point 1, the reason behind the hosts' unwelcoming policy is because they are afraid of unskilled players ( called cosmic noobs) ruining their balance or decreasing the intensity of the game. This is a valid reason, and I was peer pressured into doing this as well. However from the perspective of a new player, they have waited for a decent few minutes in your game, only to be kicked out simply because the host has never seen them before. There is very little chance for new players to integrate into the 'known players' group so there is always a constant if not decreasing number of players. Sadly, the best way to improve is to play with pros in such games, so the chance of a new player becoming good is very slim since A25. This problem did not exist in A23 and I was lucky enough to become 'known' then. Right now it is always the same small group of people playing and they don't accept any new faces. For some hosts, even a player with a very high rating (1700) is kicked simply because the nub host has never seen that 1700 person before, who ironically turns out to be an old player who has joined since A17...

Another reason is the host is scared of smurfs who might ruin balance. In some people's minds, new player without rating = smurf and deserve to get banned instantly.

Point 3 makes it very hard to get enough points to prove yourself. In order to get recognised, a new player needs to gain at least 1400 points then prove themselves to a 'known player' who is not so stubborn. After that, he needs to join the TG with their 'known player' and the 'known player' has to recommend this new player to the host. Even then, some hosts still refuse.

Once they are in the game, the specs will call the new player noob if they make a mistake, then smurf if they play well. The host might ban instantly if there is a smurf accusation. Obviously this is a toxic environment for any new players. So most new players quit soon. 

[Reyhan]

The unwelcoming hosts also explain reason 7 for smurfing. I tried to get my friend to play in TGs and he booms faster than me and will outperform everyone if left undisturbed, so every time the opposite team double rush him. Obviously he will be slow after it. Then people call him cosmic and ban him. In order to get back, he had to create smurf account and regain rating to redeem himself. Most people don't have this perseverance and they quit, which is why 0ad does not have many players.

[Reyhan]

Now let's talk about DDOS. I myself don't know much about the technical side of this attack, but it seems to me that whenever more than 2 players are losing connection or the host crashes, people whine about DDOS. Then they start to point fingers at each other and accuse each other of ddos even though no such attack has ever happened; host crashes may be due to bad laptop or bad broadband, sometimes even 0AD bugs. However, the quest to pull out the ddoser has never stopped; the 'who is ddosing'  argument has caused many feuds in the lobby, for absolutely nothing.

 

 

[Reyhan]

Now onto malpractice in the lobby

1. Spamming. This can vary from spamming any nonsense to profanity. Some hackers are proud of their spamming skills, and they creat sophisticated spams that can temporarily block out the lobby chat or game chat. The most notable examples are 'snow people mountain people' and 'follow the white rabbit'. The spammer may join any game and start spamming so that the player's screen is full of white patterns and they can't see the actual battle anymore. Fortunately this hacker has been inactive for a while. This made many hosts ban specs and makes it less friendly for new players who want to learn from pros.

2. Trolling the bots. Some people repeated ping the ratings bot or wfg bot. 

3. Cheating. This can be done in many ways but generally it either involves quickly changing the game from rated to unrated or vice versa before starting or trying to gather enemy information not through scouting but an observer PC .

Cheat codes need to be banned.

 

[Reyhan]

@Stan` I would really like you and any other moderators to be aware of these problems. I can't offer a solution for every one of them, but some can be solved by better code.

[seeh]

1 hour ago, Reyhan said:

@Stan` I would really like you and any other moderators to be aware of these problems. I can't offer a solution for every one of them, but some can be solved by better code.

Since 75% of the game is played as a team game, a team rating would also help the host to better assess a new player. An algorithm for this would be conceivable. A bit of creativity. We have very good and creative mathematicians in the community. (Yes the todo lists are very long. I do not expect any change in the near future (years). yes I have created little or no source for the game myself. Maybe this will get better one day).

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

3 hours ago, Reyhan said:

For example, I gained a reputation of having poor defence against cavalry rushes, because I wasn't used to the new mechanics in early A25 after the boom/ turtle A24. But, my boom is very fast and I can field enough units to wipe out any single player in a battle, after the boom. Those who know this, once they play on the opposite team to me, they persuade all of their teammates to rush me at the same time. In early A25 this would have destroyed me. But now, thanks to coaching from Hamdich and berhudar, I am much better and defending myself against rushes in a 1v1. But all of this was useless when 3 players of the opposite team rushed me simultaneously today, even though I was the pocket player! Clearly one of them has convinced the other 3 to do this to me as it is very unnatural to have 3 players all going in on the opposite pocket at the same time. I don't think even the strongest players can defend against 30 cavalry in their base at minute 6 while having to sustain a reasonable boom to support their weak flank player against a much stronger enemy next to him. Surprisingly, I survived the rush today and did boom up eventually, but my flanks had resigned and mighty army of 160 units with cav and champs were crushed by 2v1

Were you iberians? 

