Re: [Fwd: Re: XConq playable intermittently?]

[bob at fla dot fujitsu dot com (Bob Carragher)]

What Duane was asking for sounds similar, as well, to another
"network" game I idled away many an hour with, called "Conquer."
This was completely text-based, and differed also from xconq
in that movements were conducted "independently" of other sides.
That is, each person logged into the system, entered his moves
for that turn, and logged out.  At a predetermined time, the
system would read in all the moves, adjudicate conflicts, and
update the world status.

Would it be very difficult to adapt xconq to such a paradigm?
It might solve his original problem, where a person temporarily
leaves the game and all his units just defend themselves but
take no offensive action.

On that note, I have another thought.  In most of the xconq
games that I've played -- that is, one starts out with a city,
explores and acquires neutral towns for additional production,
and obliterates AIs before meeting a human in a real showdown
B-) -- dropping out of the game before all the non-human-owned
production sites have been "allotted" would be equivalent to
deciding one didn't want to win.  Production in such games is
vital.  Yes, you should try to concentrate resources against
your opponents' weak points, but he'll likely be doing the same,
and if you have only 80% of the production capability of your
opponent, you will eventually lose!

If one drops out for maybe 2 or 3 turns, then that would not
be traumatic.  One must take bathroom breaks when necessary.  B-)
But a drop-out of, say, 5-10 turns (heaven forbid more) would
be suicidal, particularly in the early, exploratory phase of
a game.  At that point, the lost production really hurts.  Put
another way, your opponent's increased production will enable
him to do more things while simultaneously increasing his area
surveyed and his number of neutral towns acquired.  Bottom line:
do you really want to do that?

During the midgame, when most of the AIs have been eliminated
and the humans are now meeting each other and feeling each other
out, dropping out might not hurt too much, although you're still
losing opportunities to pick up production from the AIs.  Towards
the endgame, when it's just humans vs. humans, it might be to one's
advantage to take a small break and let supplies build up.  On the
other hand, if I know that my opponent will be sleeping for the
next 5 turns, I'd have no qualms about sending scouts into his
territory, locate a nice, quiet, out-of-the-way location, and
build bases right under his nose.  B-)

				Bob