Dominion Strategy Forum
Archive => Archive => Dominion: Empires Previews => Topic started by: Beyond Awesome on June 10, 2016, 01:58:24 am
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I know we have a few months to go before that time of year, but I felt now is as good of a time as anyway to discuss rankings! I love Qvist's rankings. They're awesome. With that said, Empires adds two things that offer some complications for rankings. First, we have split piles and we have Debt. Obviously, Landmarks are easy to rank. You rank them with the other Landmarks.
Here is what I think.
Split Piles:
I think the cards should get two rankings, one for each card, but when rating the card we should take into account the card on top or bottom. So, for Bustling Village, I would have to take into account that to get to it, 5 Settlers have to run out. Or, for Settlers, take into account that Bustling Village is on the bottom.
For Debt, I think they should be both rated as Debt cards and $6+ cards. Debt cards though are quite unique in that you can get the effect sooner than most cards that cost what they cost. So, there's that to take into consideration. Nonetheless, I think ranking them with other $6+ is a good idea since it gives a better baseline for strength.
Anyway, what other people's thoughts? I have also started a poll to see what everyone thinks.
Edit: Minor Clarification, I feel that if you vote $6+ that means Engineer is a $4 cost for ranking purposes. Forgot about when making the poll. Sorry.
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Debt cards should be ranked in their coin cost bracket. I thought the point of separating them was: what can you buy with $X.
$2 or less: Engineer, City Quarter, Overlord, Royal Blacksmith, Triumph, Annex, Donate
$4: Wedding
6$ or more: Fortune
Each card in split piles should be ranked separately. Except maybe Castles.
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Think of Debt as more of a penalty on the card than an actual cost (like how Banquet shoves Coppers at you). I agree with LastFootnote's assignment of them to costs.
Split piles I think I'd prefer to have just ranked by the top card, but I'm less firm on that, and wouldn't mind either way. My rationale is that you're judging the pile as a whole, particularly since the two cards in the pile synergize with one another.
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Think of Debt as more of a penalty on the card than an actual cost (like how Banquet shoves Coppers at you). I agree with LastFootnote's assignment of them to costs.
Split piles I think I'd prefer to have just ranked by the top card, but I'm less firm on that, and wouldn't mind either way. My rationale is that you're judging the pile as a whole, particularly since the two cards in the pile synergize with one another.
I agree, because Urchin's rating is almost entirely dependent on the strength of Mercenary. This is true to a lesser extent of Hermit/Madman.
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Debt cards should be ranked in their coin cost bracket. I thought the point of separating them was: what can you buy with $X.
I don't know if I agree. A debt cost on a card is an advantage over a coin cost (well, aside from TfB), and I feel that ranking them like this is trying to treat the debt as a drawback.
Also, we already rank Stonemason as a $2 and Masterpiece as a $3 even though you don't buy those cards at those pricepoints. Debt is the same, but reversed. Masterpiece is a $3, but you buy it for $6. City Quarter is a $8, but you can buy it for much less.
Of course, I haven't had the chance to play with Empires/debt cards yet, so I don't know how they really play in practice and when you actually buy them. There's also a few debt cards where you probably will often buy them for close to the minimum value e.g. Wedding, Donate.
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My 2 cents:
If we compare debt cards with Peddler: Peddler costs $8 but you almost never pay $8 for it, still it is listed in the $6+ cards. Cards like Overlord you probably also pay less than $8, but still you have to take into account that you have to pay off the debt on following turns. So it is more an $8 costing card than Peddler. That's why I think Overlord should be ranked with the $6+ cards.
With split piles I'm less sure. The closest comparism is Urchin/Mercenary and Hermit/Madman, but ranking Mercenary and Madman individually makes less sense as you can't get them if you didn't buy Urchin or Hermit. Same goes for the Travellers Page and Peasant. You can get a Fortune though even though you didn't buy a Gladiator. So it might make sense to rank them individually. I'm open to some suggestions and reasonings. Castles though shouldn't be ranked separately; I'm pretty confident here.
