Cramchakle wrote:

Cramchakle wrote:

So, I kept thinking about this while I was typing my last response, and the best analogy I can come up with for what I think I'm looking at is a multi-player version of Conway's Game of Life where someone wins when everyone else goes extinct.

This would be a good cell-phone app. Someone make it and cut me in 40/60.

Off-topic, but:  Great idea. If you give up on the idea of making millions off it, you could do it here. This has to be possible with factories (using some fancy XML tools for the rules).

Yertle wrote:

..why wouldn't 3 (or 4) armies stay to defend rather than only 2?

Because a "round" is literally the the throwing of one set of dice (3v2, in most cases). Why would 4 stay back to defend when only 2 are allowed/needed?  We're talking about each player's "set of orders" consisting of the simultaneous throwing of one set of dice in multiple theaters. Only one set of dice can ever be thrown for each border. On the other hand, If a territory is under attack on multiple borders, it has to supply defensive armies on all of those borders; thus, there are cases where more than 2 armies stay back to defend.  Once everyone has entered their list of attacks (one per border), the Engine generates a stack of orders that are "independent" of each other ..so the order of execution doesn't matter.

 It's a single attack per "round"?

Yep, that's basically it. Potentially one on every border, not unlike Simulgear.  That's what makes for constant game-play.

Is there potential that this could lead to longer games since there are potentially more wasted moves? 

This is definitely a possibility.  In my examples I purposely pointed out of number of instances where players could place "defensive" attacks designed to counter other attacks.. But there are potential down-sides to doing this.

For instance, let's say you have 3 armies and you opponent has 4. You could place a "defensive attack" order with the idea that his attack will be cancelled.  But if he does not attack, your armies will carry out their orders, attacking in an unfavorable 2v2 battle. Because in some cases players may end up attacking when they don't want to, play could actually speed up in places and these two tendencies could cancel each other out ..but yes.  It is a valid concern.   Just as in Simulgear, the play of the game may involve more "wasted orders", but the actual pace of play should make up for that.  In any given round something  should always be happening.   There will always be production. 

Yertle wrote:

Is that Blue or Purple? 

Have you changed the attacking/allocation for defense idea since the last version?

Not really. The only thing that has changed is the time resolution.  A round is literally reduced to a "round" of rolls.  At any given time, there are a finite number of orders that can be placed ..one per territory that you occupy.  Most players will only want to place 1 or 2 orders.  Action should be fast.

 I don't remember the whole allocation and seemingly high number of "canceled" orders...wasn't there blitzing at first as well?

In the original players could write strings of blitzing orders. This has been done away with to allow for quick play.  Players write one order per border, but technically blitzing can still take place because the "turn" doesn't end until all players stop placing orders. In this sense blitzing is still allowed.  For instance, at the end of the game when one player is mopping up the board, he simply places an order (others pass) and hits send.  If other players are"courteous" and leave their turn condition in "pass mode". The game will end shortly ..all in one turn.

Reposting the link to the videos..

https://sites.google.com/site/m57sengine/home/battle-resolution

M57 wrote:

 It's a single attack per "round"?

Yep, that's basically it. Potentially one on every border, not unlike Simulgear.  That's what makes for constant game-play.

It is different from SimulGear though in that normally you wouldn't be able to take over a territory in a single round and then the next round the player could simply reinforce the territory, ie you now know where someone is going to attack.  

Again, this is fairly different from SG, I would venture to say that it has the negatives of SG and ultimately wouldn't have the positives of faster play (that is without actually playing it though, so take it as a grain of salt).  The canceling of orders just doesn't seem to fit the bill of Risk/War gameplay, there should be a better way to resolve those.

There still may be a better/different simultaneous gameplay (something like Risk 2 has been brought up before), but so far I'm not really sure the "M-Engine" would improve gameplay or actually make it faster, and I'd be quite worried that it would be more tedious and longer actually.  

At least those are my thoughts so far.

So I think I get it. It's still got some holes you could drive a truck through, like the items Yertle brings up.

What I'm not getting is how it saves any time or improves on any of the options we have now. I still hate to turn down additional options, but I don't think I'd probably ever play a game with this setup.

It seems like the concept is complicated/sophisticated enough to perhaps require using it to understand.  Is there any way to set up a trial using a simplistic scenrio (for example, only a few territories and troops)?

Cramchakle wrote:

What I'm not getting is how it saves any time or improves on any of the options we have now.

It has holes, yet.. but there are solutions, many of which I can easily come up with on my own, but I think even better solutions can be arrived at if a team is willing to work on it.

As far as how it saves time.. I will post an introductory video that explains the order resolution process, which might make things clearer.

But suffice it to say, if you currently have a standard game set up on the WarGear Warfare board for 8 players, you'd be hard pressed to pull off your move in your turn every 20 minutes.  Noone wants to sit around idle for 20 minutes just to spend 3 minutes playing their turn.   Make it a SimulGear game (which you would think could be a lot faster) and most players still want 15-20 minutes to "carefully calculate" their order string.  Not a lot of action and it's still a long game.

