It's a legitimate tactic. Just remember that some players deliberately 'game' this behaviour by waiting until the last few seconds on the timer before saving their orders to try and distort their opponents' moves. So this tactic can backfire - beware.

"metagaming" is when you use one game to influence another. An example would be where you and "Bob" are playing in game A and game B. You allow Bob to take advantage of you in game A while he allows you to take advantage of him in game B. Tourney examples are also well documented (and usually "legal") team tourneys even more-so!
This situation is simply taking advantage of someones misfortune and there is nothing wrong with that. You do need to be careful he is not setting you up and is ready to send his orders at the last moment to instead take advantage of you! This is a risky ploy but is not unheard of so beware!

Thanks to all the answers. My doubt came from the fact that when you adopt this tactic, you are obviously looking at an information (whether a player submitted his/her orders) that is not strictly part of the game.

I don't see how one gains an advantage from an NMR at all, diatarn.

You can CERTAINLY gain an advantage knowing an opponent is about to NMR, how can someone claim otherwise??? If you know your neighbor/enemy is about to NMR, all units are about to hold...you know no supports are given, you know none of your supports will be broken, how can one claim an advantage is not to be had? This is not metagaming but can certainly be considered a moral issue. Yes you know something you maybe should not, but then again, if this were face to face, you would know if a player had to step out for an emergency. How is this different? You also know from your discussions with others that a player may have stopped communicating with others, you know if he has been active, maybe he sent an in-game message to the wrong person, how is any of this used to your advantage wrong in any way?

Let me share a funny (and very true!) story...
Back in 10th grade math, we had a surprise quiz and I was LOST, I sat there just staring at the page and my eyes just wandered to anywhere but the quiz in front of me (no they did not wander to other peoples quizes!) suddenly I notice the blackboard has scrawled on it numbers 1 through 20 with what appears to be answers. Damn, my quiz has 20 questions as well, could it be these match??? I can't tell for sure but the very few things I think I know seem to match up...what the hell!?

I copy them 100% and sit back waiting for the others to finish, the teacher notices I am way ahead of all others (and he knows I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed).
The next day we get our results back, I got a perfect 100%.
The teacher asks the class "did anyone but Mr Reinecker notice the answers were on the blackboard?" One girl raises her hand and says she saw it but didn't take advantage of it because that would be "cheating". He laughs and says this was a life lesson and he says little in life is free but when it is, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT!

Same here my friend!
This is available to all and is not cheating so use it to your advantage!

I was saying, how can someone gain an advantage if they themself NMR.

I just realized I misread this post completely. I thought he was accusing the NMR player of metagaming. Carry on.

Chaqa: if it looks like your opponent is going NMR, you do can submit more aggressive moves without(?) fear of failure. For example, you have A Bur, A Pic, F Eng; your opponent has A Par, A Bre, F Mar. If you're targeting Paris, you order something like A Pic->Par, A Bur s A Pic->Par, F Eng->Bre (to cut the support); if you see that your opponent is going to go NMR, F Eng->Bre becomes unnecessary, and you can move it somewhere else (e.g. to MAO).

Chaqa: ok. sorry for the condescending reply.

And nice story, Tom :-) [life lesson to me: read ALL the thread before starting to answer]

If I were a teacher, I would do this once every year!
Have we any teachers here? It would be an awesome addition to your curriculum!?
It was a simple quiz that played very little towards our final grade, but every bit helps

To be honest, I wonder what's the point of making this information (orders status ready, saved or unsaved) available to the other players.

I'm primarily aiming at anon-gunboats, the kind of game that diatarn was referring to.

Maybe we could avoid some
"I'm essentially ready but I will save my order just in case I see that someone is about to NMR 1minute before the time deadline"
occurrences and basically speed up gunboats.
For example in 1066 and classic FoW the other players' order status is hidden.
It helps to preserve anonimity and helps keeping players away from thinking at "last 5minutes before the deadline tricks".

