Realtime game input

[piranha]

Igor I saw your post and watched the replay.

It's became clear that I quite don't understand how this mode games do. Real or simultaneous, or freez mode. Why I was beaten during freez mode, I don't understand at all. Probably this type of games not for me. Anyway not for ladder any more. Tabanli, good game.

There are two ways to handle end turn that have two different consequences.

1. No freezetime.
In this situation you can wait with moving your hero to the last 2 seconds and then press end turn. This gives you the ability to move your hero 2 times in a row which can be abused to always get the attack chance on the enemy. Both players can do this and the result will be that you wait to the last second of every turn with moving your hero.

2. Freezetime of 10 second (the way it is now)
In this situation you get a benefit from ending your turn before the other player in that you have 10 seconds to make moves before him. Now you can't go for 2 hero moves in a row. But if you end turn after your enemy he might find your hero on his turn and get a chance to attack you while you can't move for 10 seconds.

What solution is better? Or is there another way to handle this that is better?

Perhaps those of you who played realtime in warlords have ideas?

[Igor]

Freezetime of 10 second (the way it is now)
In this situation you get a benefit from ending your turn before the other player in that you have 10 seconds to make moves before him.

Ou, it's clear now why my heroes were standing during freeze mode while opponent was attacking them.
I clicked by mouse many times and said to my heroes: get out of there. But it looked like they didn't hear

I would like to offer 3-rd way, combination of 1-st and 2-nd.
a) No 10 seconds, at my look. It's don't look like real time game if one of opponents can move but other opponent can't. Both ought to be able to move at the same time.
b) Still using Freeze mode 30-60 seconds between turns. If one of opponents moved his heroes during last 2 seconds before ending of turn for to have 2 moving a row, other opponent during freeze mode can have enough time to think where first opponent can strike, and when new turn starts he can try to move his heroes first if he need.

Also I would like offer two things.
To increase a time for moving a little, 2-3 minutes more per turn, because may be very difficult to think so fast, and some units can be left without moving.
To come back again first type of fast games: turn-after-turn games, where opponents moves one after other with short time limit, as short as in reale time mode is. Such games will be of course almost twice longer than real time games, but they still be very-very fast. For example, 5 minutes for turn for one player is 10 minutes for turn for both. That is 240 minuts for 24 turns. It's only 4 hours for the game, not long comparing with 1-2 weeks per usual game. And after 24 turn (or other number) player can press special 'Cancel speed mode' button to make the game continuing as separate mode game. Something like this already was in previous seasons. Marking such games with white horse to make them different from real time games.

Existing of both types of game can give better choice what mode to play now.

[tabanli]

This was a permanent problem in Warlords too. We used to switch host machine (there was no server) every 10 turns. Guest has to be the one who resynchronize. Host always had advantage. Sometimes you click to attack an enemy stack and when you arrive he is already gone. Let's say his hero stack took a key city but lost a lot of men. He could teleport back even before server let's you click on your troops to kill the hero. Again host machine had priority. If you want to get close to your enemy hero to shatter his prime items like Medal of Valor or Mighty Feast, you had to wait your turn to be the host otherwise as you get close he would spot you and kill you while you are trying to cast spell. Real time is always a problem and even 2 seconds delay is major.

I was playing that game with Igor. We both had Valkyries and I literally click on hero and hit M, in 1-2 seconds battle was already done. Attacking Valkie beat the defending Valkie. He might have just 1-2 seconds delay. Server delay may happen to anyone and this problem has no solution. Realtime solve the problem of having the start advantage, since everyone starts the same time, but you have server delay problems. You take good with the bad. Realtime is an adrenaline rush and the results could be very unpredictable.

I also agree very strongly that 3 minutes is not enough, even at the beginning. You need to inspect the troops, choose your hero and think about a strategies. You should always have a chance to think few minutes before the turn starts that may help a little bit with devising a strategy.

[Igor]

Server delay may happen to anyone and this problem has no solution.

There was no server delay. There is 10 seconds for one of opponents who finished his turn earlier, when he can move alone. In these 10 seconds other opponent can't move even if both have the same speed of connection. That is why I offer to cancel these huge advantage.

[tabanli]

I am not sure if I ever finished early. I always used my time till the last second and even that was barely enough. Maybe the first turn but it is very unlikely. Nevertheless finishing early shouldn't give the 10 secs advantage, it shouldnt even give 2 seconds advantage. 2 Seconds is huge let alone 10 seconds.

