I remember one of Hersons recently uploaded videos was Andrew and some other player just yapping. Super annoying and unfunny, but I assumed Andrew was just an irritating individual. Even people like myself who aren't that great at civ6 can clearly see how bad Andrew's moves should be.
I've seen the dude in a few different civ steams always came off really egotistical and unlikeable. Its always crazy to me that people who cheat can inflate themselves to such a degree when they are competing against those who aren't.
The edited screenshots in the appeal completely seal the deal. This removes even the tiniest bit of doubt that he was somehow just lucky in every single game.
It is also possible that he doesn’t want to damage his rating point advantage as ranking even 2nd in any casual lobby could seriously reduce his lead. This also explains why he doesn’t use the information moderately. It’s because even this cheating can only advance his game start by a small amount. Converting a bad start to a decent start or a decent start to a good start.
may have been simply calculated: he's so reliant on it to maintain his rank that playing a month without it would *immediately* expose what's been going on. quite mad either way.
@@blaubeer8039actually, if he played without cheating for that month it would have covered up his cheating better. He would have looked like a normal player with ups and downs in their playing history. Instead, he never took a dip - the behavior that actually got him caught.
12:15 "There is clear best move that any strong player would spot immediately" Well well well. I'd say that I never did consider myself as a strong player but here I am.
I remember first watching UnderCiv playing CPL way back, and Andrew was always such a meme in the chat or as a joke in the games due to his weird play style. Just absolutely griefing, its gonna be weird watching now after this revelation, if he takes the shame and leaves the game for good. Either way, good work by the CPL admins and to Herson for explaining in such detail and with evidence for us non-CPL players, who just send their scout in what looks like the best direction in the moment
reminds me of how dream was caught. him refusing to name the "statistician" he "hired" was the admission of guilt for me. if you have haters, they will always find a way to get to you
Sadly almost all games attract a cheater at some point, especially if there are rankings involved. Some of them would even have been very succesful without cheating. One good comparison is Riolu cheating in several Trackmania titles. He was only able to cheat without streaming. He regularly broke records while streaming. But somehow it seems like he thought he deserved the ones he didn't get. He then frequently got them offline using a software that slowed down the game, granting him superhuman precision. Maybe Andrew's case is similar: maybe he was frustrated with bad luck at the beginning of the game, thinking he deserved better. He does seem like a decent player, since no one suspected him cheating before and he was able to convert his early advantages so often.
I was sold on him cheating just by you guys painting the path of his scouts and warriors going straight towards goodie huts and city states. His edited appeal photos sealed the deal, lol.
the only time any of those moves could be natural is if it was me playing, because 5 hours in I'm going to be braindead and do inefficient things- the difference is that I will not be getting lucky 100% of the time xD I am just actually bad
For future purposes, I would recommend, that all CPL match replay files need to be saved and provided after the match has ended. This actually was the case for counterstrike back in the day as well (1.3 - 1.5 era) to investigate shenanigans and find cheaters. That there is no such system, actually baffles me a bit, but on the other hand, MP in Civ is a bit niche, so it might be understandable.
Oh man, someone call an ambulance. What a slam dunk. I watched the entire thing. Really appreciate the thorough analysis and all the work you and the CPL team do. Thank you. Also great vid.
But in this case, it’s even worse. Not even a hypothetical Civ 6 engine could make the moves that Andrew did because Andrew was moving based on information that an engine wouldn’t have.
Andrew was playing civ like he was playing chess. With perfect information. While all other players and even the hypothetical perfect civ engine would be playing with imperfect information. Literally making better moves than any hypothetical perfect Civ engine moves could ever be.
But it is even clearer than that. In chess you could always have some doubt that somehow the player was smart enough to find the engine move (at least with players who do not cheat >500 Elo points above their true level). You need to find a clear pattern. But here, the pattern of movement makes no sense with the information he should have had. "I know best how scouting works" doesn't apply here, since no level of skill (beyond computing the seed number to a map in your brain and then memorizing it perfectly, which is ridiculous) could achieve what he did.
@@nilsp9426 Playing a move or game like over 500 elo above is not that impossible to happen. There are players that are good with puzzles but suck in game. Like me for example. For reference i have 1200 elo rapid and 2400 elo in puzzles lol
i would love to know off the top of your head some more examples worth looking up. In return, one i adore is the aaron1912 titanic v-break debunk, an episode of which features the greatest passive aggressive description of sinking I've ever heard
I was playin before novice games was so popular like nowadays. On 10 games 9 times I was on last position, my record was to die on Korea from scytia in 38 turns. It’s good to go on novice to train mid game and late uncontested (usually), but get experience on normal ffa, you will learn how be aware of what ur opponents do, instead of focus only on your own development. Good luck
its really not as bad as you think! I recently started playing a few months ago, you got this! Just make sure you understand all the rules and have the right mods:)
This happened similarly a while back with a friend of mine's teammate. I don't wanna name any names, but he was toxic, insufferable to listen to(according to my friend), and would constantly ask his teammates to do certain scouting moves that suspiciously ended up always working.
