No, this is not about how crappy the AI is. This is about how a player turns into an AI after surrender or being booted. I think I can keep this short. You're in a truce with a player. That player is the only one left to do his turn. Auto-surrender is on with him surrendering or he gets booted while you're not there. He'll start massing troops into you, even if you did have decent "defenses" near his borders, without a warning. Normally, this could happen with other players, but you can blacklist them for not telling you beforehand they'll break the truce. There's nobody to blame here but the AI, which doesn't care about truces and it's not so much about them thinking it's an advantage to attack you (in most cases, it isn't).

My suggestion? Allow everyone to redo their turn if somebody turns into an AI and set the same boot times for that turn. I'm not posting it anywhere yet but here to see if others agree.

|> set the same boot times for that turn

Do you mean resetting all boot timers so they start at the moment the human player is replaced by an AI?

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Practical details:

- You should probably also propose adding a new status message to the "My Games" page, something along the lines of "A player turned AI, please confirm your orders".
- In the current situation, all orders would have to be removed (since otherwise, all orders are already committed and the turn would still instantly advance). I've been thinking (not sure if I already shared it) about splitting the commit into two steps: sending orders to the server and submitting your turn.
The original idea was that it would allow showing your teammate(s) what you have in mind, letting you store half a turn (and finish it later, useful on big maps when you suddenly have to go) and to store tentative orders but only commit later (such as when you receive an answer to your proposal for a truce).
Having such a system in place would combine really well with your suggestion, as it would allow decommitting orders without having to delete them.

In short: I could see this working, nice idea.

I would like to voice that I don't see breaking truces as a blacklistable offense, and this could be construed as another possible difficulty of relying on truces...

However, I could see this idea working, although It would need to be an option in the game, else people could possible use it to draw games out even further when they have already technically been defeated..

allowing people to redo orders will mess up the game,slow it down and give people unfair advantages.

|> allowing people to redo orders will mess up the game,slow it down and give people unfair advantages.

"mess up the game" -> Can you be more specific?

"slow it down" -> Yes, but only by boot time * number of players in total, not indefinitely. This is of course a downside, but I'm with Perrin on this: the downside doesn't seem completely out of proportion, so turning this into an option is a valid suggestion.

"give people unfair advantages" -> How do you mean? Which people? And how would anyone gain an unfair advantage from being allowed to adapt to an unpredictable yet huge change to the game-situation...?

it will give people near the ais unfair advantages they will be able to prepare and have easy bonuses easier.If you get attacked by a ai in most cases the person has been able to recover.
It will mess the game play what of a game ends up in a cycle of boot and redoing same turn.

|> a game ends up in a cycle of boot and redoing same turn.

No, but now you mention it, what happens when multiple people turn AI in the same turn? Some special handling should solve this for most games, but resetting the boot timer will cause a mess when banking boot times are enabled.

Someone with little time banked will be booted first. At that point, the timers reset, meaning the person with slightly more time banked is nowhere near the boot time any more, which is bad (since it can substantially add to the amount of time it takes before a turn finally progresses). Darkruler, any suggestions on how to prevent this problem??

I dunno about all of this, but I think it is a cool idea to have extra time if an opponent surrenders or is booted. There are plenty of games where surrenders/boots cause the player to turn into neutrals, and I end up wasting troops/genius moves on what are either wastelands or easily conquerable territories.

@rvw you could either make that combination impossible and never work or
for that turn every on has the same time then the bank time returns next turn no one surrenders or booted.

RvW,

"Do you mean resetting all boot timers so they start at the moment the human player is replaced by an AI?"

I'm not sure about this detail. What I was thinking is, if a player was booted or surrendered in turn 10, there is a turn 10.5 in which everyone receives the ability to redo their turn (if they wish) but in which the surrendered/booted player turned into an AI/neutrals.

Perrin,

"I would like to voice that I don't see breaking truces as a blacklistable offense"

Sorry, that was mostly meant as a "if you blacklist for breaking truces, you have nobody to blacklist when the AI attacks you, as it wasn't the player's choice". If you don't blacklist for that, it's not really a blacklist issue.

"It would need to be an option in the game"

Of course, just allow people to set the option to grant people the ability to change their orders once there is a boot or surrender.

