Neutral players cards!

When a player goes AWOL in a game they of course become a neutral player. When you then beat a neutral player who used to be a real player you don't get their cards. I think you should get their cards like you would with anybody else. What do others think?

The problem is that if a player goes neutral, to beat that player you also have to gain control of all territories that were previously neutral.

Also, I don't see why you need to get the cards anyway. Could you please give some more arguments why you see it necessary to keep those cards into play?

Its not really fair to do I think.
Because players get stronger as the card turn in value gets higher, making it more difficult to kill them. Neutral however does not get stronger.

I'm not sure I know what you mean. When you beat a neutral player you have to conquer all of the countries they occupy like anyone else. True they are not an active player that can attack you and reinforce their territories. Like anyone else it takes strategy to conquer a neutral player spread around the board in a turn. While still working around, defending, fighting against real players. I'm not proposing this for neutral territories from the beginning of the game that are there to keep numbers even among players, which don't have cards anyway. But for real players that have turned neutral. 

An option would all I would think it would be worthy of, to make it part of every game, I would have to disagree. Most times when someone quits or misses turns, they are not doing well in that game. Unless it was capitals, then there may be they amount of men they started with on their capital.

I personally don't even know if I would use it as an option for that reason alone. Because although I could see how it could have more strategy to it, if the neutral had lots of men and 5 cards, but if they only have 1 or 2 cards and say 20 men, the next person that was in a good position would most likely get the cards.

I've played many many games here, keep track for about a week or so and see how many men or cards for that matter that a person would have to kill to get those cards, I don't think you would like the option neither. I just don't think it's hard enough that I would want my opponent to be able to do it. I play a pretty good game, and so does alot of others...Do you really want us to be able to kill 20 men for any cards, to hell with that.

I am also not a big fan of this idea. When the card turn in gets high, players start to defend themselves from other players by reinforcing their territories and attack to weaken the competitors and to get ahead with cards, neutrals however lack that ability and will remain as they are until they are extinct. If someone were to get the 'neutrals cards' then that someone would have a great advantage since the neutrals did not put up a fight. Also I think killing neutrals would be more popular than killing the actual players, which would only be weird..

And about the original neutrals vs players turning neutral. When a player times out in a game then the system automatically turn him/her into a neutral. When that is done then there is no difference between the player that just turned neutral by the system and the neutrals that were already there. Which means when a player times out then their territories would basically play the same role as the original neutral territories, keeping the numbers even, although thats not really what happens in most cases. Anyway so in order to gain the neutrals cards, you have to conquer all the neutral territories.

This would not be fun to program. What happens if two players go neutral? They are both grey so how do you tell them apart? How do you know which ones to attack in order to get which cards. Sorry Narib, but this just isn't going to work.

I also am against this idea for the same reasons that the others gave. If a player misses two turns then they will certainly have less armies than everyone else who has been taking their turns and placing reinforcements. This gives too big of an advantage to the player who goes after the neutral player because they will have an easier kill.

For the same reasons the others have already stated I don't agree with this either. I think if we were going to do something with the people that leave the game we should go with programming a way to turn all of their territories back to neutral 3's as it is at the start of the game.

Nobody considered the cases in which the turned-neutral player creates a great disadvantage to who had set to kill him. This is probably the reason why Narib made his proposal. Both of the methods are not perfect. Btw the one proposed by Narib can create unfair situations more often and it's harder to implement.

The real solution will be to replace players who quit with computer players. Several of us have experience programming computer players for TurboRisk. The challenge with doing it for the website is that any good AI would eat all the CPU cycles. We could program a player who places wisely and attacks prudently very easily but I doubt it would win many increasing card games. (the brainless bot is a good candidate) TurboRisk has some decent fixed card computer players that don't use up too much CPU so those could be ported for fixed card games.

It would be a good start if we had 1 basic AI player even if it didn't know how to win.

I personally won't work on this until we have team games and capped cards implemented. Those two options interest me far more.

I have always liked the AI idea ever since I played turbo risk, and seen what those AI's could do. This I would love to see become a part of D12...

yes i think good idea for the future but there are other things further up in the list

I think if we made AI a part of the game then it should be an option for players instead of installed into every game. That way people dont get upset if they are placed next to a computer player that they feel over attacks. They would have the choice to have a computer player replace players that leave the game or not.

yes the default would be for players to go neutral with AI replacements as an option.

sounds good to me