Transoceanic Triangular Trade

Background

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Europeans traded across the Atlantic Ocean in triangular fashion for a variety of resources. While scaled down, we will take this period to this main match.

Rules

Your objective is to use monetary resources to acquire raw materials across the world that can be used to build houses in the shape of triangles. Your monetary resources will be in the form of 4 types of currency: alps, gams, and delts which are specific to limited resources and a global currency called crons. Unless otherwise stated, resources will be given as pairs each containing a letter from A to Z and a positive integer between 1 and 20, inclusive.

Pregame

Each player will start with 20 alps, 20 gams, 20 delts, and 10 crons. To begin, each player may use any number of crons to bid on a priority list of starting continents, each of which contains different amounts of additional currency you may start with, including garnets. These are revealed before you make your bids. Bids will be read in decreasing order by bid amount, with ties being broken by the solve time on a puzzle that is be presented in the announcements.

Main Game

This game consists of 10 rounds. In each round, each continent will contain a different set of raw materials that they may bid on. You may bid on any of the materials in your continent or adjacent to your continent. Alternatively, you may spend 1 garnet to gain the ability to bid on any continent adjacent to continents you can already access without spending garnets. You may also choose to spend an additional garnet to access continents adjacent to those, and so forth. Each resource has a minimum bid in each type of currency. The global currency may be used in place of any of the other 3 currencies. The resource will be a typical raw resource, or it could be something else such as game currency or garnets. The highest bidder will win that resource. All ties will be eliminated from consideration.

In that same round, you must also choose an adjacent continent to travel to next. Your continent submission will be in the form of a priority list. If you collect a resource in an adjacent continent, you will prioritize traveling to one of those continents. Otherwise, you may travel to any adjacent continent. You may spend 1 garnet to override this rule and an additional garnet to travel to any continent adjacent to the ones you can already access (so after the first garnet you spend for this rule, garnet spends are the same as mentioned before).

At any point during the game, you may spend 1 garnet in exchange for 2 of any type of specific currency or 2 garnets for 2 of the global currency. Before the end of the last round, you may also spend 2 garnets to increase or decrease the number associated with any resource by 1. You may only do this at most once per round, but there is no limit to the number of times you may increment any specific resource.

Visible To You

At the beginning of each round, everyone’s current location will be revealed, as well the resources available for bidding this round and the next for your current continent and the continents adjacent to it.

Besides Round 1, who won what in the previous round for the resources you can see is also revealed to you but not the exact bid amounts.

As a consequence of the garnet spending rule in the Main Game section, spending a garnet to bid a layer outside of your reaching range allows you to see the resources available in that layer of continents originally unavailable to you. You may not spend garnets to gain additional intel for any round that is not the current one.

Communication

The only players you will be permitted to communicate with are the players in the same continent as you or those in a continent adjacent to you. You may elect to risk 1 personal garnet to open a line of communication with a player you are otherwise not able to communicate with. If they accept, you will get your personal garnet back and instead the pair will spend 1 community garnet. If they decline, the personal garnet is wasted. You may not perform this action to open alliance chats.

As a consequence, the player lounge may not be used unless all players are located on two adjacent continents.

Likewise, alliance chats may not be used unless all players in the alliance are located on two adjacent continents.

An example of a situation in which 3 people in an alliance chat are able to communicate with each other in pairs but not in the alliance chat is if they are located on 3 continents each pairwise adjacent to each other.

Trading

At any point during the main game before the beginning of Round 10 (the final round), you and whomever you so desire that you have an open line of communication with may spend 1 community garnet to engage in a trade contract. This trade may involve any acquired raw resources, specialized currency, or garnets. That is, crons may not be traded.

However, valid contracts are constrained as follows.

1. You may only choose to give one type from the list above. For example, you may not engage in a contract in which you give both specialized currency and garnets.
2. If you choose to give raw resources, they must all come from the same continent. You must also specify exactly the letter and number of the resource you are giving away. Hence, if you give away a raw resource that you did not originally own, you won't be certain of which continent it comes from, so be careful.
3. If you choose to give specialized currency, you may only give away one type between alps, gams, or delts. That is, you may not give away both gams and delts in the same trade contract, for example.

In order to make a trade, go into your pair chat and have someone ping me with the exact trade contract that you wish to spend your community garnet on. I will ask for confirmation from both parties whether they would like to accept the trade contract. If it is successful, both players will receive the resources given by the other player in the trade. If it is unsuccessful, whether due to violating the rules or due to one player not having enough of a resource of a specific kind (for example by giving a P27), the community garnet is wasted.

Endgame

At the end of the main game, you will use your resources to assemble triangle houses in which the three letters form a valid word.

You are allowed to use multiple resources to form one single segment, provided they have the same letter written on them. For instance, if I have an A worth 3 and another A worth 5, I can use them together for a triangle whose side with letter A is 8.

However, the total number of resources you may use for any triangle house may not exceed 5. Hence, you can't just stack 26 A's to form a side with letter A and length 26.

Your score for that triangle will be the area divided by the perimeter of the triangle. Your total score is equal to the sum of the scores of all of your triangles.

You will have until 24 hours after the deadline of the final round to construct your houses.

Results

The player with the highest score wins the MM and receives a ToL. If there is only 1 winner, that player receives 2 ToLs. The player with the lowest score is the EC, with ties broken by garnet count, then by the winner of the MM. If less than 3 ToLs have been given out, each player with the next highest score among the remaining players receives a ToL until either 3 have been given out, the number of ToLs would overflow to more than 3 (in which case none of those players would be granted a ToL), or no more players are eligible to win a ToL.

There are a few exceptions.

The player with the least number of garnets is never eligible for a ToL. If this player was to receive one from the basic rules, the ToL(s) will be passed to the next eligible player. This player is also not eligible to be gifted a ToL from a player who receives 2 ToLs. Ties are not friendly. If multiple people have the same least number of garnets, then they will all not be eligible for a ToL. Therefore, in the most extreme case, if everyone has the same number of garnets, no ToLs will be handed out.

The player with the most number of garnets can never be the EC, provided this player has greater than 0 points. If this player was to become one from the basic rules, the EC will be the player with the next lowest score. At most 2 people can be spared from becoming EC from this exception. However, a player who dodges EC by being spared from this rule must pay garnets until they only have 1 more than the next highest number of garnets and is also not eligible to win a ToL.

If there is a unique player with the least number of garnets, the player(s) with the second-to-least number of garnets will gain 1 less ToL than they would otherwise be granted if they were to receive at least 1 ToL. However, they are still eligible to gifted a ToL if there is a sole winner who receives 2 ToLs. Hence, it is possible for this player to win the MM and receive only 1 ToL, and for the next two players with high scores to each win a ToL.

With this in mind, manage your garnets well!

World Map

Continent Adjacencies

North America: South America, Europe, Asia

South America: North America, Africa, Antarctica

Africa: Europe, South America, Australia, Antarctica

Europe: North America, Africa, Asia

Asia: North America, Europe, Australia

Australia: Africa, Asia, Antarctica

Antarctica: South America, Africa, Australia

Restrictions

Calculators are permitted, but programming will not be permitted.

Addendum: It has come to my attention that the rules as written has a corner case interaction I overlooked. If you spend a garnet to see resources from continents you couldn't originally see, and then you only win resources from those continents, the "travel to won-resource continent" rule compels you to travel there provided you didn't spend any garnets. This was not clarified with the original "prioritize adjacent continents" rule which wasn't expecting garnet spends.