Recommended turn order based on play times:

After reviewing my steam conversation with Hiliadan when i got the black screen at the time of its occurence 
( which coincidentally did not trigger a reload warning ) 

My words were " i believe the game has possibly been tampered with"

i did not accuse any particular individual or more specifically my opponents in involved in the game.

If i was aware of my teammate cheating why would i do this ?

If my teammate was cheating , so be it we are disqualified from tournament and he should be exposed.
I was not directed to "watch" my teammate after his earlier crash....and honestly when i get home from work i usually have between 4-6 pbem turns waiting , sure i would take my time a little more with tournament turns , but i am definately not "counting hexes" on my allies army movements from where units were at end of his previous turn.


The protest i have is the harsh ban being imposed on me when i was the one that brought the possibilty of foul play to the attention of the judges.

Regardless , with this new discord group that has been setup by DreadReaper for live games , you will not see me much on battlefield anymore anyways. I did enjoy being part of the tournaments , and hosting some extra fancy modded pbem games occasionally. But at heart i have always been preferential to live games , or PBEM style heavily modded Titanic Map sized 2 player co-op live classic turn campaign type extreme difficulty maps with ranging between 6-30 mods.


I will host my final "hurrah" pbem game this evening it will be the last one i host for quite some time as these days work as well as the doberman and my soccer team take up the majority of my free time , and ive been having trouble keeping up with pbem turns even on 4-7 day timers.



This final PBEM will be 2v2v2v2 , very challenging settings and of course with many of the mods i have been experimenting with since the release of the mod tools.

It will be a big map and at least VERY STRONG defender strength perhaps consider even the SUPER STRONG setting allowed by the extended settings mod.

i invite any vetrans to grab a seat at the TaverN

good luck to whomever reaches the finals vs Gab&Tussel , they are some tough bastards to beat , i had thought we were on our way to handing gab his official first defeat.

anyhow
don't forget to enjoy the occasional adult beverage once in a while when playing ur turns

$eeR

As this situation is getting more tense, in order for the sake of stability of this community I propose the following.
 
I will gracefully accept the judge’s decision if
 
 
1. All judges (Hil, Fist, Mark) and Gilfraron (if as judge) individually review the accusations, proof and my explanation of accusations
2. Individually message me their decision and explanation of the decision
 
This will make solve all the problems and everyone can be in peace.
 
Regarding Seer's accusations I leave to Seer and other community members.
 
 
@Hil, I cannot share that publicly or unlisted because my opponent can access it, the game is still going on and I don't want my opponent to see it. I am still confident that this investigation was triggered by my opponent when I mistakenly shared publicly, whoever wants to judge send me their email I will share with them.
 
On the other note, it is my mistake for deleting the videos that dated more than month back (I have some problems with storage and recording where my FPS drops below 10 and unplayable I have mentioned this in the game and judges). It is also my mistake that I didn't check my outbox that the message didn't transmit. I agree on both these mistakes.
 

For your information, we are waiting for DarkRider to send us the video back. He tried to share it to my email but I could not open it, so I provided another one and waiting (and proposed to make it "Unlisted" which would be easier to access for all judges). When we have the video, we can make more comments.

SeeR did explain the strategy of DarkRider and him to us. As I said, the judges have not questioned this strategy. The cheating exposed and the ban of SeeR do not mean this strategy cannot work and requires cheating. So the fact that SeeR explained this strategy to me does not mean there was no cheating or that he did not know about it, this is quite unrelated. It would be very nice of everyone if you could wait until we have the video and answer some of the previous comments before making other comments that just "pour oil on the fire" for no benefit.

Olop, I would be interested if you could give me more details by PM because, unlike for AlX for which we argued during our 4vs4 so I see what he is talking about, and Gilafron with whom we discussed by PM, I don't really understand what you are implying.
I also proposed to you to discuss and explain more by PM.

I can understand that some feels uncomfortable with the decision and the process and we are ready to discuss it with them as I said before.

