Hmm ... Dread Lords as multiple opponents?

Given that using this "Special ARC" is responsible for a dramatic increase in ZYW scores perhaps an asterik should be noted on the older entries that clearly did not have the advantage of using this configuration?

Also while I do respect the concept of "Empire secret" everyone must realize that nothing stays secret for long. So in fairness to any ZYW players that aren't either members of Kzinti Empire or GmOOnii (assuming there are any such players still playing the game) then I direct you to https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Cheats_and_keyboard_shortcuts.

"To play as dread lords: create a new civilization called dread lords, leader lord dread, portrait the guy with the hood on, the sign is the fire ball, the planet amalda. save the civilization and load another, then load the dread lords again, and it should be a "major" race with racial abilities and the dread lord hull design. Play the galaxy, click turn once, and their race will be just like the dread lords against you. One problem, they have a bad economy."

 

Should that be *asterisk*, *^*^* or simply *.  Your *thoughts*.

Spent too much time on my copter to spellcheck. That's version 3.0 there. I had a hard time getting it to go fast enough. That plus a couple adjustments due to font differences between Word and Paint.

No worry about spelling.  I often make the same mistakes.  The new spell checker is very handy though.  Bara doesn't get enough credit for his efforts.  Don't you agree?

Somehow I knew the chopper was of your own design...an artistic sense.

I had one I copied from someone else but it was small and had extraneous text. If you look through the edits of the reply you'll see it at the beginning.

I then did a search and found the http://gickr.com site which allows you to upload 2 or 3 jpg's or some other picture format files and it will make a gif of them for you.

At first I tried to copy the two different text patterns into paint to create the two files to upload but I couldn't get the positioning of the copter consistent between the two files and so besides the copters "blades" rotating the entire thing shook back and forth. Then I came up with the idea of generating one file with all the text in both pictures, made two copies of it and then deleted the text that didn't belong in each and voila a rotating copter that didn't shake itself to death. All then that I had to do was to play with the speed options to get it to run at the speed I wanted.

All in all I probably spent as much time figuring out the gif as did figuring out the Dread Lords ARC.

Yes and yes. I don't envy Bara's job. I always preferred to create my own designs rather than have to maintain someone else's design. And these forums spread over at least 12 separate sites are probably as complex as exists and it's simply evolved over time, probably handed down from one engineer to the next for at least ten years, perhaps more.

Then you go and try to fix something and something else seemingly totally unrelated breaks somewhere else. I certainly don't envy Bara's job. However everyone's job sucks one way or another and whenever something about work bothers me I always fall back on the same mantra, "the check clears". I suspect that those Stardock checks have no trouble clearing.

I recall SS making the same argument as yours regarding an * by Motti's game.  Both are valid.  At the time SS was critically dismissed.  In the end I agreed with Motti.  Even though Motti saw SS's point, the criteria is Y0 and Motti found a more creative way to post a higher score.  As Maiden has.

What did Motti do that no one else at the time had done?

IIRC the principles of a standard ARC which is the only thing that I know that Motti used that could be considered questionable had been fully published and publically discussed including being brought to Cari's attention. If I'm not mistaken neither of these statements can be made regarding the "special ARC" that enables the Dread Lords.

As such even if the usage of ARC was questioned at the time then the argument can be made that everyone else had sufficient knowledge to do the same thing. Again that's not an argument that could have been used in this case either.

However now that I happened across the documentation and made note of it within this thread then it *now* is fair because now anyone interested in doing it can do so. This is of course assuming that what I published even works as I haven't bothered to try it out because that's not the style of game in which I'm interested. I've also mentioned it to Motti but I doubt he's interested enough to bother playing the game again. However even if he does then I would submit that would be a good thing.

So unless I'm mistaken and there's some secret Motti used that I don't know about then I see these two things totally differently, but if I am mistaken then please let me know.

The only thing Motti really did was play it out beyond the classical 12 week game.  Still technically a Year Zero.

Personally, I still think the 12-week game is a cooler concept.

I welcome any game Motti would chose to play.  His Evil Twin was an inspiration.  But that is not the issue.

