I should mention: while using the Æ symbol is cute and all, it's likely that it would rack up a few CFJs about whether you're referring to Aether or something else entirely that doesn't exist.

On 11/21/2017 1:38 PM, Corona wrote:
Sorry for the walls of text; if you don't understand anything,  I'll
be happy to clarify.

About it being rushed - A reform that could singlehandedly determine
the (un)balance of Agora will never be prepared enough, if we want to
release it in a (kind of) timely manner.

That's why we should partially leave it to the Agoran legislative
process, fixing it as we go.

After all, it is impossible for this law to introduce a complete
economy, as that depends on all the assets one can buy, and not only
would the reform get bogged down by writing out every asset to be
available for purchase, it will also be easier to imagine how will a
new asset interact with the rest of the economy if one can see that
economy in practice.

Anyways, here are my thoughts:

On 11/19/17, Reuben Staley <reuben.sta...@gmail.com> wrote:
This is still pretty rough around the edges with the new mechanics.

Title: Putting Agora on a Map v3
Author: Trigon
Co-Authors: Aris, ATMunn, G., o, VJ Rada
AI: 2

[ Version 3: So this is Go + Settlers of Catan + some RPG mechanics now.
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. Also: two drafts
in one day YEET! ]

[ PART I: Removing and Changing Stuff ]

Repeal rules 2488, 2489, 2490, and 2491.

[ I honestly tried to keep the estates, but these changes are so radical
that it wouldn't be compatible. ]

Repeal rule 2500.

Amend rule 2445 by replacing the second paragraph and subsequent list
with:

Any player CAN flip a specified proposal's imminence to "pending"
by announcement by spending 1 paper.

Amend rule 991 by removing the first two items of the list directly
following the first paragraph, and replacing them with the following
list item:

a) by announcement by spending 1 paper, OR

[ Everyone wants to get rid of these so okay, let's do it. ]

Repeal rules 2483, 2487, and 2497.

[ No more shinies, everybody! ]

Amend rule 2516 by replacing it in full with:

At the beginning of the Agoran week, the Treasuror CAN and SHALL
cause Agora to create in:

1. every player with an amount of papers less than 2 an amount of
papers so that eir paper balance is equal to 2.

2. every player with an amount of apples less than 4 an amount of
apples so that eir apple balance is equal to 4.

[ This makes it so that impoverished players can move a little each week
and make some proposals. ]


*I'd wager that players will set up contracts, allowing them to
receive state aid even when they are fabulously wealthy, and it's not
like you can just raise the price of contracts, which should be cheap.
To avoid cluttering up reports with such contracts, you might as well
give every player a flat 2 paper & 4 apples/week.

Aris already pointed this out and flat rates were also discussed.

It is never a bad thing to have more poverty/powerlessness prevention
mechanisms, and one occured to me, "scavenging for apples":

A player can, on any Land Unit, start scavenging for apples by
announcement. While scavenging for apples, e gains one apple after
every 24 hours of scavenging. A player ceases scavenging if:
-E changes location or takes any other map-altering action (building
facilities etc.)
-E has been scavenging for 7 days (to discourage idling).

Maybe there should also be an indestructible lv1 mine or orchard at
0,0 so that impoverished players can get lumber/stone, with which they
can build a facility to create the other.
As I've already said in this thread, hopefully there will be a whole list of Land Units that are protected from the normal Land Unit effecting processes.


Amend rule 2599 by replacing the second paragraph with:

When a player receives a Welcome Package, Agora creates the
following assets in eir possession:

1. 20 coins
2. 5 lumber
3. 5 stones
4. 10 apples
5. 5 papers

[PART II: Making Land]

Re-enact rule 1993/1 (Power=2) "The Land of Arcadia" with the text:

Arcadia is a land entirely defined by the Arcadian Map (the Map).
The Map is the term for the set of all Land Units.

The Map divides Arcadia into a finite, discrete number of Units of
Land, or simply Land. Each Unit of Land is an indestructible asset
specified by an ordered pair of integers known as its Latitude and
Longitude.

Every unique ordered pair of integers within the limits defined in
the Rules for Latitude and Longitude signifies an existent Unit of
Land. No other Units of Land exist. Units of Land CAN only be
created or destroyed by changing the limits of Latitude and
Longitude defined in the Rules.

