I’ve definitely been delaying my responses to Dilemmas in part to manage whether my Allocate results in 1 or 2 energy to the chosen District, so this is a welcome change for me.

I’m not so into it - I enjoy the granularity of choice.

I’m actually surprised by your response, Josh. You’re usually against mechanics that reward first-movers.

https://blognomic.com/archive/junction_box

Or did I misunderstand your comment on the “Junction Box” proposal?

I don’t find that the status quo especially benefits first movers.

Note that I have yet to respond to Dilemma 14; it is 3.30pm here, I have had plenty of opportunity to do so.

I don’t think “sequence in which players choose to perform actions” is a useful axis of choice to intentionally build gameplay along. If a choice between “do X now” and “do X in a few hours’ time” is sometimes meaningful, that’s going to on average slow the game down, and will disadvantage the players who don’t always have the spare time or the right timezone to actually exercise that choice.

It’s also impacting the “when taking any actions - including voting - will try to be fair to all players” of my Imperial Style. I should really start optimising the Dilemma posts to give all timezones a fair crack at getting whichever first or last reaction they need. (I’m reasonably Emperor-blind on how much this actually matters, but should err on the side of assuming that it might.)

I think what’s missing in the discussion here is that, while Alliances are off, there’s some potential for favour-trading that does benefit first-movers, maybe not directly, but in the ability to offer a rival a favour to be returned. For example, Josh could, knowing that Dilemmas usually come out at a time when US participants are asleep, offer to move first to Allocate 2 energy to a rival US player in return for their vote on a Proposal or some other move that would be beneficial to him.

While I appreciate that Josh has not done this yet, as he just mentioned, the possibility is still there for anyone to do this, thus there is a timing issue specifically with Allocate that I’d rather see resolved so that time zones are not a factor.

To Kevan’s point, other than the Allocate issue, I think the issue of when a Dilemma is posted is not all that important. There are other reasons to either act on a Dilemma right away or wait, but for me it has nothing to do with when that Dilemma itself is posted and more to do with its contents relative to other things going on.

“while Alliances are off…” - do people still have the superstition that the special case rule that happens to use this word determines, alone, whether players are allowed to fully team up during a dynasty?

And on that last point: Dilemmas refill the Battery Garden. If you’re delaying acting on a Dilemma (hoping that someone else will go first and you won’t have to pay out as much Energy to a rival), you won’t want to wait so long that I post the next day’s Dilemma and refill the Batteries.

@Kevan You are correctly drawing out some of the interesting interactions in the rule as currently written.

The basic concept of a game of chicken (“press the button after other players press the button, but before the croupier presses the other button”) is interesting enough, I just don’t think a 24-hour real-world clock is a sensible playing surface for it. There are other ways to work that kind of mechanic into a turn-based game.

@Kevan: No superstition on my part. That’s a perfect example of what I’m referring to by “offer a rival a favour to be returned”. It’s not only a favour for this dynasty, but perhaps a favour to put the rival in a winning position in return for a similar favour in a future dynasty.

Even if we allow that the current rules as written provide “interesting interactions”, it does so in a way that can only be taken advantage of via timing, which is inherently unfair to different time zones.

with a recommendation to Josh to propose a way to change Allocate to allow a range of values. Simply changing “by 2” to “by 1 or 2” is a start.

persuasive arguments all around… i’m conflicted about this. i’ll chew on it and come back tomorrow :0

It would be good to hear what the pro-timing-play point of view is, as the perspective is still unclear to me. (Josh was similarly terse about it just being a good thing that he likes on an earlier proposal, before gameplay had started.)

Do people think that timing-based mechanics are a cool synchronise-watches heist thing that genuinely add more fun and depth to dynasties? Or are they a bit of a drudge that’s nevertheless worth leaning into if you think that your rivals mostly can’t or won’t?

@Kevan i think Josh stated it pretty clearly — this particular timing-based mechanic has some interesting bits to it that feel fun!! i think timing-based mechanics /can/ feel bad, but this one doesn’t seem like a drudge to me. but then again, it might lose its shine later on when things get intense, and the concerns about fairness give me pause. which is why i’m on the fence.

Which bit is the interesting fun, though?

Is it purely the cool heist thing where if you can plan ahead and predict other players and manage to time and execute a game action just right within a very small window of opportunity (while others stumble and set off the alarms), you get an advantage? Or is it the more general push-your-luck Dutch auction mechanic where you’re rewarded for how wisely you can hold your nerve?

i hadn’t drilled down into why i like it as specifically as that yet, but now that i’m pressed, i think i’d say the latter is mainly it — tho the former still has some minor appeal :0

also, the bit where you can make deals to switch it from a last-mover to a first-mover advantage is neat! it tickles my brain. and the fact that outside of those deals you’re generally incentivised to allocate to the player u can allocate to who has the least energy makes it feel more fair to me.

Deals and incentives still exist if this proposal sets all the Energy output to 2, and there’s plenty of room in the gamestate for other things which can be switched around to change the payouts (maybe your Energy payout depends on how much you have yourself, maybe it burns up some Calendar, maybe it’s affected by Innovation and Commons investment, etc).

Unless a majority are invested in the cool heist stuff, I don’t think it’s a net gain to base Allocation numbers on how many other people have taken actions so far on a calendar day.

Here’s another angle to consider: does it fit this dynasty’s theme and general mechanics?

Maybe that’s not important, but it’s a point to consider. Far more interesting mechanics have been rejected due to being off-theme.

It seems fine thematically; Solar Panels fill up at “daybreak”, and the batteries drain slowly over the course of the “day”. If you “wake up early” or “stay up late” you can get an optimally high or low number out of them. Perhaps there’s some pre-existing social agreement between the Districts about access to the control station being limited.

Mechanically it’s also a fair enough fit for the idea of “Dilemmas are posted and how you respond to them matters”, it’s just an additional axis on top of “what are the choices”, “what are other people doing”, “what proposals are about to enact”, “what deals can I make”, etc.

i’ll abstain for now: I think removing the timezone dependence is a good idea, but I’d rather see some other mechanic for deciding how much energy is allocated

also, how is the battery garden going to be filled after this?

if lendun thinks removing the timezone dependence is a good idea, then i’ll vote here, although i agree that i’d like to see the battery allocation and battery garden mechanics expanded more in the wake of this change :0