Bah! Turns uploaded on Connect

[Cainehill]

Heh. Just goes to show how poorly those commands are understood, Gandalf. As Yvelina says, and as the command says in a dialog, "Your moves will not be uploaded to the server until you reconnect. To upload your moves exit via the End Turn button on the main screen".

Where I misunderstood, and where the dialog is ... ambiguous, is that it does imply that your moves might be uploaded when you reconnect. But on the other hand, it also implies that moves get uploaded via the 'End Turn' button, and not on a mere reconnect.

[archaeolept]

i'm surprised you haven't been bitten on the *** by this before caine.

worst is when you reconnect w/out actually having done anything in the turn and it hosts...

[deccan]

I agree wholeheartedly that this should be changed to an explicit command to upload a turn. Occasionally, I may do some orders offline, but don't want to upload them yet and instead only want to connect to the server to see who else has outstanding orders. The only way to do this is it seems to move the game directory elsewhere and to move it back in the Dom2 folder when you're done.

[Arryn]

Being a big fan of fool-proof programming, I have to agree with Caine and Deccan that it should be fixed. Or at the very least a prominent note should be stuck in a readme file if it's not going to be changed.

[Sheap]

Sure, the behavior is a little counterintuitive. On the other hand, I don't see why, once you've started doing your turn offline, that you wouldn't just go ahead and finish it offline, and upload when you're done.

[deccan]

Sheap said:
Sure, the behavior is a little counterintuitive. On the other hand, I don't see why, once you've started doing your turn offline, that you wouldn't just go ahead and finish it offline, and upload when you're done.

There are many different reasons. For example, say, I'm doing the turn offline, and then something urgent comes up that needs attention. So I want to connect to the server to find out if I'm the Last person. If I am, in order not to drag everyone down, I might just finish doing the turn hastily (sub-optimally). On the other hand, if I see that I'm not the Last, I may hold off doing the turn until later.

Here's another reason: I'm doing diplomacy outside of the game (via PM, e-mail or whatever) and I've already set some orders. After a while I don't receive a response, so I try to connect to see if the player in question has already done his/her turn, but I don't necessarily want to upload my own turn at that time.

More flexibility is always handy, Sheap, like when you asked me why I would want to be able to download and upload turns via a browser.

[PhilD]

Yeah, if you want to do your orders offline, you should just connect to get the turn file, not play the turn, then only play the game as you would a local game; and only reconnect when you have valid orders.

I've never been burned by this, but games on QuickHost can do that to you. Hey, I'm thinking right now - this may be how thinktank missed so many turns on our 2-player games...

[deccan]

PhilD said:
Yeah, if you want to do your orders offline, you should just connect to get the turn file, not play the turn, then only play the game as you would a local game; and only reconnect when you have valid orders.

In theory that's what people should do. But sometimes, when you get a new turn, you can't help but view what's happened, check things out and give a few obvious orders, and then you realize, oops, I don't have the time to issue orders for everything right now, but you don't want to start from scratch again either later.

[Sheap]

deccan said:
More flexibility is always handy, Sheap, like when you asked me why I would want to be able to download and upload turns via a browser.

Heh. You seem to hit all the places where the game doesn't do things well

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying "you should never want to do this," or that flexibility isn't good. It's just that often, people will complain that something is difficult, when in reality they are just trying to do things the hard way.

If you need to check the server without uploading, you can rename your "<nation>.2h" file in the subdirectory belonging to the game you are playing, and then you can safely reconnect to the server and check on your turn status. Of course, this is awkward, but hopefully it shouldnt be needed too often.

[Cainehill]

Sure, there are work arounds to avoid being bitten by this - as you say, connect once, complete the turn in offline mode, and only _then_ connect once every order is exactly as you wish it to be. Or renaming the .2h file (talk about having to do things the hard way ).

The fact that people have to do this is a relatively small inconvenience, sure - not something worth yammering for a big fix.

Except that people can and do get burned by it, because the documentation and interface doesn't at all make it clear that this is what happens.

And that seems to cry for some improvement - if nothing else, something like Illwinter did when people are about to connect and overwrite a pretender:

"If you connect to the game server now, your turn/orders as saved to disk _now_ will be uploaded to the game and possibly used before you have a chance to modify them. If this is not what you wish, Cancel and finish your turn in offline mode."