I have a potentially risky opening strategy.
1. Go straight up the Moorgate road from Bank to cross the borough boundary into Islington. Either run or take the bus if it goes in that direction. Claim & lock Islington.
2. Walk the 250m east to Hackney, claim & lock Hackney.
3. Walk a bit further east to Tower Hamlets, claim & lock.
4. Go to Liverpool Street or Shoreditch High Street (whichever is closer), and switch strategies to staying ahead of the wheel. Travel around claiming boroughs before the wheel reaches them, and get in a position to lock them the moment they open.(edited)
I feel like there's going to be a strong incentive to go west to take Westminster, but I think if we can get ahead of the wheel we can outplay the other teams
16:51
It's difficult to tell whether this is actually a good idea in practice because there's quite a lot of boroughs to the west that are open right at the start of the game.
16:53
Tower Hamlets is also quite easy to walk to
Sifa Poulton
Also what boroughs are people familiar with? So we can see what local knowledge we can draw on.
I live in Bethnal Green, so familiar with tower hamlets and hackney
17:06
I guess it's generally good to attempt to lock boroughs that others are not attempting, this reduces the risks of wasted efforts. So we want to avoid the obvious and super convenient ones, unless we have a clear advantage
One interesting possibility under the rules is claiming boroughs outside of the wheel, and then only locking them for full points when the wheel catches up
Also convenient boroughs are very likely to be locked, so it's not worth claiming them.
17:08
Wait, does locking a borough invalidate your own claim? I think it does, since the wording is "all claims are removed"
2
17:09
So the max points for a borough that you claim and then lock is 2
ratt
One interesting possibility under the rules is claiming boroughs outside of the wheel, and then only locking them for full points when the wheel catches up
Hmm okay, then it makes the pre-claim strategy slightly less good, but we may still be able to waste some people's efforts since they'd be claiming the borough simultaneously as we are locking it, and since locking takes longer, we can still impose some wasted time on others doing this(edited)
17:17
So the strat is to go to maybe 2-3 boroughs that will activate later, do all the claiming challenges before activation, wait at the border between them just before activation, and then lock them asap.
I feel like Islington is going to be a popular start location because it is both very close to Bank, and it's also straight up the Northern line if you're going in the direction of Kings Cross
17:19
I also think it'd be a good one to claim for us though, because if we're trying to get ahead of people we are possibly going to want to go north
@ratt a key factor is that we want to go to places that border 3 or more boroughs for the previous strategy. Assuming that we pre-claimed all of them, we can lock them asap after activation by just walking a few steps
yeah, but if we lock the 1st by pre-doing the locking strategy and lock it within a few minutes, we should still have a pretty big time advantage for the next 2, especially if the third one is one that people are likely to do later
17:26
We also get information on what people are likely to lock based on what they have claimed, so if we pre-claim more boroughs, we get more flexibility on the day to react to what people are doing
Edison
Wait, could we start the locking challenge say 15 min early, finish it right as the activation period starts and get 2 points?
The worry with the pre-claim and instant lock strategy is that it's pretty inefficient. The amount of time we spend on 2 points is much higher than if people just claim it. So it's not worth it if we don't waste other teams' time
Here's a potential strategy: we start with Islington or Camden, claim it, we can decide whether to lock it based on whether others are doing. Then we go to the border between Haringey, barnet and Enfield, begin pre-claiming them, and try to lock them, it's nice because Enfield is 30 min after, so we can try to lock the first 2 during the activation period (assuming we start locking one early), and then start Enfield just as its activation period starts.
ratt
I think it's most important to reduce our time wasted, and prevent other teams going the way we're going
Not necessarily. We want to avoid other teams if we have no advantage, but we want to actively be in the same area as other teams if we have a head start in locking it(edited)
Suppose we lock a borough before a team even starts claiming it, then they just bypass the borough and claim something else, and we spent time inefficiently (since locking is slower than claiming). The optimal scenario is if we lock an area just before some other team is about to lock it. Given the pre-claiming strategy, it's quite likely that we will generally have a head start, so I think we actively want to be in the same boroughs as others
ratt
There's not much benefit to going to the exact border anyway though, because we'll likely have to travel to do the locking challenge
Here's a potential strategy: we start with Islington or Camden, claim it, we can decide whether to lock it based on whether others are doing. Then we go to the border between Haringey, barnet and Enfield, begin pre-claiming them, and try to lock them, it's nice because Enfield is 30 min after, so we can try to lock the first 2 during the activation period (assuming we start locking one early), and then start Enfield just as its activation period starts.
