Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: Matt_Arnold on May 26, 2014, 07:57:05 pm
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I know that the Big Money strategy only predominated when our sets were limited to the cards in the original Dominion box. It's been less powerful since then. But ask yourself: Isn't it still too powerful? Look on Androminion, under "Statistics", and see what the win rate is for Earl, the AI who uses Big Money.
Please post Earl's win rate here. I'll go first. True confessions time: Earl wins 20% of games against me. One in five. I admit that even when I see a set which Big Money will win, I try to challenge myself to beat it. Yes, I could just try to use it and hope to beat Earl. But I would die a little inside.
The Patrick AI plays Big Money plus one card. His win rate against me is 16%. After playing Dominion multiple times per week for years, does this mean I'm a bad player?
Imagine if every game of Dominion started with each player holding twenty victory point chips. Each play of a Silver and Gold costs a victory point chip. A player who has no VP chips may only play a Silver or Gold by gaining a Curse, if there remain any.
What are your ideas for variants that disadvantage Big Money?
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I know that the Big Money strategy only predominated when our sets were limited to the cards in the original Dominion box. It's been less powerful since then. But ask yourself: Isn't it still too powerful? Look on Androminion, under "Statistics", and see what the win rate is for Earl, the AI who uses Big Money.
Please post Earl's win rate here. I'll go first. True confessions time: Earl wins 20% of games against me. One in five. I admit that even when I see a set which Big Money will win, I try to challenge myself to beat it. Yes, I could just try to use it and hope to beat Earl. But I would die a little inside.
The Patrick AI plays Big Money plus one card. His win rate against me is 16%. After playing Dominion multiple times per week for years, does this mean I'm a bad player?
Imagine if every game of Dominion started with each player holding twenty victory point chips. Each play of a Silver and Gold costs a victory point chip. A player who has no VP chips may only play a Silver or Gold by gaining a Curse, if there remain any.
What are your ideas for variants that disadvantage Big Money?
Why do you need to disadvantage Big Money? A strategy with only a 16% win rate seems naturally disadvantaged enough as it is.
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Aprils Fools Day was 55 days ago, man.
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Earl's win rate against me: 0%.
But I just recently got a new phone and have only played 8 games so far (and have not lost yet). I've been playing Bonza (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.au.com.minimega.bonza) instead.
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I'm not that familiar with Androminion. By "big money" do you mean that Earl plays by buying just gold, silver and provinces?
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Earl's win rate against me is 13%. I'm sure it would be much lower if most of my androminion games were not played while I was on the toilet. I don't really think that pure big money is too powerful.
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I'm not that familiar with Androminion. By "big money" do you mean that Earl plays by buying just gold, silver and provinces?
As far as I can tell, the Earl bot is programmed to play BM-X with certain X cards. I'm not clear on priority. I think Witch is one of the top ones. I can't remember but I think Market might actually have higher priority than Smithy. It will play pure BM if nothing in the kingdom is on its list.
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I mean, if in your ideal world Big Money is never the dominant strategy on the board, you could always just select kingdoms such that Big Money is never dominant, since you would only have to remove like, what, 20% of them at this point, I have no idea the exact amount, some kind of minority.
If Gold was considered a kingdom card and not an always available every time card, I don't even know if it would be considered to have as much impact as Chapel or or Minion.
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The win rate of Earl and Patrick are the highest is not because Big Money is too strong, it's just that a Big Money AI is easier to implement well than an engine AI.
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your post seems to be based on the assumption that big money is a bad thing, which well I don't think it is.
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Matt, is this a followup on the FB discussion re MTG?
If so, some context for others: it involves yet another person who didn't like Dominion because "obviously" BM was too dominant. I think Matt is looking for debunking arguments here, and I do think that simply having designed kingdoms rather than random is one option.
(And even if this was not intended as a followup, I think that discussion is worth having as well)
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My take:
The fact that Big Money seems to be such a good strategy to newcomers is one of Dominion's few failings. Could the game have been designed differently such that this wasn't the case? Maybe. I can't think of any easy "fixes" that don't make the game worse in the long run. The Base Set could definitely have fewer weak cards and more cantrip Actions. I think that would go a long way toward curbing these arguments.
