BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

Nice mopwork.

My win was reasonably legitimate, and 1.9 already prohibits spam and the malicious use of DoVs to lock up the game.

Josh, I don’t doubt your win. Yup, but 1.8 is only a “should”, so you can’t just go and fail the DoV.
And the main issue here is the strict “exceed Quorum” thing. It was suggested to just remove the clause, so that it reads “When a DoV is failed, the Apprentice who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was failed”. Given that it makes little sense to make a DoV after a victorious one, I suggest to not mention that the DoV has to be failed.

Because it loses the “majority against” clause. There have been several circumstances where someone has tried to win, then still gone on to win in a legit manner within five days. (and even a few where the majority against clause has backfired and delayed the game for a few days).

No simultaneous DoVs from the same person? I like that.

But I dislike trying a DoV completely killing your chances at winning later. The “majority against” should probably be tweaked in some way (its weird that if everyone votes and its deicded by 1 vote, you can’t post another DoV but if only half the players vote and they are all against (other than you) you’re good). Clearly we want some way to stop people from continually trying shitty DoVs, but this isn’t the answer.

What’s “trying a DoV”? I think you should make a DoV only when you are sure that you’ve won. If you tried to scam the rules, and failed, and at the same time you could win in a legit manner, then why scam?

(CoV) Fair enough; I hate when patches need patches.

Just because I’m sure I’ve won doesn’t mean everyone else agrees that I’ve won

Then you should choose the way of achieving the victory which you think the majority will find sound.
I like this responsibility thing: if you go for a win, you should have something at stake.

[Josh] Your win was a rare case of a victory condition pivoting entirely on the passing of time during Hiatus, I don’t think that kind of double-DoV is likely to come up again. A simpler rule is usually a better one.

[Clucky] The problem isn’t “continual” bad DoVs - just one is enough to lock the game for a day. If we relax the downsides to failed DoVs, it becomes more tempting to throw out a maybe-that-works DoV in the heat of the endgame, without checking your working thoroughly enough, before anyone else can beat you to it. (Which seems to be what happened in the Magical Apprentice dynasty.)

I’m not suggesting relaxing the downsides on failed DoV’s. I agree that people should be punished for DoVs that are actually complete BS. But I think it is reasonable for someone to try victory, get out rules lawyered, and then still successfully win.

I’ve looked through all the old DoV’s to see when this has come up. There have been like 4-5 times that someone has posted a DoV, it has failed, and then they have posted another succesful DoV later.

http://blognomic.com/2010/12/ Josh tries a scam, not sure why it fails the first time (lack of votes?) but then he does a similar thing and successfully wins.

There were a few cases of people making DoV’s just to extend haitus for whatever reason, which could be a little shady but is sometimes necessary.

http://blognomic.com/2007/03/ - I made a victory attempt, it failed early but after more discussion I convinced everyone the attempt was legit and posted another one where I won.

http://blognomic.com/2006/10/ - Rodney tried a scammy victory then won legit. This is what we’re trying to prevent, stop people from posting scammy victories so they don’t kill their chances later.

http://blognomic.com/2005/12/ - Excalabur accidentally posts a bad DoV then wins later. Again, probably what we’re trying to prevent.

http://blognomic.com/2005/09/ - Chronos tries a DoV, fails, wins later.

So like, in addition to the two scenarios in the last two dynasties, there have been like 9-10 total times this has come up in the last 8 years. And of those, I think around half would’ve probably just delayed the game five days rather than letting someone else win. So I’m really not sure this is necessary.

Maybe only delay if there are no FOR votes (other than their own?)

, but would support preventing multiple DoVs from being in flight at once by the same author.

but I’d support forbidding multiDoVing.

Digging through the history of this rule, out of curiosity, the mechanic was originally enacted as a “small cooldown after a failed DoV”, in 2008. From context, it looks like the “exceed quorum” aspect was unintentional and was meant to read “equal or exceed”.

[Clucky] I doubt that any of these would have “just delayed the game five days” under a ruleset with a DoV limit. Five days is two whole rounds of proposals; other players would not sit politely waiting for the flawed declarer to have another go at it.