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[Roboson]

-1 to seizing ship order.

[10ebbor10]

Spoiler: diatribe on voting practices (click to show/hide)

Okay, so Bob, Clonea, and Mommasboy all make suggestions. They all think that their own suggestions are the best. This is the underlying assumption, if you can demonstrate that people spend a significant amount of time suggesting things and then NOT voting for them, then by all means my argument falls apart...
S1: Bob
S2: Clonea
S3: Mummasboy

Jane, Moe, and Curly vote S1, John, Jack, Jill, Cloneb and Clonec both like S2 and Yomumma loves S3 along with Larry

4 S1: Bob, Jane, Moe, Curly.
6 S2: Clonea, John, Jack, Jill, Cloneb, Clonec.
3 S3: Mummasboy, Yomumma, Larry.
So we have a contest. Now, lets remove all the people who proposed stuff...

3 S1: Jane, Moe, Curly.
5 S2: John, Jack, Jill, Cloneb, Clonec.
2 S3: Yomumma, Larry.
And we see that their combined votes had absolutely not role whatsoever in determining the outcome. If, on the other hand, their votes still existed, but were restricted rom their own ideas, they need to choose their second-place proposal. Clonea and Mummasboy both settle for S1 for being pretty. While Bob succumbs to S3 because "Red goes faster"...

5 S1: Jane, Moe, Curly, Clonea, Mummasboy.
5 S2: John, Jack, Jill, Cloneb, Clonec.
3 S3: Yomumma, Larry, Bob.
With just that little change we suddenly have a situation in which the votes of suggesters become relevant to the outcome! It is a better system, although is usually only relevant with smalle numbers of voters.

If I thought it would work I would propose a preferential system. A good one is everyone voting for everything in order of preference. You then take whichever preference has the least primary votes and remove it from the running, everyone who primary voted for it has their vote preference decremented by one(second choice becomes first choice). After than you remove the lowest remaining one, and decrement ITs primary votes, and if any then become primary votes for a missing entry they get decremented again until their primary lands on something still available.

Bob: S1 S2 S3
Clonea: S2 S1 S3
Mummasboy: S3 S1 S2
S2 has fewest votes:
Bob: S1 S2 S3
Clonea: S1 S3
Mummasboy: S3 S1 S2
S3 has fewest votes, only S1 remains! You can still have relevance even if your primary fails...
But this is fiddly and nobody is going to bother.

Another option is weighted votes. Everyone gets a 4, 3, and 2-strength vote.Bob: S1 S2 S3
8 S1: Bob4, Clonea2, Mummasboy2
7 S2: Bob3, Clonea4
6 S3: Bob2, Mummasboy4
6 S4: Clonea3, Mummasboy3
But this gets into problems if people submit multiple proposals, but at least they still need to prioritise their own suggestions. It is also difficult to keep track of whether the numbers are accurate, because of all the character spam, and the voting panel can get large and start overlapping, not to mention all the extra addition that needs to be kept straight.

Fundamentally, the problem is that we are using the worst voting system in the world, the one that elected Thump.

With just that little change we suddenly have a situation in which the votes of suggesters become relevant to the outcome! It is a better system, although is usually only relevant with smalle numbers of voters.

You made a few mistakes.

You assume that everyone thinks their own design is the best, but then assume that they would vote for another design that is not their own. If, by the rules, you are not allowed for your own design the logical act of the self-centered inventor would be to not vote at all. Any other act will in fact disadvantage their own design.

I propose another, simpler solution. Do not restrict votes to 1 per person.

[RAM]

But they are not just a self-centred inventor, they are playing a game. Voting for yourself equates to playing to win, and most people will just sort of settle into that. Not voting at all equates to abstaining from a major component of the game. Choosing not to play is a bit more awkward. It certainly happens, but even when it does you just get the same outcome as if everyone votes for themselves of their vote not counting for anything...

If people can just vote for everything then you will tend to get the situation of everyone generally voting for everything that they think will sort-of work and you get basically everyone voting for all of the basically good designs, which is the most tied-vote pit you will ever see, except that it is massively open to exploitation of people just waiting till the last moment to tip the four-way tie with a single vote... It can work if you have some sort of unequal vote system so that people still need to distinguish one vote from another, but just opening the floodgates to vote spam? I just cannot see it ever ending well...

[10ebbor10]

I do not agree with your assessment that voting for yourself is voting to win. Voting for yourself is voting for whatever design you thought will work best, which is often your own. After all, if it isn't, you wouldn't have gone through the effort of proposing it. There is no victory here, it's simply what one person thinks will work best.

Another thing that your voting proposal does is that it will reinforce the bias in favor of Early proposers.

After all, the first proposal can be voted on by the second proposer, but not necessarily the other way around.$

Edit : Almost forgot. Your analysis does not account for the fact that each person may propose 2 proposals.