It is true that the orders status information is available to everyone and apparently this is a fair thing.
However, this information is determinant only at the time deadline, so the REAL information (will Russia NMR this autumn?) is available only to those who manage to be online a few mins before the time deadline... So it makes things a bit more biased than what they seem to be.

Agreed. I'm not sure what the point of making other player's order status, or online history for that matter, is. These are rather quirky features of the site that provide no real benefit, but offer up a variety of opportunities to exploit the game.

Further agreed on the likelihood that the game pace would pick up if this were removed. The absence of other player's order status would remove these issues, and have more players marking orders ready/final. That's not to say that if you need the full time, that you should not use the full time, but we have many players abusing this as well. Ironically the access to order status allows us to see players the abuse this. It's still a good idea to keep order status private knowledge. And as some have noted above there are players on this site who as a manner of general practice employ a tactic of staging NMRs, only to submit orders with only seconds to go. Now there's nothing really much to say about this, just like there's nothing left to say about players who stalk NMR nations. These behaviors are byproducts of information that the site gives us.

If 1066 and FoW variants have the ability to cloud order status, then maybe it's possible to provide this in all games. I would be in favor of that.

I find that the fact that the order status is visible has several advantages.

For example, I have several times seen that a player did not save any order a few hours before the turn happens. I sent a message to that player, whether he is my ally or not, in order to remind him about entering orders and it has avoided a possible NMR because the player thought that he had saved his orders while he actually hadn't ! The situation of a player actually saving no orders, while thinking that he has, happens more often that one can think. I personally don't understand how players can make that mistake but the fact is that it happens.
And that can happen even more often after an Extend or a Pause.

Another benefit is, for example, in a situation in which I had no Retreat but needed all the Phase time before the turn happens because of some RL urgency. I then wrote to one of the retreating players in order to ask him if he agreed to "Save" his Retreat instead of "Readying" it. It was with a lighter heart that I could stay away from our game without worrying of the turn happening before a certain moment.
In other words, these orders status are helpful to manage our Diplomacy games in our Real Life and that helps to avoid a certain percentage of NMR's.

On another note, in a face to face game, when a player has to leave the game for a personal reason, for example, the information of him going to NMR is available too.

What I am saying is that those orders satus have a several real benefits and that many players, myself included, appreciate to have that information.

If the info were to go away I would welcome that. But the question posed is if this is considered cheating or poor behavior and no it is not. But the benefits mentioned above make me laugh. I could find reasons why murder could be handy as well but I think we all agree it should not be allowed.

I wonder if it would be possible to code this as an option for new-games...

I agree with Decima and RUFFHAUS that the order status info might go away, especially in gunboats. A more complicated alternative is to make it "disappear" only in the last hour or so before the deadline: in this way we retain the advantages described by Retillion and make the "waiting for potential NMRs" tactic much more risky.

Isn't it a good thing that it can be taken advantage of a player who NMRs ?

Don't you think that we have way too many NMR's ? Shouldn't we welcome every possibility that penalizes a little more players who NMR ?

Retillion, you might be right that with the current system you penalize NMRs a little bit more.
But I think that this (fair) aspect is more than counter-balanced by the side-effects
1) NMRs (ad CDs) disrupt the balance of powers between the remaining players, by favoring the neighbours of the NMRing player; the current system makes this problem worse.
2) Many of us don't have the time to exploit this (even if you might occasionally happen to be there at the "right" moment), and this would give a (tiny, but unfair) advantage to those who have.
3) As Decima and RUFFHAUS were saying, it is possible that this kind of behaviour (and/or its counter-measures) is slowing down games.

any who suggest taking advantage of others misfortune are more than a bit weasely. I detest those who want to take advantage of others and would rather beat someone by misfortune rather than by skill and cunning play. (I have seen many examples) NMR's hurt all in a game but as pointed out, much of that harm is how it allows some to grow more than they should be able to, it skews the game in a bad way. While it is not "Cheating" and as it is now, one should take advantage of all they are given, but it would certainly be better for us ALL to do away with such a feature that amplifies such NMR results.

