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View Full Version : the ethics of cheating....


DrAlimentado
27-06-2005, 14:09
I've been playing with some webbrowser controls in .NET, seems to me that it would be pretty easy to code up a tool to hunt gold in KoC [satan]

It's strictly outlawed, the rules state that you cannot use any automated process to get information from the site. Some of the recruiters already break the letter of this law (they get army size info), but this would be much more blatantly illegal.

Anyway... I think I can make an app that loads a page of the battlefield (you log in) - parses the html for name/size/race/gold/rank/link info (stores info) and then loads the next page automatically. Probably with a timer so its not just pulling page after page too quick. You could set some paramaters (min size / min gold) and leave it hunting for 10 minutes - come back and you have an ordered list of targets you can click on to bring up their stats.

What do you think? If I made it then obviously I would make it available to CDZ-ers, but is it a step too far? It's illegal enough that it would have to be secret, ie. anyone caught using one would likely be banned from the game! (I think I can make it pretty undetectable - the only tell is maybe from the speed its pulling pages)

There is also a slim possibility I can make a one-shot autobuyer... Not sure if its possible (depends if they time out your session automatically even if you are refreshing the session, not tested yet) but if it is that would be an even more useful, and even more outrageous cheat.

So what do you guys reckon?


btw - I have no idea if it should make any difference to the ethical issues but you can be sure that there are 'farm scripts' used by some clans to hunt gold, not sure about one shot autobuyers but it is at least alluded to by some top-rank players in the KoC forums.

ProPain
27-06-2005, 14:14
I;m all for it. Pretty sure other do this as well and I;m curious to the extend it's possible.

Banzai
28-06-2005, 12:20
You know what pisses me off?

After searching for half an hour I find a target with:
- 6,2M gold
- Defense action of 22M
- Total Fighting Force of 627 men
Thats a good target!

I attack and steal 3,197,313 gold.
Thats only 50% [rant]

So... yes, I am all for it.

Shabbaman
29-06-2005, 10:32
It's still cheating, isn't it? If you condone it here, why not condone it in, say, GOTM?

Pastorius
29-06-2005, 10:40
Agree with Shabba.

DrAlimentado
29-06-2005, 12:36
well I think there are degrees of cheating, its not a black and white issue.

All this utility would do is find targets that you can see the gold of. It dosent give you anything extra you couldnt get without it. We are not talking hacking the game or somesuch... we are not even subverting the game mechanics, just automating a tedious part of it.

And why is this cheating btw? because it is against the rules of course, but why is it against the rules... imo the anwser has more to do with economics than game mechanics ;)

I might point out Shabba that you are probably a big cheater already. I do believe you use Ad-Block to supress the adverts, you will find that in so doing you are explicitly breaking the rules of KoC. So you do also condone cheating in the GOTM right? seems logical...

Shabbaman
29-06-2005, 14:15
quote:Originally posted by DrAlimentado

I might point out Shabba that you are probably a big cheater already. I do believe you use Ad-Block to supress the adverts, you will find that in so doing you are explicitly breaking the rules of KoC.


Is it? Very well, carry on then. If I'm cheating anyway, I might as well cheat in a way that I get at least some benefit from it ;)

Matrix
29-06-2005, 15:05
Not wanting to mix into the discussion (I don't play Kings of Chaos), but in "The early days of Scrooge McDuck" Scrooge went into a bar where his uncle was playing poker. He said it was considered an insult to your opponent if you didn't cheat. [tongue]

Big bets...
"I got full house: aces, kings. Let your tears flow..."
"Wait a second, I also have a full house: aces, aces. [groucho]"

Beam
29-06-2005, 16:17
I know at least one friend of mine who used to play KoC with 10 different accounts...

Pastorius
29-06-2005, 20:34
Well fuck me sideways. I dont care anyway. I see your point more clearly now DrA. Makes sense...

romeothemonk
29-06-2005, 20:39
I do not play KoC, but I occasionally click people some troops from the Schools labs here. I think cheating is not cool, and try and play straight up every time all the time.
I think you guys are good enough players to not need search dogs, etc, to make it easier for you. As I understand it, you are making a Mapstat for KoC, but it is forbidden by the rules. There are some games of Civ3 that do not allow Mapstat, and I would follow the game designers rules here. That being said, I use graphics mods on my C3C game, (advisors look a lot better now) so I may be misunderstanding the issue entirely. I cannot condone knowingly cheating though.