Among good players, engines almost always beat Big Money. I like the fact that Big Money can sometimes win. Turns go quickly and there's usually still a lot of tactical play to be had.
If a player thinks Dominion is bad because Big Money is usually the best strategy, that player should either improve their game or stop playing. The argument just doesn't hold up.
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IImagine if every game of Dominion started with each player holding twenty victory point chips. Each play of a Silver and Gold costs a victory point chip. A player who has no VP chips may only play a Silver or Gold by gaining a Curse, if there remain any.
Holy crap, when I first read this I thought it said you lost a chip when you bought a Silver or Gold. I was about to explain why that was a bad idea when I realized it said "when you play a Silver or Gold"! So you're basically turning any game where you can't play very many Action cards into a horrible slog as players…
1) Opt to buy nothing for a bunch of their turns.
2) Buy way too many terminal Actions and can't play them.
3) Lose 20 points and eventually fill their deck with Curses.
None of these are fun! The first two lead to your deck going nowhere fast. The third one lets you actually build a deck, but then it collapses in on itself.
In most games with this variant, players ain't getting to Provinces. The best strategy is probably to fill up on terminal Silvers (Militia, etc.) and 3-pile with Estates and maybe Duchies. Does that sound fun to you? What made you think this was a good idea?
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Among good players, engines almost always beat Big Money. I like the fact that Big Money can sometimes win. Turns go quickly and there's usually still a lot of tactical play to be had.
I keep hearing this, and I don't know, it's just not true. Engines are the way to go in over 50% of all games, but it's far away from what I define as "almost always". It really feel like this is becoming an incorrect preconception, maybe because the games with engines are more memorable or interesting, or just because they take more time because players spend more time thinking, or mabye because people think it's a sign of skill if they say that engines are dominant. but slogs + Big Money do take up a reasonable amount of all games, and I really don't get why people pretend they don't. I'd say you go for an engine in 60-75% of all games.
There is some gray area too, and for these games the exact definition of "engine" is crucial.
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I keep hearing this, and I don't know, it's just not true. Engines are the way to go in over 50% of all games, but it's far away from what I define as "almost always". It really feel like this is becoming an incorrect preconception, maybe because the games with engines are more memorable or interesting, or just because they take more time because players spend more time thinking, or mabye because people think it's a sign of skill if they say that engines are dominant. but slogs + Big Money do take up a reasonable amount of all games, and I really don't get why people pretend they don't. I'd say you go for an engine in 60-75% of all games.
There is some gray area too, and for these games the exact definition of "engine" is crucial.
I think our terminology is getting in the way here. The term "Big Money" can mean so many different things. There's a lot of middle ground between engines that draw your entire deck every turn (which I find distasteful) and decks that have 2 copies of an Action and then Treasure (which I find boring). The deck I enjoy building most builds up an "engine" just enough such that it can destroy itself by buying Victory cards and cannibalizing its pieces, but still trot up to the finish line just in time. Is that an "engine" or "Big Money" or neither?
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Among good players, engines almost always beat Big Money. I like the fact that Big Money can sometimes win. Turns go quickly and there's usually still a lot of tactical play to be had.
I keep hearing this, and I don't know, it's just not true. Engines are the way to go in over 50% of all games, but it's far away from what I define as "almost always". It really feel like this is becoming an incorrect preconception, maybe because the games with engines are more memorable or interesting, or just because they take more time because players spend more time thinking, or mabye because people think it's a sign of skill if they say that engines are dominant. but slogs + Big Money do take up a reasonable amount of all games, and I really don't get why people pretend they don't. I'd say you go for an engine in 60-75% of all games.
There is some gray area too, and for these games the exact definition of "engine" is crucial.
And then there are the rushy slogs. I feel like there might be a whole area of BM-ish strategies whose strength is not well understood, at least not compared to the engines.