All values for Latitude and Longitude MUST lie between -9 and +9,
inclusive.

The Total Land Area of Arcadia is the number of existent Units of
Land defined by permissible Latitude and Longitude pairs.

*That is _361_ ! There is a reason why Go is often played (when
practicing) on smaller boards - this is huge for just 10-20 players,
even if half of it is Æther. There are 2 issues I see:

1) It takes 18 moves to get to a corner from the center, assuming no
obstacles. Unless more movement abilities are legislated soon, I'd fix
this by allowing the players to walk diagonally, this also allows for
more manoeuvrability - if you can move just to "adjacent" points, are
moving straight west and a single-point obstacle is in your path, you
have to move north-west-west-south to avoid it, using 2 extra moves.

This way, obstacles are no longer obstacles. If there is a unit of Aether and you need to move from the west of it to the east of it, you could move northeast, then southeast. If the unit of Aether was not there, then it you could just go east, then east. Yes, it provides more maneuverability, but I'm not sure that's what you want.

2) Players, IMO, should have to compete over land. This way, everyone
can just go to eir own part of the world, and have enough space for
all the facilities there. This is a part of what I think is the
biggest issue overall - hardly anybody will want to buy land.

So it needs to be more competitive? How about if we change the size to 9x9, another common Go board size? That's only 81 units.

With comfortable distances between players, players will just build on
public land, because it's cheaper and going to another player's
facilities to steal eir $$$ will cost more (apples) than just
producing it yourself. Also, if everyone has space to build all kinds
of buildings, they need not trade for anything.

Not necessarily. Public facilities cannot be leveled up, since a player must own Land Units to rank them up. Higher ranks are vastly more profitable. They're also communal, so it's a first-come, first-serve system.

This could be fixed by introducing traversable Land Types (e.g.
"wasteland", "ocean"...) that cannot be built on, or by allowing
facilities to be built only on resources - either Land Types (which
would ruin the Go part) or fixed coordinates - e.g. the north has lots
of metal veins, and the south has fertile land, so they have to trade
lumber for coins*

I actually like the Land Type idea. Perhaps refinery facilities can only be built on one Type, and production facilities can only be built on the other.


Re-enact rule 1994/0 (Power=2) "Ownership of Land" with the text:

Any existent Land for which ownership has not been explicitly
changed belongs to Agora.

Land belonging to Agora is called Public Land. Land belonging to
a contract is called Communal Land. Land belonging to any other
entity is called Private Land. Together, Communal Land and Private
Land are called Proprietary Land.

Re-enact rule 1995/0 (Power=2) "Land Types" with the text:

Each Unit of Land has a single Land Type. Changes to Land Type are
secured. In addition to Aether, the Land types Black and White are
defined.

The phrase "Units of X", where X is a Land Type defined by the
Rules, is considered a synonym for "Units of Land that have Land
Type (or Subtype) X"

When existent Land has not had its Type changed as explicitly
permitted by the Rules, or has a Type that is not currently
defined by the Rules, it is considered to have the Land Type of
Aether. Rules to the contrary nonwithstanding, Units of Aether
CANNOT be transferred from Agora, or owned by any entity other
than Agora. If Proprietary Land becomes Aether, the Cartographor
SHALL transfer it to Agora in a timely fashion.

When an act specifies an alternating Land Type, the Land Type
chosen will be based upon the Land Type used as the previous
alternating Land Type, so that consecutive alternating Land Types
alternate between Black and White. In a timely fashion after a
Player notifies the Cartographor of an act that specifies an
alternating Land Type, the Cartographor MUST announce which Land
Type was used for that act.

*Also, players should specify the assumed Land Type in their message
(and the next alternating LT?), because so many actions depend on this
that it would be burdensome to stop the play and wait for the
Cartographor every time - players should continue under the assumption
that the creating player was right about what Land Type e had created,
  and the Cartographor should just retroactively confirm the types.

Okay, makes sense.

And what if the players were wrong about the Types used in their
actions? Either it would be ILLEGAL to make a move based on a mistaken
assumption of the current Alternating Land Type, and cards would be
issued, or it would be IMPOSSIBLE, and the whole map would be rolled
back... probably the first one.*
Excuse me? Why on earth would it be ILLEGAL to move to a Land Unit based on a mistaken assumption? If you ended up spending the wrong amount of apples/corn to move there, then the action would fail. And no, the map wouldn't have to be rolled back, the offending player's action would just fail.

