Warning re PBEM Secret Treaties

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

To all PBEM players a warning that your 'Secret Treaties' may not be as secret as you think, I have just found out that when the Merge files are sent out they, "can", also carry in game text spelling out such things as 'Secret treaties'.

Eric at WCS has been advised of how it shows up via email returns of Merged files, so hopefully in the next patch that will be stopped ... in the meantime folks best just work on the assumption that nothing is really secret. [:(]

All the Best
Peter

[Marshal Villars]

Yes. I have been very careful with secret treaties not knowing for sure if they work. Right now transfer of funds in secret treaties is actually called out under the treaties tab! For instance: "Britain transfers 300 gold to Prussia under the terms of the Copenhagen III Secret Treaty"!!!!!! [:'(] Obviously needs to be fixed!

[Anthropoid]

[:D]

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

B2, Obviously needs to be fixed! As I don’t recall it ever showing in my ‘Treaties’ tab box, I knew nothing about it, however as we are now passed Copenhagen VI don’t you think it is a tad disingenuous of you not to have brought it to everybody’s attention, as you say it needs to be fixed, ie a ‘Bug’.

However that’s not the issue I was raising, that concerns open text sometimes carried in Merged files which can include details of Secret treaties etc. It may well be that this is occurring because of the damaged files Dave had probs with in our ‘No Frills’ game, dunno thats techno stuff and outside my area of knowledge, I only noticed it because, prompted by your Role-play claim on the ‘No Frills’ MB that france had been supplied details of a Secret treaty by another European power, I wondered if I hadn’t inadvertently left incriminating evidence in an email to someone who shouldn’t have been party to the deal; to cut a long story short I did a ‘Search’ in my email programme based on £300, the sum involved, and started backtracking, and what I noticed was that T30 showed details while T29 did not

Here’s a C&P of what I noticed using the ‘Search’ engine.

drconn@aol.com Turn 31
Mon 07 Sep, 2009 Inbox
... is located in W._Mediterranean. Spanish La Coruna Fleet is located in Granada. eof #~bTreaty Report for France ~2 Britain pays ^_300^_ to Prussia under the terms of Secret_Treaty_of_Copenhagen_V. ~l18 ~bThe treaty ~gTreaty_Title ~bis ratified between ~f3 Sweden ...


And here is the actual email we see.

Turn 31
Monday, 7 September, 2009 6:01 AM
From:
"drconn@aol.com" <drconn@aol.com>
View contact details
To:
tubit@comcast.net, exoskeleton@gmx.de, powtwo@btinternet.com, tomas.pajonk@mapmechanics.com, nofrills1792@hotmail.com, drconn@aol.com, screamingpalm@live.com, montesaurus@earthlink.net, akurtz9@gmail.com
Message contains attachments
nofrills_Turn031_ALL.rep (171KB), nofrills_Turn031_ALL.sve (995KB)
The strategic withdrawal question arose again, with respect to Britain and France. Once again, I selected "no". In the future, it you do want to do a strategic withdrawal when hostilities end, please let me know. I know that may require some anticipation, but that is probably the most efficient way to do it.
--Dave

Here’s what shows for T29.

drconn@aol.com Turn 29
Thu 03 Sep, 2009 Inbox
... 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 542 542 0 15 15 3 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 31 0 0 0 1 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 noname 547 0 22 ^_3000^_ 4.05 ^_3000^_ 4.05 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 55 0 55 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 542 542 0 15 ...

And here is the actual, email.