This would explain them teaming up on you in the early game. Among the strategies to stop the OP death ball is to 2v1 rush the iber player who is most likely to get champions. 

Your point about endless smurf accounts is a good one too. I also get very tired of the extra difficulties this causes at the start of the game, (we have a debate about the authenticity and/or skill of the account).

[Reyhan]

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Were you iberians? 

This would explain them teaming up on you in the early game. Among the strategies to stop the OP death ball is to 2v1 rush the iber player who is most likely to get champions. 

Your point about endless smurf accounts is a good one too. I also get very tired of the extra difficulties this causes at the start of the game, (we have a debate about the authenticity and/or skill of the account).

I was Gauls... I made 7 cavalry and had infantry everywhere in my base... But 30 cavalry is too much at minute 6. They just go straight in for the farms then woodline.

Yes, if I make cav from the very beginning, then I could have defended it. But, any fight with 30 enemy cav will result in huge losses, and considering that I am pocket to a weaker player threatened by someone with 200 ratings more than them, I can't afford to go full defensive on my own.

I expected to be rushed since the very beginning because I know 1 of their player is a rusher, but the other one in his team just convinced them to coordinate a rush on me because he thinks I am an easy target. My teammates did help me to defend by send a few of his Cavs, and I thank them for it. But the result was he reached P3 at minute 17, at that time there were 2 rams at his cc.

The ge was poorly balanced because certain players are underestimated.

This rings a bell for another issue: ratings.

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Reyhan

[Reyhan]

Players only gain rating if they win a stated 1v1. This is not good enough. There are extremely  skilled team game players with very low ratings and 1v1 players with ridiculously high ratings that don't suit them. So rating has 0 meaning now; many 1300 players can beat 1700 players. Some frequent smurfs never had a rating above 1500 although they themselves can beat any 1900. Only rated 1v1s are counted in a player's profile, which is ridiculous. 

Proposed changes:

Any game a player plays is counted. So when someone clicks on the player profile they can see exactly how experienced someone is.

Ratings change even for team games.

Remove the 'exit' button. Only leave the resign button in the interface. If the host terminates the game, then the player with the highest score gain rating.

[seeh]

17 minutes ago, Reyhan said:

Any game a player plays is counted. So when someone clicks on the player profile they can see exactly how experienced someone is.

Ratings change even for team games.

maybe only in a later implementation a team rating should be distributed somewhat differently (in a later implementation) if this is not possible quickly and easily. Otherwise, as a first step, a very simple team rating could also simply be implemented once first. Some very good players may fear that the distribution is unfair as you probably contributed most to the profit (if you use a very very simle date basis).

[Reyhan]

2 minutes ago, seeh said:

maybe only in a later implementation a team rating should be distributed somewhat differently (in a later implementation) if this is not possible quickly and easily. Otherwise, as a first step, a very simple team rating could also simply be implemented once first. Some very good players may fear that the distribution is unfair as you probably contributed most to the profit (if you use a very very simle date basis).

We should start a new thread about improved rating system. However, an idea is that rating gain could be a function of the player's score. For example,

rating gain = A * ln(B * score + 1)

Where A and B are some constants to be determined as appropriate. This model has the advantage of no ridiculous rating gains from just one game, due to the property of logarithm (f''(x)<0). The +1 is necessary so that a player with 0 score does not get a negative infinity rating. Using this model, taking A=1 and B=1, a 9000 score player would gain 9.1 points, a 30000 score player would gain 10.3 points; a 800 score player would gain 6.9 points. 

You may argue that this is unfair as the 30000 score player did much better than the 800 score player. So let's consider some function that takes account of the player's individual performance and the overall performance of their team:

f(player score, team average)

We can deduct points if a player plays too badly with respect to their team, and reward the overperforming players. So we can have a comparing term

player score / team average 

or,

player score - team average

And then we operate on the result of this comparison to give a rating change. 

