Just use a meaningless acronym and let people give definition to it. Something that sounds like it's something that isn't really. The acronym T.W.A.I.N. stands for Technology Without Any Interesting Name. I think it should be something like this and I nominate 11's or Cram to come up with it!

SMTN, Risky.

I'm all for that! SMTNplay sounds like a good idea!

RiskyBack wrote: I'm all for that! SMTNplay sounds like a good idea!

That's not what your girlfriend said.

Ha! Jokes on sucker........I'm undatable!!!!!

I guess I like Risky's suggestion for a random Acronym the best =]

I did remember there was a thread about this already, and for probably the first time ever I actually used a forum search to look for it.  I was lazy though and searched for 'simul' in thread subject and body and came up blank.  Serves me right for even trying.

Antiscourge posted the closest to what I was looking for, although that still involves an order of sorts for the attacks/defense/combined.

Cram: 'This is true of BAO (tm), but doesn't necessarily have to be true of all simultaneous order entry systems.'

That was my primary motivation.  Kjeld, I understand you like the BaO system and the tactical use of turn order, and that's fine.  I just want to try to come up with something that has the equivalent tactics but without the padding tactics.  It's true that they aren't used on all boards, but they are used on some.

My objection to the turn system is more subtle than just padding, so I'll expound on my 'false assumptions' so you can shoot them down with more accuracy =]

I want to avoid situations where it would make tactical sense to tell 1 unit in Timbuktu to move to Kalamazoo so that my main force in Suskatchewan can hang out for one more 'turn' in order to stay on defense before attacking somewhere else (I ran outa odd area names).  That's empty tactics.  Maybe I need that unit in Timbuktu for a reason?

There's also the issue of force multiplication.  In the BaO system, 1 unit can be effectively multiplied several times.  It can be used as defense against an attack.  It can then be sent on attack.  If it takes over a country that was yours earlier in the 'turn' but was taken over, then it can conceivably attack yet again, even though the original orders used to send it were orders sent to different troops that are now pushing up daisies.  None of this is realistic.

Yes yes, I know that making something realistic often doesn't equal fun, but if we can make it realistic AND fun then that's what I want.  I don't want a unit in Timbuktu affecting the outcome of a battle 5000 'miles' away.  I don't want a single unit being able to battle 5 different times and move 2000 'miles' across the board while another is limited to moving a single space.

It might be that the other options available such as transfer-to-any-connected-territory, transfer-to-any-owned-territory*, artillery borders, capitol cities, limited reinforcement territories (do we have that yet? I want that =) might be able to be combined with a true SMTNPlay to give as much tactical flavor as you'd loose taking out turn order.

Then again it might not, and SMTNPlay would suck without it any way you slice it, in which case I'd be fine with that.  I don't really hate the BaO system, I just want to try something else.

*Yes, teleporting troops are not exactly realistic, but at least it's consistently realistic.

SMTNPlay.

Don't mind me, just repeating it so it gains currency.

IRoll11s wrote:

There's also the issue of force multiplication.  In the BaO system, 1 unit can be effectively multiplied several times.  It can be used as defense against an attack.  It can then be sent on attack.  If it takes over a country that was yours earlier in the 'turn' but was taken over, then it can conceivably attack yet again, even though the original orders used to send it were orders sent to different troops that are now pushing up daisies.  None of this is realistic.

Yes yes, I know that making something realistic often doesn't equal fun, but if we can make it realistic AND fun then that's what I want.  I don't want a unit in Timbuktu affecting the outcome of a battle 5000 'miles' away.  I don't want a single unit being able to battle 5 different times and move 2000 'miles' across the board while another is limited to moving a single space.

I am a really big fan of this and think it should be available.  The order is for troops on that territory on that round.  Not that I place Unit A here and then Unit A should only be available to attack here if it has not been destroyed.  It also seems somewhat realistic as if the territory was taken over, but then you gain it back then it should be able to attack as if it was never taken over, so the troops keep marching to where they should be attacking.  This also takes a lot of strategy to pull off successfully as well, especially in territories with maxes as you can easily leave yourself vulnerable if you try and fill up a territory but it's maxed so you pretty much waste those troops behind the attacking territory.  Soooo, I'm a big fan of it :).

What am I missing with the SMTN?  I don't get it.

"Concurrent Play" or CP - Two fewer syllables, at least.

I would like to see an option where you can order your territory to counterattack if it is attacked -- for example, you have 20 units on territory A, and it is attacked by territory B with 10 units. You lose 6 and B loses everything, but you told A to counterattack with 10 units if attacked, so you make an immediate attack back at B, conquering it because the opponent left nothing there. To be fair, the counterattack would probably have to have a lower chance of success than a normal attack.