AIXStormrage> I've had my personal fallout with Hilliadan, due to "domineering", 

I have had similar "dominering" experiences also.


AIXStormrage> but it's personal, and it never had influenced judging process for me.

Have you been accused of cheating?  If you were accused of cheating do you think the "domineering" could possibly influence actions?  

Seer> Ouch thats pretty nasty Hiliadan , Im not aware of any cheating by Darkrider , we worked very hard on our teamwork strategy , and i did explain it to you in private when you asked me on steam chat. 

Seer> Please explain to me how you think he cheated ? 

Until there is more than Hiliadan's (and the other judges') word that
Seer MIGHT have known about the cheating, I respectfully have to take
Seer at his word.  From my personal experience, I have more reason to
trust Seer.

I am happy to see that people have an opinion here and a voice. It shows that this community means something to all of us and that we appreciate it!
I also believe that the judges are right not to show the information. I could also think that maybe, if someone is still very wary, the judges could show Gilafron as a neutral community member the evidence and Gilafrom will then confirm the judges decision to everyone. I agree that it seems like Seer indeed did not follow and do his duties, so the punishment is not without reason at all. And I dod not know enoug to say whether it is too harsh or not, I leave that evaluation to more experienced members of the community.
I very much agree with AIXStormrage all in all, beautiful text AIX!

Also I want to clarify/apologize: Saying "this mess" I didn't mean the proof or the decision. I only meant this sad subject which is a mess. Just why would you cheat? A victory cheated is way worse than an honest defeat, you'll always feel like an imposter.

I also want to use my voice to thanks not only the judges but everyone here that contributes to the community and keeps it running fair and well. Thank you!

@all putting my 5 cents in:

• Integrity
  When the tournament started, everyone had a chance to read the rules and regulas. Meaning that the collegiate of the judges was made public in the very beginning. If, for some reason, a person distrusts a judge (or more than one), why would the said person participate in such tournament? 
  I am not the most influential person on this site, but if my word means something - I believe that all 3 judges, namely Markymark, Fistandantilus and Hilliadan are honourable and honest people, and doubting their integrity is a doubt directed to all community, which is sad. I've had my personal fallout with Hilliadan, due to "domineering", but it's personal, and it never had influenced judging process for me.


• Transparency
  In the past, I've discovered the loophole, which I made publicly known. At that time Hilliadan chose to hide the details, at least until devs fixed it. Looking back, I have to admit that it was, indeed, the right decision. 
  Therefore, I am actually wondering if the same can be done here - assuming devs are preparing a fix for it, when the patch comes out - the info on how the Darkrider had cheated or how he was caught, can be shared then.
  I do believe that disclosure of the details to community should eventually be done, but only after there are steps taken to prevent such occurrence in the future.


• Evidence
  whenever the case, which requires the attention of the judges, occurs, it's up to the participants to:
  a) gather and send all relevant info to the judges
  b) make sure judges received it
  c) keep a copy of all sent info somewhere safe
  what I am saying is that the excuses like "I sent the info, didn't know you didn't receive it" or "I had deleted it by accident/because didn't had enough space" can and must be treated as a proof of guilt.


• Conspiration
  With all respect to Seer, if the Darkrider had indeed cheated and he had noticed that something fishy was going on, it was his duty to either talk it through with the Darkrider (try to dissuade of using the exploit in the future) or report to the judges.
  Unfortunately, at the moment we can only speculate on whether he may have known or no, which, given that we don't know the severity of the loophole, can be majorly judged by the aftereffects on the game process. Again the most competent to judge here would be judges as they've seen the evidence.
  Personally I would like to think that Seer didn't know of this, but as the saying goes - even good people do bad things - I can't guarantee it. But, the punishment of being banned of the future tournaments and/or ranked games seem a bit too excessive to me. 
  If possible, I would like to appeal to judges to review their initial decision and decide Seers sentence publicly by community's vote. This can be also done once the dust settles and the details of the exploit are made public.

