Daniel Lepage on 31 Dec 2003 16:38:27 -0000


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] Tafl anyone? 


On Dec 30, 2003, at 11:51 PM, Craig wrote:


{{
The game is played on a board 13 spaces on a side, which is initially empty. At any given time, every position on the board is either empty, or occupied by a Tafl Piece, either a Pawn or a Hnefi, belonging to a certain player. The gameboard has two dimensions, so every position may be represented by an ordered pair of numbers. In every dimension, the lowest legal value is 1 and 
the highest legal value is 13.
}}


Can we assume that they're numbered in order?


in a single dimension during each move, and are considered to pass
through
all of the spaces between their original space and their destination, inclusive. There are two limits on the distance a Tafl Piece may move. 
It
may not move off of the edge of the board, and it may not pass through 
a
space containing another Tafl Piece.


Any piece can move like this? It seems that the rapid placement and
rescue of Hnefis is then the best way to go...


Yes, but your Hnefi cannot be used in a capture.
In real forms of Tafl, only one player has a Hnefi at all. It starts at the center of the board, as do all that player's pieces. Eir opponent has about twice as many pieces, which start closer to the edges. I'm not 100% sure how 
to capture that spirit in a balanced form of the game.
It doesn't matter if Hnefi cannot be used to capture. Under these rules, the most profitable strategy for every player is to place as many Hnefis as possible, and then escape them all for 10 points apiece. Capturing costs more to get the pawns, takes longer, is harder to achieve, and doesn't pay back as much.
One could argue that this should refer to PGo Allies and Moves as well, so that an ally in PGo who was an enemy in PTafl could lock you down by 
moving in PGo a lot.
Or that the games should be completely separate: If A is allied with B and 
C
in Go, at any time they could decide to prevent A from moving in Tafl ever. 
Although then A would break the alliance, so the net effect is to make
alliances trickier. Which is interesting politically--this is a good idea, actually. We could abstract this by defining a Game System, where allies in 
game A affect game B if A and B are in the same System.


The latter is clearly preferable. I amend my proposal by inserting the
following text at the end of section C:

{{
An alliance in Political Tafl and an alliance in Political Go have no
relation to one another. Two players may be allies in one game and opponents 
in another.
}}
I don't think that solves the problem - the rules still refer to being an 'ally' of another player, without specifying whether that means a PGo ally, a PTafl ally, or some sort of mystical alliance governed by something else. 


If a Tafl Piece has two Pawns which are adjacent to it and whose
positions
differ from it in the same dimension, it is captured.


Even if those Pawns are owned by the same player?
Here is where we'd want to use (and first fix) the Opponent definition. Also, you didn't capitalize "captured" here--I think we're case sensitive. 
Though that can just be rectified.


I make the following replacements.

{{
Anyone who is not an Ally to a given player is considered an Opponent of 
that player.
}}

becomes

{{
Anyone who is not an Ally to a given player is considered an Opponent of 
that player, except for the player emself.
}}

and

{{
If a Tafl Piece has two Pawns which are adjacent to it and whose positions 
differ from it in the same dimension, it is captured.
}}

becomes

{{
If a Tafl Piece has two Pawns which are adjacent to it and whose positions differ from it in the same dimension, it is captured. This does not occur 
unless the two Pawns in question belong to one or more Opponents of the
player who owns the captured piece.
}}
Just for the record, I believe Dave likes it more when we replace the whole text of a proposal at once - it's much easier to copy a new large block of text and put it in the database than to extract the old text, go through making a lot of point changes, and then put the new thing in.
One could also argue that this message upped your prop's revision number by 10 or so.
In the event of a Tafl Piece being Captured, the players having Pieces 
whose
presence was part of the Piece's capture are considered the Capturers. 
The
Capturers each receive one Tafl Point per Tafl Piece of theirs
involved in
the capture. Each player whose Tafl Pieces are being Captured loses
two Tafl
Points for each Piece that e loses. When a Tafl Piece is captured, it 
ceases
to exist.

You may not play a Piece in a position where it would be immediately
Captured.


By 'play', do you mean 'place', or just 'put'? I.e., can I move an
existing piece to where it would be immediately captured?
Gosh, I could have sworn I wrote in a rule about how if you move it in to 
such a position, it is simply not captured. Guess not.

I replace the text

{{
You may not play a Piece in a position where it would be immediately
Captured.
}}

with

{{
A player may not place a Piece in a position where it would be immediately Captured. [[Note that that's illegal anyway, as it would be adjacent to some pieces.]] A player may move a Piece into such a position; if e does so, the 
Capture does not occur.
}}
That's a paradox - if moving a piece into a position where it would be captured means it doesn't get captured, then there are no positions where it would be immediately captured. But that means that those places aren't made capture-proof by this section, so then they are places where you get captured immediately, and therefore they aren't.
I actually like the idea of losing your own pieces when you move them into somewhere. Otherwise, I can protect my piece by moving it right between two enemy pieces. 


in my proposed rule.


