FTA and 2(3) actions on first turn

[Alvendor]

(09-10-2012 01:33 PM)Xpander Wrote:  [quote='Joggies' pid='7021' dateline='1347225932']
If P1 for example does absolutely nothing (just passes), then P2 is in an identical position to as what P1 would have been except that the opposition now has 10 witpoints in the bank. If as P1 I can effectively choose to be P2 but with twice as many points, why would I ever choose to be P2?

The fact that most people don't pass their first turn as P1 just indicates there is an advantage in being player one IN ADDITION TO the bonus five witpoints.

(09-10-2012 01:33 PM)Xpander Wrote:  I saw a few people saying this in various threads as proof of FTA...I'm not sure what this proves if anything.

In this post I use the term "perfect" as in the best you can play given the vision you have. Not perfect as in "I use a map hack and can now play perfectly".

Joggies example it is fairly close to a full-blown proof. Granted, to completely prove if player 1 has an advantage if both players play perfectly you probably need to solve the complete game and that is pretty unlikely (harder to do than chess?).

Lets just play with the thought of being able to solve the game completely. We would end up with one of three results:

1. The game continues indefinitely, a draw that is.
2. Player 1 always wins. (The example above proves that player 2 cannot always win, if so player 1 would just skip turn).
3. Player 1 wins X% of the time. As this is a game with fog of war certain positions are of the rock-paper-scissors type and the players have to guess the exact positions. In these cases it could for example be that player 1 wins 70% of the time with perfect play.

Now to completely prove that player 1 has a FTA on a map we would need to prove one of these scenarios which we can't. But if we just assume this sentence we can prove existence of a FTA:

"Having more wits in the starting position increases the chance to win."

Now take player 1's choices. He can either
A) Move as usual
B) Skip turn and become player 2 with 5 bonus wits.

Assuming we agreed on the sentence above we know that choosing choice B) increases your chances in comparison to starting as player 2 without bonus wits. This is all we need to know, we don't care about what the other player does.

(09-10-2012 01:33 PM)Xpander Wrote:  It's not entirely clear if going first is a quantifiable advantage, for the reasons above and others, that can be represented by a number of wits to balance the game.

Again, you are correct we can't strict mathematically quantify the FTA in wits. But from a practical point of view it would be fairly straightforward to test various approaches and making sure both players win close to an equal amount of time. Either measuring all the gaming population, or measuring high ranked players. Player 1 could get fewer starting wits or as I have suggested earlier, give player 2 bonus wits.