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sojourner
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From what I can tell, some sort of a shared script is being used here. I do not believe that all of these nations are multis at this time.

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Guest Zephyr

I just took a look myself, it appears Borg has violated the multi rules by trading with one of their alternate accounts on their network.

Unique ID Search results at time of my posting:

uc68iQh.png

Offending trade:

cdVsZMI.png

I can't be bothered going through the banking records and war histories to root out other violations, but I suspect it'll be easier for Alex to comb over the records on his end.

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Its banking / alliance management tools which I freely offer people in this game through locutus. These actions are triggered by respective gov members of those alliances using commands on discord. 

I'm confident network logs can corroborate that other ingame actions were not done on the same network.

That trade is from before that account was using said tools (and thus on the same network) - so is irrelevant. Nations flagged on the same network are prevented from trading.

@Alex would verifying be necessary to clear this up?

Edited by Borg
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Guest Zephyr
50 minutes ago, Borg said:

its banking / alliance management tools which I freely offer people in this game through locutus. I'm sure network logs can corroborate that other ingame actions were not done on the same network.

That trade is from before that account was using said tools. Which should be obvious given that nations on the same network are prevented from trading.

@Alex would verifying be necessary to clear this up?

The multi rules are in place for admin and player confidence in the fairness of game play, that a player is not using multiple nations to achieve an unfair advantage. The conditions surrounding your account breach that confidence and the game rules which are a written expression of how that confidence is guarded by moderation action.

Based on what you've just said your account activity violates the game rules again...

Quote

Multiple Nations on the Same Network

Each player is allowed to have one account and nation. Having multiple nations is a bannable violation.

There is no limit on the number of nations that can play per network, so long as each nation is owned and controlled by a separate individual.

As I understand your post you are explaining that they all appear on the same network because you control multiple accounts, but this is itself also a rule violation.

So there are two verifiable violations that I can identify; one a direct interaction between multis, and the other your own confirmation here that you in fact control multiple accounts.

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Guest Zephyr
9 hours ago, Alex said:

That is correct - such trades would have been automatically restricted once you had shared an IP, and you came to the same conclusion that I did which is that the trade occurred before the IP conflict.

If you'd like to be exempt from the trade restrictions, you would all need to be Verified (or at least the parties that want to be exempt from the automatic restrictions against each other.)

 Okay, but there are 857 bank transactions orchestrated between members currently sharing the same network and according to the game rules...

Quote

Using Alliance Banks to evade trade restrictions imposed on nations on the same network is a bannable offense.

I have compiled a list of the transactions here. Three this month, 129 in April, 53 in March, 34 in January, and the remaining 638 last year.

I don't know how long they've been sharing a network, but these shared transactions seem to violate the game rules given the current facts. Through these shared transactions they have transferred to each other:

  • $8,949,455,649.94
  • 17,741,506.62 food
  • 268,832.56 coal
  • 241,790.32 oil
  • 56,952.37 uranium
  • 118,413.14 lead
  • 180,304.60 iron
  • 378,890.97 bauxite
  • 350,038.53 gasoline
  • 1,036,658.77 munitions
  • 466,668.30 steel
  • 639,934.19 aluminium

That's a lot of resources for nations on a shared network with shared control.

9 hours ago, Alex said:

Using a script/tool like this for alliance management has been allowed in the past (e.g. Black Knights) and I do not think this is indicative of you having control over multiple accounts / violating the multiple nations rules.

If they are performing actions on the account, then they are demonstrably in control of it (hence a login system to regulate who controls which accounts). I think what you really mean is you're making an exception in this case. I personally think setting a precedent for shared control of accounts is not fair to players that don't share account access, the former having the advantage of the shared activity times of the team controlling the account (and in P&W timeliness can be quite important). It also seems to be a relaxation of restrictions on multis as long as they are willing to step forward and say the magic words, "We have a fancy management system".

