It's a shame people are doing this.

Marchosias, did you make any agreement among the players not to alter moves that he broke?

Nothing was said. Nothing should have to be said. It shows a distinct lack of ethics to cheat. This is exactly the equivalent to stealing the paper your opponent writes his moves on, finding out what he's going to do concerning you, and then writing your moves based on that information.

I agree - I actually posted the first Rollback Cheating topic, I think.

The best thing to do would be to get everyone to agree to move back to where they were pre-rollback.

If Thingdo doesn't agree, he should be eliminated and the game should be drawn, as its results are no longer valid.

Wait a minute, did I *name* rollback cheating?
WHAT HAVE I DOOOOONE?!
<_<
>_>

You guys are entitled to your opinions... but I see it differently - especially since no agreement was made. The moves were revealed by an accident of fate... it's like a play in a sport being stopped due to a fan running onto the field... when play is resumed does the referee ask the teams to run the same play they were? No - that would be silly. In most sports what happened immediately prior to the whistle blow would be called a dead play (or something similar) and for all intents and purposes (for score keeping and the like) would never have existed. No one tries to recreate the dead play (unless they feel that that is their best strategy - despite the peek that everyone got).

Dexter Morgan, your analogy is inappropriate.

The plays were not interrupted before they were completed.

It'd be more like a fan running onto the field after the play is over, and the play being overturned.

Well Pandarsenic, to be fair in that situation would you expect both teams to slavishly hold to running the exact same play again? I don't think so.

I'm not coming down on one side or the other of the general issue, but it seems to me without an agreement by everyone, it was foolish to assume everyone would just make the same moves, you got to see all the other players moves too, so it's not like anyone had any more of an advantage than anyone else. It would agree it was dishonest if there had been an agreement and he had broken it, but failing that, it seems like he simply took advantage of the situation, a situation you were just as capable of taking advantage of.

DrOct, what if someone had, theoretically, not logged on and not seen the outcome?

I agree that rollback cheating is complete bullshit, and anyone who does it should be ashamed to play diplomacy. that said, I think it's perfectly ok to steal the paper someone is writing their orders on. Part of the fun of face-to-face games is being allowed any sneaky method you want during negotiations including, eavesdropping, false orders, threatening friends and family, and even stealing.

Pandarsenic,
Another analogy: An election is run - a number of ballots are lost and the election is close enough where those ballots could have made a difference... the election board rules that a re-vote needs to occur and a date is set for a month away. 1) are the candidates restricted to saying the same things they did for the last month of their campaign?, 2) are the voters restricted to voting for the same people they did the last go around?

I see your analogy - my response to your analogy is two-fold: 1) it sounds like your issue would be with the referee, not the other team, 2) multiple and in some cases conflicting analogies can be made that characterize important aspects of the "rollback"... i.e. people can legitimately have differing views of what is "fair" depending on their perspective and their expectations. You call my analogy "inappropriate" - this is symptomatic of the situation here... you are only seeing it your way.

When it is all said and done, the moderator is king/queen. Just like a referee in sport - we must live by their rulings... if you can get the moderator to agree with you and lay down justice on your behalf, more power to you - if the moderator stays out of it or actively sides with Thingdo, then more power to him/her.

I agree with Dexter.Morgan. There is no absolutely right answer to issue. There only way there could be if the site had rules that players must play the same moves as before the roll back AND kept records of which moves were played. Not everyone is going to remember which moves were played.
As it happened it wasn't an issue in my games. Kestas must have done a few rollbacks because the stage one of my games before was up to kept changing. At the final rollback we ended up where we were before the hacking. Before that happened I posted a message to global chat asking the other players what they wanted to do - and I would have gone alone with a majority decision.

I've got your analogy right here, Dexter.

You're playing at home with some friends, some acquaintances. The moves for a turn are revealed and resolved. Through an act of God, the board gets reset to where it was just prior to those moves being resolved. Everyone now knows who intended what moves. The only decision with morality, ethics, fairplay, etc, etc is to make the same moves as had been made before.

To do differently, to extract some unfair advantage out of the game, is absolutely pathetic.

I'm with Dexter. If the players had at least discussed what would be the appropriate way to deal with the rollback then Marchosias might have a legitimate complaint. Simply assuming that your opponent will make certain moves is rather naive - this is Diplomacy after all.

"This is exactly the equivalent to stealing the paper your opponent writes his moves on, finding out what he's going to do concerning you, and then writing your moves based on that information."

Actually, this is perfectly legal in Face to Face Diplomacy. Consider it like your runner being intercepted on the way to the front.

If there was no agreement, then anything goes. Its possible that some people didn't even sign in after the moves were initially resolved and didn't see the results of the moves anyway.

So, why would you try to do the same moves- knowing that your opponent knew them?

I think it would be fair for people to do the same moves, even though by this time most of those games should be a turn ahead. However, it must be left up to a group concensus. If there is someone in the group who does not want to play the same moves, for whatever reason, then they do not have to. In that case I would advise you to make your moves based on all the information that you have (Which should always be the case). In my game we were able to discuss resubmitting the same moves, and everyone agreed to do the same moves. The user that started this thread foolishly thought everyone in his game subscribed to his version of fair.

If this event should occur again, I would say make sure you discuss it. Especially if you just put in a very good move. There's no reason you cant be diplomatic in discussing a replay.

as it stands, heres what SHOULD be done: in the event of a rollback (which had better not happen often but apparently has happened before) players should redo their moves according to their previous play.
but since people arent going to do that, a way to eliminate that is for everyone to replay the round as if it was occurring for the first time. unfortunately it kills some element of suprise but this way one person doesnt get screwed out of the deal because they replayed appropriately and another did not.

this happened to our game in the beginning. the french player opened with a gambit into munich but after the rollback, the german player simply blocked the attack while everyone else moved as they did before.

Honestly, if you didn't even attempt to discuss it with the rest of the board, then I really don't see why you would have just assumed that everyone would just enter the same moves, especially as without any sort of discussion, I would imagine most diplomacy players would be suspicious of each other enough to assume that everyone was planning to take advantage of the situation.

I'm sorry but given how devious diplomacy is and how the rules essentially allow a sort of "anything goes" attitude toward all but the actual game mechanics, without some sort of agreement among the players to play another way I just don't see how you expected a different result.

As a victim of "roll-back cheating" I can say that I don't see anything particularly wrong with it...maybe if there was a discussion and it was publicly decided to perform the same moves then it is bad, but if this happens it should be that much easier to get people to team up against the offender. The people with most to lose from roll-back cheating are people who performed stabs the previous turn...so they're not exactly speaking from the moral high ground and asking people to replay moves that they know will damage themselves is asking too much.

Tru Ninja, that's what worried me about replaying moves - the idea that some players might replay the same moves and some might not. That is a worse situation than everyone dealing with it as if it was fresh situation (albeit unusual).