Dominion Strategy Forum
Miscellaneous => Forum Games => Non-Mafia Game Threads => Topic started by: Jimmmmm on October 10, 2016, 11:44:08 pm
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I had an idea for a solitaire game based on "Knights and Knaves" type logic puzzles.
There are 12 characters seated in a circle, each on a seat numbered 1-12, like a clock (the character on seat 1 is neighboured with those on seats 12 and 2, and so on). Your job is to find out on which seat the King is seated and on which seat the Assassin is seated. To this end, you will ask up to 30 yes-no questions, each to a character on a certain seat.
At the start of the game, the King and Assassin are of distance 5 from each other (ie not quite opposite - if the King is on seat 12, the Assassin is on seat 5 or 7). Every third time a lie is told by any character, the Assassin moves one seat closer to the King, switching seats with the relevant neighbour. You will not be informed when this happens. If the Assassin is already next to the King when this occurs, the King is assassinated and you immediately lose.
The characters:
King: Always tells the truth.
Assassin: Always lies.
Optimist: Always says "Yes".
Pessimist: Always says "No".
Positive Alternator: Alternates, starting with telling the truth.
Negative Alternator: Alternates, starting with lying.
Democrat: Gives the answer that the majority of other characters would give.
Diplomat: Says "Yes" if both neighbours would give the same answer, "No" otherwise.
Tracker: Tells the truth if the Assassin has moved an even number of times, lies otherwise.
Copycat: Tells the truth if the previous answer was truthful (or there have been no prior answers), lies otherwise.
Follower: Tells the truth if seated closer to the King than the Assassin, lies otherwise.
Traitor: Tells the truth for the first 15 questions, lies otherwise.
The Alternators are independent of each other, and each only alternates when that particular one answers a question. This is unaffected by the Democrat and Diplomat (ie they check how they would currently answer the question without triggering their alternating).
The characters are seated randomly, with the following constraints: The King and Assassin are of distance 5 from each other, and the Democrat and Diplomat are not neighbours, nor are they both neighbours of the Assassin (to avoid recursion).
All questions must be answerable by every character, ie it must be true that for every character, one of "Yes" and "No" is the truth, and the other is a lie. Any question that fails this - either through a paradox or because the answer is unknown, an opinion, debatable, etc - results in an immediate loss, even if it can be answered by the character you ask (eg you can't ask the Assassin "Will you answer 'No' to this question?" even though that does not cause a paradox, since asking the King would cause one).
You may need to be careful with how you refer to characters, eg asking the character in seat 1 "Are you the King?" or "Is the King in seat 1?" will be treated differently for the purposes of the Democrat and Diplomat.
If a question takes too long to find the answer to (by my estimation), or requires me to look up obscure facts etc, then I will not accept it and ask you to ask a different question. Again, this is independent of which character you ask, eg I won't accept "Are you the King, or is the 100th digit of pi a 9?" even if asked of the King.
If you want to use an objectively true statement, the sky is blue and no other shade or colour.
All characters have full knowledge of the current gamestate and previous gamestates etc.
Please make your questions and the seat they're directed to clear, as well as your final guess. You only get one guess, and it can be taken after any question has been answered, as long as you haven't lost already. The guess must specify the seat of the King and the current seat of the Assassin.
The characters are just whatever I could think of, and the number of guesses and speed of the Assassin are fairly arbitrary, so I have no idea how fun or hard it will be.
The characters have already been seated. The first to reply can decide if they want to do it alone or let others help, and ask the first question (or any questions about the game).
EDIT: You can't ask questions to the same seat twice in a row.
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I can let others help.
12
11 1
10 2
9 3
8 4
7 5
6
a crude clock for reference.
Seat 1: Are you seated next to the king?
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I'd help Liam. I'll wait the answer to his question first though :)
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I feel like this is one of those things that could be answered in one question of the form "Seat 1: If I were to ask Seat 5 how Seat 8 would answer if I asked Seat 10 to tell me how Seat 4 would answer if... [n steps] ...would you say yes?"
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From my understanding, mail-mi should ask the questions but we can council him. Otherwise it can get chaotic relatively fast and I don't think you have much room for error here. So here is my advice looking at the rules of the game
- You probably want to ask questions in the beginning that split about 50/50, e.g. does the King sit on an even numbered chair?
- It might make sense to tie answers to what other persons would say, e.g. if I asked the persons on the chairs 1 - 7, would a majority of them say that ...?
- In the beginning the King, the Positive Alternator, the Democrat, the Tracker, the Copycat, the Traitor, and likely the Follower tell the truth. The Assassin and the Negative Alternator lie. The Optimist, the Pessimist, and the Diplomat are more or less random.
