The below CFJ is 4036. I assign it to snail.
status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4036
=============================== CFJ 4036 ===============================
In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not empty, but belongs to no
community.
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Caller: ais523
Judge: snail
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History:
Called by ais523: 28 May 2023 23:25:13
Assigned to snail: [now]
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[Linked to CFJ 4037]
Caller's Evidence:
This week, I placed a tile at G6. It was adjacent to two
communities, Jade (with four tiles) at G7, and Emerald (with fewer than
four tiles) at F6. Emerald was thus merged into Jade.
The relevant part of the tournament regulations is:
{{{
If a tile has not been placed on a location on the board, it is
empty.
Participants CAN place a tile on an empty location by paying one
letter token and one number token that correspond to that
location's coordinates.
If a tile is placed that is not adjacent to any tiles belonging to
any communities, the player that placed it founds a new community,
e is granted 1 investment for that community, and e becomes its
founder. E CAN and SHOULD name the community after any color that
starts with a different first letter than any existing community
by announcement. If a community has not been named, the Surveyor
CAN and SHALL do so by announcement.
A player who is the founder of an existing community CANNOT place
a tile that would found a new community.
If a tile is placed adjacent to one or more tiles belonging to a
single community, that tile belongs to that community.
If a tile is placed adjacent to two or more tiles belongining to
different communities, a merger happens.
When a merger happens, if a single community involved in the
merger has more tiles than each other community, that community is
the acquiring community. If there is a tie, the tied community
that gained a tile least recently is the acquiring community. The
other communities are the acquired communities. All tiles
belonging to the acquired communities cease to belong to them and
begin to belong to the acquiring community. Each player gains X
(rounded down) Accolades for each acquired community e had an
investment in, where X is the total tiles that belonged to that
community immediately before the merger divided by the total
number of investments that exist for that community and times the
number of investments for that community that player owns. The
acquired communities and all investments in all acquired
communities are destroyed.
}}}
Caller's Arguments:
The intention behind the tournament regulations is probably that, if a
player places a tile to merge two or more communities into a single
community, the tile that was placed becomes part of the new merged
community.
However, I can't find anything in the tournament regulations that
states that a tile placed to cause a merger becomes part of any
community. Does this imply that the tile is non-empty, but not part of
the resulting merged community? (This doesn't break much, but causes
scores to be slightly lower.) The first CFJ is TRUE in that case, or
FALSE if G6 is part of Jade.
I also note that the tournament regulations don't explicitly state that
founding a new community by placing a tile not adjacent to any existing
communities causes the placed tile to become part of the community
founded that way. It seems plausible that such tiles would be part of
no community, although that would completely break the tournament (both
because there would be no way to score and because most of the moves
that have happened so far would be illegal). The second CFJ is checking
for the possibility that this has happened.
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