Game Issue - Garrison Transfers

[DCWhitworth]

This isn't strictly a bug since nothing is wrong with the programming, only in the implementation of the game system.

Corps A moves its full allowance to an area with a city and another corps (B). They can then drop points into the city. Corps B can now pick up those points and continue moving.

In theory this could be continued indefinitely, So a series of strength points could move a long way as long as there were cities available for transfer to waiting corps.

My suggestion would be to disallow the transfer or garrisons to corps during the movement phase. It would have to be done in the reinforcement phase.

[dodod]

not a good idea, because you should be able to take unguarded cities as you march....would be impossible with your suggestion...
 
a better system may be to allow transfer of garrison to only 1 corp in a province..but that could be a programming nightmare.

[NeverMan]

I think he will have to implement a way to keep track of how many movements the factors have moved. That shouldn't be too big a deal depending on how robust his design is.

[DCWhitworth]

ORIGINAL: dodod

not a good idea, because you should be able to take unguarded cities as you march....would be impossible with your suggestion...

a better system may be to allow transfer of garrison to only 1 corp in a province..but that could be a programming nightmare.

No, I'm suggesting that you should be unable to transfer points from garrisons to corps during land movement, you would still be allowed to transfer points from corps to garrisons.

So you could put points into garrisons but not take them out again. It seems by far the simplest programming fix for this issue.

This issue also allows you to get around the fact that you should only be able to transfer points between corps in the reinforcement phase.

[MarshallEllis]

Actually, I'm not sure how I could prevent this short of disabling the xfer FROM a garrison in the land phase BUT that sounds pretty extreme. How would you have prevented this in a board game?
 

[eske]

Well, basically you couldn't. But since each player did his own 'accounting'  secretly, you all had to trust everyone did his math correctly. This included.

How to control it: Preventing all landphase garrison placement is not a good idea.
Preventing corps picking up garrsisons from cities or depots also would be a poor solution.

How about to allow one garrison transfer to or from pr. garrison. ?

/eske

[pzgndr]

I'm suggesting that you should be unable to transfer points from garrisons to corps during land movement, you would still be allowed to transfer points from corps to garrisons.

This sounds reasonable enough and I could live with it. I'll play devil's advocate and ask why garrison transfer to corps during land phase is worth worrying about. The gamey advantage of maybe getting a few extra movement points for a few factors is limited. Some arguments against simultaneous placement of reinforcements are based on using placement order to gain what I believe is a somewhat gamey advantage for placing new troops anywhere; in reality they would muster in a specified location and not just instantly appear on a whim. But so be it. I've gotten used to transfering some factors from corps to garrison to another corps during land phase, but it doesn't happen that often and I can't say I've used it for gamey effect, just convenience. I understand the rules argument, but just don't see it as a problem.

[DCWhitworth]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Actually, I'm not sure how I could prevent this short of disabling the xfer FROM a garrison in the land phase BUT that sounds pretty extreme. How would you have prevented this in a board game?

Checking the board game rules it seems this is a loophole that has always existed, it just would be fairly obvious if a player did it I think. We never used to play with hidden corps displays, although a lot of people did I don't think it was ever part of the rules.

Can you track points dropped off and prevent them being picked up again ?

[JavaJoe]

Can factors be given a movement allowance?

That would solve the problem.

If not then really this isn't as big of a problem as it seems. To engineer this for a huge advantage is close to impossible. You need the Cities, you need the corps placed in the previous turn close to empty, and you need the factors.

For the French you may be able to move 20 factors 12 areas if you're lucky and then you're left with a wake of empty corps and depots. I've rarely seen this tactic be used to devastating effect. You're not going to be able to move factors from Madrid to St Petersburg. Although you can.

[DCWhitworth]

For a huge advantage maybe not, but it can still be very useful. Consider France wishing to defend it's coast against invasion. You could place a large corps in one place and one or two one point corps on cities with in a move of that corps. You then have the ability to effectively move the troops from the large corps anywhere any of the three corps can get to.

[bresh]

ORIGINAL: eske
How about to allow one garrison transfer to or from pr. garrison. ?

/eske

That would be a be bad solution.

Generally, you remove alot of tactical options that way.

I wont go into examples but there are numerous.

Just like in the board game you will need to trust players wont do such cheasy moves.
I doubt factors get movement points, but that would solve the problem.

Regards
Bresh

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Actually, I'm not sure how I could prevent this short of disabling the xfer FROM a garrison in the land phase BUT that sounds pretty extreme. How would you have prevented this in a board game?

I'm assuming that you coded each factor has some sort of simple data type and not an object/structure. If that is the case, then yes, it would be very difficult for you to keep track of each factors movement points.

[Jimmer]

It would actually be nearly trivial to fix this "loophole", if were really desired (to me, it's NOT a loophole, but a tactical process available):
 
Just create a boolean value for every garrison factor. This boolean would be cleared at the beginning of land movement.
 
Then, any corps that gets placed into garrison from a corps which has moved has the value set to true. (If the corps has not yet moved, then the factors would be free to move normally, as if they were in garrison the whole time)
 
If any corps picks up any factor with a true value, that corps' movement ends immediately.
 
The only thing it doesn't cover is factors being able to move up to 3 (or, 4, for the French) spaces. If a corps dropped off factors after not yet having moved at all, then the boolean is left alone for this factor.
 
