Do you ever cheat?

[Rhyfelwyr]

I need you all to make me feel a little bit less guilty.

I spent a couple of months once doing a Venetian campaign to total domination, and took up pretty much the whole 226 turns. I fought every battle I could against the Mongols and Timurids, no matter how repetetive they got.

But since then I've been getting a bit bored doing every battle manually. The games a lot more fun when I don't spend literally 50% of my time fighting the Mongols/Timurids. Usually if I fight them myself I will win, but if I auto_resolve them my men get crushed.

So since I've found out about this "auto_win attacker/defender" cheat I've used it against them quite a lot, as well as for very basic sieges, where I don't want to spend half and hour battering down three gates to kill one General and his bodyguards.

Would people consider this really cheating, or just saving time?

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I only use this cheat when M2TW dares to crash during a battle that I was winning and I don't want to fight the entire battle over and over again. The only other cheat I use is the toggle_fow cheat.

I hope you feel better now

[Monk]

I use toggle_fow a lot myself as well. Sometimes I use it to check on how other empires are doing, or other times I just don't wanna deal with fow .

Very rarely I will use the add_money cheat to give myself one or two thousand florins, I always think of it as taking out a loan on behalf of the kingdom and try to restrict myself to doing it no more than twice in a game.

[Zenicetus]

I haven't used the auto_win cheat, but I have auto-resolved sieges where my forces are only a little stronger than the defending enemy, taking advantage of the fact that tower fire isn't auto-calculated (AFAIK). I suppose that's a cheat, but sometimes I just don't want to fight out a siege I know I'm going to win anyway.

For Caledonian's specific example, which sounds basically like mopping up during the final turns and you're already dominating the map, I can see using auto_win just to finish the thing. I usually quit before then, when I know I'll win.

I so also use toggle_fow, but only briefly when setting long movement paths for agents or ships into fogged areas of the map. That reduces micro, because I don't have to keep checking on them every turn. I rationalize it by assuming the general location of major settlements, roads, and sea navigation lanes would be common knowledge by the time the game's time period begins. Europe wasn't exactly a blank slate in 1200. After setting a movement path, I turn FOW back on again, and don't spend any time trying to spy on what everyone else is doing.

The game is already pretty easy for an experienced player, and sometimes it's nice to have a surprise or two that you weren't expecting. My spies, merchants, and other agents will gradually reveal what's going on around me, while still leaving room for the occasional surprise. So other than setting movement paths, I avoid abusing the toggle_fow cheat.

[ataribaby]

My biggest vice is Quicksave/Quickload when using agents, particulary merchants and priests. I hate having heretics spoiling the religious harmony in my home territories; and smug enemy merchants who buy out my own fledgling entrepreneurs make my blood boil.

Then there's the nine-square-squish that I'll occasionally use to dispatch an enemy preacher.

More recently I've discovered the give_trait/remove_trait commands. Since I've always hated the rules for gaining chivalry in battle, I'll often give a character a point of BattleChivalry to start him off on the right path. Replaying the same battle over and over until a guy gets Fair Fighter is just too tedious.

[Duke Bart]

I do toggle_fow to decide who NOT to kill, if an empire that shares a small border with me is suddenly doing very well i will leave it alone so that it can put up more of a fight later.


Also i do the auto_win/lose battle in certain situations when i know i will win the battle

ocasionaly i do the money cheat but i treat it as loans too.

[Ratwar]

The only cheating I do is related to Princesses. I use toggle_fow when I need to find a foreign one, and I usually increase the traits of my own 'girls', since I consider my blood thirsty conquerors to be better fathers than the game.

[Ferret]

I cheated once and found it took a lot of the fun out of the game (but that was uber cheating - creating stacks of elites and teleporting them). Toggle_fow is good but I mainly play hotseats now and for those the console is disabled.

[Quickening]

Blasphemy. I am the Anti-Cheater. Not once have I cheated in Med 2 or Kingdoms. HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME IN MY PRESENCE

[Rhyfelwyr]

Um thanks for making me feel better guys.

[Galain_Ironhide]

I used toggle_fow for the first time ever when I downloaded Broken Crescent, just so I could check the place out. Aside from that I havent opened the console for any other reason.

In the past I have saved and reloaded, if something happens such as a merchant or a Spy getting killed. These days though, if something does go wrong I just accept it as fate.