It doesn't surprise me that Retillion would come down as supporting the display of order status. It fits right in with his MO. The notion that you can remind an NMR player is pure nonsense, and a first rate strawman. Regardless of that, there's no beneficial reason to the game in providing player order status. It's not player A's business whether player B has actually submitted orders or not. It should be assumed that all players will submit orders each turn, and providing knowledge to players that orders are missing only serves to exploit the damage caused by NMRs.

+1 Decima Legio, diatarn-iv, & Tomahaha

I think the information is a disadvantage for many, as others are able to take advantage of those NMR's while those of us who don't have time to sit around clock-watching can't. Although, you would know in a face-to-face game when a player hasn't submitted his orders, everyone would know that.

Not really, G-man. Your same logic can be used against this assumptions. Do you spend you negotiation time in FTF watching who has placed orders into the hat? How do you know if someone puts orders into the hat or a blank sheet of paper? I've seen "orders" put into a hat after a discussion before only to see continued negotiations from that player with others and then the look of abject horror in the eyes of other players as they see orders going into the hat again. It's really no one's business as to whether orders have been submitted by a nation or not until the deadline.

I agree with you that it's really no one's business as to whether orders have been submitted by a nation or not until the deadline, so I'm not sure why you're raising an objection. But I've never had anyone fake order submission in face-to-face, though I've never played tournaments, and played all my face-to-face Diplomacy back in the 80's with a bunch of friends and friends of friends.

Don't forget that, regarding NON-Anon games, if you happen to be logged-in at the time deadline,
if you combine the informations about the players' order status and the players' online status (another information whose availability to the others is questionable)...
Well in this case you will know for sure who is about to NMR/CD.
This is a HUGE advantage given to those who are able to be present at the deadline (eg those who deliberately wait for the planned deadline through saving their own set of orders).


So, summarizing, :
- the other players' order status
- the other players online/offline status

I know it has always worked this way due to webdip platform heritage, but l can't recognize the tangible benefits of those two features/informations

@ Tomahaha & RUFFHAUS 8 :

It seems that you misunderstood me. Maybe I expressed myself not correctly. So, in order to make myself clearer : what I find good is not so much the possibility for a player to take advantage of an NMR but instead I find it good that an NMRing player can be more severely penalized by his NMR because of the fact that someone can hurt even stronger his position if he NMRs.
In other words, if players knows that it would be impossible that someone takes advantage of their NMR, they would care even less about NMRing !


@ Decima Legio :

Here is one of the advantages of knowing if a player is online : when I check a game that I am playing, I write first to the players who are online. It offers the possibility to have an immediate answer and possibly even to chat "live". Those possibilities improve A LOT communication !

Not buying it Retillion...
You want to argue a harsher penalty will cause fewer NMR's, a "penalty" will do NOTHING to reduce NMR's and we all know this. If I don't care enough to submit orders, then why do I care if it hurts me more or less? Conversely, for those rare situations that the NMR could not be helped (as I recently had happen to me), you now want to harm that player even MORE while rewarding the player who try's to take advantage of ones misfortune? No, your entire logic is flawed and flat out wrong!

You trying to find advantages to this is quite funny and a very poor attempt at hiding the fact you want to play like a weasel and take advantage of situations, you do not want to beat someone fair and square, instead you want to take advantage of loopholes (are you a lawyer perchance???)
This is like having an argument over murder (as I mentioned before). We are stating some really good reasons to make it illegal and you come along with something like "it would save us court costs" as a reason to allow it. Same damn thing here, you are manufacturing some lame reasons to support your side!

Have to say I find players to use the 'ready' strategy to be tiresome. I am not talking about players who do need time occassionally for personal reasons, I have done that, but those who use it as a strategy to 'slow walk' the game, sometimes taking as long as three days to put turns in. Don't do this. Maybe a pts reward could be introduced as an inducement.

