All too many PBEM games have been ruined by the stupid and destructive behaviour of a few cheaters. While it’s unrealistic to hope that all cheating can be stamped out, the incidence of cheating can be dramatically reduced if players keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour and know how to deal with suspected cheaters.

Part 1: What is cheating?

Given the nature of the Civ 2 game engine, it’s hard to give precise definitions of what constitutes cheating without providing prospective cheaters with clear instructions on how to cheat. However, the following points should provide some clear indications of what constitutes cheating without being too specific:

Cheating is:

• Altering your position in the game through any means other then simply playing your turn.
• Altering or looking at your opponents (or allies!) conditions in any way except for when you have their permission to do so.
• Altering the non-graphics scenario files in any way without the prior agreement of the other players in the game.
• Running any kind of external program on a saved file (except for PBEM utilities such as Lazyciv).

Part 2: Identifying cheaters

Once again, the nature of the Civ engine means that identifying cheaters and proving what they’re doing is cheating is not easy. However, it appears that with a little bit of vigilance, most cheaters end up being caught and kicked out of the games that they’re cheating in.

Things to look out for include:

• Units moving too far (you can easily check this by comparing saves)
• Surprising combat results – especially if these results are sustained over multiple turns.
• Financial irregularities
• Large increases in the amount of units the player is credited as owning in the starting screen
• City and terrain improvements appearing at surprisingly fast rates (keep an eye out for large numbers of players cities suddenly sprouting city walls!)
• Newbies with a surprising amount of knowledge about how PBEMs work, and how to do thinks like crack passwords (don’t laugh - this has happened!)

It’s worth noting that given the turn based nature of PBEMs it’s impossible to frame another player, and that any false allegations can generally be swiftly disproved - if a player doesn’t have something at the end of their turn but has it in another players turn it means that someone has hacked the file. By checking the players conditions at the end of each of the other players turns it should then be easy to figure out who’s been cheating (see, the Civ engine isn’t all bad).

Part 3: What to do if you think that someone is cheating

Converting your suspicions into hard proof is often the most difficult part of proving that someone is, or isn’t, cheating.

The following tips should help:

• Look at old saves – an action which may have surprised you may have been simply caused by you missing something in a previous turn (e.g., a warship slipping through your patrols, or a railroad being built over a mountain). On the other hand, you may notice more suspicious behaviour which will act to confirm your suspicion.
• Try doing what you think the cheater has done in a single person game. Quite often you’ll find that your suspicions are based on nothing but a misunderstanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the games units, or the various civs ability to produce units and raise money. Alternately, if you can’t reproduce the ‘cheaters’ actions then there’s an excellent chance that your suspicions are correct.
• Discuss what you think the ‘cheater’ is doing with someone who you trust - they may have noticed other strange behaviour. Alternately they may be able to explain the ‘cheating’ as being perfectly within the bounds of the game.
• Quietly ask a neutral person with the necessary know-how to check the ‘cheaters’ save to see if they are in fact cheating (this generally settles matters one way or the other). ‘Duke of Marlbrough’ has had considerable experience in doing this on CFC.

Part Four: Exposing a cheater

Exposing a cheater is unquestionably the most emotionally fraught thing in PBEMs. Basically, the trick is to keep your suspicions as quiet as possible until you are confident that you can prove that the player has been cheating.

When you feel that you have sufficient evidence then do the following:

• If the cheater has only committed what you consider to be ‘minor’ offence then you should try to preserve their reputation as far as is possible by keeping the matter off public message boards. Instead of using the message boards, discuss the matter with all the participants in the game via email or private messages.
• In the event that the cheater has committed what you consider to be a serious offence you should post all your evidence on the games message board and contact the players in any other games that the cheater is in so that they can also make a decision on what to do about the cheater. When you make this post I suggest that you email or PM the cheater so that they know what’s going on and have an opportunity to respond (however, most cheaters generally vanish upon their cheating being revealed).
• If you are concerned about being branded a squealer or are worried about the cheater attempting retribution against you, you may want to ask a neutral umpire (where available) to post the above evidence of cheating (perhaps under the guise of a ‘random check’).
• If possible, repair the damage which the cheater has done, find a replacement to fill their shoes and then play on. If the cheater confesses to his crimes you should have a good idea of what needs to be fixed.

Part Five: Conclusion and recommendations

While cheaters are rare, they can be very destructive. The implication of this is that catching cheats early can make all the difference between a great game and a dismal failure.

Most people I’ve spoken to believe that a neutral umpire with the ability to check ‘cheaters’ games for evidence of cheating is the best way of proving wether someone is cheating. Taking this one step further, there seems to be a very strong case for having someone with these skills conducting random checks of PBEM game files for evidence of previously undetected cheating. Duke of Marlbrough performs this role on CFC and it would be nice to have someone doing the same on Apolyton.

Taking this another step further, I believe that the ‘umpire’ should also have moderators powers. This will allow them to check whether ‘new’ players are actually cheaters making a return under the cover of a DL (which has happened). In addition, moderator powers would enable the umpire to maintain a ‘stickied’ and locked thread in which they could post the names of confirmed cheaters.

Another prospect is whether cheaters should receive punishments such as being banned from the entire message board system (ie Apolyton or CFC). While this would greatly reduce individuals incentive to cheat, in my opinion it would be an overreaction as most cheaters generally leave on their own accord, and it seems over the top to ban people from contributing to message boards on different topics.

A further suggestion is to draw up a list of ‘trusted players’. However, while this idea appears tempting, in my opinion it contains two substantial flaws. Firstly, by creating an ‘elite’ such a list would discourage new honest players from entering the PBEM community and would make it harder for them to be accepted into games. Secondly, there is no way that to be sure that some of the ‘trusted’ people on the list are not actually cheaters who haven’t been caught yet. Anyone familiar with the CFC PBEM board will be aware that even the most trusted individuals can descend to cheating. As a result, a list of trusted players would, in my opinion, serve only to discourage new players and to protect cheaters.

While cheating is probably the greatest problem in the PBEM world, it is by no means a fatal problem. The majority of games never encounter any problems caused by players cheating, and most of those which do have to take action against a cheater generally struggle through and continue successfully. Nevertheless, it is important that every honest player keeps an eye out for evidence of cheating so that the flaws in the Civ engine don’t lead to the collapse of the booming PBEM community.

Appendix: Examples of Cheaters being Caught

The following list of examples of cheaters being dealt with was very generously provided by Darius871.

This list is not a comprehensive index of every time a cheater has been exposed, but is merely intended to provide a few examples of ways in which cheaters have been caught and dealt with.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47002&perpage=50&pagenumber=6

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=57838&pagenumber=3

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=277296#post277296

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=356982#post356982

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=358602#post358602

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=372035#post372035