If this didn't answer your question, then I obviously didn't understand it.

Re-enact rule 1996/3 (Power=1), renaming it to "The Cartographor" with
the text:

The Cartographor is an office; its holder is recordkeepor for the
Land of Arcadia.

The Cartographor's Weekly Report shall include:

1. the ownership and land type of all existing land;
2. all changes in the ownership and land type of existing land
since the most recent report;
3. the location for the previous week and the current week of each
entity or instrument with a defined location;
4. all patches and their constituents; and
5. all facilities and their parent patches.

[ I renamed this from "Mapkeepor" to "Cartographor" because that's not a
good name for a thing. Yes, I know that the Cartographor existed
before as part of a different system, but it's unlikely any of that'll
be coming back. ]

Re-enact rule 1998/2 (Power=1) "Land Topology" with the text:

Two Units of Land are Adjacent if they have the same Latitude, and
their Longitudes differ by exactly one; or they have the same
Longitude, and their Latitudes differ by exactly one.

[ Penguin Distance is never referenced again, so I got rid of it. ]

Two Units of Land are said to be Connected by a specific Type of
Land if it is possible to travel from the first Unit to the second
by only travelling over Land of that specific Type.

*Travelling should be rigorously defined. If players acquire pegasi to
be able to travel over Æther, this should not affect connectivity.
Also, situations may arise (one-way wormhole etc.) where travelling is
one direction only. A more flexible definition would be:

Land Unit a,b is said to be connected to Land Unit c,d if it is
possible, to reach c,d by moving an imaginary entity to adjacent Land
Units of the same color, starting at a,b.

This is a better definition, but I object a little bit to the phrase "imaginary entity".

Wait a moment, how did you intend this to work? Can two White Land
Units be ever connected by Black Land Units, or can LUs be connected
only by their own color?*

The way this rule is structured, a white and a black land unit could not be connected. A more flexible definition would allow land units to be connected by any criteria.

Re-enact rule 1999/0 (Power=1) "Entity Location" with the text:

Every Player has a single defined Location corresponding to a
single Longitude, Latitude pair.

No other Entity can have a location unless it is defined in a rule
other than this one. Changes to the Location of an Entity are
secured. If an Entity is specified by this Rule as having a
defined Location, but its Location has not been explicity set or
changed, its Location is set to (0, 0).

*Typo: explicitLy.*


Re-enact rule 2003/11 (Power=1) "Actions in Arcadia" with the text:

Players CAN destroy:

1. 1 apple to move from one Land Unit to an adjacent Unit if their
Land Types are the same and the destination is not Aether;

2. 2 apples to move from one Land Unit to an adjacent Unit if
their Land Types differ and the destination is not Aether;

3. 2 apples to set Land Type of a Land Unit which e owns to any
Land Type other than Aether, whether or not e is located at
that Land Unit.

*Also, a contract's Land Unit, if e has been permitted by the contract
to do so? Also, there may be strategic reason for turning one's own
land into Æther, such as creating a supporting Æther LU for your other
LUs, preventing their "capture", so why not allow it?

Because I didn't think of it? I just did a C-c, C-v from the old rules and updated the text to a new mindset.

While you can't remove your stones in Go, you can't capture your
opponent's "living" formation by plugging up one of its "eyes" with a
stone of eir color either.*
Please don't introduce eyes as a mechanic. This reform is too complex as it is.

4. 3 apples or 1 corn to set the Land Type of a random Land Unit
that is adjacent to the Entity's current location, is of type
Aether, and is owned by Agora, to an alternating Land Type. The
Cartographor SHALL make the random determination. The
Cartographor CAN and SHALL in a timely fashion, announce which
Land Unit, if any, is changed by this action. This action has
no effect if there are no qualifying Land Units.

*Why in the name of the Nine Hells is this random? It will introduce
day-long delays, enable the Cartographor to cheat, and, more
importantly, create ambiguities as to whether one can move there etc.
until the Cartographor generates the result.

