Hydra Discussion Thread

[Klick]

'Hi Betch, I'm looking to raise my ELO this year, want to hydra a couple of games '

[Klick]

I understand why there's a focus on the challenge aspect of hydras - it's a lot more obviously measurable. But the problem with hydras becomes much more obvious when you consider the implications of a hydra playing a particularly strong social game.

In a social game, players are only really limited by what they are able to think of saying. One player is capable of making all of the decisions that that person would think of making. If you add a second mind into that mix, you're adding a second person's set of decisions into the potential options for that slot. An effective hydra would definitely be able to sort between those two players' sets of potential decisions and choose to do things that would work better than either player would consider doing on their own.

As a simple example, I didn't follow the last game, but Skelda spoke about the clear advantage there seemed to be in having a hydra to talk things through with at FTC. Often, FTC mistakes wind up being due to individual short-sightedness, not being able to see something from a juror's perspective. Having two people interpret what a juror is saying makes it a lot more likely that the slot will be able to give a response that the juror will favor.

Anyone who has worked together with a particularly tight ally in a game should really be able to see that two people working together are able to do so much more than either of them would be capable of alone.

[Klick]

I do think there's merit in asking whether the fun of having hydras in games justifies the imbalance though. My answer would be 'probably not', but I dunno, I don't have much stake in that argument.

PEdit: not read that last post yet but Shadow is probably right