This is what you call taking one on the chin.

well done.

To be fair you've got more chance of being punished nowadays for reporting cheaters than being one, you'll be fine now you've begged for forgiveness, I think the new ruling junta will love this .....

"Although, we commonly formed alliances, it is because we knew the other person to be a reliable ally...." and he admits meat-gaming...

Ban the fool!

And that while we all agree that meat-gaming is *completely* uncalled for!

"and he admits meat-gaming..."

But that's the best kind of gaming!

Who is your brother then? Have you mentioned it in previous games? Otherwise, in my book it accounts as metagaming.

Subutai is his brother. If I understood correctly.

Krellin please don't make cheating accusations on the forum, even on a thread started by somebody admitting he was meta-gaming, you know you will be punished

If this thread had been *started* by krellin admitting his meta-gaming, then the *red-x* would already be through my name, or there would be 1,000 posts already calling for my banning.

Let's get on with it!

I think begging for mercy on the forum gets you immunity from prosecution, especially if you're popular

This is bullshit.

If the moderators plan on enforcing rules, said rules should be clearly stated.

RE: "Who is your brother then? Have you mentioned it in previous games? Otherwise, in my book it accounts as metagaming. "

There is no rule on this website to disclose who you know in real life. This is plain and clear and simple.


RE: "In this game we formed a 17-17 draw. This is probably a legit claim. I was going to take the win but when the Carthage stopped entering orders I felt it was unfair to take the win and I didn’t want Carthage to get credit for a survive. I felt it was fair to form the 17-17 draw."

Forming an alliance with the intention of getting a 2way draw is also in no way shape or form against the rules. Neither is drawing the game when a third party CDs.

CONCLUSION:
You have no need to apologize for anything. The moderators should be apologizing to you and also compensating you with extra points for the fact they have been douchebag assholes to you.


ASIDE:
When goldfinger was appointed a moderator I PMed him to congratulate and thank him. The response I received from him focused mainly on how if I PM him moderator business it will be ignored. At this point, I realized he had been a mod for only a few hours but it had already caused a severe and negative effect on his online perosnality. A real pity because I liked him lots until that point, wherein I lost much respect for him .

Animal Farm all over again.....

"When goldfinger was appointed a moderator I PMed him to congratulate and thank him. The response I received from him focused mainly on how if I PM him moderator business it will be ignored. At this point, I realized he had been a mod for only a few hours but it had already caused a severe and negative effect on his online perosnality. A real pity because I liked him lots until that point, wherein I lost much respect for him ."

This is a downright lie.

""When goldfinger was appointed a moderator I PMed him to congratulate and thank him. The response I received from him focused mainly on how if I PM him moderator business it will be ignored. At this point, I realized he had been a mod for only a few hours but it had already caused a severe and negative effect on his online perosnality. A real pity because I liked him lots until that point, wherein I lost much respect for him ."

This is a downright lie."

I'd be very curious what happened here...

That is correct redhouse1938, Krellin is also correct, that is the definition of metagaming. Allying with someone for any reason outside the game, especially trusting them because you know them in real life, is considered meta gaming and is not fair to everyone else in the game.

While you and Subutai may not have intended for your alliances to be unfair, the point remains that in 15 games 1 of your stabs led to a defeat and you ended up with 3 wins and 7 draws with 1 defeat with Subutai taking another win and multiple draws with 1 defeat. You two allied together at some point in nearly every game and the press between you and Subutai was much more friendly and open then with any other country consistently through every game. You may not have realized this at the time, but it was not fair for the other players in the game.

The moderator team does not casually come to decisions, this was reviewed by every active moderator.

@Nigee, this thread is part of the resolution of this investigation. Krellin was not making an accusation, he was pointing out something that has already been decided upon.

@Lando, this is why decisions are not left members of the forum who do not have access to the tools to see what actually happened in the games and the connections between the accounts.

As for the goldfinger comment, let me see if I understand that logic: you have respect for someone, they decide to devote their time to up-keeping a site you enjoy playing on, they ask you to follow protocol when you ask for assistance with tournaments (which Zultar, Yebellz, and I advised him to do) so you lose respect for them?

jmo ..... I was joking *sense of humour by-pass*

Lando has a pathological hatred for anyone who has Mod Status. It appears to be so bad it actually prevents him from correctly interpreting reality.

The defense would like to call... Lando Calrissian to the stand.

Please take a seat.

