Sendric wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you are suggesting that by allowing larger coalitions a chance for victory, we would be encouraging the breaking of alliances. I don't really agree with this assessment, and I'm not really clear on why it would really make a difference. You keep citing the last game, so let's use that as an example. If the game played out exactly the same as the last one, but with the ability to have larger coalitions, wouldn't it just have been a slightly larger coalition within that alliance that won instead of the results we got? If we added Congo to that winning coalition, wouldn't it have still won? If your beef is with that 11-nation alliance out-voting everyone else, what's the difference between Cuba-Kenya-Zambia vs Congo-Cuba-Kenya-Zambia? I'm very curious about how you think it would have played out had this rule been in effect. Personally, I don't think it would have made much of a difference.
Here's what I wrote last time regarding various combos, keeping in mind the thresholds I used were calculated assuming you can't vote for coalitions that don't include you (raise them otherwise):
---
The last game's Afr+NA team would have needed 48 votes to get all 7 into a winning coalition, they had 42. If only the E's banded together (Cuba+Afr) they would have had 27, one shy of the 28 needed for a 4-E victory. Adding Mexico would change the target to 31, and they'd have 32 votes. Adding Canada would change the target to 36, and they'd have 37 votes...
---
3 E's would need 26 votes, but the actual winning coalition only had 20 on their own at game end.
I actually do not have a favoured outcome from this point in the game, that's not my point. All 7 want to stick together and take the victory together? Fine, great, they deserve it, make it official (although their opponents will have a little more time to try and fight it). Or maybe a subset wants to grab a smaller (and therefore greater) coalition victory, then maybe the others get upset and do something about it, maybe getting lured by unsatisfied opponents outside the alliance. Exciting, that's good too; it's like reducing the draw size in Diplomacy.
The important point is that *capping* it at 3 takes all the tension out of it, especially since the vote is likely to be final. Best strategy is to not rock the boat and hope somehow you end up in the winning coalition. Rather than struggling for it, fighting for it, or negotiating a larger coalition and being a part of that.
And by doing that, by adding flexibility, you make being part of the winning coalition so much more meaningful. And so hopefully people will fight more over it, rather than just hoping for the best at election time.
A 7 player alliance, with 4 helpers, anointing 3 winners? That's less satisfactory. The line between winner and loser is clearly blurred. But maybe you want that. I feel it makes the game less competitive, and therefore less interesting than it could be.
Regarding different versions of the game, I did see the previous game's results and factored it into my thinking as best I could; I know it had a weird pirate faction that was controversial. I don't have results from any other instances, so if you can point me to those or email me the details that could be interesting!
There is an additional factor that slows end-game fighting though, the emptying out of the board from nukes which tends to lock up the game. That's why I included making nuke SC damage temporary in my last proposal.