[Roboson]

I'm going to agree with ebbor on this. A moratorium on voting on your own designs is a bad idea. As we've seen in these last few turns, a lot of designs have been proposed and we've had some ties, some vast majorities, and some designs that only get one vote. Typically the vote of the proposer. To prevent someone for voting for the idea they think is most appropriate stifles the process (a process which is not broken and doesn't need fixing by the way). If a player thinks it's morally righteous to not vote for their own designs along the lines of their personal principles, that's fine and more power to them. However, it is unfair and counter productive to impose that on others.

Furthermore, our system is fine. We don't need to impose rules to limit the voting process. Yes, some people will vote for their stuff (because they think it's what we need or that it's a cool idea (Which it probably is)) and there's no real reason to ban that. Especially if they went through a lot of word to field the design. And a multi vote system seems to me to just over complicate the process in the worst ways and simplify it in bad ways as well. Right now we have lots of ideas going around, good compromise and a certain level of strategy in casting votes. Not only does this work well, but it's also quite fun and adds a strategy dynamic to the game. There's no need to fix what's not broken.

[10ebbor10]

Simplified Frost Tower: We've simplified the Tower of Forever Frost while still keeping its potency and scale. Now we don't need Myark to operate it. However, it's still likely very expensive(not that that matters, we only need one per theatre).

Revision: Minor Towers of Frost [4]

Rather than have one big tower that requires constant maintainance by our Grand Master Wizard and can only be deployed in one theatre at a time, we've instead divided up the spell complexity between several smaller towers.  These smaller towers individually handle a portion of the temperature control, and each one can lower the temperature in an area by a few degrees.  The towers are not quite as tall, but by dividing them up we can scatter them across our front lines to act as bastions of defense.  If one tower falls then the spell is only weakened, not broken.  Each spell requires the constant attention from several trained wizards, but they do not need Grand Master status to control the magic within the spell circles.  Very Expensive.

Please compile your decision for the trader for this year.

Our engineers are taking very big, seemingly random liberties with our proposals.

The design explicitly asks for a single tower, instead, we get several. The design asks for the same potency, instead we get something much weaker, but spread out. The design asks for the same scale, instead we get a design that must be placed among the front lines.

This is not without consequences, especially because of this line :

we can scatter them across our front lines to act as bastions of defense.

The entire point of revising the frost tower revision was to render the enemy artillery a non-factor by deploying a powerful destructive asset beyond their reach, forcing them to create alternative solutions and allowing us to catch up, instead of this stagnating race for better artillery that we're doomed to lose because of the enemies head start.

Scattering among the front line means that the towers will be in the line of fire, and even with the (unexpected) redundancy will suffer severely, depriving the spell of it's intended, devastating effect.

It's annoying to see that plans get foiled not because of enemy strategy, not because of bad rolls, but because our orders spontaneously transmute themselves.

The redundancy is not entirely without benefits, of course. In the plains, the redundant towers may help because there we would be fighting near the tower. But in the mountains, which is what we care about, the redundant towers will be a weakness.

[Andres]

This also happened the first time we tried getting cheap fireballs. When we voted to do a design for cheaper Fireballs, we instead got Streamlined Fireballs, which were cheaper Minor Fireballs, not cheaper Fireballs.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[10ebbor10]

Oh, so it did. I didn't notice that then.

[Azzuro]

Oh guys. I come back from work and we've made more crappy frost towers that are easier for the enemy to knock down, rather than making cheaper long-range cannons as has been stated multiple times in the combat report to be what our commanders want. We have the range advantage, just not enough cannons to really capitalise on it, which is why we're fighting at a disadvantage.

Trader Actions
0 - Give him Dogwood Wands+Tree:
0 - Give him more Crystal Weapons+Apprentice:
0 - Give him Everything:
5 - Send Everything including Roboson: Roboson, Azzuro, 10ebbor10, Chiefwaffles, Stabby
1 - The viking way: RAM
1 (-1=0) - Send Everything including Roboson and contingency: Andres, -Roboson

Orders
2 (-1= 1 ) - Attack plains w/ primarily cavalry: Chiefwaffles, Roboson, -Azzuro
2 (-1= 1 )- Attack Eastern Sea: RAM, Roboson, - Azzuro
0 - Deploy frost towers at sea:
2 - Deploy Forever Frost along coast AND at sea if no penalty: Roboson, Azzuro

Voting against attacking the eastern theatres. They have a combat bonus there due to controlling the Eastern Sea, so we'll be throwing away our men for nothing. Unless taking them by surprise counts for a lot.

We're gonna get a beating this combat phase, depending on what Moskurg rolls out. Hopefully they failed their rolls or something?

Oh, and we should vote on what voting system to use. 2meta?

[Andres]

Oh guys. I come back from work and we've made more crappy frost towers that are easier for the enemy to knock down

That wasn't what we voted to get, though.

Order: Deploy Tower of Forever Frost in the Jungle. Deploy enough Minor Frost Towers in the Mountains to kill all Moskurgs but spare Arstotzkan lives. Use any surplus Minor Frost Towers to do the same to the Jungle.

