A Dance of Demons Strategy - Qiu Hua - Cat and Mouse arc - 18LoH
Sorry if the text is kinda non understandable for non 18 loh readers, this really needs context. Pics unrelated
The Dance of Demons Strategy - Qiu Hua
Situation
Qiu Hua arrives with the cats at the 10 min mark. He notices the maneuvers of Lin Xuan, the mice and Qiu Yinong. Thus he grasps upon the most important element of this web of schemes - Qiu Yinong
Strategic Premises
He knows Qiu Yinong has the Wheel of Time ability, and as a cat it will be impossible for cats to lose because she can constantly rewind time and never let the mice reach their 120 min countdown for clearance.
Thus, the aim of the mice will be to let Qiu Yinong clear the game as fast as possible. And Qiu Yinong will comply with the mice, as her teammate Chen Ran is also a mouse.
Thus he deduces Layer 1 of the mice’s plan. Waiting at the first floor in visible places to let Qiu Yinong escape first without letting other cats escape. They also need to wait at Floor 1 to make sure the cat and mice aren't deceived by any Fake Cats, after Lin Xuan has already been exposed.
Thus Premise 1 : All Mice want to make Qiu Yinong clear as fast as possible Premise 2 : All the Mice except Lin Xuan should be at Floor 1
Now with this premise in mind, he devices the most efficient strategy to let the cats win.
He also knows Lin Xuan’s Space skills and Chen Ran’s Eternal Kingdom partially. He also knows Lin Xuan would also deduce the overt scheme, so he is able to deduce Lin Xuan’s scheme, which are the 3rd and 4th layers of the Cat and Mouse scheme.
Thus Premise 3 : Lin Xuan disturbing arrangements [will be explained in Lin Xuan’s section]. This Premise exists because Lin Xuan knows the overt scheme of Qiu Hua
Premise 4 : Elevator usage will occur due to premise 3
Premise 5 : the mice decieving the cats sent to guard for their strategies
Objectives
Overt Objective : Make all the cats win as fast as possible
Hidden Objectives : Qiu Hua’s actual aim isn’t just to let the cats win. He wants to
Eliminate the low intelligence cats that might interfere in subsequent chambers Eliminate Shu Renjun Eliminate other intelligent mice too
To achieve these hidden objectives he actively helps the other mice to complete their layers of planning
Initial Strategy - Overt Objective [The Second Layer of Cat and Mouse]
- Establish a set of Future Lies for the cats to cooperate on.
- Keep a cat monitoring the Mice on the first floor. If the mice try to move, the cat can just announce “You are a mouse” to freeze the player as per rules. Also jam the elevator in Floor 2, to make it even more difficult for the mice to escape supervision
- The other players will search through Floors 2 to 18, memorising every object in every room, but this round of seeing and memorising should be superficial
Resource Allocation : By the time this strategy will start, 10 mins would have already passed. Thus all the remaining 5 mice have to be touched in these 110 mins to prevent them from clearing. This is just an approx calculation, and Qiu Hua knows Mice appeared x minutes before cats, thus the time they may have is less.
110 / 5 = 22 mins. And these 22 mins can be used to study those 17 floors Thus 22 / 17 = 1.3 mins (approx). Removing 0.3 mins for climbing stairs, there is approx 1 min to search each floor. Everyone has to be together while searching through these floors.
Now the more efficient method would be to have each pair search a floor, one to guard the hallway while the other searches the rooms. But this can make it easy for the mice to act as fake cats. The Cats have to be near each other to deter mice infiltration.
After searching the 18 Floors, the search starts again at the 2nd Floor while one of the cats replaces the cat keeping watch of the Floor 1 mice. The replaced cat can then touch a mouse and clear the level.
The touched mouse will also be found upstairs, which can be touched by another cat to clear the level. The search will still continue to the 18 Floors and start again at Floor 2
Thus just after 3 rounds of searching the entire building, all cats will have enough memory to find any transformed mice. The constant clearance by the safe guarding cats and touching the mice that have to travel above due to the mice being prohibited in lower floors would enable all the cats to clear easily after just 3 rounds / 66 mins of the game.
Now this strategy is highly efficient in cornering the mice, requiring from 66 to near 90 mins for all cats to clear, given that no external interference happens. It will disable the ability of mice to disguise as Fake Cats, or even hide in any floor other than Floor 1, making their movements predictable.
Now Qiu Hua knows if he can strategise this, the mice will also deduce the same strategy.
So Qiu Hua tries foreseeing the schemes of other mice and cats, thus starts including some exploitable loopholes and hints in his strategy, to achieve the hidden Objectives
Manipulating with Initial Strategy [The Sixth Layer of Cat and Mouse]
- Make others think of the within which one search is to be completed as 24 mins. Amidst a high stakes situation, make everyone wrongly calculate that the remaining 5 cats have 120 mins remaining when it's less than 110 mins.
