what are some situations in real life, other than “AI takeoff”, where the early/mid/late game metaphor seems useful?
I suspect it’s easy to find games or situations that have nice-ish three phase maps, for example:
Choosing a particular chess move: (I) assess the board, (II) generate some candidates moves, (III) find the best move of the candidates
Getting new work as a contractor: (I) get a rough idea of what the potential client wants, (II) create a detailed specification and work plan, (III) finalize financial, ownership, termination, etc details in a contract
Discovering a mathematical proof: (I) gather some foundational knowledge relevant to the problem/proposition, (II) search for ways to connect knowledge (and tricks) into a proof, (III) having found a good candidate strategy, try to develop a proof
In strategy board games, there’s an explicit shift from “early game, it’s worth spending the effort to build a longterm engine. At some point, you want to start spending your resources on victory points.” And a lens I’m thinking through is “how long does it keep making sense to invest in infrastructure, and what else might one do?”
Maybe my examples miss the spirit of the early/mid/late game map. Do you agree that in strategy games the three phases are roughly: (I) develop engine, (II) use engine to create relative advantage, (III) try to win.
Like, in Chess you start off with a state where many pieces can’t move in the early game, in the middle game many pieces are in play moving around and trading, then in the end game it’s only a few pieces, you know what the goal is, roughly how things will play out.
IMO one of the most important distinctions between middle and late game in chess is that the number of okay to good moves on any given turn is severely reduced in the late game compared to the middle game.
Maybe my examples miss the spirit of the early/mid/late game map. Do you agree that in strategy games the three phases are roughly: (I) develop engine, (II) use engine to create relative advantage, (III) try to win.
Yes, that was my original frame. But, the whole point of this post is that the Chess example was noticeably different from that, which suggested there might be other lenses that are useful.
I suspect it’s easy to find games or situations that have nice-ish three phase maps, for example:
Choosing a particular chess move: (I) assess the board, (II) generate some candidates moves, (III) find the best move of the candidates
Getting new work as a contractor: (I) get a rough idea of what the potential client wants, (II) create a detailed specification and work plan, (III) finalize financial, ownership, termination, etc details in a contract
Discovering a mathematical proof: (I) gather some foundational knowledge relevant to the problem/proposition, (II) search for ways to connect knowledge (and tricks) into a proof, (III) having found a good candidate strategy, try to develop a proof
Maybe my examples miss the spirit of the early/mid/late game map. Do you agree that in strategy games the three phases are roughly: (I) develop engine, (II) use engine to create relative advantage, (III) try to win.
IMO one of the most important distinctions between middle and late game in chess is that the number of okay to good moves on any given turn is severely reduced in the late game compared to the middle game.
Yes, that was my original frame. But, the whole point of this post is that the Chess example was noticeably different from that, which suggested there might be other lenses that are useful.