Just so you can gawk at me for my purples I will open up my profile after this round completes. I do not agree with the purples but the mods will not overturn. Right wrong or indifferent my opinion on the 21$ oil was this. A friend was running a country and said he would sell cheap goods. I said sure...I will make sure to put in standing orders. I didn't know what they would be selling or when so I put in orders for all military food and oil. Vast majority seemed to be oil or food. But it was all through the market and anyone could have an order in and get the goods so I saw nothing that violated the rules and went along for the ride. Once the forums started posting that this was shady I thought about it...then a mod ...tellarion I believe said it was wrong and he would be watching the market. At that point I asked my friend to stop as it was now against the rules...from what I can tell they stopped. Still a month or three later admins looked into it and now retroactively purples 7 of my countries including two #1 finishes. I did not agree with this as nothing in the rules was against putting in orders and a friend placing cheap goods up. Every round that I use orders I find SOME cheap stuff...this round I got 15000 oil at 14 LOL. Them purpling my old countries I equate to a policeman putting up a no parking sign after you parked your car and went into the store...then you come back to a ticket. As this is not right so I believe me having those countries purpled was not right.

I still have many many completely legit top 10's and #1 finishes. I believe my top three rounds were not related to my friend at all. I just want what happened to be known. Was it borderline shady...yes I agree... but I claim it was not against the rules at the time. Feel free to share your opinion or ask questions and I will answer. Also side note the friend was NOT Russian roulette.

Unfortunately, I think even the appearance of cheating should be a purpleable offense unless the players take steps to dispel such an appearance of cheating.
The maxim here being:
If cheaters can cheat in a way such that no one can know they are cheating, then any behavior that has the same appearance must needs be prohibited.

Aw man, a friend telling you he'd sell cheap fluff and then selling you fluff loads of cheap oil is obviously market coordination and cheating. The fact is you knew that oil was coming, and you knew to put out orders. What other reason was he doing that, and telling you he'd be doing that, if not to help you?

Again I agree it was at least borderline activity. I still always put up so's but no friends have told me they were selling cheap stuff to me. Now I just try and intercept anyone else who might be doing that.

As I said to you privately, it serves no purpose for us to explicitly state each and every definition of 'coordination'. Before becoming a mod, I barely looked at Express, but from the very start, after reading about coordination, I would have told you that having a friend sell cheap goods that somehow directly benefited you and (almost) only you is against the rules. I'm sorry if it was not 100% clear at the time, but it was quite obviously implicitly against the rules.

The thing about selling goods for LOW prices, as opposed to higher prices like we see with tech, is that it CAN be easily countered through SOs. The fact that your friends oil went almost exclusively to you is a bit telling, considering the facts..

Other than that, I can confirm that ebert's friend is not RussianRoulette(aka the other ebert), and he does have many many legitimate finishes in the top 10, as he said.

And as I've mentioned elsewhere, the reason more people haven't been deleted for market coordination in the past is not because it wasn't against the rules, it was more about us being unable to prove that it was coordination. If not for Zarcon finding some starting points to start digging from, none of this likely would have surfaced. This is why I keep pestering everyone to report suspicious activity(both ingame and through forum PMs), so that the moderation team can have a starting point to narrow down our search.

Trust me, you're not going to bother me by reporting something you feel is suspicious.

I just want to report old resets and not current ones, so if you guys ever want more old reset countries to investigate let me know. I appreciate all the investigation Zarcon has done though and don't want to dump too many old things on him unless he's up for it.

It was a new way of transferring money that the players hadn't cottoned too quite yet. Now that everyone is on to that sort of thing it won't work as well.

Heh.

Leaving a note of appreciation for Zarcon and Tellarion here.

this guy do deserve a second chance. He is a good player still ...

I don't get it. ebert is obviously good enough in Express to win and get top ten. Do you like get a blow job or something for winning that you need your name associated with cheating? Where is the reward for you? What is the reward for you? Now everytime I see purple, I don't think Seth or JJ, instead I think "looks like they got CX or ebert yet again". Even Viva is distancing himself from cheating. Another typical example why being good at this game does not equate to being intelligent.

viva and CX aim for records.

ebert - i think he just aimed for 1st spot.

They are all good players - to bad they sometime need to do fluff to achive fluff.

Here's the big one, the best score of all time
http://www.earthempires.com/express/165/ranks

Despite being topfed, ROR'd, and doing 42 ABs: http://www.eestats.com/express/oldcountry/421/90

Is there any chance this is legit

good players who are willing to cheat are the scariest type of cheaters tho..

All opened up for those who care.

blid ..



that totally reminded me of Lance Armstrong..

Sound like a buncha fluffin' lawyers if you ask me. Splitting hairs and arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and what the meaning of "is" is.

I unlike some admitted what happened and asked you all to judge for yourself. I don't see others accused of cheating opening up their profiles. Anyway I will be closing mine again tonight...or at least making it so you cannot see my current country.

Hi ebert00 I think your current country is visible only to yourself and invisible to everyone else even when your profile is shared.

Thanks for the info I appreciate it.

For someone as active as you are, I'm surprised you only play Express server. (I don't really treat Tournament as a server - it has too few players.)

i like the pace of express. i used to play back in 2025 days, came back to tournament got sick of that when i found express. i played with Omega, LAF, SOF back in the day. but i grew sick of all the politics in alliance. I was in management and stepped down due to all the BS, so i found my home in express where politics are pretty much non-existant.

I can understand that.... the freedom to do as you please is nice... just means you have to deal with the crazees yourself

"Politics (from Greek: politikos, meaning "of, for, or relating to citizens") is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a civic or individual level. "

Politics exist on Express. On the individual level. You have people accusing each other of cheating, market play, coordination, and all sorts of drama. Convincing each other that someone else is bad, cheating, etc. That's politics!


"A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a given society."

Here, we have people defining what is legit countries, what is gray areas, what is morally ok/not ok despite not against the rules.


Quotes from wikipedia.