My starting recommendation, just for opening the discussion. The merits of the numbers I chose are very debatable, but it’s a starting point:

Brendan x2 (8%)
Habanero x0 (0%)
jjm3x3 x1 (4%)
JonathanDark x0 (0%)
Josh x15 (60%)
Kevan x5 (20%)
redtara x0 (0%)
summai x0 (0%)
Taiga x2 (8%)
Titanic x0 (0%)

In the absence of other information, I think that Kevan and Brendan do not have better pot odds than summai or Taiga, and that 60% is too low for me based on current gamestate, in which it would be genuinely hard to see anytime catching me up (two rounds of union-led Review Boards having failed to deliver a single work result).

My opening gambit would be: jim3x3 2%, JonathanDark 2%, Kevan, Summai, Taiga and Brendan 4% each, Josh 80%.

Josh definitely has a strong lead with players failing to support each others’ Review Boards, but the path of that lead passes under the very large shadow of the current Demolition, which puts the game into an unambiguous stalemate.

Since a Demolition can only be closed voluntarily by its highest bidder, and that it blocks further Building while it is open, Josh can only win the game if somebody agrees to close the Demolition. (Josh cannot close it personally, as closing it on a high wager will result in Accidents, which block the closer from achieving victory. And if the Demolition is never closed, nobody will ever be able to get above 500 Expertise.)

My mentee Summai privately realised this some time ago, and had wagered 8 to get control of the Demolition. They mentioned it to me a couple of days ago and we started talking about it; when JonathanDark raised the bid to 9, I made the call to outbid that with 14 (I then made an inadvertently illegal raise to 36, having missed “where X is a number between 1 and the Structure”).

The game went into orphan variable limbo at this point.

Habanero pointed out “where X is a number between 1 and the Structure” on Discord, a clause which Jonathan and I had overlooked. I immediately realised that this meant that making a Wager equal to the Structure was enough to lock down the Demolition (since no player could post a higher Wager, and Disasters could topple the Building but neither close the Demolition nor increase the Building’s Structure) and posted such a comment to the Demolition.

So that’s how the game would have shaken out had the orphan limbo not descended: somebody would have either closed the Demolition early (either at Josh’s request or recklessly), or a player would have realised that a wager of 21 put the game into an immovable stalemate - the game could not have continued without Josh and the stalemater cutting some kind of deal.

How that breaks down depends on who else was aware of this possibility, and would also have been able to perform it. Ignoring the admin-advantage-CfJ timeline and just focusing on SCs, only Brendan, Habanero, jjm3x3, myself and Taiga could have wagered 21.

A genuine stalemate in any game is a tie, which I would say means a 50/50 chop. If we’re not sure who would have been on the other side of that stalemate, I’d break that down to 50% Josh, with the remaining 50% divided among the players who were able to and genuinely intended to invoke it. (I’d also give 20% of whatever my share of that is to Summai, for drawing my attention to the Demolition’s control factor in the first place.)

There is scope for JonathanDark to have closed the Demolition on Josh’s behalf and taken the hit, before anyone could raise the wager to 21, but given that they could have done that on the 30th (they were leading on a wager of 9 for a full hour) and didn’t, it looks like we can discount it.

I’ll disclose that JonathanDark and I were working together, and didn’t close the Demolition on the 30th due to a timing issue.

I’ll not be inclined to accept 50% equity on a variety of grounds - not least that I can take a single accident and still win at the relatively cheap cost of my Specialisation (“An Engineer who has a Specialisation may lose that Specialisation to reduce their Accidents by 1”), so counting me out of the demolition race is a mistake.

Closing a Demolition results in a number of Accidents equal to the Wager; there’s no way that I can see that the current Demolition could have been closed with a Wager of 1. Is there a way around that, or a way to churn Specialisations?

I am claiming that there are no valid Responses on the Demolition.

The Response Format requires a comment to satisfy

The X in this Response is larger than the X in the most recent valid Response, unless this is the first valid Response

In the above, “this Response” is undefined, and “this” (the comment) cannot be a Response, both because of the Catch-22 that a comment cannot be a regarded as a Response unless it meets the Response Format.

Following traditions (I’ve heard), Brendan would’ve been the only Engineer capable of Ending the Demolition with 0 Responses.

Oh, interesting. That does somewhat make the Demolition discussion redundant.

What’s “Following traditions (I’ve heard)” in reference to? Brendan’s Wager was the third comment on the Demolition, and appears otherwise unremarkable.

