Yes - 3(+1)
No - 0

I think this would be a lot of fun; however, I'd probably end up playing it very rarely because of time constraints.

I believe people have tried in the past to all agree to 5 minute rounds (or something like that). It doesn't matter that the turns are 24hrs if everyone agrees to finalize in a timely fashion. Does anyone know if that was a success?

yes 4
no 0

is anyone going to vote no? yes i think people have tried that before abgemacht but what makes it difficult is time zones. at anyone time there is at least 7 seven players interested im sure but they are probably split equally between asia, US and europe. i think we tried it before using the forum, the first person posts and asks for interested parties but by the time the 7th person has signalled their interest anough time has passed that the 1st person is maybe not online anymore.

My 2 cents worth would be.... I think you'd have to have real-time chat/messenger service and also process the game immediately. Once turn is due at the moment - it can take 5-10mins for the server to process the game, which is fine. But if everyone is waiting for it then people will wander off.... and you lose momentum quickly.

Might also be difficult to play out the whole game in real-time.... would be good to have the ability to "convert" the game to 24 hours again at some point. So you might play the 1st 10 years/3 hours then remaining players can agree a draw or play it out using the 24-hour turn periods.

I'd happily vote yes - but in reality not sure how often I'd use it without the above suggestions.

yes 5
no 0

I think the main issue with that is more a matter of human nature than anything else. Even with a good-faith agreement, working in a format that has 24-hour phases can make it very easy for people to forget they're supposed to be moving along faster. For example, having to refresh the page manually to see new developments, chats, etc. What we'd want is the live format to naturally encourage live behavior, such as having moves/chats auto-refresh as they occur (which isn't nearly as hard as it sounds from a scripting standpoint). The timer could be set by the host, but would default to, oh say 15 minutes, and cannot exceed something like 30 minutes and cannot be less than 3 minutes. And if a person logs-off (intentionally or otherwise), it gives the person 5 minutes (or until end of phase, whichever comes first) to return before their turn is automatically finalized as-is and the country goes into civil disorder. Of course this is just a conceptual outline; the specific details/numbers could be dealt with and discussed as the code is being written.

Regarding timezones, while your explanation has merit, keep in mind that most internet games are live, played by people across all different timezones, and it works just fine. Because an entire game would only last a few hours on average, anyone who's online when the game is first hosted will just join on the fly, typically already prepared to play it out for at least a few hours. I suppose another feature idea would be to allow the host to set a maximum game time, at which point the winner (if there's more than one player left) would be automatically determined by number of supply centers, or it'd just come out as a draw, etc.

Civilization IV is a good example of this (at least from a practical standpoint; the network code itself is a piece of garbage). A typical multiplayer game can go on for like 6 hours with roughly 7 players. If a person leaves, someone else can just join and take over that civ, just like you can now in phpDip. Of course, there's also others like Yahoo! Games, anything that uses GameSpy, etc. From what I can tell, this site definitely has a large enough returning player base to support a live gaming environment, since you're very likely to find enough people in or near your timezone to play a live game.

I think it'd be successful if the coding is done right. Certainly more effective than posting on a forum and hoping everyone remembers to finalize their orders quickly, since all it takes is one person to make the plan fail as it is right now.

yes 6 (+1)
no 0

RE: Braveheart....

Very good ideas! In fact, I don't see any reason why it would be difficult to have the server handle commands and whatnot in real-time. So long as you have the browser refreshing the input data correctly, it really would just be a simple matter of some extra JavaScript.

Regarding the other issue, we could make it so that the game can be "paused" if all the players agree, then can be resumed by the host at a later time when everyone's ready to continue. At least that's what I would think to be the most logical way to handle it.

yes 7 (+1)
no 0

For God's Sake, If you can do it, do it!

It's like asking if I would eat ice cream if you made it available!

Lol nice analogy! =)

We've done it.

yes 7
no 1 (+1)
If I could find a period of time when in advance I knew I was going to play real-time diplomacy I would get together some people from around where I live, and we'd play face-to-face

yes 8 (+1)
no 1

I'd have to know in advance though, and probably wouldn't do it that often. I like the live chat idea, you get by hitting refrest but it would enhance the experience

Lol yeah I guess it doesn't mean all that much if you can just get together with people face-to-face. As for me I only know one other person who plays this game and he lives like 30 miles away, so being able to connect with random people online to play a live game would be a huge plus, at least for me.

Yes 9(+1)
No 0

Yes 9
No 2 (+1)

Its either php or a face-to-face game for me, thanks.

phpDiplomacy used to have a feature that let people play short turns, but *no-one ever sticks to it*. People would join a game with short turns that would start at a certain time, play a few turns a day, then end for the day, but someone always isn't around for some reason leaving the game totally out of balance.

The only way it can work is if you are organized enough with other people to make sure theyre around to play, in which case why not just make sure everyone finalizes quickly?

phpDiplomacy supports turn times of any length, the only reason a turn time is going to be longer than it should be is if someone is missing their orders, in which case the turn lengths are clearly too short

Also phpDip used to have live chat; the chatbox used to automatically update. The problem was the requests made by the script which checked for new messages overloaded the server and my host disabled the script. For a site of this size on shared hosting having live chat isn't practical
No-one missed it when it was disabled either, because people are rarely online at the same time

So both of these ideas have been tried and neither worked

I think it could be interesting, but then you'd also need to limit the length of the game, like in tournaments.

No, because online you can't use my favorite face-to-face tactic: drug Russia and lock him in the closet. People used to call it cheating, but nothing in the rulebook ever prohibited it...

No, bullying Russia was actually the most effective tactic of Austria/Germany in our RL games. Like, physical, "If you fuck me up, I'm going to fuck you and your car up."

Sure it was never meant, but then again, Austria wasn't ever knocked out early.

I wouldn't want it as a feature of phpDiplomacy. I love the simple site; adding this feature would, in my opinion, fail Occam's razor (primarily because of the reasons Kestas stated above--this software already has the necessary capabilities). Now, if you want to develop it as a standalone application, I'll play it. I just see no reason for embedding it in the current system.

Yes, I would still miss the open opportunities of real FtF, like stealing order sheets....

Those sort of strategies are nice, but you have to clarify to what level you are following the implied rules and if its not against the rules you can do it. Second of these is great fun as you say, but can get violent from what I know. The cleverest I ever heard of was someone who set up camera's around the room, but I think that was just a rumour.

Yes- 10 (+1)
No- 2

Obviously I wouldn't be able to play this on the regular basis that I play php, but every once in a while I would be up for a game.