Warfish Blog

The effects of getting booted out Warfish games was permanent and could result in your account getting fewer game invites and tournament invites. So several folks have sent in feedback wanting some way to remove the effects so that they can recover from having been booted a couple times.

While your boot record still remains there is a new way of handling the effects from boots which just puts your account on temporary probation each time you get a boot. To learn more check out the wiki page about booting

This new game rule option lets players abandon territories they own during game play freeing them from having to leave armies behind to hold a territory you no longer need. Once enabled you can attack with the full force of the territory you are attacking from and when transferring armies you can transfer all your armies out of a territory you occupy. This can be especially useful in team play when you want to transfer territories to team mates but don’t want to have to attack your team mates to get them. When you abandon a territory it turns back into a neutral territory and can be taken by other players without putting up a fight since the abandoned territory does not have any armies. Here are the settings for Abandon Territories:

In addition to being able to abandon territories a new option has been added that allows players to keep ownership of the territory after it has been abandoned rather than have it turn into a neutral territory. Keeping ownership allows you to create games where players do not need to devote resources to keeping the ownership of the inner territories within their continents. In this example using keep territory ownership you can see that green still occupies most of Europe even though no armies are allocated towards its defense:

Finally, since players can lose all of their armies while attacking there is a new feature that prevents you from attacking if there is a chance you maybe eliminating your self during the attack. In other words if you only have one territory left and Keep Territory Ownership is not enabled you will not be able to engage in an attack that could end in self destruction. In the following example you can see that blue only has one territory remaining on the board (in South America). Initiating an attack on North America with 2 armies would not be possible since it would be possible to lose both units in the process, however if blue initiated an attack with just 1 unit that would be possible since losing it would not cause blue to be eliminated.

All these features also apply to Blind-at-once play as well. Please join me in seeing how Abandoning Territories plays in practice and please send me any feedback you may have on it. Thank you to Dogness, Red Baron, SGodfrey and mike… for suggesting this feature and thoughts about how this feature should work.

Instead of having to page through all the game boards one page at a time you can now search game board titles as well as jump directly to the last page. You can search game boards that are shared or for sale in the Browse tab or game boards that are shared on the create game page.

This is what the search box looks like:

And here is what some search results look like:

The “Last Page” link isn’t a large feature but was also added and nonetheless helps navigate the boards directory so I thought I’d also mention it here. It is located just next to the “Next Page” link in the game directory and create game page:

I’d been putting off adding navigation tools to the Browse tab for a while because initially there weren’t that many game boards, but at this point I agree it is a little unwieldy. Thank you to Browncoat and the mojo for suggesting last week that this feature get added.

Instead of only being able to set the maximum number of units that can occupy any territory on a game board, designers and modders can now fine tune game boards to set a maximum number of units on a territory by territory basis. This way special areas can be created on the map that are limited in the number of units that can be played there.

You can check to see if the game table you’re playing on is using these board defined unit limits by viewing the game table rules tab.

Also you can check what the actual limits are by viewing the country details on the map tab.

When designing or modding a game board you can set this new unit stacking limit by editing the country you would like ot set the unit limit on.

Playing game boards using board defined unit limits is basically similar to playing with board wide unit limits in that you lose any bonus units you are unable to place on the board.

This week’s featured is pretty straight-forward. It used to be that tournament and open games could only be started with the Base Version (or in the case of open games with the Base Version with any game host-tweaked rules). Now you can take advantage of game mods for any of the boards you have purchased when creating tournaments or if you are creating Open game tables.

Once your tournament has been started using a game mod the mod information is included on the tournament details tab. This way any players considering joining a tournament can check to see which version of the game board the tournament has been configured to use:

Also, you can start open games using mods as well. The tool to select the number of open seats appears now on the create game table page if you are starting a game with a game board that has 3 or more reviews and has 3 or more stars and you are a Plus Member

2 new game table options for Team play: Team Place Units and Team Transfer and 1 additional control for Team Blind-at-once Play. The 2 new team play game options allow you to actually cooperate with your team mates by either placing extra armies on their territories or transfer armies from your territories into theirs. On the other hand, the Team Blind-at-Once Play UI allows you additional control when you’re issuing commands during a team play game.

