RE: speeding up play

RE: speeding up play (Full Version)

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Ashtar -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 10:30:00 AM)
quote: mr.godo... mr.godo, the reason many people here wants to see EIANW as close as possible to EIA is that EIA was a beautiful balanced game. The more things you change without a serious playtesting, the more chances to disrupt that balance you have. Have reinforce be simultaneous and you will strip France of some advantage it has. For one, now France can decide his land order of movement in the reinforce phase after having witnessed where the other powers reinforced. Other powers, on the other hand, have to decide about borrowing corps to allies before knowing when France will move... Can you foresee all such effects and re-balance the game? In my opinion, game can be positively speed up by: 1. Having synchronous diplomatic and economic phases (everyone can do its moves without waiting for the others - then game loads them in order). 2. Allowing players to declare a naval phase skip in their reinforce phase (to be kept secret, i.e. none knows but when the skipping players turn arrives the game automatically generates a null turn) 3. Combine diplomatic and economic phases together (every three months after your economic phase you also play the diplo, without waiting for all other eco and diplo from other players. Then, once again, the game loads them in order, first the eco, then the diplo. This is going to speed up game by around 30%, probably almost 45% in enforcement peace periods (the worse, since enthusiasm wanes no one is eager to check its e-mail and play quickly when you know you have nothing funny to do in your next 60 turns... so in my experience games slows down more there)

NeverMan -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 3:15:57 PM)
Unfortunately, this game has already been butchered to the point of mutilation and really looks little like the original EiA. Although I would love to see a Empires in Arms game, I'm not sure that argument can be used here. The game might as well be altered to the point of playability and renamed and then someone else can make EiA.

Jimmer -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:01:40 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: mr.godo quote: I still support simultaneous diplomacy, but I realize there WILL be a cost to it. Let's get things nicely defined, shall we? SIMULTANEOUS RESOLUTION - all players turns being resolved at the same time SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSION - player turns being submitted to a central host who then processes the turn COMBINED PHASES - two or more phases combined into one phase, such as combining economics and reinforcement COMBINED STEPS - when steps within a phase a combined into the phase, such as declarations of war, peace, etc. within the diplomacy step. Jimmer, you're referring to combined steps, correct? How does that affect the speed of the game? I do not believe this is at issue here. I'm not sure I agree with the definitions. Simultaneous phasing means all players can submit their phase PBM file at any time (after the previous phase, that is). It's simultaneous only in that they all get processed at once, after the last person has submitted the phase orders. A better term might be "asychronous submission of PBM files for a phase". Your "simultaneous submission" is close to this, but this doesn't require a central host. The game would process these on each player's system. Your "simultaneous resolution" is part of my definition (the very last step). Skipping means that a player can set an option to skip his portion of one or more phases.

Jimmer -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:16:15 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Ashtar 1. Having synchronous diplomatic and economic phases (everyone can do its moves without waiting for the others - then game loads them in order). I think you meant asynchronous.

Jimmer -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:18:24 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: mr.godo Then explain to me the reason that infantry only show up during the third month of a year. You never see infantry reinforcements during January. Does this represent some natural phenomenon where your levies only arrived every three months or is it some form of game approximation? This is completely unrelated to my statement.

fvianello -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:20:10 PM)
quote: Your "simultaneous submission" is close to this, but this doesn't require a central host. The game would process these on each player's system. Who rolls the dice?

fvianello -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:30:59 PM)
quote: Simultaneous phasing means all players can submit their phase PBM file at any time (after the previous phase, that is). It's simultaneous only in that they all get processed at once, after the last person has submitted the phase orders. If the phase is processed on every players' pc, who rolls the dice ? If the phase is processed on the last player's pc, he should also send out the phase results to everyone (i am russia, i want to know what happened in the reinf phase before moving my navy).

Jimmer -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:31:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: mr.godo With respect to sequential reinforcement steps, the reason, or at least part of the reason, for having a turn order in a game is because it is not conducive to peaceful play if you have no order. It's just board game logic and it should be dumped in favour of a more fluid system that manages time better. Was Turkish intelligence really that great to have them rated fifth in the sequence? What about Great Britain's control of the sea? Wouldn't it make more sense to have them always set up last given that they're more able to drop forces off by sea while the french would have to march there? Yes, that's part of the reason. But, I included that part in my post. The issue isn't just sequencing for game play. There were DIFFERENT reinforcement orders (to which you allude). Within a game-play-only explanation, there is no valid reason for this. Thus, we must conclude that they intended GB's naval domination to be extended to the reinforcement phase as well as the naval phase (similar to France's situation in the land stuff). EIANW has already lost this distinction, and it is very clear that this change impacts GB negatively. Whether that's a good thing or not remains to be seen, but there IS an impact (as people claiming the red herring that "GB is already too powerful at sea" have already noted). If the reinforcement phase is made simultaneous (asynchronously submitted), then a similar change will occur to France's land power: It will be weakened. To what extent will this affect game play? That remains to be seen. I support a limited simultaneous reinforcement phase: The five powers all do their turn asynchronously. Then, France does her turn. Finally GB does hers. Or, reverse those last two. Or, better yet, allow France to do land after GB and GB to do land after France, but I suspect that is too difficult to program in.

