ratsy wrote:

I think we decided it does things in ASCII alpha numeric

Is that how it happens to work, or how it is guaranteed to work?

Nobody will be happy if a board is built assuming one dynamic, and then that dynamic changes some day.  As a programmer, that's the situation that I dread.

btilly wrote:

Is that how it happens to work, or how it is guaranteed to work?

Yes ..and yes!?

I think it was discovered, and then confirmed that that's how it works.  Alternatives were available?  I think random was one.. ASCII was decided on and so it shall remain.  A number of boards count on it, and Tom knows that.

IIRC, Tom uses the ORDER BY from mySQL to sort continents before applying.  Which (again IIRC), I could not find good documentation on the exact order, but the mySQL docs said it was not case dependent.

There is a post around here somewhere with that conversation in it.

When I need order dependent factories I start them all with a capital letter then dash then the real factory name.  Just to keep it simple & make sure it works.

A typical territory looks like this:

<territory id="1690338" tid="270" boardid="3818" name="Desert87Oil  " xpos="636" ypos="256" max_units="0" scenario_type="Neutral" scenario_seat="0" scenario_units="3" unit_placement="Disabled" />

I think you can add the min_units="0"  in order for the territory to never go negative.

Have you ever tried this?  It seems to me that Tom would have to make provisions for such a command to be recognized.

Yeah, I got it to work but something went wrong and I couldn't use it...  I can't remember what now though...

K - I'll give it a shot.

Gave it a try -- No Joy.

ratsy wrote:

Yeah, I got it to work but something went wrong and I couldn't use it... 

Lol, this kind of sounds like an oxymoron... :P

It was the moronic ox solution anyway. 

btilly wrote:

Kjeld wrote:

The other suggestion that has been proposed is to have factories that trigger only when neutral owns the continent. Currently, neutral doesn't count as a "player" and so can't have a factory; if this were changed, that would open up a number of possibilities as well, especially with the idea of a factory cap.

Hrm, good point.  My hack would not work as well as I thought it might. :-(

(Though you could use a universal+n factory with a continent that would be owned by whoever left.)

But if neutral owned a continent, on whose turn would neutral get a bonus?  If every turn, then in a large game even a +1 bonus would add up fast.  If not every turn, you'd need to think through the consequences of the rule.

I don't see any good reason for giving Neutral a "turn" for purposes of factory production, not only for the reason described above, but because wherever you put Neutral in the rotation would likely have a significant impact on parity.  

On the other hand, having Neutral able to "Play" as a player, or for players who have been booted is an entirely different matter.  Having a dumb, or even a smart bot has been discussed in a number of threads before.

At first I was making it really convoluted, but I think I found a pretty simple solution based on tbilly's idea, and it should rebuild the wall immediately after the territory has been abandoned.  The trick is to leverage the cap on the hidden territory.

Problem Solved .. and it works.

This is exciting because it means that we can create terrain like effects that don't disappear after the territories have been conquered once.  The only caveat, and it's quite minor, is that the territory isn't replenished until the player's next turn. This means that once the player leaves the territory, for the next turn only, any other players can quickly "climb the mountain" behind them without having to attack the neutral wall.  But if they delay, the mountain reappears.

Here is a test of the mechanism for anyone that is interested.  You can check the history to make sure all possibilities of were explored

http://www.wargear.net/games/player/250906

If green holds the mountain, an red is at the top, does red still -1 the hidden territory, and then does green get the +2?

M57 wrote:

Problem Solved .. and it works.

This is exciting because it means that we can create terrain like effects that don't disappear after the territories have been conquered once.  The only caveat, and it's quite minor, is that the territory isn't replenished until the player's next turn. This means that once the player leaves the territory, for the next turn only, any other players can quickly "climb the mountain" behind them without having to attack the neutral wall.  But if they delay, the mountain reappears.

Here is a test of the mechanism for anyone that is interested.  You can check the history to make sure all possibilities of were explored

http://www.wargear.net/games/player/250906

I didn't see any cases where someone conquered and left immediately, which was the case where my proposed mechanism would fail.  Did I simply miss it, or was it not tested?

You are right - It just failed the blow through test.