Thursday, September 23, 2021

Post dynastic discussion thread

Interregnum open thread

Comments

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

24-09-2021 00:28:19 UTC

As always, I’m not a fan of the no collabs rule. At least there was somewhat of a way around it this time around. I didn’t really start playing in earnest until a week in, and by then it was too late to join any of the major alliances. I made a couple of attempts later on but that door had closed. There was one clumsy grab at victory that I made, with my Intimidation proposal: I didn’t have any ideologies at the time, so I was hoping that loophole wouldn’t get spotted and I could pull through with a Collaboration Victory. It did, though. I feel like the Panopticon AI Core got underused, especially by the underdogs: Having that intel as to what some of the big player’s ideologies were could have been huge, what with Tips.

Clucky: he/him

24-09-2021 03:10:28 UTC

The big players were changing their ideologies as much as possible anyways so I’m not sure Panopticon AI Core would’ve been that helpful even if people had completed it because you’d need to both hit a worker belonging to one of the leaders and have that not be one from an ideology they’ve already abandoned. It probably needed to target more than two workers to really be effective.

I think the biggest problem with this dynasty is the victory route Kevan used was both uncomplicated to pull off and reasonably easy, whereas the other victory routes required some impressive feats of somehow removing everyone’s adherents or making everyone hot which there was no straightforward way to do. So it kinda funneled everyone into that one route, which of course sped things up. But also the tiebreak rules meant only the person in the lead would actually win.

Josh: Observer he/they

24-09-2021 09:28:04 UTC

There are bits of this ruleset that I really liked a lot, but I agree that they didn’t come together.

I think that messages should have been publicly posted after being censored, rather than being sent privately to their recipients.

I think buildings needed to be pinned down much earlier, and the effects should have been bumped up considerably.

And I agree with Clucky that the revolutionary win became very easy compared to the collaborator win, which is a shame, as I really want to find a way to somehow encourage BlogNomic to have a betrayal mechanic compelling enough to be used. (I accept that dealing with Cuddlebeam’s performative displays of discontent is an inhibitor towards that end in all circumstances, but I think even that is overcomable).

Kevan: he/him

24-09-2021 11:50:21 UTC

I enjoyed the censorship mechanic a lot, but was worried that other groups had worked out and locked down bulletproof codes in the early Cycles, before stronger censorship came in, so was reluctant to build on it too much.

No Collaboration plus Memory Hole was interesting for allowing effective betrayal through untraceable secret actions. Which I guess is just Werewolf where you agree not to reveal roles except when required, but that does seem like something we should try out again, with an Emperor who plays it in the right spirit and refuses proposals demanding post-dynastic reveals.

Was a shame that there weren’t many secret actions to employ, though, just Tips and Arrests. When Clucky broke ranks and proposed that I lose the game, I couldn’t (since I didn’t know his Ideology or Adherents, and the Copbots would have taken a while to fire anyway) do anything about it directly.