Board Game Arena

When I play, it's mostly turn-based games. My understanding is that you get the time increment added to your clock every time it becomes your turn, even if it's for a quick micro-turn during someone else's turn.

Is it possible that in a real-time game, you might not get the full time increment added to your clock for these micro-turns?

I've seen some examples in Catan: Cities and Knights, but I thought I would ask in a more general forum just in case this can happen in other games. The case I've noticed is when player A draws a fifth progress card after player B rolls the dice.

In a turn-based game, player A's clock is incremented by the usual amount and then begins counting down until they discard the extra card. An example of this is in this game at move 359.

I've noticed in a fast real-time game, player A's clock did not receive an extra 45 seconds and began counting down from whatever it was. An example of this is in this game at move 293.

Is something like this possible in other games? Does the game actually know whether it it is running as a real-time or turn-based game and can they have other differences as well?

As far as I know the clock is only incremented AFTER you finish your own turn and NEVER at micro-turns within your opponents turns.

There might be exceptions for some games or some situations - especially with micro-turns (since I assume the game developer may decide what is your own turn and what is only a micro-turn). I did not pay much attention to this in the past, thought.

I know that time is added to your clock at the start of your turn, not the end. However, I suspect euklid is right that the dev can probably indicate whether it is officially your turn (and time incremented) or just a micro-action (no increment). I do also wonder if that differs between RT and TB games too - it would make sense that all turns and micro-turns get incremented when it's TB, as you may not see that you have to do something until hours later. But in RT, you should be at the table paying attention, so a micro-turn really shouldn't take all that long and may not need an increment.

The answer is simpler than that : it's completely up to the developper to add thinking time whenever/wherever he wants in the code. I think the only restriction is that you can only add thinking time to an active player, but I am not even sure it's really an hard limitation.
He could also distinguish RT and TB tables since that's an information we have access to, but honestly I don't see why would one dev want to do that.

Tisaac wrote: ↑07 April 2025, 07:48 The answer is simpler than that : it's completely up to the developper to add thinking time whenever/wherever he wants in the code. I think the only restriction is that you can only add thinking time to an active player, but I am not even sure it's really an hard limitation.
He could also distinguish RT and TB tables since that's an information we have access to, but honestly I don't see why would one dev want to do that.

Thanks for providing a developer's perspective, although the answer is a little surprising. Does that mean a developer has to manually handle all of the different speeds selected by the system? Is it possible for a (rogue) developer to make a 1 move every 2 days game behave like a fast real-time game?

It does seem like real-time games have less time available than I would have expected, so that gives me more incentive to stick with turn-based games.

I don't think they have that much flexibility (but maybe they do, I'm not a developer). I believe they have to manually call the function that adds whenever appropriate, but they cannot decide how much time, that's determined by the table settings. Apparently sometimes they forget and the timer just goes down every turn with no refill. I've seen that in a few beta games.