The idler problem in ffa games: Proposing auto-destruct

[mu]

Conquest of idling nations is a frequent way for players in fffa games to gain game deciding dominance. In my opinion the best way to counter that would be an auto-destruct option in the server with a countdown parameter in turns that will erase the complete idling nation from game. In my opinion 3 turns seem to be a reasonable countdown.

This would prevent players from fattening by eating idlers except what they are able to conquer during countdown time, if the player has the necessary means at hand.

[jwrober]

That would make it too easy for the players that border the idler to take over the idle player's territory. A really good player will become unstoppable in this case. Currently the game LT admin will set the idle player to research defensive techs and then queue up defensive players. The player won't grow in number of cities, but the cities that do exist will become small fortresses.

If we had better AI in place, I would propose we assign the idle player to a cheating AI. This would be better than what we do today and still make it "some" amount of work for the neighbors to gobble up the idler.

[mu]

Currently the game LT admin will set the idle player to research defensive techs and then queue up defensive players.

In general the game admin will do nothing like that because even if he would be inclined to do that it would require him to know it and that would require him to monitor the game pro-actively. Most ffa games are not monitored pro-actively so idling players go unnoticed. Players bordering the idler have no interest to report it and other players usually don't care. Besides that, such a standing policy never existed, wieder acting like that in LT64 was an exception. In LT65 there were at least 2 idlers that were eaten without the admin taking notice, because he is not taking notice of the running game at all and to require him to do so and follow this policy would put a too large burden on any game admin. That's why I'm talking about auto-destruct as a server option.

Besides that, maintaining a rule as existent while it is not, more precisely the admin acting if he feels lucky or bored or because he got out of the wrong side of bed is exactly the thing that should not happen, because it is the opposite of a rule based approach and that is the opposite of foreseeability and that is the opposite of fairness. From nothing can it be deduced that the admin acted as reserve player in LT64 but not in LT65 and it is completely unclear what he will do in LT<future_number>.

[mu]

That would make it too easy for the players that border the idler to take over the idle player's territory. A really good player will become unstoppable in this case.

While a really good player even more so becomes unstoppable if he can take whole infrastructure of idlers, a maybe better but also probably harder to implement alternative to auto-destruct would be a server option that for idlers, defined by number of turns, a) leads to city destruction in case of conquest regardless of city size and city walls b) makes cities unbribable to prevent that workaround.

The rationale for this thoughts is that only hardcoded solutions will work. destruct_on_conquest and city_unbribable would exclude using the idlers infrastructure and als make using his territory harder.