I know a lot of people get upset when they get booted early, and others hate when people take too long.

Heres a proposal:
Couldn't there be a "auto-advance" feature, which instantly submits your moves when the time limit goes? Whatever moves you had made up until the time limit would be submitted and the turn would progress.

This way, if you take too long you don't get booted, you get a small penalty of missing a move or two, as opposed to being completely removed from the game. It also saves anyone who wants to play a fast-paced game from being labelled "rude" or "unsportsmanlike" when players they play with take too long, as well as generally making people adhere to time limits.

If a player took too many turns without making a move, there could be an option that they get auto-booted, or turn into an AI player.

I've noticed that people have a poorly-defined notion of how long is appropriate before booting, and this notion would be inconsistent among players. With this system, it would remove the need to boot entirely.

Any comments?

there have been several idea's about this already, some of which I believe are posted on UV. one problem with this, is that the orders are not sent to the server until you are finished and commit them.. meaning that if you were advanced at any time, without having first submited then changed your orders, then you would have no moves whatsoever...
Previously it was that if you changed your orders mid-turn, and everyone else submitted their orders, your turn would advance automatically.

I would consider an option that keeps a person in the game, drops their troops somewhere, and allows them to pick it back up to be the ideal.

My problem is not that there is a penalty for missing a turn, but that the penalty is permanent. Not only do the troops not get dropped (potentially game changing already), but either the AI takes over or the player becomes neutral. The AI can really screw some games up, and going neutral can also destroy the balance of a game.

Making no moves for a turn is a huge drop in effectiveness, but it's far, far better than those two alternatives.

I have a game up right now where the player is about a day passed the boot deadline. Booting them will likely change the balance of the game by a good bit, so nobody has done it yet. Maybe they won't come back, and a full boot will eventually happen anyway. I do wish there was a way to advance the game without the nuclear option, though.

Read the top section of this link for a booting alternative.

[Missing a turn - Instructions](http://www.conquerclub.com/public.php?mode=instructions6)

"If you miss a turn, you'll be compensated with deferred troops equal to the normal amount of troops received on the next turn that you do take (or double if you missed 2 consecutive turns). Deferred troops must be deployed in one shot after the assault phase."

that seems like delaying the game could turn into a strategy..

@Perrin: albeit a very, *very* risky strategy, with lots of drawbacks. But, definitely in theory (and maybe sometimes in practice), you're right.

How about using [VortexWars](http://www.kongregate.com/games/Lopdo/vortexwars) as inspiration? In one of their game modes, called "borders", your new armies are placed semi-randomly; territories facing enemies get reinforced first, then territories facing neutral and only after that will "internal" territories receive reinforcements. Note that for WL, internal territories will never receive reinforcements, as there is no cap on the number of armies per territory. This will also make it slightly more complicated to decide when to switch from reinforcing against real enemies to reinforcing to conquer neutrals (and this might seriously screw up in multi-attack games).

How about an option (with default on profile, overrideable per-game) "what happens when I miss my turn?". Possible values could be "turn neutral/AI (depending on game setting)", "let AI place my armies, make no moves", "let AI take one full turn in my place".

Landgrab.net also has an interesting missed turns system in place.

@Herkmanz:
I've looked at their website, but can't find detailed rules; can you explain what their system for missed turns is?

Here's a few more suggestions:

Vote to End: Have a majority Vote to End in between the timer and the auto-boot setting.

Temporary AI: Allow someone to re-enter the game after the AI plays one turn (you can limit this to "X" times per game)

Boot Percentage: Instead of tracking how many times someone gets booted, track how many times people boot, and the average time past the timer they do the boot. Then you can discriminate and filter out people that boot more that X% of the time, and with an average boot time of under X seconds.

Off Topic, but:

And for the sand-bagger that is losing and takes 4:59 to take every 5:00 turn.
Track what percentage of the time the person takes a turn in the last 10% of the time remaining in a turn. If they continuously do this, it will get dinged against them, and people can then play smartly.

Either way, these are my two biggest complaints about the game. 1) people booting when people need a few more seconds to play their turn, and 2) people that think they can win by outlasting by time.

A lot of other ideas, time to implement something.