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hm i stand corrected,
I keep hearing this, and I don't know, it's just not true. Engines are the way to go in over 50% of all games, but it's far away from what I define as "almost always". It really feel like this is becoming an incorrect preconception, maybe because the games with engines are more memorable or interesting, or just because they take more time because players spend more time thinking, or mabye because people think it's a sign of skill if they say that engines are dominant. but slogs + Big Money do take up a reasonable amount of all games, and I really don't get why people pretend they don't. I'd say you go for an engine in 60-75% of all games.
There is some gray area too, and for these games the exact definition of "engine" is crucial.
I think our terminology is getting in the way here. The term "Big Money" can mean so many different things. There's a lot of middle ground between engines that draw your entire deck every turn (which I find distasteful) and decks that have 2 copies of an Action and then Treasure (which I find boring). The deck I enjoy building most builds up an "engine" just enough such that it can destroy itself by buying Victory cards and cannibalizing its pieces, but still trot up to the finish line just in time. Is that an "engine" or "Big Money" or neither?
I'd define engine as "a strategy that uses several action cards which work together and goes through big parts of your deck in single turns", so, the last thing you described does sound like an engine to me.
I stand corrected, your claim wasn't that engine is almost always the way to go, it was just that engine almost always beats big money, which I don't disagree with nearly as much, because it doesn't count slogs and rushes. I have heard other people claming the former though.
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It is, in my opinion, much easier for cards to have synergy in an engine than it is for them to have synergy in a slog or a rush. There are many more ways for an engine to exist, and the whole idea of an engine is to increase the likelihood of colliding cards that work together.
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IImagine if every game of Dominion started with each player holding twenty victory point chips. Each play of a Silver and Gold costs a victory point chip. A player who has no VP chips may only play a Silver or Gold by gaining a Curse, if there remain any.
Holy crap, when I first read this I thought it said you lost a chip when you bought a Silver or Gold. I was about to explain why that was a bad idea when I realized it said "when you play a Silver or Gold"! So you're basically turning any game where you can't play very many Action cards into a horrible slog as players…
1) Opt to buy nothing for a bunch of their turns.
2) Buy way too many terminal Actions and can't play them.
3) Lose 20 points and eventually fill their deck with Curses.
None of these are fun! The first two lead to your deck going nowhere fast. The third one lets you actually build a deck, but then it collapses in on itself.
In most games with this variant, players ain't getting to Provinces. The best strategy is probably to fill up on terminal Silvers (Militia, etc.) and 3-pile with Estates and maybe Duchies. Does that sound fun to you? What made you think this was a good idea?
What's hilarious to me is that the idea sounds so bad and debilitating, but it's really close to what Sirlin thought was a clever way of correcting his terribly imbalanced dominion knockoff.
You have to play actions to win in that game, one of the vp actions is terminal, one is nonterminal.
The nonterminal one ended up being so strong on virtually every board (Combine, the 4$ chip that good players happily spent 7$ to buy) that it got "-1$ this turn when you play this" in a later "patch" (at the consumer's expense, for the physical game).
It makes the game so painful to play, it feels like "losing the game as little as possible" instead of "winning the game as much as possible".
It's the inverse I guess, losing economy whenever you use the key victory card instead of losing victory whenever you use the key economy card. But, yeah.. not fun times either way.
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Does that sound fun to you? What made you think this was a good idea?
Simple. Because I did not predict it would have that effect. I am not so interested in having a conversation about me and my qualities. I'm interested in alternative proposals that you can brainstorm, and I'll keep the conversation focused on the proposals. I appreciate your response, which was highly informative.
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I'm interested in alternative proposals that you can brainstorm, and I'll keep the conversation focused on the proposals.
If you don't want to destroy the game, you need a much smaller anti-BM incentive.
E.g. the German gaming site Hiespielchen (http://www.hiespielchen.de/dominion/index.php?ctl=varianten#geldkauf (http://www.hiespielchen.de/dominion/index.php?ctl=varianten#geldkauf)) has suggested the following back in 2009: Give each player a match for every turn they don't buy a Treasure card; after turn 2, you may only buy a basic Treasure card if you have (and presumably spend) as many matches as the value of the Treasure card is worth (i.e. 2 for Silver, 3 for Gold). This might make for a still playable game, though it ironically increases the incentive to open double Silver.
