1. Player leaves the game after announcing their departure to the moderator.
2. Player runs out of timeouts and misses their turn.

The rules for Lost Players have two phases:

1. Preliminary Phase - skip player's turn (see below for details)
2. Final Phase - remove player from the game (see below for details)

If the player's departure is announced, then the Preliminary Phase is skipped. But if the player runs out of timeouts, the Preliminary Phase gives the player a little extra time to return to the game. The Preliminary Phase is implemented when the last timeout runs out, and the Final Phase is implemented at the start of the Lost Player's next turn (if they don't show up in the meantime).

In a sense, the implementation of the Preliminary Phase is equivalent to a declaration by the player that he/she is leaving the game: both set the stage for the Final Phase to be implemented if the player does not declare otherwise before his/her next move.

The Preliminary Phase:

The MODERATOR does four things:

1. Take the missing player's turn, routing all units to the nearest city (in terms of movement points). If two cities are equally close, the moderator chooses the "best" city for the player's defense. Do not move units within cities. Do not group or ungroup stacks.

2. Send an announcement to all players that the missing player will be considered Lost if they do not reply by their next turn. The announcement should include the text of the Lost Player rules so the other players will understand what is about to happen. Note that the Preliminary Phase is *not* a Static Defense, and all hero items are still up for grabs at this time.

3. End the missing player's turn and send it to the next player via Remailer.

4. Notify Headquarters that a player has gone missing.

The Final Phase:

The Moderator does the following:

1. Notify Headquarters that the player is Lost and out of the tournament.

2. The Lost Player's final game standings will indicate the last turn and side when the player was thought to be in the game (generally the turn and side right before the first turn that they failed to take). The stats will also record zero cities, armies, gold, and profits.

3. The moderator will follow this "decision tree":
   (Each option is explained further down.)
   1. If more than one-third the remaining cities were still neutral at the end of side 4's last move, go with an Active Sub to replace the Lost Player.

   2. If less than one-third the remaining cities were still neutral at the end of side 4's last move, then go with a Static Defense.

Thus, the preference is to use an Active Sub if it's early in the game and a new player would want to join, yet wouldn't make a big change in the game strategy of the other players. If it's not early in the game, then doing anything will be a big disruption to the game, and the preference is to go with a Static Defense since that will keep things from changing too quickly, while not requiring a lot of tedious human intervention.

After implementing the Active Sub or Static Defense, the game will continue. Games with an Active Sub are played normally. In the case of the Static Defense, here is what happens:

After the moderator has set up the Static Defense, the game file will continue to be sent normally. When it reaches the Lost Player, simply skip him/her and send it to whoever used to come after the Lost Player. The person BEFORE the Lost Player will do the following each turn:

1. Open the game file

2. Start the Lost Player's turn

3. Do a "move all" command to move any units which have not arrived in a city. Units which arrive at a city that is no longer owned by the Lost Player, or whose movement paths are blocked by enemy units, should be be left in place. If the stack will be stronger with a +1 defense in city terrain, then it should be towered. [ Ideally we'd try to get all units moved into cities somehow, but in practice we need rules which can be implemented quickly, simply, and without any ambiguous choices by the players which might be used to advantage. ]

4. Send out an archive message for the Static Defense with a minimal turn report, indicating the cities/gold/income/expenses for the Static Defense. This message should also summarize any non-routine events (such as units that failed to reach cities) in this turn.

5. End the Lost Player's turn.

6. Send in the Lost Player's gamefile to keep the game moving.

Finally, it is forbidden for players to take items from a hero who is in Static Defense. The purpose of the Static Defense is to keep as much of the Lost Player's stuff out of the hands of his/her neighbors for as long as possible, and to come as close as possible to the sort of defense one might have with an actual human sub. The bottom line is that no human player would intentionally let his hero be killed and give up his hero's items, and most good human players would find ways to keep their items out of enemy hands, so a Static Defense's items should also stay out of enemy hands. (Idea from Bill Irwin.) However, the Static Defense does not start until the side's builds have been set to "enhanced" and there is no chance of the player returning to the game. So the hero items are not "off limits" until the full Static Defense has been implemented.

[ Note: Once a Static Defense runs out of gold, it permanently stops building new units, even if it later loses enough units that it could start building again. The main idea is for the moderator to intervene only on one or two turns, and then set up a reasonably strong defense which can run automatically thereafter.]

Headquarters does the following after being notified by the Moderator:

1. Cut the player from the Tournament
2. For players Lost during official rounds, add the player to the "Lost Player List": Any player who drops out during a game will be given second-class status in future PBEM activities, and placed at an appropriate disadvantage in recognition of his/her unreliability.

Here is what the different options mean:

Active Sub: (Substitute Player)

The Moderator will tell Headquarters that the game is in need of a Sub. Headquarters will designate a sub for the game. The Moderator will then replace the Lost Player with the Active Sub. The game will continue from its current position. The Sub will play for him/her self.