@Hilliadan, can you PM/chat me of the details? I am interested on how these exploits can be traced. If it's impossible to tell now, I am ok to wait until the patch is made.

EDIT:
@marcuspers, I believe that you misinterpreted and Hilliadan has said that all 3 judges agreed 100% with the fact Darkrider cheated, but if someone doubts the situation, he can temporary assume the role of the 3-rd judge to review evidence. 
Either way, I am quite curious what was the opinion of the Triumph's devs.

@Jonny When someone is using principles from the 13th century, at least I must stand up and applaud that, never mind if he is right or wrong in his assumptions. But we don't have any options for up-voting here

@Hiliadan, if you say that the vote was 2v1 and a 3rd temporary judge could make a difference, I would love to review the evidence. Or Gilafron, I don't mind!

As for potential changes in rules, in Sweden we have a legal system which in the first case consist of 1 judge and 2 people from the community, so the judge can lose 2-1 in a vote. The second instance is 3 Judges and 0 (to 2) people from the community based on the case, so we could introduce a rule that when someone is being banned, 2 people from the wider community would be included to "bring the voice of the people" to the table, that could even sway a vote of 2-1 in  favour of the "accused".

And when the DarkRider case's dust will have settled, we will still have a situation where it is possible to cheat and it is possible to find out if someone has cheated except if said someone knows how to hide his tracks ? 

Very good point Imperium, and I believe in this case there is no easy answer. We would need to trust the judges to be honest or else we will have an evil circle when someone knows something, then the judges knows something that can't be proved or how to hide it, as you say. Because when judging a tournament, there is episodes when we need to investigate something, and developers cant or wont fix it, so it's better no one knows. Or in a few examples we find it out, and then tell Triumph and they correct it, but they don't have unlimited resources.

And when the DarkRider case's dust will have settled, we will still have a situation where it is possible to cheat and it is possible to find out if someone has cheated except if said someone knows how to hide his tracks ?

Let's try to not heat it up.... I'm going to sleep now but Gilafron, as I clumsily tried a first time with my first PM, I would really like to talk to you in private first, as the more we show in public, the more it helps future cheaters.
If the probity of one judge (me) is in question, we can use the procedure in the rules and ask the 2 other judges to pick a 3rd temporary one, who could for instance be Gilafron, and he could review the proofs. That could be an option.

I'll answer some other comments later, it's late now.

At some point you have to ask yourself whats more likely. If one Judge manipulates all the others, then it´s three persons, plus the two opponents from the game who made the accusations, thats five, plus the devs. So this must be a huge conspiracy against one single player, who in his defence comes up with videos he has deleted beyond any recovery and a message that weren´t send, and his teammate, who did have a benefit from it.

Correct me if i have wrong facts but according to Ockhams razor, i´ll take the most simple explanation.

Look, I'll be upfront.  I don't trust one of the judges in this situation.  In my opinion, he has been domineering and manipulative in the past to get his way.  I'm afraid that is what happened to the two other judges.  That's why I would like to see proof.  Not words, but actual facts so the rest of us can decide for ourselves.

I understand sharing a leak is controversial.  While I still think it should be shared, a sanitized correspondence with developers would go along way in addressing this situation.

I agree with Hellbrick that the most concerning decision was Seer.  I think substantial proof is needed in that area.  Seer has already quit, so the damage is done.  This information would allow me and each community member to evaluate all sides of the issue on their own.

Being a judge in 2 other tournaments, but not the 2v2 tournament, I can understand some of the questions from other players. I guess it's in the human nature to be curious and want to know all details! But I must side with the judges in this case, and I'm almost sure (they might want to confirm) that the judges have collaborated with Triumph and in that way informed the game developers of any potential loop-holes which will therefore be looked at in the next patch?