Ask one of these fine people:

Created by Proposal 4207 (neil), 3 September 2001
Amended(1) by Proposal 4215 (neil), 29 September 2001
Amended(2) by Proposal 4229 (Goethe), 22 November 2001
Amended(3) by Proposal 4280 (OscarMeyr), 3 April 2002
Amended(4) by Proposal 4283 (Goethe), 16 April 2002
Amended(5) by Proposal 4293 (Sir Toby), 10 May 2002
Amended(6) by Proposal 4373 (Sir Toby), 6 September 2002
Amended(7) by Proposal 4405 (Peekee), 23 October 2002

I'd say that I don't make the rules, but I literally do, so...

But thanks for the suggestions for actions here. These will most likely be implemented in the future.

If you think it would be OP if not random, just make it more
expensive. Also, it's probably one of the most important & frequent
actions in the game, given that land will turn to Æther every month*


5. 4 to set the Land Type of eir current location to any Land Type
of eir choice other than Aether, if and only if the Unit is
owned by Agora.

6. 6 to set the Land Type of any Land Unit that is of type Aether
to an alternating Land Type.

*This much power projection feels scary. It would suck to have a level
4 facility on a dearly bought Land Unit just to have it nuked by you,
while sitting comfortably in your base. Perhaps the cost should scale
with distance?

Perhaps the action should be removed entirely. This is definitely way too overpowering.

More importantly: the amount of destruction you can lay to your fellow
players' land & facilities (by turning the Æther around them to
Black/White) is directly proportional to the number of apples you
have, which depends on your economy, which IMO creates a strong
feedback loop.*

The prices can always be changed if it gets out of time, and proportional economies don't seem to work (see also: the entirety of the shinies mechanic).

Re-enact rule 2004/3 (Power=1) "Land Auctions" with the text:

Every Agoran Week, if the number of units of Private Land is less
than one half the total number of units of Land, an auction SHALL
be initiated. For this auction, the announcer is the Cartographor,
the auctioneer is the Cartographor, the lots are chosen as such:

1. if there exist at least 3 Units of non-Aether Land in the
possession of Agora: any 3 such Units of Land, to be chosen by
the Cartographor;

2. if there exist fewer than 3 Units of non-Aether Land in the
possession of Agora: all such Units;

and the minimum bid is 1 coin.

*I'd say we want to encourage proprietary land ownership, because
that's the point of having land ownership in the first place. I'd put
up 5 units for auction every week. It's not like it'll be a disaster
if all land becomes proprietary, it will eventually get Ætherified,
and players will trade anyways.

Actually, I think 0,0 should always belong to Agora, as it's
indestructible and a respawn point.*

It actually was in the original rules.

Re-enact rule 2022/5 (Power=1), renaming it "Land Transfiguration" with
the text:

During the second week of each Agoran Month, the Cartographor
SHALL perform the following actions in sequence, and report these
changes in a timely fashion:

1. Every Land Unit, excluding (0, 0) that is not directly
connected to a unit of Aether, or is not connected by its own
type to a unit of Aether, shall be transformed to Aether.

2. Any entities whose locations are on land units so transformed
shall have their locations set to 0,0.

*This could be more general (to allow for easier implementation of
actions that might move players/change Land Types), e.g. Whenever a
player's location is a Land Unit of the Æther Type (or outside any
defined Land Units), eir location is set to 0,0 immediately*

Probably a good idea.

3. If any land unit so transformed is not property of Agora, it
becomes property of Agora.

[PART III: Creating Facilities]

Create a new rule (Power=2) "Facilities" with the text:

Facilities are liquid assets tracked by the Cartographor. In order
for a facility to exist, it MUST be built on a Land Unit. Only one
facility is allowed per Land Unit.

A player CAN create a facility by announcement by specifying which
Land e wants to build it on, specifying which type of facility e
intends to build, and paying the corresponding build cost.

*Mistake: Land _Unit_ e wants to build it on.

I'd allow building only in your current location, and forbid building
on proprietary land without permission.

That's what I intended to have happen, but it never got added because of classic organization troubles.

And to discourage from building facilities on public land (which would
be too easy, and, again, makes owning land kind of moot), I'd have the
Cartographor charge rent fees every month for facilities built on
public land*

You're not supposed to be able to build on public land.

