16MAY24 Bugfixes: Siege, Blockade, Occupy

This is an egregious twisting of the facts.

RE/Iron landed coordinated sieges from the result of months of intelligence gathering and weeks of planning. When the GMs reviewed what we did and how (with all supporting evidence) they classified it as “metagaming”. SMA tried to counter siege and landed 1 siege to the north square of xOutragedPandax’s city “18.Lilly Pad” which was instantly hit with cav, losing 2/3rds of their forces with more cav hours away from hitting the SMA siege. That SMA siege was recalled and then 3 SMA cheat sieges (2 test and 1 real) were sent that landed inside of Eagle’s city of Puffin. SMA was unable to land a non-cheat counter siege and needed to go under the UI to land sieges inside of Puffin, two test sieges clearly shows this was 100% intentional.

RE/Iron’s plan was to slowly siege the town of Puffin, forcing SMA to either lose it or spend vast amounts of prestige to keep it alive. We had half a million cav on standby to kill any counter sieges (which we did just that), we did not have it on standby to attack a town with a level 20 wall. Our plan was to spend the next two weeks hitting the town of Puffin with elites as we needed to kill SMA troops with favorable ratios due to our size difference, not send wave after wave of 100k cav into a lvl 20 wall to kill a cheat siege. The cheat siege that landed inside of Puffin threatened one of our two main sieges and moved up our timeline from 2 weeks to 5 days. When this happened support tickets were immediately made, and RE/Iron held off for DAYS (under an active cheat siege mind you) awaiting the official outcome. During this time RE/Iron was forced to use large amounts of cav to kill off the cats/rams inside the cheat siege and RE/Iron also held off on sending a large block due to knowing SMA cheated and that the GMs would punish them for it. The official outcome of the investigation was…

the claim that Eliza J and Duramax sent "impossible" sieges against the city of Lilly Pad whose siege armies set up in the square occupied by the friendly city of Puffin -- was meticulously researched within the game data point by point against the timeline that you provided. What we found is that those sieges were sent using the provided UI that all players have access to. There is no evidence that Eliza J, Duramax, or any other SMA member engaged in manipulation of the game's code underneath the persistent UI. SMA achieved their siege scenarios by using an aspect of the user interface that didn't invalidate access to the siege command in the UI when it should have

…

So, the official investigation came to the conclusion that SMA did not cheat, which we all now know to be false due to SMAs own claims within this forum (SMA has admitted it went under the UI to cheat). RE/Iron already knew SMA cheated as we understood the game's mechanics, so Iron sent the remote block to not only prove a point but to fight fire with fire. The Iron block only existed due to the devs not acting against SMA OR that the devs were lied to about the true origin of SMAs cheat siege. Put another way, the Devs first told us that SMA’s siege was allowed. We were flabbergasted. So Iron sent the remote block. Only after Iron sent the remote block did the Devs change their position on what was allowed. 

My question to the devs on this matter is this, did SMA initially lie to you about how they achieved their siege or did you believe it best to not tell the truth and bury it? Because the official response I received on the matter clearly states that “There is no evidence that Eliza J, Duramax, or any other SMA member engaged in manipulation of the game’s code underneath the persistent UI.” Which we all know is false. This false statement is also 100% the reason Iron’s remote block happened as it used the same exact method SMA used to achieve the impossible.

Also to add to that, I would be willing to accept that the GMs don’t interfere with an ongoing battle even if there was cheating involved except that the GMs directly interfered with the very next RE/Iron vs. SMA fight to SMA’s benefit. When SMA was attacking Iron’s city, Iron managed to kill 2 out of 3 blocks. This left the last block on the town standing but broken as it would not block incoming caravans. Multiple times Iron was able to kill the smaller blocks while letting the big broken block just exist and then send in caravans to pres build. GM Duran addressed this issue promptly and even though he said “the blocking mechanic is working the same as it always has” he still put in a hot fix that made SMA’s broken block work again. This action directly contributed to SMA getting the raze and then recalling forces to dodge our cav that was about to hit their sieges, thus allowing them to continue further operations in the area.

The fallout of this inaction from the devs during SMAs cheat siege has caused RE/Iron to reposition as we rebuild cav and has left a huge opening for SMA to move towns at a faster pace than before. This inaction occurred either because SMA lied to the GMs about the origin of their cheat siege (thus buying them more time and leading to Iron’s long-distance block), or the GMs lied to RE/Iron at the conclusion of their investigation. Which is it?