If you only play with the base game, you could also try to counter the relative weakness of many base Action cards by decreasing their costs by $1 each. I think most* of the non-$5 Actions would still be balanced, but a bit stronger, if they cost $1 less. (If you don't mind the potential for weak double-attack openings...)
*all except Militia, Smithy, Throne Room?
Moneylender, Remodel and Chapel don't need to be cheaper either, but wouldn't be (more) broken at the cheaper price, I think.
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I'm interested in alternative proposals that you can brainstorm, and I'll keep the conversation focused on the proposals.
If you don't want to destroy the game, you need a much smaller anti-BM incentive.
E.g. the German gaming site Hiespielchen (http://www.hiespielchen.de/dominion/index.php?ctl=varianten#geldkauf (http://www.hiespielchen.de/dominion/index.php?ctl=varianten#geldkauf)) has suggested the following back in 2009: Give each player a match for every turn they don't buy a Treasure card; after turn 2, you may only buy a basic Treasure card if you have (and presumably spend) as many matches as the value of the Treasure card is worth (i.e. 2 for Silver, 3 for Gold). This might make for a still playable game, though it ironically increases the incentive to open double Silver.
I don't know if this "match" system is any good, but it's trivial to remove the incentive for double Silver. Require the match payment from the very first turn instead of after turn 3, but start everybody with 4 matches. It still makes the first two silvers "free", but it carries on beyond the opening turns (and also gives a step up for people who skip Silver to go directly for Gold.
One tweak I'd suggest is to have this requirement only for basic treasures.
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One tweak I'd suggest is to have this requirement only for basic treasures.
It already is.
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One tweak I'd suggest is to have this requirement only for basic treasures.
It already is.
Oh, so it is for the actual purchase! But what about the match-giving? Holger wrote, "Give each player a match for every turn they don't buy a Treasure card". That's the part I read; it's a little odd if it isn't consistent between the two.
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I'm interested in alternative proposals that you can brainstorm, and I'll keep the conversation focused on the proposals.
If you don't want to destroy the game, you need a much smaller anti-BM incentive.
E.g. the German gaming site Hiespielchen (http://www.hiespielchen.de/dominion/index.php?ctl=varianten#geldkauf (http://www.hiespielchen.de/dominion/index.php?ctl=varianten#geldkauf)) has suggested the following back in 2009: Give each player a match for every turn they don't buy a Treasure card; after turn 2, you may only buy a basic Treasure card if you have (and presumably spend) as many matches as the value of the Treasure card is worth (i.e. 2 for Silver, 3 for Gold). This might make for a still playable game, though it ironically increases the incentive to open double Silver.
I don't know if this "match" system is any good, but it's trivial to remove the incentive for double Silver. Require the match payment from the very first turn instead of after turn 3, but start everybody with 4 matches. It still makes the first two silvers "free", but it carries on beyond the opening turns (and also gives a step up for people who skip Silver to go directly for Gold.
One tweak I'd suggest is to have this requirement only for basic treasures.
Um, if you start with 4 matches, then you can just buy treasure like normal throughout the game (except Platinum)... you don't spend the matches when you buy treasure, you just have to have the matches.
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I'm interested in alternative proposals that you can brainstorm, and I'll keep the conversation focused on the proposals.
If you don't want to destroy the game, you need a much smaller anti-BM incentive.
E.g. the German gaming site Hiespielchen (http://www.hiespielchen.de/dominion/index.php?ctl=varianten#geldkauf (http://www.hiespielchen.de/dominion/index.php?ctl=varianten#geldkauf)) has suggested the following back in 2009: Give each player a match for every turn they don't buy a Treasure card; after turn 2, you may only buy a basic Treasure card if you have (and presumably spend) as many matches as the value of the Treasure card is worth (i.e. 2 for Silver, 3 for Gold). This might make for a still playable game, though it ironically increases the incentive to open double Silver.
I don't know if this "match" system is any good, but it's trivial to remove the incentive for double Silver. Require the match payment from the very first turn instead of after turn 3, but start everybody with 4 matches. It still makes the first two silvers "free", but it carries on beyond the opening turns (and also gives a step up for people who skip Silver to go directly for Gold.