If a player owns any facilities with upkeep costs, e shall pay
them before the first day of the next Agoran month. Failing to do
this destroys the facility. In the second to last week of the
Agoran Month, the Cartographor SHALL issue a humiliating public
reminder to all those who have not paid upkeep fees on any of eir
facilities.

Create a new rule (Power=2) "Asset Generation with Facilities" with the
text:

When facilities create assets, the assets are added to the
facility's possession. The rule that creates a facility CAN
specify a carrying capacity for assets. If, at any time, the
amount of an asset in the possession of a facility exceeds that
asset's carrying capacity, an amount of that asset is destroyed
until the amount of that asset in the possession of the facility
is equal to its carrying capacity.

Each facility is either a production facility or processing
facility, to be specified in the rule that creates them. At the
end of every Agoran Week, Agora creates a number of assets in a
production facility specified by the rule which creates the
facility.

At the end of every Agoran Week, Agora destroys any refinable
assets in the possession of each processing facility that that
facility can change into refinable assets and replaces them with a
corresponding number of refined assets to be specified by the rule
that creates the facility.

A player can take a number of assets from a facility's inventory
by announcement if eir location is the same as the facility's and
the following criteria are met:

1. if the facility is built on Public Land, none.

2. if the facility is built on Communal Land, e must be a party to
that contract and the text of the contract cannot prohibit
doing so.

3. if the facility is built on Private Land, e must own the
facility.

*Or e could have permission (by announcement) from the owner?*

Maybe.

Create a new rule (Power=2) "Facility Ranks" with the text:

Rank is a facility switch tracked by the Cartographor defaulting
to 0. Its possible values include all integers between 0 and 4,
inclusive.

A player CAN increase the rank of a facility e owns by
announcement by paying any upgrade costs of the facility for that
specific rank.

Create a new rule (Power=2) "Varieties of Facilities" with the text:

For the purposes of this rule, the variable n is equivalent to the
rank of the facility, plus one.

*Wouldn't it be more intuitive if facilities started at lv1 and n was
the facility level?*

shh


The following facilities are defined as production facilities:

1. Mines
- Build Cost: 5 lumber
- Upkeep Cost: none
- Production Details: 3n stones and 2n ore.
- Upgrade Costs:
- Rank 1: 3 coins, 2 lumber
- Rank 2: 4 coins, 4 lumber
- Rank 3: 5 coins, 4 lumber, 3 stones
- Rank 4: 6 coins, 6 lumber, 6 stones, 2 fabric

2. Orchards
- Build Cost: 5 stones
- Upkeep Cost: none
- Production Details: 2n apples and 4n lumber.
- Upgrade Costs:
- Rank 1: 3 coins, 2 stones
- Rank 2: 4 coins, 4 stones
- Rank 3: 5 coins, 4 stones, 3 lumber
- Rank 4: 6 coins, 6 stones, 6 lumber, 2 fabric

*Why does this produce so few apples, which are essential even for
just walking around facilities and collecting stuff? I think 3n apples
& 3n lumber would be better.*

Because all of these values are experimental. No one has really criticized these numbers, so they never got changed.

3. Farms
- Build Cost: 3 lumber and 4 stones
- Upkeep Cost: none
- Production Details: 4n corn and 3n cotton.
- Upgrade Costs:
- Rank 1: 4 coins, 2 lumber, 2 stones
- Rank 2: 5 coins, 4 lumber, 2 stones
- Rank 3: 6 coins, 4 lumber, 4 stones, 2 fabric
- Rank 4: 7 coins, 6 lumber, 4 stones, 3 fabric

The following facilities are defined as processing facilities:

1. Refineries
- Build Cost: 4 lumber and 8 stones
- Upkeep Cost: 2 coins
- Processing Details: 1 ore to 2n+5 coins.
- Upgrade Costs:
- Rank 1: 5 coins, 2 lumber, 3 stones
- Rank 2: 6 coins, 4 lumber, 4 stones
- Rank 3: 7 coins, 4 lumber, 3 stones, 3 fabric
- Rank 4: 8 coins, 6 lumber, 6 stones, 4 fabric

*Surely you mean 1n ore?*

Indeed.


