Annotated games: 7 players

Here I will present the annotated test games as they are played.

This game was played during testing. The player decisions were either derived through reasoning (based on what players should know about each others' objectives) or randomization (if no option seemed better than another).

Turn 1 (Player 1 general secretary)

Player 1 starts as general secretary with the objective to repress Finance and proposes that ministry for the plan. Players 2, 5 and 6 would rather have "their" ministries but thanks to the general secretary's casting vote, the plan is approved.

Player 1 appoints the 3 yes-voters for the execution but only one of them is interested in repression while the other two are indifferent and select reform. Player 1 tries to replace one of them and is rewarded with another repression vote (although the reason for this vote is that player 3 changes her vote to confuse the other players. Player 1 nevertheless replaces one more player, hoping to get a unanimous vote but have to settle with a majority vote.

Player 3 is the one who caused the lack of unanimity but since player 2 fails to point out her, she 6 loses 1 influence level. The Finance Ministry now has +1 in socialism level.

Turn 2 (Player 2 general secretary)

Player 2, who wants to see Defence reforming, tries to gather all players that she thinks want to repress Finance, assuming that they also want to see Defence reforming (to make Finance the most repressing ministry). However, she's wrong about player 6, who wants to see Security reforming and votes Repress. Player 3 also votes Repress to break an expected unanimity, with the unintended result of being replaced for the second execution.

Unfortunately the replacement, player 4, wants to see all ministries repressing and also votes Repress.

For the third execution, the general secretary replaces two players and this time she's more fortunate. Player 5, who wants Security to be repressing, is happy to see Defence reforming, while player 7 wants to protect her influence and avoid purges.

Turn 3 (Player 3 general secretary)

Player 3 wants to cause a purge and proposes the not yet planned Security, which the ministers should have least knowledge about. Only player 7 votes against, fearing a fierce execution with influence losses.

For the execution, player 3 avoids last turns unanimous reformers, in case they would be unanimous again. After that, she replaces one member every time so it won't be too obvious that she wants them to vote differently. It succeeds throughout the execution but player 6 knows that player 7 played repress previous in the second round and correctly guess that she plays similar the third round. Player 1 doesn't have this knowledge but nevertheless guess correctly. Player 7 gets purged and loses 1 influence.

After three turns, player 1 (maximize Finance), player 2 (minimize Defence) and player 3 (2 lost influence in 3 turns) are in the lead.

Turn 4 (Player 4 general secretary)

Player 4 wants a positive ministry level (repressions) and proposes one of the two negative ministries, hoping that enough players will want to bring the level back to 0. All players vote yes except player 5 (who prefers Security) and player 7 (who fears a non-unanimous execution with more lost influence).

For the execution, player 4 avoids the three players who reformed Defence in turn 2 (1, 5 and 7) but still ends up with two reformers; player 2 (who wants to minimize Defence) and player 3 (who wants to break a possible unanimity).

Player 4 tries in vain to find repressers but it all ends up with a majority reforming. Player 6 sticks to repressing, although this makes her the obvious target for the following purge. (The alternative, to allow Defence a unanimous vote and another -2, would make her objective very difficult to attain.)

Player 1, 2 and 3 remain in the lead. Player 4 and 5 need repressing the last turns and player 6 reforming to stand a chance. Player 7 faces a tough challenge since she would need unanimous votes in all three remaining turns.

Turn 5 (Player 5 general secretary)

Player 5 needs to get Security (-1) higher than Finance (+1) and proposes Security. Most players have interests in this ministry in one way or another. Player 2 hopes to keep Defence the lowest, player 3 hopes for unanimity between players wanting to reform further and repress, player 4 and 6 want to repress and reform respectively while player 7 hopes for a unanimous vote to bring it back to 0. The exception is player 1, who wants to maximize Finance and keep the distance between the two, but she's voted down.

For the execution, player 5 avoids player 1, whose participation in turn 3 turned the execution from repressing to reforming. However, she does unknowingly include a player who wants to minimize the ministry: player 6. Fortunately for her, she happens to replace the "right" player with player 7, who is more than happy to contribute to a unanimity.

