The game is called, Buffalos vs Lions.
There are two zones, East and West (or better names for real or fictional places). Each player can see up to 10 20 other nearby players, who can be either Buffalos or Lions.
In general, Buffalos want to avoid Lions. Lions want to be around Buffalos. There are 100 Lions and 10,000 Buffalos, but the first 20 Lions in each zone don't count as they are hunting in the wrong places and the Buffalos that get close have space to run away.
So the number of Effective Lions in each zone is the count of Lions after 20. We pick numbers so that Buffalos are safe in both zones if there are 50 Lions and 5k Buffalos in each zone, which would be 30 Effective Lions. So: once the ratio (Effective Lions)/Buffalos in a zone exceeds 0.007, Buffalos start to lose points every turn. If all Lions and Buffalos are in the same zone, the ratio is 0.008.
Buffalos lose points based on the calculation, clip((Effective Lions)/Buffalos-0.007, 0,1). If all Lions and Buffalos are in the same zone, each Buffalo loses 0.001 points, and the total points lost by Buffalos sums to 1. Lions split the points for each zone, so each Lion would gain 0.01 points. So that Buffalos don't quit the game due to an inability to win, each Buffalo also gains 0.0005 points each turn, regardless of how many points they lose to predation. Lions lose 0.005 points to Starvation each turn, so if both zones are balanced in population with no point changes from Predation, the Lions as a group lose 0.5 points to Starvation while the Buffalos as a group gain 0.5 points.
As stated above, each player can only see 10 20 other nearby players. For consistency, each player is randomly placed in a 1D or 2D space, which can loop (a ring), and the players they see are the 10 20 players closest to them in the space, so if one player can see another player, the second player can also see the first. So no single player knows how many other players of each type are in the zone; they can only guess. If a Buffalo sees 10 20 other Buffalos, it might be a zone with 8k Buffalos and zero Lions, or it could have 500 Buffalos and 50 Lions (probability of seeing 20 Buffalos: ~12%). (The setting of 10 20 players is subject to tuning, since the population ratios were selected for realism, not for optimal gameplay when only 1% of players are Lions: seeing only 10 20 players might make more sense when there are 100 Lions and 100 Buffalos.)
Lions usually want to group with other Lions (switching zones if they never see other Lions), but if the true count in a zone is 2000 Buffalos and 19 Lions (which is 0 Effective Lions), a Lion might want to switch to the other zone, which has 80 Lions (60 Effective Lions). Buffalos usually want to group with other Buffalos.
Each round, a player learns how many points they gained or lost and also sees the predetermined number of nearby players. They can then decide whether to stay in their current zone, or switch zones. If players could not see any nearby players, then this decision would be easy: switch zones if you're losing points. So the information about nearby players needs to be useful enough to play a role in decision-making, while not being so clear that all players can predict what all other players would do in the next turn.
If there was full visibility and every player was rational, the actual strategy would be random, but if all Lions are dumb (deciding based only on whether they gained or lost points), or all Buffalos are dumb, then the other group can choose a strategy that anticipates the expected behavior. A single smart Lion would accomplish nothing, but a single smart Buffalo could avoid all of the Lions, who would be moving together to follow the Buffalos.
If players can move around on a 2D plane, they can cluster, which would lead to inaccurate perceptions about the benefit of clustering. All Lions could be on one end of a zone, and all Buffalos on the other end, and the Buffalos would see no Lions but would still lose points. So as an interactive real-time game, players would not have much to do compared with other games since movement is a big part of most games that helps distinguish between skilled and unskilled players, and in this game players would only move by teleporting between zones.
When I was thinking of these mechanics, I might have been thinking that "Buffalos in the zone with fewer total Lions never lose points". This game could simulate this outcome if Effective Lions are the count after 50, but I think a lower number might be better, as with the suggested 20. (I wanted to be able to say that Buffalos are only hunted if the ratio of (Effective Lions)/Buffalos exceeds 0.01, as a nicer number, but it would mean that the ratio of total Lions/Buffalos could not be 0.01.)
Dynamics, staring with equally balanced zones: neither group has a clear direction to move, and no player knows the zone populations. Players randomly change zones.
This evolves either into, many Buffalos are in one zone, while many Lions are in the same zone, or many Lions are in the opposite zone.
If opposite zone: heavy predation on the Buffalos in the Lion-dominated zone. High point loss means strong pressure on Buffalos to change zones. If there are 100 Lions, then it means 80 Effective Lions. 80 Buffalos would each lose (80/80-0.007) = 0.993 points, while 79 Buffalos would each lose lose the maximum 1 point per round, with Lions each gaining 0.79 points. If there are just 5 Buffalos, they each lose 1 point and the Lions each gain 0.05 points. (Ignoring Starvation changes etc.)
So once Buffalo numbers fall too low, Lions want to switch. Restricting maximum loss for Buffalos to a lower value, like 0.1, makes this happen faster, but since Buffalos have a strong pressure to leave the zone anyway, it doesn't matter much.
If all Buffalos are in the same zone, they suffer no losses as long as there are less than 90 Lions in the zone (which is 70 Effective Lions). If there are between 80 and 90 Lions in that zone, then other zone will have less than 20 total Lions, which means zero Effective Lions, and Buffalos can safely switch there before the rest of the Buffalos realize that the Lions have gotten out of control and decide to switch as well.
Of course, no Buffalo knows how many Lions are in the zone. They can only guess: how long does each cycle last? How many Lions do they see? If a Buffalo switches too early, it might sustain Lions who are in a feeding frenzy of the 30 Buffalos remaining in the unpopular zone.
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Update 29 May 2026, 11:48
It might actually be important to restrict maximum Buffalo point loss to a lower value, like 0.1 or even like 0.01. If it's too high, then it's too effective to stay in a zone that's receiving a slow trickle of stupid Buffalos. With maximum point loss of 1, maximum group gain for the Lions is 1 if all Buffalos and Lions are in the same zone, and minimum group gain for the Lions is 1 as long as at least one Buffalo is in their zone. While these mechanics don't allow for contracts or benefit-sharing, as was used to modify many of the games in the Liar Game Japanese drama, if contracts did exist one could imagine the Lions paying several of their group to travel to the other zone and scare the Buffalos there into thinking that the Lions are invading, causing them to move to the zone that actually has most of the Lions.
Their ability to do this is based on the statistical fluctuations of Lions randomly ending up close to each other in the Buffalo zone, and therefore scaring nearby Buffalos into the Lion zone. Most Buffalos will never encounter these Lion clusters, but it might be common for one or two Buffalos to encounter them, and if the Lion group is fine with being in a zone with just one Buffalo (because of maximum point loss 1), then this strategy is too easy.
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Update 29 May 2026, 12:13
It works with maximum point loss 1, because the Buffalos know that there aren't many Lions if they don't lose any points.
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Update 29 May 2026, 12:16
But this doesn't completely stop Buffalos from acting stupid, because there will always be Buffalos who try to guess that the next round will have nonzero point loss. Just like how players in Age of Empires II sometimes delay researching Loom into the Imperial Age when playing 4v4 Black Forest, despite having five town centers to research it from and maybe not even producing villagers from any of them.
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Update 29 May 2026, 12:27
I feel like there are several reasons I shouldn't say this, not least of which is that I might die anyway, but I will assume that one reason is not valid: "I said it to Sherine and it didn't work." So: share this idea about fixing problems unless you want me to die.
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