Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.

From: cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman)

Date: Sun, 04 Jul 1993 16:12:12 +0000

In article <1993Jul4.125342.27117@cs.tcd.ie> rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) writes:
   js138@cus.cam.ac.uk (John Sloan) writes:

>Another topic for your perusal.

>Given an ongoing strategy/wargame (such as Atlantis appears to be)
   >- what is the best way to prevent older players with larger more
   >powerful factions from domination the game?

>My premise here is that starting earlier shouldn't be a longterm
   >advantage over someone who starts later.  Both players should have
   >an equal chance to rise from obscurity to a certain level of
   >power.

>I offer here just one possible method.  There are many.

>The larger a players position gets, the harder it is to maintain
   >that position without help.  Either the player spends an
   >increasing ammount of his positions power in maintaining the
   >status quo, or he is forces to go into partnership with other
   >players, increasing the ammount of communication required, and
   >increasing the chance of being betrayed.  This fits well into a
   >feudal model where the ammount of influence one noble could exert
   >was limited by the need to travel from place to place, and
   >subordinates coulnd't always be trusted.

Brilliant idea !  Why didn't I think of that ? :-)

I don't like this idea because the player who's built up a big empire
   ends up being penalized, not for incompetence, but for competence, which
   in my view is a totally perverse and irrational thing to do.

This is not a "punishment" any more than the fact that large empires
tend to attract large enemy armies.  Or would you require your players
to attack large empires with small armies because otherwise they would
compensate for the fact that the empire has a large army (which
doubtlessly is a sign of the enormous competence of the empire
builder) ?

Seriously, in Atlantis the number of provinces you can conquer in some
period of time is proportional to your resources which is proportional
to your current number of provinces.  That is the formula for
exponential growth without limit.  Earlier or later one player is
going to conquer a large part of the world, and conquer the rest with
what he gained from there.  From that point on Atlantis will be over,
because there won't be any way to oppose him any longer.

But historically this is not what happend.  In particular in eras of
extremely limited communication range and speed, empires did not grow
beyond a certain size without either decentralizing power, or
collapsing quickly when the local lords realized that if they did
revolt now it'd take a year for the ruler to hear about it and get to
them.

So don't view communications limitations as a "punishment", but rather
as another realistic obstacle an empire builder has to overcome to
demonstrate his true competence.  After all, any child can sustain an
empire if given instant access and total control to the resources of
half the world.

Carl Edman

References

Ongoing Strategy Games.
js138@cus.cam.ac.uk (John Sloan)
Sun, 04 Jul 1993 03:24:37 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Sun, 04 Jul 1993 12:53:42 +0000