I can’t tell if this is just another example that strategic choices tend to be valuable (guaranteed non-negative, but in practice usually positive). OF COURSE an opponent’s choice is going to reduce your value in a zero-sum game.
An interesting example of a related thing is “charm” effects, where you pick between multiple things you can do with a card, all of them are sort of bad for the price, but the flexibility makes it worth it overall. Sometimes people focus a lot on “raw efficiency”, but when it’s between you picking the best of several inefficient options or your opponent picking the worst of several highly efficient options, the former tends to be much better.
Now I want to play a game where every card has at least one weak option, or I can let my opponent choose which strong effect I get. This would probably work best where only one card (or other action, such as in a worker placement game) is played per turn.
I can’t tell if this is just another example that strategic choices tend to be valuable (guaranteed non-negative, but in practice usually positive). OF COURSE an opponent’s choice is going to reduce your value in a zero-sum game.
I do want to warn against applying to other aspects of life that aren’t purely zero-sum and aren’t designed by a human to balance the power between both parties. See also https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logical-fallacy-of-generalization-from-fictional
An interesting example of a related thing is “charm” effects, where you pick between multiple things you can do with a card, all of them are sort of bad for the price, but the flexibility makes it worth it overall. Sometimes people focus a lot on “raw efficiency”, but when it’s between you picking the best of several inefficient options or your opponent picking the worst of several highly efficient options, the former tends to be much better.
Now I want to play a game where every card has at least one weak option, or I can let my opponent choose which strong effect I get. This would probably work best where only one card (or other action, such as in a worker placement game) is played per turn.