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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   5683 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Maybe you as a human being want to maximize the number of board games you want to win or something, but actually you also want to optimize for things like money and friendships and comfort and happiness and eventually we've gone full meta. My claim isn't that it's impossible to treat board games as repeated games or that you won't improve your winrate, my claim is that it's inappropriate and unfun. It's effectively a defection in the board game playing experience, something which increases your own enjoyment (assuming you like winning) at the expense of everyone else, and if everyone does it then everyone ends up having less fun.

If I want to win each game (more or less - I don't tryhard all the time), by induction I want to win every game. I really do not see how that's worse than trying to win individual games. By that logic you shouldn't try to win a match and instead should just make whatever move is best in the shortest term every time.

If you unilaterally declare an ultimatum "nobody can do any harmful actions against me or I will sacrifice all chances of winning to destroy you" then you'll have a massive advantage as no player wants to incur your wrath (unless they're so far ahead they can afford it, or so far behind they are going to lose anyway and want to reverse-kingmaker you).

Maybe it's just a badly balanced game if one player can be that fearsome while facing off against the entire table. Anyway, I didn't advocate for spitefully destroying the first player who attacked you at any cost. I'm advocating for reserving the right to do so if you have no chance of winning.

But if everyone player does this then you have a big mutually assured destruction scenario and, unless the game was specifically designed around that scenario, is likely to be less fun than playing the way the game was intended.

If it's not fun in that particular game then I won't do it or encourage it.

As long as there's an element of diplomacy in the game, some players will be inevitably spurned in some way in favor of others. Attacking everyone equally just means you're spreading yourself thin, it's generally a losing strategy. The possibility of revenge for breaking promises or ganging up keeps the diplomacy somewhat balanced.

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