I agree with Yertle, even though it was unrealistic that a unit could in effect act twice in one turn, it added an extra element of skill to the gameplay to be able to use it properly.

So if we take away that ability then we need to ensure that it doesn't dumb down the gameplay by taking away a feaure that more skilled players can use to their advantage.

What about the way Risk 2 handles Simultaneous Play?

I don't have time to explain it all (at work), but you can draw elements from it.

One example > If A is attacking B, it cannot defend from C attacking A, because those armies are gone before C gets there, the armies are considered "in transition." Therefore your armies can attack OR defend, but they won't be around to do both.

There is a tactical advantage to using more armies at a time, 40v10 will have fewer attacker losses than 20v10. Attacking army and defending army each roll 1 die, but the die has many sides but only 6 numbers that are distributed across it. If attacking with 5 armies, the die may have an even distribution of numbers from 1-6, but if attacking with 20 armies the die may have three 1's on it but five 6's, and tend to win more often.

There is a tactical advantage to attacking from multiple territories into one territory. For each attacking territory you get 1 die to attack with, but the tie still goes to the defender, and every attacking territory can lose an army.

I'm not recalling this all perfectly, but you may wish to see how that game handles simultaneous play. It's even called simultaneous play IIRC.

It resolves turn-order in that

All pre-transfers happen first.

Then All "Border Clashes happen at the same time" (ie A attacks B and B attacks A) and they meet in the middle. Then all Invasions happen (A attacks B, B attacks D, D attacks A) but all attacking armies are considered out of the country, they are in the place they are attacking. If two people attack the same country, the defender is suffering a huge disadvantage, but those two people attacking into that country then have to fight eachother for control of it when the defender is gone, only one army may exist in a country at a time.

Then each person gets a "surge attack" which means you may select one location on the board that you expect to own, and you can define an attack to go from that location to a neighbouring location. One army on the board gets to move twice. Then all transfers happen at the same time.

Each surge attack is resolved in the same way (ie. are two people attacking the same spot, are two surge attacks attacking eachother, whatever)

Then all transfers happen.

There is no conflicting of orders, no stringing along with attacks, and all of them happen at the same time ---> Attacking armies cannot defend the place they were in at the beginning of the turn.

I'm not explaining it all as well as I could, and I'm working on memory here, but it might work.

Andernut wrote: What about the way Risk 2 handles Simultaneous Play?

I don't have time to explain it all (at work), but you can draw elements from it.

One example > If A is attacking B, it cannot defend from C attacking A, because those armies are gone before C gets there, the armies are considered "in transition." Therefore your armies can attack OR defend, but they won't be around to do both.

There is a tactical advantage to using more armies at a time, 40v10 will have fewer attacker losses than 20v10. Attacking army and defending army each roll 1 die, but the die has many sides but only 6 numbers that are distributed across it. If attacking with 5 armies, the die may have an even distribution of numbers from 1-6, but if attacking with 20 armies the die may have three 1's on it but five 6's, and tend to win more often.

There is a tactical advantage to attacking from multiple territories into one territory. For each attacking territory you get 1 die to attack with, but the tie still goes to the defender, and every attacking territory can lose an army.

I'm not recalling this all perfectly, but you may wish to see how that game handles simultaneous play. It's even called simultaneous play IIRC.

It resolves turn-order in that

All pre-transfers happen first.

Then All "Border Clashes happen at the same time" (ie A attacks B and B attacks A) and they meet in the middle. Then all Invasions happen (A attacks B, B attacks D, D attacks A) but all attacking armies are considered out of the country, they are in the place they are attacking. If two people attack the same country, the defender is suffering a huge disadvantage, but those two people attacking into that country then have to fight eachother for control of it when the defender is gone, only one army may exist in a country at a time.

Then each person gets a "surge attack" which means you may select one location on the board that you expect to own, and you can define an attack to go from that location to a neighbouring location. One army on the board gets to move twice. Then all transfers happen at the same time.

Each surge attack is resolved in the same way (ie. are two people attacking the same spot, are two surge attacks attacking eachother, whatever)

Then all transfers happen.

There is no conflicting of orders, no stringing along with attacks, and all of them happen at the same time ---> Attacking armies cannot defend the place they were in at the beginning of the turn.

I'm not explaining it all as well as I could, and I'm working on memory here, but it might work.

From what I'm gathering of this... I like it.

Similar to AntiSourge's version right?

Check this link for some discussion on same-time Risk: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/352839/same-time-risk-on-the-board

You can download the rules here - the guy who started the thread adapted the official rules and are downloadable here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/36403/risk-ii-aka-same-time-risk-rules-for-the-board

Yertle wrote: Similar to AntiSourge's version right?

It seems I missed the "meat" of his post.  Probably he is referring to the same thing as me, but we have the title "Risk 2".

