Re: New Press Variant?

Wow.  I like the idea of modifying it so that it is dependent on what
has just happened in the previous turn, not the current game position.
 Unfortunately, that is exponentially harder to code, and I have
always taken the approach that what is allowable can always be
determined solely by current board position -- not only for
ease-of-coding, but also it just makes more sense to me as a rule.
There's really no easy way (as written) for the DPjudge to be able to
look at the prior turn and determine who attacked who, where, etc.
All of that, to the DPjudge, is just a text file now, results written
and mailed and forgotten and now we just have the current position
really "known" in any specific "way" to the code of the DPjudge.

Which is kind of a "darn it" because your modification does seem to
make a lot of sense.  Italy and Austria could talk til the cows come
home until one of them crosses up the other, etc.

Hmm....

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 1:12 PM, Sloth <[email protected]> wrote:
> I strangely like it.  Notes below.
>
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 2:16 PM, Manus Hand <[email protected]> wrote:
>> RULE HAMMER_PRESS -- players may not communicate with one another
>> whenever they have adjacent units, or when either player has a unit
>> adjacent to a supply center owned by the other.
>
> One alternative I would propose: Player may not communicate with each
> other if, in the last move turn, they had units ordered to the same
> space and/or one moved into the other's supply center.  So...everyone
> would be able to negotiate from the start, but if, for example, the
> Russians and Turks bounce over the Black Sea, they won't be able to
> renegotiate on that for the Fall move.
>
>> I think it might strengthen alliances like England-Turkey v. Russia,
>> Russia-France v. Germany, etc. Or it might lead to a lot of "hey, can
>> you tell Austria this for me?" and thus a lot of "hey, Turkey told me
>> to tell you this" lies.
>
> All to the good.
>
>> "...seems like one of those arbitrary silly-rules that has no POSSIBLE
>> interpretation in terms of the real-life situation. If anything, it
>> should be easier to communicate when you're close. But given the
>> six-month game turns, a government would have to be SUPERNATURALLY
>> ineffective to be unable to get messages around."
>>
>> I responded saying that it is realistic in an unrealistic way: "We
>> will break off all diplomatic relations with you if you are ever in
>> any position that could threaten or endanger our troops or cities."
>
> Actually, it has a certain effing brilliancy about it - much of the
> history of warfare revolves around how difficult it is for two warring
> countries to *effectively* negotiate an abatement of hostilities.  cf
> for example the efforts by the Japanese to negotiate a surrender to us
> in WW2 - they had no *effective* means of communicating subtleties in
> their position, so they were, indeed, reduced to relaying messages
> through the Russians, which did, indeed, mangle the message.
>
> --
>
> P. J. O'Rourke  - "You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money."
>
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