Re: Olympia.. treachery in the ranks

From: hauck@cs.washington.edu (Scott Hauck)

Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1992 05:50:52 +0000

In article <18853@ector.cs.purdue.edu> sjc@cs.purdue.EDU (Steve Chapin) writes:
>
>What happens if
>
>     - Rocko and Prenola are friendly
>     - Rocko is cooperative towards Oleg
>     - Rocko is neutral towards Dr. Pain
>     - Prenola is cooperative towards Dr. Pain
>     - Prenola is neutral towards Oleg
>
>     -> and Dr. Pain attacks Oleg?
>
>Are Prenola and Rocko, two friends, going to end up on opposite sides
>of the battle?  I'm afraid that the complications of secondary
>make this idea infeasible.  How can we take secondary attitudes into
>account?

The answer to this kind of situation is that ALLIED people go to the aid
of a defending player, but not an attacking player.  The idea is that attacks
are planned, and so if Dr. Pain wants Prenola's help, he asks for it, since he
knows in advance he'll make the attack.  The defender does not have thi
luxury, so he needs some way to rally the faithful.  Also, in general people
are willing to help defend much more often than join an attack, and thus would
be much happier with auto defend than auto attack.

So, in the above example, Rocko would join Oleg in defense.  Now that Dr. Pain
is attacking Rocko as well, Prenola will join the defense.  If Dr. Pain wanted
to avoid this, he'd have to make prior arraingements with his friends.  BTW,
I'd suggest not having COOPERATIVE imply springing to the defense.  There
are several important classes of people who need to be served:

1.) Business associates, who can transfer items to each other, but won't
defend.  This fits the current COOPERATIVE attitude.

2.) Town guards, who will spring to the aid of all who are attacked.  They want
to be ALLIED, but not FRIENDLY, because people shouldn't be able to take their
swords from them.  Also, the probably don't want to be necessarily COOPERATIVE
either, because of the dilution effect (The town guard captain, just prior to
an attack, gets one man transferred to him to dilute his military leadership,
and also to make him a multiple-man unit, also hurting leadership).

3.) Depot managers.  They need to be stacked with, be able to TAKE items from
and GIVE items to, but they should stay out of fights and protect their goods.
This corresponds to FRIENDLY.

4.) Complete allies, sharing everything.  This corresponds to FRIENDLY & ALLIED

To handle all these, what works is two attitude numbers.  The first is the
current FRIENDLY/COOPERATIVE/NEUTRAL/UNFRIENDLY/HOSTILE attitude.  The second
is an ALLY bit, which dictates whether non-stackmakes will aid a defender.
This could be compressed, since ALLIED UNFRIENDLY and ALLIED HOSTILE don't
make sense, unless these types spring to the aid of the attacker, when the
ALLIED UNFRIENDLY or ALLIED HOSTILE target is attacked.  (ie. if A is ALLIED
HOSTILE to B - perhaps called HOSTILE ENEMY - and C attacks B, A & C attack B
together).

Scott Hauck
hauck@cs.washington.edu

References

Re: OLYMPIA: Stacking Reform Concepts (was Re: Olympia Stacking 'Gotcha')
skrenta@cbnewsg.att.com (Rich Skrenta)
Thu, 11 Jun 1992 19:54:17 +0000
Olympia.. treachery in the ranks
Edwin Huang <eh1s+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Fri, 12 Jun 1992 17:26:36 +0000
Re: Olympia.. treachery in the ranks
sjc@cs.purdue.EDU (Steve Chapin)
Fri, 12 Jun 1992 19:27:33 +0000