i dont thinking its overly prevalent but not uncommon. i think its poor sportsmanship because youre right, you should play win or lose. ive played out situations where there was no chance of survival and pulled out a survive or even draw. play to the end. its not over til its over

If you signed up for a 36 hr turn (or longer) and they take the entire turn, that is their right. Maybe they want to slow the game down while they work diplomacy, and maybe not, but either way everyone knows the turn length when you join.. With that said, I usually still ready my moves pretty quickly even as I lose, simply because I don't want to hold up a game if I am the only one not readied. But again, I have the right to wait the full turn. People seem to overlook that fact. A LOT. Don't join a 7 day phase game if you aren't willing to wait 7 days for it to turn over...

Good point. But with a lot of these powers, they are moving very timely... until they start losing. And while I realize this could be a tactic they employ when they are losing, the feedback I get from the other players in the game indicates they are often not diplomacizing. And it becomes evident when they wait for the full phase during retreats, when they have nowhere, or one territory, to retreat to; or during builds, when they have one unit to remove.

Further, with most of the players I've talked to, this tactic doesn't help them, but actually hurts them more, i.e., players are often willing to work with a power they were working against later, because circumstances change, but when these powers "look like" they are delaying the game unreasonably, powers who might have helped them just want to eliminate them to eliminate the delays.

I sometimes do it, if I know I loose and am very busy IRL I finalize with all holds. However it is frowned apon and not something that I am proud of.

But if you're winning when you're busy you'll play?

If you're going to open the game at all, why not just go in there when you usually would and order your units to do something fast?

I think you won't solve the problem complaining here, people just will continue doing it.
I think there should be (at least as option) a surrender button.
Also, the program should auto-disband units which have no-wher to retreat.
There should also be the possibility of establishing shorter retreating or building phases.

Well said LoveDove.
I am trying to start a 10 Days phase game because I dont want to make a fuss for pausing if I have to take a week off or if real life takes over the gaming.
But If I can, I will play fast and finalize when all my diplomacy is done.
And most important, I will play till my last unit (if only to be troublesome to my backstaber or better diplomat).
I will even go back to the game after being kicked out to see who finally won.

For those interested in a slow PPSC 5 players game, I just opened this one:
http://www.vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=3543

I'm not doing this to complain Vanisher, but to open a discussion on the subject so that people might offer solutions, like your surrender button.

I also like the longer phases, as like you Moutonoir, I dont want to make a fuss for pausing (which some players don't seem to grant anyway) if I have to take a week off or if real life takes over, but otherwise will finalize when I'm done diplomacizing, which can often be within two days. And I wish all players played to the last unit like you.

Also, while it's everyone's right to wait till the end of the phase Love Dove, many of the losing players who start doing that, then go abandoned, and in a game with long phases, this can add over a month onto a game unnecessarily, particularly when the game has whittled down to a few powers.

Play till the death!!! even when it seems everyone is out to get you in every single game! I like the surrender button Idea... I would probably never use it because I like to try to make something out of nothing, but it would certainly help with the long waits for players to CD...

Based on the old goondip-code I've added a reliability-rating for each user. It counts how many phases you missed in comparison to each phase played...It collects the stats from now on, and I'll add some code after the weekend that disables new game creation/joining of new games if you are below a certain threshold.

The formula of the rating:
Reliability rating is 100 minus % of games missed times 200, not to be lower than 0
If a user misses 5% of their games, rating would be 90, 15% would be 70, etc.

Sorry with games I meant phases...

Wow! I am impressed. My jaw has dropped at how fast you've moved on this. And this should really help. Great job and thanks.

Most of the coding was already done by Carey Jensen (gilgatex) on his goondip website. I just adjusted his code for this site.

As kestasjk (the main webdip-programmer) switched to a much improved platform to host his code (with the money he got from the fund-raising), it's much easier to add custom code now to the official code. I'll try to limit my changes to an absolute minimum for maintenance-reasons, but this was not that much code to add.