When everyone says they will work with you for the first move.

Confirmation of such suspicion comes after the move when you discover that they have all lied and your time in the game is limited...

Actually, a lot of players in the past have bet the whole 100 on their first game: natural gamblers maybe, impatient to climb - and knowing that it all comes back (the 100) if they get stuffed.

'Specially when two of the people's (the newer ones) account numbers are within 100 people of each other.....

If though they are playing multiple games (some even finished), beware of those who keep playing together. WIth new layers, the tendency to help a friend or two against an outsider seems to be irresistible.

What are these 'new layers' you speak of? :p

One of the first games I played was a crazy high bet and actually, I only play small games to have fun or save up for large bet games.

Re the account numbers: I'm just thinking that as I am about to start a new game I start a new account as well and join my game. Instafriend. Disposable points.

I suppose that stats on how many 1 game then quit accounts are created cross correlated with ip should reveal the cheaters.

@flashman "WIth new players, the tendency to help a friend or two against an outsider seems to be irresistible."
I agree - quite natural. While pre-game collusion is wrong this would not be necessarily self-evident to new players.

I actually got a friend to join diplomacy, and he joined a new game for a 5 point bet. But about halfway through the game (it was a live game, I told him that was the best way to learn,) someone realised that his account number and someone else's in the game were sequential.

They refused to play the game, and trashed him in global for being a multi-accounter.

He called me up and told me the game was stupid and had no idea how I could play it every day.

It's fairly easy to notice multi-accounters. As far as meta-gamers or friends, I've got friends that play, sometimes we ally, sometimes we don't, but nothing touches meta-gaming anywhere near what those league games did. Never again...

Geofram; surely the other person who had the sequential number got thrashed too?
Agreed that its easy to spot multiaccounters when they collude against reason in a game. Or one of the pair suspciously does not communicate (in order to avoid accidental information slippage). I can see though that a well orchestrated con who creates a new account to play with him each game would be hard to catch.

On the general topic of multiaccounting, I think PPSC games is what causes the problem. WTA games would eliminate the benefit, or at least make it very hard for a multi-accounter to operate. Even if he manages to use his other player to not directly help himself illogically, he would have to orchestrate the 'giving up' of the dummy player in order to allow his real player to win, something that would be very difficult to make believable.

though PPSC games are good for starter players, I think that tracking WTA games played would be a badge of honour that would be good to keep track of. I would be apt to trust any player to plays a WTA more often. As I can be sure that they are playing to win each time, and not just friends colluding to boost themselves up.

Geofram you're talking about the live game that I was in as well?

The main pusher for OMG multi accounter! Was Submariner (a crap troll)

Then the ironic coincidence of a multi accounter being banned in that game who wasn't part of your group made it so much better. ^_^

Ooh, who was the multi accounter?

Nietzche

I'm new here and would like to know what a PPSC game is.
Also why does everyone seem to hate noobs so much?

PPSC (Points Per Supply Center)

I'm not sure where you got that everybody hates noobs part.

Well you said earlier you didn't want to play a game with any noobs...
I just assumed.

Under different thread...
Sun live game

And thanks for the PPSC answer.

We dont hate noobs perse. they can be useful ;-)
Though I think its safe to say that we are wary of noobs. Because you could really be a multi-account 'puppet account' in disguise. The scam is a medium level player (not the experienced ones who have far too much honour to stoop to that level) joins a game, then signs up a new separate account (the 'noob') and joins the game too. Instant ally, patsy, help you in the game player. Done stupidly (playing the noob as an extension of his primary country) is obviously apparent, but say, if the player is a thesbian, schizophrenic, or autistic, (completely silent, rarely sends msgs) then it becomes harder to tell. Of course the only way to tell would be to track how many times a middle ranked player wins or is doggedly assisted by a new player. Freakonomics tells us that the numbers will reveal cheaters always.

The problem is false positives, for instance, I have been in games where I recruited a noob to do my bidding with the promise of protection and survival in a game where he was about to get clobbered (I delivered by the way) after it was clear I was going to win, I delayed the ending so that my henchmen could clammer up some more centers, which probably really pissed off the second place player... sorry). I was accused of multi-accounting. But I knew I was okay and dismissed the accusations because I knew that my henchmen was not going to be someone coming from the same IP, heck domain, heck timezone, so I was not too fussed about it.

It does mean, though, if you are in the habit of recruiting noob henchmen, then you should try to avoid them being siblings/housemates using the same computer, else you may be in risk of really showing up as a multi-accounter, or at the least (in the above cases) a meta-gamer which is frowned upon, though not a strictly bannable offense (I believe right?)

Recruiting stranger noobs to do your bidding is absolutely and positively a (fun) and acceptable tactic in the game, if done well.

Remember - We are in a relatively small hobby.
Each & every newcomer should be welcome with open arms..
Sure, they pull strange moves.
Sure, sometimes we are upset about them.
But in order for the hobby to grow & develop, we need to give them a fair treatment & a positive experience of the game!

well ive only just started diplomacy really. i had never heard of it and a few months ago i played a FTF game with friends and had fun. then i joined this site and have had a ball since. i find the moves to be the easy bit. once im in a strong early position i can usually turn it into a win or an easy 2nd. i just tend to be stabbed a lot. what is your advice on that?

I agree with you in principle Perry6006, but 17000+ users a small niche hobby is not. (and I joined sub 1000) Sure, we don't compare to chess or igo, but hey, its either exploded in popularity recently due to the awesomeness of this and other web based engines arbitrators, or it means that there are a lot more fake noobs than real ones.

I think we all agree that we should/do welcome the real noobs to the game. But until they can be determined to be real noobs and not fake noobs, we have to be wary. ;)

I understand. I am an avid strategy gamer. I find it next to impossible to find people to play FTF. Most people just dont understand the value of a true challenge. I am playing a few games now and currently aspire to join the ranks of the seasoned. I open my arms to anyone willing to try and wish to teach what I know. I have learned much already and look forward to many more lessons. I have been looking for years (literally) to find a full game. Now I am in a couple. Cheating (multi-accounting) at diplomacy just doesn't make any sense to me. Heck why not just play solitare with all the cards face up and pull the ones you want. Better yet just turn the cards face up and sort them in fjour numerical stacks.... Where is the fun???
I hope I continue, for some time, to have as much fun as I've had durring my brief experience so far has allowed me.

Is there a page that displays the actual rankings of active players?

@tailboarder Cheaters just get a kick out of getting a lot of points and looking like a big shot without any of the real work and experience that that rank normally ascribes. It only works in the web version of the game, for obvious reasons but also because the web version is the only one where peoples 'skill' is tracked with a quantitative number.

Where is the fun??? hmm... where is the fun in posting to a thread where the last poster wins? I wonder.

I've played FTF long before this web version. And indeed the hardest part besides getting 7 people together in one place for over 4 hours, where exotic dancers are not involved is keeping people from CDing in the game sense... otherwise, it is really difficult to finish a game of dip because people just stop caring after they are beat up sufficiently and don't see any chance of winning anymore. What sometimes keeps them in the game is if we make a collective pot of money that the winner can split and have an xbox nearby so that the non caring players can amuse themselves in the downtime.

As for cheaters, that is a problem in online chess too: some people use chess computers to quickly boost their ranking. Overall I don't think this is too much of a problem (as in not too frequent a problem) but the mere suspicion of players using unfair methods sometimes is more of a problem...

New accounters are always cheaters