In my limited experience with this game it seems the random turn order can very easily determine the winner of games. Cycle seems to be a superior option, it lets you plan accordingly rather than just hope. Why is cycle not used in auto-games and the ladder?

Found this thread http://warlight.net/Forum/Thread.aspx?ThreadID=1459

That was an awfully close vote with only 29 votes in favor or against. Its been 1 year, how about a re vote to give all the new members a voice.

This probably is due a review. Like you said, it was a very small poll and a small margin too.

Problem is that such a change would seem to invalidate existing standings on the ladder and require a complete restart.

Yet we have a new season coming up...

John, I assume this is in reference to the 'eternal' ladder and not the seasonal one.

That minor a change wouldn't invalidate existing standings. Other things have changed before e.g. initial armies per territory used to be 5. It was changed to 4 and the ladder just continued on.

@Richard

I dont believe this change invalidates the current rankings. Yes, there are changes to gameplay IMO positive changes, but its luck that is the major change.

If you had 2 ladders 1 with random/100% luck and one with cycle/16% luck. With a large enough sample these two ladders would have near identical rankings. win % and ratings would be different, but it wont take long to get win% and ratings to where they would be had you restarted.

It would take something pretty drastic to invalidate the rankings, like using multi-attack.

Besides, the ladder is only based on games played in the last x days. Making a change like this would result in a ladder based on games with mixed settings for those x days, after that, it would just be a ladder based on only one kind of games. That the ladder was "seeded" with a ranking based on games with slightly different settings would only affect standings in theory; especially after a little while, those "seed" rankings will have less and less influence on the current ranking. Either way, it will be random noise; it won't influence the ladder to the benefit of any particular player.