Posted by oldave on 12/12/2014 10:17:00 AM (view original):
Posted by aejones on 12/12/2014 3:11:00 AM (view original):
this is like playing nearly any board game. collusion is beneficial to all. game theory would probably dictate few battles. probably a mixed strategy of rare battles with the occasional bluff thrown in.
collusion is beneficial to all?
i think i need a deeper explanation of that, jonesy.
Kind of funny i was randomly reading through some threads I had posted in and realized i never replied to this.
basically the set up for many multiplayer games is such that battling destroys the two people battling and helps everyone else. two most obvious examples i can think of off the top of my head that most people will have played are:
1. Risk: fighting is only beneficial to conquer a territory or to take out an opponent to get their cards. in all other cases your best play will be fortify what you have, win one territory that turn to get a card, and hope that your opponents fight (And therefore weaken) each other. there is some hierarchy jostling but it's primarily aimed at people who are "one spot" from each other in the "who is winning?" question. that is, if you're in fourth it's likely you can't do much about the guy in first, you jsut have to wait it out and hope everyone kills each other; but if you're in second you'll need to keep tabs on first if you're playing to win.... otherwise, this is a game where being very passive (and collusive, even making political alliances if you and your friends allow such secret handshake wink wink nod nod things) is beneficial.
2. monopoly: this is the most obvious example where the only way to get a monopoly is often to trade one for another. every trade that is made helps you and your trading partner (who is helps more is irrelevant, if you're making a trade it should benefit both parties unless oyu're the worst monopoly player ever) and hurts everyone else in the game.
the point im making is that it's basically the same with HD. game theory recruiting would basically have circles around every school with a radius of 360 miles. within every radius a school would probably fill up all of their scholarships minus two spots open, spending the least amount to get "high priority" while saving the most for any potential battle. anytime two schools got on the same person, the school at a disadvantage of ammo (prestige/distance/money) would immediately give up and move on to the next best recruit in the area, bumping off whatever other school was at a disadvantage until everyone got exactly who they "should" get, roughly. there would be some overlapping battles where the relative value of the money for the disadvantaged school jsut wasn't that important (like if they have three openings and one guy clearly locked up and 60k to fire hard with just to keep the other local school honest), but for the most part everyone would fall in line. schools would move up if they got lucky and had good area recruits and move down if they got unlucky. there are probably some other elements to this that include the occasional wild, unwinnable battle just so everyone knows you have it in you. this is basically elements of dawkins' selfish gene when he talks about the GTO behavior of animals battling for one reason or another-- there are tons of options: fight, flight, fight but pretend to flight, flight but pretend to fight, flip a coin on whether you fight or flight, etc. (this is an incredibly vague analogy)
of course this isn't how recruiting works in practice, but it's mostly the most beneficial way for everyone involved. this is much less relevant to d2/d3 where i do most of my work where 90% of recruiting is just paying attention and trying to get guys who fall through the cracks (signed a monster D2 xfer recently who was cut by an A+ prestige coach who was new to the school... no idea why he cut him, he'd prob be a future D2 AA).
anyway i certainly didn't mean that i collude, i was just talking about the general game theory of recruiting. anytime i get some idiot emailing me about how he wants to give me advice about one silly recruiting thing or another or how "this is his guy!" i just ignore it and chalk it up to people being idiots.