ANNOUNCEMENT

[anarres]

Due to the evidence of Sky manipulating save games in more than one of his ladder matches we have taken the following action:

* Skyfish is banned from the ladder for a period of 6 months. Re-admission will be evaluated at that time if Skyfish wishes to join. If re-admission is allowed it will be as a "new" player, with 2500 points.

* All of Skyfish's games in the ladder will be awarded as wins to the other player. This will take some time to administrate, so please be patient.

* Skyfish is now banned from the ISDG, there is some potential for this to change, but this is dependant on Skyfish's actions in the future.

* Skyfish has been removed as moderator from all fora. This also has potential for change, the main reason for this is that Skyfish has not yet talked to us about this issue.


Notes:

The thread with the save game analysis is here: http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/to...?TOPIC_ID=1766

You do not need to check your previous games with Skyfish in the ladder for evidence of cheating. Whether you find evidence or not, the actions taken against Skyfish will not change.

We will now start checking other games for irregularities. If any are found the action taken on a case-by-case basis. To facilitate this we request that everyone keeps a copy of the saves (for each turn) for their games. If this is an issue for anyone because of hard-drive space we can arrange an email address to send saves to on a turn-by-turn basis, which will mean no extra hard drive space is required.


ProPain and anarres.

[ProPain]

I personally regret this happened, I hoped we'd never had to go through this. Although Sky hasn't admitted he manipulated his games I can't think of another explanation. I hope this is a one time thing and we don't need to instate a checking procedure for all games from now on. That's not what CDZ is about for me, I'm here to play for fun not to police the ladder games.

I would like to ask everybody to keep things civilized when posting on the subject. It would be great for CDZ if we can leave this behind us quickly and continue, hopefully with sky still around.

PP

[anarres]

I understand people will be angry, upset, and may feel betrayed by this. I certainly went through all those emotions when ProPain and myself started investigating this issue last week.

We should try to remember that we are talking about a GAME here. Those of us that have met Sky (especially those of us who met him in RL) know he is a kind and generous person, and after my initial outburst of emotion that is still how I think of him.

Please keep your comments civil if you can, and note that Skyfish is NOT banned from CDZ. Nor will anyone be banned from CDZ because they cheated in a game.

[Aggie]

Naturally I'm shocked about it. And I agree that these games should be changed to losses for him. But I really hope that Sky stays at CDZ, because he has done some very important things here (map making for instance). I also like to continue the pbem i play vs him... I agree with anarres, I think it was great to meet Sky (twice) in RL...

[Pastorius]

I am lost for words...

[Kingreno]

greetings,

It is with great sadness that I read the "evidence" against Skyfish in the post made by Kemal. It is obviously the topic of the day that there is something like this happening at CDZ.
I too, am very upset, but it is now and here that we must make an ethical point. This has to be discussed, not in a witch-hunt-way, not in a fingerppointing-way, but in a mature way. This will not be easy.
The case. Skyfish is supposed to have used a program called c3mt to tweak saves to gain advantage in his Pbems, mentioned specificly above. The tweaks have in all cases been subtle yet very decicive. Skyfish has claimed innocence unofficialy, meaning he is yet to react publicly on this forum. However, I agree with others that it is very unlikely that Sky has not done this.
What we do not know is whether he supposedly cheated in other games.

What now. Besides the obvious measures undertaken by our hosts anarres and PP, what do we want to happen here? I for one am fully behind (e.g.) aggie and anarres in that Skysish and the others got (and get!) along great on the fora and we met in RL as well! That was great too!
Skyfish has done something bad, but if we want to get him into a acceptable position among us here at CDZ again, I feel he has to react to the why-question. On our part, we must not bombard sky with senceless PM's or anything else. Every man has a right to defend himself, and I call upon all to please allow sky to do this.

If skyfish chooses not to do so it is also his choice. But I feel his honor will drive him to give a reaction. At least, I hope so.

This reply mey seem a bit unstructured but it is just too weird atm.

[Socrates]

I must be dreaming or something.

I thought Skyfish was one of the most trustful players here, so I can't take all of this for granted before he has recognized it. There surely must be something that you overlooked, but I can't tell what.

As for my game vs him, I deleted all the save files from my hard drive, since the game was completed. I don't know for him. I still think he didn't cheat in our game (and thus deserves a great victory), but maybe he did ? I am not a known great player here, so I don't think he was tempted to cheat vs me. I would ask you to keep his victory until it was proved he cheated vs me (how ? dunno).

I hope it's just a misunderstanding, and I hope Skyfish will be around again. Just consider the time he took for Civ here, and you'll know he's a great player and mate. (and yes I'm always kind to people )

[anarres]

kryszcztov, please check the analysis thread again to see why we came to this decision.

I am certain that the save files were edited - there is simply no way to "gain" techs for free in the game, as happened in all 3 games. This itself is enough, but there is more evidence there too, such as contacts from nowhere and workers "gaining" a turn for forrest chopping. There are 3 games that show definite evidence of outside editing, there is simply no other explanation in my mind.

Regarding your game vs sky - we have made our decision based on these 3 games. Whether or not there was cheating in your game is immaterial to the decision, which is that all of sky's games are to be recorded as losses for him.

As to your final sentiments about sky being a mate: I hope I already made myself clear that I would very much like sky to be around at CDZ for a long time.

[akots]

Wow! This is weird! But why it took so long to find out? 11 games and nobody payed any attention? Sure this would cause a major mess in ISDG UN. Don't envy your CDZ team. Well, at least you are honest and made this public. Major kudos for that to Anarres and ProPain! should have been a tough decision.

Must keep all the saves then and go through them after the games are finished!

Evidence looks very strong. The question is why such a strong player might need this?

[ERIKK]

Fuck!