19:23 these Scientific City State maps are absolutely crazy. Even speaking as a "bad" Civ player by the standards of this channel, who doesn't do competitive multiplayer: this is so blatantly map-hacked
I find this whole situation really quite funny. It would be one thing if he was an upstanding pillar of the community, but from what I've seen it isn't like he was particularly well liked. Good riddance.
The ridiculous thing is that Andrew would still be a good player without cheating. Probably not absolute top tier but a great player nonetheless. It's abominable to ruin the integrity of CPL in such an unnecessary fashion purely for his own enjoyment.
@@JK-qi7pp There’s no doubt Andrew is a good player. The problem with being a good player is that other people will rise to the challenge and create a deadlock. Andrew is using this cheating stuff to get that extra lift over the other good players. No matter how hard his competition worked to get ahead of him, they had no chance unless they were willing to do the same thing. It’s all too human.
That's something that is true for all cheating competitive players. You see it a lot with speedrunners who know exactly what they have to do but cheat to remove the elements of luck that would get in their way, etc.
A lot of cheaters are often decent to great players. At least the cheaters going on to break records or hold leaderboard spots. That's one thing all of these cheaters videos have taught me
lmao i love how this video was recommended to me, none of the topics are relevant to me yet I enjoyed it. I have no idea who Andrew is, but "Boooooo!!!! you stink!". Thanks for the educational and entertaining video about a game used to play.
I used to be a part of Civ IV quasi multiplayer SGOTM (Succession Game of the Month) where teams would plan and play a single player game against other teams, playing the same start. Those games were as optimal as they could get but the maps were always cooked by the mapmaker to be more fun and different. Our top player, who definitely had skill, would always have an assumption about the mapmaker's intentions to use a map type feature, e.g. in a great lake map there was a body of water which normally could or could not have an island. He convinced us to prioritize a galley and some units to scout the island of untold riches. Indeed he was right. And when you see end results, it also made sense. However, if that was a dud, we would have crippled our normal game quite a bit and since we were all strong players, we normally would win any standard game so risk for us was actually higher if we stray from more standard path. At that time, I thought that he was really outside of the box thinker, however, later on he had had many leap of faith assumptions which ALL paid off and me and one more teammate started getting suspiscious. Especially as he was very aggressively pushing the idea against the consensual best move based on the info we had without strong arguments (remember we were all very strong players with many individual successes). I ended up leaving the team and have suspicions about the validty of my gold medals with that team. I will never have a proof.
So I've learned two things from this video: 1) Andrew is a cheating sonuvab. 2) top tier MP civ players are making a ridiculous number of decisions factoring in a ton of nuanced data points on seemingly minor choices like which tile to move a scout. Y'all are bonkers.
Those moves sound more complicated than they are... im just a casual singleplayer civ player, who is not even playing on the hardest difficulty, and even i make the moves the pros are making mentioned in the video. Its basically become a "memory move", something you do instinctively after a while without thinking about it, just by playing the game casually... Which is why Andrew's abnormal moves are SOOOO anomalous actually... At the level Andrew was supposed to be these abnormalousmoves are actually the ones, which require actual brainwork to even just CONSIDER, instead of just go for the reflexive, standard moves...
I mean, it's just a heuristic. The fact that he's able to explain the moves you should be making in a few sentences tells you it's really not THAT complicated.
When it comes to map games, I love the last paradox era, games like Stellaris, EU4, CK3, Imperator, etc. As much as I like those games, I never could get into civ, despite owning both 5 and 6. This video was entertaining enough and interesting enough to make me want to try it again.
I don't play civ 6 much, but i do believe that someone could make a program that analyzes saves and for each scouting moves make a pourcentage of efficiency. And so the moderation could simply put the save file in there and verify each players accuracy. I certainly hope this doesn't happen again in any scene. Have a good day :)
What an amazing example of what an investigation is. In depth analysis, good sample size and even reviewing the defense the cheater provided. Well done!
I dont play Civ6 in multiplayer, but it seems like a database of savefiles would be a really good addition to you guys' server, im sure it could be somehow automated and would be great if new cheaters were to pop up to have solid information on games
I really appreciate you making this vid and seeing the methodology of detection as well as what it looks like when a player is scamming their community. As Karl Jobst says, “cheaters are essentially time thieves”. I don’t play civ6 multi but I would be a bit too happy to see this player removed from the community. I like this sort of content, even the drama side of it. Was there any backlash, any Andrew apologists causing trouble? What’s Andrew doing now? Andrew aside, what other cheats were found and handled?
