Picking nations and swapping slots¶

After a game starts, its participants or a moderator pick a nation for each player in the game thread. In FFA, players can also swap slots. You can finish a game only when every player has a nation: picked, or read from an attached save.

Participants¶

Game participant — picks nations for themselves and for other players in the game, sends slot swap requests and answers them.
Moderator — picks nations in any game on their server, even if they aren't playing in it.
Bot — shows the pick menus and buttons, saves the nations, swaps the players' slots and updates the game card.

Steps¶

How nations are picked depends on the button that started the game: “Start with Draft” or “Skip Draft & Start”. Slot swaps work the same way in both cases.

Picking a nation in a game with a draft¶

In a game started with the “Start with Draft” button, you pick nations in the menu under the game card. Each player has three nations to choose from. On the game card, they appear as a row of icons under the player's name.

sequenceDiagram
    participant G as Player
    participant B as Bot
    G->>B: marks nations in the “Choose who plays which nation” menu
    alt no player has more than one mark
        B-->>G: saves the picks and puts the nation icons on the game card
    else one player has two nations marked
        B-->>G: replies “Multiple selection for …” and saves nothing
    end

Open the menu under the game card. In the game thread, the “Choose who plays which nation” menu sits under the card. It lists the nations to choose from for all players.
Find the player you need. Each menu item looks like “Orion - Japan”: the player's name and one of their three nations. Nations that are already picked are marked in the menu.
Mark one nation for each player. You can set nations for all players at once or for only some of them. To change a player's nation, remove the mark from the old one and mark the new one.
Close the menu. The bot saves the marks and updates the game card. The icon of the picked nation appears next to the player's seat number.

The bot saves all the marks in the menu together: whatever is marked when the menu closes replaces every nation picked earlier. So if you remove the mark from a player's nation and don't mark a new one while other marks remain in the menu, that player is left without a nation.

Assigning nations in a game without a draft¶

In a game started with the “Skip Draft & Start” button, there are no nations to choose from: you can assign a player any nation that isn't banned.

sequenceDiagram
    participant G as Player
    participant B as Bot
    G->>B: clicks a nation button in the “Nation Assignment” message
    B-->>G: privately shows a menu of the game's players
    G->>B: picks a player
    B-->>G: removes the menu and assigns the nation to the player
    Note over B: updates the game card after about 1.5 s
    B-->>G: turns the assigned nation's button green

Find the “Nation Assignment” message. Right after the game card, the bot posts the message “🎯 Nation Assignment — click nation to select player” in the thread. The buttons for all nations that aren't banned sit under it and under one or two following messages, up to 20 buttons under each.
Click a nation button. The bot privately shows a menu with all players of the game. The first item is “❌ Remove selection”. Under each player's name is their nation, for example “Currently: France”, or “No nation selected”.
Pick a player. The player gets this nation instead of their previous one. If another player had the nation, the bot takes it away from them. The menu disappears after you pick.
Wait for the update. About 1.5 s later, the bot updates the game card: the nation icon appears next to the player's seat number. The button of the assigned nation turns green, and the button of the freed nation turns gray again. If you assign several nations in a row, the card updates once, 1.5 s after the last assignment.

The “❌ Remove selection” item takes the nation away from the player it is assigned to. The player is left without a nation, and the nation's button turns gray again.

The menu of players stays active for 60 s. If you pick nobody in that time, nothing changes. To pick a player, click the nation button again.

Picking a nation on the site¶

This works on a server that the CivBot site works with. A player of the game who is signed in to the site can pick a nation for their seat on the game page while the game is in progress. In a game with a draft, the seat card shows its three nations under the label “ROLLED · CHOOSE THE PICK”, and you pick a nation by clicking one of them. Otherwise, a seat without a nation has a “Choose a nation” button that opens a list of nations with search. On the site, a moderator who has no seat in the game can only view it: they pick nations for players in Discord, as described above.

The list is the same as in Discord: in a game with a draft, it is the three nations to choose from for this seat, and in a game without a draft, all nations except the banned ones. You can't pick a nation that another seat already has: the site marks it as taken. If a nation can't be picked any more, the site says “This nation can't be picked for this seat any more”. If another seat has just taken it, it says “Another seat took this nation a moment ago”.

After you pick, the bot immediately redraws the game card in the thread: the nation icon appears next to the player's seat number, and the result is the same as after picking in Discord. See Game page.

Slot swap¶

In FFA, two players can swap slots if both want to. Swaps work both in a game with a draft and in a game without one.

sequenceDiagram
    participant G as Player
    participant B as Bot
    participant I as Other player
    G->>B: picks the other player in the “Swap requests between players” menu
    B-->>I: shows “Request from: …” under their name in the menu
    I->>B: picks the first player in the same menu
    Note over B: swaps the players' slots and clears both players' picked nations
    B-->>G: updates the game card

Open the swap menu. Under the game card, the “Swap requests between players” menu lists the game's players.
Pick a player. The bot records your request. In the menu, “Request from:” and your name appear under that player's name, for example “Request from: Orion”. The bot doesn't send a separate message about the request, so tell the player about it in the game thread.
Wait for the answer. The other player opens the same menu and picks you. Then the bot swaps your slots and updates the game card. If the server has the event log turned on, the bot records “🔄 Players Swapped” there.
Pick nations again. A swap clears the picked nations of both players. Pick them the same way as after the start.

