Conquer Club

Sure, it's still 2 years till the U.S. Presidential campaign gets geared up -- but the politicians are already planning their moves for 2012, so why shouldn't we?

The game would be played on a 51-state map including D.C. - the smallest states would have external bubbles to show the necessary information.



AK connects to ID instead of WA because otherwise it would be a red state within a blue region - so the connection is more ideological than geographical.

Dark gray states represent swing states which usually trend "Red". Light gray states represent true swing states. Object of the game is to control all dark gray states, plus OH, FL and one other light gray state - thereby ensuring electoral victory in the U.S. Presidential Election. (Who won, red or blue? It doesn't matter, we all get screwed either way. For purposes of this game, we'll assume that these states are crucial for either side - perhaps they were going to lose some states that they hadn't lost in a long time.)

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OLD POST BELOW (For those who may have not seen the original discussion filled with things that are not currently possible with XML):

The first player would be randomly assigned a political party (red or blue). Each remaining player would be alternatively assigned the opposite party of the previous player. Players wouldn't have troops, they'd have 'volunteers'.

Any neutral 'volunteers' would considered "independent", given a green color, and randomly assigned to a state which would then be colored green for the rest of the game. All remaining players would either choose or be randomly assigned states, which then would remain the color (red or blue) of the initially assigned player for the rest of the game.

In order to ensure an even number of red and blue states, there would need to be an even number of players to begin the game; and to ensure that a person did not win on the first turn through luck of the draw, there would need to be a minimum of 4 players. So this would be a 4-8 player game, with an even number of players to start.

Each state would also be assigned a certain number of electoral votes. This could be randomly done within a specified range; or they could be apportioned the same as in real life; or we could use the same numbers as in real life, but assign them to the states at random; or they could be apportioned in some other fashion. If players were doing manual placement of 'volunteers' to start the game, it might be better to randomly assign electoral votes after players had already chosen their states. Electoral votes for each state would be displayed on the board in parentheses after the state abbreviation.

The object of the game would be to collect enough electoral votes to win the election (50% of available electoral votes plus 1 vote.) Even if electoral votes were randomly assigned, this should work fine, because the requirement would be a simple majority of the total available votes to win.

You would receive bonus 'volunteers' for controlling states of the opposing party (it wouldn't matter whom your opponent was during the turn in which you took over the state; only whether the state's color was opposite your own party). You would receive one bonus 'volunteer' for each opposing party state you controlled just prior to your turn. This bonus could also be given for controlling independent states, as a possible incentive to attack them; or there could be no bonus given - whichever seems best.

Your initial 'volunteer' allotment would be a minimum of 3, plus 1 for every three states in excess of 9 which you controlled (regardless of which political party it normally represented or how many electoral votes it was worth.)

Stats would be posted for all to see, regarding the number of electoral votes each player currently had and how many more they needed to win the election - as well as the normal info regarding number of states controlled, number of 'volunteers' the player had, and number of 'volunteers' due the player at the beginning of his/her next turn.

Spoils would be essentially the same, but perhaps one would receive extra 'volunteers' if the color of all three spoils matched their own political party, and fewer if they all matched the opposing party.

A player's political party would be indicated on the board by a light red or light blue circle behind their number of volunteers which would be color-coded as per usual. Their party would also be listed in the Statistics section.

If you wanted to add yet another wrinkle, we could have each player choose which state was their "home state" (or have it randomly assigned), and then they would need to control that state as part of the 50+ % of the electoral votes in order to win. Their "home state" could be public information, or it could be known only to them.

Well.. that ought to be enough to start with - hope y'all like the idea! This type of game would definitely bring some unusual and challenging elements to the table, and would be especially fun to play around election season -- much more enjoyable than watching election coverage, I'd be willing to bet!

The following maps illustrate how the board would look before assigning Electoral Votes and 'volunteers' to the states; how it might look after a sample random placement of both 'volunteers' and Electoral Votes; and how it might look after a few turns.





Volunteers due after several turns:

Player 1, red - (red party): 3 volunteers for 11 states; 3 bonus for controlling 3 blue states.
Player 2, green - (blue party): 3 volunteers for 11 states; 2 bonus for controlling 2 red states.
Player 3, blue - (red party): 4 volunteers for 12 states; 3 bonus for controlling 3 blue states.
Player 4, yellow - (blue party): 4 volunteers for 14 states; 5 bonus for controlling 5 red states.