My guess is that if there is no “Engineer who posted the most recent valid Response” then it becomes “a game variable has neither a default value nor a starting value”, but that is now defeated by the clause that states that such a variable can’t be an Engineer’s name, so yes, Brendan is unremarkable in this regard.

So the game is soft-locked on the demolition forever until it’s fixed by votable matter; I’m more confident that that issue would be fixed than I would be if it was elective on a single player.

“Following traditions” was a reference to what Josh said in Proposal: Yellow Pages (“ Brendan does like to use that reference as a scam from time to time.”)

And yes my logic is exactly what Josh just said.

I am not proposing a roll distribution but I definitely think Brendan should have a larger percentage because he has the control during the stalemate.

Brendan’s scam of choice was being the alphabetically earliest player, which we voted to remove prior to the start of the Demolition.

I’d have said you could also read “this Response” as a referent for “this comment, if it is a Response”; true if it is, false if it’s not. “This thing is only a bird if this ‘bird’ has wings.”

But if we agree to amend the Demolition rule to say “the X in this Response Comment” so that the mechanic definitely functions as intended, we are just back at “first player to wager 21 is in a stalemate with Josh”.

Right, which is why I suspect that we wouldn’t resolve it that way - not least because that wouldn’t be amending the mechanic so that it functioned “as intended”, as the intent was clearly not that the highest bidder would be able to lock the game and hold it to ransom.

My guess is that in that situation we’d end up repealing Demolitions altogether as being unfixable, but a time limit on resolving a demolition would be the minimum I would expect, and given that it would be a quorum vote where no player had a specific interest through being the player that *had* captured the game I’d be surprised if that didn’t pass.

Oh sorry, I thought A1 Loophole Repair didn’t enact. If that’s the case this Demolition cannot be ended if I’m reading the rules correctly.

In your example, I can only agree with the interpretation if the quotes were there, because that shows ‘bird’ is used tentatively or with some doubt. However, in the Ruleset, we don’t have it.

Now that we’re in Endgame Lockdown, we can’t amend the rule. I was going to raise this if someone tried to end the Demolition, but that didn’t happen.

I am proposing an equal split amongst every Engineer, based on the fact that we didn’t have a chance to amend a forever locked game.

No way would an equal split be anywhere close to fair; just because we didn’t get to amend the issue doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have done.

[Josh] “the intent was clearly not that the highest bidder would be able to lock the game and hold it to ransom” - sure, this is a loophole, and it deserves as much credit as you using a loophole to earn seven million SCs a while back. You even suggested at the time that we should outright award you victory for using a loophole to lock the game and hold it to ransom.

If we now think that the game has hit a wall because nobody can end a Demolition and we need to propose our way out of that, I don’t think that throwing out one loophole but respecting and retaining the other is an equitable solution.

> redtara x0 (0%)

No.

@Kevan Sure, and the outright-victory CfJ failed - what’s your point?

Relitigating a matter that is long since resolved feels like a desperation station move to me; I understand that you’re scrambling a little for negotiating leverage but it’s transparently not going to work.

We do live in a world where the demolition issue would have frozen the game and we have a hundred examples of solid precident for how that would have played out: a CfJ to resolve its issues would have been raised and voted on, and one would eventually have passed. As per your own objection to Welcome To The Orphanage, it would have been holistic, as a CfJ to fix the game that leaves it unfixed would be unlikely to pass. And when it did I would still have infinite rerolls and no-one else would have an enactable Review Board.

Those are the facts on the ground; I’m not saying I couldn’t lose from my position, as you may have found a way to get that sixth vote on a review board or you may have found quorum to munchkin my SCs away or any of the loose-ball scenarios that we all know can exist. But that’s not worth more than 20% equity. I’m making a fair offer, here.

(I hope no-one minds but I made this sticky; it seems too important to keep losing.)

I’m not scrambling for anything, Josh.

My point is that locking the game with a loophole is something that you were so proud of that you considered it to be victory material (even in the absence of a victory condition), and which you’re now saying is something we should simply reverse and ignore. I’m unconvinced by this line of argument.

Yes, your victory CfJ failed, and nobody on the Demolition side should be venturing a similar argument that a stalemate means they have won outright either. A stalemate is a stalemate.

Interesting that you’re unconvinced by the argument, Kevan, when you were very convinced by it on my failed CfJ (“The game can obviously also proceed by proposing or CfJing to change one line in the ruleset and to rewind the wiki gamestate page a couple of steps, which is what we’d do if we hit this situation by accident”) - and, indeed, on Brendan’s successful CfJ in Habanero I (“Weighing up “what could have happened but didn’t” seems the only way to go”). Help me out with this - am I missing something or is it pure opportunism?

