Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

[Icehouse] cycles in 2-player Gnostica

  • FromDoug Orleans <dougorleans@xxxxxxxxx>
  • DateTue, 24 Oct 2006 17:00:02 -0400
In a 2-player game of Gnostica, it's possible (and pretty easy) to get
into a situation that would be a cycle (infinite loop): I create a
piece, you destroy it, I create the same piece, you destroy it again,
etc.  I suspect that in most cases, there is something better for one
or the other player to do.  But how should this be handled if both
players are convinced they will lose if they break the cycle?  Should
there be something like Go's ko-rule, i.e. no repeated board
positions allowed?

--dougorleans@xxxxxxxxx

P.S. We were playing with the variant end-game rule: if you have 10 or
more points (including shared territories) at the beginning of your
turn, you may declare the game to be over, and everyone with 10 or
more points gets a shared victory.  Would some other victory condition
prevent cycles somehow?

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