This reminds me of when I watched one of your 5 month old vods and someone mentioned Andrew only making 1 scout instead of 2, I suppose you don’t need the second one if you alrea know where everything is
I usually bank on finding a 2nd scout with my 1st. Not saying this is a good strategy or anything. But I def don't need 3 which is what ends up happening
Now i wanna see the replay when ToA was snagged out from under you when he was playing as Canada. Absolute bull that hes done this for so long to so many people.
Man I love bombshell documentaries that are well-communicated in such a manner that a *complete outsider* can process the information. Take my algorithmbucks.
Solid video. You tracing scout moves did prompt the idea that there exists perfect scout moves, and a tool could be built to determine them, both with perfect and using only known information. Almost like a chess engine. Improving scouting play in general.
If they had put even a little effort into obfuscating their actions, this would have been impossible to find. Scout while it loads, adjusting later, to reduce delay. Path to high terrain for vision, and flat terrain for distance, before committing, even if it eats up a few turns. Always moving scouts first into an area before settlers. Building extra scouts just to clear fog. Sure, it might cost a few games in the long run, but still would have provided enough advantage to keep the top spot. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. If the competitive scene wanted to curb this activity, ranked local save games could be limited to the movement range of units each turn, with a server hosting the complete map. This would prevent use of replay or map vision tools, as well as providing an archive of every game, resolving two issues with one auditable solution.
I'd be more worried about sporadic cheating, where they use some of the map, some of the time, and just have an advantage over the rest of the player base. Unless there just isn't an advantage to be had by being less optimal, I think anyone who is determined to cheat can end up having some plausible deniability.
These videos on the competitive side of civ is really interesting. Who actually first raised the suspicions? Was it one of the admins, or were there accusations from the community?
Impressive that you followed sound legal practice, and did a proper investigation. Shows how much the team cares about the scene. It is, however, quite a lot of work. Just one of these anomalous routes that turn out perfectly, is such a statistical anomaly, that it would be reasonable to ban for one such instance. Getting a perfect 20 turn route, where there are 3 equally rational moves each turn, is one in a houndred quintillion. Having it happen twice in a row, is one in ten undecillion. Three times in a row, is less likely than one to [the number of atoms in the known universe].
Wild! He’s 28% more efficient at finding goodie huts, yet his choice of scouting movements are suboptimal compared to other pro civ players (because he B-lines through rough terrains and squeezes through risky mountain passes). Absolutely damning evidence.
13:05 That move is so obvious with hindsight. 10/10 times you would move towards the horses here as they only cost 1 movement. Instead he moves down towards the mountains where his next tile is guaranteed to cost 2 movement, and sure enough that was necessary for him to find the tribal village just out of sight of the horses
I also used this cheat during many games, Andrew makes basically the same illogical moves as me, moving the warrior straight to the nearest hut, cs or wonder, when you play without the civ replay cheat you notice the difference, after a time playing with this cheat it becomes very difficult to play without it, I also noticed that over time the game becomes boring.
Reminds me a lot of the process for detecting cheaters using engines in Chess. Consistent statistical anomalies and players seen to be making "engine moves" - moves that it would be unnatural for a player to make.
Bro...imagine seeing the entire map in CiV 6. The funniest part of the entire 6+ hours game is literally first 50 turns. Finding out where to settle a few cities and wobders and huts and barbs and other civs. Like if I saw entire map I would not have fun in the slightest....
As someone who found your channel recently - this is kinda funny. Andrew’s been the villain of the satirical videos for a while and it turns out he’s a proven cheat. It’s kinda sad. I think Andrew could have been a top 10 CPL player without cheating. I know folks are going to dog pile his actual skill for cheating - but as you pointed out the way he was keeping at the top of the leaderboard was by making the best possible moves. He just had an information advantage. And that’s still huge - but I don’t think that alone would get like the 120th best player in the world to hold rank 1 for a huge stretch of time. He had to skill to be one of the best and that wasn’t enough for him. I kinda hope he just did it for the money. Because if it’s an ego thing then the man needs therapy.
thats so true. even if i had as much information as him, i wouldnt be able to be 1st rank for years 😭 that guy is talented, such a shame that he decided to cheat
You see that a lot in speedrunners too; People who know what they're doing and would do well without the cheats, but do so to give themselves the advantage they can't overcome.
Setting the playback speed to 1.25 makes this sound like a normal person talking at normal speed, instead of the deliberately slow speech trend that TH-cam essay and docu creators adopt.
I appreciate how professional the investigation was conducted. But just out of curiosity, can his rebuttal be used as evidence against him? Sure he clearly doctored screenshots but would that follow under "contempt of court"? 🤣
I don't even play cpl but those scouting principles are just so obvious to even casuals it's crazy the way he moves. I'm happy for yall getting rid of him.
Wow, he really dug himself in with the appeal. Providing nothing but vague statements would have probably served him better than that car crash of an argument.
