I became the traitor, but I never used it. (I never had reason to jump offa the winning train.)

You’re lucky that it was you flipping the coin, Cuddlebeam. I was the traitor, and I would certainly have used DICE1 for that flip, given the chance!

I’d just laugh and do a proper roll if you tried to do that lol. I’m not obligated to follow your roll (or any roll, but I choose to honor pools and fulfill the best I can).

But yeah, Im grateful for Ty’s help. They were important to the win by helping fight off the other main competitor, Kevan (we were betting on Farsight’s apathy and decided to not do anything about them). I was actually set on trying to ally up from the start given how open to player interaction mechanics the theme seemed to be. I’m happy it worked out great with Ty, who is also great.

I was surprised that Kevan caught so many things in my proposals but I was just being really careless lol (and some things in hindsight were really stupid and I definitely should’ve known better). There was no deliberate attempt to add scams, I just assume that some useful scam will eventually pop up by pure entropy if I just keep on adding text to the Ruleset, being aware of the scam at the time I’m writing the Proposal (if there is any) doesn’t really matter in the end because I could just eventually comb the Ruleset for scams later and collect what entropy gives me.

This sheer sprezzatura approach is also the reason I gambled on Kevan’s scam to end the dynasty without even understanding the scam myself lol.

(I guess its actually reverse sprezzatura because outside of I think has been perceived as deliberate, calculated mentality was just an idiot ad libbing proposals lol)

Huh, you really didn’t intend “You can swap a Money you have for an Asset of your choice” as a loophole? It seemed like exactly the kind of ambiguous “an X” that you’ve used and talked about in the past. I spotted it during voting and waved it through on the grounds that it was primarily a catch-up mechanic: if I established a strong lead later then I could fix it, if I didn’t then I could use it.

Was a bit unfortunate for me that the dynasty pivoted suddenly from “six players taking game actions, including the Emperor” to “three players taking game actions” - immediately after I rejected the private offer of a peace treaty with TyGuy6 (as it already seemed very obvious from voting patterns that they were working with Cuddlebeam). I can’t remember if that was before or after the Traitor roll, but I didn’t push too hard against TyGuy6’s “I don’t know why you would think that” non-denials as it was nice to see some politics happening.

I was super stupid to not realize it immediately, but I wasn’t aware at the time.

I wish I’d been able to participate more, but I’m too busy with work to play properly :( I really enjoyed the theme though, and I loved the “everybody loses” mechanic even though it didn’t go off.

I was excited for it too lmao

Ah, also. The plan was originally that TyGuy would aim to win (this was before the -iums were even conceived, we were just aiming for most Assets) and I’d go kamikaze and tackle down anyone in our way but it sort of flipped around once Kevan shot down TyGuy twice.

Btw, why TyGuy specifically, Kevan? (I assumed it was because he was one of the three main players or something)

I felt like I was making lots of small mistakes all game, so it was good to have an ally, if only to bounce ideas around with. I thought for a long time that Attacking was allowed while the MGTA was UNDER 1200.

Kevan’s solo play is always impeccable. He was the only one who collected his weekly money before the change to Yearly Actions was enacted by pokes. I fully expected him to also buy an ice cube or two to hit Cuddlebeam with Propaganda even after the 600 mark had passed. But we got there first, I guess.

Cuddlebeam once asked me if I was the traitor… I said no, of course. So trusting! Didn’t matter in the end, though, because you can’t often beat 50% odds in a competitive dynasty.

I’m feeling like playing a dynasty that has less direct interaction, next. Something like Kevan’s with the moon bases. Even rebooting that could be interesting. Pooling seems like less fun with smaller player groups.

[Cuddlebeam] I expect Kevan went after me initially because I hadn’t raised a defense, so he only needed the one Influence, vs. around three for you?

Also an option to avoid direct pooling: an informal agreement not to split a win percentage? Could make it a “should not” in the dynastic rules, even.

Maybe we can repeal passing the mantle to someone of your choice and make it random? (I still dont get why the mantle should be the end goal to strive for still but I’m just playing along it. I prefer that the end goal is just plain achieving victory.)

Yes, targetting TyGuy6 was because there was no additional cost to taking the Propaganda action; in both cases I’d have had to buy more Influence to target Cuddlebeam.

The first Propaganda was based on TyGuy6 behaving extremely suspiciously over Reis Sources: making a full U-turn on their earlier concerns about Annual Actions and victory mechanics, declining to simply vote against Reis Sources and instead making some slow, flawed repair CfJs. It looked a lot like a Cuddlebeam/TyGuy6 offensive was about to kick off at that point, and I’d have preferred it to have one less Asset to spend.

The second was a retaliation to Cuddlebeam Propaganda’ing me: if I couldn’t respond by targetting Cuddlebeam directly, taking a shot at the player they were working closely with was near enough. (And this was back when I thought the game had six players, rather than three; if Cuddlebeam-TyGuy6 could see that I was kicking back, they might turn their attention elsewhere.)

The mantle is the thing that’s written more visibly (in the name of the next dynasty), so I think it’s natural that it has more prestige attached, and that any group victory requires some negotiation to assign the mangle. And whoever gets it deserves some respect for their successful bargaining and/or lucky dice.

I assume everyone sees the actual victories for what they are - if a group work together to push a victory over the line, it’s seen as a shared victory of that group, rather than a solitary achievement by whichever player happened to be sitting nearest to the victory condition.

[TyGuy6] “Didn’t matter in the end, though, because you can’t often beat 50% odds in a competitive dynasty.” - you could have negotiated a better deal with someone else! If someone is about to lose to a TyGuy6/Cuddlebeam pact anyway, they’d buy anything. Even a 99/1 split with you would be better for them than a 0%.

[Kevan] Haha, oh, right. In Finity (https://blognomic.com/archive/finity) the “other” wording was just a mistake. I *was* willing to patch up the infinite loophole, but I really wasn’t too concerned that anyone could win with it, and figured (before we allied anyway) that if Cuddlebeam used it, he’d be after fool’s gold, we’d buy a couple iums and patch it up, leaving his rep in tatters. I don’t think I understood the full extent of the issue, though.

That follow-up repair CfJ to remove the word “other”? I cooked up just to buy a little time. I felt bad doing it, too, but then stopped feeling bad when I realized that it might actually do what was [not originally] intended. In short, I wasn’t sure you could actually change the text of a pending CfJ, via another CfJ! (And I’m still not sure.)

I was pretty sure my odds would have been lower had I turned Traitor, and offered you a 75/25% deal, Kevan. There were so many things that could have gone wrong with that plan, and we almost had a sure thing by the point I was even considering that as a possible option.

Yeah, I don’t think I was in a position to win that one. But I think Farsight had a very strong chance of beating Cuddlebeam if the victory clock had been kept at 72 hours: with a neutral Emperor, proposals to stop the win would likely have been failing 2-2.

I guess it would even have been socially acceptable for the Traitor to allow both Cuddlebeam and Farsight to hit the victory condition (which very nearly happened anyway), and to vote FOR Farsight’s DoV while withholding their vote on Cuddlebeam’s.

That’s a traitorous way to think. I just didn’t expect any activity from Farsight at that moment, and was too preoccupied hoping he didn’t block our shared victory to plan for if he actually did!