Essay on Writer's Block Tactics HERE.
Living with Kryptonite: "Writer's Block": Strategies (living-with-kryptonite.blogspot.com)
2024-10-28
2024-10-27
模倣子 Macromemetic Analysis & Design Summary
Introduction
Here I just want to link to a number of my essays, particularly those that have to do with my notational systems, how they may be use to describe and analyze memetic systems, and how to do design of system changes to produce desired results.
I hope to make some notes about basic principles related to analysis and design and how they might be applied.
Relevant Essays and Links
I've tried to group essays by whether they were practical projects I did at work, or models or designed systems to do with child and family behavior, or other more theoretical examinations. Many of these contain state transition diagrams and deployment descriptors, which are useful tools in analyzing and designing memetic systems.
| Kids |
|
|---|---|
| Workplace |
Blue Shirt Tuesday Doughnuts |
| Theories, Technical, Other |
Dining Philosophers, along with Bullying & Contact Memes The 12 Steps of Critique Groups Memetic Loops & Residual Memetic Debt What do Memetic States Look Like? Transition State Diagrams, Deployment Descriptors, & Transition Matrices "Full List" of Memetic Essays Memetic Nexuses & Power - & Rock Stars |
The Approach
In many of these projects, under Kids and Workplace, I analyzed what I wanted to happen, what was happening that I didn't want, and either modeled the existing system, or at least described it, as in the Bus Bingo, Road-Trip Bingo, Box Binning, Prime Pizza Thursday, and TV Time.
Sometimes it's useful to describe "what I want" in memetic deployment notation, sometimes it's not necessary to be so rigorous.
If you check out the Dysfunctional TV Time essay, you see how I simply modeled and described the dynamics of the situation with State Transition Diagrams, and then added more states and memes in order to give "me" (the parent) more options, more memes to deploy, to undercut "the kid's" memes, to create new ones for them, make sure everything is well-marked.
The two essays What Do Memetic States Look Like? and Memetic State Diagrams describe in some detail the notation system I have developed.
1. Memetic State Transition Diagrams - the "cloud diagrams" with arrows connecting them
2. Memetic Deployment Descriptors - the ICON.State.agent.meme1!meme2! => NewState thing
3. Memetic State Matrix (still working on the name, actually) - this is a collection of StateMatrix matrixes with Agents as columns and memes! as rows, and each entry of StateMatrixPointer:Weight
It's possible to completely describe a memetic system using deployment descriptors or memetic matrices, but can quickly become inscrutable for the novice, while a state transition diagram is a quick and easy way to visualize a simple system, and even make design decisions.
More will be revealed! Be sure to comment with questions and such!
2024-10-26
2024-10-24
Feli on US Elections (SUSPECNA)
Great video! The Electoral College is a problem, but fixing it poses a couple of problems: it would require amending the Constitution, it's unclear which system could replace it (mainly agreeing on it), how the "popular vote" is counted, i.e., each State's election board totals the results from each county, but they don't necessarily publish these results (I think) and it's unclear which authority (Congress, the Supreme Court?) could collect and adjudicate these results, or how they would be officially certified and delivered by the several States in some hypothetical "national vote counting," and so on. America is a republic, and the only real electoral decision that requires all of the States to get together and decide on one thing is the Presidential election. One problem is the "at large electors" i.e., those that match up with the "Senators" from the given State. In small States, which have only one seat in the House of Representatives, they still get two "at large" votes, for three times as many total votes.
