In some boards, particularly http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Hex, you may finish your attacks with no way to fortify.  If attacks are over and fortifying is not possible in your game position, it would be nice to automatically end the turn rather than having the player click once on end turn and again to confirm that they can do nothing.

yes

Hex needs the fortify option only for the deciding move. If the game ending was altered then fortify might be done away With altogether.

But I suppose the designer prefers it this way.

Litotes wrote:

Hex needs the fortify option only for the deciding move. If the game ending was altered then fortify might be done away With altogether.

But I suppose the designer prefers it this way.

 

Can you suggest an alternate method of achieving "any path across lets you win"?

I'm not a board designer myself so I won't hazard an opinion. I do agree with you it would be nice to not having to confirm you're not going to fortify after every move. But I have no idea what options are available for removing them.

Litotes wrote:

If the game ending was altered then fortify might be done away With altogether. But I suppose the designer prefers it this way.

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Litotes wrote:

I'm not a board designer myself so I won't hazard an opinion.

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I'm open to suggestions - tried once to do it with factories, but it got complicated.

Korrun wrote:

Litotes wrote:

If the game ending was altered then fortify might be done away With altogether. But I suppose the designer prefers it this way.

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Litotes wrote:

I'm not a board designer myself so I won't hazard an opinion.

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I apologize, my choice of words were poor. I meant just to raise the question of whether it was possible rather than to indicate it. I won't say anything further.

Yeah, the capabilities of the Designer are what there are.  I worked on a Hex variant for a while and I feel that Amidon37's solution is not only elegant, but it is the only way I can think of to get the job done without having to use millions of factories that represent the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of permutations to cover the possible paths across the board.

I modified A37's mechanics to create the win conditions for Battle of Waterloo.

The win condition of Quantum Entanglement has a factory taking an off-board "win condition" territory. This is the only other way I can think of to create the Hex win condition.  But again, even if you could code the rediculous number of permutations of ways across the board in xml it would crash the engine.

Quantum Entanglement uses a victory territory that triggers at the beginning of a player's turn as it fills by factory, and even that has its bugs.  The player has to complete their turn by ending it.  It's awkward and confusing the first time you win.  You can't place, move, or anything.  It feels like the game is broken, but I'll take it.  At least it works.

Litotes wrote:

I apologize, my choice of words were poor. I meant just to raise the question of whether it was possible rather than to indicate it. I won't say anything further.

And I apologize for my rudeness. You are welcome to join the conversation. Please be aware that many designer choices are less how they prefer it and more how to trick a risk engine into simulating a very different game like hex. As M57 said, sometimes this results in less than ideal solutions. There is definitely the possibility of better solutions, but not always.

Of course we could just request that Tom make the engine Turing complete...