Re: NMR's. I have been fortunate enough to be on at the right time and take advantage of it from time to time but more often than not it is a ruse so it is a risky call. I like the idea that the status is hidden for the last hour. That might make things interesting. Otherwise I think you are either 'ready' or have not submitted orders.

Another question. Is there a reason a player cannot just leave a game outright? I think being able to leave would prevent a lot of unnecessary NMR's and attempts to 'second guess' the play as discussed. The flip side of course is that leaving a game should incurr a fairly heavy penalty.

This last hour idea doesn't work as intended. If you agree (as most do) that taking advantage of the situation is in poor taste, then waiting for the final hour may help but it will still have players trying to take advantage of possible missed orders.... if we have one hour to go before orders are due, then it's still a decent chance the orders will be missed, why give ANY advantage? The excuse that you want to write a player to remind him his orders are late is pretty lame at best!

I agree about the idea of hidden order status because as it is now you can see when people are about to NMR (which most people said above). Furthermore if the status would be hidden the last hour you can still go to the players profile and see when they usually are online and thereby you can almost guess if it'll be an NMR or not.

@ Tomahaha :

I am just trying to tell you that I like to have the information available as it is and your answer is to try to say that my way of playing is wrong.
In a game where it is expected to "stab" (which means to lie, to betray, to deceit : in other words to have a morally questionable behaviour !) everyone, I find it a little hypocrite to hear about your supposed fair and square way to play Diplomacy.

Here is the way I see it : I like to have more information. More information means more possibilities to handle a situation, but also more possibilities to make mistakes.

Don't try to make fun of other people because they like things that you don't.


@ ManMountain : no, we don't have to "Ready" our orders. It is in fact the opposite : the Phase lasts, per default, its duration and it can be speeded up only if EVERYBODY agrees. If you want to know, I have many times kept a Build in reserve only to have the power to "Save" during the Builds Phase.
Similarly, I have even caused a Retreat with an ally just to have the power to make the game slower by Saving the retreat rather than Readying it. You know, not everybody is obsessed with having games going as fast as possible. Some of us are extremely busy in their Real Life but still want to play Diplomacy. These players aren't always interested in Readying a game, even when their order is obvious, for example when their retreating unit can only disband.
→ Players are perfectly allowed to use the whole time of the Phase duration.

Retillion,
I never claimed you're playing in the wrong way. You and I are playing within the rules and the features of V-dip, which is completely legitimate; I'm just criticizing a couple of existing features that I believe are unnecessay (if not harmful) for the website gameplay.

--------------------------------------

However, about the "orders status":
Other existing tools belonging to the Reliability Rating System are meant to penalize THE PLAYER.
What we have to avoid is that THE COUNTRY, hence the BALANCE OF THE GAME is not overly penalized due to a nmr "detected in advance".

It is a delicate aspect for gunboats, where the balance of powers, when broken, is harder to recover.
If we allow some players (those online at the right moment) to know IN ADVANCE who is about to nmr we're de-facto biasing the game.
As for games with press, a good player should be able to imagine an incoming nmr because of his own communication skills, not because of his "Peeping Tom" skills.

--------------------------------------

About the advantages of knowing the "online status".
The "live chat" is something that is supposed to happen anyway between players who log in frequently. Those players do already have an intrinsic advantage in terms of communication over those who log in once a day. They do not need a further communication advantage.

Lastly, don't forget that knowing the "online status" is the first weapon in the hands to those who work around the anonimity of games. (I personally do love to play under the Anon setting.)

@ Decima Legio :

I never wrote that you claimed that I play Diplomacy the wrong way. That part of my message was addressed to Tomahaha.

In a face to face game, players know in advance when another player will NMR, don't they ? Why should that be different online ?

