I think that this would be great for if you are going camping or will not have internet acces for some other reason. You have players who think they might miss a turn soon put in commands ahead of time and when the turn timelimit runs out the computer will automatically take the turn the way the player wanted.
Interesting idea, though a few problems I see. What if I own so all of South America, and I set the auto-turn to attack North Africa from Brazil, for an easy card, 2 people before my turn is up, since I won't be around for a day.
What happens if when my turn comes around, I no longer own Brazil. My turn would become pointless, since I can't attack from something I don't own.
The idea is something, but I don't see very many benefits coming from something that would be likely hard to program, considering we don't even have AI.
Perhaps you could have a much simpler autoturn. Begins turn, adds your men to any country (perhaps the country with the most men), ends turn and ends fortification. I think programming it to attack the way you want wouldn't work because like Andy said, the game changes. However doing it this way would prevent people from being kicked from the game and it would prevent the others from having to wait for 24 hours each turn. And it is simpler than giving your password to someone else and having them take your turns for you.
I think the best option thus far is the 'skip turn' button. Perhaps the idea could even be allowed to some sort of way for you to skip so x many turns of yours. It seems to be the simplest.
Or maybe skip turns until a certain date, if the game starts progressing quickly you might still end up losing turns if you just say how many you want to skip.
Yeah, but sometimes games last for over a month. I'm sure the people in those games weren't expecting them to go on that long so they wouldn't be able to plan ahead. And that would be the worst type of game to deadbeat in because you have so much invested in it.
if you are in a game you know you are going to deadbeat, follow these steps so there wont be any problems for people that are still in the game:
1. Tell the other people that are in the game that you are going somewhere and are going to deadbeat
2. On your last turn before you leave, own yourself down to 1 army on every country (trying to not mess up your opponents countries so they wont have a problem getting rid of you)
3. Tell everyone in the game you have 5 cards (they will most likely try to kill you before you deadbeat so they can get your cards.)
Haven't read posts but it doesn't sound like a good idea. The game changes in every play and changes to a players strategy must be constant if they want to win.