Do I misunderstand or are you now the arbiter of what is fair?  Had you not thought of it, out of bounds?  Pfft.

 

Just as Sole Soul was free to express his opinion then, I am free to express my opinion now. If I'm "critically dismissed" as SS was then, so be it, however you have no right to imply that I overstepped my bounds merely by expressing an opinion.

I am also free to publish information that I discovered from my own effort even if others had previously considered that information "empire secret".

This is not about your "rights", and this is not a courtroom. This is about *why* you're flaming against me, and trolling this thread??? This is why you're using wild-guess, hear-say, hypocratical lies, lies, and more lies to dis-credit me??? Can you explain yourself??? (and without lying, because I have enough of them by now).

Whatever "your bounds" are - since several years you are not an active MV player anymore, according to your own words you have abandoned GalCiv2. Besides, you've not even played a single ZYW in your entire "career", and in this light raises some suspicion about the ligitimacy of your real motives. You're nothing but jealous about my current game, because it took you so long to break the Million, and now here comes a newb like me and doubles that in half a year playing time. This is your real motive, you're going against my game, because your infantile and egocentric mind can't stand the fact that the KzintiEmpire is currently declassing everything that has been played previously.

And this has nothing to do with cheating or an un-even playing field. In fact, you yourself have confessed many times to use an un-even playing field in order to take the benefits from it, things that most will consider *cheating* or unfair game, things you knew from others for many years (and never made public) and you expressed yourself to be willing to use these methods, too.

You know these things I talk about very well. But if you like, I'll take myself the time to point them out within this thread: the decision is yours, as well as you have started this.

As far as I can tell I "flamed" no one. It's you that seem to be all up in flames.

As to never having done a ZYW in my career that's not quite true. In fact I did at least one ZYW during the Metaverse League. And I'm also in the process of doing one right now. However whether I have or have not or may or may not in the future do a ZYW, really has nothing to do with it.

The only thing that has to do with it is that I heard of something that I thought *might* be questionable and simply publicly brought up the topic. If you get so upset and consider that my merely bringing up the topic is in some way a "flame" against you, then it seems you are the one that is presuming that it's such a negative thing, not me.

I never once used the word cheating and by no means consider that this even approaches cheating. Cheating is hex editing a save game file and defeating the checksum protections, no one has suggested this is anywhere even close to that. I have used the word fair, and in my *opinion* the comparison I made between how the use of the original form of ARC was introduced in a public manner and how this "special ARC" was not, is apropos.

This is not a personal attack against you even though you seem to want to treat it that way.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

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As far as I'm concerned the issue is over and done with. I've mentioned it publicly along with the method that I *think* can be used to replicate it.

If you really do wish to continue the discussion then I'll certainly respond to anyone's questions or concerns, but as far as I'm concerned I have no need to beat a dead horse.

You've quoted my posts way too much, and put your infantile ROFL/LOL-copter under it, and that leaves not many ways open to interpret the intents of your posts, other than hostility. Especially when one keeps in mind that you've contacted me previously through PM in order to get some help from me regarding your current game... The truth is, you only wanted to "sound me out", and after I've let you down you've written another message and tried to put pressure on me... which didn't work, thus you started to post here in such disrespective and accusing manner, which is unfounded, by the way.

Lots of stuff you said above is only circumstantial, hear-say, absurd accusations etc etc. What proofs do you actually have about that what did happen?

Still, I am interested why your above posts fill this thread with deceit and disinformation, as your last posts is nothing but evasive.

All info's concerning what you posted above from the wiki was already public since years, and this applies to the info that lead to the NB strat as well. Contrary to what you say this info is even available at your forums at the ToE-site, where you are an administrator with some ~900 posts, and by that couldn't have simply overlooked it.

Although it is NOT sufficient to say that just because something has been posted somewhere in a thread, or hosted on a site, that this guarantees an even-playing field for all MV-players, which your message seems to imply. Essentially *fair* is when all participants do play to the same rules, and this does imply also the most up-to-date version of the game. Point is, the DL ARC glitch can happen to all gamers by accident, and while this is sheer luck you'll be surprised how many times a chaotic factors determines a game. It's beyond all our control and nobody's fault. However, if someone revers to an old and outdated version of the game it'll need a good explanation why an *un*-even playing-field had been chosen. Your thoughts.

