Accused:
TheScorp86
Sir Francis
Pupperston
The accused are suspected of:
Being Multis (could also just be secret diplomacy, but multis seems more likely)
Game number(s):
Game 19947688
Comments:
This is a combination of several circumstancial oddities. The game above (in first nations americas) contained me (yellow), the players I'm accusing and one other uninvolved player (OnYourShore; red). I happened to get a very lucky start, controlling the chilean bonus at the southern tip of the map, so I tried to go about consolidating it. On turn 1, Pupperston (pink) threw himself at my stack of 6 in Te'uesh, despite controlling only one region in the whole area and as such not having any realistic hope of gaining control over the south, instead only slowing down both our progress (rather pointless at that stage, I'd think). In itself this is fine, I don't presume to have perfect strategical knowledge myself, nor do I assume every poor play to be an act of secret diplomacy. I took out his presence in Selk'nam and didn't see him again until turn 4, when I took Haurpe from Sir Francis (which he had reinforced despite not fighting in the area; I can't remember if he also tried to attack me from it). Pupperston then proceeded to attack my stack of 7 in Haurpe from his original 3 in Araucanians (once again, his only region in the vicinity) and managed to push me back. Still fine, I could understand him seeing me as a threat at this point since TheScorp86 (green) hadn't spiralled out of control yet.
What first raised my suspicions was turn 5. This time I had 8 troops in Haurpe and Pupperston had 1 in Araucanians, so he could no longer stop my advance. At this point TheScorp86, however, who had completely ignored me so far, attacked Haurpe instead, and pushed me back. To contextualize why I found this suspicious: up until this point, TheScorp86 had been taking provinces almost exclusively from Sir Francis and Pupperston, at a surprisingly rapid pace. Neither of the latter two had, however, taken a single province from the prior (retrospectively, neither Sir Francis nor Pupperston took a single province from TheScorp86 in the whole game, despite him having by far the highest deployment count from round 6 to round 13, when the game ended). TheScorp86 had also just gained his first large bonus (the arctic) on his previous turn, so Pupperston (and potentially also Sir Francis) arguably bought him time to deal with my advance. Notably, his own advance also continued unchecked in the north even though most of his deployment that turn went on attacking me. This could all still just be a combination of poor luck, misjudgements from some and good situational awareness from TheScorp86, which is why I decided to do some research.
The current tally for Sir Francis and Pupperston:
Sir Francis: 25 games completed or active. 0 wins.
Pupperston: 27 games completed or active. 3 wins.
Shared games: 24 (17 with TheScorp86)
Wins in shared games without TheScorp86 (6 completed): Pupperston: 3, Sir Francis: 0
Wins in shared games with TheScorp86 (15 completed): Pupperston: 0, Sir Francis: 0, TheScorp86: 14
That brings Pupperstons winning percentage in shared games with Sir Francis but without TheScorp86 to 50%, as opposed to his winning percentage of 0% in the rest of his games. Arguably even more striking is TheScorp86's winning percentage of 93% in the triplet's shared games, as opposed to his 23% winning percentage in his other games.
In another shocking twist of fate, both Pupperston's and Sir Francis' accounts were made on the same day; March 18th, 2020.
It seemed fairly obvious at this point what was going on, but I wanted one more piece of proof to feel comfortable in making an accusation. To get it, I had to do something unsportsmanlike, which I apologize for; I intentionally stopped taking my turns in the game to see how the three of them would react.
All three left me a rating of one star across the board. Understandable as a singular reaction, suspicious under the current circumstances (Notice also that OnYourShore, the fifth player in the game, left me no rating whatsoever). More so considering Pupperston and Sir Francis used the exact same tags in their ratings: Slow, Rude, Sore loser, Quitter. TheScorp86 added some variety to the mix with Slow, Sore loser, Coward, Vindictive, which at this point seems like a red herring more than anything else.
With all of the above combined, I'll be very surprised if there's nothing more than coincidence going on here.