[Slug For A Butt]

Blasphemy. I am the Anti-Cheater. Not once have I cheated in Med 2 or Kingdoms. HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME IN MY PRESENCE

And I hereby appoint myself as your trusty apostle. Oh guardian of the true path, preacher of honesty, basher of all things naughty... these nefarious CHEATERS will fall beneath your mighty righteousness like so much dishonest fallyness before a mighty um... big... mmm... thingy. Ahem

Never once cheated either. And if I had I personally wouldn't try to justify it to myself by kidding myself that it's a loan like it would be in real life.

But, each to their own. Everyone plays their own way.

Now tell me Oh Mighty Quickening... CAN WE BURN 'EM?

[Askthepizzaguy]

As for me:

When I am doing a blitz run, and I am trying to perfect my movements, I do reload and try the turn again. I also re-fight battles if I think I can get a better outcome. I accept auto-resolve outcomes unless I think I can do a better outcome manually.

Otherwise, I don't toggle fog of war, nor do I use any other cheats. I have plenty of fun when playing the game, but I do it more or less competitively so I cannot allow myself to do real cheating.

I justify the reloading to fight battles manually during a blitz run because I could technically start the whole campaign over again and probably do a better job the next time on a lot more things than just one battle. It's more of a time saver than a cheat.

I am the most ruthless and evil exploiter, however. If the AI is dumb enough to hand me money for promises in diplomacy, is willing to trade provinces, or otherwise behaves like a nincompoop, I will slaughter the fools without mercy and I won't bat an eye at accepting an unfair deal.

I also am only slightly less evil than SitRethCir when Crusading or going on Jihad. I abuse every loophole except for the ability to attack Catholics while crusading, just because that one is a bit too sadistic even for me, unless they've been excommunicated. I just cannot bring myself to turn a crusading army, which was never meant to attack Catholics, against Catholics in good standing. They must be off crusade or they must be excommunicated before I allow them to kill fellow Catholics. But other than that, I have no morality whatsoever in my blatant and legendary abuses of the crusading system.

I draw an imaginary line between being evil and being a cheater. Shame on all of you... and stuff.

Actually if you aren't trying to impress anyone with your campaign mastery, what you do in the privacy of your bedroom with your computer is your own business. And I did not mean that the way that sounded.

[BetterDeadThanRed]

I cheated once in my Seleucid campaign out of frustration of the repeated stacks of eastern infantry that forced me to have to fight every single battle out. I felt no sense of accomplishment upon completing the campaign, even though I only did it a few times in the very beginning. I have never done it in any campaign since. I'd sooner just resign.

Sign me up on the apostle list!

[Askthepizzaguy]

One time, I got my butt handed to me on Civilization II, because I was playing a pacifist/scientific campaign, and the Mongols decided to invade me even though we were allies and I was a tiny nation.

So I got mad, turned on the cheat menu, popped open some nuclear missiles and blasted their @$$ to the netherworld in a huge fireball of epic proportions. The moral of the story is; keep me away from nuclear missiles when I am angry.

But that's not M2TW, so I suppose that doesn't count.

[WhiskeyGhost]

i cheated in vanilla MTW2, (not in kingdoms as of yet) mostly when i feel robbed of a great victory, or by sheer idiocy. For instance, i have a super general with spies/assassins, and every anti-assassination stat imaginable get killed by a 1skilled enemy assassin, i will in fact cheat and reload and warp said assassin to somewhere else.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Oh yeah... that reminds me.

An inquisitor killed my 10 star 10 chivarly faction leader one time. He had to have had at least 6 piety as well. Needless to say, I reloaded.

Sometimes you just have to tell your computer that he's being a bad m'wittow kitty, and you have to say "no" and SMACK HIM ON THE HEAD and say "no Kitty this is my pot pie! No Kitty that's a bad kitty!"

And then you reload and say "That's a good m'wittow kitty. Now don't try burning my Saintly faction leader at the stake again, or else I will have to rip out your motherboard and smash it repeatedly with my authentic medieval war axe which I keep handy in case anyone ever challenges me to an axefight to the death."

Oh yeah... that reminds me. Anyone want to axefight to the death?

[phonicsmonkey]

no thanks ATPG

I sometimes use the 'move_character' cheat to 'correct' what I see as unrealistic retreat paths for armies I defeat in battle

for example if they retreat through my victorious army, which was blocking a bridge or a mountain pass

[Askthepizzaguy]

I sometimes use the 'move_character' cheat to 'correct' what I see as unrealistic retreat paths for armies I defeat in battle

for example if they retreat through my victorious army, which was blocking a bridge or a mountain pass

Yeah that always bothered me. I would be trying to slay some bit of wandering enemy troops, and I'd attack them, and they would retreat farther, much farther, than any stack of troops could ever move in a single turn, to the other side of a complicated series of rivers and mountains and end up on the other side. Well 3 turns later I catch them again, and attack, and they would retreat to the other side again.