One thing is that the State elections are based on laws which differ from State to State. Hence the "winner take all" thing. Also, most States have a "first past the post" vote counting system, as opposed to a "ranked choice voting" system (which we are voting on starting in Idaho, by the way, and I think they already have in Maine and other places). One possibility of interest to me, in the spirit of changing as little as possible, one bit at a time, to get the most impact at each step, is to put out a "uniform law" (a law that is passed by each State, which gets around the need for a Federal-level law) that would standardize voting laws, getting rid of things like "winner take all" and adding things like ranked choice voting, perhaps allow small states to "donate" their at large votes to other states (voted by their legislature? For whatever reason...?), and report an actual certified (by the governor, State supreme court, et al -- just like the Electoral College Certificates) Statewide vote count to the joint session of Congress (and to the Supreme Court and to the National Archives and wherever, like the EC certificates). You could then talk about, if the joint session received a set of EC certificates from the several States, ALONG WITH official certified popular vote counts, and in the case (rare but disturbing, especially when one party successfully "games" the electoral college in swing States and such) where the EC did not reflect the popular vote, the joint session has, I believe, the power to decide the President based on that (or anything else), i.e., override the EC result. I THINK the joint session on January 6 has the power to do that (as long as no violent and heavily-armed mobs don't break into the Capitol Buidling and stop them...but when has that ever happened?) I came up with the acronym of SUSPECNA (I'll have to look up what it meant) for this new uniform law. How does that sound for a start? If anybody wants to help me draft it and promote it, I welcome you! Simplified Uniform State Popular Electoral College Normalization ActSUSPECNA on A Medium
SUSPECNA Notes
Ranked Choice Voting and MORE Ranked Choice Voting
Idaho Prop 1 stuff...
2024-10-22
Writing Captivating First Chapters
Here's some good tips I found for writing a captivating first chapter.
Of course, some rules can be broken intentionally, but never
unintentionally. And some we already know, but its nice to have a list
to look at. :)
2024-10-21
Star Trek Prisons & Penal Colonies
Star Trek TOS on IMDb
Which Star Trek episodes deal with prisons, mental institutions, penal colonies, and such? S1.E9 and S3.E14 seem to fit the bill. There may be several others, or in which such corrective institutions feature strongly.
I think it might be interesting to categorize all the TOS episodes in terms of what they focus on, i.e., political satire, crime & punishment, alien civilization / societal satire, existential parody. Star Trek seems to be pretty blasé about ideas such as having to lock people up, etc.
S3.E14 ∙Whom Gods Destroy
Keye Luke plays the colony director (and is in the movie Alice) in Whom Gods Destroy
Great Women Who Belong on the $20 Bill
Here's another one, showing that computer science was not only deeply influenced by women, it was practically invented by women (and Alan Turing, who was gay, by the way): Ada Lovelace. I think the language "Ada", which I've heard looks a lot like PL/SQL (near and dear to my heart) is named after her. Other great female candidates for the $20 are in this article.
Here's a link to the previous post and the original post.
Here are some other candidates to be on the $20 bill, or other units of currency (almost all are Americans)
Edith Clarke, mathematician, electric power pioneer
Cecillia Payne, discovered how stars work
Annie Bell, compiled data for Cecillia Payne
Vera Rubin, discovered Dark Matter
Marie Tharp, discovered continental drift
Rosalind Franklin, x-ray crystallography critical to discovery of DNA
Grace Hopper, inventor of COBOL, computer science pioneer
Radia Perlman, RSTP, etc., "The mother of the Internet"
Bella Abzug, Mayor of New York
Golda Meir, 4th prime minister of Israel
Catherine the Great, architect of Modern Russia
Marie Tharp, discovered continental drift
Rosalind Franklin, x-ray crystallography critical to discovery of DNA
Grace Hopper, inventor of COBOL, computer science pioneer
Radia Perlman, RSTP, etc., "The mother of the Internet"
Bella Abzug, Mayor of New York
Golda Meir, 4th prime minister of Israel
Catherine the Great, architect of Modern Russia
Emmy Noether, the most important woman in mathematics (c.f., Einstein, et al), relation between conservation laws and symmetry and oh, so much more
Marie Curie, discoverer of radioactivity
Lise Meitner, first to explain nuclear fission, 109th element "Meitnerium", director at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
Murasaki Shikibu, authoress of the world's oldest novel, The Tale of Genji
So, for starters, the Internet, the world's most popular computing language (through the 90s anyway), some of the most important phenomena that make our world work which we didn't understand AT ALL before: continental drift, that stars are made of mostly hydrogen, how they work, etc., what radioactivity is, how nuclear fission works, the idea that fields and particles can produce our reality, and what DNA is and how it's structured, and don't let's forget transmitting power over long distances with electricity, among many other things, were ALL the accomplishments of WOMEN.
