Re: long-term fun

From: lindahl@pbm.com (Greg Lindahl)

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000

archer@hsc.fr (Vincent Archer) writes:

> Olympia, as outlined somewhere else, has a good way of ensuring a longer
> playability by making sure the usual exponential growth of a faction is
> remade into a linear growth. This doesn't ensure an infinite playability,
> however. Wait a thousand turns, and you might end up with a faction ten
> times larger than most.

Note that "a faction 10 times larger tha most" doesn't mean that the
game is unplayable. What makes a game unplayable is when some group of
players has so much power that no one can catch them, or, even worse,
a game in which new players can never catch established players. In
exponential growth games, that always happens.

> - A way of encouraging elders to protect, and/or support beginners, without
>   motivating these elders to jump-start the newer players to their stage.

This is present in Olympia. Older players have an incentive to be
friendly to new players in order to use their "noble points". NPs are
used to enforce linear growth and cannot be taken from a player by any
means.

-- greg

References

Re: long-term fun
archer@hsc.fr (Vincent Archer)
Tue, 09 Feb 1999 00:00:00 +0000