Idea: No winner unless the colony does X

[Keybounce]

Reading up on a thread where someone managed to monopolize food and shut everyone else out:

In the current game, this is a viable strategy.
This, in turn, gives people a reason to not trust others to provide the essentials.

This, in turn, makes it hard to trust others.

This is "Prisoner's dilemma". This is the rock-paper-scissors question.

In a War2/SC type game: Pure economic builds will grow fast and big, and win. But a fast rush will kill them. But a balanced build will kill the rush. But a pure econ build will kill the balanced build. Etc.

In Mule:
Pure mining, with cooperation on food/energy, will give you big bucks. But you'll lose to the denial, so you have to build mixed. But mixed will lose to the specialist. And the specialist food/energy cannot make money except by earning trust from the other players.

So lets put in a mechanism where the food/energy providers have a reason to earn trust, and other players have a reason to work with providers.

No one wins if the overall colony is less than $Y. $Y can and will vary based on number of players in the game (a two player game won't make as much as a 5 player game).

Note that this isn't too far from the current system of giving grades to the colony. This is just saying that below a certain level, being first of a dirt pile has no value.

[cerealbusiness]

Could you elaborate on this mechanic? I think the whole idea is that the players are dependent on one another. At least for the first half, each player is not able to access every resource. Ergo they trade. You can't go long without food or energy, and smithore produces mules, and the money is in crystite. They specialize (economics of scale, etc) and trade in order to gain more than if they all generalized and didn't trade. It really goes back to econ 101 with production possibilities and what not.

I think trust though, more than anything develops from a modern economy that uses mechanics such as debt. Our financial system basically is founded on imaginary trust and when that carpet of trust slips out from underneath us it can be disastrous, as seen in 2008.

[Keybounce]

In a "real" economy, you have largeness. You cannot be shut out of food or energy. Therefore, you do not need to make your own.

In MULE, however, the economy is tiny. 4 people normally, 5 in the new. You can be shut out.

Because of this, because you are totally dependent on food, because you can find yourself after turn 4 with no food, and no one selling you food, you are in a position of "I must have food of my own".

Energy is similar. It's not nearly as critical, because if you have food and no energy, you can plop down some energy mules, and be back in two turns. But you cannot recover from no food unless the other players let you recover. And energy killing in round 10 or 11 is basically game over.

Food is particularly problematic in original mule. A single river plot will take care of you for about 2/3rds of the game. There's enough river spaces for people to each get one, and there's no big incentive to get two. If you do get two, then you are producing 4 + 4 + 1 + 1 = 10, but have a need of much, much less. So what do you do with the surplus? When the store values them at 15? When players see the 15 and won't give a reasonable offer? When even if the players do give a reasonable offer, the store still thinks that the surplus is worthless?

Most people wind up not even bothering to sell the surplus, and letting it spoil.
If you don't get a river, you need 2 land plots; that's enough to generally drop you a full +1 for volume on your mining. And, not only is a single river not enough late in the game, you risk the "mule runs away", or food pests, or an energy shortage killing that particular mule, etc.

So if you cannot trust other players -- ** and in a game design that deliberately says food is not regarded by the game as valuable as mining then you cannot trust the other players ** -- you have to have two food plots just be be self reliant, and a food producer strategy is a waste because even if you are serious and trustable, no smart player will. And energy isn't that far off from this either.

Hence, the RPS cycle: A self reliant producer will survive if there is a backstabbing provider. They will lose to a non-self reliant producer with a trustable provider. The non-self-reliant producer will lose to the trustable provider if there are enough non-self-reliant producers that the provider can turn constant profits. And the provider will lose if people go self reliant and not use the provider.

Everyone being dependent on each other? Generally, in mule 1, I see the store bought out of food and energy by turn 2, usually of smithore on turn 1. People horde, and make their own food or energy *in the mountains*. It's all about "Grab land that will become great, but start with just bare survival".

And money isn't in Crystite in mule 1; it's in smithore manipulation. That already seems to be going away in mule 2 (quakes don't ruin crystite; store fires don't jack up smithore prices).

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The idea for the mechanic is simple: Have a threshold dollar amount that the colony has to reach before a winner is determined. If the colony fails to reach it, EVERYONE takes a loss, even the "winner". The reasoning for it is simple: 1: Encourage more cooperative play, and 2: Increase the number of options / playstyles that the game can support. Right now, with all the advice being "shut the other person out and make it pointless for them to continue", well, yea, you'll get the higher score, but is the colony really doing well? Does the other person want to continue, or drop and let a bot flounder in that spot?

[cerealbusiness]

Yeah but that is, frankly, a stupid rule. It turns MULE into a team game. The mechanis should make so that inherently players can't be successful without depending on one another.

[Keybounce]

> The mechanics should make so that inherently players can't be successful without depending on one another.

Alright, how do you make the need for food and energy so large that someone has to specialize in those and everyone else has to purchase from that one?

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There was a sequel game to M.U.L.E. It featured three commodities, four people; producing any one commodity required two others. The economy of scale factor was such that you had to specialize -- attempting to produce all three on your own would result in a crash, and if the colony was doing really poorly, the game would give extra commodities out to all the players (in a land-grab style "run around the board, and pick up the freebies").

But yea, you had to specialize, and with three products and 4 producers, there would always be a pair of duplicates; being one of the duplicates was worse than not. So it was all about learning how to adjust the rock-paper-scissors production to be a solo producer.

===

Do you want to have a winner if the colony result is "No trade ships will come your way, you're on your own"? Do you want to have a winner if the result is "Your life will be harsh, but survivable"?

Do you want to have a system where people are dependent on each other, and someone is producing food and energy, and then in round 10 they decide "I'm not selling to anyone"? Everyone else is bleeped, that one person winds up at the top, and the colony overall does pathetic; should that one person be the winner, or just "The top of the garbage"?

Any system that I can see that makes everyone dependent on everyone else is a system where there is an ideal time to defect and hurt everyone else. Close enough to the end of the game that no one else can recover. But then, that means everyone has an incentive to defect, and no one can trust each other.

Prisoner's Dilemma solved this by not having a fixed end time -- maybe something like "The colony ship might return anytime after the 8th round. The most likely time is the 12th or 13th round, but there's no guarantee at all".

[cerealbusiness]

First of all I'm not proposing that people MUST depend on one another. The strategy and fun comes in how you choose to play, knowing that another player could withhold from selling whenever they want.

"The colony ship might return anytime after the 8th round. The most likely time is the 12th or 13th round, but there's no guarantee at all."

This sounds genius to me. More mechanics like this add to the depth in my opinion. This however sounds too random. I'm gonna ponder some solutions to this.