DrAlimentado
29-06-2005, 21:56
IMO it is too simplistic to say "if you break the rules you are a cheat".

For example, KoC has a rule that says that you are not allowed to block the adverts on the site - this rule is obviously about protecting advertising revenue, why would you feel guilty about breaking it?

They also have a rule that says you cannot use any automated process to extract information from the web pages. Why would they care? 2 reasons... advertising revenue - they want you to look at the pages as they are intended, and server load.

I am actually very considerate about server load, and in the working version I had last night it had a 1 - 3 second delay between loading each page ;)

You can imagine how much I care about lost advertising revenue...


Unfortunately my hard-drive died this morning [mad3]... nto sure yet if I can retrieve the code I had worked on over the weekend, but it wont boot no more. I'm a sad cookie monsta right now [cry]

Beam
29-06-2005, 23:32
Where are you going to draw the line DrA.? I am not telling you first hand experience but what my said good friend told me how he was playing the game to get good rankings was way-off what I consider fun gameplay. And the main reason for me not to spend any time on KoC because if you want to be competative you need to cheat heavily. Please don't misunderstand, I do not wanna spoil anyones enjoyment in this game but if you want to go for the topspots you'll have to redraw that line way beyond how I experience fun game play at CDZ.

All my personal opinion.

Pastorius
30-06-2005, 00:42
Just to make things clear, I am not gonna be participating in this, but I must admit that DrA has a reasonable argument...

Shabbaman
30-06-2005, 01:46
Well, since I think the game is kind of boring anyway we could check how far we could push the envelope.

DrAlimentado
30-06-2005, 03:06
Where do I draw the line? What, is this the slippery slope argument? [lol]

I think a one-shot autobuyer is probably across the line of what I would do, but you never know...
I'm almost certainly going to (re-)create the gold hunting tool though. I just don't like doing repetative monotonous tasks any more than I have to. Espeically tasks like parsing text and sorting data which computers do so much better than us anyway.

If I could I would create an auto-clicker that genuinely read the captcha image and clicked the correct button, but I wouldn't write one that cheats the click and fakes the recruiter database. Same result in-game for the user, but one dosen't cheat the game (only the advertisers) and the other does...

I might possibly write a utility to store spy logs, its kinda annoying that you cant search your own intelligence logs (this was apparently a promised feature for age4, so maybe we will get it in age5 anyway.)


btw - The intention is always to have fun ;) I really dont think the top-top ranks would be that much fun to play, but we will never be in taht position.

I think with some dedicated clicking we can get most of us into the top few thousand ranks next age - high enough to protect ourselves and have some fun hunting.

ProPain
30-06-2005, 09:45
quote:Originally posted by Shabbaman

Well, since I think the game is kind of boring anyway we could check how far we could push the envelope.


My sentiments exactly. Basically they're only a few strats that work so it's more going through the motions than actually thinking up better ways of playing.

What I would find the ultimate challenge is creating the KoC play bot. Just tell it what strat you want to follow and the bot simply takes care of it.

My proposed functionalities:
- auto spending functions (training and armory)
- auto gold hunting function
- spy report sorting (I hate browsing those reports, I have 500, it takes ages)
- auto click function that works with recruiter programms

My proposed strat
if you get auto buy to work, the need for turning troops into covert ops is gone. You can grow your actual army and get way more money. Also I;m convinced humans are the best choice because: more money.

Strat:
- get all troop growing upgrades
- spend all money on defense

I think defense will work great if you can have auto spend. It will make sure you're always to strong defending for the small fish and the big fish wont care as your gold is too low.

Sure this would be cheating but I think it would be incredibly funny if we could have a team of bots rise the ranks.

DrAlimentado
02-07-2005, 15:35
[lol]

I can see no way of auto-clicking or auto-spending. Excepting maybe a one-shot auto-buyer, but anymore than that requires the program reading the captcha, and that isn't going to happen without a big ai research dept and a lot of money ;)

I will code up a goldhunter asap, and after that maybe a spy-logging utility. What we could have is a centralised db of spy-logs. That could be pretty funky if integrated into the gold hunter...


As far as strategy goes, well there will never be anything more than a one-shot autobuyer at best - but I still think some of your points are valid for actual playing strategies.

I will probably be human in the next age, and start by buying UP/defense/sentry and have a large army to start. Then when I have got some serious DA/sentry and high TBG buy SA/spy and train down to have some fun. It's still going to take a lot of clicking though!