Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)

From: cedman@phoenix.princeton.edu (Carl F. Edman)

Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000

In article <morrow.814757754@newton.texel.com>,
John Morrow <morrow@newton.texel.com> wrote:
> rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Robert Christopher Butchko) writes:
> >If they had met competition for control of faery, they could have been
> >thwarted or severely reduced in force.
>
> What competition?  They started building as close to Imperial City as
> they could which gave them a huge production lead over the groups that
> decided to sail to other lands.  By the time the other groups got to
> the other lands, started to build up, and then got around to sending
> a force into Faery to look around, it was too late.

That is not an entirely fair point.  It is true that the first AOO castle
(and the first castle period, for that matter) was built next to the IC.
But of course that is where competition was the strongest !  If it wasn't
why do you think so many other faction decided to move elsewhere as you so
rightly point out ?  Just because we pulled through in the end at the
Chateau Olympique, don't conclude that it wasn't a close-run thing.  Barry
understood the risks when he built the CO, and if you study the history of
what followed, you'll see that he didn't overestimate them.

> My primary complaint about Faery is that it *is* valuable and that
> becomes quite clear the moment you start fiddling with it.

Faery and Hades obsolete geography robbing war in Olympia of a vital
aspect.  For that reason they need to be reformed drastically in G2.

> As for a general answer of why the AOO isn't attacked in general:
> (A) Many other players don't like to attack without provocation and,
>     to their credit, the AOO has provided very little of that.

Please don't minimize a factions lifes work in such a callous fashion.

> (B) I would guess that the AOO is the largest alliance in the game and
>     they dominate simply by virtue of numbers.  Building an alliance
>     to challenge them is a formidible task likely to fail.

That is not true.  I'm aware of at least two and probably several more
examples of alliances with while they lasted more members than the AOO.
More importantly the AOO was from the start highly decentralized and its
factions spread all over the world.  That means that in each of the wars
before Hades/Faery/Teleport Item only a handful of AOO factions could
participate on our side while we generally faced complete geographically
centered enemy alliances.

So on the ground we were outnumbered most of the time.  In particular our
enemies usually had two to three times as many noble points in the area.
That was always a great concern in the councils of the AOO for it would in
the long run allow our enemies to get wise, outproduce us and then crush
us with overwhelming numbers.  So we usually had to win quickly, or not at
all.

The worst case of this was certainly the war against the IN.  When the war
started they had as many castles and men in Provinia as we did and several
times more noble points.  We didn't have the strength to destroy their
bases, so if they had just started to use all their NPs wisely to produce
a large army, within a game year we might have had to flee the CO without
a battle even.  That instead they decided to attack us prematurely and in
a laughably inefficient manner saved, if not the AOO, several today
prominent AOO factions.

When G1 is over and if none of the other AOO members objects, I might just
make the entire AOO archives publicly available.  That should throw some
light on many of the contentious issues in the history of Olympia.

> (D) The AOO has gotten a lot of places first and gotten to resources
>     other players will never get -- control artifacts that control
>     4-6 units, beasts, elfstones, etc.  You need interior locations
>     to get those and there are (as you point out) very few of them
>     left.

I agree.  Non-renewable resources in an open-ended game are a Bad Idea.

> I've had more than one AOOer tell me that had they known how it would
> go, they wouldn't have joined.  I get the feeling that it is somewhat
> like the mob.  Once you are in, you don't get out... :-)

Now, pray tell, who would those be ?

Carl Edman

References

Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Tue, 24 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)
rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Robert Christopher Butchko)
Wed, 25 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)
morrow@newton.texel.com (John Morrow)
Thu, 26 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Tue, 24 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)
rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Robert Christopher Butchko)
Wed, 25 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)
morrow@newton.texel.com (John Morrow)
Thu, 26 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000