An ironic thing: As memory serves, the Kzinti first figured out the Strategy of a Thousand Names (now best known as the Galactic Swindle?), first discovered by Purge, from an AAR Mumblefratz posted in the general section of the Galactic Core, where the strategy was used but not described. What I miss about this game was how even rivals were friendly and helped each other learn and develop their playing skills. We competed, but we also collaborated and respected each other. I hope that even as the game fades, that legacy will stay intact.
The intent of that post was indeed to give as much hint as possible to as many people as possible so that people could put two and two together and come up with four. I couldn't really expose everything directly because as I've said it was not mine to give in it's entirety even though I did in fact refine and extend the methodology significantly myself. But even then I was uncomfortable withholding something that made such a dramatic difference in potential scoring. Also DethAdder contributed quite a bit to the methodology and has never received appropriate credit. To the best of my knowledge it was DethAdder that came up with the modifications to the strategy required to get it to work in DA by adding trade fodder ships to the equation as well as discovering the requirement of having to let the state of war exist for a turn before performing the "swindle". KP just as clearly added his own twist to the strategy by adding the direct trading of tech for planets long before the final "swindle" was accomplished thus increasing player development.
I've always maintained that secrets really never stayed all that secret for all that long a period of time and I always viewed that as a good thing. Things that are kept in the dark for too long tend to rot and putrefy. There was always a balance between "empire secret" and a goodly amount of hints and outright discussion even if all it started out as was trying to sound out the other guy about how much of something they've figured out. I really doubt there's much that any one person is ultimately responsible for. There's always the germ of an idea that was supplied by someone else and extensions and improvements later added by many.
Also we were always able to openly discuss things that some folks felt might be on the edge in an open and mature way. I continually point out the initial discovery of the entire concept of ARC as something many people had reservations about and these concerns were addressed and treated as valid even by those that felt ARC was perfectly innocuous. Same with bugs like the planetary governor where a few folks wanted to take off and go with it but the bulk of the "community" quickly decided it was wrong and convinced pretty much everyone that it should not be used.
It was this ability to consider the concerns of any member of the community as potentially valid that we've seemed to have lost. If even I couldn't bring up a concern and have it reasonably and rationally discussed without essentially being shouted down, then who could?