Furthermore, I have many questions regarding management tools/scripts/bots. What actions are they allowed to perform, who can initiate those actions, what limitations exist, who is responsible for those actions (rule violations, delete a nation), how they are monitored to ensure abuse does not occur, etc.? The only thing that seems to be mentioned in the game rules is:

Quote

Automated Trading

The use of any script, bot, macro, or other form of automated trading is strictly prohibited in Politics & War. These programs give players who use them an unfair advantage over normal players, and use of them is punishable by banishment.

But surely automated trading is not the only limitation? I think a post needs to be made addressing the specifics regarding their use, to clear up my own confusions and have it out in the open for us to all properly understand and even an opportunity to address questions of fairness.

Edited by Zephyr
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16 hours ago, Alex said:

 

Using a script/tool like this for alliance management has been allowed in the past (e.g. Black Knights) and I do not think this is indicative of you having control over multiple accounts / violating the multiple nations rules.

Yes 1 alliance vs 7 just showed on that screenshot and I don't believe any thing Black Knights does results in people showing on the same network. See below of proof of having 0 other people on Yoso's network

image.png.34cc3cabfd102651509640bc737313f1.png

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11 hours ago, Zephyr said:

 Okay, but there are 857 bank transactions orchestrated between members currently sharing the same network and according to the game rules...

I have compiled a list of the transactions here. Three this month, 129 in April, 53 in March, 34 in January, and the remaining 638 last year.

I don't know how long they've been sharing a network, but these shared transactions seem to violate the game rules given the current facts. Through these shared transactions they have transferred to each other:

  • $8,949,455,649.94
  • 17,741,506.62 food
  • 268,832.56 coal
  • 241,790.32 oil
  • 56,952.37 uranium
  • 118,413.14 lead
  • 180,304.60 iron
  • 378,890.97 bauxite
  • 350,038.53 gasoline
  • 1,036,658.77 munitions
  • 466,668.30 steel
  • 639,934.19 aluminium

That's a lot of resources for nations on a shared network with shared control.

If they are performing actions on the account, then they are demonstrably in control of it (hence a login system to regulate who controls which accounts). I think what you really mean is you're making an exception in this case. I personally think setting a precedent for shared control of accounts is not fair to players that don't share account access, the former having the advantage of the shared activity times of the team controlling the account (and in P&W timeliness can be quite important). It also seems to be a relaxation of restrictions on multis as long as they are willing to step forward and say the magic words, "We have a fancy management system".

Furthermore, I have many questions regarding management tools/scripts/bots. What actions are they allowed to perform, who can initiate those actions, what limitations exist, who is responsible for those actions (rule violations, delete a nation), how they are monitored to ensure abuse does not occur, etc.? The only thing that seems to be mentioned in the game rules is:

But surely automated trading is not the only limitation? I think a post needs to be made addressing the specifics regarding their use, to clear up my own confusions and have it out in the open for us to all properly understand and even an opportunity to address questions of fairness.

To be clear, this is a report thread, and not a no-discussion forum.

You are automatically prevented from using alliance banks to send funds to anyone you have shared a network with. As you said, only 3 transactions happened this month, and I imagine they were not between nations that had shared an IP or between the nations in this group that are Verified of which there are a few. I think your own data here seems to be showing that the automatic restrictions are working and preventing any rule-breaking conflicts from occurring.

To again be clear, the IP and user agent in question here is clearly a script. This is not as if one person is logging into all of these nations. Yes, there is a bit of a gray area surrounding the use of these management type bots/scripts, but generally I have allowed them so long as they just make things more convenient without actually automating any activity. E.g. creating a Discord bot that lets you type !withdraw 100 steel {nation id} instead of going to the page and doing the withdrawal through your web browser is fine, whereas a bot/script that determines on its own when and who to send money/resources to would not be allowed.

I do agree the rules are not as clear as they could be, and we should have a new set of rules by next week that will better address this.

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Guest Zephyr
7 hours ago, Alex said:

To be clear, this is a report thread, and not a no-discussion forum.

I understand, but I would argue it is relevant to the way this case is being examined (and you haven't locked the thread, so I feel like you are open to hearing more). Obviously what I've expressed applies to a larger issue I see, but it is also immediately relevant to the handling of this case, so I feel like it's fair and reasonable to respond further.

