Page 2 - [Risk] Risk

Lars, now you're talking about the right game!!! Minesweeper! That's it!

To sum up - there are n lands on a map (in our case, 40), you get 1/4 of them at the beginning and play against 3 other scripts. You can attack adjacent lands to yours.
Each turn you get new armies to place on your lands, the number of armies depends on the number of lands you control.
When you eliminate all opponents, you win. Second place goes to the script that survived the longest, third to the next and fourth to the script that got eliminated first.

I'm working on the exact rules, but don't have time to finish them today - first thing tomorrow morning (CET).

I can already say that there will be no luck involved (except the distribution of lands at the beginning, but see below). Fighting will be done with formulas instead of dice throwing and all land cards (which can be exchanged for bonus soldiers) will be equal.

Because of this, each script will be called once per turn and all moves will be returned at once (instead of each battle separately). This is possible, because the outcome of each battle is deterministic.

I'm thinking of running the tournament like this:
There will be 3 rounds. In each round, a random land distribution will be generated. Scripts will be divided into groups of 4 and in each group, a script will start the game with all 4 subsets of lands (so luck-factor is minimized because all scripts start with same lands).

After these 3 rounds (12 games), top 8 will go to semifinals. Semi-finals will be the same as the first 3 rounds, top 2 from each group go to finals, others go to play for 5-8 place. The winner of finals is the final winner.

I don't like the idea of the game depending so heavily on chance. I think a game like minesweeper would be cool, though to make it fair, everyone would have to have the same board and the board would start with an empty area that a person can work off of. I also like the suggestion someone made for Othello. Chess would be too open to abuse and too complicated for honest people to finish on time, but aside from chess, other games of strategy that do not have elements of chance to them would be preffered.

I like the idea of Risk and I think I finally have time to participate. There is one thing I don't like about doing Risk though. Risk would involve a lot of luck (it's the whole reason I don't play very much Risk). I think a better game would be Clue, with slightly modified rules. This game involves less luck, more logical deduction, and is small enough to allow concise code.

As xs0 already sayd: the "luck factor" is reduced as much as possible. It seems a great challenge to me! Unfortunately I a little problem with my wrist (beginning RSI :s)...

You can't rate scripts if those scripts are based on dices. The best script in the world strategy-side could be beaten for bad luck.

[quote]
I can already say that there will be no luck involved (except the distribution of lands at the beginning, but see below). Fighting will be done with formulas instead of dice throwing and all land cards (which can be exchanged for bonus soldiers) will be equal.
[quote]

Read before replying...

jorgen : little luck or alot of luck - luck is involved and not only coding skill. It will always be a factor ...

I can not see the "luck factor", where does the luck get involved? Only at the partition of the land, luck gets involved. But that can be solved...

Sorry for my stupidity and off-topicing (also) this thread, but what is RSI?

The ONLY luck involved as stated will be with the starting locations. However, each script will be starting in each of the four random sets. So when a group of four plays each other they will play 4 games, with a rotating starting location and all 4 games will have the same starting layout, except for the specific player that is in those starting spots. Therefore luck is virtually removed.
And if you want a complete disolution of luck from these contests you wont get it as long as scripts are running against each other. Even with trilite there was luck involved in whether your script could handle the non-logic scripts. I know some people just didnt figure on having to do that. Sounds to me like this Risk game could be plenty of fun.
I have one more suggestion to reduce luck, play more games. Maybe have 16 games per round instead of four, where every combination of player position is tried. Also, the more games played the less luck becomes a factor in any case.
Wow, that was a lot more than I intended to write.

I agree with you macadamia. Luck can be reduced!

Just off topic: Repetitive Strain Injury

"Repetitive Strain Injuries occur from repeated physical movements doing damage to tendons, nerves, muscles, and other soft body tissues"

http://eeshop.unl.edu/rsi.html

It's a really, really bad Injury!

Tell me if I'm wrong, but in Risk, to decide the output of a battle, both sides roll a dice and the highest win... or something like that. How do you plan on eliminating that luck factor?

What formula will you use to determine the outcome of battles? Is it a lucky formula?

Oh, just a note - I think chess is a whole lot more complicated than this risk game. A whole lot.

*spam* yeah, lets do chess... the winner goes against deep-blue ;) *spam*