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I'm sorry if people feel offended by my dislike of this software. Please don't take it personally. Yes, Zillions does use a bit of programming to work, but that's not really what I was referring to. You can't use math do develop a game, but you can use it to test for various situations in ways that most other systems fall short. It is true that it often misses all sorts of problems, and that it depends on what form of assumptions you make, but it will catch a significant portion of any problems a game has far more eficciently than any other approach, you just have to be clever. Playtesting with humans is far more controlled than with any sort of AI system: the advantage is that of being able to stress anything that pops up that may look like a problem. You can deliberately play in such a way that your rules are almost likely to break down. Its not really just trial and error. I do not condemn ZoG entirely, and I am not in any way trying to cause any sort of disturbance. I simply don't want to hear comments saying 'Your game should be changed in such and such a way because that would make it easier to implement in ZoG'. No matter how much you support or love ZoG, the goal of game design should never be to make ZoG happy, but to make a good game. I refuse to make any modifications to the rules merely on that basis, and although I have probably made a rude exclamation or two when it wasn't actually called for, I think that all serious people here will be able to sympathize. If it seems to anyone like I have insulted you, let me assure you that I did not mean to. Could we please stop talking about ZoG now and move on to something more interesting? (like chess variants?)