Well, the thing is, I work, then have to watch my 3 year old. I get to make my moves between 10PM and 12AM. This insures I never move first and always have the counter action role.

In this game we're play the leaders of countries, which if we were really running them, would not have to wait until late at night to give our orders.

This has cause me to have to do things like chase enemy units clear across my country because I simply go 2nd always.

There needs to be some randomization in the unit turn processing to make it fair for everyone or people in early time zones or people with later jobs who always get to go first have a clear advantage.

There is, you've just been unlucky.

The orders for your own units are processed the order in which they were given. As far as the order that your commands are processed relative to other countries is randomized.

Oh well, bad luck I guess.

How does that randomization work?

If for example I have 10 countries, each of which makes 100 moves, for a total of 1000 moves.

Does the game make 10, "action buckets," one for each country, processing each action bucket randomly, but as a whole?

Or

Does the game pick individual actions/elements from one at from each action bucket?

The results are vastly different.

In the first case each country's whole set of moves happens prior to the next country.
In the second case all units moves are random and statistics would say one country's individuals units would rarely move two units in a row.

More bad luck, he went first again.

All countries are thrown in a hat. A blind man draws names, one after another. first name drawn goes first, and so on.

Rinse and repeat for tomorrow. Guess you have been just unlucky. It happens.

I've just learned to plan that I'll go last for my defensive moves, and plan to go first for my attacking moves. It generally works out pretty well for me.

The order should be generated on the prior cycle and shown in some tab. This way you know if you're going to go before or after your enemy, and plan accordingly. It removes that random factor and makes the game less luck based and more strategy based, which should nearly always be a plus.

That would be cool

I see, it's the whole bucket system.

I guess it's easier to script, this way you have only one random draw, once for each country, The other way I suggested, though I made a type-o in my explanation, would have had a random draw after ever individual unit move, until the action buckets for everyone had been completed.

I like my way better, but then again, I didn't write the game.

What's the language game written in?

I could write the random move generation engine as I describe in Action Script 3 if the game author is interested.

Strategy is dependent on the rules of the game. This system works because no one knows the turn order and will all have to plan accordingly. In some cases it is advantageous to go after your enemy and other times it is not, regardless...a good strategy is one that directs your units in a way that will favor you most whether or not you go first or last.

this explanation is full of win. if you don't like the random attack order, you don't have to play the game.

No offense personally, but I think this idea is crazy.

Not only would that take a lot longer to process, as even on the newest map there are over 7,000 different attacks set, but statistically it would have almost no impact on the game. Where before, against one opponent, you have a 50/50 chance of all of your attacks being successful or none of them being successful, with your system approximately 50% of your attacks would be successful per day.

That was deep...but so true...

You've lost your mind.

:) wow, I didn't expect that happy reception.

I see I should keep my suggestions, ideas and comments to myself and will.

Obviously, by the game mechanics, a good strategy is one that is good both on offense and defense. No one is arguing that. There's also evaluation of risks; I could gamble on going first and making some kind of unstoppable attack that could be completely ruined just by not going first. However, there is no skill in making this gamble, since the variable is random. In a simple game like rock-paper-scissors, you're making a gamble, yet the variable is dependent on the person, which makes the game into some sort of psychological battle. That's why we have a world tournament of rock-paper-scissors and not, say, coin-flip. In this scenario, you're adding a completely random variable that doesn't depend on anything at all, so instead of adding another type of skill (reading your opponent, etc), you're removing skill in favor of luck. And that's what I'm opposed to.

A thought came to me but I don't know how well this might go over as an idea.

A major issue is people don't like people who wait until the last minute then buy, place, and move. I was thinking, what if we did this instead?

For the final three (or six) hours before a Daily Cycle occurs, units cannot be purchased. That way, there would be no "surprises" and nobody can wait 5 minutes before the cycle and spend money.

I would rather it be set up so anything you buy, actually doesn't spawn until the next day.

Normally I get home from work about 5 hours before the cycle is run, that's the first time of the day I even get to look at the map, so If we put an arbitrary limit on "no purchases 6 hours before cycle" I'd never get to play except on my day off.

I think all this does is change when the "end of the cycle" moment is to 3 (or 6) hours earlier.

Sure you can see so and so purchased at the last min, but you can't do any thing to stop them.

I was commenting on the idea that action script would help. Clearly Johnny is a bit beyond needing action script examples.

As far as the every unit random -- I think it just makes it worse. You can plan your moves so they work well both first and last -- usually this involves 1/2 of the units set to take advantage of going first and 1/2 of the units set to take advantage of going 2nd.

If every unit was at a random point in time then, well it would be impossible to plan.

One idea that seems interesting and could work is the idea that the turn order is random but then each player only moves one unit. Then turn order repeats.

This would be useful because your "first" units would go early in the turn -- thus you could give priority to some actions.

This would work, but to be useful the UI would have to have better options than it now does for ordering the moves (I still think this would be useful).

Interestingly this also gives small countries an advantage -- since they have less units, they will have all their moves complete early.

It is the best alternative proposed -- however the current system works well once you get used to it.

what units you already bought can still have their routes set, but it's what you say. Not so great of an idea.

I personally like the units spawn the next day. Or at least to make it fair no matter what time the players can play, if no body can see each players new purchases (Except maybe allies) until the turn is processed That way everyone has to go on their best guess of what their opponent may do.

The current system allows an unfair advantage to those whose sleep/ work/ school schedule allows them to be on just before the turn processes while penalizing those who can't be on then.

I like the turn schedule as is however as all players have to deal with the same variable it is not unfair in a real war their unforseeable events, if you don't want variables play chess.

This was tried for a while and it was universally hated. I was OK with it -- but it took a lot of getting used to and did not seem "natural".

We tried that for about a week where one could not see troops until the next day. OH my god did that suck. Attackers from the sea could drop a base and put a huge defense around it before you could react.
On the otherside, attacking a base, you have defeated all the defenses and suddenly there are 3 rows of turrets.

In short it is very frustrating.
IC

Agreed.

Build orders should happen during the update cycle. It's the only way to have the game fair to those who can't be 3:50 am heroes.

Buuuut.. both those 'very frustrating' examples STILL EXIST in the game.

The scenario:

1) 11pm player logs on, sees the map. He issues his orders, goes to bed.
2) 3:50am hero logs on, sees everything that 11pm player built, builds stuff, issues orders, and goes to bed.
3) 11pm player logs on the next day to see that 3 rows of magical turrets and all kinds of previously unseen magical units that have appeared exactly where they need to be to thwart him.


I've heard the "we tried it and did not like it" argument before on this topic. Give me a break. What didn't people like about it? Was the fairness bothersome?

Because it made every NEW unit in the game a 3AM hero, using units that had been created yesterday became only pointless, and you ended up trying to fight and defend against entire invisible armies.

I'm a proponent of having new units placed during or at the end of the daily cycle but not being able to attack until the next cycle. In fact, I thought Johnny said he'd try to do this already