Automated passing in turn-based games

[nandblock]

A suggestion. There are several games--Amyitis, Caylus, and Spyrium--that tend to be very slow to play in turn-based mode, especially with 3, 4, or 5 players, because they involve a lot of small moves and the end of a player's turn is marked by passing, which is an extra move. In the case of a 5-player game this means that 5 extra turns are added EVERY round, just to hit the "pass" button!

I would suggest that in turn-based mode, if a player has no legal move, the computer should automatically "pass" them and move on to the next player. It could just say "[XXX] has no legal move and must pass." -- It is very annoying to log on to a bunch of games to discover that actually I have no legal move, and it really slows things down.

I realize that some players may for whatever reason like to do the passing manually; so I think that there should be an optional "Automatic pass when there is no legal move?" button when a game is created, to give them the opportunity to choose otherwise.

Amyitis in particular would really play faster if forced passes were automated--it is very frequent that you neither have money nor camels at the end of a turn.

[Oso]

Isn't easy to implement it because some games you can pass just for strategy -example: in Keyflower-

[nandblock]

I am not suggesting it be a feature of games where you can recommence playing after passing, such as Keyflower. It would also not be suitable for games with hidden information such as Race for the Galaxy--even if I have nothing in my hand that I can develop or settle, I do not want my opponents to be given a hint about what is in my hand. Automated passing should only be implemented for games where it makes sense. All three games I mentioned--which are open-information games where passing is the final action of one's turn--would benefit from automatic passing when a player has no available move.

[Liallan]

I know a reasonable solution on Caylus, but it could be a pain to implement, plus I don't know if they'll make changes to older games. (I also don't know if they'll make turn-based work differently, cause all the turn-based are just the real-time plopped into a slow setting.)

But what about a "pass on next move" kind of option? That is, I just placed my last worker and of course I have to pass on my next move, so I can select that option and it passes for me.

By pure coincidence I just got done doing that wasted passing move on Caylus. I'm one of those people who sort of likes to do things for myself, but that is probably a case where I'd do the auto pass.

[nandblock]

Yeah--it just really slows those games down badly... especially Amyitis, which already has a very slow mechanism for turn end (everyone must pass, then three actions are required from different players to resolve the temple procession--add a cube, make 1 choice in the 1st temple, make 1 choice in the 3rd temple). The end of a round in Amyitis thus involves often 4-7 turns of doing very little, including multiple passes.

[Liallan]

That's a bit of a shame. I inherited Amyitis from someone but it has a bunch of missing parts and I don't even know if I like it and whether to bother with getting parts. I was going to learn it on here some day so I could play it and see what I think.

[nandblock]

I think it's a terrific game and I wish I had a copy--it doesn't seem to be available anymore in North America. But it's one of those "lots of tiny, crucial moves" games--each move is small and needs to be quite exactly timed and thought-through, since there is no hidden information (which is what makes it, Spyrium and Caylus very similar in flavour aside from the common publisher). It's not like e.g. Troyes where typically a lot will happen between turns (since each player can scoop up up to 3 dice).

[trojanrabbit]

Really the option should be "automatically play moves when there is only one legal move." Only when that can be determined without hidden information of course.

[Thor]

Automatic passing in Caylus should be easy to implement and would really speed up the game. No money OR no workers and you must pass. There are a few other instances where passing is mandatory but I would only suggest these two for ease of programming.