pentagram diplomacy
 

Here's a good way to play multiplayer that fixes the multiplayer problem of "If I kill you then he wins.".

In one-on-one, (or in one-team vs. one-team), you are always willing to expend your resources (i.e., send your army into deadly danger) if you think it will deplete your opponent's resources more.

But with three or more players, if you send your army to destroy player A's army, then player B is going to mop up both of you.

This encourages too much waiting-and-building-up strategy. I hate that. I want to see some good battlefield action and not just fifty turns of conquering independents and building up your super-tech.

Here's a way to play a 5-player game that has both plenty of combat and also interesting diplomacy:

For scoring purposes, arrange the players into a pentagram:

<pre>
Alice Bob


Charles Doug


Eliza
</pre>

That's some crappy ASCII art but hopefully you get the idea.

Now the scoring rule is simple: you win when both of the people opposite you are dead.

That's it!

Now what about the people next to you on the pentagram? Well, they aren't your enemies exactly, but they aren't precisely your friends either. It can lead to some very fun diplomacy.

Sometime after I move into my new house (Nov. 1), I'll host a game with these rules. There will only be four slots available, since I'm calling first dibs on one of the five slots. :-)

I'll also use the latest Version of Zen's conceptual balance mod. I like it!

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

Sounds very interesting, but how do you cope if those nations cannot reach each other?

How do you extend this sytem to 7 or 9 nations?
Would it be more sensible to retain 2 specific nations to kill (which in turn also try to kill you), but which would lead to two nations being neither you enemy nor someone who shares your goal?

Or would it be more sensible to have non-mutual enemy relationships, i.e. something like
A vs. C,D
B vs. D,E
C vs. E,F
D vs. F,G
E vs. G,A
F vs. A,B
G vs. B,C

so that A hunts C,D; is hunted by E,F; and shares 1/2 of it goal with B,G? It is sort of bad here that C and D play a different role, since C hunts both of A's hunters. It should be a system where every role occurs twice equally...
(having three goals seems bad to me for 7 players)

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

There are a couple of maps that make that easy to do. Designed for that type of play.

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

Theater of war might be perfect for it, with 6 nations. That's a map I've always wanted to have a game on... It'd give a very different kind of play, though I think the .map file would need to be editted for six players so each started in a separate sphere, and also to modify the victory point conditions.

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

This sounds very much like the "Paranoia" games over at SE4 PBW... except in those, you only had one target (and in one of the games, your target was known only to you! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif)

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

I really don't know how to generalize to other numbers of players than five.

Also, I don't know what to do if the enemy nations can't reach each other.

You could get your five players lined up, start the game, reveal the location of your starting capitol province, and then assign enemies so that all enemies can reach each other without going through friends.

What maps do you recommend, Gandalf?

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

...A...B

C.........D

...E...F


You keep it to where each only needs two specific nations, the ones that are one apart. A -&gt; D,E B -&gt; C,F

This would work wonderfully with a Theater of War game, I should think, and only requiring 2 capitals to win would keep the game from going on and on.

(Edit : periods added since it wants to collapse spaces.)

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

[Post completely edited for symmetry reasons:]

Well, this is for 6...but I am interested in 7.

What about this one:

A hunts C,D
B hunts D,E
C hunts E,F
D hunts F,G
E hunts G,A
F hunts A,B
G hunts B,C

So A is hunted by E&amp;F, both being hunted by C who is A's prey...

So each nation needs to hunt the hunter of its own hunters. Furthermore, there are no 4-cycles and each nation is contained in a 3-cycle.

Therefore, alliances are highly unstable. The game is also likely to end very soon once the first nation got killed, so sitting back and developing is severly discouraged by this victory condition!
Diplomacy, on the other hand, rules, since it is unimported who killed the killed nations.
(Note that I am merely talking about victory conditions and do not intend to place any other restrictions on alliances, etc. Every player is just assigned his own private mission!)



Does this make sense to obtain a good game? I figured that 4-cycles must be prohibited so that there are no obvious alliances, while 3-cycles rule out alliances easily. What else would be good rules for such a victory-condition?

Here is a picture showing above's hunting relation for 7 players:
http://www.tcs.ifi.lmu.de/~jost/domnations.jpg

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

A big difference between this 7-player graph and the 5-player case is that in the 5-player (pentagram) game, you are always your enemy's enemy. That is, if I can win by killing you (and one other person), then you can win by killing me (and one other person).