That would reduce the opening incentive, but would also make it easier to buy Treasures later in the game in the common case where you don't want to open double Silver. Using 2 (or 3) starting matches instead might do the trick, though that would disallow double Silver openings completely.
One tweak I'd suggest is to have this requirement only for basic treasures.
It already is.
Oh, so it is for the actual purchase! But what about the match-giving? Holger wrote, "Give each player a match for every turn they don't buy a Treasure card". That's the part I read; it's a little odd if it isn't consistent between the two.
The variant is indeed "inconsistent" in this regard; probably they just didn't consider kingdom Treasures at all (the variant was published only weeks after Intrigue's release). It's probably okay either way - if you buy non-basic Treasures, you usually don't need Silver or Gold so badly. Of course you can't require matches for kingdom Treasures, because many of them don't have a fixed value.
To avoid making slogs even sloggier, you should probably ignore the stupid Copper disincentive of one match which the variant does include.
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To avoid making slogs even sloggier, you should probably ignore the stupid Copper disincentive of one match which the variant does include.
You would only need 1 match to buy a Copper... There's no slog where you would have wanted to purchase a treasure every single turn no matter what. And even if there were, you just skip 1 turn of buying the Copper so that you can buy Copper after that... at most it could extend the game by 1 turn.
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Um, if you start with 4 matches, then you can just buy treasure like normal throughout the game (except Platinum)... you don't spend the matches when you buy treasure, you just have to have the matches.
If you take the variant literally, that's true. But I suspect that the matches are supposed to be spent for buying a Treasure - otherwise you could freely buy any amount of Treasures for the whole game after just three Treasure-less turns, which would only hurt very few BM strategies.
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does anyone here actually think the fact that we play BM from time to time is a problem, or why are we discussing this?
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Um, if you start with 4 matches, then you can just buy treasure like normal throughout the game (except Platinum)... you don't spend the matches when you buy treasure, you just have to have the matches.
If you take the variant literally, that's true. But I suspect that the matches are supposed to be spent for buying a Treasure - otherwise you could freely buy any amount of Treasures for the whole game after just three Treasure-less turns, which would only hurt very few BM strategies.
That's how the rules are written (at least if you can trust Google translate). He also says that this variant is specifically designed to weaken the strategy of 100% ignoring Kingdom cards and buying ONLY money. In other words, pure BM or BMU, not just a Big Money type strategy. The variant was obviously created by someone in "stage 2" of learning Dominion (the stage where you think that the best strategy is to just only buy treasure). So it seems like the only thing this rule is meant to do is to force a player to spend at least 3 total turns buying something other than money.
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does anyone here actually think the fact that we play BM from time to time is a problem, or why are we discussing this?
The OP does. But yeah, I'm with you.
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Um, if you start with 4 matches, then you can just buy treasure like normal throughout the game (except Platinum)... you don't spend the matches when you buy treasure, you just have to have the matches.
If you take the variant literally, that's true. But I suspect that the matches are supposed to be spent for buying a Treasure - otherwise you could freely buy any amount of Treasures for the whole game after just three Treasure-less turns, which would only hurt very few BM strategies.
That's how the rules are written (at least if you can trust Google translate). He also says that this variant is specifically designed to weaken the strategy of 100% ignoring Kingdom cards and buying ONLY money. In other words, pure BM or BMU, not just a Big Money type strategy. The variant was obviously created by someone in "stage 2" of learning Dominion (the stage where you think that the best strategy is to just only buy treasure). So it seems like the only thing this rule is meant to do is to force a player to spend at least 3 total turns buying something other than money.
Yes, the rules don't actually mention spending the matches, that's what I was trying to say. (I'm a German native.) You may be right that it's actually meant that way, which would indeed make the variant almost useless.
does anyone here actually think the fact that we play BM from time to time is a problem, or why are we discussing this?
Matt does, and I was just making some suggestions for those who want to weaken BM, as he requested.
(Personally, I would like BM to be weaker in all-base games (or in Rebuild games ::)), but in general I agree that it doesn't need nerfing.)