I wrote another little piece on great women of our time.
Marie Curie, discoverer of radioactivity
Lise Meitner, first to explain nuclear fission, 109th element "Meitnerium", director at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
Murasaki Shikibu, authoress of the world's oldest novel, The Tale of Genji
So, for starters, the Internet, the world's most popular computing language (through the 90s anyway), some of the most important phenomena that make our world work which we didn't understand AT ALL before: continental drift, that stars are made of mostly hydrogen, how they work, etc., what radioactivity is, how nuclear fission works, the idea that fields and particles can produce our reality, and what DNA is and how it's structured, and don't let's forget transmitting power over long distances with electricity, among many other things, were ALL the accomplishments of WOMEN.
I wrote another little piece on great women of our time.
The following video is almost too whingey to be included, but it highlights the women I mention above. I love it when women are shown as excelling at the same work that men do, proving that they can do it, that there is nothing inherent about being a woman that makes one less capable (in keeping with basic macromemetic theory), but the “political feminists” have to carry on and wreck it with comments that "she would've had it easier if she were a man". You could just as well say "what if he weren't a jew" (Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman and many others) or "what if he weren't from a working-class background" (Michael Faraday and Richard Feynman again) or suchlike. No, I think that a hypothetical "Cecil Payne" would've been told the same thing by his advisor, i.e., that his ideas were so transformational that his doctoral thesis might get rejected, just like male scientists have been told throughout history, though luckily these days they aren't threatened with excommunication or burning at the stake by the Pope like they used to be. In fact, I'm especially grateful to Cecillia Payne for her discoveries since my take is that since she was coming at it as a (female) outsider, she may have been more empowered to think outside the box than any of her male contemporaries who were boxed in by the kind of group-think and pressure towards conformatism that men have to put up with on a daily basis. I wish political feminists would take that into account once in a while.
2024-10-20
2024-10-18
Lost secrets of liebnitz
Samhyahu, theh yesoteheyck saycrehts uv myahths ayn fyzucks syend ool theh mo’ah myelyflooahs ooehn ryindahd yen ah kyoweyh yacsaynt, ooah wehdeyehrehk?
YouTube video
2024-10-16
Nanowrimo Hints
Nanowrimo Hints
1
Anti-writer's block tactics...
...and strategies.
Thoughts on adding new characters.
2024-10-15
2024-10-14
模倣子 TOOL Ideas Have Consequences
Introduction
I found it hard to put my finger on anything that Richard M. Weaver wrote that I actually disagreed with. Ideas Have Consequences is a wonderfully written and dense book, of which most every line could be an inspirational and thought-provoking aphorism to be printed at the top of a page-of-the-day of a Franklin Day Planner, for instance. What might be superficially dismissed as "flowery" or "purple prose" is in fact making language work hard to get his points across as succinctly and clearly as possible. He builds definitions and arguments, making frequent appeals to literature and philosophy throughout the ages, and he makes good on his initial promise to lay out solutions to the problems he has thoroughly elaborated.
I was intrigued by what he said about feminism, especially, but among many other things, such as the function of education. We could probably chase our tails all night about what he says about the nature of society and the individual, which made me think about his comments on the arts and on aesthetics, and on science might be a good focus for discussion.
