[Icehouse] Thoughts on four-player Pikemen

[Jorge Arroyo]

I agree with you. I've observed this while playing on SDG and haven't played
a 4 player game in a while. It's specially frustrating when a player
benefits someone else with no gains for himself. I know you can't always
play the optimal move, but when someone makes a move that is obviously going
to give the win to another player, then what is the point? I don't know,
maybe it's me... maybe I just play too many 2 player games... :)

-Jorge

On 1/25/08, Tucker <jazzfish at softhome.net> wrote:
>
> I think Pikemen's a great game: quick to learn, quick to play, full of
> tough tactical choices. Plus you can (in theory) play two-player with a
> Rainbow and a Xeno Treehouse set.
>
> Four-player Pikemen has a problem, though. Namely, it's possible for all
> the pawns and drones to be captured without a winner being established.
> Since if everyone is paying attention it's bloody difficult to capture a
> queen, this leads to endgames that drag on and on and on, and are
> extremely prone to petty diplomacy.
>
> (Ways to capture a queen that I'm aware of: point all your queens at all
> of an opponent's queens, guaranteeing that she'll have to drop one of them
> eventually, which has the problem of leaving you extremely vulnerable; or
> threaten a queen belonging to a player who's already had another queen
> threatened, which brings in the petty diplomacy and kingmaking problem.)
>
> The possibilities for a fix that I can see:
>
> 1) People can learn how to play the four-player endgame. The tactics and
> strategies are substantially different from the rest of the game but it's
> not fundamentally a problem. I'm open to arguments on this point, but bear
> in mind that I don't consider it "broken" so much as "un-fun."
>
> 2) Implement some sort of sudden-death or stalemate-ish rule. When only
> queens are left, limit the number of future moves. If no one's won by the
> end of the limit, figure out the winner in some fashion. (I'm partial to
> "most points, ties broken by being furthest from the start player.")
>
> 3) Change the overall victory condition in four-player. Lower it to nine
> points, or make it "twelve points, or most points when there are only
> queens left," or something.
>
> I solve this problem in tournaments by not running four-player tournament
> games, but that always makes me a little sad. I really like the dynamic of
> multiplayer Pikemen, and three-player has this weird edge case where one
> player can't get to twelve points because most of the pieces available are
> hers.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> --
> It is in the nature of poets to misuse their sources.
> --John M. Ford, "The Lost Dialogue"
>
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