Initial troop placement

I would never play that kind of game. I don't want to stick around waiting for long term games to fill up.

Thanks for the feedback The_Bishop. I'll need time to think about your ideas.

To answer your last question what I would really prefer is 2 troops on each territory set by the server and then during the initial reinforcement the player places the rest of them all at once.

I understand that players will want entire regions but I think the game play might actually be better if they are limited to just 66% of a region. It means they would have to kill at least 2 troops on the territories they don't control in order to take the region. This would make it less likely for stalemate game. I can imagine if everyone gets their regions and they all just build up instead of attacking that the cards will never get high enough for anyone to die.

I like your idea of everyone picking their 1st territory so that they can see what the others are doing and make adjustments. It's not as fast as my idea, however.

I thought of a way to improve my initial idea. Have the players pick 2 preferred and 2 to avoid and then have them pick a strategy for the computer to use. For example:

Please select an option:
A. Only select a territory in my preferred region if I am the first to select a territory in that region.
B. Do not select a territory in my preferred region if another player has also selected it as their preferred region.
C. Do not select a territory in my preferred region if more than 1 other player has also selected it as their preferred region.
D. Always try to select in my preferred region regardless of other players' choices.

If one of these options causes you to not use your preferred region then the server will pick another region for you and try to give you 66% of it.

Alternatively we can mix The_Bishop's idea and my own. Have every player pick a starting point territory in 30 second turns and then pick a strategy for the server to use to fill in the rest. Or on long term games it would have to be 24 hours and would just add a round to the length of the game.

A. Pick the territories closest to my initial pick (We can write an algorithm to find distance)
B. Pick from the region my first territory is in first, then attempt to get a second region based on availability.

On a small map like world classic I would choose A but on a map like Mediterranean States I would choose B.

I think it should still be the case that you only get up to 66% of a region with 2 troops on each territory and the other troops placed in 1 initial reinforcement round.

It all feels overly complicated for something like this. I can already predict 90% of the people having no idea how this works. That is something that you always have to take in mind. Maybe you should try to look for simpler solutions, but that's just my two cents.

complicated to understand and program but not hard to use. Especially the second option. Just click a territory and then choose between A or B. Two clicks. They don't have to understand exactly how it works, they just have to know that it will give them territories closer to each other instead of random.

That being said this would certainly be an advanced option.

And of course we should try for simpler solutions, got any ideas?

I think an advanced option is a good start. I also think that even though it may be time consuming to get a game going, those that truly do want to do this as an advanced option, warned of the time it takes to set the game up of course, may be ok with dealing with the fact that this could be a slow process to get a game started.

I also think it's quite complicated. What abouth selecting just 3/4 of the provinces. Let's imagine we have a map with 44 provinces and 4 players on the game. Every player can chose 7 provinces (+5 in case the other were already chosen). The other provinces would be asigned by the computer.

We also can make (using the same example) that if every player will have 11 provinces, the player with the first turn only can chose 5 provinces (+3 alternatives), the second one 6 provinces (and 3 alternatives as well) and the third player 6 provinces (+4 alternatives). The 5th 7 provinces and 5 more in case his selections were already picked.

Every player has to select his provinces when the game is complete and the turn order was decided. If a player cannot get the provinces he chose because they were already selected those provinces would be asigned randomly (so, if you know you are the last one in the turn order, you just should select a couple of "popular" provinces in the first places and the rest of your selectins should be provinces that you guess that not so many people are going to ask for them.

I forgot to mention that the provinces would be given in this way:

First player: he gets his first selection (all the provinces are available).
Second player: he gets his first selection unless that one was the one chosen for the first player. If that was what happened he will get his second option.

And so on.

Hmm. Muzuane gave me an idea. What if you could just select a selection of territories. You don't see what the others do, you just select the territories you wish to have. Then the computer goes through all territories. If only one person chose that territory, he gets it. If more chose it, a random player is chosen (or you could involve turn order here) to get the territory and the remainder of the players get a random other territory that is not chosen by anyone.

You could even make a setting that sets the amount of "troop placement phases". Maybe the step I described could be repeated n times, where players can choose their n themselves. Basically you have a few "same time turns" where people select the territories for a few iterations until the map is filled. I would procrastinate the "random assign the remainder of the territories" to the end though.

This would in my opinion work for both long term and live games. One could even select the preferred territories before the game even started, directly after joining it.

I don't see how that is simpler. It takes longer and to me seems more confusing especially when you start talking about troop placement phases. With that method you could end up with some players having more territories already selected than the others by the end of the first phase. That might not seem fair to some.

I had a similar idea but gave it up because I thought it would take too long on a large map.

Before the game starts, instead of selecting just the territories you want, you order all the territories from most desired to least desired. Then, instead of the computer going territory by territory it cycles through the players list assigning each player the territory highest on their priority list that isn't already taken. There would be no need at all for random assignments this way or for multiple phases. But it would take more time so there would need to be 5 min (or 24 hours) after the last player joins for everyone to finish making the selections.

