I didn't do video recaps because this game was very tedious and dull for me.

Here is a rough geographical layout of my area:

secretpanda ---- Riot

Topkilla ----- me --- Roadkeihl

Topkilla --- Yotta

The 5-second version of this game was that I acted peaceful towards all of my neighbors, and then a ton of stuff happened beyond my vision, with enormous amounts of chat visible to me but only half-interpretable because I couldn't see what was going on, which was very, very annoying.

The 5-minute version was that I was peaceful towards all my neighbors and drilled a mine once I reached initial cap. I was able to increase my cap significantly with a tinkerer and then, as I was still peaceful with everyone, decided to drill a second mine very early in the game. This ended up being my big error in the game that probably wrecked any chance I had for medaling. This caused a lot of attention and Topkilla was using a fisherman strategy (?) which I believe means he was casting lines into the public chat to see if people would be in favor of ganging up on me. This felt hostile to me and I decided to try the same strategy back at him. He didn't get any bites with his fishing, but I did get a nibble or two -- Secretpanda was in favor of attacking Topkilla. He and Riot were obviously allied but Riot was not in position, but at this time he increased his drill gifting to me. Yotta was quiet but I was hoping he'd go after TK to his west. Yotta was asking for a tinkerer so I gifted him mine, which put me over cap and crippled my production, but I needed a group effort in this attack. I also pointed out that JD, who was to TK's west, would profit a lot from this attack. So I went for it. I sent 1 big sub of 276 drills with nav, helms, thief. I thought I may be able to outmaneuver him and get him sending drills around. Unfortunately he had a universal deterrent of nav-pirate-martyr so I had to retreat. I thought it would be okay if other players were able to encroach into him but nobody did. Panda did not attack as Roadkeihl was at this time preparing to hit him. This was really frustrating to me as Roadkheil could have gone for TK just as easily, as far as I know. But nothing happened so I had to retreat and nurse my pride.

I did garner a lot of NP and some of the other players dominating the game from a production standpoint, like Roadkeihl, thanks in part to my funding, were extremely slow to mine. I decided to have one last go at Topkilla before time ran out and would have been successful in knocking him down a peg but there was no point in that, it would only benefit other players that had done nothing collaborative with me. The events are summarized well enough in TK's own thread.

I still don't understand how Roadkeihl didn't get gold or at least silver medal in this game as he easily could have. I think there were a lot of diplomatic dynamics going on that caused players to behave unpredictably.

Panda, I strongly recommend that future experimental games be done in anonymous mode.

I guess I didn't give much thought to the dynamics of public chat only, other than the annoying factor which I already mentioned.

I will say that fisherman strategy seemed good but was probably dangerous, as you are seeking a group opinion and your own messaging could backfire on you. This is what I attempted to cause to happen to Topkilla but the backfire fizzled.

In the end I wonder if players were afraid to commit to any one agenda as others would try to take advantage of it, or if there was too much "hey we know each other from the forums" going on. To try to eliminate some of the latter I do think that future experiment games should be anonymous.

6payh wrote:
In the end I wonder if players were afraid to commit to any one agenda as others would try to take advantage of it, or if there was too much "hey we know each other from the forums" going on. To try to eliminate some of the latter I do think that future experiment games should be anonymous.

I agree with this. There was also some pussyfooting around in the Regulars game as well I- an anonymous game may be able fix this...'I might have to deal with you on the forums so I do not wish to make an enemy' type feel.

Its funny to think we may need a mask to protect our online identities, no?

Except, if we play experiments in anonymous mode, it will be hard to ensure that players are following the rules. If someone cheats, it could be difficult to ban them from future experiments. In the upcoming Lucky Straw experiment, you could have people claiming to be the host and sending falsified hire information to someone. Also, assuming the host contacts people in-game to tell them which hire to choose, then the host's identity would be compromised. My personal opinion is that as these are just experiments, decisions in them shouldn't be taken personally. The focus is on the modified rules, and not the outcome of the game itself.

v3xt wrote:Except, if we play experiments in anonymous mode, it will be hard to ensure that players are following the rules. If someone cheats, it could be difficult to ban them from future experiments. In the upcoming Lucky Straw experiment, you could have people claiming to be the host and sending falsified hire information to someone. Also, assuming the host contacts people in-game to tell them which hire to choose, then the host's identity would be compromised. My personal opinion is that as these are just experiments, decisions in them shouldn't be taken personally. The focus is on the modified rules, and not the outcome of the game itself.

I believe the purpose of the experiments is not only to try out modified rules but to see if a game mode with such rules could be viable for the general player. In Public Chat I think the game mode where misrepresented as half hearted due to our relation with each other.
Because these are experiments that we volunteered for, what is the incentive to cheat? I believe being anonymous might take away our initial cautiousness towards each other.

For the next experiment, the number generator should simply be posted on the forums
The entire series of random numbers could be posted in advance before the game even starts

6payh wrote:For the next experiment, the number generator should simply be posted on the forums
The entire series of random numbers could be posted in advance before the game even starts

Yup! That's what I did.

Janitorial Duties, I see what you mean. If it was actually implemented, I can see it being better in anonymous. In the experiment though, seeing as we have to invite people, it would be a little difficult to make it fully anonymous. You would know who is in the game, even if you didn't know what colour they were.

6payh wrote:I still don't understand how Roadkeihl didn't get gold or at least silver medal in this game as he easily could have. I think there were a lot of diplomatic dynamics going on that caused players to behave unpredictably.

Yeahhhh, I played the mid game wrong. It was mostly that I underestimated pandasecret. You'd think 600 drillers, two thieves, a helmsman, a general, a smuggler, and an infiltrator would do the job.

v3xt wrote:Janitorial Duties, I see what you mean. If it was actually implemented, I can see it being better in anonymous. In the experiment though, seeing as we have to invite people, it would be a little difficult to make it fully anonymous. You would know who is in the game, even if you didn't know what colour they were.

Couldn't hurt to try it out! Any way that can rid an experiment of bias should be taken. Full anonymity of course can't be achieved because we can see the pool of experimentees.

We could, if needed, take the individuals from the experimenters pool and randomly throw them into one of the two experiments.
Instead of 'screw that Janitorial guy for betraying me', It'd be 'Screw that red guy, who may or may not be the legendary V3xt'