On the Electoral Votes, for this example I decided to go with something close to reality, but toned down a bit (so that there is no state with 55 EV.) There are eight states with 3 EV; five states each with 4 EV and 5 EV; three states each with 6, 7, 8 and 9 EV; four states each with 10, 11 and 12 EV; and one state each with 14, 16, 18, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, and 32 EV. This gives a total of 501 EV, and it takes 251 EV to win the election.

A decent idea, but half the things you propose here are not possible to code with the current XML engine.

Then they've got 2 years to work on it! lol

I wouldn't hold my breath were I you. Even relatively simple XML updates, such that would benefit many maps, that people have been asking for long time, are rarely done (although lack has promised more of them.) Your gameplay plan would require huge xml updates, perhaps changes to the game engine itself, and they would currently only benefit this single map idea. Unless you can gather really massive support for your idea I don't see that happening...

Ok, well how about listing the specific things that are not currently possible and I'll see if there's any way to work around them.

In a nutshell: Anything that is done in current maps is possible. Anything else probably isn't.

natty_dread wrote:In a nutshell: Anything that is done in current maps is possible. Anything else probably isn't

Well, I can see that Flying Squirrel (cool name btw) has played less than a dozen games, so he's probably not familiar with even a modicum of the maps yet... so Squirrel, here's some of the XML snags:

A) Player 'assignments' are pretty much always random; the only XML methods I know of that will restrict players' starting territories are:
(1) Hardcoding territories as neutral
(2) Creating Starting Points (which has a ton of limitations on it that I wasn't fully aware of until very recently)

B) The number of players in a game is always an open choice for the game creator, as long as it's between 2-8 players. The minimum is always 2, and games must allow for any number beyond that (up to 8 ).

C) Bonus values must be set in advance; they are never random (others have proposed this idea)

D) Bonus values that you propose would be tricky, but with some Rube-Goldberg methods could probably do the trick.

E) Stats and Spoils are pretty much set in stone. Map stats and players' status is standard for every game, and is not customizable to the map. Spoils ditto.

Despite these problems, I still think you could work around a lot of them, or add in other interesting things in their place.

To be honest, I'm both intrigued and horrified by this map idea. I'm a rather passionate student of my land's politics and culture and I've come to the conclusion over the years that part of the troubles I see in our systems of government come from the fact that few fellow Americans (and practically zero non-Americans) see it as the plural but rather, the singular. That is to say, a lot of folks think of it as the American government- the Federal American government- rather than a collection city governments, under county governments, under state governments, all under a loose umbrella of the federal government. At best, Americans see the American system as a heirarchy, where the Feds are the bosses and the rest are just middle management.

The distinction is important if the Constitution has any meaning any longer, which it increasingly doesn't in the face of rampant nationalism and federalism- the negative effects of which are evident in every foreign country's complaint about American imperial military adventures and every domestic citizen's gripe about Big Brother among other things.

Which is not to say that federalism doesn't have its societal benefits, but they come at the price of that which I hold to be the essence of American ideals.

Anyway, sorry to turn this into a poltical forum. I was just trying to explain why I'm a little hesitant about a map that focuses on the national political scene (as everything does). And perhaps worse, a map that exemplifies the horrible political machines that comprise the 2-same-choice-different-rhetoric party system... not that it's inaccurate. And you do mention "independents". But I think it would be less depressing to go to Fantasy Island and imagine that maybe each player could be the head of their own party, rather than participants in a 2-way contest.

And to mitigate the unreality of that situation, I will add that if there ever was a time when the Republican/Democratic monopoly on voters was in jeopardy, it might be now... well, at least until the Tea Party movement gets hijacked by the Republicans (already in progress) and the media scares disgruntled Obama idealists and Green Party members into voting Democrat

FlyingSquirrel wrote:Ok, well how about listing the specific things that are not currently possible and I'll see if there's any way to work around them.

I'll give it a shot. Impossible things are in red, with commentary in blue.

FlyingSquirrel wrote:Sorry to be a newbie proposing two new maps within a couple days of each other - but I just love this idea too much to keep it under wraps. Sure, it's still 2 years till the U.S. Presidential campaign gets geared up -- but the politicians are already planning their moves for 2012, so why shouldn't we?

The game would be played on a 51-state map including D.C. - the smallest states would have external bubbles to show the necessary information.

