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Originally posted by ruff_hi
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Ruff,
Interesting movie, judging from the description. I haven't seen it. You seem a couple of years older than I am.
I know my team declared war and I can't disclose more about it than I already did in previous letters. However, I can say that my team has felt cornered throughout the game, so that who actually made the formal declaration of war has lost all relevance, it was only a formality. The war was declared long before the fighting started and that declaration of war was when your team founded Pink Dot. That move announced a cold war from my team's perspective, one which we could long sustain, but at the price of economic development and expansion. You can see that beautifully when you check the curves.
The problem lies in a belief-system that creates a deadly trap. It works that when you see the enemy grow more powerful and you expect to be his target, that you have no choice but to do the best you can to deter him by keeping up in power. However, by doing that you inevitably leave the initiative and control over the process in your enemy's hands. For every unit he produces you will have to do the same, no matter how high the long-term cost, since you can't afford to get invaded.
Additionally, failure to have sufficient security in the short term gets you invaded and any long-term benefits you got by sacrificing on security are worthless since you will never live to experience them. Therefore, it is entirely rational to focus exclusively on a short-term arms race and ignore long-term needs like expansion and economic development.
That is how the US defeated the USSR. The USSR paid for short term security by relinquishing long-term economic development. Your team has used a similar strategy, knowingly or unknowingly, to defeat my team.
Simply ignoring the short-term need for security is impossible because of the belief-system: you can't leave your homeland poorly defended when you expect to be attacked, that is irrational and irresponsible. But if it turns out that by luck you are not attacked, you escape the trap.
The only rational way out of the trap is to change the belief-system: by no longer believing that you will be attacked. Then the need for excessive military production disappears and you can freely focus on long-term development. However, it is extremely hard to change the belief-system: you need very concrete evidence to believe in the opponent's peaceful intentions. So the belief-system really creates a deadly trap, from which rational players can hardly escape. From a scientific point of view a very interesting piece of game theory.
The way to traditionally get evidence is by signing a treaty and that is what has continuously failed for numerous reasons, mistrust and an uncompromising nature of negotiations being the prime reasons. In the absence of such an agreement or other evidence, it is folly to believe that you will not be attacked and you continue to stay in the trap and get entrenched ever deeper.
Of course the reality is a bit more complex, but the above describes fairly accurately the kind of game our teams were engaged in and which brought us to the current outcome.
Looking back I may ask myself several questions. One example: Should we have occupied the barb city south of Pink Dot back in October (or around that time)? We didn't, since we agreed not to. I feel we played too honorably. But what would have happened if we had captured the barb city and broken our promise? In any case I will have to place less trust in making agreements with other teams, since these have all been broken. In that respect, in addition to a couple of crucial mistakes, my team was backstabbed one time too many by many players in this game, once my team is completely defeated, I can tell more about that and I'd love to.
I hold no grudge about all that, but I wished some dealings had gone a completely different way, better cooperation and such.
Have fun.
Aidun
Interesting movie, judging from the description. I haven't seen it. You seem a couple of years older than I am.
I know my team declared war and I can't disclose more about it than I already did in previous letters. However, I can say that my team has felt cornered throughout the game, so that who actually made the formal declaration of war has lost all relevance, it was only a formality. The war was declared long before the fighting started and that declaration of war was when your team founded Pink Dot. That move announced a cold war from my team's perspective, one which we could long sustain, but at the price of economic development and expansion. You can see that beautifully when you check the curves.
The problem lies in a belief-system that creates a deadly trap. It works that when you see the enemy grow more powerful and you expect to be his target, that you have no choice but to do the best you can to deter him by keeping up in power. However, by doing that you inevitably leave the initiative and control over the process in your enemy's hands. For every unit he produces you will have to do the same, no matter how high the long-term cost, since you can't afford to get invaded.
Additionally, failure to have sufficient security in the short term gets you invaded and any long-term benefits you got by sacrificing on security are worthless since you will never live to experience them. Therefore, it is entirely rational to focus exclusively on a short-term arms race and ignore long-term needs like expansion and economic development.
That is how the US defeated the USSR. The USSR paid for short term security by relinquishing long-term economic development. Your team has used a similar strategy, knowingly or unknowingly, to defeat my team.
Simply ignoring the short-term need for security is impossible because of the belief-system: you can't leave your homeland poorly defended when you expect to be attacked, that is irrational and irresponsible. But if it turns out that by luck you are not attacked, you escape the trap.
The only rational way out of the trap is to change the belief-system: by no longer believing that you will be attacked. Then the need for excessive military production disappears and you can freely focus on long-term development. However, it is extremely hard to change the belief-system: you need very concrete evidence to believe in the opponent's peaceful intentions. So the belief-system really creates a deadly trap, from which rational players can hardly escape. From a scientific point of view a very interesting piece of game theory.
The way to traditionally get evidence is by signing a treaty and that is what has continuously failed for numerous reasons, mistrust and an uncompromising nature of negotiations being the prime reasons. In the absence of such an agreement or other evidence, it is folly to believe that you will not be attacked and you continue to stay in the trap and get entrenched ever deeper.
Of course the reality is a bit more complex, but the above describes fairly accurately the kind of game our teams were engaged in and which brought us to the current outcome.
Looking back I may ask myself several questions. One example: Should we have occupied the barb city south of Pink Dot back in October (or around that time)? We didn't, since we agreed not to. I feel we played too honorably. But what would have happened if we had captured the barb city and broken our promise? In any case I will have to place less trust in making agreements with other teams, since these have all been broken. In that respect, in addition to a couple of crucial mistakes, my team was backstabbed one time too many by many players in this game, once my team is completely defeated, I can tell more about that and I'd love to.
I hold no grudge about all that, but I wished some dealings had gone a completely different way, better cooperation and such.
Have fun.
Aidun
My memory of the events is that we wanted to talk NAP and they wouldn't have a bar of it without a border agreement. Seems we really mind-f**ked them on that one. If they sign the NAP, they then have the ability to run minimal defense and grab the land they wanted ... they just couldn't trust that we would not break the NAP, so they kept on building military and not expanding.
If they had kept the barb city - I am pretty sure we would have just gone 'oh well, on with the game' and left it at that. Lucky they read our super strong power curve as multiple units instead of paper and shadows
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