Thus he says
"In this way, our search speed will be very fast. We just need to complete the search of the entire building within 24 minutes."
When the Fitness Blogger asks why 24 mins, he doesn’t tell the reason. This is to make dumb 3 stars into violating the Future lie accidentally. This can be observed in how he frames the Future Lies to be said.
- He clues Qiu Yinong to the second loophole. He mentions
"Whoever opens the last room on the Eighteenth Layer first goes down to the First Floor.”
But while framing the future lie, he conveniently leaves that part out. This is to clue in to Qiu Yinong that her escape should happen in the last room of Eighteenth Floor. This is just one of several clues he specifically leaves for Qiu Yinong for her to clear first.
This is also make it easier for Lin Xuan and Gao Lan to disguise as Qiu Yinong, according to their 3rd and 4th layer of their plans [His dialogues are audible at the First Floor]
It should be noted that Qiu Hua knows Lin Xuan’s skills, so he has already predicted that Lin Xuan will space transfer Qiu Yinong to let her clear. He also deduces that Chen Ran will use his Eternal Kingdom to block Fitness Blogger’s Rampage skill.
- Another key move he makes for Qiu Yinong to deduce the escape plan is to word his plans in such a way that Qiu Yinong will deduce the hidden variables. This also serves another function, to put psychological pressure on Fitness Blogger
“We don't need to search too carefully, just remember the scene."
If further deductions were made on Qiu Hua’s plan, it would inevitably lead to one of the two results
One: When the cats are searching, if they do not search carefully, and if they cannot catch any mice. Two: When the cats are searching, if they can catch all the mice on the floors above the Second Floor.
The first result: If they cannot catch any mice, then only the cats guarding the First Floor will clear the secret chamber in advance, which means five cats will clear the secret chamber early. [1 cat already cleared before the entire thing starts]
And the final result will be that upstairs, from the Second to the Eighteenth Floor, a total of six mice and five cats searching for mice will be hidden.
The second result: That is, in every round of searching, if all the mice upstairs are caught, then the outcome will be: the entire building only needs to be searched three times, and the mice will inevitably lose.
Now the first result means the first five cats clearing the game are 3 stars, to prevent them from interfering in the late game showdown between highly intelligent 4 and 5 star players.
Do note that Qiu Hua doesn't know Chen Ran can also dispel skills and skill-created items, thus he thinks leaving weaker 3 star players to guard the mice and exit the game early is safe, because they have sunglasses to protect them against No Distance in the early game .
Thus 5 3-stars would leave the game early, but there are 7 3-star players in total, and since the cats will protect Qiu Yinong, the Fitness Blogger will alone remain as a discarded piece of Shu Renjun. The Fitness Blogger knew he was a discarded piece since before entering the instance and he also performs poorly in intelligence as compared to Qiu Hua, which Qiu Hua also indirectly points out to Fitness Blogger.
Thus the first variable will drive Fitness Blogger into a corner, making him want to clear the game the fastest. But Qiu Hua and others will block Fitness Blogger from touching Lin Xuan, which will compel him to use his skill to try escape.
Under skill usage the environment becomes pitch black, and this dark cover would help Lin Xuan replace Qiu Yinong.
- The first Future Lie: The cats remaining on the First Floor cannot touch the controlled mice in advance; they must only touch the mice when another cat takes over for them, or when 24 minutes have passed.
The second Future Lie: The players remaining on the First Floor cannot touch the mice midway while going downstairs
As explained above, even though Qiu Hua said in plan that the one searching the last room must go down, the future lies don't include that.
And through the First Future Lie, even if the cats are killed/ deceived and blackmailed by Mice in Floor 1, the other cats can’t go to support to not violate the Future Lie. Thus this Future Lie creates an Information Asymmetry for the better execution of Layer 5 of Cat and Mouse Scheme
- Through the wording and the second result discussed above, he manipulates the remaining cats into thinking that Qiu Yinong is actually not important, since her wheel of time can be blocked from usage by Eternal Kingdom anyways.
Thus the other cats are manipulated by Qiu Hua into thinking that Qiu Yinong is bait for the mice. This makes them not pay attention to Qiu Yinong, thus making the identity swap deception of Lin Xuan and Gao Lan easy to execute.
- Qiu Hua also hides the elevator display conveniently when the others are searching the floor. Thus he also covers up Gao Lan for the Layer 4 of Cat and Mouse Scheme.
Through this plan Qiu Hua is able to control the movements and actions of both the Cats and Mice, until Gao Lan, under Evening Breeze’s instruction, breaks the scheme. Thus he implements a Dance of Demons, where the strong prey upon the weak and each other while Qiu Hua stays ahead of all
Read ongoing doc for better readability
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1brJcgB80jlddNpi44vMfjtv-dJHOAHAsJvgBiTT91mY/edit?usp=drivesdk