Sad,
General Blueblaze just tried to start a game with the Europe map where he set the Portugal bonus to 300 and then selected it as his start position. Except you could see it on the map. Not sure what the purpose of that was. And he tried to pass it off as a 'bug' when I mentioned it. Then left the game. Silly.

yeah that could be an exploit using that strategy, except being more discreet by using it on a map like say bracketology, where no bonus's are shown. only somebody who checked the settings would be able tell, and then there would be no way of warning others about it, because when you leave a game all public chat messages are removed. I think there should be warning if any bonus's are changed.

its called read the setting before joining a game

There is a warning, probably not what you were thinking of, but in the settings window there's a field with any alterations to the bonus values.

I altered Korea to give me 1000. http://184.106.245.61/App.aspx?GameID=1154742

I've seen it done before and I just wanted to make everyone aware. (At least on the Earth map) You can only see the first two digits of the bonus value on the map. So if you set Alaska, Hawaii, and Japan to 20, and Korea to 1000, Korea will look less valuable because players will only be able to see the 10 and not the other two zeros, which is how you snag it.

I made this game a practice game because I couldn't consider that a win, but I also believe that you should read the settings before you join a game or pay the price.

I just wanted to point that out. Also, I thought it was funny :)

yeah I know about that warning in the settings, the problem is that many people join games blindly. But sucks to them :P

Its a scum bag thing to do, even if it is just a practice game. nuff said

I kinda agree with "read the settings". Unfortunately I dont want to spend 10 or so minutes reading the settings to find out the game I am reading the settings for has already started.

At the same time I dont want to join a game where I start out with an automatic loss.

There should be an easier way to read the game settings. "Cool, I am playing a game where no "default" has been changed. Oh wait a second, this is written in "red". Maybe I should read this since it isnt a "default" setting."

It could be as easy as... All territories start with a neutral amount of 2. You can only see what is adjacent to a territory that you or your teamate controls. All games default to a 5 minute boot time... If you can join a game, you should immediately be able to play a game.

Bam, there are the default settings.

Thank you very much.

(I am drunk. Often times I am drunk when I play this game.)

There should also be a back end setting where someone shouldnt be able to join and play more than three 5 minute boot timed games. I couldnt tell you how many times I or even the opposing team has lost a player because that player simply forgot because thy are playing "to many games".