Timeline for When is a game tree the game tree of a board game?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 15, 2018 at 19:45 | comment | added | Rosie F | @DanielR.Collins e.g. Monopoly. If the bank runs out of cash, then the players' respective balances must still be maintained e.g. by making additional banknotes. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 18:00 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | E.g.: Star Frontiers Knight Hawks (1983) is a boardgame of fighting spaceships, where players log current speed, and are advised to expand the game map as needed, without bound (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10676/knight-hawks) | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 17:50 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | E.g.: Fight in the Skies (1975) (aka Dawn Patrol) is a boardgame of aerial combat where players log altitude on paper with no theoretical upper bound (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_in_the_Skies). | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 17:45 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | ... So: A more technical term than board game may be recommended if you want to keep that restriction. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 17:45 | comment | added | Daniel R. Collins | I can think of some common board games where the "only finitely many game states that are realizable on the board" concept is violated. Basically: any board game with a "strength" of pieces that can increase without bound. E.g.: 1999 Risk rules state, "If you run out of 'reinforcements' in your original army color, you may fortify your position using Infantry of a coordinating color not already being used in the game." This at least opens the door to arbitrary numbers of pieces on the board (in fact, a common interpretation). There may be more ironclad examples.... | |
| Dec 10, 2017 at 15:30 | comment | added | Zach Teitler | I guess all the information is always contained in the rules! :-) | |
| Dec 10, 2017 at 14:12 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | @ZachTeitler Thanks, yes, I agree. The phenomenon that there is a lot of information in the rules seems to hold for most of our games. In chess, for example, if we think of the game state as basically what's on the board (plus a little more), then it is precisely because of the rules that we can only achieve certain other states in one move---we are not free to just move the pieces all around at our whim. | |
| Dec 10, 2017 at 6:15 | comment | added | Zach Teitler | If there are $n$ isomorphism types, you've described how to make a board game out of one piece, and a board with $n$ squares (positions). Or there can be a board with $2$ positions and $n$ pieces: moving $k$ pieces to square $1$ (and the rest to square $0$) is a move to a position of type $k$. Even fewer pieces are possible if the pieces are marked. We could use $\lceil \log_2 n \rceil$ pieces and write the position $k$ in binary by moving the bit-pieces to square $0$ or $1$. In these "extreme" board games (with small piece sets or small boards) all the information seems to be in the rules. | |
| Dec 10, 2017 at 3:37 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | I guess one would want to know much more than this answer provides. For example, for a given board game, how can we realize it with the smallest size game board or with the fewest number of pieces for a given board size? | |
| Dec 10, 2017 at 3:22 | history | answered | Joel David Hamkins | CC BY-SA 3.0 |