The RR is a nice tool but it is far from being perfect because stats are only what they are : stats. What's more, do many players really care about the "R" rating ?
In my opinion, some players with a R99 are not totally reliable. On the contrary, I can think, for example, of one player who has today an horrible R93 but who I consider totally reliable as far as not NMRing is concerned.

What I meant in my previous messages is that knowing that your opponents could terribly devastate your position if you NMR is a great additional element of motivation that encourages players to not NMR. On the contrary, if players know that nobody will know before the turn happens that they will NMR, then that will give those potentially NMRing players an extra protection and that is not good at all ! We must do nothing at all that encourages NMRs ! NMRs are the only real problem. Indeed, without NMRs, those orders status would not have the "disadvantages", let's say instead "consequences", that you are talking about.

I never play anonymous game. Are you telling me that the online status of the player behind a country is available ? In other words, can you, for example, see that "Germany" is online ?

Well I have no problem saying you prefer to play like a weasel. If you prefer to think playing this way is wrong (I agree) then yes you play wrong. Your arguments to allow this are laughable and yes very weasel-ish. I call it as I see it. Others can cower. Not me. Your arguments are those of a poor player wishing to take advantage of loopholes. I agree you should take advantage of what is given but we are discussing taking that ability away and you want to keep the cheap advantage. That sir is that of a weasel.

No-one is playing like a weasel, it is perfectly ok to utilise the information available to you to play how you want to play. Everyone has a different play style and even though it mightn't be compatible with your vision of how to play, there is no need to label other players because of this.

Having said this the medium will often dictate the message (in the words of Neil Postman). In this situation - the medium of exchange causes different variations of 'how' people play the game that would be different to how people communicated and played the game using just e-mail. Just as e-mail was a departure to how postal play was conducted. Just as postal play was a departure to how face to face is played. The medium dictates how the message is delivered.

Actually playing like Retillion has just described is very much like a weasel. He's manipulating the game schedule (specifically in retreat and build phases which are not meant to have time for negotiation). His objective in this is to interrupt game momentum, and cause players to become disinterested because the game drags on, which of course leads to more NMRs. This very clearly explains his empassioned defense of the ability to see who has submitted orders, who has logged on, etc. If Retillion had it his way, he'd be granted permission to read our press with other players.

As noted above, everyone has a style of play. Retillion wants to be protected from anyone uttering a naughty word and anything negative said about his short list of preferred nations around the world while he games the system, to go along with a laundry list off... actions which were not allowed to say in public. He's the first one to arrive at the scene screaming down any and all sane attempt to restor the game of Diplomacy played here to it's pure state. He love every little gimmic and quirk, and will exploit them all to win, because he's simply not good enough to win without them.

Sorry Kaner, you are wrong. It is certainly ok to utilize the information we currently have on hand. Taking advantage of this situation as it is... no problem!
What I was very clear about is the discussion to see if this feature could be removed so we can not take advantage of the system. Most seem to agree this is not right, it is Retillion who wants to get an unfair advantage and his reasons are pretty funny the way he wants us to believe he's simply helping others by taking advantage.

Please read what is being said
Taking advantage of what is available is just fine!
It's there, then use it.
But the "what if" posed, what if we removed this feature (if even possible?) that's where he shows his weasel side!

I agree with Ruffhaus' comments and was going to say something similar. "Walkers" like Retillion have admitted to gaming the system and this does interrupt game momentum causing players to become disinterested leading to more NMR's. Additionally it just seems a very inconsiderate (and spiteful) way to play the game. Just because you *can* take three days to process a retreat (!) doesn't mean you *should*. Also most people lead busy lives and still manage to get complicated orders in reasonably quickly. Keep the game moving as much as you can and people will be more sympathetic when you do need to draw a turn out sometimes.

@ ManMountain :

Using the whole time of a Phase is not at all "interrupting game momentum", like you write it.
The Phase has a duration and one game year should normally last 5 times that duration. Anything faster is an option that is the result of a consensus between all players. Such a situation would in fact speed up the game momentum.
Readying our orders is a nice option, not an obligation.
Saving our orders is normal and has nothing wrong.