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I feel like these are calls that need to be made after people have had more time to play with these cards, especially the thing about debt. We really don't know what the opportunity cost of a debt card is, and won't know until the has been done informed discussion. Maybe it'll turn out they should go with the $6+ cards. Maybe it'll turn out they should go in their own category. Really only the playtesters know at this point.
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Urchin/merc is the perfect example: You have to consider the bottom card when ranking the top one and vice versa. Split piles are exactly that with more player interaction.
Imagine a split pile with Scout/Goons: If you isolated them, Goons would be a top two card, but what would that rating mean? Nothing at all.
edit: Adding debt to $6+ would make Engineer sad
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How do you rank a Landmark? The other cards are ranked by their judged strength at cost X, but Landmarks have no cost. It's different from every other card, Kingdom cards or events, because these are all optional. I have $5, should I buy X or Y or Z, or Event A or Event B? Which card is best? I'm going with X, Y and A, my opponent is going for Z and B, what a dummy, doesn't he read the Qvist rankings?
Landmarks though are more like rule changes; this game Variety counts for more, or I get points for trashing, or suddenly 10 Coppers is worth 15VP. But it affects both players equally, and neither player has a choice in the matter, so I don't think it's possible to say "Landmark A is better than Landmark B". They could be ranked based on popularity, but I don't think it actually makes sense to rank them by how "powerful" they are.
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Incidentally, I'd support moving Peddler to the <=2$ cathegory, because that's what it costs >95% of the times it's bought. (definitely more than 90-93%, sorry)
Regarding Debt, I like LF's point.
Split piles are very different than travellers and other upgrading cards in that when you buy an Urchin, you buy a potential Mercenary, so Mercenary is part of Urchin's abilities. When you get a Patrician you're not getting a potential Emporium, you're just getting a Patrician. The fact that Emporia and Patricians always show up together (and one on top of the other) might influence their respective rating, but that's all.
And finally since we're talking rankings, what do you all think about throwing Potion cards in with the rest? (possibly in parallel with the Potion rankings, because more rankings more fun)
I'd prefer it, since cost-wise it makes more sense to me to compare Possession with Prince rather than with University.
I'd put Vineyard and Transmute with the 2$, Possession and Golem with the 6$+, and all the others in the 5$ group. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be more informative and interesting than just reranking those poor ten cards over and over. "How does Alchemist compare to Stables" is a more interesting question than asking (again) how it compares to Scrying Pool.
PPE:2
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How do you rank a Landmark? The other cards are ranked by their judged strength at cost X, but Landmarks have no cost. It's different from every other card, Kingdom cards or events, because these are all optional. I have $5, should I buy X or Y or Z, or Event A or Event B? Which card is best? I'm going with X, Y and A, my opponent is going for Z and B, what a dummy, doesn't he read the Qvist rankings?
Landmarks though are more like rule changes; this game Variety counts for more, or I get points for trashing, or suddenly 10 Coppers is worth 15VP. But it affects both players equally, and neither player has a choice in the matter, so I don't think it's possible to say "Landmark A is better than Landmark B". They could be ranked based on popularity, but I don't think it actually makes sense to rank them by how "powerful" they are.
Well, you could ask "how often and how far are you willing to stray from your default strategy for a given board in order to rack in this Landmark's points?"
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I would get rid of the cost categories and just make a global list (Landmarks separate)
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How do you rank a Landmark? The other cards are ranked by their judged strength at cost X, but Landmarks have no cost. It's different from every other card, Kingdom cards or events, because these are all optional. I have $5, should I buy X or Y or Z, or Event A or Event B? Which card is best? I'm going with X, Y and A, my opponent is going for Z and B, what a dummy, doesn't he read the Qvist rankings?
Landmarks though are more like rule changes; this game Variety counts for more, or I get points for trashing, or suddenly 10 Coppers is worth 15VP. But it affects both players equally, and neither player has a choice in the matter, so I don't think it's possible to say "Landmark A is better than Landmark B". They could be ranked based on popularity, but I don't think it actually makes sense to rank them by how "powerful" they are.
Well, you could ask "how often and how far are you willing to stray from your default strategy for a given board in order to rack in this Landmark's points?"
