AOE-II Monk macros (cheats) are becoming increasingly popular

[i_no_english]

What happens with the faith % of monks when 5 monks convert 1 unit? Will there be 1 monk with 0% and 4 monks with 100% or will they all have 80%?

 

[_VM_]

24 cyan

 

[DreamingFighter]

What happens with the faith % of monks when 5 monks convert 1 unit? Will there be 1 monk with 0% and 4 monks with 100% or will they all have 80%?

At the beginning all monks lose their faith, then in Imp there is a tech to upgrade so that only one monk lose faith. Don't know that tech's name though, as I always have to look for it in-game )

 

[Haiyti]

It's a deselection script. You bind multiple actions on one key. Shift ,auto-movement of your cursor and select a monk by spamming just one key. You can keep watching over enemy units and click them without having to select ur monks yourself.

 

[Haiyti]

Anyways sad to see that aoc is still full of cheaters. I was planning on buying aoc again and learning new civs.

 

[i_no_english]

What happens with the faith % of monks when 5 monks convert 1 unit? Will there be 1 monk with 0% and 4 monks with 100% or will they all have 80%?

At the beginning all monks lose their faith, then in Imp there is a tech to upgrade so that only one monk lose faith. Don't know that tech's name though, as I always have to look for it in-game )

Ok then I feel like the monk deselecting micro is actually a bug (or a feature lol) because as soon as 5 monks start converting they should all lose at least 1% of faith which would make them unable to convert a second unit. The monks have all contributed to converting the first unit so it's more than fair that they lose faith. Please someone fix this in the next patch xD

 

[Brainless]

Regular monks are not THAT overpowered. If they are, I never seem to see it on any of the pro streams.

That macro, though...

monks themselves are OK, but mass converting is OP

 

[iViktorius]

What happens with the faith % of monks when 5 monks convert 1 unit? Will there be 1 monk with 0% and 4 monks with 100% or will they all have 80%?

At the beginning all monks lose their faith, then in Imp there is a tech to upgrade so that only one monk lose faith. Don't know that tech's name though, as I always have to look for it in-game )

Ok then I feel like the monk deselecting micro is actually a bug (or a feature lol) because as soon as 5 monks start converting they should all lose at least 1% of faith which would make them unable to convert a second unit. The monks have all contributed to converting the first unit so it's more than fair that they lose faith. Please someone fix this in the next patch xD

nope, thats not how monks work, none of the monks that did not convert the enemy unit "helped".

http://aok.heavengames.com/university/s ... ally-work/

tl;dr
extra monks only increase the chance of getting a fast conversion it doesnt actually increase the conversion speed, eg. 10 (unlucky) monks can statistically take just as long as a single monk that gets lucky.

 

[obi11]

Lmao ban this guy. It is legit a cheat.

 

[Klaus the Conqueror]

do they use an illegal mod to achieve monk macro? if so, it should be technically possible to avoid such a mod working on voobly

 

[Haiyti]

No it's very easy to script with autohotkey eg. Voobly needs an AC like sc2 that detects anything that is imitating mouseclicks. Before that rigged staffs need to clarify that it's cheating though lmao. Until that's achieved avoid playing turks and cyan

 

[T-West]

nope, thats not how monks work, none of the monks that did not convert the enemy unit "helped".

http://aok.heavengames.com/university/s ... ally-work/

tl;dr
extra monks only increase the chance of getting a fast conversion it doesnt actually increase the conversion speed, eg. 10 (unlucky) monks can statistically take just as long as a single monk that gets lucky.

The guide you linked is a bit outdated, there is an updated version here: https://www.aoczone.net/viewtopic.php?f=428&t=119879&p=470767

 

[hdimac]

Ideas:
a) Add a cost of 10 gold 10 food and 10 wood per converted unit.
b) Cut the converted unit's remaining hp in half.
c) Cut the maximum hp of the converted unit in half.
Maybe all of that at the same time? lol, conversion would still be efficient.

 

[Shmolagin]

I made Voobly administration aware of this ~1 year ago but they flat out refuse to do anything about it. This kind of stupidity is a perfect example of how lazy and out of touch they are.

 

[roggy]

that explains a lot lol. I knew something is wrong with that guy.

