It's certainly feasible, if someone is willing to code it. Personally, I think I think it would be a good idea (although I haven't spent much time thinking about it).

Well, there I go saying something stupid because I posted before thinking.

Yes, santosh is right, this would allow people to sabotage games if they don't like the country they got. One solution to this would be for people who CD to have 100% chance of drawing the same country in their next game.

I think that is an elegant solution, abgemacht. Because yes, it does seem that certain countries ppl tend to leave more than others (Russia and Austria both pop to the front of the mind)

Well, like anything else, it doesn't matter how good the idea is unless someone is actually willing to code it. Do you know PHP?

@abge, from a coding perspective, the player would have a 1/n chance of receiving the abandoned country, where n=the number of players joining a game with that country abandoned in their previous game.

@dub

agreed

No, abgemacht... Santosh is right. It gives an out that encourages abandoning a game just because you didn't like the nation you got.

@Draug

Please see my 2nd post.

Oops, just noticed your revised version. Insteresting idea, forcing them to take the country again...

abgemacht, the problem with that is, what if two people are 100% guaranteed to have the same country? With the number of games on here, it's likely to happen.

But it leads to another techincal issue.

Joe CDs Russia one game.

Mary CDs Russia in another, unrelated game.

Mary and Joe play each other in their next game. Who gets Russia?

@Vaft

Please see my 3rd post in response to dubmdell.

Damnit! You all keep stealing my responses! :-)

I mean 4th post.

Basically, if 2 people need to have Italy, they'll have a 50% chance of getting it.

And dub's idea doesn't punish everyone fairly.

Honestly though, I think I'd prefer to just play with people who value the game (will cancel if there are CDs), rather than making changes to the site that makes it less versatile.

The only real way to implement it would be to keep the flag up until that person finally go the CDd nation. And if they CDd that obne, then keep a running counter of how many times they are on the "must take" list.

And hwat happens if someone CDs two concurrent games (started at about the same time) with different countries? How does the system decide which one they are forced to play out first?

@Draug

Yeah, a running counter could work.

They will never CD at the same time. It will either be first-on-first-off or first-on-last-off stack of CD force-takes.

So I suppose, what we will end up with eventually is, seven noobs who all abandoned Austria in one game.

Actually, there is a coding issue that is well known in country selection. Currently, if a player joins three games simultaneously, the first two of those games does not play into the country selected for the third. So even if we added this new code of a forced country upon CD, it would not reflect (presumably) until /after/ they had joined another game. We would need to rectify the current country selection process before punishing CD players with new code

Abge, you can't force people to cancel or draw just because it is the fair thing to do.

Abge - John starts two games, gets Italy and Austria, CDs both. Which does the system force him to take? Do we setup a FIFO queue of nationalities he is forced to take and pop one off when he gets it, putting it back on if he then CDs it?

"Abge, you can't force people to cancel or draw just because it is the fair thing to do."

What the fuck? Force Cancel is exactly what your OP is about.

@Draug

Will the time stamp on his 2 CDs be the same? I doubt it.

@abge - I think he meant of their own volition. As far as the timestamps go, there is no record of the CD the moment the game cancels, so how do you check the time stamp of a deleted and therefore no longer present record?

@Draug

Surely the DB keeps track of such things. If not, it can be trivially added.

@abge I meant that even if it is in their own best interest, (i.e. see my EoG for Lavango), a player often doesn't vote for a cancel or draw when they OBVIOUSLY should. And would, if they weren't a complete and total newbie like Germany was.

When we create a game, we can restrict the players who can join by setting a high buy-in. If we could also set a restriction on the number/percentage of CDs, that might be a better way to punish CDs, or to get games with no CDs.

yeah, but wouldn't everyone set it to 0 CDs? We don't want people making new accounts because they have one CD.

@abge - No it doesn't. when a game is cancelled, it's records are deleted from the database.

@Draug

the GameID is reused?

No, it isn't. and if you knew anythig about autonumbered records on websites, you'd realize the ID is never reused, but the record is deleted nonetheless. Trust me, this is my field of expertise.

Should be autonumbered records on database tables, not websites.

@abge - Think of it this way. A car is built. It gets blown to hell and vaporized. It ceases to be but the manufacturer doesn't go about building a new car with the old car's VIN.

In other words, the record number (Game ID) is not the index in the database, but a value assigned in a field on the record, incremented by one each time a new record is created, even if the old records are deleted.

I'm not questioning you because I think you're incompetent, I'm questioning you for comprehension.

Would it not be trivial to not completely remove cancelled games from the DB?

No, it would be problematic the way the system loops through the records to process the games. It would require adding a flag to mark a game cancelled, then modifying the processing code to check that flag, something it doesn't currently do. Not trivial at all.

In other words, the record number (Game ID) is not the index in the database, but a value assigned in a field on the record, incremented by one each time a new record is created, even if the old records are deleted.


Gotcha. I thought the gameID was the DB ID, but I guess that doesn't make sense

It would also require all the current search routines to filter out the cancelled games from things like player histories and the reports generated for GR as well as the search results on the games pages.

No, there is only one DB. It contains tables like games, posts, reponses, moves, players, etc. Each of those contains records based on the type of data that table is desinged to hold. And each of those records has a unique ID relative to that table that is contained as a field (a piece of data) on that record.

Guys, there's a couple things, here:
Cancelled games are not stored in the DB. They are removed. So we can't 'get' the country used without a db change.

Secondly, the main premise is flawed in that if I don't like the country, or even better: if I don't like how the game opened (germany promised to DMZ bur, but invaded), I just CD and get out of it.

There's a reason we don't have auto-cancels and resign buttons. Just convince everyone else to cancel and restart is still the best option.

If you can't talk people into cancelling a broken game, how do you expect to talk them into letting you win? :-D

The main issue is Gunboat games. Case in point, the game Lavango from yesterday. Two experienced players (Turkey and Russia) CD'd. My moves as Italy in Fall didn't go through, even though I had saved them. Hence, Austria had not the slightest force to rival him.

There were several points where 4 of the 5 players had Draw or Cancel voted. The newbie in the game, Germany, didn't do any voting until the game was decided, and Austria had already removed his Cancel vote.

On VDip it works this way:
- 1st turn (any phase of the first turn) a player does not enter a command
- Country send in CD
- game does not process till a replacement is found.
- we keep stats how many times a player do not enter commands and how many times he CD's
- with a bad reliability you can't join as many games as you want, and player can set minimum ratings (and maximum CD's) allowed for their games.

How is the game stat "Resigned" populated?

Resigned is populated by games that ended (draw or win) with that player still resigned. If someone else takes over the spot, they don't get the resign count. If the game is cancelled, they don't take the hit to their resign count. Resign count is *very* flawed as it exists right now.

Unless you mean on VDip and sleepcap will have to answer that one.

It's the same on VDip. But we keep stats if a player CDs or miss a phase...