Turn 6 (Player 6 general secretary)

Player 6 takes the last chance to draw the game by proposing Defence, hoping that most players will want to see it closer to 0. However, most other ministries want to execute other minstries (including player 7, who fears Defence wouldn't be unanimous and be followed by a purge).

Security more acceptable and player 6 avoids the three repressing players from previous turn (2, 4 and 7). Player 1 is happy to have Defence reforming to make Finance the most repressing ministry. However, player 5 wants to have Defence repressing while player 3 wants to cause non-unanimity.

For the second round, player 6 tries to replace a player but unfortunately replaces the only reformer, player 1, with a represser, player 2. Nevertheless, both player 3 and 5 change their votes for tactical reasons (they hope to avoid being replaced the last round). Because of this, player 6 thinks player 2 voted "reform" and keeps her for the last round instead of player 5.

In the last round, both player 2 and player 3 want to repress but without risking a purge for breaking the unanimity. Instead they both vote "reform" and to their disappointment, there is a unanimous vote for "reform".

With one turn remaining, neither player 1 (Finance), nor player 2 (Defence) can be sure to win. Players 5 and 6 (Security) must have a unanimous execution in the right direction (positive for player 5, negative for player 6) while the presence or absence of a purge will determine the fate of players 3 and 7. Only player 4 is out of the game, since nothing can prevent the overall ministry level from staying negative.

Turn 7 (Player 7 general secretary)

Player 7 still has a chance of winning if she can bring about yet another unanimous vote so that no more influence will be lost. For this purpose she proposes a ministry that seems to have many supporters in one direction: Defence with its current level of -3.

Unfortunately, player 5 and 6 both prefer Security while player 3 wants to avoid unanimous votes and player 4 still plays for positive ministry values. For similar reasons, they reject Finance as well which leaves Security for yet another execution.

Player 7 doesn't give up and selects two of the players (2 and 3) that unanimously voted for reform previous turn. (The third was player 7 herself.) However, player 2 votes differently this time to keep Defence the lowest but player 7 suspects player 6 but who else can she select? She decides to switch object and keeps only player 6 with the hope of getting a unanimous repress instead. To her surprise, she still gets a reform majority and now she replaces with player 6 to get a unanimous reform. Nevertheless, the result is yet another surprise.

Player 1 correctly thinks player 6 is a reformer and that a repress vote is to be expected. Rather than risking a purge and a lost influence, she votes for reform. This fools player 3, who expected a reform majority and tries to cause a purge with a repress vote. With player 5 genuinely wanting Security to repress, the result is a unanimous repress!

The final score is Defence the most repressed ministry (player 2's objective), Finance and Security the most reformed (player 1's and 5's objective) and less than half the influence lost (player 7's objective). Since player 1 and 5 have most influence (3), they are declared the winners!

The test game turned out to be very exciting. With the exception of player 4, all players had a chance of winning when the last turn started. The ministries of Finance and Defence remained stable; once they had reached positive and negative values respectively, the players with related objectives (1 and 2) were happy and voted against further executions. Instead, Security was in focus and pended between positive and negative. Player 3 was initially successful in causing purges and even avoided being purged herself but thanks to a strong finish, supported by players' anxiety of getting unnecessary purges, player 7 managed to attain her objective of few purges.

One key learning from the game was the tweaking of the objectives to give the players the right incentives and keep it open to the end. Thus, the objectives went from absolute (maximize/minimize a value) to relative (more or less than others), the differentiated scoring (±1 at majority votes and ±2 at unanimous votes) and "equal or more/less" rather than "more/less". This meant that all ministries meant something to the players and that sudden turns were possible even late in the game.

To sum up, the game fulfills several "fun" criteria, such as surprise, equal opportunity, winning chances and tension and has reached a solid state. As for the totalitarian regime, it engages in disarmament while trying to keep a plan economy with control of its citizens and less purges. Not too different from what really happened.

P&P (PDF, A4)	P&P (PDF, US Letter)

Annotated games

• 7 players

If you like those game mechanisms, I can also recommend: