Cheating in TOAW III: Policy Announcement

[JAMiAM]

[Weasel]

Hi Guys; Haven't played TOAW in a while, but I do know in SP that if you format your system it obviously deletes the registry file of the game. This will then give you a really screwed up turn counter. I also believe that window washing programs can also corrupt the counter sometimes (I use a washer program and know).

For example: I installed Vista and the next day took it off as too many of my utility programs didn't like it. My SP game, by game end at turn 25, showed:

P1: 45 loads, 45 quits, 415 fails
P2: 4 loads, 4 quits, 425 fails.

And in a game I just finished that was run totally fine with no problems it still showed P1 with 3 fails and P2 with 4.

To say that this is cheating is a stretch, and I would hate to label someone as such. It is just an anti-cheating system that can be corrupted by the smallest thing. It sounds a lot like the TOAW system is based upon the winSP system too.

Anyway, just something to consider, and I hope I didn't step on anyone's toes.

[Currahee]

Thanks for the input, Weasel.

I've now completed several games in TOAW III, and am currently playing six, against five different opponents, and have to say the anti-cheat is working well, and is a tremendous improvement over COW. We see very occasional "reloaded once" messages, generally where someone did reload, because they screwed a move up beyond all recognition; and no one objects to those sorts of things.

I don't run Vista, or window washers, but do run a large number of utilities, and none of them interfere with the anti-cheat. Not to say none of them ever would, just that I don't think that's going to be a big problem.