What happens when we reach a stalemate?

Perhaps we can get creative with different ways to kickstart games that are approaching a stalemate. Some ideas: - increase in the turn in cards increment (for increasing card setting) - auto-trigger a troop reduction (across all players) once a player hits a certain number of troops (thinking 5000 troops, 99% reduction) , instead of adding troops at the beginning the player must remove troops [need to consider implication of card turn in, I think it should just reset to 4] - randomly "kill" of a player (stalemate usually happens when n > 2 so this wouldn't result in a coin toss victory) Other ideas? Stalemate isn't that uncommon, especially in fixed/ capped card games.

I think stalemates are perfectly reasonable, just like in real life there’s not always a winner. What annoys me is people who don’t recognize a stalemate and continue to play, but that’s not an easy fix…

Currently there's two things you can do: Chat with all the (still living) players in the game and choose to 1. ask a moderator to end the game in an official stalemate - no rating awarded nor lost 2. decide with all people to play much more aggressively and all reduce each others troops equally (and thus also your own). This way, the game becomes tense again and there can be a winner again

The thing is (2.) is a little hard since it involves all players cooperating to reducing their troop count through aggression - perhaps analogous to the prisoner's dilemma. One player might/likely will decide to hold back in hopes that others will kill off each other and then swooping in with a bigger troop count. So everyone else also acts in the same way, prolonging the stalemate. Usually stalemate kicks in at high troop count, in which region bonus and card turn in add negligible % to your overall troop count, therefore the price for aggression could be losing significant troops without the possibility of a quick replenishment. So far, have tried (2.) though unsuccessfully. (1.) can be implemented as a feature

True, though if you can get it to work it makes for one of the best games you might ever have played. The trick with convincing people for 2 (and the only way to do it right IMO) is to do it slowly. Just be a bit more aggressive, but not aggressive enough to break the stalemate. Just make it look a bit less ridiculous. And then chip off a bit more, and a bit more, until eventually the game is tense again. Also, note that you should attack everyone equally*. So if one person attacks less, the others will just attack him a bit more. * In this case, equality of outcome - everyone should have (approximately) the same amount of troops. Normally for equality you want the other kind, equality of opportunity, but not here. And if people don't want to do this, you can just ask a mod to end it. Personally I don't like that, but it's not a bad ending either.

[quote=Matty]True, though if you can get it to work it makes for one of the best games you might ever have played. The trick with convincing people for 2 (and the only way to do it right IMO) is to do it slowly. Just be a bit more aggressive, but not aggressive enough to break the stalemate. Just make it look a bit less ridiculous. And then chip off a bit more, and a bit more, until eventually the game is tense again. Also, note that you should attack everyone equally*. So if one person attacks less, the others will just attack him a bit more. * In this case, equality of outcome - everyone should have (approximately) the same amount of troops. Normally for equality you want the other kind, equality of opportunity, but not here. And if people don't want to do this, you can just ask a mod to end it. Personally I don't like that, but it's not a bad ending either.[/quote] From my perspective this makes the most sense. For what it's worth. :)

https://dominating12.com/game/1337285 this game is a pretty good example...

Idea 1 has some merit. Matty is so right about aggression and chipping down with some balance in mind, and when a stalemate shifts to tense again it is pretty fun. Since “unranked” game concept is currently in my thoughts (another thread, check it out) an idea came to me: What if all remaining players could press a button as a vote agreement to change game to unranked? Maybe then players become more willing to take chances or resign? Importantly, however, is murder/suicide is Still illegal , still against the rules, even in unranked situations.

This is the solition: "Unlimited troop placement | dominating12.com" https://dominating12.com/forums/6/suggestions-feedback/3917/unlimited-troop-placement