We played a game right after that with Igor using the format Igor proposing. It was very good. Again similar to realtime. I think we should add few things like computer ending the turn for you when your time runs out and starts the new turn. It was also good to watch the other player moving. You may still change fight orders creatively, or rebuilt city after his scouts checks you out.

One thing though, I think we have to give time-out options and also give both sides a chance to adjourn after turn 20.

[Igor]

I wouldn't mind against adding 1 or 2 coffee breaks for every player, on 5-10 minutes each. Something like time-out in ice hockey.

[piranha]

Great input.

1. Breaks. This is something I've thought about too since real time games can take a while too if you play bigger games and you may have to answer the telephone or do something for a few minutes. On poker tournaments they have automatic breaks for all players every 30 minutes or something like that. Is that better, or would it be better that all players have a pot of minutes to use, so anyone may click pause and all players would enter pause mode and you can see "Tabanli clicked pause, pause time remaining 2:54" and a countdown. Then the pause would have to be for 2:54 so you cant start earlier because someone else might take the chance to do something too in those minutes.

2. There is always one player getting 10 seconds if there is at least one player who click end turn. Someone will always be faster than the other player.

Server delays:
When we tested this during development we experienced the same problem that you describe with attacking and other player moved out before your request to attack made it to the server. So we have made a solution for that. If you click to attack a enemy player and when your request reach the server it will check if the player is still there. If you clicked to attack but the player is not there according to the server you will get a pop instead telling you he already moved and a option to move there anyway or cancel.
Still I figured out that a turn based strategy game in real time mode is in fact much faster than a real time strategy game, because there units walk and then start hitting each other for a while so there is time to react. In turn based units teleport to their location and battles happen instantly.

We will increase the turn time then by 2 minutes.

Tabanli, do you also think its a better idea to give all players 30 seconds of freezetime as a solution to the double move problem instead of giving the last mover 10 seconds?

Doesn't the computer start the new turn for you when your time runs out? I think it should be like that. What happens to the counter?

[tabanli]

Doesn't the computer start the new turn for you when your time runs out? I think it should be like that. What happens to the counter?

I was writing this regarding Igor's turn-based semi-real time game mode. This is basically a 5 minutes a move turn based game with 0 freezetime.

You may want to avoid double turn in simul and devise solutions. But double turn is not a problem in real-time,IT IS A REALITY and it is part of the strategy. So let's say your hero is about to level up and you are 20 moves from a weak enemy city just behind his powerful post city. You don't want to get caught on the road. So what you do is wait for the last second to make your move and attack the city the first second of the next turn, level-up, rebuilt to +15 and sit comfortably.

What will happen in realtime games, as it always happened in Warlords, people will set course to their troop but let them sit for a while. First scouts are set to explore, second non-hero stack towards side enemy cities and the last your heroes to critical locations. And they will wait and wait until the last second. And the last second (or last 3 seconds) both sides hit MOVE ALL. So the last second, the server receives move order from both sides for 15-30 units and will try to resolve them. So when the next turn starts, you will see scouts bumping each other and couldn't reach the desired place.

Also in warlords "move" order is different from "attack" order so there is less problem. In Warbarons they are the same so this gives rise to other problems with "move all". In this scenario you cant even have time for hero level up pop-up screen or city capture mode. And this will happen every single turn. What may help is if players can set a default for hero level up or city capture.

I think we can't avoid double turn and we just need to embrace it.

[SnotlinG]

Realtime games have now been changed to work a bit different from simultaneous games.
In realtime games we now have a 30 seconds freezetime (for all players) from the last player making endturn.
Also, you start with 4 minutes of time on the first turn, increasing by 15 seconds per turn.

I have also spent some time with the code to make the transition from
Normal turn -> <press endturn> -> Active mode -> <get message from server that the last player has pressed endturn> -> Freezemode 30 secs -> <Once timer reaches 0> game automatically requests latest data from the server and updates back into Normal turn. So now hopefully no client reloads should be needed (unless I missed some case somewhere).

Let me know if you try again, and if you experience any issues with the changes/load of data...

[tabanli]

Have you checked what happens when a player hits move all (or move just one unit) right before the turn ends) and his move is into a city. How does the server handles the captured city mode?

As realtime games increase, think we will see a lot of last second move all commands and sometimes the units will bump into each other.