I agree with this. I would think of it as "how impactful are the points from this Landmark when it is present." You can compare two landmarks by considering which you would consider more important to your strategy (on average) if they appeared together.
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I would get rid of the cost categories and just make a global list (Landmarks separate)
I agree in principle, but I don't think it's feasible. I tried last time, and even splitting it in two different sessions I couldn't end my global list.
Unless you radically change the general concept and have each single player answer as many "which one is better?" questions as they wish and then make one global list taking into account those answers (weighted), skipping the individual list phase.
You'd need a solid algorithm, though.
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These lists will never be perfect.
One cheap cop out would be to make a Debt list like we have a Potion list, but that's a cheap cop out. Maybe we could do that in addition to an integrated list, the way we do Events.
Another one would be to just assume Debt equals Coins and convert. And that works sometimes but not others. Like, Engineer could be compared to a $4 cost easily. But is Royal Blacksmith really an $8 cost? It seems weird to say so, but it seems weirder to compare it to Pearl Diver too. So maybe we treat Debt as Coins, because that makes more sense than the alternative.
On Potions: I would really prefer if potions were in whatever list they would be if instead of costing P, they cost $2 more (i.e. Scrying Pool is with the 4s, Familiar is with the 5s, etc).
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These lists will never be perfect.
One cheap cop out would be to make a Debt list like we have a Potion list, but that's a cheap cop out. Maybe we could do that in addition to an integrated list, the way we do Events.
Another one would be to just assume Debt equals Coins and convert. And that works sometimes but not others. Like, Engineer could be compared to a $4 cost easily. But is Royal Blacksmith really an $8 cost? It seems weird to say so, but it seems weirder to compare it to Pearl Diver too. So maybe we treat Debt as Coins, because that makes more sense than the alternative.
On Potions: I would really prefer if potions were in whatever list they would be if instead of costing P, they cost $2 more (i.e. Scrying Pool is with the 4s, Familiar is with the 5s, etc).
I agree that Potions should join the main lists. They're rarely going to change positions, and the Potion list isn't very meaningful as-is since there is so much diversity. Like, duh, Scrying Pool is better than Possession, but Scrying Pool and Possession are rarely at a competitive cost.
I'm half tempted to suggest the Knights and Prizes lists be removed entirely too, but I guess there is no harm in them being there.
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I think the OP meant Events and not Landmarks.
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I meant Landmarks get their own list. As far as Events go, I think we had the right idea last time.
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I think ranking the cards by cost has always been a bit suspect, and now that there's debt, that makes it even less relevant. I suspect the original reason for that ranking system was to give players a sense of what cards they should usually look for first when they have an $X hand. Being able to identify the power level of cards in a kingdom is one step in evaluating what strategy to play. But it's a vanishingly small part of planning.
My suggestion would be a card database that lists a power level for the cards, from 1-10, with decimals (since it would be an average from a voting process.) That power level takes the cost into account. Expand would be one of the biggest power cards in Dominion at $3. It costs $7 for a reason. Chapel would be really marginal at $6 (I'd rather have a Count at that point.) The cost shouldn't be considered a separate thing from the rank.
The card database could be sorted, high/low or low/high, could be sorted by cost if that's what you're into, or even by set. There could also be checkboxes for card types and for card categories (draw, +actions, sifters, trashers, junkers, etc.) This starts seeming like a useful tool. It's not quite as useful as the Magic card database, which is set up much the same way, because you're not building decks from a collection, but still, a helpful study guide.
I realize that this might cause issues like Smithy having a higher power ranking than Nobles because of its cost. You usually wouldn't buy Smithy on $6 with Nobles in the kingdom (I said "usually" to avoid edge-case posts. I can think of a dozen.) But look at it this way: When you look at a kingdom with Smithy and Nobles on the board, the Smithy should jump out at you more than the Nobles, because it tells an important story about how quickly players are going to be drawing bunches of cards.
And that's really what it comes down to. When you look at a kingdom, which cards/events/landmarks should jump out at you as "pay-extra-attention-to-me" items due to their power level. Yes, sometimes there are a lot of different strategies in a kingdom and you should look for synergies and subtlety, and sometimes there are Goons.
