About Many Marios and growth rates
Posted 06-15-2011 at 06:48 PM by Dux is not you
Many Marios is a forum game that puts you in charge of a town (originally a town of Marios, thus the name, but now there are multiple unit types available) and lets you make it grow through economy, exploration and expansion.
While the game has strategic components, it is at heart a management game. This means the game won't work if the economy isn't finely balanced. To put this in context, let's make a (highly simplified) simulation of the game's basic system:
You start the game with 1 Mario. A Mario has 5 points of energy, which you can use to gather coins, at the rate of 5c for 1E, that is, five coins for each point of energy spent. Every day, your Mario's energy is restored to 5. Recruiting a new Mario costs 100c.
On Day 1 you spend your Mario's 5E to gather coins. Since you spent 5E, you obtain 25c.
On Day 2 you repeat the operation, giving you a total of 50c.
On Days 3 and 4 you once again gather coins with your Mario, increasing your coin count. However, on day 4 you have a total of 100c, letting you recruit a second Mario.
On Days 5 and 6 you gather coins with your two Marios, meaning you get 50c every day. On day 6 you reach 100c once again, letting you recruit a third Mario.
On Days 7 and 8 you gather coins with your three Marios, at a rate of 75c per day. At the end of day 8, you have 150c, letting you buy a fourth Mario and keep 50c in reserve.
So starting on day 9, you can get 100c every day, meaning an entire new Mario every day, and your growth rate doesn't stop increasing. Compare this to the start of the game, when recruiting the second Mario took four whole days.
This system has a pattern of growth called exponential growth. This means the growth rate grows as fast as the town itself. As a consequence, if a player attains an advantage over another player, no matter how small, that advantage will by itself grow into unmanageable size in just a few days.
This is not a desirable thing, and this is one of the things that removed me from VGF years ago, as I attempted to solve the issue. On my next posst, I'll talk about the solutions I tried and the results I found.
While the game has strategic components, it is at heart a management game. This means the game won't work if the economy isn't finely balanced. To put this in context, let's make a (highly simplified) simulation of the game's basic system:
You start the game with 1 Mario. A Mario has 5 points of energy, which you can use to gather coins, at the rate of 5c for 1E, that is, five coins for each point of energy spent. Every day, your Mario's energy is restored to 5. Recruiting a new Mario costs 100c.
On Day 1 you spend your Mario's 5E to gather coins. Since you spent 5E, you obtain 25c.
On Day 2 you repeat the operation, giving you a total of 50c.
On Days 3 and 4 you once again gather coins with your Mario, increasing your coin count. However, on day 4 you have a total of 100c, letting you recruit a second Mario.
On Days 5 and 6 you gather coins with your two Marios, meaning you get 50c every day. On day 6 you reach 100c once again, letting you recruit a third Mario.
On Days 7 and 8 you gather coins with your three Marios, at a rate of 75c per day. At the end of day 8, you have 150c, letting you buy a fourth Mario and keep 50c in reserve.
So starting on day 9, you can get 100c every day, meaning an entire new Mario every day, and your growth rate doesn't stop increasing. Compare this to the start of the game, when recruiting the second Mario took four whole days.
This system has a pattern of growth called exponential growth. This means the growth rate grows as fast as the town itself. As a consequence, if a player attains an advantage over another player, no matter how small, that advantage will by itself grow into unmanageable size in just a few days.
This is not a desirable thing, and this is one of the things that removed me from VGF years ago, as I attempted to solve the issue. On my next posst, I'll talk about the solutions I tried and the results I found.
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