The problem with any kind of system like this is that you can't make adjustments as you go based on what your opponents have chosen. This is why I suggest writing a few assignment algorithms that represent different strategies and letting the player choose which strategy for the computer to use. You tell the computer which territory to start at and it does the rest of the selecting based on the strategy you want to use. Seems simple to me.

With 30 second turns for selecting your starting point and strategy it won't add much time to the game and you will be able to see what your opponents have chosen as their starting point so that you can choose a better starting point than if you chose blindly.

There is a simpler solution based on Muzuane's first idea. It would be among the easiest to program and simplest ideas but the least effective at achieving the goal of mimicking choosing 1 territory at a time.

The map could be divided into groups of two territories and then randomly distributed amongst the players with a check to make sure no one starts out with a region larger than 3 territories. Then 2 troops are automatically placed on each territory. On the player's first turn they place the rest of the troops where they want them and then do the fortification phase without an attack phase.

This would be better than purely random because your troops would be in groups of two territories instead of spread out all over the map. And you would be able to place the remainder of your troops in your best location instead of being forced to have 3 troops on each.

Vexer, we have a different opinion about what it's simple ;-)

I don't see the complication in joining a game and then, chose your 5(7 or whatever) countries you prefer. In case not all of them were available you can pick 3/5... more.

You should chose different countries if you are the first player or the last one, because in this last case the most demanded countries would be chosen when your turn comes.

It looks quite simple for me, though I agree with you that it's not the fairest way of doing it, but neither it is the one we have now.

It also can be done what we talk about 2 troops per territory, and then reinforce according to what the other players are doing (maybe 2/3 troops each turn) before starting the first "attacking turn".

oops, i read Cireon's post and had so much to say that I forgot that I hadn't read muzuane's yet. After reading it I think I prefer it to Cireon's suggestion. I'm going to think about it for awhile and see if there's a way improve it.

I think most of us don't like the idea to begin holding regions from the first round, nor the idea to deploy 1v1 because it's too long.

In TurboRisk is random assignment with 1 troop per territory and then manual deployment 1v1, that is not bad, because more or less you get the same gameplay of 'selected territories option' but just people don't start with owned regions, except some rare cases. I mean if you deploy your 16 troops in Australia is like you have picked that continent as preferred. If you want to stay split, you can deploy 10 in South America and 6 in Asia. Probably your randomly assigned territories will be here-and-there all over the map since you are free to choose where to put your forces. If for some reason you think that is due to hold Europe in order to win, you just need to got 1 territory in Europe or bordering with it and deploy all there. Just examples. Can be good the idea of a random assignment with 1 troop per territory, then the rest manually deployed? This would be very simple!

But it looks like someone here would like better 2 troops per territory. It's interesting for me but I'm not sure people would love that, because the gameplay would be different. I'm sure who like 'selected territories' prefers to have the possibility to put all in one territory. Since I was thinking, if random assignment + manual deployment can be good, so what about a 3-way option like this: (?)

1 troop per territory start + 2 deployment rounds*
(as in TurboRisk but faster)

2 troops per territory start + 1 deployment round*
(a middle way)

3 troops per territory start, no deployment round*
(as in Dominating12 now)

*note = In every deployment round, each player deploys an amount of troops equals to the amount of territories owned. So that the sum is always the same, for example 8 territories, 24 troops, that was obvious.

I wrote 1v1 but I meant '1 by 1'

I haven't read the previous posts, so maybe my idea is mentioned

What I could see working for both live/longterm is a troop deployment SAMETIME phase after a random drop of 1's.
(Grab settings is time consuming for online, even the hasbro RISK players always use random placement.) You would still get the choice to strategically place the amount where you wanted on those random allocations, to possibly make the game more fair.

The rest of the game would be consecutively played.

For SAMETIME TROOP DEPLOYMENT you get 3/5/7 mins or 24 hours (according to time settings), to place any amount on those random allocations, you could strategically place according to how your opponents place (24 hours probably not, since you get an hour once you press start).
Or another option being fog placement. No one knows but you until round 1 begins then all is revealed.
*If you don't place all your given units, then you lose them I guess.

You could either bulk them all in a small region to claim and protect, or spread your armies out defensively, considering where your placement is and your order of turn. For instance..(classic map example) if your consecutively last but have a placement in Australia, you would be wise to not place there.

The FOG version (you don't see where others place) looks fair, but if you do see it, it's pretty unfair.

Interesting version: two rounds fog placement.
In round 1 you can place any amount of your troops (however much you'd like to place, you can place all of them, or only 1 (you must place at least one)).
Once everone has placed the troops, all troop counts are revealed and everyone can place their remaining troops (also fog).