The one problem that could come out of this is if there are already factors present. If that were the case, the game should probably assume that there is an "order" to the factors: The ones dropped out of corps this turn go to the "end" of the list, and factors being picked up come from the beginning of the list.
 
Example:
 
5 French factors in Lille and 9 factors in Paris. There are two corps in Lille and one in Paris.
 
The corps from Paris goes to Lille and drops off 6 factors (making 11 in the city, 5 which do not cancel movement and 6 which do), and then moves back to Paris.
 
One corps from Lille picks up 3 factors and moves to Amsterdam. This leaves 8 in Lille, 2 of which do not cancel movement, and the other 6 do.
 
Finally, the remaining 8 factors are picked up by the corps in Lille. This corps may no longer move (although, it has NOT used up its movement points -- it merely cannot move).
 
This method is a bit less complicated that assigning movement points to factors. The movement point method would be more accurate, but at the expense of being more expensive to program.

[DCWhitworth]

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

It would actually be nearly trivial to fix this "loophole", if were really desired (to me, it's NOT a loophole, but a tactical process available):

It's only trivial if the game already tracks strength points individually which I doubt very much that it does. i.e. the game will say "there are 4 points here" and leave it at that, it will not have an individual entry for each point.

If this is the case then you suggested solution is quite the reverse of trivial and would require a major recode of the game.

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: DCWhitworth

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

It would actually be nearly trivial to fix this "loophole", if were really desired (to me, it's NOT a loophole, but a tactical process available):

It's only trivial if the game already tracks strength points individually which I doubt very much that it does. i.e. the game will say "there are 4 points here" and leave it at that, it will not have an individual entry for each point.

If this is the case then you suggested solution is quite the reverse of trivial and would require a major recode of the game.

Yes, I'm assuming that Marshall has the factors coded as simple data types encapsulated within the Corps/City/Depot object/structure, so to keep track of them, period, would require a major code revision, let's think on another possible solution.

[MarshallEllis]

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

Yes, I'm assuming that Marshall has the factors coded as simple data types encapsulated within the Corps/City/Depot object/structure, so to keep track of them, period, would require a major code revision, let's think on another possible solution.

Exactly right. Individually tracking each factor (essentially serialization) might be tough???
BUT I don't know how we could stop this short of factor serialization???
I guess I'll look at what Joe said earlier, could this REALLY make a huge difference? Will you really be in a situation where this would be possible enough times to make a difference? There are so many variables here such as supply. Are you going to have a supply line long enough to supply this type of corps movement?

Definitely an odd situation??????

[NeverMan]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

Yes, I'm assuming that Marshall has the factors coded as simple data types encapsulated within the Corps/City/Depot object/structure, so to keep track of them, period, would require a major code revision, let's think on another possible solution.

Exactly right. Individually tracking each factor (essentially serialization) might be tough???
BUT I don't know how we could stop this short of factor serialization???
I guess I'll look at what Joe said earlier, could this REALLY make a huge difference? Will you really be in a situation where this would be possible enough times to make a difference? There are so many variables here such as supply. Are you going to have a supply line long enough to supply this type of corps movement?

Definitely an odd situation??????

Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal for a few reasons:

1. You still have to have the Corps in place to do be able to this.
2. This isn't going to work with leaders, so you can't "chain" leaders.
3. I just don't think this situation will arise that often.

BUT, if others think it will then I could be missing something.

[Jimmer]

ORIGINAL: DCWhitworth

ORIGINAL: Jimmer

It would actually be nearly trivial to fix this "loophole", if were really desired (to me, it's NOT a loophole, but a tactical process available):

It's only trivial if the game already tracks strength points individually which I doubt very much that it does. i.e. the game will say "there are 4 points here" and leave it at that, it will not have an individual entry for each point.

If this is the case then you suggested solution is quite the reverse of trivial and would require a major recode of the game.

You are dealing with the expanded version of my idea. The basic one only deals with the city: If any factor was dropped there from a corps that had moved, then no corps can both pick up factors and continue movement. It's just a boolean.

The idea of having different factors be treated differently is an extension that might be desirable.

[Jimmer]

The other option would be to have an integer instead of a boolean. It would still operate as a boolean, more or less. In this setup, an integer record would be added to each city (just as a boolean would have in the previous proposal). The value of the integer is set to the number of controlled troops in the city at the beginning of the owning player's land movement phase. Any city with no factors from this player has the value set to zero.
 
Any time factors are picked up from a city, the integer record is decremented by one pip for each factor removed.
 
Once the above is in place, a second change would be made:
 
Any time a corps picks up factors from a city, if the current value of the record is zero, it substracts one pip from the record.
 
it checks the value of the integer record at the end of picking up the factors. If the value of the record is less than zero, it can no longer move (but, retains its movement points, for possible use foraging later).
 
This programming tactic allows the integer record to be treated as a boolean (anything less than zero means no more movement). However, it would allos for the factors that started the turn in the city to be removed by corps and still continue movement.
 
NOTE: This is a programming "trick", and is not really necessarily. Instead, TWO records could be created: A boolean and an integer. The integer would operate the same way, but would not be the value checked for movement. Instead, the boolean is set as a second record (depending on what happened with factors so far this turn), and IT is what is checked by moving corps who pick up factors.