God England needs to draw this stuff....

Hopefully they will be there soon. This is gonna be fun to just repeatedly do the same moves for a couple of hours....

Cuz this is getting annoying...

gameID=40134

I let it run a bit just incase he could find a breakthrough, because in his defence slight progress was possible from there, but past a stalemate line

He drew. But thanks for taking a look at it.

No he didn't

Seems to me we are having more and more forced draws by the mods because people are trying to just play live games until someone gives up or NMRs/CDs. Time to implement a change that autodraws at a certain point?

How would you decide the end?

Start by banning people too unsportsmanlike to draw when they're stopped or idiotic enough not to see a stalemate line?

Wow, now that would be an extreme move!
In his defence I expect England was hoping for a mistake - not a missed order.

Just like the judges. Is it two or three years without a single SC changing hands and they draw? I forget the time frame, but it's enough to give someone time to try and break an alliance or win a coin toss situation.

I was joking about banning people that were unaware of stalemate lines.

A forced draw would be impossible to program effectively, though. After all, someone holding out could just vary their attack ever-so-slightly to avoid a force.

The trouble I see is when you have to shuffle units round.
For example, an England attacking a southern alliance might have put a lot of force into Scandanavia to force StP, but not get further.
It can easily take him a few years to realign and attack in the south. Now, clearly the opposition can do so as well, but there will be times when they just can't defend against all the units all the time.

So pick a number of years... There has to be a point, just like in chess, where a stalemate occurs. It doesn't mean the line couldn't be broken, but it means that it hasn't been in practice and the remaining players are of equal overall combined skill.

Maybe, although even then you could really annoy players.

I'm pretty new, but I think two or three years would be too short. If there are three possible strategies and three possible responses and only one condition causes progress per strategy, what are the odds the game will break in three years? Any math geniuses out there?

Btw, in chess a stalemate can occur if the same position is reached three times in a row or if fifty moves are made w/o a pawn advancing or a piece being captured. Often these things can occur while the game is still winnable.

I make it 91% in that situation, but that assumes the player is read, when more often the first two years are used shuffling units around to attack the weak point.
Diplomacy shouldn't be forcible stopped in a winnable situation

But the point is it has been that way on the judges for longer than WebDip has existed. It is an established practice. If you want to make it send an email to the mods under the conditions of something like 5 years have passed without an SC change so the mods can look at it, well then at least it still requires human intervention, but is an automatic notification.

The problem has nothing to do with the game being "winnable," anyway. Any position is "winnable" -- on any given pair of turns, all other players could NMR, giving a win by forfeit.

If by "winnable" you mean "winnable presuming orders are turned in," it's still POSSIBLE that they could all-hold or make an error, but practically speaking, a stalemate line is established and that's that. If a player has been stalemated, it is because his competition realized they could stalemate him and did so; one does not "accidentally" stalemate someone. That then logically means that the competition knows exactly what it has to do to stalemate the player. The game is done.

And if you really go back and look at the games, you will see quite clearly that an "error" isn't what they're waiting for. There is no variation in attack pattern -- they literally keep slamming their heads into a brick wall. They're waiting for a CD.

I've been the victim of this bullshit once already (a 3-way draw became a 2-way because a certain pair of jerks decided to wait until FIVE AM MY TIME so I would give up), would have been again earlier this week were it not for Alderian's benevolent interference, and see two other examples (this one with Patriot, and one with ava) where the same nonsense occurs.

I would change it so that a draw vote does not have to be unaminous (sic?). If the countries voting draw have a combined number of SC's of, i dont know - 18? Then it's a draw. I guess it would not be fair if you have just brilliantly strategically outflanked your enemies and stand to gain, but how often does that happen anyway? ;D

@fiedler - Bad idea, because if:
there are 4 players with 14, 9, 8 and 3 SCs, and
the 14 is allied with 3, while both 9 and 8 are allied and holding the stalemate line, and
both 9 and 8 want a draw, and
the 14 wants to kill the 3 to make a 3-way draw and not 4-way draw,
then the 3 SCs guy can force a draw in order to save his ass.

I think that 5 years of no SCs changing ownership should be enough to force a draw.

well another change i would like is for a draw to mean players get what points they have, not shared out equally.

That won't be viable fielder, there must be some positive incentive to draw. But you may be onto something here.
What about if the "5 year auto draw" rule discussed above would cause a draw where everyone who didnt have a standing draw vote only get their initial bets back. While the ones that had a draw vote would split the remainder of the pot ( minus the initial bets of the stubborn players)


That way the person who doesn't realize the stalemate and resisting a draw would be incentivized to concede to a draw as the auto draw will cause them to gain no points more than they bet.

@fiedler - That's definitely not a good thing: draws should be evenly split.

@digit - I have no problem with autodrawing 'stuck' games, but it's deciding at what point a game becomes such. Giving the other player less (or possibly more if they bought in a CD nation) seems unfair since they've reached the same result, and only don't draw because they may feel they have another method they want to try first.