It seems like this particular exploit could be presented by a turn timer for the first 15-25 turns. By the time they load a turn 1 save, enough turns will have gone by that it will be of limited use.
Sounds like CPL should start collecting save files for their ranked games that are recorded. Randomly poll multiple participants to ensure no individual or group can game the system by submitting modified saves.
Gotta be honest Ain't no way this guy didn't do this on purpose. Like, JESUS CHRIST! Streaming all the games and cheating during almost all of them? Taking a sus break when cheating didn't work? Fucking faking evidence against people who are dedicated enough to look at dozens of hours of gameplay? I'm actually kind of surprised it took him this long to get caught. I don't know what made him do this( some people have hard lives and any bit of recognition can be good for them.) but this just feels bad. Whilst also being hilarious.
Heartwarming: there is a legitimate reason to hate the person you already disliked.
real asf
I remember one of Hersons recently uploaded videos was Andrew and some other player just yapping. Super annoying and unfunny, but I assumed Andrew was just an irritating individual. Even people like myself who aren't that great at civ6 can clearly see how bad Andrew's moves should be.
this comment proves nicely how this whole farsical investigation, some would say witchhunt, was succesful!
I've seen the dude in a few different civ steams always came off really egotistical and unlikeable. Its always crazy to me that people who cheat can inflate themselves to such a degree when they are competing against those who aren't.
@@Rogus27 or he wasnt cheating :)
Damn, i need to play more MP
I can't believe this guy tried to doctor screenshots
Yes potato we DO need more MP videos!!! 🙏🏻
@@6leumas6 Agree
With your influence within the Civ community, a few videos about Civ6 MP could give the MP scene a bit of a boost!
We would love to see you compete in CPL
a full tournament of civ 6 content creators would be a good place to start.
Scouting tutorial AND comprehensive documentary on a prolific cheater? Take my comment for the algorithm bro😭
yeah take mine too, i dont even play this game but that was fun to watch!
The edited screenshots in the appeal completely seal the deal. This removes even the tiniest bit of doubt that he was somehow just lucky in every single game.
Yeah, it really removes any doubt. Tampering with evidence automatically makes him guilty, or else why hide it?
Herson narrates well, just when one set of evidence seemed damning enough the hits just keep on coming and getting worse.
Not playing civ for a month when cheating method is not working is mad. It means he doesn't even like the game. It's just for internet points.
Taking a hiatus like that implies long time use of the cheating method and complete insecurity without it.
It is also possible that he doesn’t want to damage his rating point advantage as ranking even 2nd in any casual lobby could seriously reduce his lead. This also explains why he doesn’t use the information moderately. It’s because even this cheating can only advance his game start by a small amount. Converting a bad start to a decent start or a decent start to a good start.
or he doesn't enjoy the game *as much* without an advantage. some people just enjoy screwing over others
may have been simply calculated:
he's so reliant on it to maintain his rank that playing a month without it would *immediately* expose what's been going on.
quite mad either way.
@@blaubeer8039actually, if he played without cheating for that month it would have covered up his cheating better.
He would have looked like a normal player with ups and downs in their playing history.
Instead, he never took a dip - the behavior that actually got him caught.
12:15 "There is clear best move that any strong player would spot immediately"
Well well well. I'd say that I never did consider myself as a strong player but here I am.
Funny I got to that part and thought “wow I’m so bad that if I won a game people would accuse me of cheating!”
7:00 This video was made because someone called herson's scouting trash
How Civ6 handles cheaters in multiplayer mode.
Anti cheat: 🙅♂
Unstable network code: 👌
Andrew "I love cheating and stomping low level lobbies" CIVPLAYER
Maybe we should put him against zuck in the civ 1v1
He really ain't beating the elo pedo allegations
I remember first watching UnderCiv playing CPL way back, and Andrew was always such a meme in the chat or as a joke in the games due to his weird play style. Just absolutely griefing, its gonna be weird watching now after this revelation, if he takes the shame and leaves the game for good.
Either way, good work by the CPL admins and to Herson for explaining in such detail and with evidence for us non-CPL players, who just send their scout in what looks like the best direction in the moment
Watch UnderCiv a lot and always wonder who Andrew was with that timeout in chat. Used it once for the memes. lol
reminds me of how dream was caught. him refusing to name the "statistician" he "hired" was the admission of guilt for me.
if you have haters, they will always find a way to get to you
cheating on civ 6 is crazy lmao
Sadly almost all games attract a cheater at some point, especially if there are rankings involved. Some of them would even have been very succesful without cheating. One good comparison is Riolu cheating in several Trackmania titles. He was only able to cheat without streaming. He regularly broke records while streaming. But somehow it seems like he thought he deserved the ones he didn't get. He then frequently got them offline using a software that slowed down the game, granting him superhuman precision. Maybe Andrew's case is similar: maybe he was frustrated with bad luck at the beginning of the game, thinking he deserved better. He does seem like a decent player, since no one suspected him cheating before and he was able to convert his early advantages so often.