Multiple Tafl pieces may be Captured in one turn, and these Captures
occur
simultaneously.
So ABABABAB would simultaneously capture all but the outer two pieces? 


That's an impossible position--some pieces should have been captured
before the last move. But moving into AB_BA removes all 3 middle ones,
which I think is good.


If we make the change above, then A moving into AB_BA results in A_A_A.


But then also, A moving into B_B results in BAB, which is bad.


E. Ko
Two states of the board are considered "equivalent" if the only
difference
between them is that, at any number of given positions, a Piece
belonging to
one player is replaced by a Piece belonging to another, and those two players are allied in either state. Only the positions of pieces on the board are considered when checking for equivalence; differences in the 
state
of alliances or in who made the most recent move are not considered.

A player may not make a move if that move would change the board
position so
that it is equivalent to a previous board position.

[[Tafl does not traditionally have a Ko rule, but it is being
incorporated
into Political Tafl because the game does not automatically end when a 
Hnefi
escapes.]]
Ko works in Go because the number of stones is in general rising. This 
is not true of Tafl, and I don't think anyone wants to be responsible
for comparing each move to all previous board states.
Chess has a similar "repeated position" rule. Actually, in chess it's a 
draw,
but here there is no way of ending the game (if people keep playing) until 
it
grinds to a halt from any move being a ko violation--which will take at 
least

2^169 moves.
I actually think a Ko rule is needed here, or someone could
move A, then eir opponent B, then A^-1, then B^-1, ad nauseum.
Some other way of ending the game would be nice--e.g., permit each player 
to
only place one Hnefi, and once eir Hnefi escapes, e retires from the game.
Hrm, I like that. That also adds an incentive to not rescue your Hnefi right 
away... you stop gaining points from captures if you have retired. Any
suggested implementations?
We could make so that initially, all players are trying to Escape; when a player escapes, eir Hnefi is gone, and e's just got a lot of pawns, so now e becomes the attacker, trying to prevent others' escapes. 


F. Escaping
If a player makes a move such that a Hnefi of eirs has as any of its
coordinates either 1 or 13, that Hnefi is considered to have Escaped.
When a Hnefi escapes, it ceases to exist and the player who controlled 
it
gains ten Tafl Points.

[[The size of this bonus may need to be tinkered with a bit.]]

G. Ending the Game.
The game ends during a Checkpoint when the most recent move was to
Pass, and
nobody has made any other move for more than an nweek.


Uh... you might want to specify *the game of Political Tafl*; I'd
rather not have B Nomic end when this game does.
Gee, this flaw exists in PGo also. In my proposed Tafl rule, I replace the 
first paragraph of section G with

{{
The subgame of Political Tafl ends during a Checkpoint when the most recent move was to Pass, and nobody has made any other move for more than an nweek. 
}}

I also submit a proposal, titled "Fixing Go Endgames", as follows:

{{
In the first paragraph of the section of the Political Go rule titled
"Ending the Game", replace the word "game" with the phrase "subgame of
Political Go".
}}


Political Go, IIRC, has a bit here about how people get points for
having Go points... is it your intent to make Tafl completely
independent from the main B Nomic Scores? In that case, you can do this 
as a society.
I don't really like the idea of having a million societies with different 
games

each. It could just be another Attribute that non-Tafl players could

ignore.
It was a conscious decision. Not everyone plays PGo; I don't expect them to care, just as I don't care about style. I'm assuming that those who don't care about Tafl would rather it not affect them by changing other people's 
scores.
So the only incentive for playing it is the self satisfaction of spending a lot of time thinking about what to do?
I'd like to see some sort of bonus for doing well in this subgame; if a player isn't adventurous enough to try it, then it's eir own fault if everyone else gets points and e doesn't. 


--
Wonko
Award Wonko a Win.
-----[[BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK]}-----
Version: 3.1
GU/O d-(++)(?) s+:+ a--->+++ C++>++++>$ UB+>++++ P--@ L+>+++ E>++ W++(+++) N+{((++]]}}) o?>++++ K? w------- O? M++ V- PS@ PE-@ Y-- PGP- t+ 5 X R+ tv--@ b+++@ DI++++ D G++ e*>++++ !h r++ y? 
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

_______________________________________________
spoon-discuss mailing list
spoon-discuss@xxxxxxxxx
http://lists.ellipsis.cx/mailman/listinfo/spoon-discuss