A Location Game on Disjoint Circles

Abstract

Two players are endowed with resources for setting up N locations on K identical circles, with N > K ≥ 1. The players alternately choose these locations (possibly in batches of more than one in each round) in order to secure the area closer to their locations than that of their rival's. They face a resource mobility constraint such that not all N locations can be placed in the first round. The player with the highest secured area wins the game and otherwise the game ends in a tie. Earlier research has shown that for K = 1, the second mover always has a winning strategy in this game. In this paper we show that with K > 1, the second mover advantage disappears as in this case both players have a tying strategy. We also study a natural variant of this game where the resource mobility constraint is more stringent so that in each round each player chooses a single location where we show that the second mover advantage re-appears. We suggest some Nash equilibrium configurations of locations in both versions of the game.

Keywords: Competitive locations, disjoint spaces, Winning/Tying strategies, equilibrium configurations