Aggravated, I decided to open up my civ ii files and nuke the Mongols again. Only this time....
it was fo' realz.

Die mongols, die!!!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

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@@@@@@ KABOOM!!!!! @@@@@@

Mushroom cloud...

POWER!!!!! UNLIMITED.... POWER!!!!!

Ah... if only I had a picture of Sidious using force lightning against Jar-Jar Binks. THAT would make my day.

[Rhedd]

I have never, EVER cheated while playing this game.

Since I'm always playing by myself, and my only goal in playing the game is to have fun, nothing I do is cheating unless it keeps me from having fun.

I've done everything from using console commands (mostly toggle_fow) to completely rewriting the traits system and editing a ton of unit stats, and I still haven't cheated once.

Funny, huh?

[Slug For A Butt]

Some weird kind of Welsh logic?

[Old Geezer]

An even deeper question is whether it is "fair" to cheat M2TW? I think we should cheat as much as possible just to get even with the developers/programers and then come here and report it as we are doing.


(Criticizing the game is one thing, but please don't insult CA. -- Martok )

[Quickening]

Now tell me Oh Mighty Quickening... CAN WE BURN 'EM?

The stench of burnt flesh already reeks from the town square. I may have been too hasty and too merciful though. I would swear that Ive seen the names of these heretics amongst those who complained that the game was too easy.

"THIS GAME IS SOOOOO EASY GUYS", as he punches in a cheatcode.

I just don't know if burning is enough to purify them. I really don't

[Rhedd]

Some weird kind of Welsh logic?

Exactly.

[CynicalP]

I sometimes used the auto_win cheat for just some naval battles. I figure the AI cheats by having a exact knowledge of where my fleet is at all times. They seem to come out of nowhere attack and destroy my fleet. Really annoys me.

[Rhyfelwyr]

For the toggle_fow cheat I am very strict with this. I only use it once every ten turns to look at the mini-map only. I go and zoom in on the Sahara while I am doing it so I don't see anyting I shouldn't. I just like doing it to see how the AI is doing.

And anyway, I never use the 'auto_win cheat' until I own every region, I have 20 full stacks surrounding the Timurids I just can't be bothered fighting the battles myself to win them (the reason I'm still playing at this stage is for the New World, don't cheat there obviously). Using auto_resolve on its own is practically letting the AI cheat since elephants are overrated and it doesn't think of shooting them with my gunmen/artillery.

[Gigermann]

I cheat. Unashamedly.

The AI cheats, so I cheat back. Devs have admitted that before, and apparently it's pretty standard in most games for the AI to cheat from time to time. Sometimes I can't abide it though. 'Course sometimes it still doesn't make up for it. I had an HRE emperor that was married for some time and had no heirs—no reason for it—so I gave him Fertile 3, WifeIsCharming 3, etc…still childless I call "shenanigans!" Fortunately he had a cousin that wasn't too bad. And when the population of my towns were 50% someone else's spies, even adding SpyMaster 3 and CounterSpy 3 on top of 5-6 spies of my own still wouldn't dislodge the buggers (even though for me to enter their cities I have 10% or less chance with a maxed-out spy)—I want a "kill all spies" cheat!

I cheat to make up for a stupid mistake on my part. I took my general left instead of right—didn't matter in MTW because the move wasn't made until the End Turn was pressed. (I'd really like them to bring that back, BTW). So, I reset the character and get him back on track.

I cheat when I disagree with the game "rules." I think a monarch who doesn't know where Paris is on the map unless he sends someone out there to scout it out is utterly ridiculous. So, if I need to send a diplomat to Krakow and I haven't "spotted" it yet, I'll use toggle_fow to get him on the right path, rather than have him wander around looking for it. There was an instance where I thought a reinforcement stack should have been included in a battle, but wasn't for some reason—so I autocalc'd in protest. I used to auto_win naval battles with pirates because I thought they were a little too "common"—haven't done that lately, though.

I cheat because I hate to lose. I lose enough in real life that I'm not gonna let some stupid computer beat me too. Losing isn't fun, and I play for fun.

If you want to cheat, do it, and don't feel the least bit bad about it. ;)

[Rhyfelwyr]

If you want to cheat, do it, and don't feel the least bit bad about it. ;)

Thankyou.

[oz_wwjd]

I have cheated once playing the Byzantines as I got tired of the Venetians eternal Milita spam against my cities,especially when I'd just beaten them off 5 times in a row,so I used auto_win once and haven't had any attacks since them,strange that..

[Spartan198]

Yes,I cheat.