Thanks for the links tom.

If anyone is interested in actually trying it out - the demo version lets you play for 60 minutes.  It's only an 80MB download.  I'm sure many of you can aquire the full version, but I'm not posting any such links here.  If you like it, it's a pretty cheap purchase.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/risk2/download_6165477.html?sid=6165477&om_act=convert&om_clk=files&tag=files;download

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Andernut wrote:

 

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Cramchakle wrote:

Andernut wrote:

 

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Truer words were never spoken.

I've been mulling over the whole tactical problem the last few days, and have decided that you can boil down the specific things that give tactical complexity to a few basic categories:

space
time
communication
numbers
logistics
luck (randomness)

Yeah yeah how metaphysical but bear with me here.

The tactics from BaO come mostly from time in the form of turn order, only partly from space (attacking the countries in close proximity 1 to 1), partly from communications (only really in team games), very little from logistics (pre-transfer) and the normal smattering of luck.  Randomness takes into account not only the dice rolls but the 'guessing' part of the battle (where someone is going to concentrate their forces).  Skillful players can influence the guessing part to a degree by knowing their enemy or sneaky diplomacy, but there is always a luck element involved.

If you take turn order away you are basically left with a very boring numbers game.

I do like the direction this thread is heading though, Andernut nice find on the Risk II 'Same Time Risk'.  Giving some sort of bonus for larger troops adds complexity.  Giving a bonus of some sort for attacking from multiple territories adds even more and is right in line with classical military flanking maneuvers.  I have a feeling that directionality would be very very hard to implement because mapmakers would have to define the entire topography of a map, but you could emulate it.  Would be relatively easy to know that if territories A and B both border and attack C, and also border each other, then that would count as a flank.  Fine-tuning would come in play to avoid stupid situations like surrounding a country with a single large force and a bunch of 1s just to get flanking modifiers, something like the attacking country with the most armies is automatically the 'point' force, and all other smaller unit attackers are the ones that get any flanking bonus.

We could add complexity through better communications.  There is no reason why I have to time a turn order in order that my ally can end up controlling a territory that we both attack, I should simply be able to order it to be so.

Logistically I also like the idea or a 'post-transfer' phase.  It could be limited to distributing armies between the territory you attacked from and the one you conquered.  As a general I should be able to say 'attack until they are dead, occupy with a skeleton force and fall back to your original position'.

Another idea that might be tough to program but I would love is the ability to occupy the same country as an ally.  It could be split bonus, or it could be that one person has to own it and the others simply occupy it, contributing to defense.  If you combined the ability to 'co-habitate' with the ability to assign control you could add additonal logistical concerns such as, if I place say 20 units under my allies control then they only actually get 16 to simulate the difficulty inherent in commanding another country's troops.  You could also limit a 'co-habitating' troop country so that only the actual owner can place troops there.  Advantages and drawbacks for each method add up to succulent tactical gravy.

But when it's all said and done I think you do need an element of time.  The pretransfers, then border clashes, then attacks simulate this to an extent.  It might be enough.

One idea I had for defining time which I'm still a little fuzzy on (so help me fill it out) would be to simulate time with something akin to action points (ala' Fallout).  It would require unit tracking so it might be a nightmare to implement.  Each unit would get the same arbitrary number of action points a round, say 10.  You could then do the following for each unit:

'pre-transfers' cost 1 action point and must be the first point used.

attack or defend for 1-10 points

the inverse of the previous for 1-10 points

post transfers cost nothing but are limited to troops that actively attacked as mentioned before

Any of the phases would be optional, you could simply tell an entire force to defend 10 and call it done.  Pre-transfers would cost a point because nothing is free, you shouldn't be able to defend a territory from 50 attackers with 1 defender simply by moving 40 troops in before the battle.  In this case your man is dead on that first turn, and your 40 'defenders' become 40 attackers.

Battle resolution would look like a single turn but would actually be 10 small turns played out at once with resulting army losses per 'phase' adjusted down by a factor of ten and summed up at the end to determine the result.

That's about as far as I got with that so I'm not sure if it actually works.

What in the world are you talking about with points?

Andernut wrote:

Yertle wrote: Similar to AntiSourge's version right?

It seems I missed the "meat" of his post.  Probably he is referring to the same thing as me, but we have the title "Risk 2".

Thanks for the links tom.

If anyone is interested in actually trying it out - the demo version lets you play for 60 minutes.  It's only an 80MB download.  I'm sure many of you can aquire the full version, but I'm not posting any such links here.  If you like it, it's a pretty cheap purchase.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/risk2/download_6165477.html?sid=6165477&om_act=convert&om_clk=files&tag=files;download

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That's exactly it.  Thanks!