LoL.. of course they are. How could you say they aren't? Obviously, anyone who has it out for me.. ME (the greatest guy in the world) is an inherently bad person.

Fair point.

The other issue is that by the time they've missed two turns, the CDs neighbours are likely to have turned to fight them.
Still, take over a CD and show good diplomacy and you'll be ok

Indeed, it enriches the game and puts new choices on the table. I've done it often, sometimes to succeed, sometimes to be screwed anyway. You should not fear a little press. Sometimes I see a CD taken by someone who presents little or no press. That is, to say the least, inviting to eliminate.

My experience has also been poor taking over cd'ed countries. I've rigorously attempted to gain the favor of really anyone in a few games to no avail. Sadly, I'm not sure I'll take over a cd'ed country again. It's just not that much fun to enter a game, put forth a great deal of diplomatic effort, and get ran over with little communication from the other end.

This has been mentioned, but I would be in favor of some bonus for taking over cd'ed countries.

I took over CD England and won the game.

with 3 SCs, mind you.

let me guess, this was before the game started, rite?

i've picked up two cd countries and came away with a three-way and a two-way draw. that being said, i'm extemely particular about what cd's i'll pick up. i won't pick up a country and pay for 6 centers when 3 of them have been captured in the spring move and the units that were holding them are disbanded. i also stay away from anything under 5 units unless its early in the game.

figs, is there a way that the cd's could have a buy in value equal to either the amount of units on the board, or centers that are not being held by foreign units (whichever is greater), or would that mess with the point structure?

whats wrong with CD's? kinda helps out the rest of us who actually want to win...

As mentioned earlier, of course you have to be careful when you take an SC, but if you do you can often do quite well from it.

trip: At the moment the value of an SC is calculated based on the value of the pot and the number of SCs controlled by the player you're taking over. The idea behind this was that all CD nations would be about the same value to take over.

There are a number of possible improvements for CD options and I have to admit I've rather lost track of what's in favour and what's not :P

I take over a lot of CDs (probably about a third of all my games).
Yes, sometimes it is only to realise everyone else is coming to get you and have already agreed how to split your centers, but overall it's no different to other games.
The only difference is that it's a bit more expensive and you don't gain so much points in the end.

Nope. During the game.

I often take over CDs, as with Ivo_ivanov I would say they make up a third of my games - if not a little more.

The thing you have to be aware of when taking over a CD power is that if another power was _already_ attacking the CD power _before_ it went CD, their default response, in most cases, will be to continue attacking you. On the other hand if the CD power had formed alliances, it may be possible to reactivate those alliances when you take over, if you show yourself to be competent.

It's all about which CD's you choose to take over. Look at the game map, and in particular look back over the previous turns. This should show you who has been allied with the CD power, and who the CD power has been in conflict with. Then you make your decision on that basis.

Some jerk took a CD in one of our games and then proceeded to time out and go CD himself. Players like that should have their IP banned.

Lee, those are normally accidental clicks where the person intended to see the map, not actually join. There is a visual issue that the join button is so big and draws your clicks versus the view game button. A simple solution would be to just remove JOIN from the game listings and make the person look at the game where there is another join button. No one is going to join legitimately without looking first anyhow.

And that fix could be done on the PHP page without any effort at all. Just ad a style to the button that says "display: none".

I accidentally took over a 2 SC Russia for 60 points (was a 1000+ game) and ended up with 4 SCs to double my points. It's not always bad. In a WTA you can be integral to a stalemate, and a PPSC you can help the leader win.

"and a PPSC you can help the leader win"
:O HERESY!!!

or you could be a pussy like figle and not take a chance on a cd :p

I joined a game once as a small power and tried to broker my units to the two big powers near me. Unfortunately they chose to stop fighting and take out the third big power and incidentally me instead. Was worth a shot though.

*considered banning trim101* :P
Haha, I would happily take over CDs, but it seems rather unfair if I just banned the account to then take it over from CD

Sounds reasonable to me, you see a 10,000 pot game going on, you ban the top two players, then you and Chrispy take them over and take all the points, then unban the players, and everyones happy:]

yep, I wouldn't like if you did that, figle, you'd cut me out of at least half of my CD takeovers :P

Hmm, maybe its just me, but I think people would notice?
Saying that, in one of the biggest games I've played I ended up collapsing and coming a terrible second after my ally got taken over from CD - that guy did well! (Yes i still hold a grudge over that one, i know it was fair but it really annoys me!)

your just scared figle

Haha for the record I am not at all implying that the mods would actually do that, I'm just being a smartass:]

Actually my first game was taking over a CD. While I didn't win, I got 1 extra supply center (ending with 4), could have gotten 2 or 1 more, if I didn't make noob errors.

I have to admit, I think the paying cost was really little so, I was tempted to do that.

The main reasons that I won't take over a cd are:
The country is dead meat. That would just be a waste of time and points.
The country is reasonably strong. However any reasoanbly strong country has more than 5 point buy in and I might as well join a new game.