Concerning pol party, I wonder if it is the name that is used in savegame or the ID (more shorter).
          
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| Once you start the game there is no way you should be able to alter the data for the game play, in this case the political party. It seems that the game itself recognised something was up (hence the anomolous score)which lead Stardock to suspect something. |
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I don't disagree with you, but I don't think in R's case that he modified the data. He modifed the process, which I think is an important point. The data in the game got confused because of the process change. Now, I doubt that R knew what was happening in the game data. For all he knew, he found a weakness in the game that allowed him to back out an anomolus score and gain a 60K score. I think that is all he stumbled on. In my point about the PQ anomolus generation, one can back out that score as well. Is there really a difference?
In the details, the problem lies in the game. It allows moded political parties to have the same name as default parties. Now that we know this can happen, it is obvious that this is a weakness in the game allowing strange things to happen.
Fix the game.
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I guess that to prevent modifying parties during the course of a game, the parties used at the start should be in the savegame. And when a reload is done, these pol parties are read from the savegame and not from the data and mods directories.
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| the problem lies in the game. It allows moded political parties to have the same name as default parties. Now that we know this can happen, it is obvious that this is a weakness in the game allowing strange things to happen. |
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Yes, but as I have stated, it isn't allowing that is a problem. It is the fact that the characteritics of the parties used at the start of the map aren't saved, in order to be sure that pol parties don't move during a game
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You know, I'm not even convinced that Renegade's sneaky political party trick would help. If he created a party that gave the massive bonuses he describes, then the AIs would choose it too (unless he gave it some massive penalties as well).
Also, there's been a lot of argument about whether Renegade should have been zeroed for doing this. But he wasn't banned for doing that. He has never been accused of doing it by anyone but himself. The accusations against him are totally different. I suppose it's possible that by changing a political party in mid-game, he caused some data to get overwritten and confused the auditors into thinking he had hacked the file directly. We don't know.
   
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| In my point about the PQ anomolus generation, one can back out that score as well. Is there really a difference? |
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Suppose I used a similar trick to give myself a +500% PQ bonus and then made it disappear before submission? Would you see a difference then?
The difference is in whether you abused the modding system to give yourself an unfair advantage during the game.
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Currently the following tactic, based on what Renegade has done, would work:
- create a political party (no need to have the same name or same id as a standard party) with only important negative bonuses. No AI will choose it but you will.
- in January 2178, save the game and exit Galciv.
- replace the political party you use (but withsame name and smae ID) with one with insane bonus. You will be the only with theses bonus. You may need the first election to take advantage from theses bonus
- play the game until the last election before the end of the game. Save at this point, exit GalCiv
- replace the politcal party for a mare acceptable one (could be a copy of a standard party)
- run Galciv and load the game. When the election arrives, your stats will be now based upon the characteristic of the modified party and will no longer trip anomalous flag.
- play to the end of the game.
The only way to avoid this kind of play, is to save the caracteristics of the political parties used by you and the AI in a savegame.
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#108
by Senator CariElf - 6/25/2004 9:17:20 AM
| We don't know precisely how they did this (hex editor, decompiler, etc.) but the only things that would appear different in the game were the gameID and sometimes the first researched tech. |
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What Brad is saying is that there are multiple ways of editing a binary file. It's not like you could look at the file galciv.exe and say "Oh yes, that was compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio 6, Service Pack 5". It doesn't matter which method you use to edit a binary file; the end result is the same.
| It's not all that clear that Galciv Writer is a non Stardock program. Stardock should immediately issue a statement that sort of thing isn't allowed amd take greater steps to catch it |
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We allow modding of Gal Civ and Hawaii 5-O's editor, and we even allow modded games to be submitted to the metaverse. The Gal Civ Writer is a valuable tool that has helped this community by making it easy to create these mods. You can edit our files with notepad; Hawaii 5-O's editor just makes it less tedious.
Wow!
I've sat back and watched this long enough:
There are questionable real-world events that are not getting this much scrutiny! If everyone here took the time put into just one of their posts and used it to contact someone about a real issue they feel strongly about, we could change the world!
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 ! I agree.  People from Michigan, I suggest that we write to our governor and tell her not to let other places dump their trash in our beautiful state.
| You know, I'm not even convinced that Renegade's sneaky political party trick would help. If he created a party that gave the massive bonuses he describes, then the AIs would choose it too (unless he gave it some massive penalties as well). |
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Yes, it does help. He uses a political party mod that gives him a huge PQ bonus. This helps him throughout the game. Then, before he ends the game when it would check for his PQ ability, he saves the game, alters the mod so that his PQ rating will drop, and then allies with the last alien giving him an alliance victory without getting an anomalous score, that he would have gotten otherwise.
| The only way to avoid this kind of play, is to save the characteristics of the political parties used by you and the AI in a savegame. |
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Yes, and I think that we're going to have to do this if we are going to continue to allow modded games to be submitted to the metaverse.
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| Yes, and I think that we're going to have to do this if we are going to continue to allow modded games to be submitted to the metaverse. |
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And it mustn't be forgotten that you can mod galciv without having the files in the mod directory: you just need to have them in the galciv/data (and below) directories.
Modded games aren't simply games where the "use mods" button is checked.
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[edited: double post]
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#111
by Senator CariElf - 6/25/2004 9:49:11 AM
| Modded games aren't simply games where the "use mods" button is checked. |
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Yes, but I can check against that.
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| He uses a political party mod that gives him a huge PQ bonus. This helps him throughout the game. |
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Yes, but if the aliens are picking the same party (I'm not sure if there's anything to prevent them) then they'll get the same bonuses on top of their standard Maso bonuses and he won't be any better off, relatively speaking. Maybe he could have won fairly all along if he'd just kept trying...
| There are questionable real-world events that are not getting this much scrutiny! |
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112 posts on finding out if our friends are lying cheaters or not? Compared to some of the things people go on about on these forums, I'd say it's a worthwhile discussion.
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| Yes, but if the aliens are picking the same party (I'm not sure if there's anything to prevent them) then they'll get the same bonuses on top of their standard Maso bonuses and he won't be any better off, relatively speaking. |
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Not as sure as you. Let's say that AI as PQ +20 as bonus on maso. It the pol party give a PQ +100,
you will have:
PQ 15 -> PQ 30 for human and PQ 33 for AI. PQ 18 with only PQ +20
PQ 20 -> PQ 40 for human and PQ 44 for AI. PQ 24 with only PQ +20.
I am pretty sure that at the beginning, the difference (from moral since it is one of the more important stats for a planet) with 1 Billion people is greater when comparing PQ 15 with PQ 18 than when comparing PQ 30 and PQ 34.
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| Modded games aren't simply games where the "use mods" button is checked |
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Yes, but I can check against that. |
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Sure. But if a workaround against this check to submit modded games is to alter files in the standard GalCiv directory, you can safely bet that it will be used
I think that is better to let modded games to be submitted than to let a such easy workaround
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| ! I agree. People from Michigan, I suggest that we write to our governor and tell her not to let other places dump their trash in our beautiful state. |
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Nooooo.!!! BE SILENT SHEEP OH RESIDENTS OF MICHIGAN!!!! GARBAGE IS GOOD. WHAT'S A FEW NEEDLES IN YOUR LAKES HUH? BASK IN THE AFTERGLOW OF NUCLEAR WASTE. WHAT'S A LITTLE MERCURY IN YOUR CREEKS AND RIVERS!!! THINK OF ALL THE MONEY IT BRINGS TO THE STATE. THINK OF THE JOBS!!! THINK OF HOW MUCH OF THAT YOU'LL GET. NO WAIT. SCRATCH THAT LAST ONE. For if they don't dump it there, they'll want to dump it here. And our legislature is totally for sale. And like I always say. Better you then me.
Sparrow now gets out of elvish territory before yet another spell flies his way. Poof!!!! Too late.
 
