Abstract
In this paper, we analyse a variation of truel competitions in which each prospective player is represented by a node in a scale-free network. Without including any particular spatial arrangement of players, traditional game theory suggests that in many truel settings the strongest player often has the lowest probability of survival, a paradox that has been popularised by the term survival of the unfittest. However, both our single-run and the Monte-Carlo simulations suggest that this particular notion does not hold in scale-free networks. The spatial structure and arrangement of players are crucial for the outcome of truels, as in scale-free networks the number of players surviving the competition positively depends on their marksmanship (i.e., the strongest players indeed have the highest probability of survival).
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Notes
For a later summary of his results, also see Kilgour and Brams (1997).
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Wegener, M., Mutlu, E. The good, the bad, the well-connected. Int J Game Theory 50, 759–771 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00182-021-00765-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00182-021-00765-1