7 hours ago, Alex said:

You are automatically prevented from using alliance banks to send funds to anyone you have shared a network with. As you said, only 3 transactions happened this month, and I imagine they were not between nations that had shared an IP or between the nations in this group that are Verified of which there are a few. I think your own data here seems to be showing that the automatic restrictions are working and preventing any rule-breaking conflicts from occurring.

I do not control multiple nations on a shared network so I am admittedly quite ignorant to what the actual technical limitations are, but based on your description doesn't this mean that if each nation handles their own deposits/withdrawals to/from a bank they can still pass resources to each other unrestricted? For example, if we are on the same network:

  1. Zephyr deposits 1,000,000 food to the bank.
  2. Alex deposits $50,000,000 to the bank.
  3. Zephyr withdraws $50,000,000 from the bank.
  4. Alex withdraws 1,000,000 food from the bank.

At no point would we share a bank transaction or be making withdrawals to nations sharing our network as each nation handles its own withdrawal. I'm guessing this is the point of Borg having control of so many nations, to circumvent restrictions, otherwise why isn't Borg just operating the bank themselves? It seems that having one player control multiple accounts just allows one player to perform more actions than the game mechanics and technical restrictions intend to allow, and which the rest of us legitimate players are limited by.

Furthermore, if the above example is technically viable then this method of circumvention may be very difficult to identify and prove. If you consider combining these transactions with other reasonably argued 'normal alliance business', then it will be difficult to spot and could be convincingly explained away. You can again obfuscate this behaviour further by using multiple banks so these nations don't even share a bank, or even disbanding and creating new alliances constantly as it results in the names being removed from bank records and thus will make examination even more arduous. I don't have the time or skill to properly examine the transactions to know if this is happening, and if you don't either, then there may be little hope of identifying and reporting this type of abuse (it seems most moderation is reactive to player reports so if players aren't realistically capable of identifying what's really happening, then it's not likely to get addressed).

7 hours ago, Alex said:

To again be clear, the IP and user agent in question here is clearly a script. This is not as if one person is logging into all of these nations.

As I understand things, Borg does have the login information in order to control the banking operations performed by these nations, otherwise how else would this be accomplished?

I have checked the unique ID for Borg about four times now, and each time it appears to remain the same list of nations. So I do have to ask, are these players entirely operating their nations via this management tool/script/bot and thus perpetually sharing an IP and user agent? If so, this raises questions for me about whether or not you can actually tell what operations a human is performing versus what operations this tool is performing and whether or not these operations are initiated by a human or potentially entirely automated?

7 hours ago, Alex said:

Yes, there is a bit of a gray area surrounding the use of these management type bots/scripts, but generally I have allowed them so long as they just make things more convenient without actually automating any activity. E.g. creating a Discord bot that lets you type !withdraw 100 steel {nation id} instead of going to the page and doing the withdrawal through your web browser is fine, whereas a bot/script that determines on its own when and who to send money/resources to would not be allowed.

But can you tell the difference, or do the developers just have to give you the right answer when you enquire about it?

For example, which of the following examples is acceptable?

  1. A Discord bot that allows a user to type a command like !withdraw nation <nation_ID> 10,000 food, then a bank controlling nation withdraws 10,000 food to the specified nation.
  2. A Discord bot that allows a user to type a command like !withdraw alliance <alliance_ID> 10,000 food, then a bank controlling nation automatically makes a series of withdrawals of 10,000 food to each and every member nation in the specified alliance.
  3. A Discord bot that automatically, without human initiation (apart from initial coding) uses a bank controlling nation to withdraw 10,000 food to each member nation at 6 PM on Tuesday with transaction description "Taco Tuesday".

There are degrees of automation, but what degree is acceptable, and how do you know developers aren't operating beyond that degree of automation you deem acceptable? For example, the second could have random delays thrown in between each withdrawal (which I understand would be a very simple thing to incorporate into the code) so that they can tell you a human is 'totally doing all that'. The third could have a more random execution time as well. What checks are in place to ensure this doesn't happen?

