It's no secret to many of you that Ertug has resurfaced yet again. Well, it seems like he may still be cheating too (big shock, I know). Following on from a post I made in a different thread with a couple of screenshots, I felt it worthwhile reviewing the entire game that came from so people can have a better idea of the context.
Attached is the recording of that hideout game, played against cloud the other day (18th April), and there are some suspicious moments during the game which I will highlight here. I'll score each moment from 1 to 10 with how suspicious I think it is: 1 = minorly odd, but could easily just be coincidence, might happen with any high level player; 10 = I cannot think of a plausible explanation for this behaviour.
Dark Age:
00:01:20 - Scouts around the outside looking for deer, none visible in line of sight. Clears one spot, then moves around to the next, goes past the most obvious location and finds them a bit round the corner in a slightly unusual spot, but still plausible. Some players might have gone to the opposite side of the base before checking this spot, but not completely ridiculous. 1/10
00:08:45 - Opts to play maa-towers (perfectly normal, especially against Turks). Doesn't scout opponent and happens to choose to go the short route to cloud's base round the outside. Not outright dodgy, but certain fortuitous. If not Ertug, would probably just describe this as 'lucky'. 2/10
Feudal Age:
00:13:20 - Having broken in, forced walls and towers on gold and taken cloud of berries, Ertug chooses not to scout further in with his still full-hp scout. Instead, he opts to break out of the base here and move further round. Meanwhile cloud has walled off and started towering his stone which is out of Ertug's LoS. Feels odd that Ertug wouldn't use his scout to gather more info on the base layout here so he can decide whether a tower would be good, especially as he has full control of this section of the base. 5/10
The game then enters a relatively normal phase, with cloud castling a couple of towers and Ertug trying to get some stone walls up on the side to buy time against Janissaries.
Castle Age:
00:23:00 - Ertug gets a monastery up and starts collecting relics. This is a great moment to enter view lock (this rec is from Ertug's PoV, so it should work relatively reliably). He takes his monk and tasks it into a patch of fog of war on the west side of the map. The is a relic towards the south-west of cloud's base which he might reasonably want to target, given he has some vision of this area of the map. Instead, he seems to task the monk through the FoW to exactly where a relic is hidden. On view lock, he never returns to this monk whilst it is heading this direction until it has already picked up the relic. It would be plausible if he had had to double-back with the monk after spotting the relic on the minimap, but there's absolutely no indication that this is what happened. Only slightly plausible explanation would be view lock being broken. 9/10
00:25:20 - Ertug's base gets castle-dropped, taking him off two gold piles. He runs some vills up towards his TC on the north-east of his base, then goes beyond and places a mining camp. There is nothing visible in his scouting for him to place this mining camp next to, but remove the FoW and it happens to be perfectly placed to efficiently gather from a three-tile gold. There is categorically no plausible explanation for this. 10/10
00:28:20 - He has now got a third relic coming back to his base, sends a monk out to look for a fourth (he knows the fifth is inaccessible because of cloud's castle and army). There are a couple of plausible spots the relic might be, most likely in either the west corner or south corner of the map. He ignores the west corner (by far the biggest unexplored area for him at this point) and sends his monk to the south of cloud's base, tasking it to about five tiles beyond the relic through the FoW. Feels lucky, and a bit odd to ignore a big area of the map unexplored, but perhaps would not merit mention if done by a clean player. 4/10
00:31:15 - cloud is breaking further in and Ertug evaucates some villagers for TCs round the side, whilst sending a group up to the north corner of the map. He very quickly finds a neutral stone. Not implausible that someone would search for neutral resources here, given how empty the rest of the west side of the map is, but certainly very convenient that he found the stone so straightforwardly. 5/10
I am the first to admit that my judgement when dealing with Ertug will always be tainted by his past, and so it's possible to see gremlins where there may be none (e.g. the unscouted maa-towers, finding the neutral stone), however there are a couple of moments in this game which categorically do not feel plausible.