I was sold on him cheating just by you guys painting the path of his scouts and warriors going straight towards goodie huts and city states. His edited appeal photos sealed the deal, lol.
Ok.. I just saw that settler at 15:00 ..this is crazy! not moving the scout first is SO damning.. none would do that!
and then at 19:05 ..well.. I am without words
Edit: he even edited the screenshots!!.. what a joke.. how many nails does this coffin have????
So blatant!
like u should be banned for that move even if u are not cheating, for throwing or hurting my eyes😂
and he had to think for like a solid 5 seconds before making that move, its enough time to not make that move just to not arouse suspicion🤣
the only time any of those moves could be natural is if it was me playing, because 5 hours in I'm going to be braindead and do inefficient things- the difference is that I will not be getting lucky 100% of the time xD I am just actually bad
Bro didn't just cheat, he insulted the intelligence of the entire mod team by using CROPPED SCREENSHOTS to try to prove his innocence 💀
Man this is years of hatred being justly unleashed
For future purposes, I would recommend, that all CPL match replay files need to be saved and provided after the match has ended. This actually was the case for counterstrike back in the day as well (1.3 - 1.5 era) to investigate shenanigans and find cheaters. That there is no such system, actually baffles me a bit, but on the other hand, MP in Civ is a bit niche, so it might be understandable.
Bruh, I remember you jokingly referring to Andrew as a cheater a few months ago in your videos! was that before or after the investigation started?
In all fairness it didn't feel very... Joking? It felt more calling him out for playing in a bizarre manner and lo and behold
many people have been calling andrew a cheater for a long time
Writing that long of an appeal document knowing damn well you’ve been cheating for a hot minute is crazy, he really has no shame
Wake up Babe, The video about Andrew is finally out. Shame he didn't release a diss track instead of a document for appealing
Oh man, someone call an ambulance. What a slam dunk.
I watched the entire thing. Really appreciate the thorough analysis and all the work you and the CPL team do. Thank you. Also great vid.
Herson for public prosecutor 🇺🇸
The blue cs minimaps are crazy. also, ain't no way the Andrew disdain was warranted, you sensed it.
nah, I don't think so. I think he was a hater first for unrelated reasons, then investigator second.
Really similar to catching cheaters in chess. You have the most human move and then you have the top engine move.
But in this case, it’s even worse. Not even a hypothetical Civ 6 engine could make the moves that Andrew did because Andrew was moving based on information that an engine wouldn’t have.
Andrew was playing civ like he was playing chess. With perfect information. While all other players and even the hypothetical perfect civ engine would be playing with imperfect information. Literally making better moves than any hypothetical perfect Civ engine moves could ever be.
But it is even clearer than that. In chess you could always have some doubt that somehow the player was smart enough to find the engine move (at least with players who do not cheat >500 Elo points above their true level). You need to find a clear pattern. But here, the pattern of movement makes no sense with the information he should have had. "I know best how scouting works" doesn't apply here, since no level of skill (beyond computing the seed number to a map in your brain and then memorizing it perfectly, which is ridiculous) could achieve what he did.
@@nilsp9426 Playing a move or game like over 500 elo above is not that impossible to happen. There are players that are good with puzzles but suck in game. Like me for example. For reference i have 1200 elo rapid and 2400 elo in puzzles lol
@@tajemniczywasacz tldr: you are not great at puzzles and bad at games, the rating system is not at all comparable for the two.
God I love petty hobby drama. Low stakes stuff I can follow like a soap opera is entertaining like nothing else.
i would love to know off the top of your head some more examples worth looking up.
In return, one i adore is the aaron1912 titanic v-break debunk, an episode of which features the greatest passive aggressive description of sinking I've ever heard
I followed that scouting advice in my last PvE game and it revealed my continent so much faster. thanks.
The advice to load it into replay or scout better? 😉
So basically it's summed up as xraying in Minecraft for diamonds
I need to take the plunge and actually join a novice game instead of being intimidated im going to die
I was playin before novice games was so popular like nowadays. On 10 games 9 times I was on last position, my record was to die on Korea from scytia in 38 turns. It’s good to go on novice to train mid game and late uncontested (usually), but get experience on normal ffa, you will learn how be aware of what ur opponents do, instead of focus only on your own development. Good luck
its really not as bad as you think! I recently started playing a few months ago, you got this! Just make sure you understand all the rules and have the right mods:)
Yo true I’ve never played a cpl game before wanna play one XD
@fosterwalrus8413 do you want to i have 2 others who were interested in a super novice game with just 4 of us dm me same name in the server
well, now that Andrew ("the novice stomper") is gone, you dont have to fear :)
This makes the Herson vs the world video even funnier
That’s exactly what I thought of, it was so recent too
This happened similarly a while back with a friend of mine's teammate. I don't wanna name any names, but he was toxic, insufferable to listen to(according to my friend), and would constantly ask his teammates to do certain scouting moves that suspiciously ended up always working.
