Graphs, Pandemic
At home, we finally won a two-person round of Pandemic with six epidemic cards in the deck. If nothing else happens, we can claim some accomplishment this weekend.
I was wondering about game design while playing. The board is a set of nodes and edges—a graph—cities and paths between them. Sort of like Risk where border-to-border contact also serves as an edge. Graph math is just about the only kind of math I have a good feel for, thanks to a series of accidents at work that led to me getting steeped in it for a while.
How would the game change if there were more (or fewer) paths between the cities? How about more (or fewer) cities? Or more (or fewer) event cards? Or players? &c. How do game designers find the (a) sweet spot of getting the map and the cards right? Or at least good enough? Simulation, then finding some optimum result? Playing the game over and over and over and over again with variations until something feels good?
I'm half tempted to pull the graph into NetworkX and see if I can somehow... I don't know, just see what happens with some different scenarios, and come to the game with a sort of plan. Not enough of a plan to ruin the fun, just enough to pull my weight as a teammate.