Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On Wed, 2014-02-05 at 19:41 -0800, Geoff Schmidt wrote: As a new Agoran I have learned two things. - Small, easily overlooked words such as currency can be very important. - It is never safe to assume that players will not collude. Also, even though I suck at it, I now think this is the finest game on the Internet. The main trick you missed here was not being in place to exploit this yourself as soon as the intent was resolved. The main trick /I/ missed here was not arranging a plan with you to exploit this between ourselves as soon as the intent was resolved. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On Wed, 2014-02-05 at 20:48 -0800, Kerim Aydin wrote: 1. The Rules of Agora no longer say that after someone wins, anything else happens. 2. In a game, if someone wins, and nothing else happens, the game is over. 3. The Rules of Agora are a game. 4. Agora is over. Uh... oops? Except maybe we're safe, because scores are reset to 0. Actually, I'm seriously worried by this. The protections against accidental ending of the game (and similar rights) all either prevent proposals being enacted, or prevent gamestate changes. Proposals aren't involved here, and it's unclear that ending the game is a change to the gamestate. AIAN doesn't help because a nonexistent game doesn't have any properties, including being ossified. The definition of game in rule 1023(b)(5) (the second (5), something's gone wrong with the numbering) may help, though. The argument is as to whether game is being used as a period of time or not in rule 2419 specifically, and I can see a good argument that it isn't. The strongest argument I can see that Agora hasn't just ended is rule 217, and I /hate/ having to rely on rule 217 (given that it defers to all other rules). Anyone else see any way out of this? Another way to look at things may be that Agora-the-ruleset and Agora-the-game are separate entities, in which case the game is over, but nothing prevents us starting another game with the same ruleset, and such a game would still be Agora. The only change from the previous behaviour would be that instead of everything continuing automatically, we'd have to start everything but the rules from scratch, with players reregistering, etc. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Jonatan Kilhamn jonatan.kilh...@gmail.com wrote: I find the thought that Agora maybe just accidentally ended hilarious. Almost so much that I want it to be true. But I think we're safe. The game of agora, and of nomics in general, is well-established as not being a normal game. Thus when the only indication we have of an ending is the text wins the game, I think it's justified to say that the rules are silent, as per 217. Then game custom and the good of the game says it did not just end. Add in 1023(b)(5) the 2nd, which says game is sometimes used as a time period, and I think we've moved up from the rules being silent to them being unclear. CFJ: The game of Agora has ended. Arguments: There is nothing in the rules saying that Agora has ended. Past precedent, custom, and the good of the game all point to Agora not having ended. -scshunt
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On Thu, 6 Feb 2014, Jonatan Kilhamn wrote: I find the thought that Agora maybe just accidentally ended hilarious. Almost so much that I want it to be true. But I think we're safe. The game of agora, and of nomics in general, is well-established as not being a normal game. This reminds me of my first game of Nomic - so either some useful historical context or a rambling memoir ahead: First played nomic circa 1990. Picked up from a copy of Metamagical Themas that circulated in the dorm about that time (we photocopied the rules out of there and pasted them on cards). So playing blind without any accumulated internet wisdom about nomics in general. The game was about 8-10 people in our usual games club, used to playing long sessions of Cosmic Encounters or whatever into the night. The very first game, just as we were settling in and and gone through one or so round of turns, an early loophole let someone jump in and get the victory condition (very obvious loophole when pointed out, no argument that the win worked). Instantly and viscerally, the table split. About half the people said eh, cheap win. oh well, game over and the other half said nothing in the rules says the game is over! It was weird how the split was instantaneous, and half the people started out at one conclusion, half at the other, without any pre-discussion. After a bunch of struggle and rules lawyering (this turned out to be our very first CFJ), the let the game continue crowd dominated, the game continued, though the disgruntled Winner just gave up, I think. Game broke up that night without a second victory condition, at exhaustion point, we passed a firm resolution that rules to the contrary notwithstanding, the game is now over. Played about a dozen tabletop nomic games in college and grad school since then. And it's basically been a meta-discussion each time that pretty much went (upon victory condition): 1. Was victory condition cheap loophole? Is the night still young? Keep playing (continuously, not with rules reset). 2. Was it a clever, hard-fought victory? Do we need to sleep? Game over. Except in that first game, it was never formally voted on; it was more like when you play a series of games/hands of any game at a late night gaming session; after each win, we basically asked ourselves, in the silence of the rules, what we might ask of Agora now: one more round, or do we call it a night?