Jimmer -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:33:29 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: HanBarca quote: Your "simultaneous submission" is close to this, but this doesn't require a central host. The game would process these on each player's system. Who rolls the dice? Whoever does now. Remember that the die rolling can be done without knowing what is being rolled against. One just must have an algorithm for applying the results in a consisten order. Alternately, the dice rolling could be done by the person going first in the next phase. That would probably be a change to the code, though.

Jimmer -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:36:53 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: HanBarca If the phase is processed on every players' pc, who rolls the dice ? If the phase is processed on the last player's pc, he should also send out the phase results to everyone (i am russia, i want to know what happened in the reinf phase before moving my navy). This pair of questions explains why the code is difficult to write. Asynchronous tasking is the most difficult of all programming challenges. But, EIANW is probably saved by the fact that there is always a "next" player (not necessarily in the same phase), and THAT player's computer can roll all of the dice. Your question also highlights why EIANW can never be the same as EIA: The ordering matters in EIA, and some actions are dependent upon previous results.

fvianello -> RE: speeding up play (12/10/2008 4:51:58 PM)
Yes, making dice roll on the "next" player pc could work, even though that means that no one will see what happened in the diplo phase until russia plays and send his reinf phase. Actually, Russia should have a button to process the simultaneuos phase, see the results, then play his phase and send everything to the other players. Mh.

Dancing Bear -> RE: speeding up play (12/11/2008 3:06:54 AM)
Marshall, let's see if we can gets some resolution here. Early on in this thread, you made the following statement with regards our begging for sim dip and sim eco: �I will say this again and I will stand behind this forever! The main cause for PBEM game delay is someone going away on vacation, sick, job change, holiday, etc. ALL of which a thousand hours of programming would not fix (It doesn't matter if diplomacy is run at the same time, you still cannot proceed without Turkey's diplomacy and if Turkey is on vacation then you're waiting).� Your statement about not being able to go when someone is on vacation is true (unless Turkey forwards his game to an ally like a good boy), but many people strongly disagreed with you saying the main problem was not the two weeks a year Turkey was on vacation, but the day to day delays of 24 hours between player submissions. Some continued to beg for sim dip and eco, thinking it would be a great improvement, to which you replied. �If there is any room for improvement it would be here. I agree with this. Diplomacy and Eco are the only phases I would ever allow this for.� Ok, there appears to be at least some sort of progress towards a compromise that sim dip and sim eco would help. (sim rein can be debated later, small steps gentlemen). Then elsewhere you mentioned. �Phase skipping is a BIG change in 1.05 and it is not because of me but because for you guys. I personally did not think it would change much BUT it did and I myself can see it! So, in summary ... do not despair :-)� This hints at hope, but I can�t tell if we are winning you over here on the sim phase idea. If you didn�t believe phase skipping would help, but when you did it, you found it was a great improvement, could you not make the same leap of faith on sim dip? Please. With almost a 100 posts and 1,000 hits on this thread, I�m beginning to despair that we are not getting anyway here. Please give us sim dip, not because you want it, but because it will make us very happy and we will shower you with accolades. If that works, we can move on to other items (eco and rein). (sorry, it never ends, you must have been very bad in a former life).

