Lin Sizhi continued, "As the age structure changes, the management selection rules also differ.
"For example, under the ’Stable Period’ age structure of 3, 5, 3, 1, regardless of whether the Conglomerate family has money, they will inevitably control the management.
"Under the ’Baby Boom Period’ age structure of 5, 3, 1, 3, once you seize the ‘Old Age’ management position, you can achieve ’one-man rule,’ with one person deciding everything.
"The ’Aging Period’ stage of 3, 1, 3, 5 makes it almost impossible to seize the management office, but there will be many ‘Old Age’ deaths at the end, so the Conglomerate must pay special attention to raising inheritance taxes for defense. Of course, if the Conglomerate wants to tear off the mask, this is also the best opportunity.
"Based on everyone’s current wealth values and the wealth distribution strategies within each community, you can roughly estimate the opponents you’ll face when trying to seize management during a specific round, as well as the required wealth values.
"In most cases, to snatch management from the Conglomerate’s hands, you must ensure that a certain Civilian ‘Old Age’ player’s wealth exceeds the Conglomerate’s.
"Just like Community 4 initially.
"But as long as the Conglomerate is vigilant about this and always ensures the ‘Old Age’ player’s absolute advantage, this method becomes very difficult to use again.
"Besides this, there’s another way to seize the management office: take all 3 ‘Adult’ players and squeeze out the ‘Adult’ players from the Conglomerate players.
"This way, 3 votes against 2 votes, you can still control the management office."Because simultaneously having 3 Civilian ‘Adult’ players beat Conglomerate ‘Adult’ players in wealth values is a rather harsh condition, missing even one person won’t work, so most Conglomerate players will be lax in their defense.
"The prerequisite for achieving this must be under the ’Boom Period’ population structure of 1, 3, 5, 3, which is during rounds 3-4, or rounds 11-12, or rounds 19-20.
"In reality, there’s only one opportunity during rounds 11-12.
"Based on the players’ age structure in rounds 3-4, you can calculate the list of ‘Adult’ players in rounds 11-12.
"The four qualified players in our game at that time were Auntie Zhou, He Ming, Qin Yao, and Cai Zhiyuan.
"The choice was then very clear.
"I specifically asked Auntie Zhou if she and Zhou Rong were relatives because I was worried that if Auntie Zhou had too close a relationship with other people from Community 4, emotional factors might cause accidents. Since they weren’t that close, we could consider further testing and contact.
"Of course, if the initial personnel structure had been different, we would have had to consider other strategies.
"Suppose the qualified players from Community 12 at that time were Fan Zehui and He Ming. With us not trusting either of them, we could only choose to seize the management office in other rounds, for example, concentrating all our hoarded vouchers from the beginning to forcibly snatch the ‘Old Age’ management.
"If luck was too bad and various conditions just weren’t met, or if Community 4’s attempt to steal Conglomerate status hadn’t succeeded...
"Then we would naturally have to switch to other strategies.
"But no matter what, the hidden expired investment vouchers would secure enough initiative for us."
Wang Yongxin still found it somewhat hard to accept this result, "According to this explanation, the voucher-hiding strategy was something you thought of very early, and contacting this Auntie Zhou was also something you were doing very early.
"But what if Luo Wei hadn’t betrayed?"
Cai Zhiyuan took over, "Let me explain this point.
"First, we indeed had no intention of actively kicking out Luo Wei. If Luo Wei hadn’t betrayed, we wouldn’t have brought Auntie Zhou in.
"Not actively kicking out any player is our community’s principle and bottom line. Auntie Zhou, I hope you can understand this."
Zhou Guifen hurriedly nodded, "Of course."
Cai Zhiyuan continued, "We actually had two different plans:
"If Luo Wei didn’t betray, then Community 4 would have great difficulty finding a breakthrough among Civilian communities.
"Han Mengying looked down on Community 12’s players and wouldn’t be likely to deliberately poach them, making it very difficult to create prisoner’s dilemmas in round 10. Community 12 wouldn’t experience catastrophic betrayal.
"Of course, we never planned to keep cooperating with Community 4 indefinitely. Regardless of whether they changed their minds, we would use our hoarded investment vouchers to seize the management office.
"It’s just that without Community 12’s betrayal, we wouldn’t completely destroy them. The final result would be us four plus Luo Wei taking the lion’s share of earnings, while the other three from Community 12 would also get some earnings.
"Without falling out, Auntie Zhou could naturally return to Community 12.
"But since Luo Wei betrayed and we tore off the mask with Community 12, we could only execute the other plan, which was to abandon Luo Wei and bring Auntie Zhou back to Community 17.
"We won’t actively kick out any companion, but we absolutely won’t forgive any betrayer.
"No matter how indispensable her abilities might be."
Fu Chen raised his hand, "Let me interject. I suddenly thought of a new problem.
