Popeing Consequences

A few years ago I posted some thoughts about 'Popeing', the practice of using potentially deceptive words during a game to convince an opponent to take an action better for you than the one they're likely to choose on their own. I certainly am guilty of doing (at least) my fair share of Popeing, and I actually really like games where Popeing is a key part of the game. (Diplomacy is pretty much entirely Popeing with a little bit of tactical movement. Battlestar Galactica has a really core Popeing component while there are unrevealed cylons.) But I tend to get annoyed when otherwise 'normal' games devolve into a Popefest. Puerto Rico is like that for me. I don't like playing the game when every move has comments from every player because I find it adds too much time to the game and makes it mentally draining in a way I don't enjoy.

A couple of situations have arisen recently where someone said things and/or made 'deals' that they later rescinded when the game state changed favorably for them. In both cases I'd argue that the game state only reached that position because of what they'd said, and that by then taking the actions they did they broke their word and acted unethically. In neither case were there any in game consequences for their actions, and I don't even know what could have happened. Both cases were very distasteful for me, but both are things that could well have happened in a Diplomacy game and would have been hailed as great plays there, and not as cheating in any way at all. So maybe the problem is just with me and my black-and-white way of looking at things. Maybe I need to learn that just because someone says they'll do something doesn't mean they actually will and that I have to analyze a board state assuming they'll go back on their word?

The first one happened in a game of Risk Legacy. It's a Risk variant where you play to 4 points instead of to global conquest, and where you play 15 games in a row and the goal is not just to win an individual game but to have won the most games after 15 are played. In one of those games Pounder established a treaty with someone else to not attack each other. The other person didn't defend that border and left a juicy path to their home city (and a victory point). Pounder hit 3 points from other sources and went for the 4th by breaking his truce. He did it, won that game from out of nowhere, and is in a good position to win the entire campaign thanks to the snowballing effect of wins and the fact the rest of us are unwilling to properly punish him for his lie. I want to lower Pounder's chances of winning a given game, but I'm not willing to significantly lower my own to accomplish it. That would just help Sky win, and we can't have that now can we?

So the moral of that story seems to be that breaking a treaty for a win carries no consequences at all. In fact, it mostly seems like the end result of Pounder breaking a treaty isn't that no one makes treaties with Pounder. It's that no one makes treaties at all. The unwritten social rules of our games have changed to line up with the way Pounder played. So it seems like his play was just a smart one. Treaties clearly weren't something the table actually cared very much about, so his willingness to break them worked well for him.

The second one was in a game of Blood Bowl that I was watching. Brent and Robb were playing and Robb was in a commanding position. Brent was down on men (he had 7 left in play and 2 in the KO box), Robb was up 1-0 and had the ball in an unassailable position. He was able to score trivially and Brent didn't even have a low percentage shot to stop it. All but one of Brent's guys were on the ground and Robb was about to hit the last one. Robb is a methodical player and tends to take the full 4 minutes for his turns. Brent sounded frustrated over voice chat and asked Robb to not waste more time than he needed to. With 6 turns left this request would probably save everyone 15-20 minutes of time. But even in such a dominant position there's lots of things the winner needs to consider:

• Can I prevent my opponent from getting any 2 die blitzes with his guys on the ground? (Important because having guys get hit risks getting them injured.)
• Can I prevent my opponent from getting any 1 die blitzes with his guys on the ground?
• Do I even want to score a second time? Scoring means having to kick off, which means three of my guys are going to get hit. I think the answer is going to be yes almost always, but it's still something to consider.
• If I score, when should it be? Can my opponent score 3 times to win? Can they score 2 times for the tie? Are they so beaten down that I can reasonably score again myself?
• Can I choose who on my team is going to score? Personally I like scoring with 'unlikely' guys like the agility 1 saurus on my Lizardman team. 6 of my 8 touchdowns on that team have been scored by such players. (You do this to level up important guys since scoring a touchdown is a key way to earn experience.)
• Should I foul someone? A successful foul on a good player will often change some of the above answers. I could totally see fouling a dude and then scoring fast if it works and stalling until the end if I got kicked out because the difference in player numbers will have a big impact on my odds of scoring the third touchdown versus their odds of scoring twice.

Robb was going to end up taking a lot of time thinking about these things (and probably more). Brent didn't want to sit around while he got dominated. So he told Robb straight up that his plan was to leave all his guys on the ground. If somehow his one standing guy stayed standing he was going to dodge around until he fell down too. Robb has been on the receiving end of some brutal games (my Skaven beat his Dark Elves up pretty badly recently) so I imagine he felt a little sorry for Brent. No need to prolong suffering in people, especially if it might drive them away from the game. So Robb stopped thinking about most of the positional stuff. He decided to score with his Ogre (after a little pressure from Sceadeau and myself) and tried a risky hand-off. It failed and the ball ended up in a somewhat vulnerable position. But that shouldn't matter, because Brent was going to just pass his turn...

