New variant & contest: Void

Void takes the Chaos principle and gives it a little spin. Where Chaos
starts in Winter 1900 with all supply centers taken and no units on the
board, Void starts one season earlier, in Fall 1900, with all supply centers
open and units in every non-SC territory that borders at least two SC
territories. That's 36 powers on the Standard map. Powers derive their name
from their starting position. Powers on land start with an army, at sea with
a fleet. The first season is a sprint for survival, with everyone trying to
capture an SC. Early elimination awaits those who fail. As per normal chaos
principle, you can later build in every SC you own.

Two games have been created on the DPjudge to kick this off, void (press)
and silentvoid (no press). Harry Kriewaldt has volunteered to master both
games. Take a look first at the game testvoid which shows the starting
position and in the process demonstrates how random play can result in a
huge carnage. In that game only 12 powers survived the winter. You can do
better than that. The question is how much better. Indeed, how many powers
can at most survive the winter of 1900 when every power in Fall orders his
unit to move to a neighbouring SC territory? Fleets attempting to move to a
multicoast territory are understood to be moving to a coast which borders
their sea space.

The first one with the correct answer gets his power of choice in one of the
void games. To participate, join one of these games, void or silentvoid, and
send press to the master with your prefered power in case you win and a
complete list of moves for every unit on the board. It goes without saying
that you are allowed to join a game even if you're not participating in this
contest. You are allowed to send in more than one solution.

I will post a sample solution, so that you can simply cut and paste and
adapt it to your solution. If you'd like to send in your own answer without
participating in one of the void games, register as an observer and follow
the same procedure. At the very least you will be told, usually within a
day, whether your answer was valid and how many powers survived. Please do
not send any message directly to me or Harry and certainly do not reply to
this list. Please refrain from posting your solution to a large public until
the winner of the contest is announced and his solution publicized (see
further).

The order list in your answer can be written as a sequence of 36 "org-dst"
lines where org is the abbreviation of the unit's starting non-SC territory
and dst the abbreviation for his destination SC territory. No coasts need to
be specified, no unit types, no power letters. You can choose your prefered
abbreviations, but solutions containing dubious or an incomplete list of
orders will be rejected. Winner in each game is the person who sends in the
best solution, with a valid list of orders, the fastest before the start of
the game. Fastest is determined by the time of arrival in the my mailbox.
Only messages coming from the dpjudge will be accepted.

The winners will be announced after the games started, together with the
number of powers that survived in their solution. If the overall winner
participates in both games, he gets his power of choice in the void game,
and the second fastest with an optimal solution in the silentvoid game will
be declared the winner there. Games will start no sooner than July 6, 12:00
GMT+0, so you have at least until Monday to come up with an answer.  The
winners' solutions will be demonstrated in two demo games after the first
season in both games have been processed. Until then, they are asked to keep
their solutions to themselves. It would be much appreciated (though not
enforceable) if everybody, powers and observers and non-participants alike,
would keep their solutions private until that time, in order not to
influence the actions in the actual games.

Good luck,

Mario.


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