I vouch for Maiden's authenticity and honesty 100%.  In recent months his research efforts have revealed numberless details about game mechanics.  He is a tireless and devoted researcher who has made many excellent discoveries.

Mumble, as always you are a master at crafting posts designed to both inflame, while yet preserving plausible-deniability that to do so was not part of the intent.  A very familiar tactic from you, but not convincing to those of us who are familiar with it.  How tiresome.

Sentient species taste better...

I see you wish to continue this discussion. OK, if that's what you want.

I'm sorry I didn't know there was a quote limit. I simply quoted those posts in this thread that discussed the "special ARC" and use of a Dread Lords opponent.

Apparently 2 quotes is "way too much" since I only quoted you twice, GmOOnii twice and KP once. Unless of course you're merely an alternate identity of either GmOOnii or KP in which case it would be more, however I would have no way of knowing that.

Since you brought it up, I'll comment on that.

Yes. I contacted both you *and* KP by PM but not because I wanted help in my current game, but simply because I had questions about the legitimacy of this "special ARC". I specifically contacted you and then KP by PM because I really had no desire to cause you or the Kzinti Empire any possible embarrassment, even though I didn't think the "special ARC" was all *that* big of a deal, or would be sufficient to cause you all that much embarrassment.

Since your response was that it was an "empire secret" and KP chose to essentially ignore my request, I felt free to find out what I could on my own and to publish that here in the thread dedicated to ZYW's since the "special ARC" is pretty much specifically tailored to ZYW.

That is correct. However that doesn't mean that I or anyone else knew about it. I only found it by doing a site specific search of the wiki site for "dread lords" and the only reason I did such a thing was because of it being mentioned here. It was tucked away under the cheat codes section and I had never encountered it until the day that I posted the information here.

You apparently know more about the ToE forums than I do. So much for "empire secrets" eh?

However you are mistaken on three counts. One is I've 852 posts (although I suppose 900 is close enough), secondly I'm a moderator *not* an administrator and thirdly I have *never* seen any discussion of any kind of ARC that uses the Dread Lords as an opponent. It was also a surprise to Motti who did not know how it was done either.

However as a member of the Kzinti Empire that seems to know more about the ToE empire private forums than I as a member do then please by all means point out where this information exists on the ToE forums. I do know that Motti greatly helped you out when you were getting started with all kinds of "empire secret" information, a fact that you have acknowledged in this very thread so perhaps you paid more attention to this than I did.

I assume you mean "revere" as in "to show devoted deferential honor to".

I think I have made my position clear both in PM to you and scattered throughout various threads on these forums. I stayed with DL v1.4x for as long as I was playing DL exclusively simply because I object to having programs on my PC whose sole purpose is the update of another single program that I own. This went for Stardock Central and even more so for Impulse.

Also from what I know DL v1.4x is pretty much identical to DL 1.5 and beyond with the one exception being that in DL v1.4x being bankrupt actually means something and you cannot  purchase buildings, ships and upgrade ships after going beyond -500bc (as you can in DL v1.5 and above *and* in DA of *any* version). If you want to argue anything you'll have to admit that the DL v1.4x version I played is harder than any DL version 1.5 or above.

However when it became clear that Stardock Central was going away I did break down and install Stardock Central so that I could get to the latest versions of the game that I could at the time which are DL v1.5, DA v1.80g and TA v1.96.

That upgrade actually cost me the ability to submit a 960K DL game because after I did the upgrade I uninstalled StardockCentral which, unknown to me, deleted the game serial numbers from my registry. Once I discovered this I restored the serial numbers but the damage was done and this made games started prior to the uninstall of SDC invalid (not cheat flagged, actually unsubmittable).

So anyway the revs I mentioned above, DL v1.5, DA v1.80g and TA v1.96, will be the revs of any future games that I choose to submit. As far as I know DA v1.80g was the standard for a very long time, is very stable and is a perfectly legitimate version of DA to be playing.

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As I said previously, it's not my choice to continue beating this dead horse, but as I also said before I will respond to anyone's questions or concerns.