Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)

From: morrow@newton.texel.com (John Morrow)

Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000

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

I'll agree that, early in the game, the CO stategy held a great deal
of risk.  And I have no arguments with that aspect of the game.  I'm
one of the big proponents of the single starting point for just that
reason.  It alllows for such a dynamic.  But once the war with the
agressive little pooch and the IN was over, the AOO had (as far as I
know) a sufficient breather because there was never as large a group
of players starting in IC as the first few turns to challenge the AOO
there.  BTW, I'm sure my information is skewwed a bit so I may be
overgeneralizing.  Feel free to correct.  My early information is
especially sketchy because I *thought* I wouldn't have to deal with
the AOO for a long time by sailing far away.  Gee, was I wrong. :-)

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

Anyone disagree?  (gavel bang)  Agreed.  :-)

>> 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.

Hmmm.  I thought I was being generous.  I was trying to say that the
AOO hasn't been excessively provoking people to attack them.  Is that
wrong?  Maybe next time you should hire less competent PR people... :-)

As for the skill aspect, the AOO did show skill at defeating other
similar (military oriented) alliances.  But, in other cases, it was
simply a matter of mopping up smaller, less organized, and differently
oriented factions which is about as praiseworthy as swatting flies.
To me, a challenge is when you can barely win if you do everything
right (the early AOO victories qualify here), not Desert Storms where
an overwealming force swats an inferior opponent.  Remember that not
everyone approached Oly as a min-maxed war game since Oly *did* promise
to be more than that.

>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.

OK.  Perhaps I am overestimating the size of the AOO although I heard
that at turn one, the AOO was roughly 1/4th of the game.  I didn't
think the game could have more than, well, four such 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.

Why do you think that these mightly alliances fell?  Because many were
not centralized war machines.  This is the classice "Oly favors the
factions with the biggest army" and "Oly can't get beyond being a
wargame" complaint.  Since the AOO consists of (A) core players who
had alled before, (B) many players who chose a military approach, and
(C) players who enjoy maximixing production and efficiency, they did
better than a lot of other alliances.  I guess you can call this good
play.  And in the early wars, anyway, it was.  But I'd really hate to
see a G2 where everyone does things the AOO way because it is the
only strategy that works.

(Here I will also point out that several AOO members had similar
"problems" in the playtests as their current opponents have -- being
badly damaged or eliminated by making mistakes, making chance attacks,
or by well organized opponents.  So I guess you can say you learned
from your mistakes.)

>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.

Agreed.  But the IN situation also showwed how important battle in Oly
is.  One major loss can destroy an entire alliance.  It did with mine,
not only because of the lost production time and noble points but
because the enemy often gets benefits from winning that you can never
catch up to again.  Part of the problem here is how slowly things break,
die, or decay in Oly.  Once you bring something into the game or get
some advantage, you rarely lose it.  You build up and you stay ahead.

>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.

That could be interesting.  Other alliance mail could be interesting,
too.  I know that many misconceptions flew around in the first few
turns (look at how few people left IC on the first few turns except by
sea).  I already had a discussion with an "opponent" about one such
misunderstanding after I left the game.

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

Anyone disagree?  (gavel bang)  Agreed.  :-)

>> 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 ?

That would be telling ;-)

Since I obviously have a lot of misinformation about the AOO, you can
rest assured that they aren't spilling their guts about the AOO's
plans or internals.  They've only commented on their general opinions
of them...

John Morrow

References

Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)
morrow@newton.texel.com (John Morrow)
Thu, 26 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia and Game Theory (LONG)
cedman@phoenix.princeton.edu (Carl F. Edman)
Sat, 28 Oct 1995 00:00:00 +0000
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