http://web.archive.org/.../earth/tourney/champs.htm

Link = fail

Well that sux ... was working when I posted it.

Ok so now I can only offer a couple of screenshots from the page.
http://tinypic.com/m/eu2a02/2
http://tinypic.com/m/eu2a03/2
Not sure why the there are months missing in the one.
Maybe the Wayback Machine will be up again soon ;(

Back up. A lot of familiar names there.

I remember when Illini put up that perfect $101,101,101

I never had a clue how he did it.

no

I remember that. I was in the same game and thought that he had found a way to hack into the servers, but the prevailing theory at the time was that he exploited a market bug which allowed him to place the same goods on the market repeatedly.

Those who made this claim stated that he executed this bug by using more than one browser to place goods on the market (same amount of units and same price) at the same time. Apparently, if this was done fast enough it would trick the server into putting all the goods on market but the player would only lose units in one of the orders, so instead of having 1 order of 1000 tech points on the market, he would have 2000 or 3000 tech points on the market, but he would only lose 1000 tech points.

I never bought that theory since it seemed too simplistic.

That was around the same time as the in game alliance bug, but it couldn't have been pulled off like that in tourney.

I think Illini was one of several countries run by one person.

The Dark Sphere
**************
Niitaka

The countries listed above were also acting strangely, if I remember correctly. They'd make huge jumps out of nowhere and then one of the other ones would follow suit.

They were either receiving foreign aid or they were doing market buyouts.

$100+ Million is possible if you run several countries. In Oct, 2001, Everclear reached $60 Million (one of JonnyBlaze's many countries) and the networth value had changed since Illini's top score so the $60 Million NW is the more impressive of the two.

At the time Jonnyblaze was bragging about running multies in the tournament. A lot of names that appear on that page are of countries run by cheaters. It's probably the same now.

Now that you mention it, I vaguely remember that there was funny business with Niitaka. My memory is hazy.

With multiple countries, the in-game ally bug could have been a big exploit in such a small pool of players, but you would have needed 3-4 countries in Game A to pull it off. You would still have to be good to get it lined up.

I think there is a lot less cheating in tourney now than there was back then. I personally have not seen any indications

*agree...

It was a private market bug that he used. A variation of of abusing the $2bil limit.

That quick selling bug wasn't really useful. Mehul "fixed" it rather quicky by doing a blanket fix of wiping out identical sell lots if listed at same price.

It's why later on people wouldn't store common round amounts of food since they could disapear.

Ie: storing 100,000,000 bushels for 300. so many people would do it they'd all lose the bushels. and the bushels would just be deleted.

So it started being common for people to instead sell 100,004,219 type amounts.

I remember having to store bushels at 150,000,952 for 471 a bushel.

You needed a weird price as well.

And as a side note, it was amazing to me that one single un-named alliance was the one to find every bug there was out there. It was like they had a team that worked at finding exploits.

Heh over half were all the same player even. Good old Corleone

Dallas Cowboys
QuiKSilveR

was Johnny Blaze

Radar, Mijn Feyenoord and others were part of a group of players/multies that would FA one to the top.... 'the dutch bunch?' i think.

July 2003 jackwongPWNSyou - this was a favorite win for alot of people.... Jackwong was one of the better tourney players going around, and he always seemed to have reset ruined. He also played 888T888 TeNniSboyIsBaCk

Stardust - That's Stardust from LCN

i like to know how to do this hahahaa

I was pretty sure Illini was doing the market bug. I used to do commie starts and then somehow use two browsers to get a free revolution later.

hehe

really? you can get a free revolution later without the 14% penalty?

tell me how exactly do you do it!!

It was a long time ago, I don't remember anymore, and the bug is fixed a long time ago as well I'm sure. I think maybe all it involved was opening a second window and doing the revolution on the second window.

Ahh, the good old days..
http://web.archive.org/...earth/primary/jan00/k.htm
http://web.archive.org/...earth/primary/oct99/j.htm

Yes: September 2002, same name than my current tournament country
September 2000, same name than my current primary country

wow, this brings back old memory. I played for a bit back in 1998-2002 (under a different alias) and then from 2008-2009 (using my current alias). It was so much harder to get a top5 in tournament game A then compared to now lol.

I played these countries:
June 1999 - Noriko 4th
January 2000 - I Like Chio Bu 3rd
October 2000 - Zi Wei Xiao Yan Zi 2nd
August 2008 - EMAPPL 4th
September 2008 - EMAPPL 5th
November 2008 - EMAPPL 1st

Yes it was much harder for top 5 but at least I could won it once ...
(September 2000 - Dark side of the moon - 1st)
(September 2002 - Lands of hope 5th)

I played a little back in the late 1990s and early 2000s again. It did feel a lot tougher, but then again I was significantly younger and significantly dumber back then, haha. Also there was quite a bit of cheating back then

I could barely stay in game A by the skin of my teeth back then. A 9th or 10th place finish at best. It is much easier now.

I see one of the old country names I remember from the 90s, and that is on that list and won a set, just popped up for the first time in game A this set. Played in EoS back then.

I pretty much stayed in A too, but didn't become immortalized (make top 5) until the very last set @ OMac. Unfortunately, the wayback machine doesn't have that one.
Yes, it was harder to make top 5 back then. Besides the cheating and bug exploiting there were more players in each game.


I don't know how the changes @ EE have affected your strats but changing the max sell rate & the addition of the reduce expenses bonus have both helped CI to be more competitive end of set. ;D