Turn 29
Thursday, 3 September, 2009 6:51 AM
From:
"drconn@aol.com" <drconn@aol.com>
View contact details
To:
tubit@comcast.net, exoskeleton@gmx.de, powtwo@btinternet.com, tomas.pajonk@mapmechanics.com, nofrills1792@hotmail.com, drconn@aol.com, screamingpalm@live.com, montesaurus@earthlink.net, akurtz9@gmail.com
Message contains attachments
nofrills_Turn029_ALL.sve (987KB), nofrills_Turn029_ALL.rep (174KB)

Now, I did those yesterday for Eric, and have just gone back in to C&P them for you folk here and notice the 1st file Dave sent for T33 also contains open text, the subsequent one we were asked to use due to a damaged file doesn’t have the open text, so it would now seem that these damaged files are what are causing the problem, Dave maybe you could forward them on to Eric at WCS so he can see what goes down, as it’s obviously something that needs to be fixed ... well, as far as I’m concerned anyhow!

All the Best
Peter

[Marshal Villars]

Wow. Nice job Kingmaker. I had no clue this went so deep.

By the way, I am confused on the following comment:

"B2, Obviously needs to be fixed! As I don’t recall it ever showing in my ‘Treaties’ tab box, I knew nothing about it, however as we are now passed Copenhagen VI don’t you think it is a tad disingenuous of you not to have brought it to everybody’s attention, as you say it needs to be fixed, ie a ‘Bug’."

I am not sure I even follow. Perhaps you mean I should have brought it to everyone's attention before play began? I simply meant I did not know if secret treaties were 100% secret, so my use of them in all PBEM games has been extremely limited. However, that doesn't mean I knew there was a problem. This was the first time I had this come up as well. And I certainly thought that you wanted to play CoG:EE vanilla with "all of its warts"--meaning I would assume with any issues which are still in it--including possible bugs. It was actually another player who called this treaty issue to my attention the turn it surfaced in the treaty tab report. The problem is that I do not know exactly what is not working as it should be. And I don't want to post a list of all the things which could be concerning me and may not even be true. My recent experiences with libel and slander law have made me somewhat of an expert on the topic, so I will do my best to be very careful in the future!

So, I am confused as to whether we are playing CoG:EE "vanilla" or if we are playing "CoG:EE vanilla with full reports from each player to other players on what could possibly be wrong with the game and where it might pop up and ways to make it all work to your advantage."

Kingmaker, believe me that on all of these things which you are concerned, I am just as concerned and am furiously taking notes to work things out. I wish I could snap a finger and have things change, but all I can do is make lists and forward them on to Eric. The more things that we find "broken" (i.e. "not realistic" or "gamey" or actual bugs), the harder I am working to make sure that they get taken care of--for instance, you may have noticed my major efforts to get to the bottom of the problem on the "quick surrender" and "enforced peace" issues in the threads in the forum. These are not just rants I am posting, but I am working on a methodical process to provide the rational human with the incentives needed to produce "historical outcomes" without depending on anyone's desire to be a "nice guy" and do things which the game creates a disincentive for just to be historical.

These are not minor issues for me. They are things which I want to work correctly in 100% of situations (or at least 99% of situations). The PBEM I am in (nofrills) is a fantastic place to play vanilla and see what isn't working. I would love to see every loophole tested and the limits broken to determine where CoG:EE needs tweaks.

But believe me, if there is an issue which I think might affect game play and I think there is a problem, I will continue to suggest "Non-Proliferation Treaty" use to combat the problem. I would say secret treaty issue could be a candidate.

And again, great detective work on the file info!!!!! [8D]

[Marshal Villars]

So, Kingmaker, are you saying that in your experience, normally a secret treaty works (i.e. keeping it secret), but in this case there was a problem which was out of the ordinary?

By the way, what other kinds of room for abuse is there for other computer savvy people?

[MorningDew]

Obviously, one wouold hope players don't "cheat" by looking at the raw save file. HOWEVER, obviously players do or we wouldn't need passwords. I'd like to see the informaton encrypted in some form in the save file to avoid the tempation.

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Right on Andrew! but at the same time the information shouldn't be available for players to get too anyhow, as you suggest encryption of .sve files.

All the Best
Peter

[Marshal Villars]

I would agree on encryption. Now we need to sell Eric on that. [:D]

[Mus]

Encryption would be good, but the main reason it was noticed was it was right there in the political or treaty report, can't recall which.