1 Dec 2009 15:46
Re: Re: How much table talk is too much table talk?
Bruce Beard wrote: > Please note--David Hecht just described EU as interminable! He didn't say that--he just said that under certain conditions it seems interminable. Many years ago I published an article on this list (or more likely one of its predecessors) on 18xx games that had no end. (I'd just had a particularly tedious office meeting ) The rules of the exercise are that the players cooperate to get the game into some dead-end state from which no possible set of moves can extricate them. With some games, it's easy--in 1856, for instance, you must launch all of the companies, have some company acquire a 5-train, and then withhold until all of the companies fall down the bottomless pit in the corner of the stock chart; obviously, the CGR must not form. With others, it's more of a challenge. 1830 is particularly tricky. A fairly rapid analysis suggests that it takes a bit of work to get 18EU into a state from which the game must continue indefinitely, but it's not all that hard. If only minors #6, #9, and #12 could build themselves into a cul-de-sac, like all of the others, it would be a doddle. Or if it didn't have a last-man-standing rule, you could drive everyone bankrupt. As it is, you have to have the minors earn £1300 of company capital between them, and use the money to buy up to the first 4-train, leaving the minors without a penny. The players would therefore have at least £1300 between them, and this must be spent on presidencies, lots of them, but without buying any extra shares. The public corporations thus started can't be floated, so they don't run. The minors with trains don't have routes, because they've built into dead ends (I knew there had to be a reason why minors can't lay(Continue reading)
RSS Feed