JerBear 
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Posts: 491
(6/7/05 8:01 pm)
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Simultaneous Game
Since all the other threads are currently screwed, I thought I'd try to reignite an old discussion. Is anyone interested in attempting a simultaneous crucible game? I'd love to try something like this. I never got a chance to play diplomacy or any of those other free-for-all board games, and a simultaneous crucible game seems like it could offer quite a bit of intruige.
This would probably require a good bit of work and would be mostly text-based. I would think the current dice-roller code could be modified to take care of a lot of the stuff. I think you would need the following setup:
You would need a "roller" for each submission phase of the turn. Each roller would have to be able to save multiple submissions from each player (and in the ideal situation would allow you to delete some of them and add new ones, but that might get complicated for the first go-round) and have a final "complete submission" option at which point no further submissions will be accepted from that player for that phase of the round. Once all players have "completed submission" all requests would be combined into a single form and emailed to all players.
I would think that in the short term, an inaccessible file could be created for each phase of each round. All submissions are appended to the file until all 6 players have selected "complete submission." At that point, the entire contents of the file gets emailed to all the players. In an ideal (long-term) solution, each player would have a username and password to log-in to prevent someone from accidentally or intentionally submitting something for another player.
After the phase gets emailed, someone is in charge of updating the map and mailing it to everyone. After they get it, they move on to the next "roller." I think you need a total of three different rollers:
A trade-roller: You enter your country, resources, and the destination country and submit the trade. It is possible to perform multiple trades in a turn, and in a simultaneous game, the only control you have in a trade is whether or not to give resources to another player. You just have to hope they live up to their side of the bargain and send you what they promised to give in return.
A purchase roller: The current one should work pretty much fine for this phase. Early in the game you probably wouldn't need to know everyone's purchases before making combat movement, but later on you will certainly alter your combat movement on whether or not your enemy is purchasing chemical weapons and heavy armor instead of subs and transports! So this has to be a separate turn phase.
A movement roller: The current combat roller could be modified for this purpose. You will need to submit an origin country, the quantities of each type of troops, and the destination country. No need to specify the defending troops, because they will likely have already moved when your forces arrive. I think a separate submission is also needed for each group from each territory of origin so that whoever updates the map does it correctly.
Once the combat map is setup, whoever is doing the updates can then do all the rolling and input the combat results back on the map. Perhaps each player can take care of their own combat rolling and updating. Otherwise I'd advocate a 24 delay between sending out the combat movement map and rolling the combat to allow for order of loss and retreat requests. After combat results, the movement roller can be used for noncombat. It probably could also be used for placement.
To make things easier so that one person doesn't do all the updating, perhaps each player can take care of his own updates after each phase gets mailed out. For example, combat moves for all players are mailed out, and then Wake starts and updates the map with all his combat movement, then Taizu, then Ra, etc... Since the movement is already specified, order shouldn't matter.
If setting up a roller system is too tough at present, we can always do it with a game-master. I'd even be willing to be the GM for a game if no else wants to do that and there is enough people to play a game.
What do you think Rich? Do you have any time or desire to set up the computer system?
Is anyone else interested in playing a simultaneous game?
JB
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