I found myself unable to disagree, at least not strongly, with much of anything Weaver wrote, but red flags went up a bit at his insistence on the need to revive dualism as a route to repairing the ravages of utilitarian materialism. As I'll get to below, I've always thought of dualism as a kind of hobgoblin, incompatible with the 20th Century science and mathematics of Kurt Gödel, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and others, and of micro and evolutionary biology in general. Weaver seems to tend to lump evolutionary theory in with denial of transcendentals, as I mention below, and this stood out to me as emblematic of the potential issues I had with Weaver's arguments. I don't feel that 20th Century science is the baby out with which the materialistic bourgeoise woes outlined by Weaver should be thrown, but at the same time I feel we cannot not reconcile our views on science and technology with Weaver's worldview.
Art & Music
He comes down hard on modern art and music. He makes comments similar to what he says about other larger more abstract things, like decrying the rejection of transcendentals. The idea that "the naked truth" is more truthful, that there are no outlines in nature, sensuality without ironic distance.
He takes a poke at modern art, painting landscapes, photography, etc. He doesn't mention still life painting that I recall--perhaps he's okay with that--while landscape painting, and painting of haystacks at different times during the day is "industrial." I wonder how he'd feel about Generative AI, or even machine translation.
Science & Technology
Weaver writes about the atomic bomb, so he had at least some access to the scientific ideas that informed that project. He takes a shine to the Platonic idea of forms imperfectly realized. However, when I talk to molecular biologists or quantum physicists, and increasingly, cosmologists; these fields all look like rabbit holes or "turtles all the way down" where there are no rules, no perfect forms that we already fully understand and are just trying to fill in the details. Do we hope to find the rabbit, or the mind of G-d, at the bottom somewhere, or are we resigned that we'll never get there, and if so, does this represent something that cannot be shoehorned into Weaver's otherwise very appealing worldview.
Early 20th Century math and physics was characterized by unknowability and uncertainty, with Werner Heisenberg and Kurt Gödel, among many others. Weaver seems to agree with the idea that "the information from our senses is actually the least reliable source of information" but does that include scientific measurement? Is this what he means by transcendentals, or to be dismissed along with a lifetime misspent mapping the nervous system of the leech?
Language
Weaver says some interesting things about language. One thing he said that I found particularly intriguing is that the exercise of translation is one of the best ways not to be self-deluded on the subject of meaning. I can't say I disagree. Of course he gets into the equivalences the Bible makes between G-d and The Word, and how this is an important concept, and how both the Bible and science are very much about assigning proper names to things, as in G-d calling Adam, first thing, to his side to tell him the names of all of the plants and animals, and how that was their names thereinafter. Anyway, he says that the degradation of culture and society is linked to the degradation of language.
Again, what about things like machine translation? Is this another example of the machine telling human beings what to think? Human beings skipping the process of developing skills and applying them to process and leaping straight to an unself-examined and automatically blessed finished result?
The Stereopticon
Joseph Goebbels really went to town on these ideas, especially with his attention to the radio. He made it the law to listen to the radio, for one.
One thing that struck me is "laugh tracks" or "canned laughter" as a way of telling people when to laugh at shows, and how people respond to this more and more. Laughing, as well as crying and yawning, are all memetic responses (they may be induced by memetic interactions and are contagious) hence even en absentia people may be synched up memetically, icons downloaded, and so forth, and this has huge ramifications for the consolidation of power.
Also, "what is a newspaper?" I had some thoughts about the early development of this technology, for instance, that presses dashing off a quick page or two each day and making money was probably an economic motivation for putting out newspapers instead of books. Books were worked on over time, and there was a problem of setting up for a given folio or quarto, and one had to decide how big of an edition to make straight from the start, even though it might take months or even longer to complete the project, which meant no profits from the expensive printing press the whole while.
One could wonder if the whole culture of newspapers and journalism, and the printing up of handbills for ads, political or otherwise, derived from the need to get money out of one's expensive capital investment without the risk that a book, exacting and months in the making, with lots of up-front work and supplies outlays, would otherwise involve. This same economic culture, of course, exacerbates the cult of popular authors, or the fact that everybody wants a bible, and large organizations (such as churches) can pony up large sums for large quantities to printers, who would otherwise be taking a chance of making a run of books and then trying to get the money back by selling them.
