Cheats and Exploits

A recent announcement about fixing cheats and exploits by General Dogsworth, a community manager on the official Zynga E&A forums:

Ten-HUT!

We've received a lot of contacts from our players lately involving cheats and exploits. While we obviously don't encourage players to talk about exploits on the forums—to prevent them from spreading—we do still receive emails and notifications from players about this, as well as doing our own research.

The most recent batch of exploits has allowed some unscrupulous players to obtain high level units without paying for them. This is bad enough on its own, but when these same players use them in World Domination it can make them very difficult opponents.

We want you guys to know exactly what we're doing to address these exploits.

First, as of last week the exploit no longer works. We tracked down and identified the problem that allowed players to get ahold of these units illicitly.

Second, this week we will be going through and removing all of the units which were generated through this exploit. It will likely take a few days before they get cleaned out, but we have a record of every single unit that was generated through this exploit and every single one will be removed from the cheater's Empire without a refund.

Since one of the variants of the exploits involves gifting, there may be some of you who received an unsolicited unit as a gift that was generated by an exploit. No action will be taken against your account, but the exploited unit will be removed.

We encourage you to continue to contact us via PM if you encounter evidence of another exploit in the wild. We're committed to making sure that our game is fun for EVERYbody, not just for the cheaters.

DISMISSED!

I may add commentary later.

Source:
Cheats & Exploits - General Dogsworth, Feb. 28, 2012

Enemy AI Hit Rates

Some E&A players have complained that enemy AI units seem to have an unfair advantage in battle.  They allege that enemy AI units seem to get more than their fair share of direct and critical hits, even when the enemy unit is "poor" versus the player's unit.

General Dogsworth (a moderator on the official E&A forum) had this to say about enemy AI hit rates, dispelling the myth held by players:

"We usually don't talk much about the way that we make internal calculations about how damage is done, how the AI chooses its targets, etc. and this policy hasn't changed. However, since there has been a lot of confusion on this topic, I want to jump in and let you know one thing: There is no difference in the Glancing Blow/Direct Hit/Critical Hit rate between your units and the AI. You can certainly get a string of bad luck that causes you to lose a valuable unit or two—I know I have. But I've confirmed it with the development team: the code we use to calculate whether a hit is a Direct Hit, Glancing Blow, or Critical Hit is the same code, no matter whether it's you firing or the AI. 

In PVP invasions, we do take your opponent's upgrades into account. So if you're attacked by a neighbor who has researched the Accuracy upgrade for the units that he has invaded you with—or the units that you get as defenders when you invade your neighbor—those units WILL have increased Accuracy. But obviously any units that you've researched Accurace for will have the same bonus."

Personally, I believe there is a perception problem on the part of some E&A players.  Players don't usually use fighting units that are "poor" versus enemy units.  If they did, they would probably notice that direct and critical hits are not that rare in these situations.

Source of quote:

Enemy AI Hit Rates - General Dogsworth - Official E&A Forum