Please observe the play of my lovely grey teammate "canadiensnextyear."

http://WarLight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=2764720

He's sitting in iceland with 50 men, not expanding and not engaging enemies. He's obviously playing to lose, and refuses to accept my surrender. I reported him a couple of days ago.

I have a few questions: Is there any way to follow up on my report and find out if any action has been taken against canadiensnextyear? Obviously it is an account set up to benefit some other account. Is there any way to find out who the beneficiary is, and if so, will action be taken against him?

If the culprit is found will this awful game be deleted? Meanwhile it drags on...

I suspect this "playing-to-lose-to-benefit-the-other-team" happens a lot. Are there safeguards against it?

Fizzer?

one more question: how long does it take to review reports and mete out "punishment."?

1 - I wouldn't expect any punishment.

2 - Best option is to simply blacklist and let others know of his actions so that they too can blacklist.

yes you cannot be punished for the strategy you use you simply have to find a way to beat it and then black list that player and the player you think is controlling them to

Essentially any case of "cheating" would have to meet the Fizzer test. Is Fizzer bothered by that? He's said before that the use of multiple accounts by the same person to affect a game is against the rules, so if that's the case, he would likely suspend the accounts involved.

I put cheating in quotes above because we really have almost no way to tell if cheating is involved. I've been in plenty of games where one or more players did really dumb things, mean things, counter-productive things, etc. Even though a number of those cases benefitted me (sometimes even handing me the game wholesale), I was never controlling the accounts that did it. It's my understanding that Fizzer won't police bad play, in game teams (so long as there are individual players for each team member), throwing games, or anything else except for the same person using multiple accounts to benefit themselves.

I would certainly suggest blacklisting the person, as that's the intended "go-to" option for people who don't play the way that you like.

no offense, but did you look at the game I posted? Do you really think there's no cheating involved? I do appreciate the response though.

Is it counterproductive and stupid? Yes. Is it CHEATING? Not hardly. Blacklist him and move on, bro.

Do you really want to open the can of worms in which Fizzer has to investigate every case of counterproductive or stupid teammate? I have an ongoing game in which a teammate clearly ignored an enemy starting spot. He was told there was an enemy in an adjacent territory, acknowledged that fact, and continued to be oblivious. I certainly wouldn't want to play with him again, but he wasn't cheating.

Luckily the opponent next to him was a Warlighter, so the situation is resolving itself ;)

Mercenary,

First off, the game is still ongoing and as such we cannot see what is occurring. Such a complaint must wait til after the game is complete and the fog is lifter in order for it to be reviewed. I would have thought that would be common knowledge after 2000 games.

Second, just because someone is using poor strategy and trolling the game does not mean he is an alternate account. They could simply be an asshat who wants to be difficult or has a bone to pick with you from some past slight. Yes, he certainly could be an alternate account but there is no guarantee that is the case. If it proves that he is not an alternate of one of your opponents then there is no cheating going on, merely asshattery which is allowed.

I forgot that you can't see what's happening. So I'll move on. Thanks for the replies.

Since you already reported him, my guess is that Fizzer will look into the matter. If he determines that the account is an alternate of your opponent both will be suspended.

If he determines that it's just an idiot trolling then he will do nothing since there were no rules broken.

Just for the record, I'm not Fizzer; everything in this post is my best understanding of how things work, but I can't promise 100% accuracy on everything I say here.

I have a few questions: Is there any way to follow up on my report and find out if any action has been taken against canadiensnextyear? Obviously it is an account set up to benefit some other account. Is there any way to find out who the beneficiary is, and if so, will action be taken against him?

There is no possible way for you to determine if your report resulted in a warning; those are invisible to everyone except the player involved. While I can't remember Fizzer ever having confirmed this, I strongly suspect this is by design. If your report will result in a long-term (or permanent) suspension, the account will automatically surrender in all its on-going games. I'm not entirely sure whether that also happens if a short-term suspension is issued. However, in the case at hand (the linked game has direct-boot set to three days), you can still manually kick him.
Accounts which are currently suspended are marked as such on their profile page (I think including the expiration date of the suspension). Once a suspension is lifted, no permanent trace of the suspension remains on the profile.

If the culprit is found will this awful game be deleted? Meanwhile it drags on...

I don't think any games are deleted, ever (exception: map testing games, because retaining those would require storing each and every single version of a map on which a testing game has ever been played; those games are deleted, but only(??) because of practical reasons). The best you can hope for is a vote-to-end.

I suspect this "playing-to-lose-to-benefit-the-other-team" happens a lot. Are there safeguards against it?

Please do keep in mind it is incredibly difficult to reliably tell the difference between an utterly incompetent player, someone who has a bone to pick with you (and doesn't mind recording a loss on his own record if he can annoy the hell out of you in doing so) or someone who's actually using a second account to spy on your team.
That having been said, I'm sure Fizzer has some tools in place to make it easier to catch (and punish) offenders. In order not to help (potential) cheaters, I think it's better if I don't describe any such possible tools (and hope everyone else will also refrain from doing so!).
The only safeguards I'm aware of are the option to report people, the possibility for Fizzer to temporarily or permanently suspend accounts and your blacklist (which will prevent most (but, for practical reasons, unfortunately not all) cases of you having to ever again deal with such a player).

One question about that particular game: are there any other players in it (preferably on the other team) which you've played before? You could private-message them and ask if anyone said something in their team-chat which they shouldn't have been able to know, that would be a possible indicator of foul play. If that's the case, it might make sense to also report the account you suspect to be canadien's alter ego.