2. Mills
- Build Cost: 6 lumber and 6 stones
- Upkeep Cost: 2 coins
- Processing Details: 1 lumber to 5 paper.
- Upgrade Costs:
- Rank 1: 6 coins, 3 lumber, 3 stones
- Rank 2: 7 coins, 4 lumber, 5 stones
- Rank 3: 8 coins, 5 lumber, 5 stones, 3 fabric
- Rank 4: 9 coins, 6 lumber, 7 stones, 5 fabric

*Don't forget your N's - 1n lumber to 5n paper, right?*

Uh, no. I only want people to have to input 1 lumber all the time, but I'm a little scared of adding n times the amount of paper per rank, so I was kind of deliberating over how I wanted to do it. I think this was supposed to be 5+n paper.

3. Looms
- Build Cost: 8 lumber and 4 stones
- Upkeep Cost: 2 coins
- Processing Details: 1 cotton to 5 cloth.
- Upgrade Costs:
- Rank 1: 6 coins, 3 lumber, 2 stones
- Rank 2: 7 coins, 4 lumber, 3 stones, 3 fabric
- Rank 3: 8 coins, 5 lumber, 4 stones, 5 fabric
- Rank 4: 9 coins, 6 lumber, 5 stones, 7 fabric

*1n cotton to 5n _fabric_, as you refer to it elsewhere. Also, the
processed materials seem weirdly abundant. With a rank 2 loom you can
make 10 fabric/week, probably enough for upgrading all your facilities
to rank 4.

You're not supposed to be able to do that, as I already said. That would unbalance the system way too much. Perhaps 5+n would also work here.

Also, I think upkeep should definitely scale with rank, perhaps even
polynomially, because that would make choosing whether to upgrade or
not interesting - upgraded facilities take up less land than multiple
low-level facilities (you spend less apples running aroud collecting
and have to protect less LUs from being "captured"), on the other hand
they would have more upkeep per unit produced.

Probably they should.

Finally, upgrading feels too passive, you just wait and run around
collecting resources, not interacting with other players much. What
if, for example, upgrading to the final level of a facility required
an Energy Crystal, of which there would  always be 30 instances. It
would be initially distributed or auctioned off to players, and
building any lv 4 facility would cost one. When such a facility would
be destroyed (by turning its Land Unit into Æther), the crystal would
be given to the nearest player. - This would necessitate trading or
raiding to create (more) lv 4 facilities.

Maybe so. I feel like this is material worthy of a different proposal, though.

[ All the values in this section are experimental; feel free to contest
any or all of my decisions. ]

Create a new rule (Power=2) "Economics" with the text:

The following currencies are defined, and are tracked by the
Treasuror:

1. ore
2. stones
3. lumber
4. apples
5. cotton
6. corn
7. coins
8. papers
9. fabric

*TBH, most of the currencies (except apples) feel kind of the same,
like, every building costs some of each resource, and you have to
produce/trade everything roughly equally, and you don't need to trade
much, because you can build any type of facility anywhere.

Hopefully this will sort itself out in the future when people start proposing more assets along the same vein as these nine, so specialization can start. I want to keep it minimal at the beginning.

I'd like if it were more like e.g. Catan, where you build lots of
cities if you have good access to rock and straw, and focus more on
villages otherwise.

On the other hand, the resources will probably be differentiated
enough by the other things one will be able to purchase.*


[ Probably not all of these will be managed by the Treasuror, but it all
depends on where the discussion takes us over the next few days.]

Stones, apples, and corn are considered unrefinable currencies;
ore, lumber, and cotton are considered refinable currencies; and
coins, papers, and fabric are considered refined currencies.

Coins are the official currency of Agora.

[ TODO: Remove references to shinies in the ruleset and replace them
with the new currencies. ]

Set the land type of all land units that lie withing the region from
(-2, -2) to (+2, +2) to White. Create the following facilities:

- Four mines at (-2, -2), (-2, +2), (+2, -2), and (+2, +2).
- Four orchards at (-1, -2), (-1, +2), (+1, -2), and (+1, +2).
- Four farms at (-2, -1), (-2, +1), (+2, -1), and (+2, +1).

*Specify that these belong to Agora. (And that Agora doesn't have to
pay upkeep to itself for facilities it owns?)*

Well, even if Agora does have to pay upkeep, e can just create assets anyways, so...


Set the locations of all players to (0, 0).

Make Trigon the Cartographor.

[ Someone else can take this job if they want. I just put my name in
because I know that I will indeed take the job. ]

--
Trigon


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