It is understandable not to want to give away the good prizes when there are few players, but it's unfun to wait for a game to start each hour and have it deleted over and over again.

I suggest an alternative to deleting the games. For the number of players that are missing you could add in bots that start out in a win state. This could be a stop gap measure eventually you could make competitive bots to fill in missing spots.

A few other things:

Could you let us change our artifacts in the 30 seconds before the match starts.
Have a chat for after it ends and while waiting for players to join.

There is a perverse incentive to not to be in first place to avoid heat from attacks. This leads to each player trying there best to slow the game down. To counter this I propose a patriotic group of free mercenaries that start out as zero armies but slowly grow in number while you are in first place and when you get hit by an attack.

For all of idle, it's often hard to find the recipe you need, you have to select a unit next to some random recipe, then click next to it then connection list so you can see what it is. Could you make it so you can see the recipe when you hover over it also add a find button from the tech area next to the ingredient list, it would be grayed out if the recipe territory is not scouted out.

See on hover would also be nice for powers.

Edited 1/6/2021 05:15:31

Great idea to be able to change artifacts. Even while in queue and waiting for a game and also the countdown to start once the game kicks off. This is a period when you're not able to go into WZI-Regular to change your artifacts, so you need to change artifacts, join WZIB queue, finish WZIB, change artifacts back to what makes sense for WZI-Regular play.

Ideally the WZIB artifacts in use shouldn't even be the same artifacts that are active in WZI-Regular during your Idle time - different sets of artifacts are likely at play. Many people use efficient smelters/crafters/etc during regular play, but use army/money camp/cache bonus artifacts for WZIB play, and it is odd to have to modify your effects during Regular play in order to do better in a Battle.

Also interesting idea with the bots. That'd be a neat idea. There could actually just be by default 9 bots in every game, and they are removed as required to accommodate players so the 30 player cap can still actually handle 30 real players. The bulk of the AI required for is likely already present from WZIC ... just give them good artifacts & AP Advancements to compensate for the people smarts. Of course, they should not be so good that good players can't actually beat them. It would be pretty annoying if the bots always got finishing slots 1-9.

Would be nice to be able to have a chat :D

why bother with bots instead of just adjusting the prizes like in any sporting event?

a minor golf tournament with 10 entries might have prizes like 50-30-20 while one for 20 people might have prizes like 100-50-25-15-10 where more people get prizes of lower values.

i'm sure someone could do the math or find an actual sporting comparison if needed.