How is cheating possible?

[Boron]

On a related topic, does this revelation put all of the debates about balance into a new perspective? Norfleet's favorite strategies, the VQ and Mad Castling, look less strong when you realize how he really did it. He was fond of saying the strategies were not that overwhelming, he knew lots of people who could not make them work. I, for one, could never get the resources to spam castles across the landscape or get the VQ fully decked out so early. Now I know why he was so much better at it than I.

yeah i thought some days ago i have improved my dominionskills from newbie to an already quite good player . then i read the thread what norfleet had at turn 23 with ermor and only thought : WOW i have so much still to learn . i have never tried e.g. the raven feast because i remembered how small the gains are . now i thought perhaps i was wrong .
so thnx for revealing this stormbinder .
about 30h ago when norfleet was still defending i almost believed him that he was really lucky and got this through lots of good events ... .
it was still a bit unbelievable but i thought well norfleet is known as probably the best dominionsplayer so it can be possible .

now after revealing his cheating i still miss his funny or informative Posts . i think norfleet deserves a new chance because he is a loss not for the game probably because he cheated there but for the community .
he always gave good advice and his view of the world was bizarre but funny to read .

[Boron]

oh and i think norfleet almost didn't need that cheating because he already had lots of wisdom in dominions .
so even without he would probably have won the majority of his games .

perhaps he was forced to cheating though :
i speculate a bit now because i only own dominions since 2 months so i have no knowledge about the time before but here my guess lol :

norfleet was good in the beginning and always won without cheating . then because the community is so small in the new games everybody allied secretly against him and he had no chance to win against others because even the best player can't win against 3-4 others in no game if the others are not complete noobs .
so the community forced him to either play under different nicks each time or to his solution : "cheating" .

perhaps he found now a new game and got really tired from dominions and so he chose that in his eyes "funny" way to say adios .

although i don't know norfleet personally i still have a kinda high opinion of him and he is a loss for the board .

[archaeolept]

norfleet was good in the beginning and always won without cheating . then because the community is so small in the new games everybody allied secretly against him and he had no chance to win against others because even the best player can't win against 3-4 others in no game if the others are not complete noobs .
so the community forced him to either play under different nicks each time or to his solution : "cheating" .

no. even the earliest games w/ norfleet, other than his initial "map of the world campaigns", which I wasn't in, had him demolishing alliances made of everyone else. These alliances were in no way secret, or set up beforehand, but emerged naturally because he was so dominating, and able to put up castle/temple/labs every turn in every new territory. This was months ago.

And a number of players in those games, who were pretty good and were initially enthusiastic about the game, just left the scene. Perhaps they would have left anyways, or perhaps the impossibility and frustration, and the seeming refusal by the old guard to take their concerns seriously, encouraged them to give up on Dominions.

[Yossar]

oh and i think norfleet almost didn't need that cheating because he already had lots of wisdom in dominions .

That's what I don't get either. I'd like to think there was more to it than just simple cheating (especially after reading some of his final comments here), but I don't know. Norfleet was pretty eccentric and maybe I can't / don't want to understand him.

[Stormbinder]

Greetings.

I would like to thank you all for your kind words, they are very much appreciated. Also I would like to say special thanks to Mose, for him believing me in the begining, for his support on board, for spending his valuable time analizing Ermor's file, and for making Norfeet's Ermor file available for download on his server, where it can be accessed by anybody who would like to see it himself.

Thank you guys! Your words tell me that all the time and efforts dedicated to bringing this sad matter to the concluion were well spend and appreciated.

Regards,
Stormbinder

[jimbo]

Add me to the list of people in your debt, sir! Very well done indeed.