Girls 1, Rule 0 0
Posted by Rob Herman at September 6th, 2006
This might be the first time that I have really completely dropped the ball on an R0 update. You have my apologies if not my regrets. Watch, though: my love for gaming and for all of you is so strong that I will parlay this very setback into an update.
Within about the space of a month, I’ve lost a roommate who was one of my best friends, moved across town into a new apartment, and acquired a new girlfriend. On the one hand, this feels very much like the beginning of a new chapter in my life. So much has changed! On the other hand, many things are basically the same: same job, same city, and I still have most of the same friends as before.
What the heck, you ask, why do I even care? Well. One really neat way a good game can have depth and maintain interest is if the game takes a major shift at some point during it. To my mind it contributes to the elegance of the game if this shift is implicit, a change only of tactics and strategy instead of a change in “phase”; but this is certainly not required for a good game.
- Chess and Go both have a distinct opening (both players playing familiar moves), midgame (working to expand and exploit the opportunities set up by the opening) and endgame (fighting desperately or mopping up.) The rules of the game neve mention these phases, but the differences are clear. In a time-controlled setting, experienced players will try to spend most of their time in the intricate, unfamiliar midgame.
- Although not every game of Settlers of Catan features this pattern, many times you see an initial land grab where players rush quickly for the few remaining decent production spots, followed by a period of building cities and marginal expansions, followed by a desperate push to eke out the last point or two before anyone else. You can tell the last phase has been reached because of players’ sudden reluctance to trade with players perceived to be a threat to win imminently.
- Power Grid features explicit phases. Each one is marked by its own land rush as players vie to be the first to the desirable cities and regions. It’s neat, though, because if you are beaten to a city, it’s not lost for good; you can look elsewhere and eventually still build there, just later and for a higher price.
As the local Go evangelist, I’m compelled to say that while Rob is quite correct that a typical game of Go breaks down into distinct stages, they aren’t quite analogous to the stages of a game of Chess. The most striking difference is the end-game. While the last moves of a chess game are naturally the most exciting because the main issue of contention, whose king shall be mated, is going to be resolved in a violent and bloody confrontation, the end-game starts in Go when there’s nothing big left to fight over. The two sides have staked claims to territory in the opening, fought viciously over them in the midgame, and now realize that the situation has settled down and become static. While a single mid-game move may be worth 10-15 points or more, the dozens of moves in the entire end-game will often be worth less than five points difference in the final result. While it’s possible for a slip to cost one player or the other the win at this late stage, there’s a strict limit in how much it’s reasonable to make up at the last minute. A ten point gain in the end-game is considered a herculean accomplishment.
The opening in Go also differs strongly; at high levels, it involves much less memorization than in Chess, and lasts much longer. In a professional level game, the majority of the time control is spent on opening play. Given the extremely long time controls in professional go (up to eight hours per clock played over two days), it’s not uncommon for a pro player to stare at a board with a handful of stones on it for half an hour without moving. The opening in chess isn’t exactly the same - a decent analogy to the go opening would be to start a chess game with empty back-rows, and have the players alternate placing the pieces in new starting positions. Then, once white moves the first piece - we’re in what in Go is the midgame (this isn’t exact, some very quiet opening lines would be an exception).
Oh, good. I was going to say more or less exactly that (as a huge Go fan myself, though I play fewer games than I’d like, with less skill than I’d prefer). So, seconded.