SMG Studio

Jacob I think all the bot games have had the side effect of making extremely difficult to get a sixth player in regular games. I've hosted games for months and in my opinion it has never been so hard to fill the sixth slot before. My games often sit waiting for a sixth player to join for unreasonable and disproportionate amounts of time. Sometimes people start to drop because they are sick of waiting. I think many people want to avoid bot games and so they don't take the sixth slot.

Same person. "Master" created the game for six players and last minute replaced two with bots. The remaining three played together so the so called Master would win - very obvious.

Avoid games with 'expert' Irma Von strop 3, a novice sets up the game (forgot name) and the expert joins as last player - same person.

Do people think cheating is common? I tend to get my backside kicked from time to time with both human players and bots (expert bots!) employing rather dubious strategies. That said, I don't think that I am being cheated myself. My reasons are that I always create my own game with myself and two "expert" computer opponents. I then wait for a human player to join and wait a couple of seconds in case they don't fancy playing against one human and two bots. Regardless of their rating, I then start the game. Being rated highly (username Northantsovich..... GM or Master usually), I often find myself under heavy assault from a human opponent wanting a scalp, especially if I am last turn and the two bots have decided to have a go at me too. I still enjoy the challenge. I have even gone on to win such games having been down to one territory with one army! No lie!! It pays to never give up. Too often a human opponent will leave the game if they think they can't win. You get nothing for leaving the game. Even finishing 3rd out of 4 means your rank doesn't drop as much as it normally would. It's sad that people cheat but that's life.... Using my method above guarantees no cheating. That said, on one occasion, my human opponent seemed to gain lots of extra armies on their first turn (no continents but gained about 10 armies instead of 3). They went on to lose (left the game) but it did make me wonder if anyone else experienced this? Cheers! Tim So, whilst there are undoubtedly unscrupulous players, I am not among them.

Tell me this is fair play. Had a plan from the beginning. Blue left immediately, orange took control of the British, red let him have France, then used orange to clear up the independent states for red. Absolutely no threat to each other. Guess that's fun for some loser out there. Enjoy your fake grandmaster status. I want my money back. Is SMG even monitoring this thread, I haven't seen a response to the numerous examples and complaints of clear cheating.

I know this comment looks long and intimidating but please consider reading it because it is a worthwhile read for all who enjoy playing SMG's risk game that features interesting insight based on a year of playing it with premium. I think real cheating is extremely rare. But sadly since cheating leads to success the leaderboard seems clustered with cheaters. Especially really high up. I don't look at the leaderboard that much but I know that every now and again top ranked players disappear from it in a way they couldn't just by losing. In most cases that means SMG has penalized them for cheating. As far as I am aware to reach the top spots (top 100 or so) you have to play with lots of bots or cheat. Another thing I have seen is that some people play really odd games (dlc maps, short timers, manual setup, etc.) where they have the advantage of hundreds of games experience. Personally I play the very standard six players automatic progressive 3m classic map. Yes I probably have more experience with that than my opponents but most all of them have played that style of game enough to be comfortable, especially since I strive to always get highest ranked opponents possible. Of course playing a game that is familiar to you but strange to your opponents is not cheating and playing with bots is not cheating and trapping opponents in games with bots is not cheating. When I say cheating I mean playing with more than one account in the same game or altering the game so that you can break the rules. Still the more bots in a game the easier it is to win. I almost always play against five human opponents which is makes it much more difficult to advance my rank once in the gold star range. And I have empirical evidence. I have an account ranked 800 or so. I use that against human opponents. That one tends to fluctuate in the 1000-350 range. I have another account that I used to use for bot games and trapping high rank opponents. That on is now in the high 300s but that is only because I stopped playing with it because it was too boring. I had it consistently around 250 before. But back to cheating, it's too easy and too rewarding. There are many honorable players, myself included, who would never cheat. But others have less respect for the game. Just think about it people could play with two or more of their accounts, a bot, and no one else! No one would report them that way. I suppose it's possible that you can't play a game with everyone on the same network, I have never tried. But a really determined cheater could get around such a restriction if it existed. SMG really should do automated record checks for the top 500 accounts. The check would consist of the same process those reported for cheating are already subject to but in an automated fashion. Suspicious accounts would be flagged for human attention. Also I think there should be four leaderboards one for progressive five or six players. One for progressive three or four players. And same deal for fixed.

Simple solution, do away with rankings and just play the game for fun, without the ranks there is zero reason to cheat

I think people would still cheat, maybe not as much but do we really want to do away with everyone's hard work because of what I imagine is a comparatively small number of cheaters?

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

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.

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.

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!

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?