If we can get the Engine running somewhere around a round or rolls per minute, we're talking maybe 5 or 6 minutes a turn max and maybe more like 3 minutes on average (no matter how many play) - what's more, players are constantly engaged.. there's always something going on.. the board is constantly changing, and players have the ability to react to those changes.

It's not just play-time that reduced.. A big part of it is constant interaction with the game.  That's never gonna happen when most players are waiting for their turn or twiddling their thumbs waiting for everyone to place their orders (which when you think about it could be even more frustrating).

Simulgear could have been the answer, but it just takes too long to "program" your moves.

The goal is more of a RT feel, but only in the sense that everyone must complete a "set" of orders in a relatively short period of time, which then are adjudicated by the engine.  It is much more like Simulgear in this sense.  One of the main differences is that the slice of time represented is much smaller. there is no order-stacking, and no need to place "anticipatory" orders. 

Maybe I'm not the best person to comment here because I barely understand simul-gear and I don't understand the m-engine, but could you get some of what you want (i.e. the quoted part above) by putting a limit (maybe 3-4) on the # of simulgear moves that can be made in a turn (similar to how in turn based play you can limit # of attacks & fortifies) and using the fisher clock to have very quick turns (on the order of a minute or two).

Ozyman wrote:

Maybe I'm not the best person to comment here because I barely understand simul-gear and I don't understand the m-engine, but could you get some of what you want (i.e. the quoted part above) by putting a limit (maybe 3-4) on the # of simulgear moves that can be made in a turn (similar to how in turn based play you can limit # of attacks & fortifies) and using the fisher clock to have very quick turns (on the order of a minute or two).

This is not a bad idea.  ..if only SG could be played on normal boards with dice mods, etc.  <Sigh>

Another problem is that because order of events plays such an important role, there are too many considerations that players need to take into account and play drags, and the shorter the time-frame covered in the "round", the more important "order" becomes.  Effectively making it not much different than the turn-based game that it was meant to be an improvement on.

M57 wrote:

If we can get the Engine running somewhere around a round or rolls per minute, we're talking maybe 5 or 6 minutes a turn max and maybe more like 3 minutes on average (no matter how many play) - what's more, players are constantly engaged.. there's always something going on.. the board is constantly changing, and players have the ability to react to those changes.

But it's not simply 3 minutes (albeit on the long end) per round, it's pretty much 3 minutes PER ROLL, that's a drastic increase of the 1 second for a 20 vs 10 that would occur in Turn Based.  I really think this is going to create a less fun game, especially if your orders don't get carried out, that's not fun.

It's not just play-time that reduced.. A big part of it is constant interaction with the game.  

Now if you are traveling down the path that this is completely different than Turn Based and not simply to reduce amount of time per game, then I think that does open up some more paths/possibilities to solutions... but between Turn Based and SG, I'm still not sure it's needed.

Maybe I'm not the best person to comment here because I barely understand simul-gear and I don't understand the m-engine, but could you get some of what you want (i.e. the quoted part above) by putting a limit (maybe 3-4) on the # of simulgear moves that can be made in a turn (similar to how in turn based play you can limit # of attacks & fortifies) and using the fisher clock to have very quick turns (on the order of a minute or two).

Yes you can do this today with SG.

M57 wrote:

This is not a bad idea.  ..if only SG could be played on normal boards with dice mods, etc.  

 

Another problem is that because order of events plays such an important role, there are too many considerations that players need to take into account and play drags, and the shorter the time-frame covered in the "round", the more important "order" becomes.  Effectively making it not much different than the turn-based game that it was meant to be an improvement on.

SG can have dice mods.

Why would there not be as many considerations with your proposal?  

The importance of "order" differs between boards/setup, I'm not sure if I remember how rounds are resolved with your idea, but isn't there a bit of "order" in there as well?

SG was made to be different than Turn-Based, not simply "an improvement" on Turn-Based.

Yertle wrote:

M57 wrote:

SG can have dice mods.

Yes, using it's own peculiar paradigm for battle resolution ( I meant to say that it does not support the standard board dice paradigm and by extension cannot support dice mods for those boards).  I am not trying to say that the SG method of Battle resolution is inferior - it's just different, and most people don't understand it ..or don't want to take the time to understand it.  On the other hand, though M-Engine deals with the current Risk style dice standards that everyone understands, it's way of dealing with battle resolution may also be too complicated to understand.  That doesn't bother me so much.  But if your suspicions are right, and it's cumbersome in actual play, then there should be no place for it here.  I think what the site needs is a way of playing the boards that is "fast", with all players constantly actively involved.  That's the paradigm for play that people expect in most any game these days, and I'm doing my best to tailor the M-Engine to achieve that goal.

The importance of "order" differs between boards/setup, I'm not sure if I remember how rounds are resolved with your idea, but isn't there a bit of "order" in there as well?

Nope.  Every order is reduced to an independent event that should have no bearing on the outcome of any other event placed at the same time. 

SG was made to be different than Turn-Based, not simply "an improvement" on Turn-Based.

