Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
I
NTHE
G
AME
Scouting the Enemy
If we are playing a strategy game, we may be faced with a decision about what sort
of units to build in an army. Do we want to construct melee units? Archers? Do we
need fast units such as mounted ones? Do we need defensive, area-of-effect units
such as catapults? Much of our decision is based on what the other player would be
building. If he is constructing primarily melee units, for example, we may want to
load up on archers so we can attack him at a distance before he gets the opportu-
nity to close on our forces. But how do we know what he has built already or is
building currently?
One way of solving this problem would be to send scouting units to the enemy
base. Once we discover him and spy on the make-up of his armies, we can better
decide how to proceed with our own production.
This approach has a few problems, however. First, we may incur a cost of time
and material in creating a scout. We may
lose
that scout if it gets discovered. This is
especially problematic if the scout is discovered prior to reaching the enemy base—
we would get no information for our efforts. Additionally, we have to wait for the
scout to reach the enemy base before any information can be gathered. That is time
we could be spending producing an army but instead are electing to use waiting for
the information to make the proper decision. And, on top of all of this, the scout
could acquire incorrect information. In fact, our enemy may intentionally work to
deceive potential scouts by building things differently initially and then changing
later. Or, our enemy may hide the bulk of his
real
force and expose what he wants
our scout to see—and for us to believe.
All of these are things that can go wrong through us wanting to collect informa-
tion with which to make a decision. We are costing ourselves valuable time and
resources for what may be questionably useful information. At that point, most of
us would be content to say “never mind� and simply start building an army with
what we
believe
will be a correct balance. As we gather information later (and at less
direct expense), we can change our plans or adapt accordingly.
What we have elected to do is proceed with our plans in
rational ignorance
.
We left ourselves ignorant of some of the information we could find useful simply
because the cost of acquiring it would be too high.
T
HE
C
OST OF
C
ALCULATION
Another reason for adopting rational ignorance may be the cost of calculation. This
is very similar to expending effort on the cost of information above. In this case, we
