RE: [VANILLA-LIST:3149] Re: Continuous scoring

["Paulsen, Brian" <BPaulsen@lehman.com>]

Sorry to expose the length of time that I've been away from the 
game, but what currently happens between high-clue teams 
now?  It sounds as if one team is stockpiling armies and another
is using its armies to expand and get the 15-5 advantage.

Where does the 5-15 side keep the armies?  Does it throw
them all on a base?  Why doesn't the other team horde a bunch
of armies of its own?  After all, with a 15-5 advantage, armies
should be somewhat easy to come by, right?

Again, it has been a long time since I've played, but I'm very
curious about this strategy.

Brian
aka FreeKill

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Dave Ahn [SMTP:ahn@vec.wfubmc.edu]
> Sent:	Monday, May 08, 2000 3:23 PM
> To:	inlcouncil@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU; vanilla-list@us.netrek.org
> Subject:	[VANILLA-LIST:3149] Re: Continuous scoring
> 
> On Mon, May 08, 2000 at 11:07:55AM -0700, Tom Holub wrote:
> > 
> > You also are assuming that we don't care about the effect on the 
> > predictability of games.  Your system makes game results more
> predictable;
> > the existing predictability is already too high.
> 
> Yes, I am.  But so do you.  Shortening the gametime to 60 minutes also
> makes the game results more predictable because irrelevant portions of
> the game are simply cut out.  Both ideas yield the same result: a more
> interesting game.
> 
> > You have a fallacy in your thinking here.  A team that is behind 15-5 in
> > planets but has 25 armies is not behind by 5 planets in the same way
> that a
> > team with no armies is.
> 
> I intentionally said "successfully delivering 25 armies" as opposed to
> "being up by 25 armies" to avoid this misunderstanding.  Oh well.
> 
> > Trading control of territory for consolidation of resources is not just
> > a netrek strategy, it's a war strategy, and often an effective one.
> 
> Yes, it is.  However, it is seems to be the _only_ effective strategy in
> use now between two reasonably equal Netrek teams.  If football had a
> strategy that consistently outperformed others like in Netrek, it would
> become a lot less interesting.
> 
> > Again, with this kind of system the game is over 30 minutes before the
> > end.  Emprical evidence shows that 11-8-1 or closer is the expected
> > score between two reasonably equal teams in a 90-minute game.  If behind
> > behind 11-8-1 is now a winning condition, you've now given the team
> that's
> > AHEAD a great incentive to play passively and store armies; how are you
> > going to get a 12-7-1 advantage against a team that just controls their
> > front and never tries to drop armies in your space?
> 
> Given two equal teams, the advantage should be close or equal to zero, so
> your scenario wouldn't happen.  If one team dominates during opening, then
> the opposing team has the incentive to aggressively win the mid-game to
> negate the advantage.  Even if one team gains both handicaps going into
> the end-game, the granularity of the advantage should be relative to the
> degree of dominance.  I used the fixed half-planet handicap to illustrate
> the point.
> 
> You have valid observations about this system, but I think that some of
> them are overstated or at least addressable.
> 
> -- 
> Dave Ahn <ahn@vec.wfubmc.edu>        |  "When you were born, you cried and
> the
>                                      |  world rejoiced.  Try to live your
> life
> Virtual Endoscopy Center             |  so that when you die, you will
> rejoice
> Wake Forest Univ. School of Medicine |  and the world will cry."  -1/2
> jj^2
> 
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