I have recently encountered two situations that both concern how to avoid bad events and where I would like to share my views with you.
1. TO LET THE GAME GO ON
First we have a comparatively minor thing. One of the real veterans of EU MP recently wrote that towards the end of a session he got a bad event. He then decided to let the game roll on with him doing nothing (it was not much playing time left of the session). The event blocks him from the computer, except for clicking away messages, and thus he cannot do anything until the session ends (or he decides to change his mind and do click the event away). Our vet simply calculated he would gain more money from doing nothing than from first accepting the bad event and then doing some smart things, e.g. sending out merchants. Well do you find this behaviour acceptable?
My own is view that this behaviour does not harm any other player in a direct meaning. On the contrary, directly it only benefits them as you cannot compete with them on the markets available, such as the trading market or the colonising market. Indirectly it does of course harm the other players since the competitive strength of the nation doing this reasonably will increase but this is IMO of much less importance. Neither can it be checked by the GM. All of this means that in my eyes it is perfectly acceptable and in fact, I do it myself now and then.
2. TO VOLUNTARILY CTD
When I was about to sub in another game I got some instructions where the perm informed me that I would get a bad event some time into the game and that some other people had “told” him to make a false CTD and stay away from the game a year or so because the event could only fire a certain year – if the nation in question was crashed during all this year then the event would never fire. He himself considered it as very gamey and said that he would not do it but he left it open for me to do how I wanted.
Well, this behaviour is not easy to check for a GM. So far it is similar to the previous one. But it does have a direct influence on the fellow gamers. A rehost is necessary. And indirectly it is of course beneficial for the player.
But it can of course not be allowed. Because had it been allowed we would have rehosts every 10 minutes and it is obvious for anyone with an intelligence above that of a chimpanzee that we do not want this. I need no specific rule to understand that this is an unwritten rule. I do not even need to enter the moral dimension and ask if it is so bad from a moral point of view that it is forbidden (which of course it is). It is enough to conclude that if everyone did it then the joy of gaming would disappear because of all the rehosts and thus it is forbidden just because of this.
For me breaking a rule while knowing you break it, is the definition of cheating. This means these evil CTDers are in my eyes cheaters.
I asked the perm who these people were, they who recommended him to CTD, but he withheld their names. I am still puzzled as to why the perm left this open to me, why he even mentioned the possibility.
GAMEY PLAY
BTW, I always play “gamey”, i.e. I play this game as a game, not as a kind of nice evening socialisation, and games you play to win. But I always try to follow the rules, even when they are stupid and for example say “gamey things are not allowed”. But that kind of generalised rule is almost extinct now.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
So what can we do to stop voluntary CTDs?
1. Well historical events, in contrast to random events (like political crisis etc) often occur on a fix point in history or during some narrow interval of years. I believe that our GMs should to a greater extent than before start checking the correlation between CTDs and dates for bad events. The first thing we should do is to compile a register of bad events and sticky on the MP page.
2. In the save there is a list of events that have fired. If someone does either of the things mentioned above, does the list get updated? If not that is a way to check whether someone avoided a bad event or not.
3. Then we can dream about getting some feature in EU III MP that more automatically checks this. We could make a post about it in the EUII thread.
Coming to think of it. Perhaps we could put together a list of methods to stop all kinds of cheats and then let FAL post it as a request in the EU III thread. He is not only our beloved moderator but as well a beta tester of EU III.
1. TO LET THE GAME GO ON
First we have a comparatively minor thing. One of the real veterans of EU MP recently wrote that towards the end of a session he got a bad event. He then decided to let the game roll on with him doing nothing (it was not much playing time left of the session). The event blocks him from the computer, except for clicking away messages, and thus he cannot do anything until the session ends (or he decides to change his mind and do click the event away). Our vet simply calculated he would gain more money from doing nothing than from first accepting the bad event and then doing some smart things, e.g. sending out merchants. Well do you find this behaviour acceptable?
My own is view that this behaviour does not harm any other player in a direct meaning. On the contrary, directly it only benefits them as you cannot compete with them on the markets available, such as the trading market or the colonising market. Indirectly it does of course harm the other players since the competitive strength of the nation doing this reasonably will increase but this is IMO of much less importance. Neither can it be checked by the GM. All of this means that in my eyes it is perfectly acceptable and in fact, I do it myself now and then.
2. TO VOLUNTARILY CTD
When I was about to sub in another game I got some instructions where the perm informed me that I would get a bad event some time into the game and that some other people had “told” him to make a false CTD and stay away from the game a year or so because the event could only fire a certain year – if the nation in question was crashed during all this year then the event would never fire. He himself considered it as very gamey and said that he would not do it but he left it open for me to do how I wanted.
Well, this behaviour is not easy to check for a GM. So far it is similar to the previous one. But it does have a direct influence on the fellow gamers. A rehost is necessary. And indirectly it is of course beneficial for the player.
But it can of course not be allowed. Because had it been allowed we would have rehosts every 10 minutes and it is obvious for anyone with an intelligence above that of a chimpanzee that we do not want this. I need no specific rule to understand that this is an unwritten rule. I do not even need to enter the moral dimension and ask if it is so bad from a moral point of view that it is forbidden (which of course it is). It is enough to conclude that if everyone did it then the joy of gaming would disappear because of all the rehosts and thus it is forbidden just because of this.
For me breaking a rule while knowing you break it, is the definition of cheating. This means these evil CTDers are in my eyes cheaters.
I asked the perm who these people were, they who recommended him to CTD, but he withheld their names. I am still puzzled as to why the perm left this open to me, why he even mentioned the possibility.
GAMEY PLAY
BTW, I always play “gamey”, i.e. I play this game as a game, not as a kind of nice evening socialisation, and games you play to win. But I always try to follow the rules, even when they are stupid and for example say “gamey things are not allowed”. But that kind of generalised rule is almost extinct now.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
So what can we do to stop voluntary CTDs?
1. Well historical events, in contrast to random events (like political crisis etc) often occur on a fix point in history or during some narrow interval of years. I believe that our GMs should to a greater extent than before start checking the correlation between CTDs and dates for bad events. The first thing we should do is to compile a register of bad events and sticky on the MP page.
2. In the save there is a list of events that have fired. If someone does either of the things mentioned above, does the list get updated? If not that is a way to check whether someone avoided a bad event or not.
3. Then we can dream about getting some feature in EU III MP that more automatically checks this. We could make a post about it in the EUII thread.
Coming to think of it. Perhaps we could put together a list of methods to stop all kinds of cheats and then let FAL post it as a request in the EU III thread. He is not only our beloved moderator but as well a beta tester of EU III.
I do. In fact I did so in a game I subbed a couple of weeks ago. Well, actually twice that game. One was a national event which I waited for till the start of the new year to avoid loans and the other one was 6 months prior to the end of a session. The event was unhappiness of the peasantry 