Team Place Units and Team Transfer options on the Tweak Game page

Team Place Units This can be enabled by tweaking game rules when you create a game table (or if a mod/game designer has created a mod or game using this game rule). This new options simply allows you to place your new units on any team mates territory. You may want to do this for example if they are in jeopardy of being eliminated or if they occupy a territory that is strategic to the game. This might also allow some team members to focus on holding continents while others can play offensively.

Team Transfer This can be enabled by tweaking game rules when you create a game table (or if a mod/game designer has created a mod or game using this game rule). This option helps you better utilize armies that are already on the game board by transfering them to neighboring team territories. Once you do so though they immediately become troops under your team mates control.

Blind-at-once Play Attack/Transfer Team Checkbox

Blind-at-Once Play Team Checkbox This new checkbox is available when issuing Attack/Transfer commands during Blind-at-once play when you’re playing a team game. This checkbox indicates whether your armies should consider your team mates while carrying out this particular order.

One basic example of when you may want to use this is when you are jointly attacking an enemy territory with one of your teammates. If you enable the Team checkbox for that attack order then you can avoid the possibiliy of you or your team mate taking the territory first and then the second person attacking one’s own team mate. In Team Transfer games you can even instruct your armies to transfer into a friendly territory in this scenario by selecting either Attack or Transfer.. or if you want your armies to hold their position in this situation you can select “Attack only”. For more details check out the Team Checkbox FAQ entry

With these team play extra team play is more cooperative not just working independently towards a shared victory.

Now you can finally see who’s top dog on Warfish with the new Browse Directory > User Profiles > Top Players page:

This shows you how has the most medals of honor based on all the ranked games across all the different game boards on Warfish. To get medals you must have a ranking of 1150 or more on at least one game board. The higher your ranking the more medals you get. Be careful though the number of medals you have is updated realtime so if you drop in ranking the number of medals you have will be adjusted as well.

Several new categories have been added to the Browse Tab directory: Game Mods, Plugins and Your Invitees. These new categories allow you to see all the Games that are getting modded, any plugins you can use to customize your Warfish account and profiles of all the people you have invited to Warfish.

The easiest way to browse the categories is to click on the links at the top of the Browse tab shown in the above image. Some categoreies have subcategories like in the case of Game Boards and User Profiles which will be displayed at the top of the Browse tab once you’re inside either the Game Boards or User Profiles category.

The image above shows the Game Mods category of the Browse directory which is only available to Plus Members. These are listed in order of newest to oldest so that you can see what new mods are being shared on the website. Any Game Mods that were published within the last week are marked as *new*. In some cases the Game Board that the mod is associated with is not Shared for Plus Members or requires a purchase before it can be played, so when you click on Start Game for thos mods you’ll be given a message indicating that you don’t have permission to play that Game Board.

Finally, this last image shows the new Plugins category in the directory. The Plugins category shows all the plugins that are available on the site. You can customize your Warfish account by installing these plugins and they can perform a variety of functions from counting up how many unit, territories and continents a user has to plugins that render a visual representation of you game history.

Speaking of plugins here are a couple plugins by Theep that have been recently updated. Not only did Theep help refine the plugin system and create these plugins, he was also nice enough to write the following about his recent changes:

Loss Plugin – So, you have been playing warfish for a while and you are sure that the computer is rigged against you! This plug-in tells you how much you have lost when attacking compared to statistical average as well as other players.

Contrast Plugin – The contrast plug in is designed to help figure out which players are which, specifically when the colors used on the board are similar. It will encircle your players in white. You can click the name of the player and they will have all of their countries encircled in black. UPDATED: You can put your mouse over any country, it will show you the name of who owns the country.

Map Based Combat Summary Plugin – This plug in is designed to show you what has been going on for the last several turns. It shows the map with a circle and a line toward the country that was attacked. Black are successful attacks while the white are failures. The table at the bottom shows a listing of each attack and the losses each side took. UPDATED: By putting your mouse over a country that attacked you can see how many the attacker and the defender lost.

So now you can find plugins (Theep’s as well as other plugins), game mods and your invitees more easily by looking for them in their own categories in the Browse directory.