My ISP works very well with continuously-on connections, but has a nasty habit of closing connections that don't get used. If my opponent thinks too long I might get my connection closed and I have absolutely no way to tell besides waiting. I don't want to wait any longer than I need to, both for my own sake and for my opponent's sake if I actually am disconnected, so I often refresh the page or switch between images and text to see if the game is really waiting on my opponent or whether I've been disconnected. I was just in a colony game with lots of +2 action cards that ended up going a bit long; we both had some long action chains going. After a bit I got "5 reconnects remaining". Not knowing what would happen if I ended up using all of them, I just continued doing what I was used to doing, trying to play the game at a reasonable pace. I "used up" all the reconnects and ended up being booted and told to "stop abusing the server". Well, I'm willing to do that, as soon as I can have a way of knowing whether I'm still connected when the game stalls for a few seconds; I don't want both of us sitting there waiting for each other.
Any suggestions?