Bonopart 2 PBEM - Page 17

conmcb25 · January 8, 2003, 14:11

We need both! And what is the story you dropped out of this one before. And it hasn't gotten that much better.

FiGu · January 8, 2003, 14:13

I can take the Country that is left..

yop73 · January 8, 2003, 14:29

What do you mean, con?
I quit because I don't like at all to play Britain (or Prussia) , but I do like the other countries. (just because

)
So I wouldn't drop out a second time.

conmcb25 · January 8, 2003, 15:30

Just wondering Yop.

And FiGu think twice Austria is already defeated.

Darius do we REALLY need a human for Austria, I would hate to do that to someone......

conmcb25 · January 8, 2003, 22:47

OK Austria goes to the AI unless Yop wants to play both.

I warned FiGu off today on ICQ.

It really isn't fair to him.

If anyone continues to have a problem with that then Figu can take over Russia. My patience is at an end with the delays in this PBEM.

Choke · January 9, 2003, 01:08

Yeah, if this game isn't moving within 36 hours I'm abandoning it.

gonzo_for_civ · January 9, 2003, 23:57

To quote Major Payne:

Why do I feel like a jackass?

Sorry guys, I wasn't really thinking and guess I kind of thought that marriage wouldn't get in the way of the PBEM

Anyways, playing now, but I must say it was rather weird, because someone forgot ctrl-k r ctrl-n or whatever it is and a lot of units started moving. In fact, I would've finished early but I thought that I started playing as the wrong person

Sorry about the delay

gonzo_for_civ · January 9, 2003, 23:59

ANd another sorry and another couple

s to go along with it.

Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry Sorry

conmcb25 · January 10, 2003, 00:10

Gonzo what the heck did you have to ruin your life by getting married for? Should have asked me about my 13 year sentence in the bondage of marriage. Kind of wish I would have gotten the electric chair instead.

Well play on quick the peanut gallery is getting restless!

gonzo_for_civ · January 10, 2003, 00:12

Nothing much happened, just counterattacking, building defensive units, and fortifying against the onslaught.

Spain revolted against napoleon(automated scenario action) and some country sent money to napoleon opposition(forgot which one

)

Case · January 12, 2003, 00:07

I'm sorry to tell you guys this, but it appears that Galvatron has been cheating. I contacted him asking for an explination yesterday, but despite reading my PMs (according to the 'poly PM tracker) he's chosen not to respond.

From what I can make out, it appears that he's been fiddling with his production and artifically keeping city's out of disorder.

The following pictures clearly illustrate what's been going on.

Picture 1: At the start of the July turn, the city of Seville (and about a half dozen others) is in disorder.

Case · January 12, 2003, 00:11

Picture 2: At the end of the turn which Galvatron posted, Seville and the other half dozen cities are now out of disorder despite unhappy citizens still outnumbering happy ones. In addition, Seville has completed and moved a bomb ketch during the turn (something which is impossible for any city).

Darius871 · January 12, 2003, 00:44

Now that the cat's out of the bag, I guess it's time to mention our suspicion that Galvatron is a DL of Imperial-Markus. For those of you who don’t know, Imperial-Markus was caught cheating back in July and returned to CFC under the DL ‘The Overlord’, with which he cheated again and ruined several more games (for more details check the database). We had always feared that he would come back to Apolyton sometime, but it turns out he likely already has been here for nearly six months.

Last week, conmcb25 was discussing a game he was in with Galvatron, and in passing he asked who he was. Galvatron said his name was 'Markus' and he was in Bavaria (Imperial-Markus/The Overlord was Austrian, close enough

). Since then we’ve looked into it further, and here's all the evidence we've gathered:

Profile Similarities

Imperial Markus’ birthday: May 19, 1982
Galvatron’s birthday: May 19, 1982

Imperial Markus’ interests: Civing, Girls, Disco (Trance, Dance)
The Overlord’s interests: Girls, Civ 2, Trance, House, Star Wars
Galvatron’s interests: Living on a wave of Trance and Techno

Imperial Markus’ name: ??????? ???????
Galvatron’s name: ???? ????

The Overlord registered at CFC on August 13, 2002.
Galvatron registered at Apolyton on August 18, 2002.

The Overlord’s very first post was entering a Bonoparte II PBEM in early August.
Galvatron’s very first post was entering a Bonoparte II PBEM in early August.

Circumstantial Evidence

Now this next piece of evidence is a little shaky, I'll admit it, but it’s worth mentioning. When we first discussed this matter on AIM, Steve gave me the impression that Galvatron and the Overlord had the same ICQ account. Since then he told me that actually he only had the Overlord's number, not Galvatron's. However I tried something out of curiosity after I noticed when looking at my Apolyton buddy list that Galvatron was online. Just to see what would happen, I added the Overlord's number (147214761) to my contact list, the request to user 147214761 to allow this was sent, and the request was accepted within 30 seconds! I put two and two together and thought that perhaps Galvatron accepted it since he was online at the time. I'll still admit this one is shaky on its own, but when considered along with everything else it’s worth mentioning.

