ORIGINAL: Dancing Bear
Well Neverman, the Marshall has you there.
Skipping works well when a player is at peace and nothing is going on, for instance Austria and Prussia are under enforced peace with France, and all the minors are gobbled up, why do they need a diplomacy or non-reinforcement phase? On the other hand, a player can't afford to skip when at war, so depending on where your game is, you should see more or less skipping. Perhaps there is a lot going on in your game (or everyone else is too intimidated to try).
There games out there, where if a player does not do his turn in 24 hours, the host skips his turn. These games scarifice tolerance for speed. Why not apply this same militant attitude to skipping. If you are at peace, you must continuously skip reinforcement, or other wise the host will take off a political point loss for wasting time (like an icing penalty in hockey). If you apply this rule, you might see some big gains in speed, and it is not as harsh as the 24 hour rule can be, so playing this way doesn't make the host a super bad guy.
However, don't get me wrong, I do not believe skipping is the final solution to game speed. It is just one, pretty limited tool.
Things can change in this game pretty rapidly. I like to be able to adjust on the fly, which means skipping phases isn't really an option. I understand if some people find this useful, personally, I have yet to use it and I have also yet to see it used.
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