Talk:History of victories

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Pooling victories

I'd class The Second Dynasty of Pokes as a conventional victory, given that its "pooling" mechanic was out in the open: I think everyone understood that the UN voting system was there so that a slight minority of strong players could push an otherwise unpopular proposal through. For my money it was one of the most nomiclike dynasties of the last few years. --Kevan (talk) 08:02, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I sip air through my teeth at that. You are right that it was in the open, but it wasn't a victory via an explicitly established dynastic victory mechanic which is how I think is a good guideline to denote Conventional wins. I'll make it Conventional + Pooling for now. Maybe we can call it Dynastically-supported Pooling? I don't know. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 09:04, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
True. And I suppose the group made the decision to support a 25% victory split rather than infighting a little more to get it up to 33% or 50%, so it was mostly a matter of pooling. --Kevan (talk) 09:22, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Yep. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 12:03, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

The tiniest scam

What's your low bar for something counting as a scam? Addressing some of the question marks in the table, I remember this DoV as Brendan using a rule in plain sight that I (and maybe the third player) had certainly seen before, but which wasn't uppermost in our minds. You ask whether that's a "late reveal scam" or not - is using an overlooked clause a scam?

A counterpoint would be this DoV (where I used a clause that Brendan had forgotten about), which you classified as Conventional. --Kevan (talk) 18:24, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Good point, and I'm not entirely sure myself but maybe we can figure something out together. I've been thinking about something very similar to that too in regards to the Werewolf situation of 20th of Kevan (IIRC, everyone except Viv themselves forgot about that proposal that made her a Werewolf lol). But, I think a scam could be when you bring up an interpretation that is different from what is at first interpreted from ruletext by the consensus, and then the consensus accepts the new interpretation. Just using a forgotten clause doesn't involve interpretation. However, there are times when you can pull some kind of infinite combo or some other cool trick but with no need for interpretation gimmicks and it seems very scam-like (for example, if card's "a stable population" proposal passed, we would've had an infinite combo in plain rule-reading). Is that a scam too? --Cuddlebeam (talk) 06:27, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Maybe a scam is a strategy that a layperson would miss in a thorough but unimaginative reading (and playthrough) of the ruleset? Player consensus isn't quite the measure - if you pull a scam and everyone else throws down their cards because they were going to pull the same scam and hoped nobody else had spotted it, it's still a scam. --Kevan (talk) 08:49, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
I think that is a better definition, yeah. Just so that it's clear, that would mean that just forgetting rules wouldn't mean that it's a scam - it's just player negligence, yes?. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 15:41, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Better but still needs work: a brilliant chess opening probably isn't a "scam", even though a chess novice would never think of it. But a broken Magic the Gathering combo (to the point where the publisher puts out errata or bans the card) seems like one. Maybe it's the difference between "that's clever" and "that's clever but we should fix it". --Kevan (talk) 15:58, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree. I think that line is when it causes enough damage to the original spirit of the game made (or how healthy games in general are supposed to be like) starts to feel subverted. I think just plain obscurity (to an informed observer) defines a scam, it was "deep enough" in complexity, interpretation, etc to remain hidden or expected to not be obvious. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 16:18, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Assisted Conventional

What do you mean by calling a couple of victories "Assisted Conventional", User:Derrickthewhite? Is it the same as "Conventional + Pooling"? --Kevan (talk) 15:51, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

I think it refers to that at times, minor alliances are made but there is no outright plan to force a win of one of them. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 10:37, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
To put an example, players who deliberately try to synergize or trade for mutual benefit (trading information in a secret information dynasty for example) but there is no plan for one of them to just give up winning for the other. This feels a lot like just normal nomic play, you often have to interact with people positively or negatively, but I guess it's worthwhile if the dynasty's win relied on it notably enough. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 11:03, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
That does seem normal in most cases - if we counted that as "Assisted", any win in a dynasty with trading would fall under it. The First Dynasty of Derrick ended with what might have been one player stepping back to let another win (which seems like just another negative-but-equivalent version of Pooling Actions), the First of Trigon ended with what looks like straight kingmaking (which seems to definitely be Pooling Actions or Resources, depending on what the rules were). --Kevan (talk) 11:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

End the dynasty and elect a player as winner

Having the crowd vote for a winner (because the dynasty can't continue for some reason, such as the Emperor leaving) seems to be pretty common. It doesn't feel like the same kind of victory as the others because the dynasty didn't get to play out, but it has happened often enough that it seems to merit a name. What should we call it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuddlebeam (talkcontribs)

"Election"? Feels like there's some overlap with pooling because it'll sometimes involve a group of confederates agreeing to block-vote for one of their number, but it's very hard to know whether or not this happened, in a long-forgotten dynasty. --Kevan (talk) 07:21, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
You've added this as "[E]" - are you intending it to be a subtype of Pooling, or Conventional? --Kevan (talk) 08:11, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
I added it as an "Other" type. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 08:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Core/Dynastic Scams

I think it's relevant to classify the scams as Core (non-Dynastic?) or Dynastic. Small reminder for myself or if anyone else wants to try it out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cuddlebeam (talkcontribs)

Question mark question

Does the question mark mean "the player who added this wasn't sure and would appreciate clarification" or "we can't be 100% sure what happened, from available game history"? --Kevan (talk) 07:29, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

The first one lol --Cuddlebeam (talk) 08:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Pooling actions

Have added a new subtype of Pooling (and swapped colours to fit), for situations where no resource is traded and one or more players take actions which lead to another's victory - does that seem like a useful distinction to draw? It arose from http://blogspot.blognomic.com/2004/06/declaration-of-victory.html, which seems to have been one player triggering an alien attack which handed their confederate the victory. --Kevan (talk) 10:36, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah I think that's a good one. Actions themselves can be considered a dynastic resource too though, but I guess it's a lot less abstract to just refer to the action. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 10:39, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Read-as-Written

Does the "Read-as-Written" scam type imply a read-as-not-written type which (from the looks of the table) never happens? Would that be where a player successfully declares victory according to the spirit of the rules? Or when a scam uses an unusual wording which players are persuaded to support (or does that just become "as written", if a quorum agree that rule X means Y)? --Kevan (talk) 08:35, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

This hurts right in my rule Platonicism but you’re right. Sometimes people just agree to a scam out of apathy or whatever, which disappoints me. Oh well. We should probably call the “You thought it meant this, but it actually means this!” scams something else. --Cuddlebeam (talk) 08:53, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
I can vaguely remember a case or two where a scam didn't quite work due to some miscalculation on the part of the scammer, but players awarded the win anyway for being close enough. --Kevan (talk) 09:09, 8 July 2019 (UTC)