I'm designing a board where its possible (actually it's common) for a player to attack with their last army (with abandon on) and eliminate themselves. The problem is that it's easy for that player to forget to end their turn, which could slow down game play considerably and may result in players getting booted to easily. It would be nice if a turn could end automatically when players eliminate themselves.

That sounds like it should be easy to fix. Do you have a link to a game where this happened so I can test it?

https://www.wargear.net/games/view/81283290

I took myself out on my second turn!

Thanks

So, the player isn't actually eliminated at turn 1454 because they still have 1 unit on the Elimination territory which is hidden. I can see that would be confusing for players. The Elimination factory territory is then assigned to the next player when their turn starts which is when the elimination actually takes place. So far so good, that's all working as designed it prevents self-elimination which is generally undesirable on most boards.

Is there a rule that can be added here that allows this to happen and would be useful for other designers? For example, if the Elimination factory is present to get around the logic which prevents self elimination, do we need a rule which permits players to eliminate themselves via an attack? That would be doable.

That sounds confusing and I don't see how it solves the problem. Do you mean that players would be forced to attack themselves when they have no other options?

This may or may not be relevant, but my factory scheme (when I get it to work) requires self-elimination.  The whole point of needing a kill switch to eliminate  players after they lose their last territory on the board is because I'm using their Capital as a separate "immediate" kill switch to eliminate them when they have too many units on the board.  In other words, I'm trying to create two distinctly different, and in this case polar, elimination mechanisms.  I want players to lose when they have either "too few" or "too many" units on the board.  This forces them to keep their stacks intact. Currently, it's impossible for one factory (Capital or otherwise) to do this.  Any and all workarounds involve an extra turn for a delayed elimination.

Regardless, I agree that it would be best to find a feature that's reasonably doable that has as many far-reaching implications. I have a few ideas, but I want to think about them just a little more..

Sorry I didn't explain that very well.

At present it's impossible to eliminate yourself during an attack. If there is a rule which relaxes this restriction, then you wouldn't need the Capital to do the elimination for you after their turn finishes. So, in the example of your game, on Instead, on turn 1454 you would be eliminated, your turn would end and the next players turn would start. This solves the problem of the player forgetting to end their turn.

You would still need the too many units elimination mechanism.

tom wrote:Sorry I didn't explain that very well.

At present it's impossible to eliminate yourself during an attack. If there is a rule which relaxes this restriction, then you wouldn't need the Capital to do the elimination for you after their turn finishes. So, in the example of your game, on Instead, on turn 1454 you would be eliminated, your turn would end and the next players turn would start. This solves the problem of the player forgetting to end their turn.

Yes, the rule as you describe it would work provided that there are no off-board territories that are still occupied.

You would still need the too many units elimination mechanism.

The 'too many units mechanism' is actually the fast one. Every territory is an individual continent that feeds the capital factory "-1" and the Equalizer is there to feed the Capital +2. when the number of territories on the board exceeds 2 the Capital sees a total of -1 and is only eliminated at the beginning of the player's turn. I'm pretty sure this is what your fix would take care of, and that's good. It's the "too few units" mechanism that would delay the elimination, but even there your fix would make it such that players wouldn't have to take two dummy turns.

Perfect, I'll add that in.

So, a follow up question - if the player eliminates themselves when attacking another player, does this count as an elimination by the player that they attacked so they get the elimination bonus + cards + reserves? Or are these all discarded? Also does this count towards the players elimination streak?

If they eliminate themselves against a Neutral then I think the elimination bonuses should be discarded.

Agree.

I think my Quantum Entanglement Board has a delayed self-elimination mechanism and I'm pretty sure it messes up the elimination streak tally, (which is weird and irrelevant stat in my opinion, but whatever..)

As a side note, I think I've noticed that elims in DEV games seem to count. I'd bet my longest elim streak stat is inflated as a result of me playing my test dummy account player.

This setting is now available on the Rules page in version 1.5 of the Designer (https://www.wargear.net/wiki/doku.php?id=designer_workshop:installing_the_board_designer):

Any gameplay problems let me know as usual!