Conquer Club

Manual Troop Deployment Improvement

Related to this bug report.
I didn't realize this was an intended behavior at the time.

Problem

When manually deploying initial troops in round 1 if you close the browser you lose all troops that were not deployed.

Suggestion

I have two suggestions that in my opinion would be a better way to do this:

1. If you close the browser and still have troops left to place the game could disperse them evenly across all spaces like it does in an automatic game. This could be applied to any case where a player deploys 0-n troops and then closes the browser. Just loop through the owned territories dropping one in each until there's none left to deploy.

2. Carry over any remaining troops to the next round and allow them to be placed at the end of the turn. As is the case if you miss a turn.

Aside from manual initial deployment I think either solution could be applied to later rounds as well. Losing troops at any point in the game due to a closed browser seems unnecessary. But I'm not familiar with the implementation so I may be missing the reasoning behind this behavior.

How it helps

People make mistakes and the close their browser before finishing deployment as I did. In some cases like mine that can put you 60+ troops behind from the get go. I'd consider it game altering, especially early on when having troops to capture regions is the critical.

To be clear, this behavior has nothing to do with exiting your browser. If you exit your browser and then pull up the site again, you can continue your deployment up until the round timer ends (in the case of the game you were playing, one hour for manual). Your turn to deploy your troops did last a full hour and you could have come back any time before that hour was up to finish. You lost the troops because you didn't deploy them by the end of that hour. So, are you advocating that we change what happens when you run out of time at the end of the initial deployment phase?

Ah that's a hole in my understanding of how it works. The problem I have is that you lose all the troops if you don't play them in that first turn. So yes I am advocating that you change what happens when time runs out at the end of deployment.

yeah, no.

Why would you improve something that is cleary established, manual troop deployment means what it means, if you go ahead and click "BEGIN" you should ensure you have few minutes to deploy before quiting, if you are not sure that hour count is too short for you then wait a better opportunity before clicking "BEGIN".

Note: You said you closed the broswer inadvertently, since you have one hour to login again that should be plenty of time to reopen your browser .

When you join the game you have 24hrs to figure out when you can deploy and how, difficult to better that, improving it by evenly disperse the troops in case you failed to deploy those during that hour means that you ask a Manual game to become an Automatic game...

perhaps an "olde entish" mode could be created for DYGAZ and his ilk : u get 24 hrs to deploy and 7 days for all your subsequent turns...

To your point about manual deployment being a clearly established thing. I don't think anyone builds their strategy around the chance their opponent with forget to deploy. So improving how it works will only help to create a more enjoyable game. It's just protecting against a single case and potentially game ruining situation.

I agree that the first thing I suggested goes from manual -> automatic. That's probably undesirable but to my second suggestion. Carrying the excess troops over to the next round to be placed manually at the end would keep it in line with a manual game. Then the troop count is maintained and only a minor disadvantage is given to the player that faulted during deployment.

I don't understand why it was decided that the troops just disappear if they're not deployed in that hour time frame. Why is that time frame even needed when we already have a time limit on the round? It seems unnecessary and I haven't heard any reason other than "that's how it works".

The time is set per the "BEGIN" round, disregarding the settings of a game, modifying this for the only "MANUAL" mode will open other same type of request such as:

"Can I get 2 spoils the next round if I missed the previous one?"

I see your point trying to have the Initial MANUAL troop to not be lost but this is part of this mode, strategy isn't in question in this. That would apply for an escalating game with a player hit "BEGIN", exchange a set of spoil and forgot to deploy within the hour of his round, do you want that player to retrieve those troops for the next round?

I'm not saying your suggestion is trash but this can open bunch of little tweak to those fundamental settings rules, when you make a mistake then you pay it cash most of the time unless you are playing with unexperimented player(s). That is what makes you getting better since you are suppose to learn from your mistake and again in your case I want to believe that you will now watch for not forgiving any deployment .

I see what you're saying about this case opening up the possibility of more request for little tweaks and agree that could lead things down the wrong path. This wasn't really a mistake I ever expected was in the realm of possible and my whole point with this thread was to try save other people from it. I've certainly learned and if you're saying that these types of nuances in the site are part of the experience then I'm cool with that. It makes the learning curve a little steeper but I'll just take that as a right of passage.

For what it's worth I probably would argue for carrying spoils over to be placed at the end of the next round if you miss them in the same fashion.

DYGAZ wrote:...For what it's worth I probably would argue for carrying spoils over to be placed at the end of the next round if you miss them in the same fashion.

why? this could be fun

It's really the same argument I have for carrying troops over if you fault in manual deployment. To me maintaining the troop count is important.

Imagine playing on the classic map with escalating reinforcements. You get to the point where a few players are receiving 2-5 or so troops for bonuses and a 3-5 for territories. So a range of 5-10 reinforcements per turn for each player. Spoils have escalated to 20 for a set. At this point in the game spoils far out power reinforcements and to maintain any sort of balance you have to pit spoils against spoils. Some use them aggressively and others defensively but what really matters is the math behind it all.

Let's use a single battle as an example:
Player A receives 8 troops for bonuses & territories and another 20 for spoils.
Player A then places them all on a single territory.
Player B receives 4 troops for bonuses & territories and another 22 for spoils.
Player B then attacks Player A. A battle of 26 attacking vs 29 defending.
Based on this calculator it's a pretty fair fight: http://riskodds.com/ (27 on attacking, 29 on defending)
Now imagine Player A faulted on spoils.
Then it's a battle of 26 vs 9. A guaranteed win.

At that point it doesn't matter how good you're strategy was. Mathematically you can't win an engagement solely because of the odds spoils introduce to the game. You're bonuses and territories don't really matter once spoils get high enough.

Sure it's your fault for screwing up the spoils deployment but if thus far it's been an even game with some good engagements back and forth this pretty much throws the game. It's not a satisfying way to win and pretty disappointing way to lose.

That's a really simple example and dispersed across a board things do look totally different. It's still staking the odds against one player over a silly mistake that really isn't a part of strategy but has the potential to ruin it. To me it's not ideal to win or lose because the odds were suddenly stacked against one player because of a mistake outside of their strategy.

IMHO making the initial deployment troops carry over to the next round-- if not deployed during the deployment phase-- would be beneficial. It will create a greater overall consistency with game (since on any other turn except for the first turn, troops not deploy will be deployable in consequent turn.) Also, with regard to DYGAZ comment about reducing learning curve, I'd agree that the loss of all you initial deployment troops during the first turn can be a non-intuitive and unforeseen outcome for newcomers. Also, losing all those troops can effectively ruin the game since that player will probably go idle for the remainder of the game, thus each turn will take awhile for the remaining players.

Just started a speed game. It's manual and the wifi I'm on went spotty and stopped me being able to place my troops during the placement round. This meant I just lost all my troops and all my opponent had to do was use his stack to mop up all my 1s.

If you miss a regular turn you get deferred troops. Why does the same not happen if you miss your deployment turn?

If you had actually missed your turn, you would have received those troops. (They would have been placed on the board automatically for you.) This is the normal behavior for when you run out of time in a turn and do not deploy allocated troops.

Merging with another recent thread asking for the same behavior change.

I can see a possible situation where people are letting their turns run down in order to avoid having to deploy their troops, and saving them for a bigger deployment on the second turn - could be handy for trench.

clangfield wrote:I can see a possible situation where people are letting their turns run down in order to avoid having to deploy their troops, and saving them for a bigger deployment on the second turn - could be handy for trench.

Yeah, every time I play trench I think it would be great if I could let my opponent start nicking my territories, and only then put down my troops and attempt to counter attack.