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A 1-10 scale might be a good way to rank. And, we can still order by cost. Interesting idea.
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My thoughts:
Split Piles: Each card rated separately. You never need to buy a Gladiator to buy a Fortune, and buying a Gladiator doesn't mean you'll gain a Fortune later, so the comparison to Urchin/Mercenary doesn't hold. Of course, Fortune will be a less valuable card if Gladiator isn't often worth getting.
Debt: Two approaches seem reasonable:
- Ignore the debt in the cost when classifying. Most debt-cost cards will be in the $0-2 bucket. This is pretty weird when it comes to comparing power levels, but it is certainly true that you can always open with Overlord (unlike the $6+ cards).
- Convert the cost by making the gross assumption that 1 debt = 1 coin. This isn't a perfect assumption, by any means, but it leads to sensible power-level results. Most of the 8-debt cards are at least as strong as $6 cards. We could do something similar for Potion-cost cards, potentially.
Landmarks: Comparing power levels of Landmarks seems... odd. I have a construction of power level that can incorporate Alms, Borrow, and Save. But, Landmarks... I don't know how to do it.
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You usually wouldn't buy Smithy on $6 with Nobles in the kingdom (I said "usually" to avoid edge-case posts. I can think of a dozen.)
Sigh. It's like a disease.
1. You're piling out for the win
2. +Action token on Smithy
3. +Card token on Smithy
4. +Coin token on Smithy
5. Cost reduction; you're buying two Smithies
6. You're trying to win the Smithy split
7. You're playing Procession and have a Smithy-$5 sequence in mind
8. Opponent is playing lots of Bureaucrats
9. Opponent is playing lots of Tributes
10. Colonnade, Museum, Obelisk, Orchard, Tower, Triumphal Arch, Wolf Den (you think Empires is going to be game-warping?)
11. Nobles is embargoed heavily
12. You're playing Horn of Plenty and you don't have a Smithy yet
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Landmarks: Comparing power levels of Landmarks seems... odd. I have a construction of power level that can incorporate Alms, Borrow, and Save. But, Landmarks... I don't know how to do it.
I actually think it slots in right with the others. If a power level is 1-10, what it's really saying is "How much is this card likely to be a factor in the game?" It's like the whole "skippable" series of discussions. If a landmark has a high power level, you had probably better plan on getting victory points from it or you're likely to lose. If it has a low power level, you can usually ignore it completely. Lost Arts is usually a major factor. Raid is usually skippable. Same principle.
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I would keep it simple and use the Debt cost as an analog to Coin cost.
I also would treat Potion cost as ~$3 because of the special card needed to buy. (Eg. Familiar ranked with $6 cost cards)
Landmarks will be their own thing, because they are. That's a strategy discussion more than a power discussion.
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My suggestion would be a card database that lists a power level for the cards, from 1-10, with decimals (since it would be an average from a voting process.) That power level takes the cost into account. Expand would be one of the biggest power cards in Dominion at $3. It costs $7 for a reason. Chapel would be really marginal at $6 (I'd rather have a Count at that point.) The cost shouldn't be considered a separate thing from the rank.
The card database could be sorted, high/low or low/high, could be sorted by cost if that's what you're into, or even by set. There could also be checkboxes for card types and for card categories (draw, +actions, sifters, trashers, junkers, etc.) This starts seeming like a useful tool. It's not quite as useful as the Magic card database, which is set up much the same way, because you're not building decks from a collection, but still, a helpful study guide.
I realize that this might cause issues like Smithy having a higher power ranking than Nobles because of its cost. You usually wouldn't buy Smithy on $6 with Nobles in the kingdom (I said "usually" to avoid edge-case posts. I can think of a dozen.) But look at it this way: When you look at a kingdom with Smithy and Nobles on the board, the Smithy should jump out at you more than the Nobles, because it tells an important story about how quickly players are going to be drawing bunches of cards.
And that's really what it comes down to. When you look at a kingdom, which cards/events/landmarks should jump out at you as "pay-extra-attention-to-me" items due to their power level. Yes, sometimes there are a lot of different strategies in a kingdom and you should look for synergies and subtlety, and sometimes there are Goons.
