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[blueblimp]

Wikipedia:

A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can proceed.

Either online or in real life (edit: although I'm more interested in how it could be done online). A maximum time for the whole game seems bad, because different kingdoms can last drastically different numbers of turns. Allocating a certain amount of time per turn also seems bad, because different strategies can take different amounts of time per turn, so a per-turn time restriction would favour treasure-oriented strategies over engine strategies.

One could allocate bonus time per click on isotropic, but that doesn't seem very fair to players who use click-light strategies. Would it be better if the bonus-time-per-click were given to both players?

[yudantaiteki]

Honestly I don't think you can come up with any way that's fair to all players simply because of the wide variety in boards and strategies.  If it's essential due to a tournament structure, it's probably best to just go with a time limit for each game or set -- that will be unfair in certain cases but so will any other time limit choice, and at least this one is simple.

[Schneau]

I'd say do something like chess often does: have a set time for the game, and for each move either add time to the clock or have a delay before the clock starts going. I think something like 10 minutes for the game with a 30 second increment / delay would probably be reasonable (though this is just off the top of my head, the actual numbers would probably have to be tuned up or down after some trial with different kingdoms). It may be reasonable to start the game with a set period where both players may look at the kingdom without either player losing time - maybe 1 to 3 minutes?

[yudantaiteki]

What happens if you play a card that requires opponent response?

[Schneau]

What happens if you play a card that requires opponent response?

Good question! I could see this being a real issue, especially for reaction cards, etc. Online, you could have a 30 second limit for reactions / Envoys / Contrabands, etc. But, that wouldn't really work in-person.

[Octo]

Personally I wouldn't limit the time at all. It's not a long game like Chess that can go on for several hours (and some long games like tennis don't have time limits), it's a very quick game - a time limit is really not necessary for dominion, just be generous with the scheduling times to allow/compensate for overruns. There's no need to be draconian about such a quick game.

What would you do when the time runs out? That person loses (a la chess)? It's a draw? You add up the current VPs even though they're not all out? None of those are very appealing and the run the risk of influencing the strategy, which would be terrible in my opinion.

[paulbaxter]

Personally I wouldn't limit the time at all. It's not a long game like Chess that can go on for several hours (and some long games like tennis don't have time limits), it's a very quick game - a time limit is really not necessary for dominion, just be generous with the scheduling times to allow/compensate for overruns. There's no need to be draconian about such a quick game.

What would you do when the time runs out? That person loses (a la chess)? It's a draw? You add up the current VPs even though they're not all out? None of those are very appealing and the run the risk of influencing the strategy, which would be terrible in my opinion.

I'm left wondering if you've never been stuck in a game with a griefer who is hoping to wait you out.

[GendoIkari]

There's a long discussion on this somewhere within the Isotropic discussion sub-forum... can't find it at the moment. Several people wanted some sort of per-turn type limit, or total game limit, but as a whole I believe the consensus was this simply doesn't work in Dominion. The problem is that some strategies automatically take longer than other strategies, and adding any sort of time limit (other than a per-action time limit; basically not allowing pointless stalling), unfairly discourages playing strategies which happen to take longer to play.

[polonkus]

In a commercial product or a tournament setting this is trivial to fix: just make it possible to call for a judge/admin to observe.
A human can easily tell whether someone is griefing or playing a slow strategy/genuinely puzzling over difficult decisions.

[Octo]

I'm left wondering if you've never been stuck in a game with a griefer who is hoping to wait you out.

I have, but I didn't get the impression that this was what the OP was asking about - it seemed to me they were thinking of a time limit in terms of general tournament logistics, not "how long before we should time-out douche-bags". My opinion on that is inline with polokus: you should have human intervention. Those kind of things are judgment calls, like unsporting behaviour in a football match. Martial arts have rules in place that mean you get docked points for lack of attacking play, but it still takes a referee to make that call.

Playing computer games has made people get used everything being black and white and the idea if a player can physically (digitally) do that then it's all kosher and fine, and if it's not fine then we need to make sure the player physically cannot do that in the game. Well, often we have to play by that standard because there's no other way to enforce it, but for me that's not ideal at all, it's an unfortunate practical limitation that should be avoided if possible.

If people going to be douche-bags then they'll be douche-bags. If it's not by slow play then it'll be something else. Don't change the rules just because some of you haven't got the patience in a tournament to out-wait a slow player you've clearly beaten. It might be sporting to concede, but you don't see tennis players doing that do you? You need to find some way to notice it warn/disqualify them (eg take the time-hit on a long game, but get game logs with time-stamps, or look at the chat logs to see if they're chatting shit at you the whole game or whatever). In a face-to-face tournament this just would not be a problem at all, it would be so easy to spot.

[Obi Wan Bonogi]

Copy online poker's rules and use a time bank.

[blueblimp]

Copy online poker's rules and use a time bank.

Neat, I hadn't heard of this before. I don't think a per-tournament time bank would suit Dominion well, but maybe per-series would make sense.

FWIW, the original reason I was thinking of time controls was for AI-vs-AI play, where you need some sort of automatic rule. It seems reasonably important for online tournament play between humans too, because that seems awkward to manually admin.

[polonkus]

Copy online poker's rules and use a time bank.

Neat, I hadn't heard of this before. I don't think a per-tournament time bank would suit Dominion well, but maybe per-series would make sense.

FWIW, the original reason I was thinking of time controls was for AI-vs-AI play, where you need some sort of automatic rule. It seems reasonably important for online tournament play between humans too, because that seems awkward to manually admin.

Why? Just work off chat/play logs, and if deliberate slow playing is known to lead to an ejection I doubt you'd have more than one or two issues per tournament, if that.