"Deployment Limits" are a very simple setting suggestion which leads to exciting and tactical play:

It's like local deployment, but more flexible, less tedious, and much easier to adjust to match different-sized maps.

It's currently the highest-rated Uservoice not to have received any comment from Fizzer.

Check it out, and please vote. It's been playtested in about 100 games now, with different settings. Deployment Limits:

* Make multi-attack games much more strategic (and less unpredictable), by forcing players to plan ahead and take multiple turns to prepare long-range attacks.
* Allow regular games to develop "battle lines" and reinforced borders, fronts which move slowly forward or backward, much more like a real war. (For example, look how players' borders move in this game: https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9000249)
* Give an advantage to the player who surrounds their enemy, rather than the opposite (which is how it works in Warlight currently: you are better off when you are surrounded!), making position and maneuvering more important.
* Deployment Limits are one of the simplest and easiest setting changes you'll find on Uservoice, making it far more realistic than most other suggested changes.

Here is the uservoice:

https://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/7328093-deployment-limits-a-tactical-option-esp-for-mul

Here is the original discussion, with lots of interesting comments:

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/82395-deployment-limits-easy-new-rule-implement?Offset=0

* Give an advantage to the player who surrounds their enemy, rather than the opposite (which is how it works in Warlight currently: you are better off when you are surrounded!), making position and maneuvering more important.

For me, this seems to be the most compelling reason to have this implemented, as it opens up a significantly different type of strategic game-play that actually seems to make a lot more sense than how things currently play out.

I like the idea of battle lines, too. I'll check out that game. Do you have some more links to games? They would be interesting to watch and see how it plays out in practice.

I like the idea of battle lines, too. I'll check out that game. Do you have some more links to games? They would be interesting to watch and see how it plays out in practice.

I and a few others use these and other rules, such as pockets (where, if your troops are surrounded, you can't deploy and/or move them), important boroughs (where, if captured, gives some kind of punishment, f.e. income cut by 20% for 2 turns, or no attacking for 2 turns, or losing the game), stack limits (can't make a stack over 100).

Here is an old template of mine, but it's one of my best balanced.

https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=10501802

wct,

Take a look through the older thread, linked in my original post. There are a few examples there!

I just thought of an idea to help enforce the deployment limits. It might also be a good enforcement mechanism for other kinds of 'house rules'.

Basically, the idea is 'death of a thousand cuts'. In a game with several players (more than 5, say), each player has a supply of sanction cards that are relatively weak on their own, say 20% income reduction. Playing one of these by yourself will only annoy an opponent, but if everyone plays a sanction against a single person, all at the same time, the results stack up, and the effect can be very strong. E.g. 5 players playing 20% sanctions against 1 player would make (1 - 0.2)^5 = 0.8^5 = 0.32768 which is a 67% reduction in income.

So, no single person really has the power to enforce a rule, but many players coordinating together can enforce a rule (or at least penalize infractions).

So, one rule would be: You can only play sanction cards to enforce rules; anyone playing a sanction unjustly will get sanctioned themselves. Another rule might be to keep a deployment limit of 10 per territory per turn. Really, you could enforce just about any rule this way.

The benefit is that you don't have to go as drastic as 'you must offer your surrender', which is a pretty much all-or-nothing punishment. I liked how the players in that game came up with different compromises on their own. Anything like that would also work, but at the end of the day, it would be really useful to have something with some 'oomph' behind it, just to make sure people can't totally ruin a game by ignoring the rules and the attempts to 'softly' enforce them.

Interesting! It has promise. Unfortunately, it works best with cards played being revealed to all opponents, which ruins certain styles of gameplay.

On Limited Deployments:

The reason "battle lines" are interesting is because they "feel" more like real warfare. In Warlight, it is generally to your advantage to create one giant stack and then try to pierce your opponent's defenses, breaking bonuses. This means you're generally better off dropping your defenses and rushing through with the biggest stack you can make, which your opponent can't really stop (unless they get very lucky).

With Limited Deployments, it often matters how many territories you have bordering your enemy. If you can outflank your opponent, you're deploying greater numbers at the immediate front than he is, and you will have an advantage. Creating a "giant stack" leaves you very vulnerable, however, and takes time, making that tactic much less appealing.

You have to constantly balance an even defense with your needs to outmaneuver your enemy. Battles can be tense standoffs until one player outmaneuvers the other and manages to break through, at which point the defender either destroys your "raiding" army (which is much easier, since it is surrounded) or their defenses crumble and they have to fall back to another position.

(Having to set up defenses in advance of the attack is also a nice tactical touch!)

Consider, as another example, a small and isolated island. If I land with a large force, I then have to try to control the majority of the island before I run out of troops. The defender has the advantage until I manage to capture more than half the island (at which point I effectively outproduce him).

Once that's accomplished, I can win this fight and capture the island, even though the defender might have greater production numbers overall.

