CatChess/ChallengeGridDiscussion

On page CatChess, MoonShadow wrote: Hm. Well, the effect of style and presence was meant to be subtle, not overwhelming. Still, no effect at all might signal a need for some tweaking.. What would happen if players got a few more counters, the grids were 4x4 or even 3x3 and started with at least one cell in each row and column blocked (so you couldn't get undefeatable cats)?
AlexChurchill replied: Interesting. My initial thoughts are that this would turn some/most combats into a 50/50 guessing game - eg attacker has a column (A) of all-but-one blue, and in the nonblue (blocked) row (R) has a blue spot in a different column (B): attacker wants either col-A and any non-R row, or col-B and row-R; defender wants the reverse. Turning the previously deterministic combat system to something approaching RockScissorsPaper? (generously; more likely, a 50/50 guess) doesn't seem ideal to me. I guess I'm known for preferring deterministic combats (a la Go or Diplomacy?) to random ones (a la Risk or DotHack Enemy's destiny), though. --AlexChurchill
Vitenka riposted: Not having seen this game, I am a bad person to comment - but I feel bound to point out that RockScissorsPaper is something a bit different from random. Especially if the cats are known in advance to have bonuses in certain rows or columns. A 3x3 grid seems to bring anticipating your opponents skill into things more heavily than a 5x5 grid.

AlexChurchill was imagining a situation like the following. (Attacker's irrelevant G and defender's irrelevant B omitted for clarity.)

  Attacker's grid        Defender's grid
    B  B  -  B             - - - -
    -  -  B  -             - G - -
    -  B  -  -             - - - G
    -  -  -  -             - G - -

Recall attacker chooses row, defender chooses column. Principal strategies for attacker are {At1}: row 1 (his invested strength) or {At2}: row 2 (if he thinks defender will choose col 3). Principal choices for defender are {Def1} col 1 (if he thinks attacker chooses {At1}, his invested strength) or {Def3} col 3 (if he thinks attacker chooses {At2}). It doesn't benefit either side to choose anything other than these choices. So the relevant results matrix is:

            {Def1}           {Def3}
  {At1}  Attacker wins     Tie resolution
  {At2}  Tie resolution    Attacker wins

Hence, it becomes a simple case of who can outguess the opponent between two choices... which is what I meant by a 50/50 guess.

Having played the game in its deterministic form, I don't think changing things so some challenges degenerate to 50/50 guesses is an improvement. --AlexChurchill

: Mph. You make a strong case. It seems a pity to lose that entire aspect of things, but refactoring needs to be ruthless. What if the challenge grid outcome was, say, a small bonus/penalty to self-esttem instead of an outright win/lose? - MoonShadow

Which I agree to. I'm not entirely clear of the way counters are placed. {snip about three different failed attempts to make it work} Humm. That's quite tricky, actually. The RPS does come into the above example, since you can try to analyse which strategy your opponent takes more often. But it is quickly defeated by random play (a feature of all this sort of sub-game) There needs to be some associated risk with using a stronger line, so that "more likely to win" also includes an element of "but if you don't win, it's worse" I have no idea how this might work. Perhaps if there are prefilled squares on the grid which become unfilled once involved in a tie? --Vitenka

: If you lose, you take the counter from the selected square in your grid and give it to your opponent to place as they like? Or is that too powerful?

Such a loss (it seems to me) would swing the game very quickly to the winner of the first contest. This may be the desired effect, of course - it would make the early game very much more cautious. I was thinking that you would just erase that square. That way, if you use the bonus row, you are taking a risk - the cat becomes permanently weaker if you tie, but if you lose you still lose the cat completely, so you are reducing one risk at the cost of increasing another. Whilst still, technically, 50/50 or deterministic you get an element of personality and bluff involved. --Vitenka