mr.godo -> RE: speeding up play (12/11/2008 7:24:23 AM)
quote: mr.godo, the reason many people here wants to see EIANW as close as possible to EIA is that EIA was a beautiful balanced game. The more things you change without a serious playtesting, the more chances to disrupt that balance you have. I'm not sure it was the b-all end-all of gaming. Breaking it down into the original steps would make it playable only by the most stalwart of players. Just take those steps and treat them like phases: the dip phase would last 9 times as long as it is now! Jimmer, My point about the timing of infantry reinforcements is intended to demonstrate that some mechanics of the game were done for simplification. I believe the reinforcement rules are not tied to any supremacy in intelligence possessed by the French, or in their ability to respond better. As it stands, you cannot tell when a corps is reinforced, only when it is placed. The french advantage is nullified merely by having a pre-existing corps. And if a new corps is placed, you can't tell if 1,000 men show up or 20,000 men. I agree that changing the reinforcement phase would affect gameplay, and it would need some playtesting, but I don't believe that it affects the game in a negative way, it would just require a different appreciation for stratgey and change this further from the golden child EiA. The posts from Thresh gave me the impression that he didn't appreciate the games simultaneous execution of phases, so I felt it necessary to dissect and define concepts. We have the phases being resolved simultaneously. The die rolling is already done on the last computer to touch the phase. What is lacking is the ability to submit those phases in any order and hence my notion of simultaneous submission. However, the one rolling the dice would be the host and not the last player in the phase, unless some tricky file handling routine is devised. Nice focus, Dancing Bear. I agree. Let's see what simultaneous submission on 1/4 of the turn will do to overall turn speed then work from there.

Marshall Ellis -> RE: speeding up play (12/11/2008 11:58:07 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Dancing Bear Marshall, let's see if we can gets some resolution here. Early on in this thread, you made the following statement with regards our begging for sim dip and sim eco: �I will say this again and I will stand behind this forever! The main cause for PBEM game delay is someone going away on vacation, sick, job change, holiday, etc. ALL of which a thousand hours of programming would not fix (It doesn't matter if diplomacy is run at the same time, you still cannot proceed without Turkey's diplomacy and if Turkey is on vacation then you're waiting).� Your statement about not being able to go when someone is on vacation is true (unless Turkey forwards his game to an ally like a good boy), but many people strongly disagreed with you saying the main problem was not the two weeks a year Turkey was on vacation, but the day to day delays of 24 hours between player submissions. Some continued to beg for sim dip and eco, thinking it would be a great improvement, to which you replied. �If there is any room for improvement it would be here. I agree with this. Diplomacy and Eco are the only phases I would ever allow this for.� Ok, there appears to be at least some sort of progress towards a compromise that sim dip and sim eco would help. (sim rein can be debated later, small steps gentlemen). Then elsewhere you mentioned. �Phase skipping is a BIG change in 1.05 and it is not because of me but because for you guys. I personally did not think it would change much BUT it did and I myself can see it! So, in summary ... do not despair :-)� This hints at hope, but I can�t tell if we are winning you over here on the sim phase idea. If you didn�t believe phase skipping would help, but when you did it, you found it was a great improvement, could you not make the same leap of faith on sim dip? Please. With almost a 100 posts and 1,000 hits on this thread, I�m beginning to despair that we are not getting anyway here. Please give us sim dip, not because you want it, but because it will make us very happy and we will shower you with accolades. If that works, we can move on to other items (eco and rein). (sorry, it never ends, you must have been very bad in a former life). I do not recall most of those quotes ??? LOL! I am looking at how this may be done but it is not a simple change. It will not be in 1.05 or 1.06 since I have enough on my plate for those BUT I am looking into this... I'll keep you posted... Yea, you're right. I must have been "Jack the Ripper" or something in a previous life ... LOL! Oh well, sucks to be me!

Thresh -> RE: speeding up play (12/11/2008 2:39:56 PM)
quote: We don't want to necessarily take different phases and combine them (see below). We want to allow simultaneous submission of game files for phases which are not sequentially dependant. The fact that you don't think the diplomatic phase is sequentially dependent says volumes to me... When I ask "Who's played simultaneous diplomacy before?" I mean this: You and the six other players in your game submitted your orders for the diplomatic phase to a GM, who then processed those orders. You did not have the opportunity to "Go back" and fix any errors or oversights. Todd

bresh -> RE: speeding up play (12/11/2008 2:42:58 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Thresh quote: We don't want to necessarily take different phases and combine them (see below). We want to allow simultaneous submission of game files for phases which are not sequentially dependant. The fact that you don't think the diplomatic phase is sequentially dependent says volumes to me... When I ask "Who's played simultaneous diplomacy before?" I mean this: You and the six other players in your game submitted your orders for the diplomatic phase to a GM, who then processed those orders.� You did not have the opportunity to "Go back" and fix any errors or oversights. Todd We did, like the board game "diplomacy", all write down simultanious diplomatic actions give the paper to the one on the right, and read it all up sequential. Currently EIANW needs us to all write the diplomatic actions sequential to. Regards Bresh

NeverMan -> RE: speeding up play (12/11/2008 3:04:25 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Thresh You and the six other players in your game submitted your orders for the diplomatic phase to a GM, who then processed those orders.� You did not have the opportunity to "Go back" and fix any errors or oversights. Todd This is essentially how it is being done now, so what's the big deal? Simul WILL speed the game up, I imagine much more so than "skipping" ever would, as, personally, I NEVER skip any phases "just in case". Skipping to me really seems futile and I'm wondering how effective it is in a real PBEM game (not some test game where the game play is totally different and not some AI game).