The first player would be randomly assigned a political party (red or blue). Each remaining player would be alternatively assigned the opposite party of the previous player.[Assigning political parties may be feasible with a few compromises, but making sure that those colors alternate according to turn order is just plain impossible: Roles of this nature are always randomly assigned. Note that this wouldn't exactly be fair either since turn order is the one thing that players can choose voluntarily.] Players wouldn't have troops, they'd have 'volunteers'. [If they do, they can only be referred to as such on the map image; they'll still be called "troops" in the stats because mapmakers can't modify the stats chart.

Any neutral 'volunteers' would considered "independent", given a green color, and randomly assigned to a state which would then be colored green for the rest of the game [Changing the map's image on the fly from game to game: Another no-no.]. All remaining players would either choose [No they can't.] or be randomly assigned states, which then would remain the color (red or blue) of the initially assigned player for the rest of the game.

In order to ensure an even number of red and blue states, there would need to be an even number of players to begin the game [This might be possible; I know that you can have a maximum player cap, but I don't know if they can likewise disable numbers in the bottom or middle of the range]; and to ensure that a person did not win on the first turn through luck of the draw, there would need to be a minimum of 4 players [Fun fact: You can win an election with fewer than 1/4 of the states!]. So this would be a 4-8 player game, with an even number of players to start.

Each state would also be assigned a certain number of electoral votes. This could be randomly done within a specified range; or they could be apportioned the same as in real life; or we could use the same numbers as in real life, but assign them to the states at random [Fine as long as the electoral vote count assignment is the same in every game; once againm you can't change a map randomly every time it's played]; or they could be apportioned in some other fashion. If players were doing manual placement of 'volunteers' to start the game, it might be better to randomly assign electoral votes after players had already chosen their states. Electoral votes for each state would be displayed on the board in parentheses after the state abbreviation.

The object of the game would be to collect enough electoral votes to win the election (50% of available electoral votes plus 1 vote.) Even if electoral votes were randomly assigned, this should work fine, because the requirement would be a simple majority of the total available votes to win. [Since you can't make up your own variables in the map XML file, in order for this to work you would have to list every possible winning combination in the XML file. I'm not going to do the math quite now, but that comes to somewhere between the Library of Congress and All Words Ever Spoken.]

You would receive bonus 'volunteers' for controlling states of the opposing party (it wouldn't matter whom your opponent was during the turn in which you took over the state; only whether the state's color was opposite your own party). You would receive one bonus 'volunteer' for each opposing party state you controlled just prior to your turn [This hinges on the ability to assign political parties to player, which, as I've said, would take some compromises to be feasible: the only way to differentiate players in gameplay is through the territories they hold, so they'd have to have specific territories that mark their party affiliation. This is also just plain a bad idea, since players have less incentive to actually hold on to the states of their own party]. This bonus could also be given for controlling independent states, as a possible incentive to attack them; or there could be no bonus given - whichever seems best.

Your initial 'volunteer' allotment would be a minimum of 3, plus 1 for every three states in excess of 9 which you controlled (regardless of which political party it normally represented or how many electoral votes it was worth.)[This, we can do!]

Stats would be posted for all to see, regarding the number of electoral votes each player currently had and how many more they needed to win the election - as well as the normal info regarding number of states controlled, number of 'volunteers' the player had, and number of 'volunteers' due the player at the beginning of his/her next turn. [Mapmakers can't change the stat sheet. I think it would be possible, if you have some solid programming mojo, for you to build a specialized extension to provide these stats, but players would have to download and install them by themselves, and in general it would be best not to penalize players who don't do so.]

Spoils would be essentially the same, but perhaps one would receive extra 'volunteers' if the color of all three spoils matched their own political party, and fewer if they all matched the opposing party. [I like this idea, but you can't mess around with spoils at all.]

A player's political party would be indicated on the board by a light red or light blue circle behind their number of volunteers which would be color-coded as per usual. Their party would also be listed in the Statistics section. [See the comment two paragraphs ago.]

If you wanted to add yet another wrinkle, we could have each player choose which state was their "home state" (or have it randomly assigned), and then they would need to control that state as part of the 50+ % of the electoral votes in order to win. [No can do.] Their "home state" could be public information, or it could be known only to them.

And MarshalNey, I would just love to get all political rant with you but this is really not the place.