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
Arguments: When we survey what are commonly called games, we find many games that end upon a win, but also many games that do not end upon a win. An example of the latter is America's National Football League. In the NFL, players are grouped into teams, the wins of each team are tallied over time, and based on the wins a trophy is transferred to a particular team. The rules are silent as to which type of game Agora is. However, the presence of the word Trophies in the Short Logical Ruleset, and their customary use in Agora, suggest that Agora is in the balance rather more like the NFL than like Tic Tac Toe. Citing rule 217, common sense indicates that it is not the intent of rule 2419 to end the game of Agora Nomic forever. The proposer of rule 2419 had an opportunity to indicate in the text of rule 2419 that a win would end the game of Agora Nomic forever, if that was eir intention. Even if that was eir intention, eir failure to clearly indicate this unprecedented (in 10+ years) interpretation should be prejudicial to that intrepretation. On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 7:15 AM, Sean Hunt scsh...@csclub.uwaterloo.cawrote: On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Jonatan Kilhamn jonatan.kilh...@gmail.com wrote: I find the thought that Agora maybe just accidentally ended hilarious. Almost so much that I want it to be true. But I think we're safe. The game of agora, and of nomics in general, is well-established as not being a normal game. Thus when the only indication we have of an ending is the text wins the game, I think it's justified to say that the rules are silent, as per 217. Then game custom and the good of the game says it did not just end. Add in 1023(b)(5) the 2nd, which says game is sometimes used as a time period, and I think we've moved up from the rules being silent to them being unclear. CFJ: The game of Agora has ended. Arguments: There is nothing in the rules saying that Agora has ended. Past precedent, custom, and the good of the game all point to Agora not having ended. -scshunt
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On 2014-02-06 10:15 AM, Sean Hunt wrote: Arguments: There is nothing in the rules saying that Agora has ended. Past precedent, custom, and the good of the game all point to Agora not having ended. How can you possibly invoke good of the game here? -Dan, for Evil Queen Davy.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On 2014-02-06 5:03 PM, Geoff Schmidt wrote: Arguments: When we survey what are commonly called games, we find many games that end upon a win, but also many games that do not end upon a win. An example of the latter is America's National Football League. Football definitely ends when one team wins. And a League is not a game. -Dan, for the Evil Queen.
DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
As a new Agoran I have learned two things. - Small, easily overlooked words such as currency can be very important. - It is never safe to assume that players will not collude. Also, even though I suck at it, I now think this is the finest game on the Internet. - Shredder On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 6:01 PM, omd c.ome...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 8:55 PM, Sean Hunt scsh...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca wrote: I board nichdel's ship and pillage eir operator collection. I transfer all my operators to omd. I board G.'s ship and pillage eir operator collection. Now I have 5 7 i - 2 i 0 2 8 6 - 2. I specify the operators - 5 7 2 0 2 8 6 and myself. My score becomes -5,720,286. I set my quadrant to Beta. I have achieved escape velocity. I transfer my remaining operators to scshunt.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 10:41 PM, Geoff Schmidt ge...@geoffschmidt.com wrote: As a new Agoran I have learned two things. - Small, easily overlooked words such as currency can be very important. This is pretty tame, as scams go. Every word matters. - It is never safe to assume that players will not collude. It is usually safe to assume the opposite. -scshunt
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On 2014-02-05 10:41 PM, Geoff Schmidt wrote: Also, even though I suck at it, I now think this is the finest game on the Internet. Second finest, surely. -Dan
DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On Wed, 5 Feb 2014, omd wrote: On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 8:55 PM, Sean Hunt scsh...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca wrote: I board nichdel's ship and pillage eir operator collection. I transfer all my operators to omd. I board G.'s ship and pillage eir operator collection. Now I have 5 7 i - 2 i 0 2 8 6 - 2. I specify the operators - 5 7 2 0 2 8 6 and myself. My score becomes -5,720,286. I set my quadrant to Beta. I have achieved escape velocity. I transfer my remaining operators to scshunt. Shredder's adoption passed just when I was on the way out to dinner, and I thought don't have time to make a move, so bet my Operators are gone by the time I come back. Agora did not disappoint. Nice.
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On Wed, 5 Feb 2014, Kerim Aydin wrote: Shredder's adoption passed just when I was on the way out to dinner, and I thought don't have time to make a move, so bet my Operators are gone by the time I come back. Agora did not disappoint. Nice. ps. are we now in an unstable equilibrium?
