Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.

From: js138@cus.cam.ac.uk (John Sloan)

Date: Sun, 04 Jul 1993 19:52:12 +0000

|> >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.
|>
|> 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.

You can view it this way if you feel you must, but I find it a perverse way of
looking at the world.  The challenge is to sustain as large an empire as possible
- the more competent you are at organisation, and at keeping your subordinates
loyal, the larger your empire and sphere of influence will be.  Compare with any
sport where the better you are, the better the quality of opposition you will end
up playing.

|> The way I do it in Atlantis is simply to start up batches of newbies at
|> a sufficient distance from older empires so that the older empires can't
|> just come along and overrun them.  (I would only start up a new player
|> in the same region as an established player, if there wasn't going to be
|> competition between them, e.g. if the new player didn't want to go into
|> the empire-building business, and the established player was prepared to
|> leave him in peace.)

This is, however, no solution.  The older empires in the middle will, by the
nature of exponential growth, always be bigger than the ones outside, until they
reach the limit of size they can grow to, at which point they will expand
outwards into the less well developed empires.  As time goes on the map will grow
bigger and bigger and the empires larger and larger until managing them will take
more real time that some people are prepared to put in, and the player with time
to burn will do the best.

|> --
|> "To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
|> Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
|> rwallace@cs.tcd.ie

To summarise, if there is going to be a constraint on the size of empire by the
ammount of organisation it takes to run it, it should be a constraint built into
the game, and not applied from outside, as this levels the playing field.

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

Referenced By

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