Starts with A?
@@CoolCong-nz4rt Starts with A?
19:23 these Scientific City State maps are absolutely crazy. Even speaking as a "bad" Civ player by the standards of this channel, who doesn't do competitive multiplayer: this is so blatantly map-hacked
Andrew was the biggest villain on the civ 6 community I has ever know.
You haven't met Esdeath.
I find this whole situation really quite funny. It would be one thing if he was an upstanding pillar of the community, but from what I've seen it isn't like he was particularly well liked. Good riddance.
tbh if he was a good/nice person he wouldnt cheat hahah
As someone new to Civ 6 thank you for the scouting tutorial and the interesting deep dive into a competetive online community I did not know existed.
The ridiculous thing is that Andrew would still be a good player without cheating. Probably not absolute top tier but a great player nonetheless. It's abominable to ruin the integrity of CPL in such an unnecessary fashion purely for his own enjoyment.
@@JK-qi7pp There’s no doubt Andrew is a good player. The problem with being a good player is that other people will rise to the challenge and create a deadlock. Andrew is using this cheating stuff to get that extra lift over the other good players. No matter how hard his competition worked to get ahead of him, they had no chance unless they were willing to do the same thing. It’s all too human.
I would say the game of civ where everything goes right and everything is meh has such a different experience and result afterwards.
he isnt good. he doesnt know how to scout. He has no experience. If in a random lobby without cheating he would be back of the pack
That's something that is true for all cheating competitive players. You see it a lot with speedrunners who know exactly what they have to do but cheat to remove the elements of luck that would get in their way, etc.
A lot of cheaters are often decent to great players. At least the cheaters going on to break records or hold leaderboard spots. That's one thing all of these cheaters videos have taught me
lmao i love how this video was recommended to me, none of the topics are relevant to me yet I enjoyed it. I have no idea who Andrew is, but "Boooooo!!!! you stink!". Thanks for the educational and entertaining video about a game used to play.
I used to be a part of Civ IV quasi multiplayer SGOTM (Succession Game of the Month) where teams would plan and play a single player game against other teams, playing the same start. Those games were as optimal as they could get but the maps were always cooked by the mapmaker to be more fun and different. Our top player, who definitely had skill, would always have an assumption about the mapmaker's intentions to use a map type feature, e.g. in a great lake map there was a body of water which normally could or could not have an island. He convinced us to prioritize a galley and some units to scout the island of untold riches. Indeed he was right. And when you see end results, it also made sense. However, if that was a dud, we would have crippled our normal game quite a bit and since we were all strong players, we normally would win any standard game so risk for us was actually higher if we stray from more standard path.
At that time, I thought that he was really outside of the box thinker, however, later on he had had many leap of faith assumptions which ALL paid off and me and one more teammate started getting suspiscious. Especially as he was very aggressively pushing the idea against the consensual best move based on the info we had without strong arguments (remember we were all very strong players with many individual successes). I ended up leaving the team and have suspicions about the validty of my gold medals with that team. I will never have a proof.
So I've learned two things from this video:
1) Andrew is a cheating sonuvab.
2) top tier MP civ players are making a ridiculous number of decisions factoring in a ton of nuanced data points on seemingly minor choices like which tile to move a scout. Y'all are bonkers.
Those moves sound more complicated than they are... im just a casual singleplayer civ player, who is not even playing on the hardest difficulty, and even i make the moves the pros are making mentioned in the video. Its basically become a "memory move", something you do instinctively after a while without thinking about it, just by playing the game casually... Which is why Andrew's abnormal moves are SOOOO anomalous actually... At the level Andrew was supposed to be these abnormalousmoves are actually the ones, which require actual brainwork to even just CONSIDER, instead of just go for the reflexive, standard moves...
i think its already muscle memory for them lol
I mean, it's just a heuristic. The fact that he's able to explain the moves you should be making in a few sentences tells you it's really not THAT complicated.
He really is the wirtual of civ 6
I somehow feel like only 8 people will get this reference but I agree with you and I love them for that.
I had the exact same thought, like "wow this is giving off trackmania cheating video vibes"
The Wirtual and Karl Jobst fans giving him a round of applause
When it comes to map games, I love the last paradox era, games like Stellaris, EU4, CK3, Imperator, etc. As much as I like those games, I never could get into civ, despite owning both 5 and 6. This video was entertaining enough and interesting enough to make me want to try it again.
this is a compelling, clearly articulated, and thoughtful analysis. I really appreciate the work that went into this!
I don't play civ 6 much, but i do believe that someone could make a program that analyzes saves and for each scouting moves make a pourcentage of efficiency. And so the moderation could simply put the save file in there and verify each players accuracy.
