Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dominion123]

I encountered a player who I suspected of cheating.

He's ranked about 5200, so I would expect rational play. However both our openers were militia & smugglers, and on his 3rd draw he got 5 coins but bought a silver, despite market being avaliable (I had smuggler in hand). This is very suspicious, to me at least.

I suspected it was a bot, and checked it out by waiting for 4 minutes or so several times until ending my turn and he immediately reacted each time. Either he's simply staring at the screen and ready to click his cards for 4-5 minutes, or I was playing a bot. He did not respond to a single one of my comments.

Thoughts? Is cheating possible on goko, and are there actually bots here?

[WanderingWinder]

My initial thoughts: DO NOT DO THIS! 1. Publicly naming someone you suspect as a cheater is really bad, in the rather significant chance that he isn't a cheater. 2. Waiting four minutes, particularly MULTIPLE TIMES, is NOT COOL if the guy is actually there. 3. From everything you say, it really doesn't look like he's cheating. I mean, yeah. MAYBE it's a bot, but who cares if it is?

I mean, when my opponent makes a bad play, I don't think "Oh, he's cheating."

[dominion123]

took out his name.

If you don't care, why do you even post...

[Teproc]

What ? You're insane. He made a play you didn't agree with, so you made him wait for four minutes multiple times ?

He WAS probably staring at his screen, thinking you were just lagging hard.

[Awaclus]

I'm not sure if that's even possible, most certainly it isn't likely. I'm not sure how he thinks he would benefit from buying a Silver and letting you smuggle a Silver instead of buying a Market and letting you smuggle a Market that early, so I believe he just thought that Silver is better than Market for him in that situation for some reason. I'm usually playing against 5.3k+ and I still get opponents who open Pirate Ship, so that kind of thing does sound possible.

Also, I would be extremely annoyed if you started taking 4 minutes per turn several times. It's not that surprising that he doesn't want to respond to you after that.

[dominion123]

I'm not sure if that's even possible, most certainly it isn't likely. I'm not sure how he thinks he would benefit from buying a Silver and letting you smuggle a Silver instead of buying a Market and letting you smuggle a Market that early, so I believe he just thought that Silver is better than Market for him in that situation for some reason. I'm usually playing against 5.3k+ and I still get opponents who open Pirate Ship, so that kind of thing does sound possible.

Also, I would be extremely annoyed if you started taking 4 minutes per turn several times. It's not that surprising that he doesn't want to respond to you after that.

he didn't respond before that when I asked him why he did that.

[qmech]

Setting aside the question of whether this opponent was in fact a bot, would anybody have a particular problem with bots playing on the pro ladder?  I imagine it would be hard to write a bot to do very well, and I would be glad to play against any bot that was good enough to rise up the rankings.  Ideally bots would be labelled as such though.

[soulnet]

The fact that he did not chat may be due to him or her playing on a tablet. I understand that chat is not available for them. I don't think buying Silver instead of Market once is evidence enough for calling anyone a cheater. And sometimes Silver IS better than Market (since you do not have terminal draw, this is possibly not one of those cases).

[SCSN]

Wow, lol, I found the log of the game OP is talking about...

[Warfreak2]

In a deck of 7 Coppers and 3 Estates, Market increases your effective money density to $0.8/card, and Silver increases it to $0.8181.../card. Silver also increases your money density variance which is important against a discard attack such as Militia. Basically, you are only shaming yourself, and the only reason I'm responding (rather than not feeding the troll) is to discuss, for the benefit of the rest of the forum, the possible strategic advantage of Silver over Market in the early game.

[SCSN]

In a deck of 7 Coppers and 3 Estates, Market increases your effective money density to $0.8/card, and Silver increases it to $0.8181.../card. Silver also increases your money density variance which is important against a discard attack such as Militia. Basically, you are only shaming yourself, and the only reason I'm responding (rather than not feeding the troll) is to discuss, for the benefit of the rest of the forum, the strategic advantage of Silver over Market in the early game.