An interesting note: After a google search I discovered that ‘Galvatron’ is a Transformer who was basically a spawn of the dead Transformer ‘Megatron’ (link). If you’ve ever seen the movie Goldeneye, you’ll remember that the villain in it, Alec Trevelyan, who was known only by his alias ‘Janus’. Now ‘Janus’ was a mythological creature who died and rose from the dead in another form, just like Alec, who was believed to be dead. The same principle applies here; ‘Galvatron’ is a very clever name for a DL.

Yesterday, Case sent a PM to Galvatron asking him to explain the ‘irregularities’ in the Bonoparte savegames. Galvatron was online for most of the day, and he didn’t respond. In fact he even posted on a thread as if nothing had happened, long after the PM was marked as ‘read’ in Case’s message tracking. Then, Case asked in this post that Galvatron respond to his PM’s. He’s been online several times since that post, and still hasn’t responded. That's fine in and of itself, but what’s interesting is that the Overlord did exactly the same thing when he was caught cheating.

The cheating apparently committed by Galvatron is the same kind as that which was committed by the Overlord.

More importantly (you’re not going to believe this), less than 15 minutes after Case’s post on the thread, Galvatron began to edit the DL tells out of his profile!

First he changed his name from “????, ????” to “First Name, Last Name”. I refreshed the page a few minutes later and saw that he had edited out his birthday as well. If he wasn’t a DL, it’d have to be one helluva coincidence for him to edit these out of his profile at that exact time. Fortunately we took screenshots of his profiles expecting him to do exactly that.

Also here are the original profiles if anyone wants to take a look:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/Galvatron.zip

The Smoking Gun

The biggest smoking gun we have is that Galvatron’s email address is identical to that of the Overlord. When the Overlord was caught cheating, Steve asked him for his email so that they could talk via email about the matter, and it was MarkusKG@gmx.at. Now Galvatron as you may or may not know was translating Yaroslav's diplomacy utility, and Steve was running beta tests of it. To facilitate discussion between people helping the project, Yaroslav sent an email to all people involved with every other helper's email. Lo and behold, Steve noticed that Galvatron's email on the list was MarkusKG@gmx.at!

Really this evidence should be enough already.

Not only are the emails obviously identical, but it's also worth noting that www.gmx.at is an Austrian site.

Unfortunately, when Ming ran an IP check, however, it came up negative:

Quote:

Ming wrote on 08-01-2003 13:44:

You seem to have better evidence then I do. Ran an IP check on both... and then did standard DL checking.

Nada. Not even close IP addresses... and checking on all the other IPs that he has used over his stay here, none match those used by I-M or are even close. Email addresses way different... and different servers.

Obviously this doesn't mean he isn't I-M... but I can't prove that it is. The stuff you have is pretty interesting though

Sorry... wish I could have been of more help.

As he said this doesn’t prove either way.

Well, this is what we have, if anyone has any questions they can PM me or conmcb25. If this is proof enough and/or Galvatron confesses, I would suggest a permanent banning of Galvatron as is done to all DL accounts, but the mods can decide what to do about this.

conmcb25 · January 12, 2003, 10:05

Sounds like this PBEM is pretty dead.

Darius871 · January 12, 2003, 10:18

Why does it have to be? It's just Spain that's been messed with...

conmcb25 · January 12, 2003, 12:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Darius871
Why does it have to be? It's just Spain that's been messed with...

OK then how do we fix it? And I just kind of figured this was the last straw in a PBEM that has been doomed from the start, or at least it seems to be in MHO.

Darius871 · January 12, 2003, 18:39

I wouldn't expect a seabee to be that defeatist.

The impossible just takes a little bit longer!

Choke · January 12, 2003, 20:14

Well I'm done with this game.

Darius871 · January 12, 2003, 20:35

That doesn't have anything to do with my saying I'd attack you, does it?

Case · January 12, 2003, 20:50

IMO, this game can be saved if you want to. While Spain's cheating was on a larger scale then I first thought that it was, if the new Spanish player was to disband about a third of their military then the effects of the cheating would be undone (though Spain would be a total basket case thanks to Galvatrons economic missmanagement!)

conmcb25 · January 13, 2003, 10:40

Quote:

Originally posted by Darius871
I wouldn't expect a seabee to be that defeatist.

The impossible just takes a little bit longer!

Go for it pal when you find two replacements, Ill play my turn. Until then this is on hold.

My only point here is this PBEM has had a dark cloud over it since the beginning. Lack of PBEM'ers playing, one restart, two cheating incidents. And we have what close to 70 turns to go in a 75 turn game. Just seems like a totally fresh start is in order. But if you REALLY want to continue, I will but only when we find two replacements.

Choke · January 13, 2003, 12:16

No Darius, I was going to stop playing in this disaster (let's be honest, calling it a game is insulting to actual games) and when you said you were going to attack...that was just the final nail in the coffin, the game was dead to me already.

Darius871 · January 13, 2003, 14:45

Fine, fine.

conmcb25 · January 22, 2003, 16:20

So is this PBEM officially dead?

Darius871 · January 22, 2003, 17:37

Yeah, and thanks for opening old wounds Steve.

conmcb25 · January 22, 2003, 17:42

Geez, Im sorry, I didn't know you had such an emotional attachment.

Maybe that other Boney game wil get going.