status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#4037
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).
=============================== CFJ 4037 ===============================
In the context of Commune, at least one tile belongs to some
community.
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Caller: ais523
Judge: snail
Judgement: FALSE
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History:
Called by ais523: 28 May 2023 23:25:13
Assigned to snail: 04 Jun 2023 13:28:17
Judged FALSE by snail: 13 Jun 2023 03:07:17
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[Linked to CFJ 4036]
Caller's Evidence:
This week, I placed a tile at G6. It was adjacent to two
communities, Jade (with four tiles) at G7, and Emerald (with fewer than
four tiles) at F6. Emerald was thus merged into Jade.
The relevant part of the tournament regulations is:
{{{
If a tile has not been placed on a location on the board, it is
empty.
Participants CAN place a tile on an empty location by paying one
letter token and one number token that correspond to that
location's coordinates.
If a tile is placed that is not adjacent to any tiles belonging to
any communities, the player that placed it founds a new community,
e is granted 1 investment for that community, and e becomes its
founder. E CAN and SHOULD name the community after any color that
starts with a different first letter than any existing community
by announcement. If a community has not been named, the Surveyor
CAN and SHALL do so by announcement.
A player who is the founder of an existing community CANNOT place
a tile that would found a new community.
If a tile is placed adjacent to one or more tiles belonging to a
single community, that tile belongs to that community.
If a tile is placed adjacent to two or more tiles belongining to
different communities, a merger happens.
When a merger happens, if a single community involved in the
merger has more tiles than each other community, that community is
the acquiring community. If there is a tie, the tied community
that gained a tile least recently is the acquiring community. The
other communities are the acquired communities. All tiles
belonging to the acquired communities cease to belong to them and
begin to belong to the acquiring community. Each player gains X
(rounded down) Accolades for each acquired community e had an
investment in, where X is the total tiles that belonged to that
community immediately before the merger divided by the total
number of investments that exist for that community and times the
number of investments for that community that player owns. The
acquired communities and all investments in all acquired
communities are destroyed.
}}}
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Judge snail's Arguments:
Unfortunately, I see nowhere stating in these regulations that a tile
begins belonging to a community at any point except when placed next to a
tile already in a community. When a player places their first tile, all
that happens is they found a new community, get an investment in it, and
become its founder. I don't see any text that says otherwise, so sadly, the
tournament is broken.
I judge CFJ 4037 FALSE, and recommend some sort of proposal to fix the
tournament.
I also judge CFJ 4036 FALSE, ("In the context of Commune, tile G6 is not
empty, but belongs to no community.") as the tile is in fact empty, since
ais523 already founded a community, which was not destroyed.
I will note for future reference that "If a tile is placed adjacent to one
or more tiles belonging to a single community, that tile belongs to that
community." can still apply in a merger, which, if CFJ 4037 was true, would
mean the tournament works as intended. The tile would belong to each
community involved, and then since the acquired communities are destroyed,
only belong to the acquiring community.
Caller's Arguments:
The intention behind the tournament regulations is probably that, if a
player places a tile to merge two or more communities into a single
community, the tile that was placed becomes part of the new merged
community.
However, I can't find anything in the tournament regulations that
states that a tile placed to cause a merger becomes part of any
community. Does this imply that the tile is non-empty, but not part of
the resulting merged community? (This doesn't break much, but causes
scores to be slightly lower.) The first CFJ is TRUE in that case, or
FALSE if G6 is part of Jade.
I also note that the tournament regulations don't explicitly state that
founding a new community by placing a tile not adjacent to any existing
communities causes the placed tile to become part of the community
founded that way. It seems plausible that such tiles would be part of
no community, although that would completely break the tournament (both
because there would be no way to score and because most of the moves
that have happened so far would be illegal). The second CFJ is checking
for the possibility that this has happened.
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