[Rules] Reset Deadbeat Armies to 3 Neutral per Territory

[Simon Viavant]

Concise description:

• Reset the armies of deadbeats to three per territory

Specifics:

• If someone deadbeats, the neutral armies will be reset to three on every territory that person owns.

This will improve the following aspects of the site:

• Deadbeats won't end up making a continent bonus unusable for the rest of the game.
• Deadbeats won't end up defending someone else's borders.

[*manimal]

Concise description:

• Reset the armies of deadbeats to three per territory

Specifics:

• If someone deadbeats, the neutral armies will be reset to three on every territory that person owns.

This will improve the following aspects of the site:

• Deadbeats won't end up making a continent bonus unusable for the rest of the game.
• Deadbeats won't end up defending someone else's borders.

Like the idea this guy deadbeated the middle of a fedual game and had like 150 men on his castle which made it ungettable the whole game and really stretched it b/c this guy could of had the object but didnt have that castle and ended up losing the game b/c of it.

[wcaclimbing]

I vote NO, because whoever goes directly after that player in a heavily fortified game could pull a huge advantage.

Example, a game with big armies on each border. someone owns N america on Classic map. the guy owning S america deadbeats.
if the guy on N america plays next, he gets a huge advantage cause he can take S america and not really lose many armies. So then he can just fortify his border again and no one can break him.

[Simon Viavant]

That's a good point. It could be an option, not mandatory. And maybe no one could invade them for a turn, but that would cause more complications. In my expirience, no one really deadbeats who has a heavily fortified continent playing in that kind of situation.

[yeti_c]

A solution to solve that problem - would be to apply a decay to a neutral deadbeats armies... say -1 every round until 3.

C.

[Simon Viavant]

That's a good idea, but with a steeper decay, like -2 or -3. Probably -2, until it gets down to three.

[cicero]

I think that resetting deadbeat neutral territories to 3 armies would be a negative change.
Whilst deadbeats are annoying their effect on a game after the initial terminal boredom of waiting for them to die can be interesting. The sudden appearance of impenetrable barriers or other awkward 'artificial map features' makes each game different. With automatic resetting to 3 armies each game with deadbeats would be much the same.

[Soloman]

I think that resetting deadbeat neutral territories to 3 armies would be a negative change.
Whilst deadbeats are annoying their effect on a game after the initial terminal boredom of waiting for them to die can be interesting. The sudden appearance of impenetrable barriers or other awkward 'artificial map features' makes each game different. With automatic resetting to 3 armies each game with deadbeats would be much the same.

I concur

[Simon Viavant]

Yes, but that usually secures the win for someone completely. In a game I'm in now, there's about 200 points at stake, and everyone but three of us have been eliminated. And now someone with Australia and Asia just got three impenitrable borders. And nobody can take Europe, which is interesting, but the thing with the borders just really gets me, him sort of winning anyway, but still easily stoppable, and then this happens.

[Thezzaruz]

A solution to solve that problem - would be to apply a decay to a neutral deadbeats armies... say -1 every round until 3.

C.

I'd rather have it as a percentage (say 5% rounded down? with a minimum of 1) if at all.

[cicero]

Yes, but that usually secures the win for someone completely. In a game I'm in now, there's about 200 points at stake, and everyone but three of us have been eliminated. And now someone with Australia and Asia just got three impenitrable borders. And nobody can take Europe, which is interesting, but the thing with the borders just really gets me, him sort of winning anyway, but still easily stoppable, and then this happens.

Yes, but ... you'll have seen the possibility of the person deadbeating when they missed a turn. Then they missed another and it looked even more likely. And now ... well you've had two turns to consider the possibility that they might deadbeat so now that they have, you do have a contingency plan. Don't you?

That extra level of strategy is the only thing that - for me - saves deadbeats from being an utterly negative experience.
[shameless plug]There's always Infected Neutrals (see latest proposal as indicated by thread title) in the pipeline somewhere too ... [/shameless plug]

[Simon Viavant]

That might be good, but I think the zombies should be able to attack each other, and randomely to any adjacent territory, not an alphabetical one.

[gdeangel]

Rather than having a decay on the neutral, you simply put a cap, that way you get the changed landscape concept, but you can just rule out stuff like the guy in feudal with 150 neutrals. I think a good number would be 20. If the dead beater has more that 20, the territory goes to 20 neutrals. Otherwise, for under 20, it works like it does now.

While I think the decay idea is very creative, I don't particularly care for it because time will always be on the side of whoever is currently in the lead, so you don't necessarily get to the crux of the problem, which is keeping the playing field as "unbiased" as possible by the deadbeat armies going neutral.

If you limit to 3, the person who goes after the dead-beater will have advantage for sure, particularly in a game where people have stacks of 50 +/-, they can roll right over the dead-beated bonus areas, like the example of N-S America... and most maps have hold points that work this way. But, at at the same time, biting off 20 neutrals is a decent commitment, even if you've got a stack of 50, and if your in a game where 20 troops is insignificant, then its likely that continent bonuses also probably don't mean much at that point either (i.e., it's a massive build game / probably esc cards).