So this might be a kind of "memetic accident" associated with the printing press as a technology, trying to replace an oral tradition of minstrels and speakers and such. I could go on and on about the odd memetic dynamics we've perhaps inherited from these past early decisions and vicissitudes. For example, how nowadays journalists could spend months on a story that is effectively printed once and then to a degree forgotten, e.g., Woodward and Berstein, the Boston Globe Catholic Child Molestation story, etc. Unlike books, which are collected, kept in libraries, referenced (which newspapers can be as well these days).
Rob Words on the printing press
2024-10-13
Moves in So-soo-yoo
Me explaining moves in sosooyoo
Add this link to page for so-soo-yoo
I added this to the main So-Soo-Yoo page I made for the Bridges Conference
2024-10-11
摸倣子 Alternate Lord's Prayer
Previous Version
I need to get the verses right and maybe add another one to match them up so this will go right up against the original side-by-side in say, an AA meeting.
| Original | New |
|---|---|
|
Our Father, Who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever and ever Amen. |
Higher Power, Who farted the Heavens, “Howard” be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day some garlic bread, And forgive us our jokes, as we forgive those who laugh at us. And lead us not into self-urination, but deliver us from ego. For wine is dumb, and true story, I am a drunk for ever and ever Say "When." |
2024-10-10
Read this essay on TIME TRAVEL
This has a lot of insights, I think for my novel coming up this November (whether or not Nanowrimo is still functioning).
2024-10-09
漫画 Part Wars Comics for VP Debate
Full List of Comics - Election 2024 Comic - Girl Scout Merit Badges for Trump era
漫画 Birthday Link to All Comics
Full List of Comics - Election 2024 Comic - Girl Scout Merit Badges for Trump era
Hey folks! Sorry my blog is such a mess with lots of long posts that make it hard to get back to the comics index, so here's a page to link there.
Yes, it is my birthday today!
I plan to draw another four pages for the Election 2024 comic and put out a new 'zine edition. I plan to make both available on my Etsy site.
2024-10-08
Nautical-but-Nice Fast Risk, Streamlined
Overjuiced version - Previous Rules Set - Medium on Risk math
MBJp134
Introduction
I’m going to streamline the set-up, so that the whole board may be set up the same and players just choose which army they want, and kick of the game from there.
Set-Up
Deal out the 42 Risk cards into six piles. Each of the six colors of armies gets one pile. Place two armies on each card territory. Give each army a factory and a ship with three armies on it. For each army, choose a random card from that army’s pile of seven for the location of the factory and again for the coastline of the territory to put their ship.
If the territory for the ship has coastline on more than one ocean, roll a die to pick one. If it has no coastline, pick again.
For each army color, choose three random cards from their pile of seven cards and place three armies on the indicated territories.
Roll dice to determine which player goes first, each player chooses a color of army.
Shuffle the Risk cards and poker cards. Each player gets 2 Risk cards and one poker card to start.
Assign one or more poker suits to each allied army, i.e, hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades.
Players may move their factories, ships, and armies as desired.
The game is ready to begin.
Joining and Leaving Mid-Game
If a player turns up late and wants to join the game, they pick an allied army to take over. They immediately draw two Risk cards and one poker card.
If a player leaves the game, their army becomes an allied army. Any Risk and poker cards they have remain with the new allied army and may be seized by the first player who manages to play the allied army (by a poker win or if unchallenged--see below) or if the new allied army is completely defeated by another player.
Turn-by-Turn Play
Reïnforcing at Start of Turn
At the start of every turn, including the first, a player gets:
Territory bonus (divide number of territories by three, minimum of three)
Continent bonuses
2 armies per factory (on the factory territory)
Card turn-in (armies, factory, ship, with territory bonuses--see below)
Armies may be deployed to any territory held by the player, but may not be deployed directly to a ship--a ship may only pick up or drop off armies to a coastal territory within one boat length of the ship's location, during the player's turn.
