11/3: Class Notes

We ran G1,2,3,4,5,7 on a 100 round sim:

G4 strangely pushed directly away from itself
G7 is trying to co-operate with the player directly opposite from it, for the first 10 minutes

Is it possible to try to cooperate with everyone?
Jesse: This might appear to be non-cooperation for some
Elba: A tit-for-tat strategy will always help (if everyone is)

Can you help two players at the same time?
John: Yes, but it's very small.
Neha: We should try to only give small helping moves first, and then we can move to more later once we're sure that we're cooperating

Flavio: At the end of the game, co-operation can also include a "defense" strategy

When do we degrade how much we are valuing our cooperation 
Nitin: At first it might look like someone is helping you, but they may be actually just pushing through you to make it to another player
 Zack: Don't just keep a history of the past 10 turns, keep a weighted history of everything - both how much X has helped you ,but also how much you have helped X.
Daniel: It's important to keep track of *if* someone can be helping you, because if they aren't helping, and they can't, you shouldn't hold it against them.

What would make a neutral move?

Should we co-operate with immediate neighbors?
Eva: No, because there are fewer number of moves to make to help

Daniel: Opposite players will end up at end-game doing a defensive strategy for each other.
EPK: Breaking an alliance at the end of the game may be risky because it may alienate them
David: If two players team up against 1, that 1 would need to have 2 people protecting it, otherwise it will lose coins

Neha: The game has something of a bias towards randomness because as the game ends you will HAVE to push piles together

For next Monday:
Improve, improve, improve your players (nooo illegal moves)
Encourage: swap your players