One of each if nobody has attacked at all (other player’s choice). If an attack has been made then a piece from the player who was not the last attacker.
That would allow some element of a stand-off potential if both players believe they are better served by a smaller scale battle, a stand off that would probably only be stable if at least one of the players was making an error in judgement. It also encourages various feinting strategies that should ensure that most games do not become dominated by a stale mate.
10.1 It is not allowed to move a piece more than 5 times non-stop between the same two squares, regardless of what the opponent is doing. It does not matter whether a piece is moving and thereby attacking an opponent’s piece, or just moving to an
empty square.
10.2 When a scout is involved in the Two Squares Rule, a scout is considered to start on the starting position of his move plus all the squares he steps over, and he ends on the final position of his move plus all the squares he steps over.
11 Repetition of Threatening Moves: More-Squares Rule
11.1 It is not allowed to continuously chase one or more pieces of the opponent endlessly. The continuous chaser may not play a chasing move again more which would lead to a position on the board which has already taken place.
11.2 Exception: chasing moves back to the square where the chasing piece came from in the directly preceding turn are always allowed as long as this does not violate the Two-Squares Rule (Five-Moves-on-Two-Squares).
11.3
Definitions:
continuous chase: the same player is non-stop threatening one or more pieces of his opponent that is/are evading the threatening moves.
chasing move: a move in a continuous chase that threatens an opponent’s piece that was evading during the continuous chase. Hereby:
a/to move: a/to move plus attacking or a/to move to an empty square.
to threaten: to move a piece next (before, behind or besides) a piece of the opponent.
to evade: to move a piece away promptly after it has been threatened.
Wait, those scouts sound familiar! I suspect I have played that game. (Everything has a point value, higher points usually beat lower points, scouts get to move like rooks, etc. I have vague memories of marshals and land mines too...)
Oops, I failed to notice that part. Well, no, I can’t. But then maybe you should just be playing a different game, or if you have a lot of time, redesigning Stratego from scratch. :) But failing that I guess opponent-shaming does work if you’re willing to allow it.
Edit: But I don’t see how it can be considered at all a good solution. It also requires that you both recognize the problem in the first place. Though with something like stalling I’m not sure there is any real stable solution, due to boundary exploitation and the ability to stall more subtly. Hm, I guess I take back my “opponent-shaming does work if you’re willing to allow it”; if you’re already at the point that it’s the only solution you can find, then it isn’t going to solve the problem.
Though with something like stalling I’m not sure there is any real stable solution, due to boundary exploitation and the ability to stall more subtly.
I find that this analysis is exactly correct for bughouse, a time-based 4-player game where stalling can be the key to victory and is very difficult (costly) to monitor, because any time you spend seeing if your partner’s opponent is stalling becomes time that you can’t spend defeating your own opponent.
In Stratego, a turn-based 2-player game, you can often treat the decision to stall or not-stall as an iterated fake Prisoner’s Dilemma, especially because the cost of being defected on for one turn is quite small, and the act of defecting for an entire game is quite noticeable. If I ‘cooperate’ by attacking you for 2 games in a row, and then you refuse to attack me on the 3rd game, I can’t help but notice that I’m always the one attacking, and I can just refuse to play a 4th game with you until you apologize.
But then you should, if possible, explicitly patch the game in a way that makes that not a good idea.
I completely agree. I can’t think of any fixes for Stratego, though. Can you?
If neither player has attacked in a certain number of turns, then a piece is removed from the board?
Which one? Keep in mind that, as written, Stratego has no element of luck.
One of each if nobody has attacked at all (other player’s choice). If an attack has been made then a piece from the player who was not the last attacker.
That would allow some element of a stand-off potential if both players believe they are better served by a smaller scale battle, a stand off that would probably only be stable if at least one of the players was making an error in judgement. It also encourages various feinting strategies that should ensure that most games do not become dominated by a stale mate.
Sounds great! I’ll try it.
(Who goes first is random, isn’t it?)
Anyway, I did a bit of Googling, and I found some official Stratego tournament rules that address stall situations.
Wait, those scouts sound familiar! I suspect I have played that game. (Everything has a point value, higher points usually beat lower points, scouts get to move like rooks, etc. I have vague memories of marshals and land mines too...)
Oops, I failed to notice that part. Well, no, I can’t. But then maybe you should just be playing a different game, or if you have a lot of time, redesigning Stratego from scratch. :) But failing that I guess opponent-shaming does work if you’re willing to allow it.
Edit: But I don’t see how it can be considered at all a good solution. It also requires that you both recognize the problem in the first place. Though with something like stalling I’m not sure there is any real stable solution, due to boundary exploitation and the ability to stall more subtly. Hm, I guess I take back my “opponent-shaming does work if you’re willing to allow it”; if you’re already at the point that it’s the only solution you can find, then it isn’t going to solve the problem.
I find that this analysis is exactly correct for bughouse, a time-based 4-player game where stalling can be the key to victory and is very difficult (costly) to monitor, because any time you spend seeing if your partner’s opponent is stalling becomes time that you can’t spend defeating your own opponent.
In Stratego, a turn-based 2-player game, you can often treat the decision to stall or not-stall as an iterated fake Prisoner’s Dilemma, especially because the cost of being defected on for one turn is quite small, and the act of defecting for an entire game is quite noticeable. If I ‘cooperate’ by attacking you for 2 games in a row, and then you refuse to attack me on the 3rd game, I can’t help but notice that I’m always the one attacking, and I can just refuse to play a 4th game with you until you apologize.
Oh, so you’re considering this over games/strategies, rather than moves/tactics. Interesting.