Hello Livonya, I had never played a Metaverse game. I never liked the one-dimensionality of it; the 'you have to play this way, and this way only, if you want to post a respectable score' aspect of it. Still don't. But in the spirit of camaraderie, I bit the bullet and started my first meta game, and if I may say so, I played brilliantly. It was perhaps the most perfect game I have ever played, and quite surprising to me, as I was playing completely outside of my normal style. When the game was finished, however, it wouldn't post to the meta. No cheat flag, it just wouldn't post. Was I upset? You bet I was. Many hours wasted. It turns out that it was a problem with updating during that game-the two versions didn't get along well. Nothing to do about it though.
That put me off for awhile, but I decided that I had to try again. I started another meta game, and again, it played out beautifully. A game and a score that I would be proud to post. But...just as I was in the 'mopping up' phase of the game, the messages started popping up on the forums about the cheat flags. OMFG, it's happened again.
I only use these examples to let you know that I understand and sympathize. I can be incredibly frustrating to do everything right(as far as you can tell) and still have the rug pulled out from under your feet. But I'm still here, and perhaps in time, I'll give the meta another go.
There are other things that to me, are just or even more upsetting than these two games. I play (primarily) as a Terran trader, and the nerfing of trades has just killed me. There are a few other issues, which I won't get into now, but the bottom line is - I'm still here. I truly believe that the people at Stardock are working as hard as they can to try and make this game as good as it possibly can be, and I have faith that soon, they will have it balanced and polished up.
Winning in 12 weeks or less will also trip the cheater flag.
Might there be a way to update this? Frogboy and Kryo can beat the game in 8 turns, with no cheats. This is only possible in a tiny galaxy, so perhaps an exception for the tiny galaxy? I would like to give this a shot myself, and if successful, be able to post it.
It would be nice if on load or save, the cheat flag was checked for
I think this is a very good idea. When the game first came out, there was no way to know whether or not you had 'tripped a flag' until the game had finished. Cari, thankfully, added a check to the setup portion of the game, which saved, I'm sure, countless cases of the type of frustration mentioned in this post. Perhaps it is time now to check, as you mentioned, every load. It wouldn't, by itself, stop the event, but it would allow a player to stop/save the game at the very point where it did happen, so that perhaps the root cause can be found.