The other thread about draws made me wonder if it would be possible to enforce a preplanned draw (indirectly) by getting all participants to vote for them in advance, or all but one (if the draw-aimed alliance wanted to trust one player as the adjudicator with the final vote).
The idea being that an alliance of 2+ players say they want to draw, but to affirm their intentions and decrease the chance of someone changing their mind, they get everyone to vote for it in advance, before the game is resolved.
Then the game would automatically end in a draw when all other players had been eliminated or vote to draw, right?

Obviously, the option to enter an '/undraw' vote would give someone wishing to go for the win an out, but in doing so they'd also attract suspicion from their allies. And such an approach would also (potentially) allowing losing players outside the alliance to enter their own votes and force the draw earlier, but then that's kind of what I'm going for here. (Even if it's scored the same, the last player who votes to draw on the other side can be seen as surrendering in some ways).

I know some of you were arguing that there's too much playing for draws already, and I'm not necessarily arguing for more, but I'd like to know how the details are implemented here anyway.

Thanks.
Faster response than I expected. :)

I don't know much about computers, so this will probably be explained really badly :)

Anyways, it's my understanding that the system checks for draws every five minutes, so once everyone has voted the draw it could be instant, or it could be a maximum of 5 minutes away, depending on when the last vote comes in.

The Gamemaster runs I believe every 5 mins. I'm not sure whether with draws it happens at the first or the second running, or indeed if it is a different piece of code entirely.

The one thing I've always wondered - if 4 of 5 players vote for a draw, and the 5th player is then eliminated, does the GameMaster pick that up? I believe the answer is yes, but I should dig into the code.

Yes Jbalcorn, that is part of what I was wondering too.

Yes, it does. The code for the gamemaster checks the votes of active players only when it runs, so if the nondrawing player gets eliminated, then the draw occurs. That being said, I haven't looked at the details close enough to determine when it checks. It may be much like the 0 point survives in that you have to wait until the spring after they are eliminated before it triggers the draw.

Lead Question:
The gamemaster runs every 5 mins, meaning this is the maximum time you could have until it runs (assuming everyone is ready). Yes draws stay there until people remove them and can be used as a sign of solidarity.

Later: I would guess that it picks up on the draw 5 minutes after it runs the adjudication in that case, but again I haven't checked the code.

The other thing to keep in mind is that /draw and /undraw are both toggles. So if you have NOT voted to draw yet and enter /undraw, it will actually count as a vote to draw. So do not use /undraw to just try and check on the current voting status unless you are okay with your vote being toggled.

It would be nice if there was a /vote command that would display the current vote statuses for both draws and pauses. Or at least make /undraw not a toggle but an absolute change to not being voting for the draw.

Mr. Pinguin. I think you'd find that strategy to be not very useful, because as soon as you were on the verge of eliminating your opponents, you might find yourself frustrated as they too join in on the draw.

@Chrispminis:
On the contrary, such a scenario would be the whole point of this approach. It would allow a group of players to show their solidarity against a rival faction, and then effectively force the draw on the other group/player.

Or as I said above, one could also orchestrate an alliance where all but one ally declared their draw (perhaps the weakest ally is given the final vote, because they're the least capable to stab and the easiest to be defeated if they do?)

In either case, there's still plenty of opportunities for subterfuge, but the advantage is that a player who has entered their vote risks the game suddenly ending before they've had a chance to change their mind/pursue a stab. And of course it clearly draws attention to someone's intentions if and when they do vote to undraw.

It also allows the odd-man out (presumably a player trying to solo-win), a chance to surrender and end the game while holding a majority share of SCs and the points they represent.

If they choose to be greedy and continue their struggle, they might lose more SCs and ultimately finish the game with a smaller reward.

It's a particularly timid approach, so it might not be attractive to some, but when one or more nations are in a mostly unwinnable position it seems like it might become appealing.