Playing a game of DNJ
Dilemma
In self-play (computer vs computer) mode, all you have to do is sit back
and watch the action. Playing manually against the computer in the Standard
edition is pretty easy
too - from an operational point of view, at least!
In both self-play and manual modes, once the setup panel has disappeared (see
previous page), the game begins. In both modes, these two buttons
remain lit throughout the game. Help opens these help pages, while
Abandon cancels the current game (after a confirmation dialog) and
re-opens the setup panel.
 Playing
in manual mode.
In manual mode, you are the left-hand player, and have to decide which
card (Cooperate or Defect) to play in each round. You select your card via
these buttons:
The buttons are only lit when it's time for you to choose a card to play
in the current round of the game. As soon as you click a button, both are
dimmed. There's no 'undo', so once you've played a card you can't change
it.
You can take as long as you like to decide which card to play - the
computer, meanwhile, will take up to five seconds to play its card in the
right-hand column (unless you selected 'High speed play' in the setup
panel). It doesn't matter which of you plays first.
Once you've both played your cards, the game will turn them over, like
this:
and award you the appropriate scores (see rules of
the game for details). At this point you either go on to the next round, or the game
ends. Each game lasts between 6 and 16 rounds - you've no way of knowing
when a game will end, and neither has your opponent's strategy.
At the end of the game, the computer tells you which strategy it was
using (unless you specified a name strategy). The setup panel re-appears,
with its previous options selected.
 The
game history display
This area, between the second and third
score displays, shows the round-by-round history of the current game so far.
A butterfly indicates a 'cooperate' card , while a spider indicates
'defect'. The display starts at the bottom, and grows upwards, so the top
entries are the most recent. The history display is your most valuable
(only, in fact!) strategy tool when playing Dilemma. By analysing it, you
should be able to get some idea of which strategy the computer's using in
this game, and adjust your strategy accordingly!
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