"Actually, the Conglomerate could have a rather extreme playstyle, which is to max out all Civilian tax rates from the beginning and play by themselves.
"They could choose to pool money and escape in round 10, or choose to stay and play hard despite wealth shrinkage. Wouldn’t that mean Civilians would 100% have 50,000 minutes of visa time deducted?"
Cai Zhiyuan nodded, "Yes, but that’s only an extreme theoretical state. The probability of this actually happening is very low.
"Because for the Conglomerate, playing this way is completely unprofitable.
"Taking the standard earnings that Fu Chen’s group’s Conglomerate got: even if they knew nothing, as long as they held the Conglomerate position and took 40% of earnings, each person could bring back eighty to ninety thousand visa time to the community.
"If they completely excluded Civilians from the beginning, the earnings they could bring out would be far below this number. It would be very difficult to reach consensus among the four internal members, any one person disagreeing would prevent implementation.
"Playing hard despite wealth shrinkage would reduce their own earnings, while escaping in round 10 would let Civilians directly control the management office and play by themselves.
"Eight Civilians wouldn’t trigger wealth shrinkage, their wealth values would be sufficient to reach 500,000, and earnings wouldn’t be too bad either.
"Moreover, if the Conglomerate did this, it would greatly damage their reputation and create big grudges with the two Civilian communities.
"What if they encountered them in other games later?
"Taking ten thousand steps back, if Civilian communities really encountered this situation, there’s nothing they could do about it. It’s like when you’re playing cards or games and encounter a teammate who’s taking revenge on society, what can you do? You can only give up and wait for the next round.
"So normally you still need to save up more visa time. If you really encounter this situation, you won’t be afraid of deductions.
"For players with lots of visa time, ’not being afraid of deductions’ itself is a psychological advantage that can increase bargaining space during mutual losses."
Everyone fell into silence. Through the three groups’ reviews, everyone had roughly understood all the details of this game.
The rest could only be slowly digested by themselves.
Wang Yongxin remained silent for a long time, then asked, "One last question. Were all these strategies from your group thought up by Lawyer Lin alone?"
Lin Sizhi honestly said, "Strictly speaking, we each thought of half.
"After we initially sent Luo Wei away, we used very little time to naturally form the strategic framework through discussion, only making some supplements and fine adjustments during the specific execution process."
Wang Yongxin looked at Cai Zhiyuan somewhat suspiciously.
Cai Zhiyuan spread his hands, "Why are you looking at me like that?
"Have you forgotten what my main job is?
"I write algorithms. You don’t think this level of calculation is something I can’t handle, do you?"
Lin Sizhi observed Wang Yongxin’s expression. Obviously, Wang Yongxin didn’t quite believe these words.
Wang Yongxin would probably prefer to believe that Lin Sizhi had thought of the entire plan, with Cai Zhiyuan only handling thirty to forty percent of the assistance and calculation work.
Saying half each now was merely Lin Sizhi deliberately sharing credit to elevate Cai Zhiyuan’s status in the community but actually, Lin Sizhi was telling the truth. They had indeed each completed half.
Cai Zhiyuan had been consciously sending Luo Wei away from the beginning and actively discussing countermeasures with Lin Sizhi.
Although the method of hoarding expired investment vouchers was thought up by Lin Sizhi, Lin Sizhi suspected that given Cai Zhiyuan’s abilities demonstrated in this game, he might not necessarily be unable to think of this strategy, it was just a matter of sooner or later.
Of course, considering Cai Zhiyuan’s identity as an algorithm programmer, having one or two highlight moments in calculation-intensive games like this was completely normal.
No matter what, in this game, Cai Zhiyuan’s demonstrated comprehensive abilities exceeded Luo Wei’s and were completely on par with Wang Yongxin’s.
This further highlighted Wang Yongxin’s awkward position in this community.
The results of this game were very much like a microcosm of Wang Yongxin’s time in Community 17:
Although his breakthrough abilities in games were strong, and he always earned the most in money-related games, the problem was that this wasn’t enough to establish a sufficiently large advantage in the community.
The pairing of Cao Haichuan and Li Renshu, while not as good as Wang Yongxin in game-breaking abilities and basically unable to find optimal solutions, could always find the least bad solutions.
They didn’t earn much each game, but they were stable, with almost no situations of being badly screwed over.
That is, insufficient in offense but adequate in defense.
Even if Lin Sizhi didn’t stand with the five-person group, the abilities of Cao Haichuan, Li Renshu, and Cai Zhiyuan were sufficient to suppress Wang Yongxin, making it very difficult for him to accomplish much in the community.
If Wang Yongxin switched to another community, he might have already become the absolute core but in Community 17, he was precisely in an awkward position of being neither up nor down.
Fu Chen stood up and stretched, "Alright, today’s review ends here. Everyone’s tired too, go back and rest well!"