A game is a kind of intellectual theater. You know the idea if you take the role.
Your score is an unspecified mix of how much you value your outcome, how high this is relative to your best outcome, how happy you are, how happy your negotiating partner is, and how often you are selected in subsequent rounds based on your partners' reports over time of how happy you made him or her.
Please notice that this is different from simple-minded personal utility-maximization.
If playerA forces (leaves the negotiation), the forced row is indicated, and the only response playerB can make is a column (the menu of options is reduced). Likewise if playerB forces a column.
The resources of each player may be offered as sidepayments.
Resources
have no value unless they make possible a substitution as explained below.
The value of an outcome is the sum of all the cards for the outcome, regardless of whether the card was revealed during the negotiation, and irrespective of color. Some cards, however, may be substituted prior to their participation in the sum. If a player holds (or can acquire) a card which is the negative of a card (same rank, opposite color), and if search was expended to define a substitute for that card, then the card can be exchanged for its substitute. If a chain of substitutes is defined, a player may exchange as far along the chain as resources permit. If an exchange is made, the substitute defines a minimum value for any card in the pile.
Suppose a pile contains a red 5, two 2's, and a 10. Suppose for the red 5 can be substituted a red 3, for which can be substituted a 7. If the player has or can obtain a black 5 and a black 3, then both substitutions can be made. The red 5 is thus worth 7, but each of the 2's is worth 7, too. The total value of the pile is 7+7+7+10.
When the negotiation ends, exchanges are automatically performed so as to maximize the value of an outcome.
Please notice the analogy between search, deliberation, and planning. Search reduces uncertainty, creates focal points, and permits joint problem-solving.
The menu of options is at the bottom. Most of the buttons are optional
if the move is otherwise clearly stated.
The record of the other player's
last move is important, since this is the only place where questions,
answers, and threats appear.
The dialogue that can appear in the text area is largely unrestricted.
Some special characters are transformed if they are meaningful to the
UNIX shell.
If you would like to read more about this approach to the modeling of negotiation, see Dialogue and Deliberation (if you don't have a postscript viewer, there is a text version ...). More reports are forthcoming (a draft). You might also want to gaze upon the beauty of the gawk implementation(!) which can be run locally and which will allow plug-in programs to automate one or two players.