Wishlist: Capitulation

[VedalkenBear]

Why not make the provinces go independent, and re-produce appropriate Independent defenders of the provinces? Alternately, if someone 'quits', have the computer zero all of their dominion. That will do the equivalent, but IIRC leaves the national troops in place.

My issue with your proposal is that it gives provinces when they could not have been conquered as quickly otherwise.

AFAICT, there is _no_ problem with AI control of quitting players. I am not sure what your performance measure is, here. You say 'better'. Better in what way? According to whom? Do you mean more challenging? Certainly, it's not. Having a hole in the map (player-wise) leaves all kinds of challenges, most diplomatic. Allied players who only allied to defeat the leaving player now have to reassess their diplomacy _while carving up the remaining territory_. Other players now have to assess this windfall, and what that does to the balance of power. Etc. etc. etc.

Also, if you want to do instant division, you need to make sure it is applied dead last in turn order. Otherwise, you can have players who are allied suddenly invading each other's territory.

All in all, I think this idea is not healthy for the game unless and until better standards can be provided to judge it vis-a-vis the current system.

[Gandalf Parker]

The game does have a recommended fix for that already.
The Master Password allows the person running the game to enter as any player. Usually if the player stops playing its to set the player AI. But it can also be used to allow a replacement player, or for the person running the game to make moves for that player. Or even can be used to do some of the dividing which people are recommending.

Providing more options for breaking up the departing players property sounds like more trouble to add than it would be worth for the problem.

Yes I know that its easy to not think about the need for master password until its needed which is too late. I HIGHLY recommend that all hosts ALWAYS set a master password. And if you are the kindof person which always forgets then just change the defaults to always put one in. Add to your dom3 icon the switch to do
--masterpass masterblaster

Gandalf Parker
--
To some people, unlimited options seems to them to be zero options.
Without a menu of choices, they are lost.

[Illuminated One]

I think the main problem is that the AI goes hostile to everyone.
If there was an AI just passively defending against attacks that might be fine.