During our Die Macher game on Sunday, the subject of "revenge" came up.  That is, if given the opportunity to screw a fellow player, should you pass over the opportunity knowing the other player might retaliate?  Does the negative action act to harm both the players, or is it part of the strategy of the game that deserves to be employed?  One of the cards in Die Macher is called an opinion poll.  These cards allow the player to pick two actions from five options.  Each action affects a single player, and moves that player either up or down by a value of one to three.  So for instance, the actions may be:

You may take two of the five actions, or simply take one.  So let's suppose you are Green in this game, and you draw this card.  It is still early in the game and no one player has a definite advantage over the others.  Do you a) Move Green up two and move another player down? or b) Move Green up two and decline your second action?

 

My answer depends on a lot of factors.  The two most important that I can think of:  a) Do I know the players I'm playing with, and are they particularly vengeful?  And b) What is the likelihood that the player will be able to exact revenge for my actions?

 

To break from the Die Macher question, I'll rephrase it as a Settlers of Catan question.  If you roll a 7 early in the game before any player has any advantage over the others, do you put the robber baron on someone?  Or do you play diplomatically, choosing to make no enemies?  First, it depends on who I'm playing with, or what kind of game it is.  In casual games I put the robber on the desert hex.  In competitive games, I'm 50/50.  If I see a great hex that will shut down other players, I'll hinder them with the robber.  Sometimes I'm afraid of retribution and I'll wait for another player to be the first aggressor before I take an offensive robber baron action.  But Settlers is different than Die Macher in one respect:  A player is almost guaranteed an opportunity for revenge.  Sevens are rolled frequently, so the chance is high that the player I screwed can exact revenge.  I might not want to be the aggressor.

 

In Die Macher, the ability to exact revenge isn't a given.  For starters, the opinion polls are acquired by a player with less frequency than sevens are rolled in Settlers.  And even if a player acquires an opinion poll, the blind nature of the actions on the card may not even allow him to exact revenge on the player who screwed him.  I don't know how many opinion poll cards say "Move Green down three", but I imagine it's only one or two cards in a stack of 20-30.  (it would be nice to know the exact numbers)  A player might draw a card that moves Green down only one or two spots, but in that case the "revenge" wouldn't be as harsh as the initial action.

 

Given the factors in Die Macher, the opportunity for revenge seemed low, so I chose to move the Blue player down three.  He protested, we debated, and moved on.  The next turn, he won an opinion poll that allowed him to move me (Green) down three.  The Blue player argued that all I did was hurt both of us, causing the other three players to have an advantage over us.  I construe that his ability to take revenge on me was a calculated risk, and that I was unlucky he was able to exact revenge.  Had he not drawn that particular card, I might have had an advantage over him for several turns.

 

My friend Brandon had some comparisons of this debate to the Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory, but I'll let him expound in a separate post if he wishes to.

 

I would love to hear some thoughts on the subject.  There is a link to comment below, and although it's a bit kludgy at the moment (too many clicks to comment - I'll be fixing that soon), feel free to chime in.