@Hellbrick, it was my team mate that cheated in a game vs Hiliadan and Rickyroo. He did so in the very last turn (where he killed Hiliadans leader and I had already taken his throne), so it wasn't possible for me to report any breach of rules before it was too late. This was also reported to the developers who was looking into closing some ports that was previously possible to abuse. Again, this was also put under a lid to avoid any temptations for other players to try.

So my only question for clarification is:
Have Triumph been able to isolate the "cheat" and confirmed they will look into how to prevent it, or even already said they will do it in next patch?

/Marcus

That reminds me of the doping investigations in sports. I am sure it`s very difficult to give a 100 % valid proof of cheating if the cheater knows what he is doing. But if there are enough facts that lead to this suspicion, it becomes more likely with every fact. That´s just statistics. But it need careful judges to watch over this facts cause there is always the danger to become obsessed by a conspiracy theory.
I personally think that i can trust our judges to be careful enough and look over every other explanation and see what´s most likely. I do not question this decision. I also don´t what to know how to do this cheating cause that´s tempting for sure 

Personally, I understand and support the judges' decision to keep the lid on the details of the cheat. The knowledge of how to do it (and even the knowledge what "it" is) may encourage more people to cheat and may discourage some people from playing if they are afraid the integrity of the game may be compromised. Neither of those things sound good to me, so I'm with Hiliadan on this one.

What does strike me as odd is SeeR's ban. I obviously don't know the details of the situation, but punishing him on account of "we believe he was very likely aware of the cheating" doesn't sound fair to me. The judgement of DarkRider is being based on proof (even if it's being kept private, I believe the judges that they have enough proof to reach a conclusion), but the judgement of SeeR seem to be based on a sheer suspicion and that doesn't sit well with me. Especially if you consider the fact that whether or not he's innocent, he's already being punished by getting out of the tournament on account of his teammate being disqualified. Also, IIRC, there was a precedent of cheating in another team game, which didn't lead to any disciplinary actions against the teammate of the cheater. So I can't help but wonder what's different this time.

I will once again ask, please provide proof.  Transparency is a valuable tool to earn trust.  This situation is no exception.  Right now, it looks like an unfair process.

As a side note, I want to know what the cheat is and what to be on the look out for.  I don't like having others judge what is best for me to know and what not to know.  I will trust your decision and process more if you provide this information.  It is better for the community to know what it is, not worse.

In short, I make a formal request for:

1.  What is the cheat
2.  What should players be on the look out for
3.  How did Darkrider execute the cheat
4.  How did Seer know about it

We are a community, place your trust in that.

Thanks for the feedback Olop, Gilafron and Zytozid.

We are three judges on this tournament: Fistandantilus, Markymark and me. If someone believes all three of us are corrupt, doubt our integrity and/or believe we are ready to ban players without proof just because we don't like them, then I don't know what to say . Maybe one judge can be like this (and of course, this is not the case even for 1 judge). But the three? We all saw the elements in this case and all agreed there was 100% chance of cheating.
Judges are indeed all powerful, and that is transparent in the rules, but that is because participants are supposed to trust the judges. Trusting the judges to take the right decisions is what underpins the tournaments. Of course it is possible judges make mistakes but that is why they are 3, so that the mistake from one is countered by the others. In some cases, like this one (see paragraph just below), the players agree to put their trust for decisions "for the greater good" to be taken by the judges. That is because in some cases, asking the opinion of other players would make matters worse.
For a decision like this, we clearly did not take it lightly and made sure to have a very high confidence to know what happened.

Olop, you ask if we shouldn't explain what cheat occurred and how to identify it. If we explained that, we would basically be explaining to everyone 1/ how to cheat and 2/ how to avoid being detected (knowing how to be identified is also knowing how to avoid being identified). I do not think that is a good idea as we surely do not want more people to try to cheat or to learn how to be harder to catch.
If you have doubts about someone cheating, please report to the judges and we will give you indications on things to monitor so that we can catch him.
If you are really concerned about this specific case for DarkRider and SeeR, we can understand that, then please contact me by PM or on the chat and we can further discuss that and I can probably convince you .

