game mechanics, Turns and ending them.

Robbie.Price

Join Date 04/2007

+12

game mechanics, Turns and ending them.

In turn baced games there can be one serious problem with multiplayer (and to a lesser extent single player) Long turns.

I would like to beg, to plead, that elemental work on a simulare system to Risk 2 (i belive it was the computer game Risk 2) and MOO (amounst others) Seperated orders and excution phases!!

In one phace you give orders to your troops, arrange your diplomacy, set your contrucition / troop buying.

Then you hit end turn, and phace two happens, all units on all teams move, status of towns is updates, resourses are generated battles happen, and then the turn ends.

All teams can input thier commands at once, all commands get exicuted at once. AI's don't have a benifit of being able to order their troops faster, and claim things before human users just because they send thier move commands sooner (Happens in GC, really sucks for getting special resourses). and in 5 player mulitplayer games people don't sit uselessly waiting for (average game turn) durations.
Also it greatly reduces the load on the host servers, updating in real time the possition changes of all players peices, all AI peices is asking for lag and computer to computer disagreement on which troop got where first.

Keep it simple, keep it fun, Don't have 45 minute delayes between turns.
Simutanious orders! simutanious action phases!

Please please please please please please PLEASE!

Live long and prosper
Robbie Price.

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Is this different from the simultaneous turns option present (or by default) in most modern TBS?

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Goodmorning,

AOW:SM had both simunanious and wait forever turns.

Heroes of might and magic has Wait forever turns (5 may have Simutanious, i don't know)
Moo2 had plan your turn, execute all turns, simutanious play.

Dominions is the same way i belive.

other TBS i don't know.

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I am a big fan of simultaneous turns when they are done right. Standard Turn based only works well in single player games and PBEM.

Sammual

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

My vote will always go for standard turn, for both multi and single player. Putting some work into minimizing how much needs to be done hands-on each turn will be of greater benefit than designing some weird hybrid system. Even in simultaneous play, if turns take 20 minutes each you're not going to be able to finish a game in a reasonable time anyway.

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As long as none of this simultaneous gets in my single-player, it's fine. But SP should be traditional full turns.

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Denryu

Join Date 07/2006

+93

There was an old wargame called "The Perfect General" that had excellent phased turns even in single player. Duirng the execution (actual move) phase if something changed such as new units came into view, etc it gave you the chance to take "opportunity fire" (which of course deducted from the move points for the units that took it.) It moved things along quite nicely while giving you the chance to react immediately as the situation changed.

But non-phased turns work great too. I am mmostly Single Play myself, i would just dread multiplayer late game in a rotating turns game.

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He he! Just wanted to add my 2 cents to this topic.
I have always wanted to play a deep TBS game but unable to find anyone willing to sit down to play a proper game due to exactly the problem of long turns.

My thoughts on this would be a combination options to reduce the turn time.
There should be 2 phases, planning and movement.
Everyone takes the planing phase at the same time. Time limit say of 5 minutes could be enforced to add a sense of urgency to this phase.
However in this phase you can't move units. You can only assign simple instructions to units such as idle, guard, ambush, build etc.

Then in the movement phase, you will have a chance to move your units. But instead of each player moving their entire set of units, units should have an initiative stat. Units with higher initiative regardless of which player it belongs to would get to move first. If 2 players have the same unit with same initiative then then player 1 would always move first and so on. Units set to guard or ambush etc would not be allowed to move but may get certain bonuses, example set to guard means you won't have a chance to move but get a defense bonus. Again time limits such as 30s per unit could be imposed to ensure everything move along at a good pace. A table showing the movement order of all units could be shown so that players know when their units turn to move is coming up.

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I would hope Elemental includes both the simultaneous turns and the classic long turns as game options.

The simultaneous turns allow faster gameplay which is great for LAN and WAN games.

The classic long turns are necessary for PBEM and HotSeat games.

Both are important game options.

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Quoting moondoggiee,

reply 32

Time limit say of 5 minutes could be enforced .

Age of Wonders:Shadow Magic provided the perfect time limit by allowing the players to adjust the time setting limit before starting each game. This allows fast movement at the early stages and when more time is necessary the timer can be properly adjusted as an agreement by all players.

The only problem was in Age of Wonders:Shadow Magic any battles would be shown to everyone during LAN and WAN games. Ideally only those with troops in the battle should be allowed to watch the battle... other players should be allowed to manage other game decisions during another players unrelated battle.

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