I did not mean to say that one was better than the other in a general sense.  I was just pointing out that there are areas where one might be considered stronger than the other.   I think we can all agree that no one system for play is going to satisfy everyone.

SquintGnome wrote:

It seems like the concept is complicated/sophisticated enough to perhaps require using it to understand.  Is there any way to set up a trial using a simplistic scenrio (for example, only a few territories and troops)?

It's easy enough for one person to test play the Engine.  In fact I can purposely try and break it because I know where its flaws are.  First I think some more basics need to be hammered out.  Like Cram said, there are holes.  I may be aware of more of them than he is.  I know they can all be filled but I have left them there intentionally.  There are solutions for everything and everything.  The question is what are the best solutions..  Some solutions will ruin the game.  And some are very simple but they "change" the game too radically. 

For instance.. Take Yertle's point about cancelled orders slowing the game too much.  Well ..what if in all situations where A attacks B while B Attacks A, those orders are placed and the battle is fought as if it were over "unoccupied-territory".  I.e. a last man standing dice-off.   After all, both are in "attack" mode, so treat it as such.   This is a viable solution - will certainly avoid stalemates and a lot of otherwise "cancelled" orders will go through.  The only "problem" with the solution is that it breaks the "prime directive" as I've stated it.  So ..who cares?  Maybe there should be exceptions.

BTW, I've added another "Basic Description" Video to one of the pages:

https://sites.google.com/site/m57sengine/home/basic-description-of-play

Yertle wrote:

M57 wrote:

If we can get the Engine running somewhere around a round or rolls per minute, we're talking maybe 5 or 6 minutes a turn max and maybe more like 3 minutes on average (no matter how many play) - what's more, players are constantly engaged.. there's always something going on.. the board is constantly changing, and players have the ability to react to those changes.

But it's not simply 3 minutes (albeit on the long end) per round, it's pretty much 3 minutes PER ROLL, that's a drastic increase of the 1 second for a 20 vs 10 that would occur in Turn Based.  

Not necessarily.. First off, the A and T buttons are available, and unlike in the regular game where players are usually best off using the "3" button, there should be greater advantages to using the A and T buttons, for instance if they are trying to blitz through a line of defense.  Why give opponents time to react?

And in any case, for those games where a player may want to hit the 3 button "every" time, they are going to hit "Submit" after every attack -- and play will proceed neglibly slower than it would in a normal "Lightning game", where the same player would ostensibly be hitting the "3" button every time as well.  The only caveat would be that other players would need to be in "Pass mode".   But there are solutions to this.  For instance, the engine could put players in "Pass mode" on any round proceeding a round where they place no orders. They can take themselves out of Pass Mode manually at any time. 

You guys can pick any aspect of the Engine and find holes in it.  And for every one of these, there will be multiple solutions, many of which would be an improvement on my solutions if only you put yourselves in a more productive criticism mode.

Y, I know you're highly skeptical of the system, but I respect that you have put the time in to understand it, and I believe at this point that you have a pretty good understanding of the overall concept. 

Maybe the thing to do is to take the idea off the table (again) for the time being and switch the conversation to whether or not there is a need for such an engine in the first place.  If there is some consensus there (and I'm beginning to believe there isn't ..which still surprises me) then we can look at it in more depth, or start from scratch ..stealing whatever M-Engine elements seem appropriate.

I'm thinking that if things move forward, implementation would still be a few years out.  It needs to be well thought out and beta tested, etc.. There are many things that are more important to current members.  Try to think of it as something that will sustain and support the site as it moves forward and brings on a ever-growing population of "Lightning Round" players who will want to play in games with more than 2 or 3 people., and preferably on existing boards. 

M57 wrote:

Not necessarily.. First off, the A and T buttons are available, 

Wouldn't that mean that more than 2 defending units must stay behind though?  All units would then need to be defending, right?

Wouldn't that mean that more than 2 defending units must stay behind though?  All units would then need to be defending, right?

What I was thinking is that hitting the A and T buttons would create automatic sub-rounds.. where no intervening orders can be placed.  Does that make sense?  It should work, ..right?

Edit: remember, multiple players will be hitting their T buttons on the same rounds.  So all rules need to apply on a sub-round by sub-round basis. 

So then there is order to the Turns right?  Because all the Sub-Rounds would need to be completed prior to "canceling" orders...?

Yertle wrote:

So then there is order to the Turns right?  Because all the Sub-Rounds would need to be completed prior to "canceling" orders...?

I'm not sure what you mean by this.. I've just created a video explaining the concept of Sub-Rounds.  Perhaps you can re-frame your question in the context of its scenario.  I'm putting it on a supplemental page..

https://sites.google.com/site/m57sengine/home/modifications-additions-etc

Aye, I think that helped/answered my question.  Thanks!

Y, I've been thinking about your concerns regarding the slowing down of play and stalemate issues.  I think they are valid.  I've just come up with a solution for one very commonly occurring position that potentially slows down play, and is stalematish at worst.  It creates an exception to the "Prime Directive".  But I think it's quite clean and intuitive..

http://www.wargear.net/games/player/137759