Philalethes posted this as did philcore....something is wrong with Phils today

LOL! I did notice that was tempted to ask if they were one in the same person who had just switched which account they were posting from.

caught! Dammit - If only we were ever in a game together we could actually cheat!

On a related topic, I'm actually in a game with drphil as Turkey gameID=37872

England in this game is what prompted me to post my original post

Not just one other but two accounts?!? You, my friend, need a doctor.

Dragnar: No, I didn't. Do you find that shocking, perhaps challenging your very notion of reality?

Sigh....we need a Phil vs Draug thread

LOL. I was just busting your chops, Phila (not philc). Having a little fun was all.

I think we all agree the autodisband when there are no options, whether it be at retreats or builds would be good and it is on the list. But doesn't have the priority of other things.

Cool. Group hug.

Actually, I prefer them not auto-disbanding. A retreat can sometimes be the result of a stab, and if the stab leaves you buildless and you're not diligent, you'd be in for a shock when you finally got a notification to turn in Spring orders.

It also gives you a chance to assess the situation, which is nice.

I think the point is if you have no valid retreats, to put in the autodisband order just as if you had no orders to enter.

Right. Which means that, when you look up at the top of the screen, the game won't show up, because you have no orders to enter. Combine that with a buildless winter, and a less diligent player could end up with a nasty surprise when he finally gets notified to enter spring orders.

Highly specific situation limited only to the less-aware among us? Absolutely. But compared to clicking the game at the top, scrolling down and entering a disband order, it strikes me as a minor consequence.

And the same happens already if they have no retreats to enter and no builds as well. What's the difference? A less diligent player would still not notice that both a retreat and build phase went through if they had no orders to enter in them. Your logic fails when you consider that this same opportunity already exists under more common circumstances.

What if it were done in conjuction with email notifications or adding a home page notification warning the player an auto function was commencing?

Of course, having shorter retreat and build phases as an option would improve the situation tremendously. Then you could play 24 hour games with 12 hour retreat/build phases.

I am asleep for 12 hours (or I try)

Of course it happens anyway. Assuming that scenario is a bad thing, though, there's no need to perpetuate it further. ((It's still not a particularly strong argument or anything. Just a reason, however minor, that it might not be so bad. Honestly I don't personally care, autodisband wouldn't affect me because I hyperdiligently [obsessively?] check each of my games and entering a disband order while I do is no big deal.))

I think this has been addressed even further into the past... kestas said something like, if it's automatically done and someone is absent for most of a retreat phase (but comes in near the end), they get to know that they have a forced disband, and that's that. However, if the disbands were auto-finalized and everyone else does their retreats earlier, then when the auto-disband guy comes in he'll see a new phase and not know what happen, and think that the game has moved on without him, or has a bug, or was hacked.

That's not to say nothing can be done, though. I propose just making it so that the orders are auto-finalized when the page is first viewed (or some short time after), and maybe have a Javascript alert indicating that the orders are all auto-disbands and will be auto-finalized, and then the reader can see the map where the auto-disband had to happen and why.

That way, everyone is guaranteed to know about auto-disbands, but it's also impossible to hold the game up unless you just never come to the game.

Another option might be to send a message to a user's PM box indicating when a retreat phase with auto-disbands occurs, saying which units were auto-disband, and then automatically finalizing; then the user sees the message when they next log in and the game can move on.

Aw hell, Draugnar beat me to it!

I think it's only appropriate when a player has been defeated. I wouldn't want auto disbands for players with SCs left. Most importantly, they get to decide which ones to disband. This is only a sugggestion for defeated players that have to go in and take some action before the game can move on for the rest of the players. And the action they take is logically deterministic - they have no choice. They're out of the game. They're just forced to go to a screen and basically tell the computer "Yes, I get it, I've been defeated". It's kinda sad, really

@philcore don't be so hard on the topic. If you are defeated, you're done.. Sometimes you gotta move on.

I'm so sorry (sorry) that it didn't work out.
I'm MOVING ON.
So sorry that it didn't work out.
THE PAIN IS GONE.

Well, in conjunction with a PM, it seems like it'd be fine. And really it'd be fine just autodisbanding for the majority of players here anyway.

The entire thing seems like a giant moot point, since the difference created by making any changes is... honestly fairly negligible in my opinion.

philcore, it could also auto-disband during the retreat phase if a unit is dislodged and has no where to retreat to. That scenario is complained about just as much if not more so than a player not finalizing the destruction of his last units.

Frankly, I don't get the argument that someone will come back to the game and be confused as to what happened.

For an auto-disbanded dislodged unit, you look at the map and you see that where your unit was is now another unit and a little explosion.

For an auto-disband during build/disbands, you come back and see where your last units were the big explosion. AND you get a PM saying you were defeated.

It isn't that complicated, IMHO. Sending a special PM when a dislodged unit is auto-disband seems like a good idea and sufficient. Especially if someday email notifications are added where the user can choose to have their user PMs and/or game PMs emailed to them.

@Alderian: It might be hard to tell (for a newbie) if a disband happened automatically because of lack of retreat options, or if it happened because the game somehow processed without them. If you come right at the tail end of the phase, you might panic a little, thinking, oh, I thought I had an hour left, what happened, did the game move on without me?

And you've surely seen how many people whine about orders being adjudicated incorrectly... People will whine about this, unless there's some way to get their attention and notify them about what actually happened (for an auto-disband).

The other consideration is how an auto disband during the retreat phase would be treated on computing back to back NMRs for a CD...

@Katsarphat, and that's why I agreed that sending a PM notifying the auto-disband was a good idea. And in my opinion, sufficient.

@Draugnar, it would appear the functional difference would be that since no order was needed, it isn't an NMR so doesn't advance the player towards a CD.

The political difference is that it means it could take a player longer in game years, if not real days, to go CD. Which means a more critical phase in which the country languors without someone else being able to take over and restore order. But, what percentage of CDs are for countries anyone would want to take over?

So I see some negative, but not much. I don't think it outweighs the gain, but that's just my opinion.

@Alderian - I agree it could be done in non-defeat situations, but I think it's important that people actually look at the board and see why they can't move. Plus my biggest gripe about the defeated scenario - is that they've got no motivation to ever return to the game, whereas in the non-defeated scenario, they have just as much interest in the game continuing as the rest of the players.

So we code it such that it recognizes that the disbands will result in 0 SCs and 0 units and don't require a return to "accept" the autodisbands.

@philcore, sure they have motivation. To not be a douche.

haha - unfortunately that is not enough for some people Alderian. I sure wish it was, in more areas of life than just Diplomacy, for that matter.

Indeed.