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast (second try)
On Wed, 5 Feb 2014, omd wrote: On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 11:19 PM, Kerim Aydin ke...@u.washington.edu wrote: ps. are we now in an unstable equilibrium? Well, operators haven't been destroyed, so someone else can probably do the same thing, if that's what you mean. Incidentally, there's no way to award Champion anymore. Not sure if that's intentional, but assuming it isn't-- 1. The Rules of Agora no longer say that after someone wins, anything else happens. 2. In a game, if someone wins, and nothing else happens, the game is over. 3. The Rules of Agora are a game. 4. Agora is over. Uh... oops? Except maybe we're safe, because scores are reset to 0.
DIS: Re: BUS: Avast
Seeing interest in pillaging but concern about the race condition at the end of the week, I'll try a version with a 168-hour (7 day) timeout instead. I'll also replace city block distance with Euclidean distance for better compatibility with Kerim's simulation, should both proposals be adopted. Reasoning: Rule 478 already requires that messages sent to public fora have a time date-stamped on the message, and makes that time authoritative in resolving the order of actions. If we're willing to trust that timestamp then a 168-hour timeout seems workable and not too hard to administrate. If we're not willing to trust that timestamp then we have bigger problems and should fix Rule 478. ais523 still had some concern about a 168-hour timeout and eir ability to exploit it (see thread copied below). In the spirit of general mischief I'm going to go ahead with it, since after sleeping on it I couldn't figure out an exploit. Any further feedback about the change -- or Agoran etiquette! -- is appreciated. - Shredder On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Alex Smith ais...@bham.ac.uk wrote: On Thu, 2014-01-30 at 04:54 -0800, Geoff Schmidt wrote: Thanks, I appreciate the critique. I see now how resolving the actions at the end of the calendar week would be incredibly obnoxious. Do you have any suggestions about how to fix the timing problem? Do you think it would work to instead require that a week (like, 168 hours) has elapsed since your last pillaging? A 168-hour timeout isn't quite as bad, but it has similar issues. I'd prefer that in the sense that I probably have the most experience of any Agoran in exploiting things like that, but it'd probably be bad for the game as a whole. The usual technique's to require the player to spend something, but there's nothing obvious to spend. I guess you could add boarding hooks or something to the random assignment of symbols. Another possibility's to allow boarding attempts as a reward upon some event happening, e.g. judging a CFJ. This is hard to get right, but has lead to compelling gameplay in the past if done well. BTW, you sent this email to me privately, rather than agora-discussion as a whole. If there's nothing in it that you particularly want to keep secret, copying it to a-d so that other people can weigh in is a good idea. I don't mind this reply becoming public. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast
On Fri, 2014-01-31 at 15:51 -0800, Geoff Schmidt wrote: Reasoning: Rule 478 already requires that messages sent to public fora have a time date-stamped on the message, and makes that time authoritative in resolving the order of actions. If we're willing to trust that timestamp then a 168-hour timeout seems workable and not too hard to administrate. If we're not willing to trust that timestamp then we have bigger problems and should fix Rule 478. Timestamp issues have lead to a lot of friction in the past (especially on one occasion when G. sent a message before a deadline, but due to events outside eir control, it arrived afterwards). I know the Distributor was talking about automatedly rewriting Date: headers to be trustworthy and outside the control of any players, although I'm not sure if that actually happened or not. (The problem is that emails have multiple times datestamped on them, of varying levels of reliability; the Date: timestamp is one of the least reliable, by default, in that I've known it to be out by more than a day by accident before now.) That sort of precise timing issue usually isn't a problem, anyway, and I'm sure we can have a bunch of interesting CFJs about it if it does end up as a problem. -- ais523
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Avast
On Sat, 1 Feb 2014, Alex Smith wrote: Timestamp issues have lead to a lot of friction in the past (especially on one occasion when G. sent a message before a deadline, but due to events outside eir control, it arrived afterwards). I know the Distributor was talking about automatedly rewriting Date: headers to be trustworthy and outside the control of any players, although I'm not sure if that actually happened or not. omd did when that occasion happened, but people complained right away so e switched back. Then e wrote a proposal to make automatic re-writing the official stamp by law, but it got voted down, so e was annoyed and gave up on that - I think e actually said well don't blame me if it comes up again. Without that, the precedent set by judgement over the summer is that the authoritative one was actually the receipt by forum's domain, not the (standard display) one. But I think older precedents disagree, so it's messy. -G.
DIS: Re: BUS: Avast
On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Geoff Schmidt ge...@geoffschmidt.com wrote: 6. If e has not done so in the current week, a player CAN specify another player and announce that e is boarding that player's ship and pillaging eir operator collection. The attempt fails if there is any other player nearer in hyperspace distance to the announcing player than the named player. Otherwise all of the named player's operators are transferred forthwith to the announcing player. Present, based on ais523's argument. It would still probably be more interesting than the current version :)