On another note, ManMountain, you just wrote :
"Also most people lead busy lives and still manage to get complicated orders in reasonably quickly."
[YOUR EXACT WORDS]

ManMountain, what takes time in a Diplomacy is not entering orders. There is no such a thing as "complicated orders". What takes time is COMMUNICATION. Of course I can see that you don't write much in your full press game : your profile shows that you wrote only 1523 messages in 23 finished games. That's about 66 messages per game in average.
As far as I am concerned, I write MANY MORE messages than you do in a game.
We obviously don't play the same way a Diplomacy game. Communicating in a game requires infinitely more time than simply entering orders.

Once again, players are perfectly allowed to use the whole time of the Phase duration.

CORRECTION : ... in 23 *full press* finished games...

Entering orders can certainly be VERY complex. Take my only game here so far [MY EXACT WORDS] I have about 50 units to order with all the possibilities and dealings with other players, yes it can get quite complex to say the least. Entering the orders is however usually simple and order entry does not take too very long, it is the communication with other players that takes a long time. Everyone should most certainly take the time they require! But you can not tell me you REQUIRE the full allotment of time every single turn and I have seen MANY already who have a retreat due, they save the retreat and do not ready it ever. It sounds as if others have called you out on this and you want to defend it but in doing so you failed. Nobody has said players must always submit orders immediately and they should never wait, but when they know their orders are final, in that case they should be readied as soon as possible and not delayed. That is owed to all the players of the game, to selfishly wait so you can try to game the system ...again you show a side that is not becoming! It is quite selfish, quite ungentlemanly, quite rude!

fyi, why does my profile show 0 in game messages? I have well over 1000 if not 2k by now.

Tomahaha, I believe the number of in-game messages is only updated once a game is finished. Since you have 0 finished games, it also shows 0 messages. They will all be added at once when your game ends.

I have found in my time playing this game that communication actually doesn't take all that long. Most players know where they are in relation to one another (at least if you pay attention to the board), alliances/stab positions are clear and they can figure out for themselves (mostly) what is in their own best interests and usually only need minimal prompting. Protracted negotiation indicates either a) a desire to be unnecessarily verbose in your missives, b) your own plan isn't being executed properly c) the other person isn't interested/has other objectives but you insist on hammering the point (which is counter productive in my view). I certainy don't know what you could be discussing in a retreat phase that could be taking three days though, Ret... weather? holidays? yankees chances this year?

wow, I would say that above statement is 100% counter to my own. I talk a lot to my allies and good allies will go back and forth a LOT. It's called negotiations, negotiations are two way streets and require a lot of back and forth proposals and counterproposals, exchange of ideas and plans is important and any who would talk to me quickly and go away assuming all was grand, those people will not be allies very long!

That is for close allies and it does not apply for every turn, sometimes things are quite clear what needs to be done, but more often than not, things should go back and forth OFTEN and 2 days is not enough time in my book. I have had many turns go right up to the deadline with negotiations and ideas and such, I find a lot of communication a good thing and little communication a sign of a stab....just the opposite of the above post! In fact, we do have a saying that silence is a sign of a stab, so if ManMountain is next to me in a game, things are going to get really interesting really fast!

Interesting comments Tom, don't know that you can automatically assume silence in itself means a stab. It depends on the situation of course but even a flurry of communications could be an attempt to gain your trust or to draw info out of you. I find actions speak louder than words as everyone has to stab at some point if they hope to win, or at least put in a good showing.

I hope we do get to play in the same game sometime, Tom.

Good allies exchange ideas. They discuss things often. If someone so talkative suddenly goes silent ...beware!
Now a lot of talk could certainly be setting you up. But I have found it less likely for one to talk at length just for a stab. Always be careful in this game and use good judgement but the averages speak for themselves.