http://forum.phpdiplomacy.net/

This is the developers' forum.

I did have to hunt a little for it, but it wasn't too hard to find... from any phpDiplomacy page, just click Help -> Developer Info -> forum.phpdiplomacy.net

And there you are.

ah thanks kats

The problem is the guy who wrote it disappeared, plus I wasn't 100% sure about the way it worked. I'd rather have an algorithm that assigns people to countries that they haven't been for a while, while still keeping it fairly random :-(

Anything like that is fine as long as it doesn't result in players consistently getting one or two of the same countries. Not really complaining, I've gotten pretty excellent with Austria.

The system is going pretty well for me, I havent gotten austria for a long time, maybe the entire time i've been on this site. But yes, Kestas does a good job.

The system was supposed to allow you to express your preference of country in order from 1 to 7. Then somehow work out which one makes most people happy.... so would still turn out to be reasonable random if everyone voted to be France, Russia, Turkey as their top three. But I still think it would be an improvement on existing method (if implemented properly) as there are times when I'd actually prefer to play Italy or Austria... which seem to get a bad rap on this site, but i cannot. I also didn't get to play Turkey until about my 30th game on the site.

XD

Never been England, Germany, or Italy...
I've been France once, Russia once...

...

I've had Turkey 3 times and Austria 4 times. D:

I was a big fan of the preference system as set up in the test, but it should be optional on a game by game basis (ie, only games marked as country preference would use the system, regular games would still use whatever the current "random" system is). This allows people to increase the likelyhood that they'd get to play a country they really like, or that they want to try out, but wouldn't assure that people always got whatever country they wanted/wouldn't effect most games. It also might make sense to limit the buy in for country-preference games, or to even make them "free" so they wouldn't impact peoples point totals all that much. ie country preference games would essentially be "friendly" games while regular ones would be "ranked" or whatever.

Again, I'm not sure why people think the only reason for a system like this is to decrease the likelyhood of getting the same country over and over. That is a problem, and this could help solve that, but the point is to let people increase the chances that they get a country they want to play in a particular game. (For example, I still haven't gotten to play Turkey, and really want to try out a strategy for the country, and don't want to just keep playing game after game hoping I'll just happen to get it).

enforced randomness.....I like it!

There are some problems I have with preferences:
- It wouldn't ensure you get a country, which doesn't make it so suitable for trialling strategies
- It would need a clunky interface add-on, or need knowledge of some preference syntax like "EFRTAGI"
- Would it be on a per-user or per-game basis? If per-game then it would need more data stored in the database. If per-user people didn't seem to like that during the trial
- It would favor pre-determined alliances by allowing people to choose to join neighboring countries
- It's against the rules (technically so is balanced randomness, but that would definitely be more random than preferences and make it impossible to select a country which I think is the point of the rule)
- Any worldwide game setting can divide the community. Players who like preference games would be split from those who don't, and if you keep dividing the community with extra mutually exclusive settings you can end up with a less active community overall

So preferences aren't ideal and probably won't be added until after balancing has been added, if at all

I like "enforced randomness" better than "balancing" actually (though technically not accurate) :-)

I understand the issues that go along with it. I liked the per-user interface that was set up, didn't find the interface clunky at all.

It does at least sort of favor pre-determined alliances, but... personally that's why I like the idea of limiting the point buy in or even making the point buy in for such games zero, so that these games are clearly friendly "variants" that don't effect the "main" games. However creating two "classes" of games (ie those that have point buy ins and those that don't) might be difficult from a site maintenance/programming. I can't really speak to that.

I don't really care about splitting the community, I think I, and most people would simply play in both types of games. They'd play some country-preference games, and some normal games. At least that's what I'd do.

As for it not being the best system for "trying out strategies" I agree, it's not ideal for that. If it were completely up to me, we'd have the choice to start games where everyone chose a power on a first come first serve basis or something, but I understand that's not practical, and that people would freak out about "pre-determined alliances" which I think I've already said I'd deal with by creating a "friendly game" category, with low or no point buy-ins enforced.

As for it being technically against the rules... I really probably couldn't care less about that. If it's fun, that's all I really care about. This isn't any kind of "official" tournament or anything, it's just a game. If we want to implement a house rule for some games, I don't really see how that's a problem, as long as it's fun. But that's just how I'd run things if everything were set up for my personal enjoyment, rather than for the enjoyment of lots of people.

All of that being said! You are the maintainer of this site, and are free to run it any way you want to. I understand you have a certain community you want to maintain here, and that's not only your right, but a very good reason to be very cautious about making changes. It's also why I'm very glad that you have set up the source-code to be open source, so that if someone else wants to set up another community, with a different feel and with different variations on the game they can! (So basically what I'm saying is I understand the difference between phpdiplomacy.net as a community and phpdip as a program/codebase, and that you have different priorities with running this specific site vs possible options for the game itself).

You cannot choose your country of birth. Neither can you choose your Diplomacy Great Power. You must deal with both as best you can.

why not just make it true random?

Many other sites offer a preference list you can give. However, I really prefer the random one like on phpdip. With the other system, you have to alter your preference lists from time to time, so that you get to play every country once in a while. Or, if you decide not to give any preferences, you always get Austria or Italy.
With the random system here, at least you get all the countries evenly (statisticly), and that is pretty much my personal preference.
Another point is, random is of course the best-effort-approach (which is just a nice way of saying lazy developper picking the easiest solution for himself :) )