[PCarroll]

Scott Hebert said:
To speak to the chess problem... if I miss the fact that you're are threatening my rook, did you out-play me if you take it, or did I miss it? This, to me, is more of a situation of the latter.

OTOH, if you knight-fork my King and Queen, this is more likely a matter of out-playing me than a mistake on my part. True, you could see it as 'not seeing that you could fork me, and thus not defending myself properly', but then it could also be that you are setting up multiple threats, perhaps using a bit of misdirection to confuse me, etc. etc. There is a point where someone can be simply out-played.

Is there such a point? Perhaps. When I bought a boxed Go set (back in 1975), I read a curious point of etiquette in the instruction manual: it said that it's not uncommon to allow an opponent to take back a move--or even several moves--even in a tournament game. The rationale given was that it's considered dishonorable to win just by capitalizing on an opponent's oversight.

I've always had mixed feelings about that, and I've always continued to wonder about it. On one hand, I'm all for letting an opponent retract a move or two; I'll even agree to start over. But OTOH, theoretically a game could go on forever that way: every time you get in trouble, you say, "Oops. Can we go back six or eight turns? I think I must've made another mistake."

I'm inclined to believe that *all* games are won by capitalizing on opponents' oversights (or lack of foresight or insight).

And yet, I suspect you're right too: there's a difference between missing a direct threat and missing a setup for a knight fork. But what is the difference really?

Seems to me we're talking about the line between what's considered obvious and what's not considered obvious. Beyond the beginner level, direct threats are supposed to be obvious to a chess player; so if an experienced player misses a direct threat, that's just an oversight.

The trouble is, at an intermediate level, setups for knight forks are supposed to be obvious to players. So if an intermediate-level player misses one, why doesn't that also count as an oversight?

"Obvious" is a matter of degree and experience. Grandmasters sometimes, in hindsight, consider their moves (or their opponent's moves) obvious blunders.

There may indeed come a point where "someone can be simply out-played." But the test of that is losing repeatedly to a given opponent. And even if player A consistently loses to player B, how do you know whether player A is being outplayed or is just prone to making oversights?

I have to say that my biggest problem with Dominions II is that the game rapidly outstrips my ability to focus on all of the different pieces that require my attention. Some people may like the fact that late-game Dominions has 100s (if not 1000s) of commanders that require orders every turn; I do not. However, adding more automation is not the way to 'solve' this problem, IMO. A 'better' way of solving the problem would be to allow fewer commanders to do more, or alternatively add a limit to commanders, whether a hard cap (you may not have more than 20 commanders), or a soft cap (your commanders die after X turns).

Now you're speaking my language. This sounds like the "mental hold" problem I was describing in my last message: a game that's too big, with too many moving parts, to comfortably hold in one's mind.

To me, size (including number of units to command), rules complexity, and game length are the three things that can weaken one's "mental hold."

Also, at this point, there is very little in the game that can surprise me, and surprise is useful. . . .

That's a twofold topic: (1) the joy of learning all the possibilities a game affords, and the pleasant surprise of making a new discovery, and (2) the surprise of a random or unforeseen game event occurring, and the challenge of having to deal with it.

The first type of surprise is, IMO, a big reason for being attracted to games like Dom2 or a good RPG or wargame system: it seems there's always more to discover. The size and complexity of the game gives a player a lot to explore before he's seen it all (whereupon he often gets bored and turns to a new game).

The second type of surprise is what makes backgammon different than chess: there's a factor (the dice rolls) you can't accurately predict; you have to take them as they come and make the best of them. In a sense, each dice roll is a surprise (all the player's calculations notwithstanding).

The latter is a kind of surprise that occurs during the play of a game. The other kind only occurs during the learning of a game (which, for a very complex game, can be a never-ending process).

So, the question is: What do you really want to do--play a game, or just keep learning games? Those who get more joy out of learning games may hate "mental hold"--because if they can comprehend the whole game, there's nothing left to learn. But those who get more fun out of playing will welcome "mental hold"--because once they've got it, they're free to focus on strategy & tactics, on playing well.

Is it dishonorable to know about the Void Gate in Dom2 if your opponent doesn't? Do you really want to win just because you happen to know something that comes as a surprise to your opponents? Theoretically, nothing in the rules or structure of the game should ever be a surprise to players. Yet, there are players who thrive on exploring the game-system and its possibilities; and once they've tried everything, the game becomes like a stick of gum that's lost its flavor.

It's weird when you stop and think about it. What would you say to a person who says, "Chess is boring now that I've learned all the rules"? Learning the rules is just the beginning of being able to enjoy chess. Yet we hear people saying, "The Void Gate was the last thing of interest to me in Dom2; now that I've experimented with that, the fun's over for me." That's a little like someone saying, "I didn't know about en-passant captures in chess, and that was kinda cool; but that was the last rule I had to learn, so now the fun's all over." Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

Clearly some modern games (wargames, RPGs, etc.) have a very different kind of appeal than traditional games.

--Patrick