> They take action A unless they receive a message from the other general The missing piece in your algorithm is how long do they wait to receive a message fro

> They take action A unless they receive a message from the other general The missing piece in your algorithm is how long do they wait to receive a message from each other and how they can know that it's long enough? If they don't wait long enough they will not receive a message and will make wrong assumptions about the other general, will not reach consensus and will take each their own action. To fix this each has to wait as long as it takes to receive a message from the other general and know about this (which in itself requires more messages). But what if one of the generals dies in the meantime and stops sending messages? Or what if both Bob and Alice got the same random integer? There are other issues too. But the important thing is it's all about time. You can always wait out uncertainty, but of course you won't be able to make progress waiting.