Love this site, don't love manual distribution. You just rank your preferences and hope for the best. You might end up near 3 other people and the 4th person is all alone to expand like crazy. Game over. IMO, there should be an option that you pick in random order, and the territory is grayed out if already selected, but you don't know who took it. There needs to be some additional options for manual, that is all I am asking for.

Thanks!

This would only be feasible in real-time games since everyone would need to be present to make selections.

Also, how would it stay hidden from view when the selection order could be determined by the chat or similar measures? You could also easily determine which players made which selections (assuming a snake method is employed for fairness). At that point you might as well play with light fog since you will already know where your opponents are.

Good points. I would assume that even though a snake method is used, the people wouldn't know what the order is. You'd have to not have the asterisk there to show who's turn it is though.

Maybe it wouldn't really work. Just would like to see more manual options I guess.

You wouldn't necessarily know whose turn it is, though it could possibly be determined by the chat (who is and isn't talking).

However, you could determine which territories are owned by the same person if you pay attention. Then once you meet someone you can figure out where else they are.

As for alternatives, there is always random distribution where it is all up to chance. As for manual distribution being unfair at times, it is all part of the selection process. If you suspect multiple people will select a certain bonus then the smart thing to do is to look elsewhere and become that 4th isolated person you mentioned.

As said, it is not that luck-based whether or not you end up with three others near you. It is very easy to see some spots are better than others. It is more likely another player will choose one of the better spots than one of the worse spots. It then becomes a choice between a better spot with the chance you start near opponents or a bad spot with a chance to be alone. However, it all depends on the size of the map in relation with the amount of players. A big map with a few players generally means you should pick a worse spot to allow farming up. A lot of players cramped together means you should pick the best spot, as you'll be near other players any way. Case-by-case.

this is the age old discussion of cluster of spread, just in a ffa environment..
if you spread, then each one is less likely to hold out against an opponent.. if you cluster, then you'll be better off -if there are no opponents near-

wat about playing games with warlord settings

I actually meant that to be based on warlord settings.. I rarely ever play cities or full dist

I would prefer to see 'rounds' introduced into the manual distribution. As one of the preferences, you could set how many territories would be given per round, and rounds would operate as turns.

For example, let's say we have a 3 player FFA set to 6 starting territories, with 2 given per round of distribution. In the first round I rank territories and submit, receiving 2 territories once everyone has submitted. Of course, which other territories are not available, which allows me to adjust my strategy as necessary as I rank for the next territories.

To use the manual distribution as it is now, the default setting could be set such that territories given per round of distribution are the same as the maximum number of territories given to each player.

As an option, this would simply add another possible game style for 1v1, but I think the real advantage would be in the 2v2v2 and 3v3 games, which seem to be too often won and lost based on proximity. (As a result of both strategy and luck.)

Thoughts?

this way is alright and not broken so needs no fixing in real wars in can't choose ur country.