Cheating on the EU4 Leaderboards

[Ident]

Playing for scores in EU IV is silly and therefore a leaderboard is silly. More refined goals like the ones given in the achievements are more meaningful but even those can easily be cheated with steam achievment unlocking programs.

They should rather finally fix the bugs in the game that exist since long and are well known, like AI armies not being controlled by the AI until reloading the game.

 

[Dalos]

Now I can see almost 10k campaigns... Probably now showing non-ironman ones as well?

 

[Hiiri]

Would be neat if we could sort by country tag. I'd like to know if my 103 Gelre in 1495 is terribad or not (only my 4th game, going for the form Netherlands cheeve)

You can click on the country names to find all entries of it.

 

[Balgar]

Ah so you can, now I just need to find another Gelre since sorting by myself filters to just me as well.. Thanks!

 

[Balgar]

Oh, you can click the filter to remove it.

 

[grisamentum]

The answer you seek is yes
The leaderboard is still being worked on but we wanted to release it with the expansion since it's something the community has been asking for. Rest assured that the current situation is currently being looked at and we hope to have a good solution for it soon.

Unless the "good solution" is "we host the EU4 game and you log in to play it" there is no solution. I have the physical hardware on which the game is running so I have ultimate control over what is happening.

 

[AdkEric]

Leaderboard appears to no longer be working...

 

[ChildeR]

I know you need to play ironman to get on the leaderboard.
Can you play ironman without getting on the leaderboard?

Don't log into Paradox Account in the launcher. Not sure if there are other generic ways (that allow achievements).

 

[Leakweeb]

In order to protest against cheaters and help prevent cheaters you decided to cheat yourself and then post exactly how to cheat on the forums thus ensuring more people would cheat.........that sounds logical to you?

Yes. It's such an "easy" way to cheat, it shows that if they don't fix that, someone is going to do it (I wasn't the only one, nor the first. I'm just the only one who put it that high).

I actually tried to edit my score above yours but I kept hitting the Int limit. Then I tried editing Ryukyu's name to "**** you XTBoris" but Paradox uses tags, not in game names.

Not gonna lie, I'm actually impressed you got your score that high. I feel like it's something obvious I missed though.

Score seemed to be coded as 29 bit signed integer or some other non-standard format (weird, I know, but 0x1000000 shows -2^7 ingame ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), so I put it just a bit under 0x0FFFFFFF to be sure.

 

[Hiiri]

In order to protest against cheaters and help prevent cheaters you decided to cheat yourself and then post exactly how to cheat on the forums thus ensuring more people would cheat.........that sounds logical to you?

This kind of behaviour should be rewarded, since it exposes flaws and therefore can be fixed.

 

[Suzaku]

This kind of behaviour should be rewarded, since it exposes flaws and therefore can be fixed.

Actually in the past were rewarded. The biggest example is DDRJake.

 

[solidprice]

For the leaderboard, will it list the patch it was achieved on?
Because that makes a HUGE difference for scores.

 

[Tacticus101]

This kind of behaviour should be rewarded, since it exposes flaws and therefore can be fixed.

Breaking the rules should be rewarded? Damn, why hasn't anyone thought of this, all that crime we could avoid......

Actually in the past were rewarded. The biggest example is DDRJake.

They are not the same thing. DDRJake found exploits and weaknesses in the game. This is a direct and obvious cheat.

Yes. It's such an "easy" way to cheat, it shows that if they don't fix that, someone is going to do it (I wasn't the only one, nor the first. I'm just the only one who put it that high).

The old "everyone is doing it" excuse. How original.

 

[Balgar]

Probably only shows scores on the 'current' patch?

 

[Hiiri]

Breaking the rules should be rewarded? Damn, why hasn't anyone thought of this, all that crime we could avoid......

It is actually done all the time. This isn't some original idea I just came up with.

 

[Leakweeb]

Yeah, I wouldn't say what I did was anywhere near DDRJake, I was just making the point that the leaderboard is useless in the current system (and I still think it's meaningless with how score works atm, but that's more of a design decision than a flaw). And I don't think I should be rewarded, if anything I should be banned from the leaderboards. As I said, I was making a point, I know that what I did is cheating. Now that TinyWiking said that they're looking into ways of making it meaningful, I'm not gonna start again, because it'd serve no purpose apart from griefing.

 

[underlordgc]

Score seemed to be coded as 29 bit signed integer or some other non-standard format (weird, I know, but 0x1000000 shows -2^7 ingame ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), so I put it just a bit under 0x0FFFFFFF to be sure.

That is odd. I've also seem to have been banned from the leaderboards since my score isn't showing up anymore so whatever. It was fun while it lasted I guess.

Personally, I don't see how they could solve it easily without outright using an anti-cheat program for a single-player game which is kinda overkill.

 

[grisamentum]

That is odd. I've also seem to have been banned from the leaderboards since my score isn't showing up anymore so whatever. It was fun while it lasted I guess.

Personally, I don't see how they could solve it easily without outright using an anti-cheat program for a single-player game which is kinda overkill.

Not just you - the leaderboard is totally down right now (no scores). Probably because they realized they had some thinking to do before they continued with it.

Actually in the past were rewarded. The biggest example is DDRJake.

This isn't the same thing at all. Jake was a master of exploiting the in-game rules. You can argue about the intent of the developers, but the point is that he took the game as it was, and played it.

The leaderboard cheating is different because it relies on an external program to alter variables in the computer's memory. Even if you couldn't directly edit your score, you could cheat to give yourself an advantage and inflate your score. Cheating players will always be able to do this because they have physical control over the hardware.

There are games with leaderboards, but they typically rely on hosted servers and logging in to play (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a good example).

 

[Leakweeb]

Not just you - the leaderboard is totally down right now (no scores). Probably because they realized they had some thinking to do before they continued with it.

It's back up now. Until it's down again (I've seen it go up and down and up and down at least 3 times in the last dozen hours)

 

[grisamentum]

It's back up now. Until it's down again (I've seen it go up and down and up and down at least 3 times in the last dozen hours)

Weird - I JUST checked it before I posted and it was down. Now you're right, it's up. Maybe this is just a web-end problem.

Edit: and now it looks empty again?