Friday, January 10, 2025

Proposal: Snail-like Reflexes

Withdrawn. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 10 Jan 2025 23:07:55 UTC

In the Rule “Plays”, after the text “at least three greater than every other Snail’s” add the text “or if a Snail other than that Snail has made a Play within the last 60 minutes”

Reducing the ability of a player to “snipe” another player by making a Play in between another player’s Plays, so that timing isn’t as big of an issue. Also makes collaborating a bit more tricky, though not impossible.

Comments

Josh: Mastermind he/they

10-01-2025 09:13:31 UTC

against Combo-breaking is fun.

Habanero:

10-01-2025 14:38:24 UTC

Conveniently if you have a way to win in one sequence of moves alone this prevents anyone else from stopping you. If the stakes weren’t so high I’d be for this, but right now I’d like to avoid drastic changes to the gameplay going into this final race unless they’re fixes against

ais523: Mastermind

10-01-2025 17:47:17 UTC

Hmm… if there isn’t a way to win in a single sequence of moves, this doesn’t really matter; if there is, but nobody tries to snipe it, it again doesn’t matter; and if there is, and someone tries to snipe it, this basically changes the result “there are overlapping actions by different players leading to an unclear mess of CFJs” to “the first person to attempt the sequence wins”. Neither is really a desirable result, but which is more desirable? (Note that the current rules really don’t handle simultaneous actions well – sniping people by making a play in between their plays is all well and good, but what about sniping people by making a play during their plays? It’s really unclear how to resolve that.)

This reminds me of a type of proposal I’ve made in previous dynasties, “I already know that the dynasty is going to end in a scam which would work regardless, but want to manipulate things so that it ends cleanly rather than in a mess of CFJs”. (For timing scams in particular, there are huge potential Fair Play issues if two players are both trying to do something at the last possible moment, because MediaWiki handles simultaneous edits by rejecting the later edit, which could be unexpected behaviour.)

I am in favour of things that avoid masses of CFJs, but also against things that allow other players to win the dynasty without me having a chance to stop them. Ideally, we’d fix the potential problem a different way.

JonathanDark: he/him

10-01-2025 18:07:02 UTC

I’m actually thinking the opposite: I suspect someone has a way to win via simple collaboration. Now that Waking Hours is gone, it’s very easy for collaborators to quickly enable each other to get to the Finish Line in the lowest number of plays. There’s a stronger incentive to do so with the clause of Coregency now available. I was trying to throw a monkey wrench into any such plans.

Habanero:

10-01-2025 18:28:53 UTC

I’m also not terribly interested in the optimal strategy occasionally being one player staying up all night and taking a play every 59 minutes to delay an opponent until Danger is Spotted and kills them; I doubt anyone would be willing to do that but it probably shouldn’t be rewarded

ais523: Mastermind

10-01-2025 18:47:34 UTC

FWIW, I don’t think the Coregency outcome matters so much – even if two players tie, only one of them can declare victory and thus I will only be considering one of them to have won. If I remember correctly, in BlogNomic’s early history, mantle passes were usually “because I don’t feel confident running a dynasty, I’ll pass to someone more experienced in the hope it produces a better dynasty” rather than a reward.

In fact, I think explicitly aiming for a Coregency (rather than just having it happen as the result of a tie) would be a Fair Play violation (“A Snail should not [...] trade actions or favours in one Dynasty of Blognomic for actions or favours in another Dynasty of Blognomic.”) – if a conspiracy is aiming for a Coregency specifically, that would mean that one player is giving up their win chance for the current dynasty in order to gain Imperial control over the next.

JonathanDark: he/him

10-01-2025 19:02:33 UTC

Interesting take. I hadn’t considered that.

JonathanDark: he/him

10-01-2025 23:07:37 UTC

against Withdrawn