Evil DIMwit wrote:

FlyingSquirrel wrote:Ok, well how about listing the specific things that are not currently possible and I'll see if there's any way to work around them.

I'll give it a shot. Impossible things are in red, with commentary in blue.

Wow Evil, your assessment was almost identical to the one I gave him by pm

However there's one thing you said that caught my attention:

in order for this to work you would have to list every possible winning combination in the XML file.

Not anymore... you can use continents for objectives now. Didn't you hear about it?

natty_dread wrote:Not anymore... you can use continents for objectives now. Didn't you hear about it?

Shush, I'm trying to scare the guy!
...Yes, I've considered this possibility, but I didn't mention it because it makes the analysis math that much harder. At any rate, it certainly wouldn't put the size of the XML file anywhere near feasible.

Evil DIMwit wrote:And MarshalNey, I would just love to get all political rant with you but this is really not the place.

Yes, of course you're right. I realized that I was digressing on a rant but couldn't bring myself to hit the delete key. My only defense is that I was trying to lay the basis for an alternate way to take the idea, if Flying Squirrel chose to pursue it... sort of a "Head Your Own National Poltical Party" map.

Btw- something I also can't stop myself from spewing- an even more Fun Fact is that one can win the Presidential election with the popular vote from exactly zero states! (The members of the Electoral College being under absolutely no legal complusion to vote along with the popular vote of their state).

MarshalNey wrote:

Evil DIMwit wrote:And MarshalNey, I would just love to get all political rant with you but this is really not the place.

Yes, of course you're right. I realized that I was digressing on a rant but couldn't bring myself to hit the delete key. My only defense is that I was trying to lay the basis for an alternate way to take the idea, if Flying Squirrel chose to pursue it... sort of a "Head Your Own National Poltical Party" map.

I agree that sounds like a more fun way to go, but it seems to fit better with certain other countries' political systems than the United States.

Btw- something I also can't stop myself from spewing- an even more Fun Fact is that one can win the Presidential election with the popular vote from exactly zero states! (The members of the Electoral College being under absolutely no legal complusion to vote along with the popular vote of their state).

Not quite entirely. About half the states have laws to punish faithless electors -- with a majority of the electoral votes, as it so happens -- and Minnesota and Michigan go as far as to invalidate the votes of their faithless electors, though they haven't really had an opportunity to practice it.

Evil DIMwit wrote:Not quite entirely. About half the states have laws to punish faithless electors -- with a majority of the electoral votes, as it so happens -- and Minnesota and Michigan go as far as to invalidate the votes of their faithless electors, though they haven't really had an opportunity to practice it.

The laws exist but they have absolutely no legal leg to stand on. They are more "protest" laws than anything. The Constitution takes precedence over state law, and it allows the Electoral members to cast votes as they please.

...I hope this is still at least somewhat related to gameplay...

MarshalNey wrote:

Evil DIMwit wrote:Not quite entirely. About half the states have laws to punish faithless electors -- with a majority of the electoral votes, as it so happens -- and Minnesota and Michigan go as far as to invalidate the votes of their faithless electors, though they haven't really had an opportunity to practice it.

The laws exist but they have absolutely no legal leg to stand on. They are more "protest" laws than anything. The Constitution takes precedence over state law, and it allows the Electoral members to cast votes as they please.

Apparently, in Ray v. Blair the SCOTUS did rule that electors are representatives of the states, and that states do have authority to hold electors accountable for their choices, with no violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Lol. Didn't mean to start a political discussion - fun fact, someday in the hopefully not too distant future, the Electoral College will be irrelevant! http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

Ok. Well you have all scared me, but not quite enough. I'll obviously have to scrap the idea as written, but I have plenty of ideas still on how this could work. And you must admit, it would be a blast around Election time to be playing out some kind of scenario ourselves. Well I'll get back to y'all soon!

Evil DIMwit wrote:Apparently, in Ray v. Blair the SCOTUS did rule that electors are representatives of the states, and that states do have authority to hold electors accountable for their choices, with no violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Unfortunately, this probably isn't related in anything but the most tangential sense to gameplay, but maybe Flying Squirrel could use it... info is never bad, right? Since he's reworking the idea, he'll probably need all the information possible.