Static Defense:

In a Static Defense, the Lost Player's units are retreated to his existing cities, and existing cities build in place, much like "active neutral" cities do once provoked. The Static Defense will be set up by a moderator or moderator-designated unbiased neutral player, who will play a single turn in order to do the following (in order):

1. Set all stacks to retreat towards the "nearest" friendly city - the one which can be reached by that stack using the fewest movement points. Stacks which can reach more than one city with the same number of movement points will be sent to optimize the Lost Players' defenses as the moderator sees fit. Stacks may not be broken apart or consolidated. Stacks within cities are not to be moved even if nearby cities are defenseless. All the moderator will do is click on each stack outside a city, click on the nearest city, and watch it move.

2. Turn off all production vectoring.

3. A "production cushion" of 200-359 gold will be kept if possible, to allow the Static Defense to build new units for defense before going broke.

4. Count the number of cities ("C") which do not have any installed builds. If the player has more than 300 * C + 200 in gold, buy heavy infantry in each build-less city, while retaining 200 gold in reserve. If the player has more than 160 * C + 200 in gold, buy light infantry in the player's border cities, and then as C decreases, if the player has enough gold to buy heavy infantry, buy heavy infantry in their "non-border" cities. If the player has less than 160 * C + 200 in gold, buy as many light infantry as possible in the player's non-border cities. At the end of this step the player either has at least one build in each city, or they have only 200-359 gold left (the "production cushion").

5. If the player has cash remaining, use the remaining gold to purchase city-defense units (heavy inf or light inf) where those units would be superior to existing builds for defense. (Add heavy inf to any city producing units weaker in cities than heavy inf; if gold is scarce then just add light infantry to cities producing only units weaker than light inf (i.e., scouts, orc mobs, light cav, bats). At the end of this stage either all cities will build units at least as strong as heavy infantry, or the side will have only 200-359 gold left (the "production cushion").

6. If the player has cash remaining, use the remaining gold to purchase "defense-2 upgrades" for the player's cities. First add the cheapest available build to any city which produces two units, so that it produces 3. Start with non-border cities and then upgrade border cities. Then add the two cheapest available builds to any city with only 1 build, again starting with the player's non-border cities and then working toward the borders. Continue until either all cities have 3 builds, or the side has only 200-359 gold left (the "production cushion"). .

7. If the player *still* has cash remaining, they get to keep it and use it for maintenance of their mighty defenses.

8. Note: The moderator should use judgment to make the Lost Player's defenses equally challenging to all neighboring players, and to keep the gold available from sacking as balanced as possible.

9. Turn the "enhance" option on so all future production will arrive with +2 base strength. Thus light infantry built by the Static Defense are now strength 4, and heavy infantry are now strength 6. The strength of the enhanced units will be visible when you look at the stack, just as blessings show up as increased base strength.

10. Move existing non-enhanced units out of the upper city squares, so players can easily tell which units are enhanced and which are "normal" - the new "enhanced" units will be in the upper squares only, at least for the first 16 turns of Static Defense. The "normal" units will be in the lower squares.

11. Set all cities building the strongest available units, accounting for the +2 "enhance" bonus, the city terrain bonus, and the rate of production. For example, spiders are generally best. In a city building heavy infantry and heavy cavalry, since two enhanced heavy infantry are stronger than 1 enhanced heavy cavalry, the heavy infantry would be the preferred build. (Run a WarBOT battle between the two options to test!)

12. If these rules have not yet been revised and we are playing with an army set other than the Tournament Army Set, contact Headquarters ASAP! (The rules need to be revised for other army sets.)

[ Note - "Overbuilding" of expensive builds is no longer a part of the Static Defense, because the PC-Classic version does not allow it. ]

[ These rules are not yet 100% definite; suggestions are welcome.]

Selected Commentary on the Static Defense Rules

Subject: On the lost-player rules

>Frankly, I think they stink, regardless whether you decide to make them
>consistent across platforms, or to disallow overbuilding in PC Classic
>games.  Application of the rules precisely as stated, in the practice
>game I'm in right now, has given an enormous benefit to one side, done
>great damage to another side (mine, which is why I'm complaining, but
>that has no effect on the validity of my complaints), and has for all
>practical purposes made it impossible and pointless to capture any of
>his cities.

I agree they aren't the greatest, but they were the least bad of all
the possible options we considered for when a player is Lost.

>Have these rules ever been play-tested??

Yes, but not extensively.  It's not like we've had playtesters
dropping out of games like flies. :)

>The idea is to
>prevent the other players from reaping a huge benefit when one player
>drops out of a game.  That's a worthy goal, but the effect of the rules
>as they stand is to deny players the benefit they've earned for their
>plans when the player they're about to crush gives up and walks away.

It really depends on the player that walks away, though.  We never
know how good the player is who disappears.  If an expert dropped out of
the game, you can bet that the Static Defense would not be as good
as that human's defense.  But if a clueless novice drops out,
it's true that the static defense can be more challenging to overcome.
On the other hand, after the Practice Round there are no more novices,
and after Round A there won't be any clueless players either.  So the
Static Defense will be (more) comparable to the abilities of the average
player in the official rounds.  Also, we expect that with the exception
of various disaster situations, all players will finish all their
games during the official rounds, and all the dropping-out will be
done between rounds, so we don't expect to use the Static Defense often.