Ironheart,

"it will give people near the ais unfair advantages they will be able to prepare and have easy bonuses easier."

This is a trivial issue. If a person surrenders halfway through a turn with someone having already done their turn and another did not, then the third person is capable of changing their orders in such a way they'll have an advantage due to seeing the surrender. The other person may have put income near the surrendered player and less near the other to protect against both, so gaining a disadvantage. The unfair advantage is, actually, the other way around.

As for a supposed advantage when people are booted, I think again the unfairness is actually the other way around. I have an advantage when your truce near you turns into an AI due to being booted and massing into your borders. My orders would not have changed if that AI is not near my borders, but you are at a severe disadvantage with a person apparently breaking their truce while it was clearly not a good choice if it was a human player (most of the times).

But I think you're mostly talking about being booted (or surrendering) and turning into neutrals. Again, if a person surrenders halfway through, the person still having to do his turns can change his orders while the person already having done his turns cannot. Make this trivial issue equal to players by the suggested option that players can redo their turns when a player surrenders/gets booted. I get your point if there is an advantage to the person near the booted person turning into neutrals if he can immediately start capturing his territories, but figure the trivial issue where a person is above the direct boot time and you first switch your orders to take over his territories, then boot him and take your advantage.

Maybe this all sounds a little vague, but I think Perrin and I are on one line. This should merely be an option, of course. If you think it's so very unfair (like custom scenarios), you don't have to join them, but I think it actually makes it fairer.

Rvw,

"No, but now you mention it, what happens when multiple people turn AI in the same turn?"

I'll assume without banking boot times (as you mention later in your post) at first. I think this should only occur at the end of every turn. So, if there are multiple surrenders in one turn, at the moment the turn would progress it would instead ask all remaining players to check their orders. This could count as a new turn (I don't know how easy this is to implement), and so if there are new surrenders again at the end of the turn this would switch to a new, "switch-orders" turn.

"Someone with little time banked will be booted first. At that point, the timers reset, meaning the person with slightly more time banked is nowhere near the boot time any more, which is bad (since it can substantially add to the amount of time it takes before a turn finally progresses). Darkruler, any suggestions on how to prevent this problem??"

As I might have made clear above, I would effectively count it as a new turn. Everyone who did their turn gets the normal boot times banked, and then this would again happen in the "switch-orders" turn after that. I'd say that would be the fairest way of dealing with banking boot times. That, combined with only adding such a new turn after every turn would progress.

I hope I made it clearer, but if there's some things that would instead be opposed in here, feel free to point it out. If we can work out a workable option here, then I'll be glad already.

@DarkRuler:
That actually sounds pretty workable.

So, currently there's a piece of code in WL that basically says:

if all players have completed their turn
then
go to next turn

(where a turn is completed either by submitting orders, surrendering, or getting booted)

What that could become is:

if all players have completed their turn
then
if any surrenders / boots happened
then
go to confirmation turn
else
go to next turn

That would solve the problem with banking boot times I think. Because even if multiple players (with different boot deadlines) get booted in the same turn, only a single confirmation turn will be inserted.

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There does remain one practical issue: what happens to players not confirming their orders? Are they assumed to "implicitly confirm" the moment they would otherwise be booted? Or are they actually booted themselves then?

At first I'd say "auto-confirm instead of boot", but on the other hand, they do have just as long as on a normal turn... And, it gets kinda complicated when the different boot timers (vote, direct, auto) have different lengths. After thinking about it for a bit, I'm tempted to go with "if you don't confirm in time, you're booted".

While it is the easiest solution (both to code and for players to understand), it is a pity this can cause one confirmation turn to trigger another (in theory up to a maximum of 23).

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Maybe give it a few more days, see if anyone else has further suggestions or ideas and then put it up on UV?

Darkruler, I agree completely.. with the current system the people that gain advantage from booting are the booters, and with surrenderers the slow(er) players are given the advantage over the fast(er) players... an option similar to this would give an even advantage to all players...

Ironheart, Having a player Booted/Surrender will always give an advantage to the nearby players, that is why I highly dissuade it, but -personally- I would prefer a game be decided by skill, than by my ability to change orders then boot.. or by my ability to take my turn soo late I've noticed someone surrendering..