Maybe you can also elaborate on the merits of a T4 Estate over a Market? Or if not you, perhaps the OP, who happened to be the one making the play:

dominionnn: turn 4
dominionnn   plays Militia
r0nk3l1   discards Estate
r0nk3l1   discards Copper
dominionnn   plays 3 Copper
dominionnn   buys Estate
dominionnn   gains Estate

[soulnet]

In a deck of 7 Coppers and 3 Estates, Market increases your effective money density to $0.8/card, and Silver increases it to $0.8181.../card. Silver also increases your money density variance which is important against a discard attack such as Militia. Basically, you are only shaming yourself, and the only reason I'm responding (rather than not feeding the troll) is to discuss, for the benefit of the rest of the forum, the strategic advantage of Silver over Market in the early game.

The deck also has Militia and Smugglers (btw, Smugglers is not a great buy against Militia), which I think gives Market a little edge. But I think the variance is the important part, and also, more Silver means you can afford more terminals with less collisions, and I would definitely want to buy more Militias in a BM deck. The board seems not great for Engine, with NV alone as Village, and the Militia will hurt the engine player more than the BM player because of less variance (and while building, you need every cent out of your Coppers because you are buying much less money than a BM player). I would think BM+Militia is a good option here (I don't know how it compares against BM+Smitty), maybe adding Salvager later for the end-game control. I would buy Market over Silver, though, but because I would open Militia/Silver and I want to play Militia more.

[DG]

Markets are strong in militia games as they help you get 8 coins from 3 cards. Don't buy silver ahead of markets.

Smithy + treasure is better than militia + treasure but the market helps the militia more.

[Awaclus]

Markets are strong in militia games as they help you get 8 coins from 3 cards. Don't buy silver ahead of markets.

Smithy + treasure is better than militia + treasure but the market helps the militia more.

I thought that cantrips are weaker than usual in Militia games.

Though, the same is true for Silver, too.

[Morgrim7]

Welcome to the forums, dominion123! I don't think this person is a cheater or a bot, but that doesn't matter. Ou did spark an interesting question though with the Slivers and Markets, and I daresay with Guilds out an all we could use something to talk about besides mafia.
That being said, I think I agree with DG. In a Militia game that looks to be pretty big moneyish, youre more likely to hit eight wth the Market in than with the silver.
The flipside is that near the beginning Silver may help more to build up your deck with those Markets and Golds and such.

[mail-mi]

Or maybe, he forgot he had the +$2 from militia. I do that all the time.

[sudgy]

Or maybe, he forgot he had the +$2 from militia. I do that all the time.

Me too.  But I wouldn't have bought an Estate with $3...

[Ozle]

Quite a few foriegn players play, they may not have understood your language.
Some people dont like to chat
Someones brother/sister/other half could be olaying on thier account leading to sub optimal play


If its a bot i doubt it will get a good rating with plays like that though....

[heron]

See also: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9721.0

[Archetype]

Just so I'm clear, the OP is 'dominionnn' on both Eggplantation's and SCSN's logs?

[heron]

Yes, although I should elaborate: It seems to me that the OP is an easily-excited person prone to leaving unusual chat messages. Just a little more insight into the whole situation.

To the OP: I suggest that you try to stay more calm. Breathing exercises and meditation are helpful.

[lespeutere]

He's ranked about 5200, so I would expect rational play.

As an aside: I randomly check opponents' ranks on the Isotropish leaderboard and have played people as low as lvl 25ish despite having the threshold set at 5000+.

[blueblimp]

To the OP: I suggest that you try to stay more calm. Breathing exercises and meditation are helpful.

Seconded on the breathing exercises and meditation. I've never found them necessary for online Dominion, but back when I played online Starcraft, they were incredibly useful. Online Starcraft, if played with a bad mindset, is easily the most rage-inducing game I have ever experienced. That's too bad, since it's an interesting game. I found if I did a quick meditation between games then it put me in the right mindset to enjoy the game.

[ragingduckd]

Wow, lol, I found the log of the game OP is talking about...

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131110/log.516d5652e4b082c74d7bad47.1384085549276.txt

The OP's Goko hash code actually contains the word "bad."  I find this way more amusing than I should.  If only it spelled "troll" instead.