How is cheating possible?

[Stormbinder]

All I know for 100% certian from the Posts is that:

1) stormwhiner attempted to setup Norfleet in a game where he had allied before the game started with all of the other players. A clear indiction of a pathetic coward.

ROFL. Small tip Huzzur, why don't you at least use "IMHO" word instead of "I know for 100% certain", when you make such a statements? Trust me, it will make you look better at the end.

FYI I didn't even know any of the players before the game, except Cohen. Which is not suprising considering the fact that for all of them it was the first MP game. I never spoke to any of them about any in game alliances before the game. And I din't even send any in game message to any of them until about turn 10, when I got the message from Arco (or Jotuns, don't remeber) asking me if I want to ally with him against Ermor, since Ermor was starting to grow very powerfull by than, based upon graphs that were visible to everybody.


You can go and ask any of these peoples yourself if you want to, they all are forum members.


So unless you intend to accurse all 5 of us of lying, I suggest you take your words back and next time try to think, before you post anything "with 100% certainty"

Stormbinder

[Sheap]

I'm thinking that Huzurdaddi didn't pay enough attention to who he was replying to here.

1) stormwhiner attempted to setup Norfleet in a game where he had allied before the game started with all of the other players.

Even if this is true (I do not think there has been real evidence or anyone that admitted to this) the thread is about Norfleet, not Stormbinder.

2) Norfleet had an insane number of gems in the game in question. I have no idea how he got them.

I think the means is pretty apparent.

4) someone who made entertaining Posts, who was insightful about the game, and who shared *some* of his knowledge about the game is probably gone from the community due to a vendeta.

So you are saying that Norfleet's admittedly helpful forum postings justify his cheating? I don't think you can argue in this case that you have to take the bad with the good. No one has a responsibility to be helpful and answer questions, but everyone has a responsibility to not cheat. There are other people that know the rules and tactics and I expect they will help out.

And I think that Norfleet left because he was caught cheating, not because of a vendetta.

[The Panther]

As for game-engine effects, from spending a lot of time analyzing Norfeet's file, it seems to me that the main focus of his cheating was to keep adding about 200 gems to any magic schools when he needed it. Or maybe reseting all magic schools gems to 200. Than he could just used and convert these gems in whatever he wanted to. He must have did it many times thoughout the game, based upon final gem count. Most of his magic gems in the treasury very quite close to 200, except those that he had been using heavely (like fire and death gems). He even had 200 bloodslaves (for whom he had no use though and of course being Ermor he didn't really hunt these slave)

Other game mechanisms appeared to be intact

This makes a lot of sense based on what I have read so far. Even though I am a rank newbie, I ought to be able to win against anybody with infinite gems available to me.

As for the money to build his 20+ castles, Norfleet could always change fire or earth gems to gold any time he wanted to erect another expensive castle. He would not have to muck with anything else AT ALL other than to reset all of his gem counts to 200 each and every turn.

Plus, doing this would be very hard to catch after about 60 turns or so, as having about 200 gems of each type in the lab would not be quite as noticable on turn 60 as turn 20. Thus, I also think it quite likely that he got nailed because it was only turn 22. Storm knew enough about the game to notice the excess gem spending early on.

But I wonder how long Norfleet has been doing this in other games. If he had not gone so insane with spending his free gems so much in this particular instance, it would have been far harder to catch.

So, having everybody allied against him at the beginning of that game meant he had to use his free gems both ruthlessly and properly in order to win, which was one of the reasons he was caught. And Norfleet is obviously a good enough player to do this. I doubt I could have pulled it off in a 1 on 6 even with unlimited gems.

Cheers

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Man, this is sad. A few points:

• Thank you Stormbinder! And apologies for not wanting to believe you :-( Also thanks to Kristoffer for the official backing, and for the unpleasant work.
• The sources to the game pages are publicly available in a somewhat old Version, under GPLv2, in the LINKS section of my pages. I am occasionally contacted by individuals who wants to set up an identical server, though none of them have yet done so.
• I find it unlikely but possible that my server as such has been compromised. If so, the attacker has been quite skilled. To be safer, I have started the process of upgrading all software on the server. This will undoubtedly cause crashes at some point.
• For those that care, the game itself and my own, simple analysis of the situation is here: Norfleet analysis
• As to how, I would guess hacking the nation.trn and or .2h file is the best bet. I agree with Stormbinder as to the nature of the cheat: Gain gems, possibly resetting the number of gems to a certain value.
• The dominions II game was obviously not written with security as a priority. To do it right, you have to let the server execute and check on all movements the client submits. This is just like writing a web page: All data sent should be regarded as suspicious (Perl: tainted). Care should be made to track this tainted data and untaint it by careful checking. On the other side, no data should be transferred to the client which the client does not need.
• All the big internet game houses have had problems with cheating. It is not trivial to get right, and the above is just an observation, no a criticism.
• I would have Banned Norfleet from the server, but I see no point, especially now.

I'll shut up now. Hopefully, this particular hole will be plugged soon.

[tinkthank]

This is sad.
Since I had no idea that there was a cheat at all (I had to search with "Norfleet" in the subject title to find that thread, and just read it, boy is it long), I had never really thought it possible. I am not personally worried since I don't play competetively nor with people I could ever imagine even wanting to cheat, but I still think that measures should be undertaken to ensure that "hacks" or whatever you call them are as difficult to do as possible. I have no idea about computers or hacking, but I imagine that nothing is completely safe.
In any case, I think the original question is a good one, and if it won't be answered here, it should at least be not-answered by means of an assurance that smart people are working on a cheat protection.

[Tannath]

Greetings

This may be a little late, but, it was sugeseted (not for the first time) that Stormbinder allied with the other players before the game started (as if that would make a big difference to the fact that Norfleet was cheating...).
Well, I was playing Pythium and I didn't even knew who Stormbinder was. Actually, by turn 4 or 5 I made a non-agression pact with Norfleet!! And Storm contacted me, as he said, by turn 10 or maybe even later.
I cannot talk for the other players, but if you go to the Battlefield forum you can see that we were all (with the exception of Cohen) newbies (actually, this was my 5th MP game), so very unlikely to be allied with Storm from the beginning. Forget about the conspiration theory.

Stormbinder made a big favor to the Dom2 community and everyone should be grateful to him
Thank you

Regards.

[Cohen]

My reply here was deleted?

[Boron]

man this is sad . i didn't know that cheating is possible in dominions 2 too . i read the other post too and thought wow how can you get all this stuff with ermor at turn 22 but i believed that it was perhaps really luck .
thnx for revealing this stormbinder .

hopefully it gets fixed soon because otherwise even if you ban norfleet how can you assure that he doesn't join each time under a new nick ?

[Lepakko]

BIG Thx to Stormbinder to finding out of cheater


I had game Vs norfleet in Battlefield tourney 1

I thought game was in my hands i had like 13+ lands and he had only 3. Turn was like 15-18. Then he attack me super comm + his god. They had hydra armors + realy good other items in turn 15-18. i thought it was skill to build all most full best items to turn 15-18 to 2 unit

i hope he didnt drop me in tourney by using cheat

[Molog]

Norfleet analysis

Correct master password is cohennap.