Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

The cheat notification comes up from time to time when no-one has done anything bad. It's a bug, I'd say. Mostly when it comes up in MP games I tell players to ignore it.

One thing that can cause it is capturing an enemy fort which had build orders. When you cancel the orders you get gold back - the game can't work out where the gold came from, so you get the cheat warning.

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

This is different, though. It happened at the first ever hosting, and it specifically said that the pretender data wasn't right. The error message maybe should have stated, WHICH pretenders were the ones that are suspected of cheating, in order to check it. Or just look at every nation that got it.

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

The way the cheat detection interacts with pretenders assigned in the map file has been ecplained in detail in the mapedit.pdf in the docs folder. Look it up. It's in the God Commands section.

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

Thanks for all the feedback. However, none of us has ever downloaded a mod. In fact, we don't even know how we would do that. We've always played the vanilla game. Three of us in fact installed the game from scratch on new computers to play this scenario. We just patched to 3.21, downloaded the Arduria map I listed above, and I set up host. And, to make matters more mysterious, I played my pretender on this map before, without triggering cheat protection, but I was one of the three players who showed up as "cheating" on turn 0 (i.e., before any of us issued any orders). One of the players is playing on a Mac. Could that be the problem??

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

It shouldn't be. Could it be that (some of) the pretenders were made in an older patch version? That's the only thing I can think of.

You could just play it safe and turn cheat protection off. You can change it from the same page as independent strength. Since you're all family and the cheating isn't simple to do in any case, it shouldn't matter.

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

You didnt load off the same Dom3 CD did you?

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

This is a good one. If you loaded a saved god that you made before applying the patch it is possible that the game might think it's cheating. If you think this may have happened, try making a new game and make new pretenders for it.

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

yes, the various "cheating" players may have loaded old gods that are no longer legal under a new patch, or else the one hosting the game isn't on the proper patch.

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

I think the problem may be that one of my players may have screwed up patching his Mac version of Dom 3 to 3.21. He said it required many steps. Is that correct?

I've posted this query separately in case some Mac user has advice:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...063#post661063

Re: Please help: Cheat detection problem
 

Guys, thank you for all the sage advice. Turns out my son created his pretender and *then* patched. Not sure why this didn't show up when we ran a 2-player test.