Card Turn-in
A player gets either:
Armies equal to two dice rolls
A factory (to be placed at the end of turn)
A ship with one die roll worth of armies on board to be placed in an ocean bordering one of the player's territories (if no territories have a coastline, no shipbuilding is allowed)
ALONG WITH two armies for each card territory owned by player, on that territory
Mobilization Bonus at Start of Campaign
The first time a player is attacked during a turn, they may get a “mobilization bonus” on one or more of their territories immediately. Cut the Risk card deck and if they own the territory shown roll one die and place that many armies on the territory. The player also has the option of revealing one or more of the Risk cards they hold showing territories they possess and roll for armies on those as well. The card-cutting bonus goes for allied armies as well. If the cut shows a wild card, or the player holds wild cards (and they want to reveal them), the mobilization bonus may be placed at the attacked player's free choice (by the player rolling the defending dice in the case of an allied army).
End of Player Turn
Draw a Risk card and a poker card (if territory taken)
Place any factories purchased at start of turn
Replace any and all captured army tokens with tokens of player's own color (see below)
Make a single troop transfer of one or more armies through contiguous territory
After their turn, a player may choose to play an allied army
If a player has more than five poker cards at the end of their turn, they must discard some to get their stash down to five.
Playing an Allied Army
If nobody challenges, a player just plays the allied army, otherwise the player must win a poker game, and their winning hand must contain at least one card in the suit of the allied army they wish to play (otherwise they just collect the winnings and their turn ends).
An allied army gets all of the same army bonuses as a player at the start and gets a troop transfer at the end.
Playing Poker
The active player and all players contesting them count out their "betting pots," or all the armies they stand to get at their next turns, including factory bonuses. At their next turn, the player uses this pot instead of normal reïnforcement bonuses (but still gets factory bonuses), and they use the pot as it is for any other poker games that happen before their next turn.
Any player may be the dealer. The game is five-card draw. Each player must take at least one poker card from their stash to play.
Red queens are always high.
Each player antes up one army, then the cards are dealt. The bet is to the active player (they start the betting). Each player may bet, check, call, fold, or raise. Each action is for only one army at a time.
Betting is where a player adds one army on top of the ante (if no bets have been made yet, i.e., the "live bet" is zero). Calling is where a player matches the "live bet" (which includes what other players may have made on top of the initial bet by the active player). Raising is where a player adds another army on top of the "live bet". Folding is where a player drops out of the hand, forfeiting their armies in the pot, and not showing their cards.
The betting round ends when all players have had the chance to bet, raise, or fold, and no one has raised the last bet.
Next, each player may discard and draw either from their remaining stash cards, if any, get cards from the dealer, or both.
Another betting round ensues, followed by the showdown. If all players but one have folded, the remaining player wins the pot. If a player has been called, they must show their hand first. All other players have the option of showing their cards, or mucking, i.e., folding without showing their cards.
The best poker hand wins the pot.
If the active player wins, and their winning hand contains at least one card in the suit of the allied army they wanted to play, they may play that army, otherwise they just collect the pot and their turn ends.
The player who wins the pot converts the armies they won into their own color, and keeps them to use for their next turn or if they want to join another poker game before then.
How to Campaign
Normal battles are conducted as in normal Risk, i.e., the attacker rolls up to three dice, and the defender rolls up to two dice, ties going to the defender.
However, these battles can slow the game down considerably, especially when large armies are involved. One solution is to roll more dice and force both sides to commit more armies. This is done through two types of attacks: Committed Attacks and Flanking Attacks.
