Some thoughts

[Igor]

Some thoughts are born.

1. When a new turn has begun, let all players to have just appeared units in the same time, does not matter does player move first or second. For example, white moves 1-st and yellow 2-nd, both have production in their cities. Next turn white gets his just appeared production and attacks yellow, who can't use his production yet. If both have their production in the beginning of each turn, that makes less matter who move first.

2. I don't know, is it possible to do, or not, but it seems to be usefull for team games to let units of 2 or more team mates to stand at the same place.

3. Let players who plays with undercover name to be undercovered not only before game starts, but to the end of the game. Now it is not, but could be usefull.

[smursh]

I think this would be particularly useful on some smaller maps where going first gives a big advantage. It would eliminate at least the main part of that advantage.

[KGB]

Igor, Smursh

1) All this suggestion does is give an advantage to the player going last. To understand why, picture a 2 player game. When the 1st player finishes his turn he must hold his cities while player 2 moves before he gets his production. But for player 2 when his turn finishes all production would happen so he would not have to hold his cities during player 1's turn. So player 2 gets a big advantage (bigger than any move advantage for going first). Right now with production happening at the beginning of your turn there is no production advantage to any player.

KGB

[Igor]

2 cities is near each from other. One is owned by white, other - by yellow. Both have paladin and 2 light infantry in city, both have spider as a production which will be born next turn. So, next turn begins. Let watch at 2 ways.

1-st way. White has his production, and yellow hasn't. White send his pal+2 inf.+spider to attack yellow who has only pal+2 inf/ in defence, without spider (it's not born yet). White will win, yellow's city will be owned by white, yellow's spider can't be born at all.
2-nd way. Both get production in the same time. So, both have pal+2 inf.+spider in their cities. White moves first. White can send his army to attack yellow. White also can stand in defense and wait for yellow. In this case yellow can attack white or not, any case white already has his spider.
Looks like first way gives big advantage to white and second way gives only little advantage to white - just to decide to attack or to stand in defence, not in number of armies.

KGB, I see no advantage for 2-nd player at all, with any way. Only 1-st player can have advantage, like it is now.
Really, advantage of first move the best seen on little map.

[KGB]

Igor,

Now look at this example of what will happen if your suggestion is implemented.

White captures a neutral city and starts production of Hv Inf for defense then ends his turn. There is no Hv Inf made because it is not the end of all players turns. Yellow attacks the White city and captures it and starts production of Hv Inf then ends his turn. Yellow immediately get a Hv Inf in his city because it is the end of all players turns. So when White goes to attack back, Yellow has 1 extra Hv Inf because he gets his production INSTANTLY as the 2nd player while player 1 must wait until after Yellow goes to get his. This is very unbalanced against White.

Really, advantage of first move the best seen on little map.

This is a problem of small maps. Not of how the game works. When you play small maps you accept this issue which is why I said bidding for turn order is something the game absolutely needs.

KGB

[Igor]

Yes, you're right, it's extra unit for 2-nd. But now it's extra unit for 1-st, isn't it? So, where is balance?

[KGB]

Igor,

It's not an extra unit for the 1st player. It's only the advantage of first move. The reason is that in order to get your production you *must* own the city during the other players turn. IE: White takes city, starts production. Yellow takes the city from White, starts production. White takes city from Yellow, starts production. No units are ever produced in this scenario because no one owns the city during the other players turn.

The way to balance out first move is the map maker has to space the cities far enough apart that stacks must spend 1+ turns in the open (Stratego as a small map does this by having an empty center). Then if White/Yellow start a Spider on the same turn, White gets his first but can't reach Yellows city and must spend a turn in the open if he wants to attack. Too many of the 50x maps don't do this. Either that's due to small map area or the map makers don't understand that concept of spacing them far enough apart.

KGB

[Igor]

If to make appearing of units for all players in the same time - beginning of each turn, and if white will take a city from yellow, he must attack yellow's just appeared unit, of course.
But now if white will atack the same yellow's city, yellow will not get produced unit from this city at all. So, white have an advantage.

Look at the map where only 2 cities and no units in defense, only production in cities. Turn 1 starts, white gets his production and attacks yellow which does not get his production yet and has no defenders at all. That's all, game is over, white used his advantage of appearing unit. But if white and yellow will get their produced units in the same time, they will both have defenders in cities. It would be more balanced.
If map is big, it can be separated to many little 2-cities-map. And in every such 2-cities-part of big map white has advantage until to let units to appear in the same time.

White takes city, starts production. Yellow takes the city from White, starts production. White takes city from Yellow, starts production. No units are ever produced in this scenario because no one owns the city during the other players turn.

Yellow can't take his city back, he has no units to do this, because his production didn't give him units before white attacked him.

The way to balance out first move is the map maker has to space the cities far enough apart that stacks must spend 1+ turns in the open

If it is so it shows that will no advantage if to let units appear in the same time. Yellow must take a turn in open and white will get his unit in the beginning of next turn.

Analizing all saying above, I can see advantage in both ways.
1) If it is like now, white has advantage when gets his units and can use them and yellow does not get and can't use them yet.
2) If to make appearing units in the beginning of turn for all players, yellow has advantage only if white takes city from yellow and yellow takes this city back in the same turn. Too rare case comparing with big advantage now.

[KGB]

Igor,

#1 is just an illusion created by the placement of cities close to each other on a mirror map. Here is another example of that on a non-mirror map with 4 cities spaced as: W-----N---N----Y. This time the N (neutral) on the White side can't be reached on turn 1 by White but the neutral on the Yellow side can be reached by Yellow on turn 1.

Turn 1: White moves toward his neutral, starts production of a 1 turn unit. Yellow captures his neutral, starts production in both his cities.
Turn 2: White gets a man in his capitol, captures his neutral and starts production. So half way through the turn White is ahead by 1 army by your logic. Yellow gets a man in both his cities. Now at the end of the turn Yellow is ahead by 1 army by in his neutral and will *always* be 1 army ahead simply because he reached his neutral first. So now White will be ahead in production in the capitol and behind in production in the neutral.

So you can see that the idea that someone getting an advantage is not such a simple thing. It's 100% dependent on how fast you capture cities and how far apart the cities are placed etc. So on perfect mirror maps there is an advantage but that's all map based, not game based. The easiest way on mirror maps is to make sure central cities are spaced far apart so that players must spend time in the open allowing both players 1 full turn to defend.


Also we have only talked about production. There is another bigger advantage for Yellow using your method. As White you capture a neutral. I assume you then leave 1 man in the city to defend against a crow/scout from Yellow on his turn. But Yellow doesn't have to do that. When he captures a city he can move all his men on toward the next neutral / enemy. The reason is because he gets his production as soon as he ends his turn so even if he leaves the city empty he immediately gets 1 defender there. So White must leave 1 man but Yellow doesn't have to. This is a big big advantage in the early turns when you are expanding.

KGB

[Igor]

You told about disbalanced map. Just change start positions, let White to be closer to his neutral city than Yellow to his one, and you will see that advantage of White will become huge. At the beginning of 3-rd turn, before White makes his move, White will have 4 units and Yellow only 1 (born in his capital in 2-nd turn).
So, if map disbalanced for White, both players have almost the same conditions. But if map is disbalanced for Yellow, White has huge advantage.

When both get units at the beginning of turn, White has 'active' units, he can move them first, and Yellow has 'passive' units which are only stand under White's strike.
Now is much bigger advantage for White, than it may be for Yellow if to change appearing of units. IMHO of course.