How do we determine the guilty suspect if two are tied?

Thanks!

The suspect closest to the top on the murder sheet is declared guilty.

Yeah, what's great about this is no 2 scenarios are the same. What are the odds that suspects will tie to begin with?

Alexca1 said:

No, it's not great. It's actually a really silly way to implement a tie break. It means that some players start with an automatic advantage from the beginning based on a random draw.

Boy, you just don't like anything about this game, do you? ;-)

Normally I might also object to handing out a fraction of a guilt point at random, but since it's public knowledge which suspects would win a tie, I think that whatever advantage one gets from drawing the top-most suspect will quickly be neutralized through the players' collective evidence decisions. Plus, it's not like one doesn't get random advantages/disadvantages anyways, by, for example, drawing a guilty hunch who isn't anyone's innocent hunch. (This too balances out, as long as the other players are paying attention to evidence placement and using the snitch, etc.)

subochre said:

I'm afraid your arguments don't hold. You are basically saying:

1) Player X doesn't *really* have an advantage because all the other players have to do to counter it is play as if player X had an advantage (which he does).

2) The imbalance can be excused because there are even worse imbalances in the game.

It may in fact be a silly way to determine a tie-breaker, but honestly, how often will this really come up. In all the games I've played it's happened exactly zero times. In the rare occasion that it does happen, there is at least something in the rules. Excessive griping over such a trivial thing is, well...trivial.

Bleached Lizard said:

"Basically" nothing, that's exactly what I'm saying. :-)

Although in claim 2), you've omitted a key premise, which is that the "worse" imbalance doesn't adversely impact gameplay, from which it follows that a much smaller (and, as Tsugo says, virtually unheard-of) effect wouldn't either.

I'm sure you disagree with said premise, but I think the disagreement over claim 1) is actually the more interesting one, in large part because of the number of games in which such a phenomenon occurs. As I recall, there's a similar tiebreaking mechanism in Modern Art, which gives each artist a slight intrinsic difference in value. Such differences were not introduced simply because Knizia needed a a way of resolving ties, as evidenced by the fact that there are also differences in the frequency of the pieces; it was a deliberate design choice to not make all of the conditions identical for all players. Even more conspicuous are all the wargames in which one side starts at an apparent disadvantage, not to mention the sorts of situations that can occur in cosmic encounter, etc etc

Now, one doesn't have to like any of these sorts of games, but what keeps happening in this forum and on BGG is that instead of acknowledging that your own aesthetic standards are more restrictive in certain respects than the rest of ours, you insist that we are Wrong for failing to recognize that all such mechanics are Inherently Broken, which is not only an unproductive conversation to have, but really a pretty silly one.

Re: 2 - Yes, the worse imbalance does adversely affect gameplay *hugely*.

Re: 1 - I've never played Modern Art, so I can't comment. However, your argument is based on the premise that KW wasn't just after a way to settle a tie break situation and built the imbalance between players due to the tie break into the game as a deliberate design decision. I'd say this is stretching credulity a bit.

There are much better ways a tie break could have been implemented (both players score the points, or suspect with the most positive evidence tokens is declared guilty). My (rather pissy) point is more about the fact that they couldn't even get something as simple as a tie-break right in this game.

You could break it by detirmining which suspect is the most purjured. It gives a nice "rp" feel to the tie break, since the guy who lied is the default choice if it comes down to a two way tie in the real world, right or wrong. If it was still a tie, you could add up how many positive points one suspect had over another and then go that way (so if one suspect was +20 with -10 and the other was just +12 with -2, the first one would be the guilty one).

That being said - it is extremely unlikely you will get a tie. I am sure it could happen, but the odds are really against it from occuring.

True that if tied one player benefits from a random advantage. But really like most games Android is full of random advantages and disadvantages everytime someone draws a random card of any kind. Its just one of many random advantages. If you draw double ace in texas hold em, you have a random advantage too, but that does not make the game itself imbalanced.

There are other games around without any random factors. Chess is a good example. But I think most actually enjoy a bit of randomness, and randomness that wont change your advantage in relation to other players is just a poitless mechanics in my opinion. Enjoy the randomness