 

[bobdebuilder]

omg thats ridiculous wtf

 

[bobdebuilder]

this is why voobly level went down.... all this stupid mods and easy macros made blind people 2k++ and this post is one of the biggest examples.... just ridiculous how BF LEVEL is decreasing

 

[CZ_Mango]

Maybe scripter64 and the UP team might come with some idea how to prevent it and implement it in next release of UP? Seems like the only way how to get rid of it for good. This is a serious issue for at least 2 years now. This is also the reason why arena tgs basically vanished. Every time there was someone using this monkscript and in combination with FI for example with aztecs there was nothing to stop it. Now these ppl move to BF. Something really has to be done to stop this cheating.

 

[SouFire]

I complained about this few months ago, i saw some chileans doing it with insta conversions, so far there are several softwares that allow you to add macros, the own drivers for gaming mouses or keyboards those ones can not be detected by voobly.

The only way to fight this is reporting users and if there is stream add it and ask for a ban petition and also burn in public the player, but as we know the current voobly administration is out of business unless they come up with the brilliant idea of making premium the usage of macros :lol: and that my friends is possible.

 

[scripter64]

I'm guessing the reason this hasn't been resolved is not that Voobly doesn't care (it seems they blocked autohotkey?), but that this is a very difficult issue to check for, since it's essentially cross-process window message injection. I can't recall if there's any way for a process to determine whether a particular window message (like mouse move, click, etc.) came from within or was injected by a separate process in the background. UIPI was added in Windows Vista to block certain kinds of injection, but if the injection app is elevated, this may not help. From checking on google, it seems these macros exist for many other games including HD, DOTA2, and SC2.

The community might need to help the Voobly devs by reporting not just the fact that these injection apps exist, but the specific exes and names of these programs. It may then become possible to do something about it.

 

[NachoAoE]

Does someone have a list of players that do this? So i can avoid playing them?

 

[Brainless]

I'm guessing the reason this hasn't been resolved is not that Voobly doesn't care (it seems they blocked autohotkey?), but that this is a very difficult issue to check for, since it's essentially cross-process window message injection. I can't recall if there's any way for a process to determine whether a particular window message (like mouse move, click, etc.) came from within or was injected by a separate process in the background. UIPI was added in Windows Vista to block certain kinds of injection, but if the injection app is elevated, this may not help. From checking on google, it seems these macros exist for many other games including HD, DOTA2, and SC2.

The community might need to help the Voobly devs by reporting not just the fact that these injection apps exist, but the specific exes and names of these programs. It may then become possible to do something about it.

but what about changing the game structure like i suggested? Either cancel conversion if a monk group is changed, or change the effectiveness of consecutive conversions.

 

[scripter64]

That penalizes players who can perform the same commands quickly without a macro and would be a core gameplay change. It might be best to make another thread if you'd like to get focused feedback on that topic.

 

[Shmolagin]

I'm guessing the reason this hasn't been resolved is not that Voobly doesn't care (it seems they blocked autohotkey?), but that this is a very difficult issue to check for, since it's essentially cross-process window message injection.

It's a combination of only caring a little bit and being to delusional to admit they have a problem. They block autohotkey but they also refuse to even make a statement that it's even cheating. I gave them a list of some similar programs to autohotkey that could be blocked the same way already.

 

[scripter64]

A big part of the problem is likely that many official mouse driver packages like ms intellipoint include this kind of macro capability and taking action against that kind of driver software could cause even more problems. If modern games like SC2 haven't been able to fully block these macro apps, I imagine it's more difficult than one would expect and not simply negligence.

As for voobly not making a statement, I can't know for certain, but it might be due to "responsible reporting" practices that you can see with things like the recent WPA2 wifi exploit. The idea is to try to not publicize a bug or exploit until a fix has been made. The WPA2 exploit was discovered and privately reported several months ago to os/wifi devs. Only recently was it revealed to the public after a method of fixing it was established. The exploit was patched in windows about 2 weeks ago, before it went public. For the macro issue, unfortunately it seems that a method of reliably resolving the issue has not yet been found by the entire gaming industry on windows, so it may be unrealistic to expect a direct fix from voobly or HD and voobly making an industry-wide issue more well known without a fix may not be beneficial.

Shmolagin, if you or anyone has a link to the monk AHK script, it might help to see if the behavior could be detected by the game itself instead of watching for various exes in the background by name, which could easily be renamed or modified to avoid simple detection.