SMG Studio

Marietta Snooty 3 suicides for Charlie Bataille 2. I can't swear they are cheaters but it's easy enough to check their ipa and see when they play together in their game history

@Roccocoty I feel your pain. How frustrating it is to find a game with a grandmaster and master only to realize they are one cheater. Also congratulations on reaching the esteemed rank of master. At that high level it's important for your rank to play against high level opponents but too many times they have not earned that rank fairly. Because of the need for high quality games I am organizing a group of players ranked expert or better to play risk together. No cheating just high quality risk that's good for your rank. See http://smgstudio.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/11000012564 for details. And check out our latest comments here http://smgstudio.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/11000012564/page/last#post-11000062867 Anyone else ranked expert or better is also more than welcome to join us.

Jketonen and Dustin Mays cheat... Playing two accounts and it is obvious. I usually try to avoid playing a game when I join and the first two joining are same level, like Masters or Expert because they are so frequently cheaters but sometimes I just don't have enough time to leave before they click start. It really is no fun playing with cheaters.

More cheaters. Rob Overkill 6 and K-A Immortal. Ridiculous cheaters. Beyond an alliance.

I used to have that problem but it was almost always with a (grand) master and a novice. The same person. Some exceptions but i have minimized cheaters by never playing that combo. I always host so i kick out the masters and avoid novices too.

Sandy Kicks 5 (mentioned earlier in this thread) and Vaughn Midnight 5 - same player. I joined a six player game that was reduced to four and included a bot, I had no chance. Don't mind losing it's just sooo boring - how can they enjoy it?

Doing away with rankings won't stop people cheating and will simply send a message to cheaters that they have won. I think you are more likely to get ganged up on if you join a game with more than one other human opponent. I experienced this a lot in the early days of playing and felt in some games I was definitely being targeted but not for strategic reasons or reasons of rank. So I started creating my own games and hey presto with only one human opponent and two bots, my win ratio rocketed due to my deeper understanding of these types of games. No cheating or fake rank there. SectaOne makes some excellent points. I'm not sure why people dislike bots in games but I always leave a respectful amount of time to allow the human joiner to exit prior to starting the game. There are definite tactics to employ when playing against bots and it might seem like they are targeting someone in particular. They're not. It's just that they aren't particularly good at the game. The programmers do change the bot strategy from time to time and they're definitely better than they were but they're still usually only a secondary concern. On alliances, I never break these first unless my allies position is getting out of control or they are the last colour left. Once I get my winning position sorted out I will make efforts to preserve an allied human opponent unless they leave the game. Then I destroy them first so they get no points. If they "get" what I am doing, stay in the game and respect my armies then I "allow" them to finish 2nd. The same sometimes happens to me so if I can't win I will try to finish 2nd, hoping that a dominating human opponent takes pity on their ally. If you think you are being cheated, create games with bots and only one human opponent slot. I've only had one instance where "cheating" might have occurred and that's when the human player, going first, got a bunch of extra armies on their first go. Way more than they should have. Whether this was a glitch in the program or somehow someone was cheating I doubt I will ever know. As I mentioned previously, it didn't help them, they clearly weren't a genuinely strong player!

I'd like to clarify some wording in my previous post. When I said that the large number of people complaining about cheating was "fine" I was referring to the act of complaining and not to the situation that has caused it. Also I accidentally left the word people out of that sentence altogether.

We have very different experiences. I haven't seen any (noticeable) cheating in months. And I play regularly. However, I almost always host my own game so maybe that's why I don't see as much. Still 90% percent and a rare occurrence are a long way apart. I always play progressive bonus so maybe that has less cheaters than fixed? Whatever the case may be, I don't think we should throw away so many people's hard work by eliminating the rankings. Right now there are a lot of complaining about cheaters here and that is fine. But imagine all the "SMG took away my rank. Hundreds of hours down the drain" posts there would be if the rankings were gone. I still believe my automated cheating investigations idea, described in my earlier post, is the best way to counter cheating. Instead of taking the rankings away from everyone regardless of whether or not they play within the rules, it specifically targets cheaters and takes the things they most value in risk: their rank & status.

It's not a small number it's about 90% of games I play have obvious cheating