SMG Studio

I quite like the old system where if you're playing a game with a 60 second timer you only get 60 seconds to complete your go. I don't like that players now get extra time. The whole point of a 60 second game is to keep the game flowing quickly and to make people think on their feet. If you're playing against 5 people you potentially have 5 lots of 60 seconds to plan your move. It's a bit like chess, you should be planning many turns in advance and multiple strategies/contingencies in your head of what you would do depending on the variables and possibilities. Part of the fun is contemplating "do I have enough time to kill an enemy and then fortify to protect my continent". Part of the game is luck as to whose turn it will be at the point at which the weakest opponent is in a position of A. (in an area not surrounded by other armies), B. (has a low enough number of armies to attack), C. (has enough cards to make the kill worthwhile). Really other than doing the maths of "is it worthwhile" the only skill involved is being able to do it against the timer. Being given a large chunk of extra time really puts finishing off an opponent down to positional luck. I guess you can sometimes block others so they have to go through you to take out the weak player but that's not always possible and quite risky. I do however quite like the idea of having an extra 30 seconds to deploy the armies from your new territory cards, but not to then go on attacking. It's too powerful an update which is based mostly on luck of who gets it.

But it would be logical for the feature of dynamic turn timer extension if the player is still attacking. It doesn't make sense when the same turn timer of say 90 secs applies to a player who attacks 1 territory compared to a player who is on a chain attacking 20 territories. Both players has the same amount of turn time but one use it for one attack/one dice-roll, another one needs 20 attacks/20 dice-rolls. It is also nerve wracking to see the timer getting towards the end but I am still in the process of attacking. And then suddenly the timer ends and I got no time to complete my chain-attack and fortified my troops. The game is stupid when its like you get penalised for attacking too many territories, because you have only the same amount of turn time to attack, be it one territory or 30 territories. I love the suggestion of freezing the timer during attacking, meaning the timer clocks only for planning and not for attacking and dice-roll. Whats the point of adding the manual dice-roll in global gameplay when no one is using it? Everyone else is using blitzed dice-roll especially when you needs to attack a number of territories. Either a dynamic turn timer which varies on the number of consecutive attacks or freezing the turn timer during attack would really helps. This needs to be seriously look into. :)

Yes the turn timer issue needs to be seriously look into. I can't believe the developer hasn't done anything on this since this thread is one year ago, with so many comments/feedbacks on the issue. I just downloaded the game few days ago and is having fun playing, which is why I later purchased the premium option. But then there are countless times when I lost a game due to the sudden expired timer; 1) when I was at the end of a chain attack after eliminating a player and the timer expired and I have no time to change the cards and fortified the troops; 2) when I was near the end of a chain attack with the last one territory to eliminate a player and then the timer expired and the next player took the chance to eliminate that player when I have done all the hard work.  This turn timer needs to be improved. - Maybe with time extension of 5-10secs after every 3-5 consecutive wins during a chain attack (time extension and number of consecutive wins can be varied depending on map and number of active players in game etc). This will give the attacking player extra time when he is on a chain attack. - Or a time bank as someone has suggested. Time not used during the turn timer period (eg. a player used only 50sec in a 60sec turn thus he saved 10sec into time bank) can be used when the turn timer expired during a turn (a pop up option asking if a player wishes to extend). This time bank will have a maximum allowable time stored, eg max 90 sec for a 90 sec turn game. So at any turn, a player can only used up to 50% or 100% of the time in time bank (the developer can study on the allowable time extension). To make it simple, every time the player activate the option to use the time bank, all the time in the time bank is used. When the time bank is depleted, then any unused time during a turn can be saved again. So this make sure a player cannot saved unlimited amount of time, which makes sense. I hope the developer looks into the comments and feeebacks regarding this turn timer feature and work out something. The sudden expired turn timer during gameplay always make the player frustrated especially when he's on a chain attack. Even more frustrating when you are on a winning edge but lost the game due to the turn timer expiring.  Lastly, enjoy the game and cheers! 

@Wolf Thorne, Markus's idea would actually allow for a game of quicker judgement with the 30 second turn idea. The 5 bonus seconds is only so you have enough time for you to physically make the attacks, not to plan them. Side note, you should also get 5 seconds whenever you fail a blitz to try to recuperate.

A short term improvement could be to make it so that when a player has 5+ cards at the end of their turn the set troops are deployed to a random border territory instead of spread out everywhere. Alternatively the card bonus troops could be deployed to the border territory with the largest army in it.

The game used to just skip a player who had left the game but each turn he would get his new troops randomly distributed. This would lead to a large build up of troops that could be used as a shield. For example let's say the red player left the game, I destroyed all of his territories that were left except the one in front of Australia because I own Australia. Then every turn 3 more red men would be placed there providing me a shield for Australia. The new way is much better. I like the timer idea!