Anyway, yes I'm aware that the state laws can punish faithless electors, but they can in no way invalidate the vote. The distinction is clear; if an elector is willing to face the consequences of breaking his pledge, there is nothing the state can do to change or invalidate the vote once it is cast (in the strictly legal sense). Of course, this has never come up since these laws were put in place (as you pointed out earlier), and I'm sure with some legal reacharound the Constitution would be ignored in this case. And perhaps I've missed more recent legal opinions that have already paved the way for such. But that has been my understanding of the situation since I last looked at it about ten years ago.

Bottom line, though, if the states don't like the Electoral College they should just amend the Constitution...

but I have plenty of ideas still on how this could work. And you must admit, it would be a blast around Election time to be playing out some kind of scenario ourselves.

I admire your tenacity. God speed, young American with a similar fondness of Squirrels.

Bottom line, though, if the states don't like the Electoral College they should just amend the Constitution...

Agreed, the electoral college was a good idea in the 1700's but we can count so much better now!

Ok. How about this:



Blue and Red states were chosen based on the following: Blue - went blue each of the past 5 elections. Red - went red at least 3 of the past 5 elections. (Let's not re-hash Florida, it needs to be red for the electoral math to work.) This gives Blue 248 EV and Red 249 EV; OH is worth 20 EV, and all 4 remaining Swing states are worth a combined total of 21 EV. 270 EV needed to win.

In reality, electoral math-wise, Blue should have the same rules as Red for winning (OH plus one other swing state), but Blue has so many fewer states and more easily defendable regions, I felt that it needed the extra handicap of having to take all 5 swing states.

Killer neutrals can't be part of objectives.

(well, technically they can, but then the objective will never be reached).

Don't they revert back to neutral before the next turn? Technically if you achieved the objective, shouldn't that happen BEFORE they can revert back to neutral?

Anyway, if that's the only problem you can see, that makes me happy. We can just deploy regular neutrals on however many of them are necessary.

Killer neutrals revert to neutral at the beginning of the turn of the player who holds them.

Objectives need to be held for one full round, ie. you must hold the objective at the beginning of your turn.

Now, if you hold the objective and it has a killer neutral, you begin your turn -> the killer neutrals will revert to neutral and the objective will not be achieved. This is because the neutralization is done before the objective is checked.

I'm not totally clear on what kidn of objective you're planning btw. Which territories do you actually need to hold for the objective?

natty_dread wrote:Killer neutrals revert to neutral at the beginning of the turn of the player who holds them.

Objectives need to be held for one full round, ie. you must hold the objective at the beginning of your turn.

Now, if you hold the objective and it has a killer neutral, you begin your turn -> the killer neutrals will revert to neutral and the objective will not be achieved. This is because the neutralization is done before the objective is checked.

I'm not totally clear on what kidn of objective you're planning btw. Which territories do you actually need to hold for the objective?

Ok, so no killer neutrals. You have to hold either all Red territories, plus OH and one other gray territory; or all Blue territories, plus all gray territories; or all Red territories, plus all gray territories except OH. (Maybe skip that last option, to make it a bit less complex, and just make it all Red territories plus OH).

So in that case it would be, either hold all Red territories plus OH, or hold all Blue territories plus all gray territories.

Ok, so no killer neutrals. You have to hold either all Red territories, plus OH and one other gray territory; or all Blue territories, plus all gray territories; or all Red territories, plus all gray territories except OH. (Maybe skip that last option, to make it a bit less complex, and just make it all Red territories plus OH).

So in that case it would be, either hold all Red territories plus OH, or hold all Blue territories plus all gray territories.

Either would be possible.

I guess basically we would want to play out several different scenarios, Blue and Red each needing some combination of Gray territories in addition to their own to win the game. Whatever seemed to give them each an even chance of winning the game is what we'd go with (so it would probably have very little to do with the actual real-life electoral math, but that's ok.) NM should definitely be included in the list of Swing states that Blue must conquer, to make up for its initial advantage. Also we should try out different bombardment scenarios.

So what's the next step, if nobody sees any other glaring flaws in the plan? Do a poll to see how many people like the idea?

I'm a bit uncertain as to whether AK should really be red - it seems to me that Blue already has quite an advantage to start out, with so many fewer territories that are easier to defend. So maybe it would be better to make AK blue, or a Swing state. Although I did want the initial layout to reflect electoral reality to the best extent possible.

Perhaps we would remove the border between AK and WA, and instead make it go from ID to AK. Or, make Florida Blue or Swing to make up for the added difficulty of Red taking AK. Could do a poll on that as well, to see what people would prefer to see.