BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

Any enacting admin could blast up a bunch of distance right before enacting this, enact it, then do the new daily action movement to cross 50 and win.

Also, you have the most distance yourself, and with everyone having identical movement opportunities to you, but you have a higher starting point, I doubt anyone but yourself would win.

Good point on the first, I’ve added a clause to bring back anyone who rushes ahead.

I hadn’t considered the second issue to be a problem. If one player is in a clear and unassailable winning position for eight full days, proposals can and will easily change that.

I think it would be better if there was more movement play and player differences in regards to movement before setting into a movement win, because it really isn’t much of a “game” in regards to Distance, yet. Maybe throwing people up and down positions, or sprinting with a cost, etc.

If we’re happy that there’s no instant scam victory here, eight days seems like plenty of time to make Distance more gamey. (And most changes are likely to increase that time, in the process.)

I don’t like that I’d have to propose stuff which necessarily have to black sheep you (in contrast to the rest of players) or anyone in a similar situation to you (high Distance count), in order to win. How would I make it pass? I’d have to rally card/ATMunn for it but even then, it’s going to be really blatant. Why not instead just propose to have one of us three, determined by random, to win?

And If I don’t do something self-serving like that, I could try to propose something sneaky, but the best play for you would be to just spread paranoia about any proposal in order to defend your impending victory.

I don’t like either situation really.

I think you’re in the stronger position anyway, here, having stockpiled expensive Abilities, including a 44% chance of being able to kill one player outright per week, and protection against anyone else killing you in the same way. Since killing a player resets them to 0 Distance, that would be a big deal under this victory condition.

Any player wanting to get into the same position as you will have to do some serious wrangling, as Acid+Sword+Bulky totals more than 100 Suspicion (so can’t be bought in one go) and each costs more than 25 Suspicion (so the third can’t be bought after having Suspicion lowered to 75 by Capture).

Any player who wants to get into the same position as me just has to move twice.

>just has to move twice.

Yes, but nobody can do a daily action twice in a day.

I give up lol, have your win, let’s make a better dynasty after this one.

Players can move as much as they like while this proposal is still in the queue.

Yes, but imagine nobody does, because they’re snoozing or something. Then it’s a wait until you inevitably win (or we blacksheep you with proposals, in which case, why not just cut our delusion that there’s a game at all and just proposal-win instead).

And if they do set themselves to 15, then the culmination of the dynasty will be whoever clocks their daily movement at the right time, which isn’t particularly interesting. (Unless proposals come in play, which will need to be self-serving to be useful, which again, why not just proposal-win instead at that point).

Sorry for being negative but I think the main issue is that the game (in regards to distance) is way too simple (because all there would be is to just mindlessly tick in dailies/weeklies), which means needing to bring in proposals to compete against any impending would-be winner of that, and the best proposal-play is to just propose a win.

Knocking the leader back is still a game. It puts the second-place player into the lead - did most people really want them there, do we knock them back as well, when do we stop knocking people back, are people going to knock me back when I get ahead, etc.

If we build a complex enough game then it becomes fuzzy as to who the leader is at any given moment, to the point where some players don’t mind (and can gain some social capital by not minding) if others seem “ahead”, because they think that they have a secret way to get further ahead, or some other way to stop the leader. This is perhaps the core of a game of Nomic.

But yes, completely agree that Distance is still quite simple and that a peloton of monsters hitting the border at the same time would be a boring endgame. I’d hope that the reaction would be to make some proposals to shake things up.

(I still don’t see your angle on the “propose a win” thing, and how it’s the most rational play whenever anyone takes the lead. If you mean a proposal of “a random member of my quorum-sized cabal wins”, it’ll only get votes from players who think their chances of winning are already very low, and who don’t attach any social significance to how and why they won. We hardly ever see that kind of proposal, and even then it’s only ever tried at the end of a silent or chaotic dynasty where there’s a clear feeling that it needs wrapping up.)

>(...) This is perhaps the core of a game of Nomic.

I agree with that a lot.

And about the propose a win thing, it’s about using proposals to change the rules to change the chances of winning of the players.

Imagine we have this distribution of win-chances (which would happen in an ideal vacuum with a player with this proposal passed and a distance difference with the 2nd guy of more than 5):

A: 100%
B: 0%
C: 0%
D: 0%

So, the players react, maybe sedating themselves with the sense that it’s “unfair” to justify making and passing a proposal that adjusts that to something like this for example:

A:40%
B:20%
C:20%
D:20%

Now, all that did was lower A’s win-chance and increase their own. Why stop at just +20% to yourself, -60% to A? Why not this?

A: 37%
B: 21%
C: 21%
D: 21%

Seems even better, right? Why stop there though? Why not make it this?

A: 0%
A: 33.3%
A: 33.3%
A: 33.3%

In the end, you’re just reducing someone else’s winchance for your profit and bribing the rest of players with winchance too to make such a proposal pass. What reason is there to stop at any certain number? Why not max it out, if that’s the best competitive move, and the reason why you want winchance is to compete?

That’s rational if the entire game you’re playing is to agree on numerical percentages and then make one die roll. But in a game of Nomic, you’ve got a base game which you could win anyway (so you’d only agree to a 33.3% split if you thought your chances of winning the main game were lower than that) and/or the option of a more complex way to split the win (perhaps a fair-seeming subgame which B proposes against C and D, but where B secretly has some experiential or loophole advantage that puts them above 33%).

Yes, totally, it’s like poker. But the distance game is so simple that there really isn’t much leeway for any complexity (excluding perhaps a Core scam, maybe a way to do daily actions more than once or glitch your GNDT values, but that’s not really an issue of this dynasty in particular).

I’m finding this conversation very interesting. I see your point about maxing out the competitive move Cuddlebeam, and fundamentally you are right, but I would not want to participate in such a move because I think it just ruins the fun (at least for me). Of course we’re playing with numbers and probabilities but (and I think you’re the one who said something like this last dynasty) what motivates people to play is the fantasy layer added over these numerical rules (this is valid for most games I suppose). So if in the end someone wins because they were the first to “escape” well I would simply say that fits the spirit of the dynasty even if there was a “numerical” way to avoid it. I guess this doesn’t make me a true Nomic player (but I’ve only played one dynasty so who knows).
Buuuuut… I’m the Director here and I’m not supposed to win but make this game funner, and I feel this hasn’t gone as well as I was hoping so I’m preparing a proposal to add more spice to the endgame. No-one is escaping my Dynasty so easily…

(Also I don’t want to annoy anyone but ‘m sort of hesitating to Veto this by the way, not because I think that winning shouldn’t be based on being the first to reach a certain distance (it feels logical even if I agree it’s way to simply right now), but because I don’t really like the idea of introducing such an easy win right in the middle of the Christmas holidays. I prefer to wait until other players return before we launch the end-game.)

(I unidle after my extended holiday; quorum remains 4 and I steal the dubious honor of being the lexicographically-greatest Failed Experiment from PineTreeQ)

Self kill, if most players aren’t sure.

lol

I posted this on my wiki profile in SHA256:

if anyone wants to gamble on a one third chance to win by
just blasting yourself up to fifty distance and staying captured
as the proposal enacts, go for it. That is if kevan doesnt decide
to selfkill if the proposal is going to pass.

I knew you were going to selfkill! Aaah!

Cuddlebeam, people probably didn’t notice because hardly anybody has a wiki profile page and therefore no-one has a reason to check them