- 30 questions is plenty, so the real criteria is the 5 moves it takes the Assassin to kill the King. Hence, it can be risky to ask the same person too frequently unless you have a good idea that they tell the truth.
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I feel like this is one of those things that could be answered in one question of the form "Seat 1: If I were to ask Seat 5 how Seat 8 would answer if I asked Seat 10 to tell me how Seat 4 would answer if... [n steps] ...would you say yes?"
The minimum number of questions is 5. You have 12 options where the King could sit multiplied with 2 options for the Assassin (left or right) and every question gives you 1 bit of information. But it could be that there is a possibility to solve it in 5 questions with a very convoluted set of questions.
Rules question: Are we allowed to game the system? We could for example ask after 15 questions
Are you the traitor XOR the real question we want to ask
to map the answer of the traitor to truth even after 15 questions have been asked.
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Seat 1: Are you seated next to the king?
No
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A rule I forgot to mention (it's now in the OP): You can't ask questions to the same seat twice in a row.
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I feel like this is one of those things that could be answered in one question of the form "Seat 1: If I were to ask Seat 5 how Seat 8 would answer if I asked Seat 10 to tell me how Seat 4 would answer if... [n steps] ...would you say yes?"
The minimum number of questions is 5. You have 12 options where the King could sit multiplied with 2 options for the Assassin (left or right) and every question gives you 1 bit of information. But it could be that there is a possibility to solve it in 5 questions with a very convoluted set of questions.
This sounds like the type of question I had in mind to not answer because it'd take too much working out.
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Seat 1: Are you seated next to the king?
No
This is probably true.
I think the next question should go to any other number asking did #1 tell the truth.
Also for the next 2 questions we can be sure that no-one will change their place, so seat 1 will be the same role.
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Rules question: Are we allowed to game the system? We could for example ask after 15 questions
Are you the traitor XOR the real question we want to ask
to map the answer of the traitor to truth even after 15 questions have been asked.
There are no rules forbidding this sort of thing, apart from not making it overly complex. I figured it's probably possible to do something like this, but hoped there were enough variables (in particular the moving Assassin) such that there wasn't just a mindless algorithm. Of course whatever people come up with can help refine the rules.
At the end of the day, mail-mi and others should play the way that would provide the most enjoyment or whatever else they're looking for.
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I made a doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lcb2j_vctYYkbviSgGR5oVT2cSMfo34xLwdGOOGyDac/
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is zero an even number of times for Tracker? :)
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is zero an even number of times for Tracker? :)
Yes, zero is an even number. :P
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Seat 1: Are you seated next to the king?
No
This is probably true.
I think the next question should go to any other number asking did #1 tell the truth.
Also for the next 2 questions we can be sure that no-one will change their place, so seat 1 will be the same role.
Okay, thinking about this, Seat 8, is seat 1 telling the truth?
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then you can ask #1 again, if the sky is blue. We will know about two people a little info.
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Seat 8, is seat 1 telling the truth?
Yes
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then you can ask #1 again, if the sky is blue. We will know about two people a little info.
seat 1: Is 2+2=4?
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seat 1: Is 2+2=4?
No
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so, mail-mi, can he be Democrat? I think yes, cause "no" could answer only:
1) Assassin
2) Pessimist
3) Positive Alternator
4) Diplomat
5) Copycat
6) Follower
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also, it can be three lies now so Assassin moved somewhere.
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I think we should've started from 2*2=4 =)))
Now we can ask someone is seat one telling the truth and then make some more difficult questions, concerning more than one seater.
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Seat 1 cant be the Assassin.
Hm...
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Seat 1 cant be the Assassin.
Hm...
Look at my GoogleDoc if you can =)
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Seat 1 cant be the Assassin.
Hm...
Look at my GoogleDoc if you can =)
I'm on my phone at work, so thinking is hard. :P I'll do more when I get home.
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Bump?
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Sorry, yesterday was busy. I'll get to this later today I hope.
Also, I officially make LaLight my partner. He can ask questions as well.
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well, I'll ask some when forum will be stable.
Also I played this IRL thrice. Not sure I'll come with some strategy, but maybe will be helpful.
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Seat 2: are you the King?
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Seat 2: are you the King?
No
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let's try this:
Seat 12: If I ask number 2 again if he is the king, will he give ne the same answer?
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Seat 12: If I ask number 2 again if he is the king, will he give ne the same answer?
Yes
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seat 2: are you the king?
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seat 2: are you the king?
