Re: Olympia Turn Length

From: cedman@714-725-3177.nts.uci.edu (Carl Edman)

Date: Sat, 30 May 1992 23:00:47 +0000

Greg Lindahl writes
> Have you ever played the game Empire? From what people say
> about it, the most effective attack strategy is to attack
> late at night while your opponent is in bed. Or while they
> are on vacation. That hardly seems to be a game of skill to
> me.

Don't try that with Aeternitatis. When I play empire, my workstation is
only some 20 meters from where I sleep and if I worry about a midnight
attack, I can have a script check for attacks every few minutes and
raise the alarm if one is detected.

But on the larger point you are of course right. This is a flaw in
empire and shouldn't be added to Olympia. Isn't it fortunate that I
didn't suggest that ? :-)

> Also, you don't seem to get that it's not a matter of people
> having the time to log in frequently. Lots of people do not
> have instant email delivery. Delays to Compuserve and
> some foreign countries can be 6 hours to a couple of days.
> 1/3 of Compuserve's mail was held for 2 days over the
> Memorial Day holiday weekend, it seems, because of a
> screw-up that wasn't fixed until the staff got back
> Tuesday morning. Even my email occasionally gets held up
> by hardware problems, both in my local machines and our
> network connection. I'd hate to see a game in which a
> typical once-in-a-year failure causes me to get wiped
> out. I'd like to think that I'll be playing Olympia for
> years.

Yes, yes, yes, but _how_ in the world would this become worse by going
to daily mini-updates ? _Today_ you can be attacked without having any
chance of defending yourself for a game-month. In the very worst case
scenario of mail delay you still could be attacked without having any
chance of defending yourself for a month. But under my proposed change
you have something from an excellent chance to a certainity depending
on your mail connection, to be able to strike back and retreat within a
few game-days and so to prevent the worst.

IMHO, the real problem is that Rich would have to make the update much
more automatic than I understand it is right now. Right, Great God
Atnerks ?

BTW, most foreign countries also have instant email. What causes delays
is UUCP.

Carl Edman, aka BtA

References

Re: Olympia Turn Length
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Sat, 30 May 1992 19:49:51 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Olympia Turn Length
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Sat, 30 May 1992 19:49:51 +0000