>The cities I would have taken on my next turns were valuable and weak.
>They are now strong and worthless.  The green kingdom was an eggshell
>with a lovely yolk inside, and IF green hadn't dropped out, I would
>have shared an omelet with the blue player.  Now, by application of the
>Lost Player rules, the green kingdom is a granite rock, with nothing but
>more granite inside it, worthless to anyone and impossible to break in
>any case.  It produces armies EVERY turn that defend with the strength
>of an attacking griffin.  Nobody is going to bother to waste the
>griffins from two cities just to take a city producing only Hv Infantry.
>You might as well just raze the damned things and be done with it.

I think that's a little overboard.  The Static Defense can hold off
isolated attackers and stacks of identical units, but a city of 8-12 heavy
infantry still gets mulched by any attacker with a decent stack bonus.
You might have trouble overrunning a city with a single griffin, but
if you use a Worm or a Hero in the stack, it's a different story.

>Green will lose only one more city: one that would NOT have been taken
>if not for application of the rules, forcing a wolfrider to retreat into
>a city that needed no defense, instead of continuing forward to defend a
>city it was obviously intended to defend.  By forcing armies to head to
>the "nearest" city instead of the "most sensible" city, the rules gave
>blue a spider-producing city he could not have taken.

But there's no telling what Green might actually have done in any case.
He might have pulled out of the spider city completely, and sent all his
units after you, or vice versa.  There's no way a Moderator can
adequately put himself into the Lost Player's shoes and decide
what is "most sensible".  You have to have a recipe.  And you can't
trust appearances either.  I often have attacking stacks that are split
up and look like they're heading as reinforcements to various cities,
when in reality they all intend to converge on a single target.

>By overbuilding
>heavy cavalry with heavy infantry, the rules tore from my grasp 600 gold
>I had earned through good strategy (which cannot be kept from me playing
>fairly in PC Classic, anyway, but that's not the issue I'm discussing
>here -- I think the overbuilding rule stinks in ANY version).

Well, we can fix this by eliminating the overbuilding rule.

>By giving
>the lost player a +2 strength bonus, especially on armies that move so
>slowly they never EVER get blessed, the rules make it utterly pointless
>and nearly impossible to take any of these cities anymore, a condition
>that certainly would not have existed if the player had remained in the
>game.  The rules accomplish the goal of preventing a windfall benefit to
>the other players when one side becomes mindless -- but they go so far
>beyond that it's ridiculous.

I disagree.  The +2 simulates the fact that the average player would
most likely have had some sort of stack-bonus unit defending his/her
vulnerable "target" cities and/or fortify the city to +2 defense
and/or have reinforced the city with additional troops from other cities.
A stack of enhanced heavy inf is pretty strong, but in general it's not
much stronger than a mixed stack with bonuses would have been.
And it's still valuable to take as many cities as possible.
A city taken on Turn 12 at a cost of 3 units still pays for itself by
building 8 units by Turn 20, or at least by by supplying enough cash
to help support other armies from other cities.  The other thing is that
by spending all the player's gold on new production, the Static Defense 
can only produce units for a few turns before going into debt and not 
being able to produce.  So there's a limited supply of those enhanced units.

In DuelZ12 (a game I was in with 3 novices) we had a player drop out
around Turn 9, with about 8 cities.  I had to slow my expansion
to assemble some city-kiling stacks, but when I brought in an
elephant and a pegasus and some spiders, I mopped them all up in
just a few turns.  I would have had to do pretty much the same thing
if the player had stayed in the game, only instead of planning
my attacks and routing units against immobile enemies, I would
have had to deal with the randomness of a human player.  Individual
battles might have been easier against non-enhanced units, but the 
war as a whole would have been just as hard.

>As far as the ban on picking up items the lost player had, because
>"nobody would let their hero get killed", oh how I laughed at that.
>Yea, right, nobody ever lets their hero get killed.  Who thought that
>one up?  I've killed two heroes in the first six turns, and passed up
>a chance last turn.

The rules presume veteran players who know how to figure out when
their hero is vulnerable.  I think that's reasonable for the
majority of the tournament.  Players who have no choice about losing
their hero generally park him over the water where the items get lost.

>In short, I think you should ditch the +2 rule, ditch the overbuilding
>rule, and move armies to the most sensible city for defense, rather than
>the closest one (even if they have to move out of or through a city to
>accomplish that purpose).  Converting cities to produce heavy infantry
>is reasonable as long as they're NOT +2 strength (making them as strong
>as griffins, every turn).  Dropped items should be fair game to whoever
>gets there first with a hero to pick them up.

I'm still not sold on any of the changes except getting rid of the
overbuilding rule.  Although a Static Defense will defend itself
better than a novice player, it is nowhere near as good as an experienced
player, and I think it's a pretty good compromise.  In general I don't
want to weaken it.  On average we want a player to use the same fraction
of his/her strength beating a Static Defense as they would beating a typical 
human being, so that the Static Defense doesn't allow the player to divert 
lots of units to his/her other fronts.  It's impossible to avoid damaging
a game when a player is Lost, but I think the current recipe is
about as good as we can do.

-- Bob