Improved Multiplayer

[Gandalf Parker]

As a moderator on forums, and customer service, Ive learned that its better to seem abit naive than to take something as a joke when it wasnt meant that way.

I was letting the conversation progress abit before bringing up that the needs of doing stale turns as AI have been discussed. And the idea of allowing a player to be turned AI while they are away doing something then coming back to play. But apparently both have problems. Switching a player to AI sets many variables for the nation that apparently cannot be set back again as far as the way the code is presently written.

However, as far as the "tired of waiting" thing..
I have suggested creating a game of "musical chairs" with 10 players where the game automatically hosts whenever it gets 9 files turned in. The last person to do their turn always gets left out. For some reason I get a picture in my head of the chess games where they slap the timer after each move.

You would do only the minumum actions then rush your turn in and curse over every second that passes waiting for it to host thinking that you could have done one thing more. But then next time you try to squeeze in another action and the game cuts you off.
MUHAHAhahahahahahh A very evil blitz game.

Gandalf Parker

[Maltrease]

I really like that idea Gandalf. Actually what would most likely happen is you do your most critical turn elements and submit it. Then go back and do more things and hope to have time to resubmit your turn.

Another idea would be to make the last player pay some kind of fine. Like 20-50 gold to each player depending on how many people are playing.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well the musical chairs thing can be done now on a linux server. The fine couldnt.

[danm]

I like your the mind-reading game server idea better Maltrease.

In fact, once implemented, you could extend the idea so that after submitting my turn, the hosting logic could change it so that it does what I SHOULD have done that turn instead of whatever idiotic thing I actually did.

I think there's some real potential there )

[Agrajag]

Wow, that's a really cool idea Gandalf. Though I know there's no way I could survive in such a game

[paradoxharbinger]

i don't understand the changing of a person to ai if they take too long, wouldn't this eventually devolve into an sp game for everyone? so say someone doesn't get done before you, are they booted out of the game, or forced to take the actions the ai decides for them? and in the case they are forced out of the game, what happens on thier end? 'woops, you took to long, you've been booted.'

on the other hand i do like the musical chairs idea, though maybe set the threshold at a fifth of the players in the game, so for a 15 player game, the last 3 get cut off. i think it would keep any one person from getting thoroughly trounced if they are especially slow, even out the battlefield a bit, so to speak.

[PashaDawg]

Why don't you play a blitz in the IRC channel? That's fast! You can play the game all afternoon... no waiting...