Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !) From: bc@lnec.pt (Luis Miguel Sequeira) Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1993 14:49:10 +0000 I seemed to have goofed it up with my last posting... ah well, here is another comment: ulim@coli.uni-sb.de (Ulrich Mayring) wrote: >Q: Why do you have (amongst other skills) to have a _feel_ for simple >arithmetic when being successful in strategic/tactics games? > >A: (IMHO) Because a large part of strategic skill comes from being able to >anticipate the outcome of certain actions and adjusting one's own plans >according to what one believes to be the outcome. This involves COMPARING >options. >How do you compare options? You translate abstract game situations into >arithmetic representations of those. Why do you do that? Because you can >compare numbers quite easily (10>5 is immediately accesible to everyone), but >without a sense of mathematical equivalence you cannot compare e.g. this: No, no, no. Keynes tried to that with World Economy, getting it all in a simple formula system, and IT DIDN'T WORK (economists out there reading this may object, but I don't mind). If a so-called realistic game is sufficiently complex, so as to come as near to reality as possible, it ought to have the simple consequence of being impossible to predict its results with a formula! Put in other words, PhDs in Mathematics armed with spreadshits and other "heavy weapons" will _not_ be able to predict the future, even if they try very hard. At least, they can make a few estimations, but that's all! > 1500 * Value * Demand > ------------------------------------ > sqrt(Availability+10) + sqrt(Supply) I never played Gladius et Pilum, thus I won't comment on the game. But a so-called "simple" game would simply have *NO* market economy! If it had, it ought to be a more complex one, and the above formula would not be a "realistic" one in any way. What about external influences, like weather, the ruler having died, the province being subject to plague and so on? Thus, if the game is extremely simple, formulas aren't necessary, because it's not by knowing them (even if they are publicly listed) that you win the game. If the game is astonishingly complex, formulas are - or should be - impossible to recreate (too many unknowns, too many random effects, either generated by the computer or by the players). That's what I think, anyway. Luis Sequeira Up