Great news kestas, any idea on a likely release date? Also do the "adjudicator improvements" include ability to support convoyed armies? Or proper support for coasts?

Great news! I am looking forward to these refinements. Thanks.

Thanks for all your work Kestas!

anything i can do to help?

oh, and when is the custom deadline update coming?

hi Kestas! in my opinion "winner takes all" should be "winner takes almost all" where winner takes like 75% of the pot (others have suggested different percentage, maybe it could even be adjustable) and all survivors share the rest equally

Alamothe, is that close to "Points per unit"?

Points per unit is what we have now; what alamothe is suggesting is similar but would give a bonus for winning and a lesser distribution of points to the non-winning survivors.

no, what i suggested here, and other players in other threads, doesn't take units in account at all. either you win and take 75% or you survive and take your equal part in the 25% - number of units doesn't matter

I don't see the point of that. Somebody with 1 unit clearly doesn't deserve the same as somebody with 15.

I disagree PTP. Both players LOST, why shouldn't they get the same point return.

they lost worse

no... anyway the creator of the game should have the option, so we can all play diplomacy the way we like it & be happy

If I come a very close second I would be very disappointed to get the same point return as the guy who finishes on one unit. But it's not the sort of disappointment that makes me complain that the site sucks, it's the sort of disappointment that makes me try even harder next time to finish first. More players need to be instilled with a strong desire to win, and I think alamothe's idea would do that. Winning is an achievement, surviving is an achievement. Coming second is not an achievement and shouldn't get any additional reward. I don't want to see alliances based on helping another player come second in exchange for help winning the game. I want to see players fighting tooth and nail to win, and fighting tooth and nail to survive. I don't want to see anyone fighting to come second, what is the point in that? How can you deal with these people, how can you appeal to their ambition if they have none? If they are not interested in winning, then I cannot trust their motives for allying with me, and can have no confidence that they will fulfill their agreed obligations. It's a waste of time negotiating with them.

also, Kestas, remember about draws! you may think they're not so important if you look at the number of requests since they're made possible. but this is for the current point system, where a large percentage of games is already ended by some kind of agreement, like 18/16 split or 18/8/8 split or something like that. this is a kind of draw (the players share victory / points) - in "winner takes all" game it would have been! so it's essential to have them, solo victories in this games will be rarer cause the player must against fight everybody in the endgame to take the victory

Oh boy, I'm excited. Can't wait!

Will there be an in-game messaging tab for everyone? There are things that don't need to be said in the forum, and wouldn't quite be appropriate in the current one on one messaging tabs, but would fit very nicely in an in-game communal messaging tab. I'd like to be able to greet everyone in a game, and congratulate the players with one message, as well as make declarations much more official. Nothing pressing, but it would make me very happy.

Sorry to be a morning grump, but I have truly had enough of noodle going on and on about winning and the dishonour of finishing second. Alright, dude, we get it.

With the 2 options for points, will the system have any meaning? Or will players have 2 sets of points, one earned proportionally and the other in winner-takes-most games.

Kestas, how about shortening the time to cd, or letting the moderator set it for individual games, or letting mods manually bounce players from games.

What are the performance measures for the points system? Is anyone analysing:
-number of players going into cd when they're losing
-number of new players who care about points
-number of games in which other players helped one player win in order to protect their points

How do you know it is an improvement? Are you sure it hasn't solved certain irritating things while creating new, larger problems?

Will accounts (and points) be kept after the change?

sineWAVE: of course.

"The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another." - Adam Smith

will there be a "stable" tarball released before or after these changes?

huh?

Probably before berliner

I mean, what is a "stable" tarball?

a tarball is similar to a zip file (not necessarily compressed, but usually is). Stable meaning, for the most part "stable" code which can be installed elsewhere.

Just a quick clarification for the benefit of TheMahatma: It's not a dishonour to finish second, it's a dishonour to WANT to finish second.

Agreed, if you're talking about from the outset of the game. But then, if from the outset you WANT to finish second, you're probably cheating in that you're only there to help someone else finish first. Later in the game, there is no dishonour in wanting second - especially if you're in third or fourth.

But that's not the point, is it? The point is that players are concerned about how many points they're going to get and are playing to preserve their "investment". I wouldn't call this a dishonour - I would call it a perversion of the game. A greater perversion, in fact, than people abandoning.