Included below is a list of all the accounts recognised by aoe2.net as Ertug's, for tracking purposes:
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9687739
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9599374
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9792453
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9888746
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9926868 (the account used for the game detailed above)
https://aoe2.net/#profile-10041821
Attached is the recording of that hideout game, played against cloud the other day (18th April), and there are some suspicious moments during the game which I will highlight here. I'll score each moment from 1 to 10 with how suspicious I think it is: 1 = minorly odd, but could easily just be coincidence, might happen with any high level player; 10 = I cannot think of a plausible explanation for this behaviour.
Dark Age:
00:01:20 - Scouts around the outside looking for deer, none visible in line of sight. Clears one spot, then moves around to the next, goes past the most obvious location and finds them a bit round the corner in a slightly unusual spot, but still plausible. Some players might have gone to the opposite side of the base before checking this spot, but not completely ridiculous. 1/10
00:08:45 - Opts to play maa-towers (perfectly normal, especially against Turks). Doesn't scout opponent and happens to choose to go the short route to cloud's base round the outside. Not outright dodgy, but certain fortuitous. If not Ertug, would probably just describe this as 'lucky'. 2/10
Feudal Age:
00:13:20 - Having broken in, forced walls and towers on gold and taken cloud of berries, Ertug chooses not to scout further in with his still full-hp scout. Instead, he opts to break out of the base here and move further round. Meanwhile cloud has walled off and started towering his stone which is out of Ertug's LoS. Feels odd that Ertug wouldn't use his scout to gather more info on the base layout here so he can decide whether a tower would be good, especially as he has full control of this section of the base. 5/10
The game then enters a relatively normal phase, with cloud castling a couple of towers and Ertug trying to get some stone walls up on the side to buy time against Janissaries.
Castle Age:
00:23:00 - Ertug gets a monastery up and starts collecting relics. This is a great moment to enter view lock (this rec is from Ertug's PoV, so it should work relatively reliably). He takes his monk and tasks it into a patch of fog of war on the west side of the map. The is a relic towards the south-west of cloud's base which he might reasonably want to target, given he has some vision of this area of the map. Instead, he seems to task the monk through the FoW to exactly where a relic is hidden. On view lock, he never returns to this monk whilst it is heading this direction until it has already picked up the relic. It would be plausible if he had had to double-back with the monk after spotting the relic on the minimap, but there's absolutely no indication that this is what happened. Only slightly plausible explanation would be view lock being broken. 9/10
00:25:20 - Ertug's base gets castle-dropped, taking him off two gold piles. He runs some vills up towards his TC on the north-east of his base, then goes beyond and places a mining camp. There is nothing visible in his scouting for him to place this mining camp next to, but remove the FoW and it happens to be perfectly placed to efficiently gather from a three-tile gold. There is categorically no plausible explanation for this. 10/10
00:28:20 - He has now got a third relic coming back to his base, sends a monk out to look for a fourth (he knows the fifth is inaccessible because of cloud's castle and army). There are a couple of plausible spots the relic might be, most likely in either the west corner or south corner of the map. He ignores the west corner (by far the biggest unexplored area for him at this point) and sends his monk to the south of cloud's base, tasking it to about five tiles beyond the relic through the FoW. Feels lucky, and a bit odd to ignore a big area of the map unexplored, but perhaps would not merit mention if done by a clean player. 4/10
00:31:15 - cloud is breaking further in and Ertug evaucates some villagers for TCs round the side, whilst sending a group up to the north corner of the map. He very quickly finds a neutral stone. Not implausible that someone would search for neutral resources here, given how empty the rest of the west side of the map is, but certainly very convenient that he found the stone so straightforwardly. 5/10
I am the first to admit that my judgement when dealing with Ertug will always be tainted by his past, and so it's possible to see gremlins where there may be none (e.g. the unscouted maa-towers, finding the neutral stone), however there are a couple of moments in this game which categorically do not feel plausible.
Included below is a list of all the accounts recognised by aoe2.net as Ertug's, for tracking purposes:
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9687739
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9599374
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9792453
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9888746
https://aoe2.net/#profile-9926868 (the account used for the game detailed above)
https://aoe2.net/#profile-10041821