7 hours ago, Alex said:

I do agree the rules are not as clear as they could be, and we should have a new set of rules by next week that will better address this.

This is good, but I think we also need a thread dedicated to examining the specifics and discussing what's fair and what the vulnerabilities to abuse are. We have a situation here where nations on the same network controlled by one player are not actually under more scrutiny or suspicion for what is ordinarily considered highly suspicious or possibly even illegal, but are in fact granted more ability to operate in a more advantageous way than legitimate players who are not operating under suspicious circumstances. I'm not really sure how this set up is considered fair play, and seems like it would actually be a really great way to run a multi ring while apparently not being too closely scrutinised as long as you dismiss enquiries with the magic words, "We have a fancy management tool" which could really mean, "We have a multi management tool".

I've helped you identify and take down multi rings and was even part of the team that identified and reported NPO's enormous illegal farming operation, I hope that you can appreciate that when I bring these concerns forward it's because I genuinely feel there may be a lack of regulation and oversight here that is open to abuse.

So again, on this specific incident:

  • Are these nations always controlled from the same IP and user agent?
    • If so, how do you know who is controlling the account? Do you permit anyone to handle wars for any of these accounts now, amongst any other type of action they might like to perform? What can and can't they do for each other on these shared accounts? This could be an advantage to utilise the activity time of all these players during war time for example.
  • Can you tell what actions a player initiates and what might be entirely clever automation?
  • Why isn't Borg just using their nation for banking, why is it necessary that one player controls all these accounts? How then do we know these are real players and not an elaborate multi ring (or in future new comers that make a similar fancy management tool claim)?
  • Doesn't your current approach just establish a really good arrangement for multi rings to operate under?
  • What degree of automation is acceptable? One command for one game action? One command for a series of game actions? Set timers for things?
  • Are there bank records that violate the rules on bank use to circumvent trade restrictions on same network nations that I haven't identified? If I'm not equipped to identify them, are you? Will you? Will you actively monitor for such incidents moving forward? If they're sharing banks, doesn't it become confusing about which nation actually owns what resources, and therefore obfuscates when they are actually passing resources to each other versus taking out alliance "grants" or "loans" or whatever?
Edited by Zephyr
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Sorry. I know this is no-discussion, but I feel that my transparency in this would help. 

> I'm guessing this is the point of Borg having control of so many nations, to circumvent restrictions, otherwise why isn't Borg just operating the bank themselves?

I am doing this because people want to use my bank/alliance management tools. 
Its very convenient to do things through discord, especially since the game doesn't natively have a way to track and verify individual nation's deposits / loans / grants. 
I can't operate this myself, because I AM NOT IN THOSE ALLIANCES. There is no feasible way for a script running via my nation to perform the necessary bank or alliance actions. 

> Borg does have the login information in order to control the banking operations performed by these nations, otherwise how else would this be accomplished?
The usernames and passwords are salted and encrypted in a database which is queried only via prepared statements. 
Unfortunately it can't hash the passwords since it needs to unencrypt it to perform the logins. 

> are these players entirely operating their nations via this management tool/script/bot and thus perpetually sharing an IP and user agent?
No. The script is solely for bank/alliance management. 

> what operations this tool is performing and whether or not these operations are initiated by a human or potentially entirely automated?
!EditAlliance - change alliance control panel settings
!mail - send an ingame message
!checkmail - check ingame messages and post to discord
!modifytreaty - modifies a treaty ingame (e.g. cancel it)
!sendtreaty - sends a treaty ingame
!setrank - sets a nations rank
!transfer - sends funds
!grant - same as transfer, sends funds (but as a grant)
!checkup (does IA audits - doesn't do anything ingame except scrape stuff from the alliance page)
!taxbracketsheet - generates a sheet of player's tax rates
!SetTaxRate - set a player's tax rate
!SyncTaxes - fetches the tax logs and adds them to the database

The checking / sending of ingame mail is automated. Everyone runs recruitment bots. 

