speeding up play

[fvianello]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

ORIGINAL: Thresh

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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?

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?
[blockquote]quote:

If the two day players could respond at the same time, then the game would be processed when the last person responds.[/blockquote] 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]

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]

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!