A swap doesn't affect everything tied to a player:

Part	What happens in a swap
Seat number	Players swap numbers
Nations to choose from	In a game with a draft, players swap their three nations
Picked nation and nation from the save	Cleared for both players
Bans and rating	Stay with each player

To cancel your requests, pick yourself in the menu. The bot removes all your requests and replies “All your swap requests have been cancelled.”

Rules and exceptions¶

You can pick nations for any player in the game¶

The “Choose who plays which nation” menu and the nation buttons in the “Nation Assignment” message are open to every game participant and to moderators. With them, you pick a nation for any player, not only for yourself. The bot refuses access to everyone else on the server. See Players, moderators and admins.

With a draft, a player plays one of their three nations¶

In the “Choose who plays which nation” menu, each player has only their own three nations: you can't pick a nation from another player's set for them, and you can mark only one. See Nations: bans, draft and picks.

Without a draft, a player is assigned any nation that isn't banned¶

The “Nation Assignment” message has buttons for all 43 nations except the ones banned during the gathering. Nobody gets a banned nation in this game. See Bans.

One nation belongs to only one player¶

In a draft, the players' sets don't overlap, so a game never has two identical nations. Without a draft, a nation assigned to a new player is taken away from the previous one. That player stays without a nation until they are assigned another.

You can change nations while the game is in progress¶

While the game is “In progress”, you can change nations as many times as you like. When the game is finished or scrapped, the pick menus and buttons disappear, and the bot deletes the “Nation Assignment” message. See Finishing a game.

Slot swaps exist only in FFA¶

The “Swap requests between players” menu appears in games with more than two players. A Duel has two players, so there is no slot swap. See Game.

A swap happens by mutual request¶

Players swap slots when both have picked each other in the “Swap requests between players” menu. Only a game participant can send and accept a request. A moderator who doesn't play in the game can't swap players.

Every player needs a nation before the game is finished¶

A player's nation is their pick or the nation the site read from a save attached to the game. It is the nation shown next to the seat number on the game card and in the “Currently: …” caption in the assignment menu, and finishing counts it; a nation from the save takes precedence over a pick on the card. A player who has only a nation from the save doesn't block finishing. See Game saves on the site.

Before it records the result, the /game finish command checks that every player has a nation. If someone has none, the game stays “In progress”, and the bot replies in the language of your Discord client. In English, that is “All players must pick their nations before finishing!” See Finishing a game.

On a server that the CivBot site works with, the “Finish the game?” dialog on the site requires the same: while someone has no nation, you can't confirm, and the dialog offers to pick one right there or attach a save. See Finishing a game on the site.

Menus and buttons are written in the server's language¶

The bot shows the “Choose who plays which nation” menu, the nation buttons in the “Nation Assignment” message, the player menus and the swap menu in the server's language. The replies “Multiple selection for …” and “All your swap requests have been cancelled.” are always in English. See Bot language.

What can go wrong¶

The bot replies “Multiple selection for Orion”. In the “Choose who plays which nation” menu, two nations are marked for one player, so the bot saved nothing. Open the menu again and leave one mark for that player.
The bot says you don't have access. When you click a nation button or pick from a menu, the bot replies “You are not allowed to perform this action.” Only game participants and moderators can pick nations: ask one of them to pick the nation.
The nation you need isn't in the “Choose who plays which nation” menu. In a game with a draft, each player can use only their own three nations to choose from. In FFA, you can swap slots with another player and get their three nations.
The nation you need isn't in the “Nation Assignment” message. It was banned during the gathering. The bans are under a spoiler on the game card. Pick another nation.
The site says “Another seat took this nation a moment ago”. While you were picking, this nation was picked for another player. Choose another nation from the list.
The nation icon didn't appear right away. In a game without a draft, the game card updates about 1.5 s after the last assignment.
The picked nations disappeared. If players swapped slots, a swap clears the picked nations of both. Otherwise, someone changed the picks: in a game with a draft, by closing the “Choose who plays which nation” menu with a player's nation unmarked, and in a game without a draft, by assigning that nation to another player or choosing “❌ Remove selection”. Pick the nations again.
The slot swap didn't happen. The other player hasn't picked you in return yet. Your request is visible in the menu under their name: “Request from:” and your name. Ask them to pick you in the same menu.
The bot won't let you finish the game. When you run /game finish, the bot replies that all players must pick nations. In an English Discord client, that is “All players must pick their nations before finishing!” Someone has no nation picked, and the save didn't show one: there is no nation icon next to their seat number on the game card. Pick the nation and run the command again.

This page was translated with AI and checked against the bot's terms.