One such model is

rating gain = A * exp(B * (player score / average score of their team)) - C

C is a threshold constant, which determines whether someone gains or loses points after comparing with their teammates. The advantage of this model is that a player in the losing team who played very well can still gain a lot of rating in spite of their noob teammates. Suppose a 1800 player is paired up with 3 cosmic noobs, the 1800 player can still gain quite a lot of points if he scores 20000 and the noobs score 5000 each. On the other hand, a noob player in the winning team may still lose points. 

 

[LetswaveaBook]

@Reyhan You could look at some things differently. If you are attacked and are 3v1, you are not being bullied by your enemies. The bullies are your allies, they should made it a 3v3.

 

I think TG meta is entirely wrong. You should always rush and any team mate should contribute to that. Booming is a strategic mistake, because if you boom you cant prevent your ally from being attacked. At least that is my view.

[alre]

whith this example, @Reyhan, you showed perfectly why it's not fun to have nubs on your team, and why many hosts only accept players of their level. even teams means more fun.

also, if this bullying is an effective strategy, than I don't think it can be blamed. it's a coordinated assault, and it makes a lot of sense in TGs.

All in all, I'd say you are painting things a lot darker than they are, and many of these issues are simply caused by 0AD having a small playerbase, and it having a public lobby, with a public chat. there's good to it, and bad.

of course it is true that smurf accounts should be limited somehow, and that TG should have a rating system, both these things have quite some consensus. (but TG rating should not consider in game scores though, this too has been discussed).

I also think that if the game also had a quick matchup system for 1v1, this would make matters simpler, and be more inviting to many new players.

Edited December 2, 2021 by alre

[Dakara]

8 hours ago, Reyhan said:

 

Proposed changes:

Any game a player plays is counted. So when someone clicks on the player profile they can see exactly how experienced someone is.

Ratings change even for team games.

Remove the 'exit' button. Only leave the resign button in the interface. If the host terminates the game, then the player with the highest score gain rating.

Hello, I have been playing for a few years and yet I am not so frustrated. Of course there are some games that are not fun but it's the RTS playstyle that wants that. I always have fun.

The ddos I don't know if 0AD can do anything about it but many orthers videos games are affected.

1)

I don't know if you take the measure of what you are offering. Making every game count for rank would be counterproductive, people would play games less for fun. There would therefore be fewer games in progress, this could gradually lead to an empty lobby and therefore a dead game in 2 years. I carricature but you get the idea.

The scoring system is open to criticism but it is not intended to be infallible, it is just an indicator (up to the players to use it as they want, to trust it or not. It has the merit of creating a small little competitiveness and a ranking sympathetic to the ego of the people).

Most of the known hosts themselves estimate the level of the players to balance the games. sometimes it's done well sometimes not, it's impossible to do it all the time. I assume that if the gap is not too large all games can be won.

2)

Then most of the smurfs accounts do not pose any problem, but if they are done with an aim to piss off or create bad for others it is a shame. For example, I have 4 accounts, 2 of which are shared with my brother and a friend, we have the same level overall and I always announce my average rating when I do a 1 vs 1 so as not to trap the person by stealing his points.

Why am I doing this? No idea, I find it funny, it's less boring to always have the same nickname, people expect less of your strategies or a bunch of other childish reasons lol. It could be interesting to see the date of creation of the account to avoid old players without rating to be considered as smurfs. When I'm on a different account I feel like I'm in a different vibe too.

don't ban please  

[Reyhan]

7 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

@Reyhan You could look at some things differently. If you are attacked and are 3v1, you are not being bullied by your enemies. The bullies are your allies, they should made it a 3v3.

They did help. But enemy cav come and go faster. It is economcally unwise to keep 10 cavalry idle in my base just to protect me. If you rush the enemy, then I am totally dead. In fact, one of them did  rush but a single team of 10 cav can never beat 30 cav on the move. Furthermore, they must prevent being outboomed by the boomers on the opposite team. 

7 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I think TG meta is entirely wrong. You should always rush and any team mate should contribute to that. Booming is a strategic mistake, because if you boom you cant prevent your ally from being attacked. At least that is my view.

You have a point. However, you must also remember that a TG is not a 1v1: if you rush, as long as you didn't kill everyone on the enemy team, one of them will boom up and ram your CC down at minute 14 with a full army. If all 4 of you rush, if just one enemy is ahead of you then your team is dead. It is a very risky strategy to go all rushing. The most optimal situation is 2 rushers and 2 boomers, or 1 rusher 3 boomers. 

