Fair 'nough
First of all, if this needs stated again - only an admin can decide if the accounts mentioned are to be banned for cheating, or if there is insufficient proof for that. Until we hear from a game admin, there is only suspicion (suspicion based on previous experience with similar cases proven to be breaking the rules, but not immovable fact). As it turns out, admin Jason has actually read my e-mail (his reply, sent after I'd already created this topic, ended up in my Spam folder, as he used the support e-mail address for some reason, and I just found it today), so there might be some development to be expected in the future.
As for my reasons for suspecting script using and multi accounts, I'll present them at length below.
The history so far:
[spoiler]I first came across one such account while looking for farms. I found a low-ranked account with a decent amount of naq out, I spied it and, seeing it had 0 def, I attacked it. When I went back to the battlefield page a few moments later, I saw it had naq out again, so I figured it was farming.
Now, I don't usually attack active accounts, but since it had no defense, I knew someone else wouldn't hesitate to attack it, so I thought I'd be better off being the one to take the naq; that way, if he asked for me to return it, he could get it back and at the same time learn a lesson about having large amounts of naq out without any defense.
So I attacked a few more times, expecting him to stop farming (as any intelligent player would do when repeatedly losing all the naq he had farmed), and maybe try to attack me, set me to peace, or send me a message, like other newbies had done (some of which later became my officers or alliance mates, but that's another story). But no - without any reaction of the sort to show that he'd noticed, he kept farming blindly, so I stopped short of the auto war declaration and got back to my farming.
Around that time, that account and, one by one, others like it, started showing up in our as well as other alliances' attack logs - all of a sudden, almost every day, at least one of them would hit the lower ranked accounts, and quite a few of the attacks were unsuccessful (as they were hitting blindly, including members who had defenses). What's more, they all had Slovenian names and behaved just like the first account I had noticed.
By then, I'd realized this was no innocent coincidence, so I reported it on the forums (albeit without including the IDs, to avoid less scrupulous people making a boatload of naq off them before they were banned); my topic was largely ignored for a while, but then someone else also reported it, including names and IDs (some of which I didn't have on my list). There was no reply from an admin to the topic itself, and I pretty much forgot about it for a while (being busy IRL, if I'm not mistaken) until it was posted that the whole lot of them had been ostracized a little later. I believe I've included a link to this in my first post.
With that, things were quiet for a while. I became more active last summer, after my last ascension, as I had time and motivation to play more. I reported a couple of unrelated cases to admin Sue in Aug-Sep (getting fast replies in both cases), but I hadn't had anything to do with the Slovenian multi for a few months. Some time in the next two weeks, however, I noticed 4 new suspicious accounts in our logs doing the same suspicious stuff that the banned ones used to do. Of course, I sent another e-mail to her; as far as I know, she didn't reply, but 2 of the accounts were ostracized some time later - I can only assume, being found to be multi accounts.
I kept the two IDs that hadn't been banned, and added several more to the list; but again, being busy IRL, I didn't really do anything more until a week before I posted this topic. I went through my old list, updated it with a couple IDs that had popped up lately, thoroughly spied all the accounts and sent first one, then (half a week later) another e-mail with more info. Having received no reply, I posted this topic to at least try to do something about the whole business. As I mentioned above, admin Jason replied a while later, but as I've mostly been offline until this weekend, I didn't see it before. For the record, this was all he said so far:
thank you.
see this and a couple newer emails from you (same title) so...
will check them all out. and deal accordingly
nice work!
thanks.
jason
[/spoiler]
Aside from this background (which I included to prove that accounts I had previously suspected turned out to be banned), here's a list of things I looked for - and still look for, when new suspicious accounts show up -, and things that helped me find them:
1. first of all, aside from accidentally finding a suspicious account in a haystack of tens of thousands of low ranked ones, the most helpful thing turned out to be having one or more low ranked, low covert alliance members in Normal reality (one of the few good reasons for keeping inactives in an alliance or as officers); if said low ranked, low covert member also has a standing defense and a decent income, all the better; having such alliance members or officers, sooner or later, all of the names I included in the first post would eventually show up in their incoming attack logs, so I didn't really have to waste too much time searching for them
2. of course, you'll need to filter the attack logs - not everyone attacking your alliance member or officer is a script user or multi; unsuccessful attacks and repeated/frequent attacks (successful, but especially unsuccessful ones) have been one important factor in deciding who 'deserves' more attention
3. all suspects have relatively new IDs in two ID ranges, currently from 1986574 (meeting with the range of the older, Slovenian multi accounts) to 1987947, and from 1989254 to 1989489 (and up to 1989700, including the two accounts banned a few months ago)
4. so far, each account on the current list has been one without any alliance or CO (some have themselves as COs) - it would make sense not to allow anyone else to see your multies' attack logs
5. all the accounts so far are small, low ranked, unascended or Prior; they have/had small stats, and their Ascended accounts are inactive and pretty much untouched; they used to be undefended, but this has changed since I took an interest in them - now, they usually build a small defense before they start farming
6. all of them have good (level 32-33) covert - presumably, to benefit from the minimum bank size this grants
7. most importantly, when observed for a longer time (a few weeks or more), all of them present the same bot-like farming behavior: hit as many low ranked targets as available (possibly on one page of the rankings, or even less than one page) in a short time (1 or 2 seconds, at most) for amounts as low as 25 bil. naq (probably without setting war), repair attack weapons, bank the naq, repeat; while in farming mode, they don't repair their defense; if the naq they farm is taken, they don't take naq out of the bank to repair their attack, even if it means losing it
8. things that exceed the assumed script's current possibilities (such as rebuilding defense, replacing the missing attack, training UU, or, in exceptional cases, sending a message to a particularly annoying fellow trying to ruin your business) happen after one or more turns, but not much later - I'm guessing, about when the owner expects the bot to have finished farming
If all or almost all of the things from 3. to 8. match up, chances are it's another bot - but even if it all matches, it never hurts to ask for someone else's opinion, to avoid harassing clueless noobs.
Of course, if there is cheating going on and the cheater happens to read this, I expect he might change some things (maybe lay low for a while, maybe create new accounts or dig up older ones, build bigger stats, ascend them more than once or whatever he might think would trick me), but as long as he keeps using a script, odds are someone will figure it out; if I figure out anything new or remember something I may have forgotten/ignored, I'll be sure to add it here. And if he stops using the script - well, multi or not, he doesn't seem to be able to do much on his own, so at least real farmers will once again be able to farm normally.