Turn based vs. real time

Fortunes of War is played in turns, typically one per day. This distinguishes Fortunes from the current crop of real time games in several critical ways.

1. Fortunes of War does not suffer from the lag problems that hamper real time programs. Most of the program's functions are provided by the Fortunes client application. A typical turn's commands are compressed into a file about 15 K in size, which is then sent to our server. The server interprets everyone's commands and returns a response file of approximately 30 K. Fortunes of War is designed for the current state of the internet, not the internet of three years from now.
   
   
2. A turn-based game allows much deeper strategy than a real-time game. A player may consider his moves at length, giving complicated and devious orders to his units and crafting his diplomacy messages with care.
   
   
3. A move for a turn-based game may be entered any time in the day at the player's convenience. You do not have to have all players connected at the same time to play. This makes it very easy to set up games with one's friends, who are, of course, the people that gamers most prefer to play with. Contrast this with the real-time experience, where you either arrange for all your friends to connect at once (a difficult task at the best of times), or you limit yourself to logging in and playing with whatever strangers happen to be connected at the time.

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