This game is worse for my sleep than having a newborn again. I find it difficult to sleep more than four hours at a time due to anxiety about being attacked while offline. Plus I think new players are discouraged by this aspect of the game as well.
To counter this, I'll propose a new aspect that could be incorporated into some maps. I think the game should last 12 hours, then pause for 12 hours. The game could even go at double speed while in play to keep the overall pace the same. This way players could sleep at night without fear of being attacked in their sleep. While paused, players could still access the map, give new commands, and otherwise strategize however, nothing would actually happen until the game resumes.
I'm not sure how likely this would be to implement or if this has already been suggested. Thoughts.
I've thought about something like this for a while now because I too lose sleep because of paranoia of being attacked while offline. Often end up with just 4, maybe 5 hrs of sleep.
Weeks of sleeplessness is just rough. Even quite my last 2 games where I was topping the charts because I just wanted my sleep back.
Sleep is the most underrated thing in CoW and I think it's universally agreed upon that being sleep deprived is never a good feeling, so yea, I'd like this to be an option.
This idea has been launched before, but Bytro was less than enthusiast so it won't happen.
It would make games timezone-specific, and thus harder to fill rounds. Your 12h "daytime" doesn't correspond to someone elses; furthermore, people may not be able to play from work as well so they'll want 4-hour games rather than 12h ones. The diversity of personal day schedules is endless and you can't possibly cater to everyone.
So until then, what you need to learn is, damage control in case of unexpected overnight events:
- NEVER leave your planes patrolling over the battlefield. NEVER! Let them patrol as far back as you can from their current airbase; that should be enough. It will take you less than an hour next morning to get them back in full-fledged action.
- When you're blitzing, let the attack arrows end just BEFORE the last province dot, rather than actually going all the way. If there is a dangerous enemy stack, you have a decent chance he's offline as well and you can sneak back. You CAN continue your blitz overnight when you have scouted well, though of course it is more dangerous.
- When you're attacking, use delay. You can time your armies to start marching an hour or two before you wake up, then start the actual attack over breakfast.
- When you're at peace, don't defend the first province against a possible overnight attacker, but keep your troops 3-4 provinces behind. That's usually enough to survive for a full eight hours even if you ARE attacked at the worst possible moment (just 10 minutes after you doze off).
- When defending, concentrate troops in the evening in bigger stacks. It is simply harder for an enemy to kill many stationary troops in the same place, than mopping up many isolated units. Ground is easier to recover than troops.
There's really no need to lose sleep over the game... after all, it IS "just a game" though I realize that statement can sound ridiculous when you're really hardcore. But in the end, you play it for fun; and even losing a round is better than walking around like a zombie all day because you didn't sleep enough.
Yea, certainly, no need to lose sleep over the game. It's just a game after all. Most of the time, the paranoiac concerns aren't even reasonable. It's largely just all in the head.
Still, I'd favor for this suggestion to be added though I don't think that'll be the case. I always knew this suggestion's never gonna fly, hence why I never pitched it even though it's one of the very first suggestion ideas I've thought of.
I think the 24 hour nature of the game turns off a lot of potential new players. If they would turn more players who give the game a try into regular players, they would fill more games. Sure you can’t make everyone happy, but a 12 hour on/off cycle seems like a nice improvement. Everyone needs to sleep.
I’ll admit I’m pretty competitive and once you invest so much time into a game, it’s harder and harder to walk away from just to get some sleep.
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