This Redhouse is a funny lad :-)

Lando, frankly I don't know what I did to lose your respect. I really valued the compliment you gave me and how high your opinion was of me.

For the record, my response to his congratulations (and tourney help) PM was:

"Thanks for the compliment :) Please still go through the mod email account though with your requests. I'll handle them as quickly as possible."

If this was too terse or came off as snobbish then I apologize, for it was unintended

I will put out there simply that I appreciate the job that the mods do. The reality is that you commit time and effort into managing the site. Like most policing/oversight, you could make the right/best decision 99 out of 100 times, but you'll only catch hell for the 1 instance that comes into question.

1) Again, rules need to be more clearly defined: It appears to be accepted that if I go into a game with a player, I look through all his games and I make a judgment about how "stabby" he is, that this is OK. However, if I use information that I have obtained from outside the website, this is not allowed? Then, let me ask, how can you make a decision on which of these the player did without being in his head?

1b) A different example: I know Frank in real life. We sometimes talk about diplomacy in real life - for instance, we discussed the English move on NTH-SKA in 1901. Now, if I am in a game with him and I am Germany, is it against the rules of me to "guess" at this move and go to SKA in 01 or do I have to block this out of my mind?

2) RE: goldfinger - yes. The biggest problem with the moderators on this site is that they do not show respect to the players they are dealing with - cheater, snitch or otherwise. Furthermore, the fact that other moderators know about my private conversations with another player is somewhat distubring. Can you guys explain this? Why is it your business what goldfinger and I talk about - I was not messaging him with mod business at all, and for him to respond in the traditional "douchebag moderator" tone did cause me to lose respect, yes. And no, his willingness to help out the site does not cause me to lose respect.

You publicly accused a new mod of having a serious character flaw. I take such accusations seriously and, thankfully, found it to be a completely unwarranted accusation.

The stats on the game results are damning enough. 3 of 7 wins from allying with his brother...I don't see your problem with it Lando, he clearly cheated.

I'll let one of the more senior mods answer 1, but I don't quite know how I was disrespecting you Lando. I was being walked through the mod tools at the time so I asked jmo and zultar if I could do it via PM. They said it was best to do it through the email for documentation purposes, and that if we let one player conduct a tournament via PM, then that could open the floodgates to having our PM's spammed with messages from other players. I just wanted to keep my message board clean :(

So yeah, they didn't snoop on our conversation, I asked them. Again, I apologize if my tone was too "douchebaggy", especially considering that's the tone I write my in-game messages in haha.

I want to echo Lando re: the metagaming rule. While I understand the nature of metagaming is rather subjective, and thus that ironing out a specific objective criterion for determining whether metagaming has/hasn't occurred is difficult to do, I do think the rule as it exists at present is too vague. For instance, it would be helpful to codify the commonly-used standard requiring people to disclose knowledge of other players from outside the game. I don't think the rule should be done away with altogether, for obvious reasons, but it is genuinely hard to know whether or not you're violating that rule.

2. No Meta-gaming

You can't make alliances for reasons outside a game, such as because you are friends, relatives or in return for a favour in another game. This is known as metagaming and is against the rules because it gives an unfair advantage to those involved. If you are worried that you can't stab someone because you want to stay friends, then that's fair enough but you can't join a game with them.

Explain to me what part of that is unclear. Do not play with real life friends if you cannot play fairly with them. End of discussion.

As for you and Frank ,if you are discussing gunboat games and making alliances because you are friends and not because of reasons in the game then yes, you are metagaming and should not play with him. You seem like a logical person, if something doesn't seem fair to you, then avoid it.

As for goldfingers message, believe it or not, we moderators get along pretty well, and we actually discuss things not related to moderating. It came up in a discussion that you were the first person to ask for something moderator related. Everything is tracked on the email, that way all the moderators can oversee each other and make sure no one is acting rashly. This is especially true with new moderators, so of course goldfinger was asked to tell you to go through proper channels.

Admins can see pm's, that means abge and yebellz. This is Kestas's site and he decided that was a tool he was giving to admins to better do their job, do you honestly think google and facebook do not have administrators capable of checking private messages and chat conversations? If so you are deluded, every site does, and it's for the members protection so complaints of harassing or threats can be addressed. It's also used by admins and ex admins to check and make sure moderators aren't acting inappropriately in private chat.

One of these days I would really appreciate it if you would have a civil conversation with us about why you so strongly dislike the moderator team instead of just throwing random accusations at us in random threads.