On 12/7/06, David Artman <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
First, the Mastodon player almost has to stick to an edge. I can't prove this without a HUGE e-mail, but it's sort of intuitive: being at the edge means there are only five adjacent squares instead of eight; and herding can reduce that to three or even less. So I will arbitrarily place them on the top edge, then show the distribution of Cavemen that pretty much seals the deal: --abcde 1 MMMMM 2 .Y.Y. 3 H.Y.H 4 Y.H.Y 5 .H.H.
Are you saying that this layout is the "best case scenario" for the Mammoths? I don't think it is. There is no significant tactical advantage to being in a single large herd. If you have two herds, one of two mammoths and one of three, the third mammoth can usually (often? sometimes?) leave one herd, enter the second, and if he's lucky, kill a caveman along the way. Maybe. You've obviously looked at it a lot, but I'm not comfortable with accepting this argument as conclusive. Yet. The all-in-one mega herd seems like poor strategy. -- - |) () /\/