Tbh, it's a relatively simple thing for Fizzer to add, but things on User voice never seem to happen, instead he adds in his own ideas (like commander or new cards)

So I think he activley avoids adding in user-generated ideas so that he doesn't lost authoritarian control over the game. If users ideas are added you might start to feel that you also own Warlight, and Fizzer wants to make it 110% clear that it's his and his alone.

So therefore as great as an idea it is, I don't think it will get anywhere no matter how popular it might be :/

Interesting! It has promise. Unfortunately, it works best with cards played being revealed to all opponents, which ruins certain styles of gameplay.

You could rely mostly on 'soft' enforcement, via negotiated (or pre-arranged) compromises, and only use the death of a thousand sanctions trick for really serious infractions (e.g. failure to comply with 'soft' enforcement being the main one).

That way, for the most part, you won't even need to play sanctions, as long as everyone's playing in the spirit of the house rules. Thus, you wouldn't really need to have card-play visible, because the sanction thing would only be once in a blue moon (that's the hope, anyway).

What is the solution when you only have 1 territory left and more to deploy than the limit allows?

What is the solution when you only have 1 territory left and more to deploy than the limit allows?

That possibility is mentioned in the uservoice. I added a comment there with some options (at least one other person also made similar suggestions, too). Here's mine, from https://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/7328093-deployment-limits-a-tactical-option-esp-for-mul:

"The only challenge I can see is that it must be possible to override this rule in the case where you have fewer territories than income. (Although this would be incredibly rare, and the game would work just as well if you weren't allowed to deploy extra armies, instead.)"

I don't think it would be 'incredibly' rare, just rare. But you could easily have a simple choice option to add to this: 1) More income than territories allows works like Army Caps, meaning you don't actually get that income to deploy during your turn, or 2) More income than territories allows you to dump the 'remainder' into only *one* of your territories, after all other territories have been deployed to maximally, or 3) More income than territories temporarily raises your 'armies allowed per territory' limit to exceed the base setting, until you capture more territories. E.g. 34 armies to 3 territories with a base limit of 10/territory would temporarily allow you to deploy 34/3 = 11.33 which rounds up to 12 (to allow all armies to be deployed). So, at least you'd still be forced to spread your armies around. (If you capture another territory, the limit obviously goes back to 10/territory, since 4x10 = 40 > 34.)

If you're asking specifically about voluntary deployment limits, rather than Fizzer-implemented ones, then I think options 2) and 3) are still feasible.

I feel like making it income/territories is better if you have more than 10/territory, than allowing you to put everything into 1 territory. I can see there being a lot of potential ways to "break" the format through manipulation otherwise. Also it would be more interesting with higher income maps :)

I wouldn't agree with using option 1, that could lead quite quickly to a player being overrun with no way to defend.

Edited 2/16/2016 14:45:20

In the original context I posted that in, it was literally an 'option' setting. As in, you could choose, per game, whether you wanted option 1, 2, or 3.

I don't see too many Warlight games where a player controls 3 territories and yet manages to have an income of over 30/turn, although it certainly COULD happen, given various unusual settings.

My preferred solution is to allow players to break the limit when they need to. Inquisitor's solution handles this nicely:

The deployment limit is equal to X/territory, or [your income]/[# of territories you control], whichever is higher.

However, I would recommend games which expect such a high income with so few territories to use a higher deployment limit (maybe 50/territory?), so these weird situations don't disrupt gameplay.

I think the variability of the deployment limit is a nice feature of this setting: 3/territory or something similarly low would create a game which felt quite a lot like "local deployments", whereas a game with a higher limit would be more dynamic. Playing with this allows you to adapt the rule appropriately to the size of the map and expected income range. (Whereas a setting like local deployments makes playing any significantly large map a tedious exercise.)

Thank you for the votes, Warlight people!

This Uservoice has climbed to #8 most-popular in the last couple of days!

Let's keep it moving!

If the limit is not adjustable it's use is quite limited.
Some people seems to like scaling up the income by some factor. You could also see this as indirect deploymentlimit scaling but that feels quite weird. Especially as you can't scale it well in both directions.

I don't see too many Warlight games where a player controls 3 territories and yet manages to have an income of over 30/turn, although it certainly COULD happen, given various unusual settings.

Reinforce cards, overridden bonuses, lottery maps with huge bonuses, etc.

Well, precisely: possible but hardly common.

Excellent news!

We have surpassed 200 votes.

Let's keep it moving - it would be great to have this as a working feature. Know anyone who would like this? Try it out, and/or tell them to vote.

Here's another way to enforce an agreed-upon rule (also not perfect, but packs a punch):

Set a time of 4 hours for "boot by vote". (That's the minimum.)

If a player breaks an agreed-upon rule, the other players simply boot them.

This has potential with the right people (although not a great solution for playing with strangers).