Accused of "rigging" the game. Is this even possible?

[nevermindme]

I was just playing a game with someone who after the first 10 or so moves, got mad and said I was rigging the game and resigned. I can't understand what happened. They bought a bunch of militias, I kept using moats. That's all I can think of. It's possible the opponent was just being a sore loser, but I'm curious whether it's actually even possible for someone to rig the game this way?

[Ingix]

As far as I understand, no.

It's not like your browser is doing the card shuffling and can be manipulated into always giving you a Moat. All that happens on the server.

Unlike other games that are at least partially based on physical reflexes and work in some version of real time, this game is "slow" and turn based, meaning it doesn't care if you choose what to discard to Milita now or in one hour (your opponent will care, of course). Until you make that decision, the game is stopped and nothing is necessary to "keep it going" for the other player.

Of course, any kind of protocol can have weaknesses, it isn't impossible that sending malformed data to the server will cause something strange to happen. But "rigging the cards you hav in hand" seems very implausible to me.

[josh bornstein]

The only way I can think of to "rig" a game is if you hand-picked all the cards (or a group of cards) for a kingdom, to create a game that you were very very skilled in playing.  But nothing in your post suggests that this was the issue in your case, right?

(I have seen games like that, but it's usually completely up-front.  'Oh, this is gonna be a Duke/Duchy game.'  "Oh, this might be a Gardens game.")

[Question to Ingix/others: If someone has set up a game and I'm thinking of joining; is there a way for me to see, in advance, what cards (if any) have been hand-picked, kingdoms that have been excluded, etc.?  I've always been the one setting up the games in my own matches...and all of those have been completely randomized cards, from all kingdoms.  So, I have no idea what the other person actually can or cannot see, as part of the matching process.]

[Ingix]

It looks like this when you are joining a table:



I handpicked 3 cards, made 3 more cards come from a specific expansion each, there will be at most one landscape card and I excluded Alchemy (which is not easy to see because it just lists all allowed).

[josh bornstein]

Thanks Ingix,
Good to see.  So, I guess one *can* rig a game . . . but it's totally above-board and apparent to all other players.  So, not really "rigging," which sort of implies some hidden activities to me.