i was reading in another thread about the prevalence of cheating on express and how it is making the server an undesireable experience for some ... with echoes from the past and across all servers - how it basically has never been otherwise, though the prevalence and intenisity ebbs and flows over time

gerdler has made the point that it has been worse in the old days and that at least today, the mods do take an interest and do have the power to delete "suspected" cheaters as cold proof can be hard to come by --- i agree

since there aren't many players, mods can take the time to investigate and make a good decision

but since making a new country is fast, free and easy, cheaters can get back in business pronto

so i will offer up a radical proposition for debate: require new players to make an application to join EE, with a small essay and such and a waiting period of 48 hours to a week for the mods to vet their application before a new profile is created. more over, if a profile is deemed to be involved in any cheatng on any server, all countries linked to the profile are simultaneously deleted without exception

this would restrict and deter legitimate new players, but we don't get many of those

my intuition suggests such measures might deter enough cheating to be worth it

please comment

thanks

:)

Easier just to make a script that detects suspicious behaviour and temporarily deletes people until a mod reviews it. If the mod decides there was no foul play, the player can be restored with the turns he would have had etc. It would be simple since suspicious play in this game is extremely obvious. As for essays, people would just fake who they are. It might prevent someone like macdaddy from making countries because his grasp of the English language is on par with a 4 year old Chinese kid that lives in India and has never spoken in his life, but anyone half-way competent could fake it.

this posted twice for some reason please delete