I certainly hope this doesn't happen again in any scene.
Have a good day :)
Your dedication to the community is unparalleled, bravo!
What an amazing example of what an investigation is. In depth analysis, good sample size and even reviewing the defense the cheater provided. Well done!
I have been praying on Andrews downfall tbh
Kino is served
didn't know CSI is getting a reboot
I dont play Civ6 in multiplayer, but it seems like a database of savefiles would be a really good addition to you guys' server, im sure it could be somehow automated and would be great if new cheaters were to pop up to have solid information on games
Wait Herson is your pfp a cute Taliyah icon? If so, extremely based
Considering Herson was a challenger level Taliyah main...
bullshit
Andrew simply has a superb gaming chair
and every first turn on every game he takes his time to adjust it to the map he is given
Much awaited vid
Also you didn’t mention that he insulted my religion and two days later god smited him 🙏🤙🤙
For the record, he also said I would chose the wife beating pantheon.
@@hamhead88ur religion is more dishonest than adrew will ever be
@@hamhead88your religion is islam?
I really appreciate you making this vid and seeing the methodology of detection as well as what it looks like when a player is scamming their community. As Karl Jobst says, “cheaters are essentially time thieves”.
I don’t play civ6 multi but I would be a bit too happy to see this player removed from the community.
I like this sort of content, even the drama side of it. Was there any backlash, any Andrew apologists causing trouble? What’s Andrew doing now?
Andrew aside, what other cheats were found and handled?
Mark Zuckerberg 1v1 when
This reminds me of when I watched one of your 5 month old vods and someone mentioned Andrew only making 1 scout instead of 2, I suppose you don’t need the second one if you alrea know where everything is
Idk much about cpl but I play casually with AI and I almost always got a scout into Warrior into Settler XD didn’t know two scouts was so broken
@@fosterwalrus8413 they usually have very few barbs plus the ai starts with extra stuff so you kinda need the barb for single player
@@fosterwalrus8413barbs in cpl are much more civilized compared to single player ones lol it makes sense to make warrior first
I usually bank on finding a 2nd scout with my 1st. Not saying this is a good strategy or anything. But I def don't need 3 which is what ends up happening
Excellent video! Thank you for taking the time to perform this investigation.
Now i wanna see the replay when ToA was snagged out from under you when he was playing as Canada. Absolute bull that hes done this for so long to so many people.
damn you andrew...
Man I love bombshell documentaries that are well-communicated in such a manner that a *complete outsider* can process the information. Take my algorithmbucks.
He's not the only one.
Should look at the outliers of hut, cs, and wonder finds in civreplay for anyone who enters the top 25.
Thank you (and others) for the many hours you put into investigating this and for explaining this to the community!
Always encouraging to see mods being so diligent
I thought Herson's comments about Andrew were made in a joking manner between friendly rivals, but now I see Herson wasn't joking at all.
Solid video.
You tracing scout moves did prompt the idea that there exists perfect scout moves, and a tool could be built to determine them, both with perfect and using only known information. Almost like a chess engine. Improving scouting play in general.
Karl jobst needs to get on this. What a wild ride
This investigation is impressive! I hope people from other mp games are taking notes
If they had put even a little effort into obfuscating their actions, this would have been impossible to find.
Scout while it loads, adjusting later, to reduce delay.
Path to high terrain for vision, and flat terrain for distance, before committing, even if it eats up a few turns.
Always moving scouts first into an area before settlers.
Building extra scouts just to clear fog.
Sure, it might cost a few games in the long run, but still would have provided enough advantage to keep the top spot.
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.
If the competitive scene wanted to curb this activity, ranked local save games could be limited to the movement range of units each turn, with a server hosting the complete map.
This would prevent use of replay or map vision tools, as well as providing an archive of every game, resolving two issues with one auditable solution.
I'd be more worried about sporadic cheating, where they use some of the map, some of the time, and just have an advantage over the rest of the player base. Unless there just isn't an advantage to be had by being less optimal, I think anyone who is determined to cheat can end up having some plausible deniability.
Should have just made a dis rap track in response instead of the investigation review 😅 Great vid, keep it up
These videos on the competitive side of civ is really interesting. Who actually first raised the suspicions? Was it one of the admins, or were there accusations from the community?
great as video, ur getting really good at commentary videos, very wel though out and stil fun, enjoyed it!
Impressive that you followed sound legal practice, and did a proper investigation.
Shows how much the team cares about the scene.
It is, however, quite a lot of work. Just one of these anomalous routes that turn out perfectly, is such a statistical anomaly, that it would be reasonable to ban for one such instance.
Getting a perfect 20 turn route, where there are 3 equally rational moves each turn, is one in a houndred quintillion.
Having it happen twice in a row, is one in ten undecillion.
Three times in a row, is less likely than one to [the number of atoms in the known universe].