[Simon Viavant]

What if it automatically went to the cap (20), and then decayed at -1?

[Humrlmo]

This idea should look at the banned accounts then deadbeats. Games where someone is banned for being a multi still play out games they are in and basically ruin play for all others (example see Game 2620665). BOTH multi's as well as deadbeats should have a round-by-round deduction to armies on countries, but need to also lock-out the multi's after busted! They are busted for a reason, and while they can no longer join games, why reward them with taking points they'll never see again or becoming deadbeats and leaving mass stacks of armies on the board!

[edsdad]

Good idea.I cannot begin to count how many games I've been in that were decided by deadbeat neutrals

[gdeangel]

I'm going to just summarize with a hypothetical:

Solution 1: attrition, would have the territory go to 15 in my example, but then wind down by -1. The obvious problem is that in this example, where A has more troops and a nice bonus, by the time the clock runs on the 15 units, he will have killed off B...

Solution 2: flat reset, would have the territory go to a simple 3. This levels the playing field, but you lose that certain "adaptation" effect, of being able to play of a dead beater's neutrals when they alter the landscape.

Solution 3: capped neutrals, using, say, a cap number of 10. In the example above, the strategic territory goes to 10 rather than 15, making it more "in play" that it would otherwise be, but still leaving some strategic dynamism to the map. There is no attrition, so, in a sense, the map is what it is and you have to adapt.

Solution 4: cap with attrition: In this example, the territory would convert to 10, then shrink down each round. This would limit the benefits of the netural "shield" / too-costly bonus for so many turns, but, again, possibly of little value if one player has a demonstrated lead.

Solution 5: max out to some cap number, with attrition. If the cap were twenty, then in the example above, the territory would not be converted to 15 neutrals, but rather 20, then gradually reduce. For obvious reasons, this approach makes the original problem worse in the short term of the game.

[KLOBBER]

A solution to solve that problem - would be to apply a decay to a neutral deadbeats armies... say -1 every round until 3.

C.

That's an interesting idea. If it's a gradual enough decay, I see no reason for it to stop at 3. Why not decay slowly all the way to 1?

How about making it even more gradual, like decaying each neutral to 95% of the total each turn? (IE, a neutral block of 200 armies would go down to 190 after 1 turn, then down to 181 one turn later, then 172... and a block of 25 armies would go down to 24 after 1 turn, then down to 23 one turn later, then 22, and so on.... The minimum decay rate could be set to 1 army taken away per neutral territory per turn, until it reaches 1 army.)

This would give a realistic opportunity to eventually take over "undefended" territories, without giving an unfair advantage to the guy who just happens to get there first. It would be like the military has left a particular territory, and the civilians living there become easier to attack as time goes by.

The gradual decay would add fluidity to games otherwise wrecked by deadbeats, and expand the opportunity for strategy in every game where there are any neutrals, and as a strategy-based player, I think it would be great!

[kletka]

I am categorically against resetting armies!! One has to read the log and anticipate a deadbeat. If you plan for it, it could even benefit you. Resetting the armies will only benefit poor players who have no skill to anticipate someone's deadbeating.

[KLOBBER]

You have a point, but consider the gradual decay option. That would allow for the skilled player to still anticipate deadbeats, and actually, it would add a whole additional aspect to that anticipation.

The skilled player would also take advantage of anticipating the gradual decay of the neutral armies.

The more I think about this idea, the more I like it!

[Simon Viavant]

I am categorically against resetting armies!! One has to read the log and anticipate a deadbeat. If you plan for it, it could even benefit you. Resetting the armies will only benefit poor players who have no skill to anticipate someone's deadbeating.

Sometimes you can anticipate, but do nothing, like what happens when some guy has Asia and the guy in Europe deadbeats with 40 armies on his borders? But just on his Asia borders and nowhere else?

[KLOBBER]

I have a solution for the above-posted problem. Please see the folowing thread:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=54886

[kletka]

Sometimes you can anticipate, but do nothing, like what happens when some guy has Asia and the guy in Europe deadbeats with 40 armies on his borders? But just on his Asia borders and nowhere else?

GO through Middle East or Kamchatka. Build up an alliance to do so. It takes 3 rounds to deadbeat: plenty of time to do something

[Simon Viavant]

Do you think that if someone was strong enough to break the Asia bonus with 5 borders, do you think they'd wait until he had 2 borders? And a lot of people who play CC refuse to do any type of diplomacy.

[kletka]

Do you think that if someone was strong enough to break the Asia bonus with 5 borders, do you think they'd wait until he had 2 borders? And a lot of people who play CC refuse to do any type of diplomacy.

OK, then the player holding Asia wins. What is wrong with it?

I understand why Klobber lobbies for this. He plays a bunch of noobs, half of whom deadbeat... And they are his multis anyway. For any normal player, deadbeating just shifts the balance of the game. Resetting the armies does not rebalance it. You can imagine hundreds of situations when resetting will just help the strongest player to break a weaker player. So resetting is a random interference with the natural flow of the game without clear benefit in most of the games