I recognize the role of SeeR in the community and he was also in my first AoW3 games (and first tournament) and SeeR and I had planned to comment together the Arena tournament (if it ever happens some day; and actually we can still comment it together if SeeR is OK) and I am really sad to have reached that ban from ranked games now. As I said in my previous message, we have not detected cheating from SeeR, however, we believe he was very likely aware of the cheating (given what we saw and what we asked him).

Then to answer some of the elements provided by SeeR and DarkRider:
- the inquiry in this case started a very long time ago and we have been collecting proofs and testing hypothesis for about a month. We have exchanged several emails with the devs. It is not a rushed judgement and this is not a "mess" that needs to be sorted out.
- we were 100% sure of cheating around Monday and sent a PM to SeeR and DarkRider on Tuesday to give them a last chance of explaining or recognizing what DarkRider did. Both were online several times until Friday and we got no answer. I also sent a message to SeeR on Steam Friday without answer. Apparently the message DarkRider sent us was not sent, well, I could not know, but that doesn't change much as we already had 100% sure proof.
- "I usually keep all videos but due to space constraint I deleted the old ones": well, that's an issue. Interestingly, you also removed the video you provided us from YouTube. At the time I write this message, we are discussing by PM to put it back with only people with the link able to see it (or with sharing to Google accounts).
- "This is really sad because just a quick decision destroys our reputation": as I pointed out, it was not a quick decision, we worked on it for a month. The PM you sent us does not explain all the elements I mentioned in my PM on Tuesday as I will show you when we have the video again.
- "Judges also don't like the fact and Seer was giving me gold" this is wrong. We do not have an opinion on that and it is fine to give gold to your team mate.
- "If you wish to witness our teamwork practice in effect in a demo vs AI EMP": this is not about the success of your strategy, we do not challenge it.

EDIT:
Also, I forgot to mention that more than a week ago, we asked both teams to send us ALL they had (logs, screenshots, videos, anything) about the whole game as we were investigating the game. gabthegab sent us the videos of all his turns (actually turns 1 to 6 but we can get the rest when we finish watching these 6 hours or so of video). We had 1 turn from Tussel, the only that was recorded. We got NOTHING from DarkRider (except the video from his crash we had on turn 3) and SeeR. So again, this is not a rushed investigation.

I hope this get's clarified. The judges definitely should sort the mess out with Seer and Darkrider. Please everyone collaborate on this, do a skype call or whatever and talk through what the judges claim you did and then explain yoursef to them. I hope this will come out as a misunderstanding and we all can just continue playing.
But if there was an exploit or something, then this defninitely needs to be sanctionized, I am sure Seer and Darkrider agree to this, as they woul also wanttothers to be sanctionized if they played unfair.
Everyone, make a common effort to clear this up and let's continue having fun games in the future!

We  (the judges) do not ban any Players when we are not sure.

Maybe  finding an answer for the most  inconsistencies but not an answer for all inconsistencies, some are just not possible!

Hilidan> The details of the cheating, etc. won't be communicated to avoid inciting other people to cheat.

I understand you don't want others cheating, but this make you 
all powerfull (you being the judges).

If you cannot provide the evidence, then you cannot ban a player.

Otherwise, you can ban anyone that happens to cross you and their
is no repercussions.

> Please note that we have ways to find cheaters,

Since you are able to identify how the cheat occurred wouldn't it be
better to explain the cheat and how to identify it?  Then everyone
could monitor for the cheat.

> so let's all play fair!

When I started playing, $eer was in several of my first games.  Many
of the games I have played since then have included $eer.  I highly
doubt he is a cheater.  I suspect the same is true for DarkRider.

As Gilafon said, If there is cheating, proof has to be provided.

If there is cheating, proof has to be provided.  Otherwise, $eer and DarkRider are being inappropriately blackballed.  As Hil previously said, he can catch it.  So please provide your proof to backup these allegations.