Re: Open-ended games (Olympia, Atlantis)

From: sjc@cs.purdue.edu (Steve Chapin)

Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1993 05:34:14 +0000

}} In article <rwallace.735950801@unix1.tcd.ie> rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace) writes:
}}
}} It certainly is possible to create an open-ended game which does not
}} stagnate; many commercial such games have been running for years and are
}} still drawing players. Notice that neither T'Nyc nor Olympia had
}} stagnated when they went down; the Dark Prophet (my character, aka
}} Amber) was all set to have another go at world conquest in about 10
}} turns or so, once his army was sufficiently large. Nor do I think
}} Olympia would have stagnated.

I do think that T'Nyc had stagnated.  I had (one of) the largest
factions (Kosar the Indefectible [753], Prince of Chardia), and was
fighting a forever war against another big player.  It had stagnated
because, with our economic resources, we could produce armies as fast
as we could kill them off.  We were simply too big to kill.

Olympia tried to take steps to stop infinite playerships, and I think
that Atlantis has taken further steps in that direction.

The purpose of the Market in Olympia was to supply goods, because
there were no production skills originally.  As we added them in, we
found that it was a hard problem to balance the output of production
skills against the amount of money that could be made selling them to
the infinite desire of the market.

That violates my cardinal rule of open-ended games:  infinite growth
must not be allowed.

There were two choices to remedy the infinite markets of Olympia:
remove them, or cap the demand.  We preferred to keep them around, and
had discussed several methods of capping demand.  We had several
workable systems, one of which should appear in Oly II.

sjc@cs.purdue.edu                 Steve Chapin                 ...!purdue!sjc
                    Those two want to go to the zoo, too!
                 They're aware bears bare their hair there.

"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of
       human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full
                 well he will never sit."  (Elton Trueblood)

References

DM: the Hatchet
picasso@acs2.nntp-read.bu.edu (David Ondzes)
Tue, 27 Apr 1993 10:58:52 +0000
Open-ended games (Olympia, Atlantis)
hauck@cs.washington.edu (Scott Hauck)
Tue, 27 Apr 1993 20:11:37 +0000
Re: Open-ended games (Olympia, Atlantis)
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)
Tue, 27 Apr 1993 22:46:41 +0000