Combo-breaking is fun.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Interesting take. I hadn’t considered that.

Withdrawn