Just wanted to see if anyone knew a bit better what is going on.  I think maybe I can still get this to work by having two capitals for each player, so that they are not eliminated immediately and have a chance for the stay alive factory to get the capital back before the second one gets taken away, but was looking for any more information before I go through the trouble of testing.

I would really like clarification on the order in which factories (of different types) trigger with respect to one another and also with respect to abandonment of the territory and the check for elimination.

I feel like there might be an issue like this latent in my current dev board Dungeon Quest, http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/6080, where I use a mechanism similar to what Ozy describes above:

Have a capital off board for each player that they start with.  Max 1 unit.  Give it a "decay" factory with itself as the only member and the target with a value of -1.  Then another "keep alive" factory for every on board territory * every capital.  Where the factory target is +1 to the capital.  As long as you have at least one on board territory the +1 balances the -1 and you stay alive.  When you have no on board territories, you only get the -1 applied to your capital, and it goes to -1 and you get eliminated.

In my case, I'd like a player to be eliminated automatically if they ever occupy more than 3 territories on the main board (the dungeon). So I set up a capital for each player, that gives a +3 factory bonus to itself each turn. Each capital starts has a unit max of 4. Every territory on the board gives a -1 factory bonus to the capital of its controlling player, so if you ever have more than 3 you get +3 and -4, which is 0. So far, I think it works, but I haven't actually tested out the elimination mechanic yet.

Don't factories trigger in order: #/alpha?

You may be right, but it's quite difficult to test in practice.

Tom explained it once. 

Found the thread:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/2949p1/Question_about_order_of_factory_behavior

It's done by a mySQL ORDER BY on the factory name field - it is case sensitive.

mysql documentation says ORDER BY is insensitive by default:

>On character type columns, sorting—like all other comparison operations—is
>normally performed in a case-insensitive fashion. This means that the order is
>undefined for columns that are identical except for their case. You can force a
>case-sensitive sort for a column by using BINARY like so: ORDER BY BINARY
>col_name.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/sorting-rows.html

(i.e. Tom originally said it was case sensitive, but then I found documentation that sounds like it is not)

I also found this bit in the same thread from Tom:

the order of capture will be determined by the factory name. But it is a two pass system so first it runs through to see which continents the player owns, then it builds a list of auto-capture factories.

The auto-captures are then run through in a second loop. So only one auto-capture will fire depending on which territories are owned at the point of the first loop run through.

I'm not exactly sure what that means.  Does it mean that the last auto-capture that gets triggered is the only one to be applied, or is it the first one?  Seems like it would be better to go ahead and apply all of them.  It could have an affect on how many units end up in the territory even if it doesn't affect the eventual ownership.  Also, do auto-neutral factories count as auto-capture factories?

If Tom would be willing to post the relevant code that handles this, that might be the most definitive way to answer this rather than trying to have him try to explain it.

More related discussion here, but no Tom:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/3259/Factory_order_for_filling

Doesn't look like the two capital system is working either. Both autoneutral factories are triggering before either autocapture: http://www.wargear.net/games/view/426546

well damn.  Thanks for checking that out Korrun.  So it looks like Auto-neutral factories either are all applied first before any autocapture.  Or possibly it runs through all the possible capturing  factories to determine ownership and auto-neutral dominate or apply 2nd or something...

Did another one where the only one of the two capitals has the autoneutral: http://www.wargear.net/games/player/426588

Seems that the autocapture factory is still adding units to the territory, but not changing ownership.

not sure I get what happened there.  I need to look more closely when I have time.

btw - I noticed that on my maps the auto-neutrals did not kick in until the beginning of the 2nd round,  but yours kicked in right away.  Maybe because you let players choose their territories?

btw - I ran a test game with abandon on to verify that the technique I outlined above does in fact work for abandon boards:

http://www.wargear.net/games/player/428034

And, since I wasn't 100% clear what Korrun had done, I setup my own scenario with no abandon.  The game was over before it even started, and seemed to confirm that auto-neutral factories dominate auto-capture factories regardless of the name of the factories:

http://www.wargear.net/games/player/428048

Ozy, this is exactly what the 'token territories' request I have in is to accomplish. As it stands, even with abandon immediately on, elimination gets odd/ugly. Even after all of your territories are gone, you have to take one more confusing turn where you have nothing to place and no moves to make, but still have to hit the 'end turn' button to accept your fate. See my time zones map for an example of this in action.

Ah a year late on this thread, but I seem to be having a similar problem with the new GoT map. Was there ever any clarification about different factory types taking precedence regardless of name? Autoneutral vs autocapture, specifically...

The best way to find out is to try it on a simple board yourself. As I understand it - Name determines order. So for instance an 'early' standard factory may not fill because the territory gets called before an Autocapture 'turns' it.

psilofyr wrote:

Ah a year late on this thread, but I seem to be having a similar problem with the new GoT map. Was there ever any clarification about different factory types taking precedence regardless of name? Autoneutral vs autocapture, specifically...

I don't recall the details of my testing on this before, but from what I remember, the auto-neutral and auto-capture don't play nice with each other.

Has anyone else worked on this problem at all?

I know I tried some things, but I need to track down my notes or comments or something.  I'll try to do so sometime soon.