7 hours ago, alre said:

whith this example, @Reyhan, you showed perfectly why it's not fun to have nubs on your team, and why many hosts only accept players of their level. even teams means more fun.

 

My teammates were no noobs; all of them were 1400+, and they did help me by diverting some enemy cavalry away. 

7 hours ago, alre said:

why many hosts only accept players of their level. even teams means more fun.

This is not plausible if you are 1600+. Just how many 1600+ players are there, and how many of them can be online at the same time? Now, even a 2000 player can make a mistake, so there is no guarantee that having all 1600+ players in a TG will prevent you from being placed in a 3v1 if one of them tells everyone that you are an easy target. 

7 hours ago, alre said:

also, if this bullying is an effective strategy, than I don't think it can be blamed. it's a coordinated assault, and it makes a lot of sense in TGs.

Yes, bullying is encouraged by the meta and it is very effective at winning games where a team has 1 pro and 3 weaker players. If the pro is dead then the other 3 lose morale and will be killed easily. However, from the perspective of the losing team, they had no fun because it's gg 6 minutes in, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. 

7 hours ago, alre said:

0AD having a small playerbase

This is the root of most problems. And the reason for small playerbase is because of unwelcoming hosts, then it goes back to the smurfing and imbalance problems.  So a viscious circle is formed. The only way out of it is to make 3v1 less viable or less effective so that there is less motivation for smurfing. This requires some changes in the game mechanic. 

7 hours ago, alre said:

I also think that if the game also had a quick matchup system for 1v1, this would make matters simpler, and be more inviting to many new players.

Good suggestion.

[Stan`]

15 hours ago, Reyhan said:

From the topic, you can guess this thread will be heavy. So @Stan` please feel free to lock this thread or ban me if you don't like it. Having been undercover with 20 different accounts over the past 2 alphas, I noticed some persistent issues in the multiplayer lobby (especially TGs). 

Do people think I am some kind of despotic person? LMAO.

You raise good points and I am afraid I can't mitigate any of them. I'd like to have 2v2 and 4v4 rankings in the future, but there are some issues with the lobby we need to fix first. It's managed, updated and controlled by one person @user1 so if you want new features you have to go through him. He is also the person that will do the banning. The muting is handled by a bot.

I didn't make the lobby ToS and ToU but I do agree that smurfs can be a plague. Anyone can host their own lobby though: https://github.com/0ad/lobby-bots but in the end it will only make the player base smaller.

14 hours ago, Reyhan said:

@Stan` I would really like you and any other moderators to be aware of these problems. I can't offer a solution for every one of them, but some can be solved by better code.

I am aware of this. I'm not sure what you mean by better code though. More code, maybe but imagining we can fix everything with just code is a bit overreaching.

[Reyhan]

7 minutes ago, Dakara said:

The scoring system is open to criticism but it is not intended to be infallible, it is just an indicator (up to the players to use it as they want, to trust it or not. It has the merit of creating a small little competitiveness and a ranking sympathetic to the ego of the people).

It is almost completely useless right now. Too many people are unrated, too many are underrated, too many are overrated. 

7 minutes ago, Dakara said:

Most of the known hosts themselves estimate the level of the players to balance the games

This promotes kicking new players, which is the problem.

But @Dakara has made some good points here, and has given me the following inspirations:

There is already a player profile lookup function, and that allows you to document the number of games played. Now, we can add in more information, including:

Date of account creation

Total number of games played, including unrated and TG, and their outcomes

Total time spent playing. 

This allows you to tell smurfs apart from genuine new players: smurfs are likely to have 100% win rate whereas  a genuine new player would have a much lower win rate and more number of games before they reach the same rating. Here are examples of a real account and a smurf account:

Real account:

This player clearly has reached 1429 after accumulation of experience over many games, some were won some were lost. This looks like the natural progress of someone from nub to OP. 

Smurf account:

This player has only played 8 games and won all of them. On average they won 25 points per game, which implies they have to beat very strong players (1400-1600) players every time to progress this quickly. No new player can reach 1501 without a single defeat, therefore this must be a pro player's second account, who wipes out any unsuspecting challengers in the lobby.

Hints such as this can tell you who is smurf and who is genuine. If we include the team games as well then we would get an even better picture. 

[Reyhan]

14 minutes ago, Stan&#x60; said:

Do people think I am some kind of despotic person? LMAO.

I know you are a very nice person, Stan, but this is an extremely controversial topic and involves gross violation of multiple rules. 

