Friday, September 25, 2020

Proposal: New Tok

Timed out and passed, 5-0. Josh

Adminned at 27 Sep 2020 20:20:06 UTC

Change the Generate Time atomic action to read as follows:

* Carry out the instructions in the rule Round 4.

Add a new rule to the ruleset, called Round 4:

When instructed to an Island must carry out the following changes to the ruleset, in full and in order.

Rewrite the rule Turns as follows:

The game is divided into Rounds, which are tracked as a non-negative integer that is tracked in the Great Sea page of the wiki, and which defaults to 1.

Each Island has a Turn Tracker, which is tracked in the Great Sea page of the wiki and is either x or -, and which defaults to -. Whenever the Turn Tracker of all Islands is -, Gaia must Progress Time, which is an atomic action with the following steps:

* Remove the text “DELAY:” from the title of every rule which begins with “DELAY:” and from every line of a dynastic rule where the line begins with “DELAY:”
* Identify the Pool Dice, and generate and set the Weather
* Increase the Round by 1
* Set the Turn Tracker of all Islands to x
* Make a post announcing that a new Round has started, and what the Weather, the Sea Type, and the Pool Dice for that round will be

Once in each Round, each Island may take a Turn, by carrying out the following atomic action:

* Carry out this entire list of Underground Actions in any order:-
** Roll: Select one of their Terrain Dice and the Pool Dice, randomly select one effect from each, then apply that effect
** Flood: If it is Round 5, set the values of all tracked gamestate information (except Topology) for all Islands to their new-player default values, then Erode all Islands, then remove this bullet point from the ruleset.
**Shift: Either increment their Pressure by 1, or set their Pressure to zero.
**Consume: Check the difference between their Animal Biomass and Foliage scores. If the former is greater than the latter, reduce its Foliage by the difference between the two, to a minimum of zero, with any excess reduction being taken from that Island’s Animal Biomass score instead
**Contain: Roll DICE100. If the result is lower than 3 times their pressure, explode
*Selectively carry out some, all or none of this list of Overground Actions, no more than once each per turn, in any order:-
**Deposit: Add a new level with 0 land to the bottom (end) of their topology
**Adjust: Take an Dice Face Action as per the rule Adjustments.
**Seed: Alter their Pool Dice vote.
*Propogate: set the value of one of Schwingrasen’s held gamestate variables to match their own value for that same Variable
*Set their own Turn Tracker to - and make a post to the blog summarising their Turn

Remove the text “If an Island’s Turn Timer is an even number, then that Island is in a Receding Sea. If an Island’s Turn Timer is an odd number, then that Island is in a Strong Sea” from the rule Tectonics.

Change the text “except for Turn Timer” in the rule The Floating Island to “except for the Turn Tracker”.

Delete this rule.

Add a new rule to the ruleset, called Pool Dice:

Each Island has a Pool Dice, which must be the name of a single default dice or “-”, is tracked in the Great Sea page of the wiki, and defaults to -.

If Gaia is required to identify the Pool Dice then the Pool Dice is whichever default dice has named in the Pool Dice field of most Islands, with ties broken by random selection. If an Island is required to select an effect from a Pool Dice then they must select from the default version of that dice, as established in the rule Dice.

Change the text of the Rainstorm effect in the rule Weather to read:

All Basic Effects generated on a Green dice have +1 effect.

Change the text of the Drought effect in the rule Weather to read:

All Basic Effects generated on a Brown dice have +1 effect.

If the rule Adjustments contains the text “Spend 1 Mana: Create a Time Crystal in your ownership with a value between 45 and 55. This is tracked in your Turn Timer column as a value in parenthesis” then remove it.

This now also takes out Receding and Strong seas, as they weren’t doing anything.

Comments

derrick: he/him

25-09-2020 15:05:54 UTC

Is there a good reason we’re rewriting the entire rule? I find that to be rather disruptive to making proposals, and most of this is copying, not real rewriting.

Josh: Observer he/they

25-09-2020 15:18:09 UTC

I find it easier and more intuitive to write that way.

derrick: he/him

25-09-2020 15:32:41 UTC

“Change the Generate Time atomic action to read as follows:”

will completely overwrite generate time rather than adding to it. you should fix that.

derrick: he/him

25-09-2020 15:34:04 UTC

Also, this destroys half of Chris Tall if it passes.

Josh: Observer he/they

25-09-2020 15:58:32 UTC

@derrick overwriting the whole atomic action is deliberate; it means that the rule changes fully to the new version and then the atomic action triggers again from the beginning under the new regime.

This and Chris Tall are contradictory.

derrick: he/him

25-09-2020 16:18:55 UTC

If they’re contradictory, you should destroy all of it, not half of it.

This may have been easier and more intuitive to write, but I can’t say that about reading it.

Josh: Observer he/they

25-09-2020 16:23:52 UTC

Thanks - have included reversion of the rest of Chris Tall.

Clucky: he/him

25-09-2020 17:51:03 UTC

Turn timer provides a nice forcing function of requiring people to take their turns. Its certainly not without its problems (hence the attempted use of double time to speed things up) but I worry this might introduce new problems if people want to strategically wait to take their turns.

I’m also not fully sure I understand the point of Schwingrasen now. You can no longer get stuff out of Schwingrasen, right? Which I think might be needed to prevent pooling, but now its write only memory

Brendan: he/him

25-09-2020 17:53:59 UTC

for

Josh: Observer he/they

25-09-2020 17:57:24 UTC

Schwingrasen does need some thought. A few people seem to be uncomfortable with it and so it needs to be either developed or removed. I like it as a field for light player interaction and as a way of mitigating the mid-dynasty new player problem, but the problem is how to make it interesting for existing players as well, who don’t necessarily have an incentive to give mid-dynasty new players a leg up.

I’m not keen on adding very direct player interaction, so strategic waiting shouldn’t be a factor, but if timing is a problem then we can add a real-time component to turn-taking as well. That said - I’m not wedded to this proposal or approach. I’m offering it to the Islands as an alternative structure, to adopt and develop or reject as they wish. This method will be quicker, the existing method will be more legible.

derrick: he/him

25-09-2020 18:02:19 UTC

Does this overwrite delay, or does delay persist?

Josh: Observer he/they

25-09-2020 18:03:40 UTC

Delay persists.

Kevan: he/him

25-09-2020 18:47:39 UTC

Combining turn order with zero player interaction was looking increasingly unnecessary.

for

Bais:

26-09-2020 06:42:40 UTC

for there are many interesting mechanisms in this dynasty, but enforcing the turn order was severely limiting everybody’s ability to explore/exploit them all..  effects on player interactions (*if* they’ll be introduced) are valid, but there are none so far which would break by this change, and if we ever introduce any we can take the new regime into account.

derrick: he/him

27-09-2020 01:04:32 UTC

imperial