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| People from Michigan, I suggest that we write to our governor and tell her not to let other places dump their trash in our beautiful state. |
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If you do that where oh where will Toronto send its garbage?
Toronto City hall likes to sit back and wait until the next election before they decide to make a stand on an issue.
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#117
by Senator CariElf - 6/25/2004 12:14:48 PM
Send it to New Jersey. Just kidding. But I do believe that a better solution than dumping trash out of country could be found.
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| a massive civ-wide PQ bonus (say 100%) allows the player to merrily colonize low PQ planets |
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That's true of a massive bonus, but he says he only took +30% PQ. Cheating, yes, but not very effective cheating.
For my own amusement, I just tried a tiny abundant maso where I gave one of the political parties +500% PQ. All the Majors chose this party. It was something of an advantage that I could colonise PQ 14 worlds that the AI ignored and turned them into something decent, but that's true of every game. I could also colonise PQ 3 worlds and have them turn into PQ 18, but since I was keeping my taxes at 100% (which was fine as most of my worlds were over PQ 100) PQ 18 wasn't good enough. Overall, it was quite fun (super-fast research!) and only slightly easier than a normal game.
(It came out anomalous, of course.)
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I colonise PQ12s all the time. They're don't bring much tax income, but in AP there's enough trade around it doesn't matter. With SE & HI, you can get them up to PQ 14 (15 with the 5% PQ bonus) at which point they give you no financial penalty. They produce research, population, events, ships and influence.
I agree with your basic point though - with an extra +30% PQ bonus I'd be taking PQ10s...
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| People from Michigan, I suggest that we write to our governor and tell her not to let other places dump their trash in our beautiful state. |
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Hear, hear!! NIMBY!! (Not In My Back Yard) 
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| Only way to stop any of this is to ensure original files are used with no mods for metaverse submissions. |
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How could you ensure that? You need to be sure that no standard files have been modified and that Galciv take only the standard Galciv files associated with the version.
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