Re: Ultimate Goals in Olympia

From: desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 1995 02:07:42 +0000

Rich Skrenta <skrenta@pbm.com> writes:
> This hoses solitare puzzles such as the NPC monster lairs.  If they are
> easy enough for an individual to tackle, then a small alliance can
> trivially take them out.  But if they are tough enough to be a challenge
> for an alliance, then individuals don't stand a chance.

But this should be self-regulating.  If 10 factions work together to take
out a lair, it might be a lot easier, but they have to split the proceeds 10
ways.  Collectively, they might not gain any advantage at all from working
together.  Indeed, they might suffer, if they achieve sublinear results
(i.e., the result of N players working together is less than N times what
one player can accomplish).

To some extent, we have seen that happen in Olympia.  A few players in the
Chateau Olympique held off a much larger number of IN players attacking it,
because the latter all stacked together, and achieved much less than what
they could have individually in the turns before the attack, while the
former worked mostly individually and achieved greater results.  The big
stack could take out any lair easily, but if they had been split up they
could have taken several lairs in the same time.

> This hoses solitare puzzles such as the NPC monster lairs.  If they are
> easy enough for an individual to tackle, then a small alliance can
> trivially take them out.  But if they are tough enough to be a challenge
> for an alliance, then individuals don't stand a chance.

Hmm.  It seems to me that what you want is a _mixture_ of linear,
superlinear, and sublinear payoffs.  That way you get strategy, instead of
just automatic decisions.  In terms of lairs, this might mean lots of weak
lairs with useful treasures, to give players working individually the
advantages; and also some more powerful lairs with much greater rewards,
which would reward those who are able to coordinate their activities with a
reward greater than they could achieve separately in the same time.

There are other ways you can reward cooperation.  For example, quests which
require traveling to many different places to retrieve needed items, and so
it would take too long for one player to try to do it all.  And, of course,
specialization, where no one player _can_ accomplish everything necessary
for a particular task.

> An example:  Suppose you can train a character into a fighter, thief, or
> mage.  Monster quests require a party with one of each.  The same player
> can send in three of his own characters, or two or three players can group
> together for the quest.

This still seems linear or sublinear.  You aren't giving the N players any
incentive to work together.  Suppose I and two allies each have a fighter, a
thief, and a mage.  Each of the three of us can go on a separate quest, or
we can form three joint parties for three quests.  We don't get any
advantage for the latter; in fact, we're at a disadvantage.  It's harder to
coordinate the activities of several players than one (as anyone who's tried
to run a joint operation and seen the flurry of last-minute messages can
testify).  And there might be other disadvantages: in Oly, there are things
that two units belonging to the same player can do, such as TAKE, that two
units belonging to different players can't.

> In Oly, we could do something like make caves "small", so only a noble
> and 4 of his men could fit in to get at the monster.  You'd want to
> send in the 4 best men you had, and that +20 sword would be worth taking.

Well, what do you mean by "men"?  It sounds like I could just train four of
the strongest type of man.  What you want is that each player can only have
one sufficiently strong man to contribute, so that any one player wouldn't
be able to put together a strong enough force to win.  But four players
could: superlinear payoff, since X is greater than four times zero.

You have to do something about those completely useless +20 swords, though.

David desJardins
--
Copyright 1995 David desJardins.  Unlimited permission is granted to quote
from this posting for non-commercial use as long as attribution is given.

References

Re: Ultimate Goals in Olympia
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Mon, 23 Jan 1995 01:38:13 +0000
Re: Ultimate Goals in Olympia
skrenta@pbm.com (Rich Skrenta)
Wed, 25 Jan 1995 14:34:38 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Ultimate Goals in Olympia
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Mon, 23 Jan 1995 01:38:13 +0000
Re: Ultimate Goals in Olympia
skrenta@pbm.com (Rich Skrenta)
Wed, 25 Jan 1995 14:34:38 +0000