Committed Attacks
In a committed attack, the attacker commits some number of armies to the front line, from four up to eight, and must keep fighting, possibly sending in reïnforcements, if available, from the rear, until victory or all the front line armies are defeated. The attacker may increase this front line strength, but never decrease it. So long as the attacker maintains the front line troop strength, they get a plus-one bonus on any one of their dice and if they “totally defeat” the defender on any dice roll (the defender taking no armies) they capture one of the defender’s armies which is placed with the attacker’s reserve troops. If the attacker’s strength drops below the full strength value (initial or increased), they lose both of these bonuses. The defender must roll the full value minus one, or the full number of their armies if that’s all they have. Even if the attacker’s armies decrease, the defender always rolls the maximum (full values or max armies).
There are only two possible outcomes for the attacker:
They win and send in the committed troops and possibly more
All the committed troops are destroyed and the attack ends
If a committed attack fails, the player may take no more action from the given territory for the rest of the turn. This also applied to naval battles.
Flanking Attacks
A flanking attack is similar to a committed attack except that the attacker commits two or more separate blocks of troops (initially of equal size), or "flanks," to the attack. Each flank attacks as a committed block, one after the other. A flank may be a territory or a ship.
If a flank’s front line is completely defeated, and the attacker cannot or does not wish to reïnforce it, that flanking territory or ship drops out of the battle and cannot take any action for the rest of the turn. The other flanks carry on the battle.
If the attacker wins, all committed armies from all flanks (but not captured armies--they remain behind) move into the captured territory and play continues.
Ships
Movement
A ship moves one die roll worth of boat lengths on a cruise. If a cruise reaches a port of call (to pick up armies), or a landing, or a naval battle, and the embarkation, landing, or battle succeeds, the ship may go on another cruise, proceeding to the next action with another die roll. A player may take action with each of their ships at least once per turn.
Opposed Landings
An opposed landing is where one or more ships attack and try to take over a hostile territory with or without the assistance of the player's land-based forces. Multiple ships may attack the same territory in a flanking attack, otherwise one ship must mount the attack.
If the player being attacked has ships in the same ocean, that player may roll a die for one or all of these ships and if they can reach the ships doing the landing, they may attack it in a naval battle (see below).
Naval Battles
Any one or more ships may come up alongside an enemy ship and mount a regular, committed, or flanking attack (if two or more ships). “Total defeats” on die rolls in a committed attack result in capture of defender sailors, as normal, but a “total defeat” on either side may sink either the attacking or defending ship. Both sides roll a die, and if the totally defeated ship gets the low roll, their ship sinks. If all sailors on the defending ship are defeated, the attacker boards the ship with all committed troops (or flanks, if applicable), or can let the ship sink. The captured ship is free to take action (embarkation, landings, further naval battles).
Patrol
When a ship reaches a shoreline to make an opposed landing, if the defending player has ships in the same ocean, the defending player may roll a die for any or all of their ships in that ocean and if they can reach the enemy ship, they can engage it in a naval battle.
The separate oceans are, by the way, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian, and the Arctic. The Mediterranean, Hudson Bay, Black Sea, Baltic Sea, and Davis Straight (Greenland) are part of the Atlantic. The Red Sea is connected to the Indian Ocean. Indonesia, New Guinea, and Siam are connected to both the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Western Australia is connected only to the Indian Ocean, and Eastern Australia only to the Pacific. South Africa is connected to both the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Central America, Venezuela, and Argentina are connected to both the Atlantic and Pacific. Kamchatka and Alaska are connected to the Arctic and Pacific. Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, and Ukraine are connected to both the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.
Sea Roving
If all of a player's land armies are destroyed, but they still have ships at sea, they may continue to play, effectively as a pirate. They cannot reinforce however, even from the winnings from a poker hand, since ships may only embark troops from a friendly land territory.
Pirates may attack other ships or attempt opposed landings. If successfully attacking enemy ships or shore territories in a committed attack, they may capture enemy troops to be added to their own crews.
If all of a pirate's ships are defeated at sea, or captured in an attempted landing, the player is out of the game and may choose to play a still-active allied army, if any.
If a pirate makes a successful landing and captures one or more territories, on their next turn they may reinforce that territory with the usual bonuses, including any poker winnings still held.
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