It is my understanding that away players only collect dice for two turns. This allows for lag difficulties but prevents the truely absent from profiting in the long run.

yeah...let's not make yce's thread comment into more than it really is. it is a singular case of the away player determining a game's outcome. we are savvy enough on the upper-echelon tables to almost universally agree that unless it kills our chances, we will eliminate away players first. what yce points to is perhaps an inconsistency where a player may be punished for what we all almost without exception consider right...that is going after an away player (i.e., an away player has 1 country left with 7 die while an "active" player has 1 country with 5 pieces, and my 8 piece borders both). We have all played enough to realize that fairness dictates that we "should" go for the away player in this instance even though the die percentages are less). What this thread raises for discussion is whether we should look into the process that gives this away player 7 die to begin with, and whether it is in the spirit of the game...naturally, I can choose to eliminate the active player first, and mathematically speaking I should...but the question at hand is whether it is proper for an away player that has not played a single round to be able to amass these die to begin with...

<p>Here's a thought off the top of my head.</p>
<p>Do the 2 turns and collect dice to protect from bad connections, etc. But after say 3-5 more turns *after* you get your dice, and you're still away, you start to lose a die from a random territory.</p>

@ jakestone: Players would wait to take out away players. Risk would be reduced with each turn. So it is a bad idea.

Well, jakestone, believe it or not, i came up with the same idea while first reading funk's comment!

Well actually that isnt a bad idea at all, lags never take more than 2 rounds or so, so lets say, for safety, that the 3 and 4th round, they just dont fill up anymore, and from the 5th round on they start to lose dies (from their biggest country starting), but i think ryan will work the details out just perfectly if he makes the changes, cause he did so with everything else!

I hope this proposal is considered seriously cause it really could work for everybody!

@ alegios: thats not true at all, that depends on playstyle, some people like to take risks and they will not wait once they have one die in advantage, but some like the safety of 2 and more.
But while those 5 rounds of "awayness" are running, people are still filling up, so they can attack when they have enough, but this proposal is just to prevent some accidents like a player getting 7 dies to start and leaving in first rounds, cause other peoples could take for 10 rounds to just fill up next to it (and even still might lose the 1st attack), things would just speed up a little for the away players, what makes the game more interesting for the players at the table!

My opinion about away players:
I always kill them before all the other players but I don't kill them before anyone is in danger to get killed before the away player. And I only try to kill them if I'm the biggest.
I had never problems with away players so I don't know if we need something to do against them.

Away players ...

The concern I'm hearing hear basically has to do with the ranking and points we get, right? That its unfair that Bill walks away and gets 5th place when Jane and Jack stuck with the game but were just eliminated earlier, so they get fewer points.

If that's the concern, how about the away (or extreme away if its 5 turns or whatever) player gets their points and rank assigned at the moment they become "away" or "extremely away." That way, if the strong players strategically want to get rid of Jane (active but weak) before eliminating Bill (away) they can do so w/o Jane being penalized for Bill.

How does that sound?

"What´s about "away players" who can´t join the game by technical problems like an ugly connection."

and server problem. the screen freezes all the time.

another problem is not all players would agree to kill the away players first.This happened to me once. There are 3 players remaining and I am 3rd with 10 territories and the away player with one. The 1st place player for some reason decided to kill me first before the away player. I don’t understand why but it may be a case of pre game alliance.............

I'd just like to add that I don't thnk for a minute that Away players defend better. Watch for another 20-30 games, and see what happens with *every* contest between a "here" player and an Away player. If you are diligent, you'll notice [b]no difference whatsoever![/b]

IOW, quit yer whining.

A couple of days ago, it appeared like the server went down. I refreshed and refreshed... nothing. So, I went off to other sites to fool around, and came back in about 6 - 8 minutes. Hey, the same game was back up!!! It was several turns later, and I was behind because some other people had come back sooner, but I still had some territory, and had accreued some dice, so I could keep playing. Under your scheme that Away players lose dice, I woulda been completely screwed. Think about it. You're just upset because you got hosed by legitimate probabilities. You'll get over it.