- When someone is about to reinforce to a trapped territory, display a warning.
Specifics:
- If someone tries to, or is about to, reinforce to a territory that borders nothing and can bombard nothing (whether because the player just took the territory or during reinforcements phase), display a warning of some sort.
- The best warning might be a confirmation dialog box, that only pops up after the player submits such a reinforcement order. (Thus, if presented with a list of places to reinforce to on Chained reinforcements, the warning only appears after someone selects a trapped territory, and does not get in the way of players who avoid that. It also does not appear for players who reinforce 0 armies to a just-conquered trapped territory.)
- If a dialog box is not feasable, an alternate might be bold text that appears just above the reinforcement command window when the selected reinforce-to territory is trapped.
- This only applies to maps such as San Francisco, where a player can be trapped in Alcatraz. This is a particular problem with Battle for Iraq, where a player can be trapped in several territories (the US and Baathist loyalty boxes) and it is not readily apparent that reinforcements to any of those territories will be trapped (see the many many complaints that has generated so far), but this suggestion is intended to fix this problem in general in case it appears on other maps in the future.
- This does not apply to maps such as Waterloo, where a player can be "trapped" in artillery but still able to bombard and otherwise affect territories beyond what the player controls. In particular, this does not apply to Arms Race, since being "trapped" in half the map and being able to bombard the rest is part of the point.
- At the moment, there do not appear to be any maps where a player can be trapped in territories that border or can bombard anything (short of controlling the entire map, at which point the game is won anyway). Therefore, "territories that border nothing and can bombard nothing" seems to be a sufficient test, requiring no reworking of the maps where this occurs, and no foresight in future maps (unless future maps allow for someone to be trapped in territories that border one another, at which point this can be revised).
- This is only a warning, not a prevention. Reinforcing to trapped territories is a legal move, and there may be tactics that rely on that.
- This is separate from the "Automatically eliminate trapped players" suggestion. Both suggestions are intended to improve the site, but they may have different strengths and weaknesses that need discussion, and they will probably affect slightly different areas of the site's code.
This will improve the following aspects of the site:
- Most of the time, reinforcing to a trapped territory will probably be a mistake or a misinterpretation of the map. Reinforcing to trapped territories under such circumstances makes the game less fun for the reinforcing player, and likely also for the other players upon experiencing the reinforcing player's typical (and justified) reaction.
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