yes, that too.

This has been suggested a number of times in the past.

It is my understanding we don't do this because it could seriously mess players up who log in at regular intervals--they may miss a turn.

I am with abgemacht on this. I would hate to log in 2 days into what I thought a 3 day build or retreat phase, only to find that I have missed 2 days of solid communication with my opponents and only have a fraction of the time I should have to enter my moves.

But it can already happen if there are no builds or retreats in a given year or if the people who have them are efficient and finalize as soon as they are done. This just reduces the waste caused by players who refuse to place orders they have no choice in making (required disbands).

Agreed. If there's only one guy who needs to disband since he can't retreat, he could set it right away, making the phase last less than 5 minutes and not changeing anything in regards to skipping it completely. Or he can be a jerk and not finalize or do it until the last minute.

As with most above I'm with you here. Automating it wouldn't be hard, and I must admit I thought it was on the todo list for 0.9 so I don't know quite what happened.

Or, at the *very least*, have it so that if nobody has any options for any given phase, cut the timer by at least half. For example, if all retreating forces must be disbanded, there's no reason to wait the whole phase duration.

"This has been suggested a number of times in the past.

It is my understanding we don't do this because it could seriously mess players up who log in at regular intervals--they may miss a turn."

What about making this optional?

There seems to be a misconception that people not finalizing on build/retreat phases are "wasting time." Perhaps his is different for other people, but I have not noticed this to be the case. I often don't finalize my builds/retreats. Instead of waste time, I'm usually communicating with other players. This is particularly necessary when I play games with people in opposite time zones.

Everyone knew how long the phases would be when you joined. If you were busy negotiating, would you want someone whining about making the phases shorter?

Also, I think the idea of cutting time in half would be the most confusing and worst solution possible.

I agree completely with abgemacht

I think there is an issue that a player need to be informed that his unit was disbanded.

it is also difficult to determine if a unit will not possibly be in supply (And therefore should be disbanded) - especially when you lose your last SC it is usualy that you retreat, and then disband, two phases when now were specifically needed.

Also I'd prefer if a message was posted (by the GAME) to the user about his unit being destroyed. (as opposed to having messages appear on the home page, which people can easily miss... i often don't know why i've no orders to enter for a game, until i realise it has ended for some reason...)

join the live gunbaot!If you're on here you know you want to play!

There are some quite simple criteria for when a unit can be forcibly disbanded, so its not impossible, but as we can all see it hasn't been done yet so hey.

@orathaic - you may not have anywhere to retreat to. That is the point. If you have no valid retreats, where all you can do is disband, then why not make that the same as if you had no orders that phase? If you have no builds and must disband all you rremaining forces (because you have no more SCs) then why not make that the same as if you had no orders that phase. You could display it on the screen as if they were normal orders, but have it finalized and not be able to be unfinalized to prevent abuses from bitter eliminated players. It wouldn't stop someone with valid orders from continuing to negotiate because they could remin unfinalized.

I completely disagree with abgemacht. That's what DIPLOMACY phases are for. In real Diplomacy, you are NOT ALLOWED to talk during the retreat and build phases. Not to mention the gunboat games where it's never even possible.

Furthermore, GoonDiplo allows you to set different timers for the different phases, why doesn't WebDiplo?

Also, that argument about "timed/regular/whatever phase checking" isn't worth shit. Because these phases are automatically skipped by the game when there are no retreats to do anyways, so there'd be no difference in skipping them when there is no options availalble.

For once, DHJ and I are in agreement.

Indeed, I can't check right now but I seem to recall that you could write messages to others during these phases? Why is this so? Why doesn't the game block chat during the build and retreat phases, as it should be?

@DHJ

For exactly the reason I stated. We are playing on an international site. The board game rules did not expect players to be halfway around the world from each other. I have been in games where me and another player only got to talk once each phase because of time differences.

goonDiplo allows you to vary the times for each phase. For example, you can have 1-day build and retreat phases with 3 day diplo phases.

Why doesn't this site do that?

And again: If the problem is that you don't have time to discuss, then what you need is LONGER DIPLO PHASES, not hogging up the whole retreat phase to compensate.

@DHJ - because it is a free site built by one man who does it out of his love for the game. Is that a good enough reason?

@DHJ

I play in the Leagues, where I don't have the luxury of setting phase length.

And to elaborate on Draugnar's statement--goonDip is based on webDip code, so their devs have more time to focus on other things.

I agree with automating mandatory disbandment, to hell with the meta-gaming aspect of drawing out the turns for diplomatic discussion and strategic planning.

I have to agree with abgemacht here. If we were all in one room, we could follow the strict communication rules of Diplomacy as DominicHJ suggests, but on the Internet, that's unreasonable.