Especially thinking about path-dependent interactions,
I’m reminded of Ultima IV’s virtue system. The eight virtues and shrines seem like just the sort of thing that would fit right into that mechanical structure. As usual, a very thought-provoking piece!
This kind of thing happens often with videogames (dynamic difficulty adjustment and its descendants) so I see no reason why it couldn't be implemented in boardgames. The main challenge in both cases is making sure the system can't be second-guessed by players so that they intentionally play suboptimally to keep difficulty down (or steer it in an exploitable direction)...
Geoff, I am interested in your comment that "As a caveat, we ruled out using any app assistance". I am working on a wargame with secret movement and a search system, and have done the same. Why do we do this? It would be so simple to ask a computer to do the job. Yet I (we?) want to maintain a strict boundary between computer and board games. (The only exception that combines the two I can think of is UBOOT.) - Paul H
I'm not opposed to using an app to control an opponent or environmental - I love games that are app-assisted. However for the purpose of this exercise we wanted to focus on how to accomplish this without using an app. That's what I meant.
Recently I've been tinkering with a 2d6 table ai because it makes certain behaviours more likely than others. If you have a game with 2 playstyles (e.g. melee and ranged), maybe you could have a floating modifier than goes up and down depending on the players' actions, with counter strategies for 1 playstyle on the lower numbers and counter strategies for the other on the high numbers
Hi Geoff, great piece. Have you considered evolutionary (gene based) systems? Normally, individuals will all have separate genes. But what if you have a 'ancestor blueprint creature' that has all the genes filled out (I'm thinking kind of the blueprints in Eclipse but more complex) that has several gene slots. Each round it spawns 2 offsprings. You draw several new genes for each offspring at random.
The offsprings and master all attack you and maybe perform some other game related stuff and whenever you attack the weakest creature takes the damage. Then the ancestor takes the genes from the strongest offspring and the cycle continues.
Especially thinking about path-dependent interactions,
I’m reminded of Ultima IV’s virtue system. The eight virtues and shrines seem like just the sort of thing that would fit right into that mechanical structure. As usual, a very thought-provoking piece!
Love this! Reminds me a bit of the embodied cognition discussed in this conversation: https://x.com/Meaningness/status/1731699163979514254?s=20
He uses the example of a stack of bowls in the kitchen as a kind of sorting algorithm that is instantiated in the environment.
Joe Henrich talks about this idea as being the key thing about humans in his fantastic book The Secret of Our Success: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691178431/the-secret-of-our-success
Computation is physical, and this is a profound and counter-intuitive truth that board games perfectly express.
Tabletop Network seems cool, will check it out!
This kind of thing happens often with videogames (dynamic difficulty adjustment and its descendants) so I see no reason why it couldn't be implemented in boardgames. The main challenge in both cases is making sure the system can't be second-guessed by players so that they intentionally play suboptimally to keep difficulty down (or steer it in an exploitable direction)...
Geoff, I am interested in your comment that "As a caveat, we ruled out using any app assistance". I am working on a wargame with secret movement and a search system, and have done the same. Why do we do this? It would be so simple to ask a computer to do the job. Yet I (we?) want to maintain a strict boundary between computer and board games. (The only exception that combines the two I can think of is UBOOT.) - Paul H
I'm not opposed to using an app to control an opponent or environmental - I love games that are app-assisted. However for the purpose of this exercise we wanted to focus on how to accomplish this without using an app. That's what I meant.
Recently I've been tinkering with a 2d6 table ai because it makes certain behaviours more likely than others. If you have a game with 2 playstyles (e.g. melee and ranged), maybe you could have a floating modifier than goes up and down depending on the players' actions, with counter strategies for 1 playstyle on the lower numbers and counter strategies for the other on the high numbers
Hi Geoff, great piece. Have you considered evolutionary (gene based) systems? Normally, individuals will all have separate genes. But what if you have a 'ancestor blueprint creature' that has all the genes filled out (I'm thinking kind of the blueprints in Eclipse but more complex) that has several gene slots. Each round it spawns 2 offsprings. You draw several new genes for each offspring at random.
The offsprings and master all attack you and maybe perform some other game related stuff and whenever you attack the weakest creature takes the damage. Then the ancestor takes the genes from the strongest offspring and the cycle continues.
Thinking on it might be even better if some are the genes are hidden at some moments so the players cannot plan for the evolution.
Interesting idea! The whole game could be centered around breeding algorithms that do well in the game.