The only issue with this is that there's limited benefit to doing something clever to capture Haringey early if the other teams are just knocking out the fully open boroughs in the meantime
18:09
The easiest three borough chain we can get right at the beginning is Islington-Hackney-Tower Hamlets
18:09
we can do that just by walking
18:10
I'm not sure how easy the locking challenges will be though
the downsides of the normal strategy of trying to claim the first boroughs is that they are contested so we might get locked out and the points might be wasted. The incentives to lock a borough is quite high if all the other teams have claimed it. It is actually worth more to lock a borough that both other teams have claimed after the activation period compared to claiming an active borough
18:14
Locking a borough that both teams claimed after the activation period causes an unconditional 3 point swing against both teams, claiming an active one only gives a conditional 2 points swing (if it doesn't get locked after)
We do need the points though. There's 7 boroughs open at the start and if the game does start closer to 10 then it'll be 9 very soon. If we don't get a chunk of those then we're just leaving them open for the other teams.
18:18
Preempting the wheel is great but we need to be in the initial skirmish for boroughs as well or we're going to be at a disadvantage right from the start
So if other teams adopt a claim-only strategy, then they can get 6 points in the initial period realistically, since each claiming challenge takes 15-20 minutes and there's travel time. The issue with a claim-only strategy is that this is very vulnerable to people going later and locking them out, since that's a guaranteed 3 point swing against all other teams.
Alternatively, if people adopt a claim-and-lock strategy, I guess realistically they can at most only lock 1 borough and claim 1 borough. This is not a huge advantage if we have a head start for the rest of the game.
If we start by claiming Islington or Camden, I feel like we can be more flexible, we can choose to claim more group 1 boroughs (those that activate first) or pre-claim group 2 boroughs
18:30
But I'm pretty uncertain
18:31
I think the main issue with the fast locking strategy is that they can just skip the boroughs and start the later ones early
Wait, our location is always visible to others, I think that makes the fast locking strategy not viable. Since people will just avoid any borough that you have a head start in
Given location tracking, maybe the best strategy is just to simply try to lock a borough if someone is also in the same borough but you finish claiming it first, and if no one is in the same borough, just move on to a new borough.
Not sure exactly what you mean. Some are explicitly fail-able, but then there's no reason you can't just immediately attempt them again provided the borough remains unlocked
Sifa Poulton
I assume we don't know the challenge until we arrive
For the locking challenge, you will know all of them in advance. For the claiming challenges, you won't
Realigning
Not sure exactly what you mean. Some are explicitly fail-able, but then there's no reason you can't just immediately attempt them again provided the borough remains unlocked
team chat: I think any place where we can get a relatively easy 3x claim just by walking between the locations would be a good start
13:08
I do think we want to be bold here, even if we end up in conflict with other teams, because any team that doesn't do well out of the initial scramble for boroughs will have a disadvantage
13:09
The last game I played in Central London my team went straight for what we believed to be the hotspot with a backup option in case we came into conflict. What actually happened was that noone contested us and we had the lead for nearly the entire game
13:11
Both Islington-Hackney-Tower Hamlets & Westminster-Lambeth-Southwark are easy to walk between if we go straight for the borough boundary area
13:13
Going to Embankment and walking to Southwark via Waterloo would be an option if we want to hang back a bit and target the boroughs where other teams are not in.
13:13
This is also very walkable
13:14
just north of Moorgate, across the shopping area at the bottom of Hackney, and finally trying to claim Tower Hamlets and getting straight on the Overground at Shoreditch
13:16
I think we should be fairly ambitious right at the start and reevaluate judging by how well we do out of the initial scramble for boroughs
One consideration I think is that in practice, teams might just be racing just across the borough boundary, or to specific locations within the borough depending on what the challenges are
I thought about it and going back and lock is not a good strategy as long as locking is slower than claiming. During the time they lock our claim, we can claim another borough.
E.g. suppose we and another team have both already claimed borough A, we move on to borough B, they lock borough A. We end up with 2 points from borough B only, and they end up with 2 points from borough A (we've clarified the rules and a claimed + locked borough is worth max 2 iirc). And given that locking is slower than claiming, we actually come out ahead(edited)
20:09
And they are at a even bigger disadvantage if they go back and lick after activation period and turn their 2 points into 1.
This generalizes. As long as, by the end of the game, we won't have run out of boroughs to claim while they lock boroughs (which I think is clearly true since we simply don't have that much time), I actually think that going back and locking is very inefficient.(edited)
20:13
Also it sounds like locking is high variance whereas claiming is safer, which makes claiming better I think
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Play "25 questions" with Helpdesk
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You must visit 5 of the main attractions in Westminster. The whole group must take a picture in front of each of the 5 attractions. Eligible attractions are as follows: Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, London Zoo, Madame Tussauds, Nelson's Column, Piccadilly Circus (specifically the Eros Statue), Selfridges, Tate Britain, Wallace Collection.
MediocreLogarithm257
Claiming Challenge for City of Westminster
Play "25 questions" with Helpdesk
Play "25 questions" with helpdesk via chat. helpdesk must be thinking of a person and the team must ask 25 "yes or no" questions to work out this person's identity. If the team has not worked out who this person by the end of asking the 25 questions, they have to stay in the same place until 25 minutes has elapsed since the start of their first question. (edited)
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair
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Reenact Jet Lag
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Seduce Helpdesk to a cult
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Run for Lord Mayor of London by a Town hall.
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