That seems very usable by someone with a switchcomb, and not super usable by anybody else

not if montereys coast passes

Which at present it isn’t, because your voting block is tediously organised

(No shade - a well-organised voting block is the only unbeatable play in BlogNomic)

Morally, I don’t try to go for an alliance that reaches Quorum size, because the game just ends at that moment. Proposals are omnipotent and with majority control, you can do anything.

But pretty much any dynasty can be won that way because it relies on the Proposal mechanics which are Core rules. And that’s boring.

My alliance winning strategy actually fell apart in Derrick 3 because with someone idling from inactivity, the alliance became Quorum in size and people weren’t motivated to leverage our alliance to just win. https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=The_Third_Dynasty_of_Derrick

Quorum-2 is the biggest I’ll generally go. I thought I was safe with Quorum-1 at Derrick 3’s, but I wasn’t.

(That said, I might go with Quorum-1 if just one person unidling doesn’t make it Quorum, but that is pretty much the limit)

(That said, I might go with Quorum-1 if just one person unidling doesn’t make it Quorum, but that is pretty much the limit)

I still don’t buy the idea that quorum-alliances only refrain from immediately proposing victory from some magnanimous moral high ground. Sure, if you recruit 10 disinterested humans from an off-site haunt they can vote you into power and wander back off, but a quorum of actual BlogNomic players will only propose to crown someone if they can agree how to pass the mantle afterwards. Which pretty much comes down to whether each of them feels that they have a less than (100/quorum)% chance of winning through other avenues of wit or negotiation at that point.

But not all of them can be correct to think that they each have more than (100/quorum)% chance to win, right?

I don’t think BlogNOmic players are purely rational though. The current situation disproves it, in fact - let’s lok at the Cuddlebeam / card / Tantusar alliance. Do each of those players have a less than (100/quorum)% chance of winning? Yes, all of them do. Quorum is impacted by low-activity players, so every marginally-active player has a better chance of winning than quorum would suggest. Two of those players have substantially higher probability than that, being presumptively the leader and second-placer as things currently stand.

They’re working together not just because it is in each of their individual interests. Perhaps some of them don’t actually want to win; perhaps they’re working a more meta-dynastic alliance; perhaps some of them just enjoy the alliance game more than the other game. Hard to know. But it’s not just about appraisal of self-interest for all players.

Please excuse typos - phone, thumbs, cold. The less than should be a more than in sentence 3.

Also, @Kevan: having the alliance be too big and be “unfun” because of the degree of noncompetitiveness and control over the game was explicitly the reason people dropped out of the Derrick 3 alliance.

But also @Josh:

Cuddlebeam / card / Tantusar alliance? This will be fun to bring up on the post-dynasty comments lol

I calls em like I sees em :)

If I’m wrong then fair enough but you do all seem to be voting with each other quite a bit.

[Cuddlebeam] Sure, and nobody can be sure of their odds of winning in a game with hidden information - let alone a game where unexpectedly scamming the rules is a valid tactic. But rationally I’m only going to join a five-person equal-split quorum cabal if I feel that my current gameplay has me languishing among the bottom 20% of all players (or if I’m being offered a better split).

[Josh] I guess this is more the thing where active players can often end up in a position to help one another win through dynastic gameplay. We’ve certainly seen dynasties before where two players find themselves 1 Macguffin short of the total needed to win, and begin frantic counter-negotiations with various kingmakers. I’m really just frowning at Cuddlebeam’s idea that quorum-victory-cabals are often hanging over the game, restrained only by their moral rectitude.

@Kevan - oh, I agree with that. I think alliances, even informal ones, are comparatively rare, or at least they were five years ago.

I have the subjective and limited impression that what Cuddlebeam terms above-and-beyond moral virtue is something I tend to see as just playing the game in good faith.

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