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For the $1 rule, you can't really do that for the $5 cards, and I think most of the <$4 less are fine where they are. Remodel is arguably weaker at $3 because you can't do Remodel=>Gold=>Province.
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For the $1 rule, you can't really do that for the $5 cards, and I think most of the <$4 less are fine where they are. Remodel is arguably weaker at $3 because you can't do Remodel=>Gold=>Province.
Agreed about Remodel. But Moat, Workshop, Woodcutter, Chancellor, Bureaucrat, Spy, Feast, Thief and Adventurer are all among the very weakest cards of their price points (see Qvist's rankings) and could certainly profit a little from the $1 decrease; that's 75% of the $3 cards and 40% of the $4 cards, and 36% of all the game's kingdom cards. (Donald said that he put the weak attacks at $4 in order to prevent newbies opening double attack, but they're much weaker than later $3 attacks like Swindler or Ambassador.)
Among the $5 cards, Mine is the only very weak card, and I think it could also work at $4, in the absence of Platinum. All the other $5 cards are okay IMO; Market and Festival would actually profit quite a bit from the $1 decrease of the cheaper cards.
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does anyone here actually think the fact that we play BM from time to time is a problem, or why are we discussing this?
The OP does. But yeah, I'm with you.
...and so does every fifth newbie who refuses to play Dominion with me.
There comes a point of expertise, after which we tend to forget that it's possible for any human being to not have that expertise. This thread has been a classic example. We actually saw someone speak as if he expected me to correctly predict the output of a complex system-- as if it were obvious in advance.
Perception matters-- even incorrect perceptions. Not just what you find out after your three hundredth game.
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does anyone here actually think the fact that we play BM from time to time is a problem, or why are we discussing this?
The OP does. But yeah, I'm with you.
...and so does every fifth newbie who refuses to play Dominion with me.
There comes a point of expertise, after which we tend to forget that it's possible for any human being to not have that expertise. This thread has been a classic example. We actually saw someone speak as if he expected me to correctly predict the output of a complex system-- as if it were obvious in advance.
Perception matters-- even incorrect perceptions. Not just what you find out after your three hundredth game.
Funnily, none of the people I introduced the game to has ever complained about, or even played, pure Big Money, as far as I remember. It could be because I usually try to make "balanced" semi-random kingdoms IRL, so that BM is almost never competitive; or could "overpowered BM" be a group-think thing?
I agree that a casual player can't be expected to completely predict the output like LF did. But IMO it's still quite evident that your variant was very drastic: A Treasure bought in the early game is usually played at least 5-6 times, so each such Treasure would have a "negative Province" attached to it. Every Province bought using three Silver/Gold would effectively only be a Duchy, even in engines when there are no kingdom cards that give $.
Contrary to what LF said, giving a 1VP on-buy penalty for treasures might work IMO, at least if you allow the first 4-6 treasure buys to be free. It would hurt Silver and Gold less than an Embargo token on the pile does, which can easily happen in regular games.
I realize that "my" Hiespielchen proposal has a similar problem as your suggestion (on a smaller scale): It makes engines more competitive against BM on boards where both are possible, but it also drags out games where BM is the only viable strategy.
In principle, the best way to weaken BM would be to strengthen Action cards. Apart from reducing some cards' prices, as I suggested above, one might also give small amounts of VPs for gaining Action cards, e.g. by giving each player a "virtual Vineyard" (i.e. 1 extra VP for every 3 Actions) at the end. Since Vineyard doesn't break the game at all, this should make for a reasonable game, if skewed towards Action-heavy strategies.
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Funnily, none of the people I introduced the game to has ever complained about, or even played, pure Big Money, as far as I remember. It could be because I usually try to make "balanced" semi-random kingdoms IRL, so that BM is almost never competitive; or could "overpowered BM" be a group-think thing?
It's mostly a result of nobody in the group knowing how to build decks that beat BM/X, someone trying it out and always beating everyone else with it. If there's at least one experienced player in the group who can beat BM/X, then it will never be a problem. I mean, I just introduced someone to Dominion this summer and beat him with different kinds of engines, why would he complain about big money?