[Thufir]

Cainehill said:
Pretty sure that it's something Esben did, to counter the problem of people over-writing other people's pretenders. In a normal server game, the pretenders do get overwritten, but Esben saves the first pretender uploaded for a slot, and restores them when overwritten.

That's why the UI shows it as successful, but it doesn't actually work. It fixes the problem of thoughtless people taking a slot someone else already had, but doesn't allow for cases like restarts, or for when someone decides they uploaded a screwy pretender.

Ideally, the game owner could kick specific nations if need be, and a player could kick or overwrite his initial pretender, but that'd be a lot of work for Esben.

That does make more sense. I guess what I'll do next time I start a game is document the limitation clearly in the starting post and harass people a bit to make sure they did not attempt to upload over an existing pretender.