No
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god, Democrat is hard af
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mail-mi, help :)
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So, we think that seat 2 is democrat yes?
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So, we think that seat 2 is democrat yes?
Hell no. Democrat is one of the hardest roles to point.
It's just hard every time to think is the seater a democrat because you need to think about everyone's answer to a question to know what democrat would answer.
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So, we think that seat 2 is democrat yes?
Hell no. Democrat is one of the hardest roles to point.
It's just hard every time to think is the seater a democrat because you need to think about everyone's answer to a question to know what democrat would answer.
Right. Hmmmmm...
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Bump.
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Jim, I'm so so sorry
Actually sometimes I try to play it IRL to find out what questions to ask :)
Will post a q in 10 mins
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Seat 12: maybe you're the king?
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maybe
...yes
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Seat 12: maybe you're are you the king?
Yes
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Seat 2: 2*2=4?
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Seat 2: 2*2=4?
Yes
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I'm sorry for delays, that's hard to figure out a good question.
Seat 12: Is everything seat 2 answered the truth?
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Seat 12: Is everything seat 2 answered the truth?
Yes
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Bump.
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Seat 1: 2*2=5?
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Seat 1: 2*2=5?
No
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oh this is hard really.
My tactics is to understand one's role and then move from this info. But I can't, because Assassin moves and there's always Follower and stuff.
Well, Seat 8: Have the assassin moved already?
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I want to replicate on another forum: did you distribute the characters randomly?
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/out I can't think about this much anymore. Sorry Lalight. :(
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Seat 8: Have the assassin moved already?
Yes
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I want to replicate on another forum: did you distribute the characters randomly?
Pretty much. I randomly chose a seat for the King, then I randomly chose a seat for the Assassin out of the two of distance 5 from the King, then I randomly distributed the rest, rerolling them if the Democrat and Diplomat were together (or both sides of the Assassin) until they weren't.
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Seat 8: Have the assassin moved already?
Yes
Seat 2: The same question
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Seat 8: Have the assassin moved already?
Yes
Seat 2: The same question
Yes
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Seat 1: 2*2=5?
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Seat 1: 2*2=5?
No
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Seat 1: 2*2=5?
No
This is still narrows Seat 1 to Copycat or Pessimist.
Rules question: if seat 1 is pessimist and I ask paradox question, will i lose the game, or they will answer "No"? :)
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Seat 1: 2*2=5?
No
This is still narrows Seat 1 to Copycat or Pessimist.
Rules question: if seat 1 is pessimist and I ask paradox question, will i lose the game, or they will answer "No"? :)
You'll lose the game. Each question must be answerable by each character / seat number.
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Seat 1: 2*2=5?
No
This is still narrows Seat 1 to Copycat or Pessimist.
Rules question: if seat 1 is pessimist and I ask paradox question, will i lose the game, or they will answer "No"? :)
You'll lose the game. Each question must be answerable by each character / seat number.
Okay, thanks!
Seat 2: Is Seat 1 a pessimist?
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Seat 2: Is Seat 1 a pessimist?
Yes
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Bump.
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seat 12: 2*2=5?
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seat 12: 2*2=5?
Yes
You have now asked 15 questions.
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Bump.
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Seat 2: 2*2=4?
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LaLight: 2*2=4?
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LaLight: 2*2=4?
I feel pessimistic today, so no
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Seat 2: 2*2=4?
Yes
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Seat 2: 2*2=4?
Yes
Okay, I'm finally gonna assume #2 is the King. Let's move from that.
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Seat 2: 2*2=4?
Yes
Okay, I'm finally gonna assume #2 is the King. Let's move from that.
Oh no, they can't be. Heck. Need to think more on that.
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Seat 9: is Seat 2 a Follower?
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Seat 9: is Seat 2 a Follower?
No
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Seat 9: is Seat 2 a Follower?
No
Seat 2: Have seat 9 told a truth?
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Seat 2: Have seat 9 told a truth?
No
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Seat 2: Have seat 9 told a truth?
No
Seat 9: 2*2=4?
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Seat 9: 2*2=4?
Yes
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Bump.
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Bump.
Is this still happening?
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Bump.
Is this still happening?
Please specify which chair you're asking that question.
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Please specify which chair you're asking that question.
42.
As you're the only other person who's posted here in the last 3 weeks, want to ask a question?
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Please specify which chair you're asking that question.
42.
As you're the only other person who's posted here in the last 3 weeks, want to ask a question?
I've been loosely following along, but not nearly enough to play and i don't want to put the time effort in to work out what's actually going on.