15 minutes ago, Stan&#x60; said:

I am aware of this. I'm not sure what you mean by better code though. More code, maybe but imagining we can fix everything with just code is a bit overreaching.

Of course. We can just add more features and fix the any bad game mechanics. 

[Feldfeld]

19 minutes ago, Reyhan said:

This player has only played 8 games and won all of them. On average they won 25 points per game, which implies they have to beat very strong players (1400-1600) players every time to progress this quickly. No new player can reach 1501 without a single defeat, therefore this must be a pro player's second account, who wipes out any unsuspecting challengers in the lobby.

I may not remember well but I'm pretty sure I did.

Also the first few rated games give a lot of rating deviations so I think it's possible just by beating a few 1300s and 1400s.

[Reyhan]

Smurfing doesn't always work. Sometimes I get spotted just from my playstyle: unusually fast boom, no rush, mostly women in early game. Sometimes, people place their suspicion on FeldFeld or Metafondations before they think about me. So to smurf better, I purposely slow down my boom and make soldiers or cav in early stages, then go to 200 pop before clicking P3 (to imposter Rauls and Hamdich). I used to compomise techs to maximise unit production but now I research techs just too make myself less obvious. Impostering other players often work as well. 

I created this fake identity Reyhan to protect my friend from abuse in the lobby. I just claim that 'Reyhanna is my sister, don't touch her or you are dead' everywhere so that she(he) can play in peace without being targeted as a threat or being trolled. When I create a smurf account, I have learnt to be flexible and random to confuse everyone. The only bottom line is not abusing unsuspecting cosmic noobs. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 hour ago, Reyhan said:

This player has only played 8 games and won all of them. On average they won 25 points per game, which implies they have to beat very strong players (1400-1600) players every time to progress this quickly. No new player can reach 1501 without a single defeat, therefore this must be a pro player's second account, who wipes out any unsuspecting challengers in the lobby.

I think this player just wanted to have a rank of 420 because he likes marijuana. But I agree it is probably a smurf account.

[Yekaterina]

4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think this player just wanted to have a rank of 420 because he likes marijuana. But I agree it is probably a smurf account.

 Trinitrophenol was me, and trinitrophenol is also known as picric acid, an explosive substance. I was using a comparison between my genuine account and smurf account to illustrate a point. 

Reyhan is also me. If you saw Sephine in the lobby, that is me as well. 

I knew posting this thread will get me into trouble so I used it on a smurf forum account. @Silier I apologise for whatever I said that got Reyhan a warning point. But both accounts belong to me, no need to ban this one as well. 

The list of malpractices in the lobby goes on: some people preach political ideologies and fake news in the lobby. That shouldn't be allowed neither. Some players have usernames of controversial political figures. Others join random games and nub because they are too busy preaching their fake news about some genocide that never happened. When players gather in a game, they want to have a good time fighting units, they don't want to listen to political nonsense or fake news. If they want to discuss these, use private chat or Mumble or Discord. 

 

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

6 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

 Trinitrophenol was me, and trinitrophenol is also known as picric acid, an explosive substance. I was using a comparison between my genuine account and smurf account to illustrate a point. 

Reyhan is also me. If you saw Sephine in the lobby, that is me as well. 

I knew posting this thread will get me into trouble so I used it on a smurf forum account. @Silier I apologise for whatever I said that got Reyhan a warning point. But both accounts belong to me, no need to ban this one as well. 

The list of malpractices in the lobby goes on: some people preach political ideologies and fake news in the lobby. That shouldn't be allowed neither. Some players have usernames of controversial political figures. Others join random games and nub because they are too busy preaching their fake news about some genocide that never happened. When players gather in a game, they want to have a good time fighting units, they don't want to listen to political nonsense or fake news. If they want to discuss these, use private chat or Mumble or Discord. 

 

 

Why did you want a rank of 420, just curious? XD

+ I also should have known it was you from the nickname.

[Dizaka]

@Yekaterina ... the reason I started reusing Akazid (older than Dizaka) is because of nonstop gank hits IG.  I know when I play there's  a 60% chance of getting rushed.  If I'm Mauryas or Carthage 90% of rush and 70% of a double gank.  

I can guarantee like clockwork even which players will scout map and rush me.  For some games it is justifiable (b/c I'm Carthage).   I've  started to now just play unconventional civs (Seleucids, Kushites, Macedonians) as they keep ganks off me.

Additionally, bc of ganking, I'd  be great if fog of war could hide terrain inflence, civ anonimity until explored, and player name could be hidden for matches.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Dizaka