Nope. Brent stood a guy up and went for a 1 die blitz in an attempt to get at the ball. The ball was in a vulnerable spot, but only because Robb didn't bother spending time to secure the location first. Because Brent asked him not to waste time. Brent justified his play by saying he only told Robb what his plan was, not that he'd promised to go through with that plan. Now that the game state had shifted (it was now entirely plausible for Brent to tie the game) he didn't feel like he should be tied down with his previous statement. And given the board state at the time it's absolutely right to try to get the ball and score. If Robb had made a catastrophic misplay then absolutely you should pounce on it. My problem is that Robb didn't really make a catastrophic misplay. He played quickly to do Brent a favour. Is there really a difference between the two? For me there is, but maybe that's a greyer area for other people.

It ended up not mattering since Brent's 1 die blitz resulted in an attacker down result. Robb then took the time to set up better positioning and went on to score with a blitzer instead of the Ogre after several handoff attempts to the Ogre (closer to the end zone) failed.

Will there be consequences from this one? Maybe the metagame should shift the same way the Risk Legacy one did, with no one giving their opponent the benefit of the doubt. But I think Blood Bowl is such a relatively long game and causes such intense feelings of despair in some people when they get into a bad spot that going skate to throat on them isn't really a good idea. I've had people say they were just going to end turn with all their guys on the ground in the past, and they've done it, and I think it was good for the health of the league that I let that happen. So I hope things don't shift to prevent that from happening. On the other hand, if I ever get Brent into such a situation I'm going to assume he's just playing possum and plan accordingly. He's shown the willingness to ask for mercy and then stab for the win if it becomes viable. Which is an awesome trait for a Diplomacy player to be sure, but maybe not so good for a Blood Bowl player who might actually want mercy at some point. 

Risk Legacy: Impact of Defensive Buffs

Over the weekend we played many games of Risk Legacy which is a Risk variant board game with some pretty wacky rules. The specifics of those rules are unimportant for the time being (and contain spoilers for anyone who might want to play in the future) but one of things that happens is some of the time the defender gets to modify their die rolls. These modifications are unambiguously good or bad (adding 1 to your roll can't be worse than not doing so, after all) but the question really is how big of an impact do they have. Sky had a few turns where it seemed like he couldn't hurt Pounder at all... Was this just a result of Pounder rolling high on small numbers of dice or did his defensive mod actually make the attack sketchy in the first place? I want to find out!

My first problem is I've never actually crunched the normal Risk attack numbers. I used to play Risk a fair bit way back when I was a kid and didn't really care about precise odds. 3 is bigger than 2, so attacking is good. Defender wins on a tie so that's good too. Those two good things OBVIOUSLY cancel each other out so it doesn't matter if you attack or defend, right? Right? The only thing that matters in that mindset is getting more guys. I've since been informed that the attacker actually has the advantage but I still have no idea how big an advantage that actually is. Therefore it is definitely time to crunch some numbers!

The numbers displayed below are how many troops the attacker expects to lose while killing 1000 defenders. So, not small numbers of dice at all, but it shows some trends. For reference, an ammo shortage subtracts 1 off of the defender's highest die (with a min of 1). A bunker adds 1 to the defender's highest die (with a max of 6). A fortification adds 1 to both defender's dice.

	Normal Risk	Ammo Shortage	Bunker	Fortification	Bunker+Fortification
3v2	853	510	1192	1893	2613
2v2	1566	1017	2260	3469	5000
3v1	516	211	1025	1025	2000
2v1	728	350	1400	1400	2724
1v1	1400	800	2600	2600	5000
1v2	2927	1541	6200	6200	14429

So it turns out attacking 1 on 2 into a bunker and a fort is a terrible, terrible idea. Who knew?

More seriously, the times when the attacker has an advantage are 3v2 normally and with an ammo shortage. 3v1 normally and with an ammo shortage. 2v1 normally and with an ammo shortage. And 1v1 with an ammo shortage. In every other situation the defender has the advantage. When you combine a bunker with a fort it's a huge undertaking to take it out. A bunker alone more than doubles your expected losses. A fort alone more than triples your expected losses. 

I think you'll want pretty good numbers, or a really good incentive, before attacking any of the defended positions. Being able to defend the spot yourself is a decent reason if you can win with enough troops remaining but that seems pretty unlikely if they had a decent force to start. Probably you'd be better off going someplace else. A good incentive would be a chance at straight up winning the game. The actual game is still played with small numbers of dice and maybe a slim shot is the best you're going to get. But I was more than willing to attack a defended position willy-nilly yesterday and that no longer looks like a terribly good idea. And I suspect if I look at how missiles impact things it'll look way worse for the attacker!