Sure. That first one was a response to your victory CfJ claiming that when we hit a stalemate we either have to throw out “most” of the game and start again, or declare the stalemater the victor. My point was that the group can always propose its way forward - it’s what we’re doing right now.

“What could have happened but didn’t” is also what I think we should be doing here - we went into orphanage limbo at a point when several players could have triggered a stalemate, so we should try to work out (by rolling dice as needed) who that player would have been, and how that stalemate would have gone down.

Go ahead, then: starting from the premise that the demolition lock can’t be resolved by a single player and would require a CfJ to resolve, game out for me ‘what could have happened but didn’t’ - that’s all I’ve been trying to do in this thread amongst the chaff being thrown up by yourself and others, so lets hear your proposal. How would it play out, and to what extent would it have adjusted the underlying current merit position of the dynasty?

BlogNomic: A Counterfactual History

Posting a formal suggested chop as an equation and on the main thread, from the starting point of this endgame being a 50-50 standoff where one loophole has blocked another and nobody wants to repeal both of them:

* 50% to Josh;
* 50% to be divided proportionally between Brendan, Habanero, jjm3x3, Taiga and myself such that the players in that group who say they were already aware of the Demolition deadlock loophole receive double the weight of those (if any) that don’t;
* Then split 20% of whatever my share is off to Summai.

I’d like to mention that I would not like any share of the chop.

Everyone should get at least a little bit of a chance. This is nomic, where anything can happen!

There’s four loopholes on the table. The fourth one wasn’t in anyone’s favour. The two loopholes essentially has the same outcome: No players can end a Demolition, and Josh’s loophole was blocked.

[Kevan] I was conscious of your plans of deadlocking the Demolition but was more convinced that it didn’t matter because of the Response Format problem. I would argue that if we were going down the path of your suggestion then any Engineers that realises either of the two loopholes should get a larger share.

So there it feels to me like there is a lot going on here and I am conflicted on how exactly to land since I still feel like I am pretty new to playing. Having said all that I will admit missed the demo lock until it got mentioned so I am fine getting a small portion of the chop, having said that it seems like there was also enough of untapped potential for others who are not Josh to have turned the game in their favor even if only a little bit. To suggest that this dynasty should end with and 80/20 split for Josh doesn’t seem right given all the scheming that the rest of us have been doing.

@Josh I know you have been very clear that a 60/40 is too low, what would you say to a 65/35 in your favor?

[Taiga] Fair point, I’ll factor that in.

@jjm3x3 Let me think on that and get back to you. 65% is heading in the right direction. I’d fine 75% easier but there may be some work we can do around the balance of other players’ shares to bridge the gap.

Per my comment on the fourth chop proposal, my winshare just based purely on the current standing of the victory resource is 63%... which should by itself put paid to any 50% nonsense

[Taiga] I am really not convinced by the argument about the response format for the demolition. It is very clear from the wording what the rule says. If the power of the demolition deadlock is discounted because of the wording, it will set a very unnerving precedent of moving the focus away from making rules and finding loopholes to making sure the language is watertight, which I think it never will be since a lot what we understand has implicit meaning attached to it that is never well defined. Plus it will be very annoying to always keep track of every word and every sentence.

I understand that mathematicians are pedantic, but there is a limit. To give a math analogy, this kind of interpretation of the rules will move the game away from ‘math’ to ‘philosophy of math’. However, if the demolition rule is discounted because of the wording, I will never henceforth hesitate to play the game from this ‘philosophy’ standpoint, however annoying it may be for the other players.

Per my previous comment, I don’t think Josh has the best chance of winning, but it definitely is much better than everyone else. As a result I will vote for proposals that roughly satisfy the following criteria:

Josh has a share between 50 to 60 percent.

Kevan has a nontrivial share from the remaining part (since he and Habanero were the only ones who could have executed the demolition plan and habanero decided to withdraw).

I would also like to withdraw, since I currently have no intention of leading a dynasty and mantle limitation rules are active.

I think JonathanDark’s first comment here is the ideal distribution for me.

Why would e.g. Josh deserve any more share than I do? Neither of us has Safety Checks.

I turned off the sticky-note option on this. Misty has channeled The Mighty Thor and laid down the hammer.

[Bucky] Josh was a player of the game at the point at which we voted to hive off the game and decide a winner according to “some criteria that seems agreeable”, and you were not. Feel free to state your case, though.