Wild! He’s 28% more efficient at finding goodie huts, yet his choice of scouting movements are suboptimal compared to other pro civ players (because he B-lines through rough terrains and squeezes through risky mountain passes). Absolutely damning evidence.
I'd heard it was obvious but not OBVIOUS obvious jesus H christ
13:05 That move is so obvious with hindsight. 10/10 times you would move towards the horses here as they only cost 1 movement. Instead he moves down towards the mountains where his next tile is guaranteed to cost 2 movement, and sure enough that was necessary for him to find the tribal village just out of sight of the horses
That Mali game from 2 months ago suddenly makes a whole lot of sense. This guy was far more evil than we suspected.
was kinda hoping you'd touch on his simming abilities too
I also used this cheat during many games, Andrew makes basically the same illogical moves as me, moving the warrior straight to the nearest hut, cs or wonder, when you play without the civ replay cheat you notice the difference, after a time playing with this cheat it becomes very difficult to play without it, I also noticed that over time the game becomes boring.
i get good drama and guide to scouting in one
well worth the time spent watching this
Reminds me a lot of the process for detecting cheaters using engines in Chess. Consistent statistical anomalies and players seen to be making "engine moves" - moves that it would be unnatural for a player to make.
Bro...imagine seeing the entire map in CiV 6. The funniest part of the entire 6+ hours game is literally first 50 turns. Finding out where to settle a few cities and wobders and huts and barbs and other civs. Like if I saw entire map I would not have fun in the slightest....
Me scouting: I go this way
Herson: Any sensible player would go that (other) way
Me: Yes yes! What was I thinking. Ofc I would go that way
As someone who found your channel recently - this is kinda funny. Andrew’s been the villain of the satirical videos for a while and it turns out he’s a proven cheat.
It’s kinda sad. I think Andrew could have been a top 10 CPL player without cheating. I know folks are going to dog pile his actual skill for cheating - but as you pointed out the way he was keeping at the top of the leaderboard was by making the best possible moves. He just had an information advantage. And that’s still huge - but I don’t think that alone would get like the 120th best player in the world to hold rank 1 for a huge stretch of time. He had to skill to be one of the best and that wasn’t enough for him.
I kinda hope he just did it for the money. Because if it’s an ego thing then the man needs therapy.
thats so true. even if i had as much information as him, i wouldnt be able to be 1st rank for years 😭 that guy is talented, such a shame that he decided to cheat
You see that a lot in speedrunners too; People who know what they're doing and would do well without the cheats, but do so to give themselves the advantage they can't overcome.
Taking a month off because your cheats aren't working says enough, he only cared about holding top slot not about just playing and enjoying the game.
wow, the end of an era...
that why its called era
Goodbye Andrew 👋 see you never again
Setting the playback speed to 1.25 makes this sound like a normal person talking at normal speed, instead of the deliberately slow speech trend that TH-cam essay and docu creators adopt.
4:00 absolute best Zhangye spawn 2024
I appreciate how professional the investigation was conducted.
But just out of curiosity, can his rebuttal be used as evidence against him? Sure he clearly doctored screenshots but would that follow under "contempt of court"? 🤣
“Illegal trade deals” because no government has ever done that 😂
Civ so realistic multi-player lobbies recreat Iran-Contra
I don't even play cpl but those scouting principles are just so obvious to even casuals it's crazy the way he moves. I'm happy for yall getting rid of him.
straight up hilarious, nobody is gonna stop you from reaching rank 1 now
Great work
They changed his mod tag to inquisitor for this.
Wow, he really dug himself in with the appeal. Providing nothing but vague statements would have probably served him better than that car crash of an argument.
Incredible ending to the Andrew saga. What a sad person
It seems like this particular exploit could be presented by a turn timer for the first 15-25 turns. By the time they load a turn 1 save, enough turns will have gone by that it will be of limited use.
Sounds like CPL should start collecting save files for their ranked games that are recorded. Randomly poll multiple participants to ensure no individual or group can game the system by submitting modified saves.
who would pay for that??
Gotta be honest
Ain't no way this guy didn't do this on purpose. Like, JESUS CHRIST! Streaming all the games and cheating during almost all of them? Taking a sus break when cheating didn't work? Fucking faking evidence against people who are dedicated enough to look at dozens of hours of gameplay?
I'm actually kind of surprised it took him this long to get caught.
I don't know what made him do this( some people have hard lives and any bit of recognition can be good for them.) but this just feels bad. Whilst also being hilarious.
19:10 is the best proof of cheating in this video. Very unnatural patterns.
this video is sadly gonna be biggest thing to come out of civ 6 mp
It is so unfathomably cringe to edit screenshots in your ban appeal and subsequently proving youre guilty just by yourself.
God this is awkward.
9:40 there also tend to be more goody huts in tundra
The next move is for other pro players to start making those same unnatural, inefficient scouting moves and see if they get the same kind of rewards.