Have option for disallowing undo in turn based

[dralkyr]

Just now I was playing Puerto Rico with my wife sitting next to me on our laptops. I had to get up to get something and as I did so accidentally hit the mouse which clicked the wrong card, destroying what I had been planning and working towards for literally 4 turns. Undo is paramount to any game so long as all parties are in agreement. Whenever you're playing a game face-to-face and someone either makes a mistake, realizes they didn't want to do something within a reasonable time period (1-5 seconds), or simply didn't know the consequences the other players will almost always allow the player at fault to change the turn, especially if said player is new to the game.
Granted there comes a point where you should know a game well enough to know and live with the consequences, but ruining all your prospects for the entire rest of the game because you didn't know what the possible consequences of your first few moves were does take the fun out of playing.

Based on the title of this thread and the first post I have to assume there is at least one game on BGA which allows undo already. What game is this?

[Liallan]

I just took my workers back on a Stone Age recently. I don't remember how I did it and wasn't even sure I could. I may have just clicked on the new resource I wanted? Maybe I re-clicked where they were and they went back to "home base."

I've also taken back moves on Chinagold by just re-clicking.

In both those cases, there's like a "confirm move" button or something, so maybe that's why.

That's the ones I'm thinking of off the top of my head. I've never attempted to take back a worker in Stone Age on a hut or card, only resources. Which is why I'm thinking it's related to the fact that there's a button to confirm it, cause it doesn't know when you're done.

I wish more games did have this ability, as long as nothing is exposed by the move of course.

Oh, and yeah, the group I was in... if someone was new to a game and didn't understand a rule, we would let them take back a move. I thought they were almost a little too lenient about it. I remember that happening in Year of the Dragon and the two people after me had already gone, and I just couldn't comprehend undoing moves for two players to back it up to me. Weird. So unless I'd just immediately done something, I usually didn't take advantage of this -- it's part of learning the game. Definitely we let people take back moves if the next player had not done anything yet and as long as nothing was exposed. Like I could start to take a card, and decide, "No I don't want to do that, I didn't see it, really I didn't"... and they'd let me put it back. (I never knew anyone to cheat in that group.) Now, continually changing your mind and taking forever doing it... that would kind of be pushing it. Deal with it already.

[Jest Phulin]

I think, but am not sure, that Through the Ages allows this. I seem to recall this discussion starting when that game was released.

I don't play TTA, so could someone please confirm/deny that?

[jgbaxter]

It does not, and often that mistake can either lose you the game or severely hamper play.

Undo is a requirement for a game, I've never seen a face to face game where someone said 'oh no, you accidentally touched that piece now you must lose'... idea is stupid to prevent undo. There is a timer to deal with too much undo-ing, and as long as the player hasn't done something like rolled dice or drawn a card, basically revealed something new- then they should be able to undo a command.

[Jest Phulin]

Depends on how strongly one feels about the game, jgbaxter. While I admit that on this site it should be for fun, and that lends itself to undos, see my previous post about the laws of Chess. And be careful when using "never" and "always." You've never seen it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.