This will kill all Moskurgs in the Mountains, making it a cakewalk for us to gain victory there. If there are any towers left for us to use, we'll ship them to the Jungle and kill all Moskurgs there too. Moving the proper Tower of Forever Frost away from the Jungle when we're losing there and it's providing a major buff is a very bad idea, especially since we can kill all Moskurgs there if we use it in conjunction with enough Minor Frost Towers.

Trader Actions
0 - Give him Dogwood Wands+Tree:
0 - Give him more Crystal Weapons+Apprentice:
0 - Give him Everything:
5 - Send Everything including Roboson: Roboson, Azzuro, 10ebbor10, Chiefwaffles, Stabby
1 - The viking way: RAM
1 - Send Everything including Roboson and contingency: Andres

Orders
2 - Attack plains w/ primarily cavalry: Chiefwaffles, Roboson
2 - Attack Eastern Sea: RAM, Roboson
0 - Deploy frost towers at sea:
2 - Deploy Forever Frost along coast AND at sea if no penalty: Roboson, Azzuro
1 - Deploy Forever Frost in Jungle and Minor Frost selectively in Mountains and Jungle: Andres

Whoever first started doing negative votes is an ass for doing so. Negative votes are worthless and contribute nothing but increased annoyance.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[10ebbor10]

Eh, we want to be able to stop stupid orders. So we need cancel votes.

On that note, orders have 30% chance of blowing up in our faces. Use them sparingly.

[Azzuro]

I disagree, otherwise you and I can Order: Withdraw entire army to the capital and screw over the whole game. We need some way of reflecting the popularity of an order, and negative votes are the best way to do it without the GM going: "Hm, 3 people voted for this, but there are six players and 2-3 lurkers, is that enough to proceed?"

Also, I'm kinda curious if the Moskurgs know how our cannons work yet. They know that we have steam engine, but do they know that the cannons are steam cannons? Because we could have a common vulnerability between the two, and they might invent antimagic shells and screw us over. evictedSaint, did the Moskurgs capture any of our cannons yet, or did they have the chance to observe it operating at close range?

Edit: Ninja'd by ebbor.

Doubleedit:

Trader Actions
0 - Give him Dogwood Wands+Tree:
0 - Give him more Crystal Weapons+Apprentice:
0 - Give him Everything:
5 - Send Everything including Roboson: Roboson, Azzuro, 10ebbor10, Chiefwaffles, Stabby
1 - The viking way: RAM
1 - Send Everything including Roboson and contingency: Andres

Orders
2 - Attack plains w/ primarily cavalry: Chiefwaffles, Roboson
2 - Attack Eastern Sea: RAM, Roboson
0 - Deploy frost towers at sea:
1 - Deploy Forever Frost along coast AND at sea if no penalty: Roboson
1 - Deploy Forever Frost in Jungle and Minor Frost selectively in Mountains and Jungle: Andres

Ebbor raises a good point, I'm removing my vote for the orders.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Trader Actions
0 - Give him Dogwood Wands+Tree:
0 - Give him more Crystal Weapons+Apprentice:
0 - Give him Everything:
5 - Send Everything including Roboson: Roboson, Azzuro, 10ebbor10, Chiefwaffles, Stabby
1 - The viking way: RAM
1 - Send Everything including Roboson and contingency: Andres

Orders
3 - Attack plains w/ primarily cavalry: Chiefwaffles, Roboson, Stabby
2 - Attack Eastern Sea: RAM, Roboson
0 - Deploy frost towers at sea:
1 - Deploy Forever Frost along coast AND at sea if no penalty: Roboson
1 - Deploy Forever Frost in Jungle and Minor Frost selectively in Mountains and Jungle: Andres

[evictedSaint]

This also happened the first time we tried getting cheap fireballs. When we voted to do a design for cheaper Fireballs, we instead got Streamlined Fireballs, which were cheaper Minor Fireballs, not cheaper Fireballs.

Glory to Arstotzka.

Minor Fireballs were Expensive iirc and the goal was to get Cheap Fireballs your apprentices could cast.  The other type of Fireball was Very Expensive and had moral penalties.  That's why you made Minor Fireballs in the first place.


I had assumed that not having a single "shell this one spot here" tower would be beneficial and requiring the enemy to take all the towers to remove the cold penalty would be a good thing and took the liberty of doing so, especially since the tower of frost was built as close to the front lines as possible anyways.  If that's an issue then the towers can all be built together in one spot and form a single tower again.


The tower is not built to extend into the sea theatre.  If you want to attempt to make it a player in sea engagements it will require an order.

[Azzuro]

I think the rest of us assumed that the tower was well out of reach of enemy artillery but still powerful enough to have its effect on the battlefront, given that it's a National Effort. Jenga tower-ception sounds fun, but do we still have the original capital-T Tower alongside our minor towers, and if so can we deploy that instead of Myark with the fireball wand for even more cold?

I think if the tower really can't affect our engagements at sea, best not to push our luck. Voting against the sea-or-coast deploying orders.

Oh, and

evictedSaint, did the Moskurgs capture any of our cannons yet, or did they have the chance to observe it operating at close range?