With this 7-player game diagrammed above, I want to protect myself from my two attackers, but I don't get any victory points for conquering them.

I guess the problem is if I were playing in this 7-player game, I wouldn't know what strategy to use!

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

Well, Gandalf hasn't (yet) recommended a map to use for this kind of game. I'm partial to the Cradle map. It is good looking, has interesting barriers -- rivers and mountains -- and I appreciate that the map image lets me know the actual contents of the provinces (e.g. farmlands, extra-magical-provinces, etc.).

If I were to organize a 5-player pentagram game on the Cradle map, I would want to do it were each player reveals the location of their capitol and then gets assigned enemies so that all enemies are as close to each other as possible.

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

Wouldn't it be easier to simply put a limit on two enemies? Symmetrical animosity demands a symmetrical expansion. That's good and well on a map like the Theather of War but in the Cradle of Dominion I might very well be isolated from my enemies in a sea of "friends".

Perhaps another system based on chance, voting or rules could be deviced. Perhaps you always go to war with the first nation you encounter and then can't start a new war until that opponent is defeated. First one to defeat two enemies wins?

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

Yes, and my intention was the following:
I want a game where everybody is at war with everybody else. There shouldnt be much time for building up an army and then just steamrolling without a good fight. Furthermore eliminating three nations seemed difficult to me in a 7 player game, so I was stuck with 2 goals.

So I decided to decouple the goals: Everyone must defend against two nations, but this isnt his topmost priority. Even worse, should he cripple one of his attackers, someone else will win (there is always someone who has those two attackers by design). So that means that there are no likely allies around - No FRIENDS! -, but nevertheless one should better hurry up to see that the right nations are killed, since it is likely that someone wins as soon as the second nation gets wiped out!


Maybe having three goals set is also feasible for a vicotry condition: So one nation has to kill three others, and the remaining three will try to kill this nation:

A - B,C,D
B - C,D,E
C - D,E,F
D - E,F,G
E - A,F,G
F - A,B,G
G - A,B,C
(i.e. every nation needs to kill the next three on a circle, yielding the 7-symmetrical complete graph on 7 vertices).

This seems to guarantee even more trouble, but on the other hand, this victory condition imposes a not so immediate danger of fullfillment, while already suggesting alliances with the two neighbors on the circle who share the goal by 2/3 (whereas the previous chart didnt suggest any alliances, at least none that I could spot), which in turn greatly depends on the starting positions within the map (i.e. am encircled by my two likely allies, or they far or near...).


BTW: these charts shall not prohibit alliances nor wars at all - its just the victory condition...

Re: pentagram diplomacy
 

By the way, I've realized something silly about the pentagram style: being enemies with the two players opposite you (on the strategic map) makes it so that you will always collide with one of your non-enemies. That is: you attacking your enemy, and the guy next to you attacking his enemy have to go through the same middle provinces.

However, saying that you are enemies with the two people *next* to you avoids that problem while retaining the exact same diplomatic issues.

Is it possible to make a map like this?
 

I know it is possible to edit a map so that it has five specific starting positions.

But is it possible to make a map with per-player victory points? So that player A has requires three victory points to win: VP a, VP b, and VP c. And player B requires three victory points to win: VP a, VP b and VP d. And so on?

This would be the way to implement the pentagram (or other player-specific) win conditions.

7 Nation Diplomacy
 

A friend of mine pointed out how to arrange some symmetry for the 7 nation victory condition, so I updated the picture in my previous Last post in this threas to a more pleasing and more fair one, and I have also updated my comments about that picture as well as design reasons in that previous-Last post of mine.

I am interested in playing a game with such a victory condition, but I am currently involved in enough games, so I am going to ask about that later...

funny result of pentagram style
 

The 2x2x2x2x2 game that we are playing (you can see it in the multiplayer games section of this forum) is really fun.

One of the teams has been all but eliminated, and an interesting consequence of this is that the two teams who were not the dead team's enemies have become ipso facto allies even though they are technically enemies. You can see why this works when you consider that neither of them can win if the other one dies *first* -- both of them have to kill their *other* enemy before they can kill that enemy. If they kill that enemy first then one of their competitors wins.

I'm pleased and amused. And it's fun.