Is it possible to have a constantly "rolling" game, where the world keeps going and players can log in (sort of "email") orders. Like a match could take 2 weeks, but you might only need to go in and check status, issue some orders once each day since the game is so slow. Lagg wouldnt be a problem, but how complicated would it be to have such a system? Is it necesary to have a server att all times or could one have a system where orders are sent and the master updates the world with all new orders each day? If a player has not given new orders his country just keeps going in the same direction as before. This is a bit like the game eutopia i know, im looking into the possibilities. Thanks Erik

Well, I can't really understand what your question is, but I'd say that yes this would be rather simple, compared to something like an FPS network, as far networking code goes. But everything else, like gamestate and loging in would probably be much harder than oh say an FPS or whatever.

Yes, this is very easy (comparitively) because you don't have to worry about all the lag issues and so on action games face. You can do it with a standard PHP/mySQL hosting package, probably, with an action script that is called once a turn (I guess you need cron or similar to do that), or at a pinch even by email and an automated mail reader that read the account's mail and parsed the commands. It would certainly be easy enough to write a game server to do it.

This is my plan:

World gets updated/one turn progresses once per day (or maybe twice: noon and midnight)

When i player logs in, he must download the world-state first(all units in the game, maybe changes from the last turn, updated kingdom riches etc) he can que up building-orders, issue move commands, etc. At logout, all orders will be sent to the master.

It would be best if the master doesnt have to be online when a player send his orders.

But i dont know where to start. Im a complete newbie when it comes to networking...

Thanks for any help you can supply
Erik