Playing Turn-Based Within Simultaneous Turns

[zeph38]

Like many other people on this forum, I can't see why they didn't include a within-game option to toggle between strictly turn-based and simultaneous turns (similar to the speed settings in Defcon).

However, since they don't seem to be changing this, it's up to players to make the change themselves. I've got one proposal - please let me know your thoughts.

This entirely relies on players being cooperative, so inevitably it's going to work best between people who already know each other. But all that it's asking of players is really just the equivalent of saying "don't throw my pieces on the floor" when you're playing Risk.

Turn-Based Rules Beta

It's very simple. People play turns simultaneously for the vast majority of the game, for example when they're building up their civs and attacking AI. However, if at least one player types:

"Request Turns"

then players have to take turns in moving their units in some pre-decided order, for example at the beginning of the game everyone decides "Jack is Player 1, Jim is Player 2" and so on for more players. I'm not sure whether this needs to be followed for buildings as well, or just units. I'll describe it for 2 players, but it's exactly the same principle for more:

So Player 1 does all of their movement and attacks. They then write "Player 1 end".
Player 2 then does all of their movement and attacks. They write "Player 2 end."
Then Player 1 is not allowed to make any other movements or attacks (because they had their turn at the beginning).

This process continues until both players agree to play simultaneously again, for example by writing:

"Player 1 requests simultaneous"
"Player 2 requests simultaneous"

Now, it takes *all* players to request simultaneous in order to return to turn-based, but only *one* to return to turn-based.

So, any suggestions on how to improve this? If you are perfectly happy with the simultaneous gaming mode, then please do not comment here, I am very aware that some people are fine with how it is at present.

Of course, this process I've suggested is surely very easy to program into the game, I still have no idea why it isn't an option.

[Answulf]

Great job - that's a good non-coded, "gentleman's rules" fix I think!

Your request should be starting next turn so that you aren't racing to type that out before someone moves a unit. Then going back to simultaneous turns is also starting next turn. You could abbreviate it: RTB (Request Turn-Based) and RST. Everyone verifies they are ready to go back to simultaneous turns by typing RST - if someone isn't ready yet, this just type RTB. Maybe you go through that process at the end of each turn until the game is back to simultaneous. Or even just "T" and "S".

You could also have the turn order be from lowest score to highest, so that it was dynamic and maybe a little balancing.

[civdiss]

really good idea thanks..we should try this because it seems we are not getting turn based play as an option. No idea why this is not a priority for 2k games to be added with the next patch. They said its a programming issue but surely it must be easy to program something like this..I guess its more of a lack of will to include this possibly because it would be like accepting it was a bad mistake not to include from the beginning an option for turn based play in MP; in a game which is supposed to be turn based anyhow.

[Beliathon]

I love this idea, and I'd be extremely interested in playing a game this way to try it out.

[kooljay2]

Interesting idea. Seems very doable btw friends and family. Needs some tweaking, but in principle it should work. I just had a thought though: the game may not process the turns one at a time, but may still wait until everyone is finished and process them all together. For instance; we have two units opposing each other. I strike first. In TB you would see how much damage was done and make your counter move accordingly. Suppose even though I go first the game will not process the effects of my damage until ALL the turns are taken. You would not know the condition of your units in order to make a move decision.

I will test this tonight in a LAN game and see what happens.

[EDIT]OK, it works in a LAN environment. The games shows the results of each turn as it is being executed, then the next player takes his turn, etc. I see no reason why Internet games would be any different.

[zeph38]

I'm glad people seem happy with the suggestion - I haven't had any time to try it out myself, I'd be interested to see people's thoughts. The suggestions here are good...

... by the way, isn't this an easy thing someone could make a mod of? I have no idea how those things are made.

[Answulf]

Even if it was just a toggle button that you could turn off and on...