SpielByWeb

[cowdog]

I preface this by saying that this did not cause me to lose points in a game. I did that all on my own by not reading the rules closely enough.

I made a silly mistake in a game recently (I have a grand total of three under my belt now) by ordering a church built in a province that already had one. In my case, it was due to my not having remembered the rule allowing only one of each building in a province. Thus I lost my church for that round.

It won't make a difference -- I don't think -- in the finishing order for me, and I wouldn't care if it did.

It occurs to me that this is something that is detectable during the action planning stage. Could the web interface either warn you that there is already a church/palace/firm in the province you plan, or forbid it?

Is it the way it is (silently allowing a seemingly silly move) since there is a possibility that the province specified <i>could</i> be devestated before the church action comes up?

Just tossing the idea out for discussion or derision.

And -- like it needs saying in every post -- this site rox!

Cheers,

Hank
_________________
Road to Hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs -- Ernest Hemingway

[TMJJS]

I think it's fine the way it is since you are able to make this same mistake in a face-to-face game. It rewards those who are planning and paying attention.
Of course for newbies it's a slight disadvantage since they/you are still learning the game.
It would be the same for all the other events too: should we get a warning we aren't building a commercial building when there's a bonus or we are mustering troops in a province that has a shortage, etc...

[cowdog]

The more I think on it, the more I agree.

The initial thought process was: surely it would <i>never</i> happen that the church -- in this specific case -- would be possible to build. I suppose it could be determined that devestation is impossible, and then a warning issued, but that would be something like what TMJJS rightly objects to.

I put it down to a newbie mistake.

Cheers,

Hank
_________________
Road to Hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs -- Ernest Hemingway

[lotsa blots]

If province is Devastated, no one owns it, so Church could not be built.

I don't think there is a way to create a situation where a Church could be built later in a season in a province that already has a Church during the Planning Phase for a season.

I, for one, don't think that the limitations of the physical world should be enforced in the virtual world, but I've encountered several POVs here that suggest whatever limitations exist in the physical world should be enforced here also, and that possibilities that exist in virtual should not be created if they aren't possible in the physical, so I'm not sure this will get actioned.

[Golux13]

There are no circumstances where you can build a church in a province that begins the turn with a church already in it. Once a province is devastated, it is lost to the owning player, so even if he retakes it later, he cannot perform the building action that had been planned for it.

I firmly believe that the SbW implementation should not be error-checking player's plans or moves unless they are a violation of the rules (which should not be possible anyway, since the implementation is designed to enforce the rules). In other words, if you make a strategic mistake, you make the mistake. Maybe you lose the game, maybe not, but that's the way games work. Wallenstein especially is about proper planning, and there are a myriad ways you can screw it up (my most common error in face-to-face games is mixing up my Move A and Move B provinces). If you plan a church in a province that already has one because you don't know the rule, then it's a learning experience -- you won't make that mistake again. If you do it out of inattention, then that's a different kind of learning experience -- you'll pay closer attention the next time.

The only "forced errors" on SbW are the ones that arise from misclicks. I've sent troops to the wrong province because I hit the wrong one in the pulldown, or because the pulldown reset. I've overbid on the wrong province in Amun-Re. Those are annoyances, and if they are obvious/egregious enough, it should be possible to convince all the players to allow a mulligan (and then get Milksheikh to rewind the game). Outside of that, though, the unforced errors of misjudgment or inattention... in my view, those are part of the game and you should just play through.