Learning to Win With Aion Strategy

A game is basically a structured form of interactive play, often undertaken for fun or entertainment, and at times used as an instructional tool. Games are very different from work, which normally is carried out only for profit, and from literature, that is more often a pure expression of personal or aesthetic elements. In most cases, games can be learnt by taking part in them; so if you want to teach something, a game will help you do it much more easily than doing it the traditional way. A game can therefore be seen as a teaching tool.

Every game has its own set of rules, with the rules generally being designed to create the maximum excitement and therefore maximize enjoyment. These rules may be very simple, like ‘don’t touch the other players’ or very complex, such as ‘you must not click your mouse more than once on the same square’. Simple games may have simple rules, while complicated ones may have complex rules. In many respects, a game theory is much like a set of pure strategy: the rules are there to guide you, the strategies are the tools that you use to get to where you want to go.

Of course, simple games like the classic’Mahjong’and ‘Oriental Caravan’will satisfy a basic need for strategy, by providing a means to achieve goals, although the underlying rules may be less than perfect. However, the more complex the game rules, the more likely that the game will provide an experience of pure skill. The game ‘Uno’ is a good example: although the rules are complex, they are based on a very simple set of rules. If one player executes a perfect move, the other player cannot make an unpredicted move – and, as a result, the game is not ‘fair’, since the two players have ‘perfect information’ about each other.

But pure strategy can only be used successfully with carefully selected open-ended games; without a fixed limitation for the number of moves, it is impossible to plan. This is why, in many strategic board games, the game rules often restrict what a player may do, rather than restricting what he can’t. In the case of ‘Aion’, for instance, the game rules limit the number of ‘checks’ that a player can make per turn. This is a limitation that is designed to prevent players from exploiting their opponents’ checks. For example, when a player is on the third move, it is legal for him to move four spaces forward, but it is illegal for him to move any further forward (so that the check has been executed). This is therefore a closed rule set, whereas in a game like Solitaire that may not be closed (since there are no legal moves in a pure strategy game), the rule for ‘Aion’ is that a player may only move forward if he has neither made a check nor taken a move at the cost of his empty row (thus, a player can move up to four spaces forward, but not beyond nine spaces, if he has not already taken a check and is in a row, regardless of the number of moves that he has performed).

As we saw above, the game rules in Aion are designed to limit the number of ‘checks’ that a player can make during each turn. At the start of each turn, a player may choose to take an action even if he does not have the luxury of doing so. However, he risks the chance of ending up being unable to perform any such actions later on, for that certain action may have triggered an ‘unlock’ condition, in which case all his available moves would be forfeit. This means that in the game world, as in the real world, a player has to be careful about how he plays, since he stands to lose more than he gains. He also has to be careful about the game’s interface: in Aion, a player may alter his actions by changing his board resolution (‘bid’ and ‘action’) at the click of a button, without having to roll a die or deal with any counters.

The point of view through the eyes of a player playing Aion may appear to be very complex at first glance. However, it is quite easy to get the hang of, once one gets used to the various aspects of the game world and begins to get used to the way that the rules of the game work. Once a player begins to learn the different strategies that he may employ during game play, then he really starts to understand the dynamics of the board game, from the very start. It is thus more sensible to stick to games like Huizinga, instead of spending too much time on games like Aion, where complicated rules are simply the sign of a great game.