> But can you tell the difference, or do the developers just have to give you the right answer when you enquire about it?
Opening the game at a school, university, or even a mobile network (with a shared IP pool) can result in this (to name a few). 
You yourself have (incidentally) been on the same network as 7 other people in the past
https://politicsandwar.com/index.php?id=178&nation_id=220948
Ultimately, the kind of information required to differentiate between legitimate usage is only something the game admin has access to. (i.e. Due to privacy laws like GDPR)

> Are these nations always controlled from the same IP and user agent?
Only the banking/alliance management tools via the bot occur on the same network. Their normal ingame activity will use their own network. 

> Do you permit anyone to handle wars for any of these accounts now
I would assume that would not be permitted (though I guess up to alex how he wants to interpret the rules). Regardless, I do not want be controlling people's wars or playing the game for them. This is solely for bank/alliance management. 

> Can you tell what actions a player initiates and what might be entirely clever automation?

Theoretically it should show up in network logs e.g. what IP address was used when the declare war page was requested. 
I would expect these network logs to be kept for 30 days before automatic deletion. 

I don't think there's an easy way to provably differentiate between what you define as "cleverly automated" and performed by a person.
Alex could ask to be added as admin on all those alliance's discords maybe - though this is wholly irrelevant to the original report of multis. Plenty of alliances, including yours, have tools for the game - the only difference is that I am sharing. 

Its worth noting - besides 99a/space invaders - my alliance has no ingame ties with the other alliances (and I would assume, actively raids them). I am not compensated for the tools - though I suppose you would only have my/the alliance leader's word on that. 

> Doesn't your current approach just establish a really good arrangement for multi rings to operate under?
these tools are things I've asked the game mods about.
Alex has ways to verify whether e.g. a war declaration - occurred on the same network, by checking network logs. So no, its not a good way to avoid a ban if you have multis. 

Besides, the amount of effort, not just in making the tools for these alliances to use, but involving in a multi ring... the gov, all the people who have known each other for potentially years? I can give you a list of the discord's for the alliance gov/leaders you can talk to. So you can better understand the scope of the multi conspiracy you are accusing me of.

imo, if someone wants to create a multi, I would imagine using a vpn, or tor would be a simpler approach. 
 

Edited by Borg
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Guest Zephyr
On 5/14/2021 at 2:59 PM, Borg said:

> But can you tell the difference, or do the developers just have to give you the right answer when you enquire about it?

 

Opening the game at a school, university, or even a mobile network (with a shared IP pool) can result in this (to name a few). 
You yourself have (incidentally) been on the same network as 7 other people in the past
https://politicsandwar.com/index.php?id=178&nation_id=220948
Ultimately, the kind of information required to differentiate between legitimate usage is only something the game admin has access to. (i.e. Due to privacy laws like GDPR)

Playing with that multi buster tool and picking a few different nations my initial impression is it seems quite common to end up sharing IPs at some point (every one of the few I quickly picked turned up results), and my own record surprises me too (I guess this is because I play on mobile sometimes). I guess I have to readjust how I value same network status as it now seems a lot less meaningful.

On 5/14/2021 at 2:59 PM, Borg said:

Alex has ways to verify whether e.g. a war declaration - occurred on the same network, by checking network logs. So no, its not a good way to avoid a ban if you have multis.

If I'm understanding things correctly, a tool like this could still be used to easily manage a multi tax farm (which is an example of a type of multi abuse) as the few types of actions required to manage it would all be ones currently permitted? This tool obviously logs into nations, so presumably this updates the activity status of the nation which subsequently prevents it looking inactive (decreased raid risk) or being moved to grey (maintains taxable status). So with clever automation this sounds like a potential means to autopilot a multi tax farm.

On 5/14/2021 at 2:59 PM, Borg said:

these tools are things I've asked the game mods about.

If you've had your management tool pre-authorised for use and/or only used it in the ways permitted then I would hope that Alex doesn't take action against you as that obviously wouldn't be fair, but I don't know you or the specific circumstances around this tool (because a lot of this stuff doesn't seem to actually be posted or outlined in the game rules), so I'm going to examine it for what it otherwise appears to be and hopefully you can appreciate I'm just trying to help ensure the fairness of play is not violated.

Thanks for your response, it answers some of my questions.

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