Jimmer -> RE: speeding up play (12/11/2008 4:18:39 PM)
I wouldn't make it a button to process, but to SEE, yes. If it were a button to process, then it could get skipped, and that would cause problems. The game has to do it automatically.

Jimmer -> RE: speeding up play (12/11/2008 4:27:27 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: mr.godo Jimmer, My point about the timing of infantry reinforcements is intended to demonstrate that some mechanics of the game were done for simplification. I believe the reinforcement rules are not tied to any supremacy in intelligence possessed by the French, or in their ability to respond better. You are correct that the way troops show up was done for simplification. However, that statement leads to the exact opposite conclusion from the one you came to. Try answering the question "Why are there two reinforcement phases (with different ordering) in EIA?" from within your logical structure shown here. It can't be done. The only possible reason for two separate phases (with different ordering) is because they determined that it was important to have different orders for naval and land.

Dancing Bear -> RE: speeding up play (12/12/2008 2:35:56 AM)
Hi Marshall I can grin and bear it for a while, but was getting my hopes up with all this talk about speeding up play. Keeping pluggin away at it. The skipping was a nice surprise, and appears to be helping. Though we want more, and the sooner the better. Bear.

mr.godo -> RE: speeding up play (12/12/2008 1:51:47 PM)
quote: You and the six other players in your game submitted your orders for the diplomatic phase to a GM, who then processed those orders. You did not have the opportunity to "Go back" and fix any errors or oversights. We have a GM? I'm not contesting the current structure of the game when it leads to what I perceive as slower play. I haven't played the online version you're playing and reading into it, I believe what you're describing is having the GM breakdown the diplomacy phase as required. So if everyone submits all steps in the political phase, but then one nation declares on another, the GM prompts certain nations for a call to allies step. Very dynamic and it sounds like a good compromise amongst seven dedicated players. This is not that game. The diplomacy phase has replaced the political phase and you need to go through the diplomatic options screen to set up your policies. It's not like you're pressed for time (which is the jist of this thread). If you were to combine the play of the current game with your gm'd game, it would be like asking each nation to submit their declarations of war in a squential order and then for the gm to announce them simultaneously. I'm just curious, but would the scenario I've described be played out at the speed of the slowest player and hence no different than if the dow's were submitted all at once? quote: ORIGINAL: Thresh So, Player 1 submits his part of the Simultaneous turn at 5PM, when does Player 3 submit his part of the turn. Three hours later at 8PM at the earliest? quote: If the two day players could respond at the same time, then the game would be processed when the last person responds. Which means.....wait for it.....The game is moving at the speed of the slowest player! Imagine that.... I haven't read your epiphany response yet, so I'll just keep pressing. This isn't quite said correctly. The turn is always processed when the last person responds. What this should say is If the two day players could respond at the same time, then the game would be processed after two days in a simultaneous turn. If you have two players, A and B and they both take two days, how long does a simultaneous turn take? 2 days. Sequential turn? 4 days. When is the turn processed? When the last one responds! And how fast are the games moving? The speed of the slowest player. Which player is taking four days to play? Jimmer, I see your point, and my indirect support thereof. So I'll retrench in a call for refining the reinforcement phase to enhance gameplay and speed: divvy it up by month with builds. And simultaneous phase submission when phases are simultaneously resolved.

borner -> RE: speeding up play (12/14/2008 2:48:53 AM)
In a way the game does progress at the speed of the slowest player, but, the difference is that in one case you are just waiting on this player, in another, you are waiting for a day or two, or more, for the phase to even get to him. So, yes, phases happening simultaneously does speed up play in regards to the time before or after the "slowest player" in each phase.

Marshall Ellis -> RE: speeding up play (12/15/2008 2:42:27 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Dancing Bear Hi Marshall I can grin and bear it for a while, but was getting my hopes up with all this talk about speeding up play. Keeping pluggin away at it. The skipping was a nice surprise, and appears to be helping. Though we want more, and the sooner the better. Bear. I appreciate this! I will be looking at different ways speeding up play (Maybe simul Dip, Eco) but I have to make sure I don't break anything!

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