For several years I have felt this would be better than the Qvist ranking system, though I think ratings from 0-100 (with a single decimal in the averages) would be nicer because of its granularity. However, (1) I'm not Qvist, (2) I don't have the time to do something like that myself, and (3) people probably aren't going to do two separate sets of voting for two different lists.
It's not even the separation by cost that I think is the problem; it's the fact that it's impossible (in my opinion) to separate (for example) Mountebank, Cultist, and Rebuild. They're all power level 100. Others would likely disagree, and they'd end up in a ranking, but I wouldn't have to find some way of ranking them relative to each other.
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I guess I forgot to mention this earlier, but split piles need to be ranked together. Simply because, you will never see one without the other, and that affects the strength of the card immensely. Rocks is objectively bad without Catapult. It would be at the bottom of any $4 list, yet you'll probably gain it more often than Scout since you basically have to have a Catapult if you're buying Rocks. Emporium is a cute Peddler variant, with the opportunity cost of having had to gain like five Patricians, and that also needs to be a factor. The synergy is fundamental to how these cards work. They will never be in a vacuum so it doesn't make sense to treat them as such.
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I guess I forgot to mention this earlier, but split piles need to be ranked together. Simply because, you will never see one without the other, and that affects the strength of the card immensely. Rocks is objectively bad without Catapult. It would be at the bottom of any $4 list, yet you'll probably gain it more often than Scout since you basically have to have a Catapult if you're buying Rocks. Emporium is a cute Peddler variant, with the opportunity cost of having had to gain like five Patricians, and that also needs to be a factor. The synergy is fundamental to how these cards work. They will never be in a vacuum so it doesn't make sense to treat them as such.
I still think split piles can be ranked separately. The ranking of rocks should be understood with the context that catapults are available.
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I think ranking the cards by cost has always been a bit suspect, and now that there's debt, that makes it even less relevant. I suspect the original reason for that ranking system was to give players a sense of what cards they should usually look for first when they have an $X hand. Being able to identify the power level of cards in a kingdom is one step in evaluating what strategy to play. But it's a vanishingly small part of planning.
My suggestion would be a card database that lists a power level for the cards, from 1-10, with decimals (since it would be an average from a voting process.) That power level takes the cost into account. Expand would be one of the biggest power cards in Dominion at $3. It costs $7 for a reason. Chapel would be really marginal at $6 (I'd rather have a Count at that point.) The cost shouldn't be considered a separate thing from the rank.
The card database could be sorted, high/low or low/high, could be sorted by cost if that's what you're into, or even by set. There could also be checkboxes for card types and for card categories (draw, +actions, sifters, trashers, junkers, etc.) This starts seeming like a useful tool. It's not quite as useful as the Magic card database, which is set up much the same way, because you're not building decks from a collection, but still, a helpful study guide.
I realize that this might cause issues like Smithy having a higher power ranking than Nobles because of its cost. You usually wouldn't buy Smithy on $6 with Nobles in the kingdom (I said "usually" to avoid edge-case posts. I can think of a dozen.) But look at it this way: When you look at a kingdom with Smithy and Nobles on the board, the Smithy should jump out at you more than the Nobles, because it tells an important story about how quickly players are going to be drawing bunches of cards.
And that's really what it comes down to. When you look at a kingdom, which cards/events/landmarks should jump out at you as "pay-extra-attention-to-me" items due to their power level. Yes, sometimes there are a lot of different strategies in a kingdom and you should look for synergies and subtlety, and sometimes there are Goons.
This is only tangentially related, but I really wish we had a tier thing going on.
Like, you open "let's discuss"-like threads for each card to discuss where to put them. We have a good time, we discuss, we argue, strong feelings, a bit of lightearthed drama, yay.
Then if somebody is not satisfied with Forge being in the B tier they may open threads to motion for a change in tier, and we have more discussion, more arguments, more strong feelings, more drama, more yay.
The tiers could look something like:
S: You extremely rarely don't want to make use of this, and when you win without using this you want to post a thread in the Games Report.
A: Kingdom definer - This thing shapes the kingdom around itself
B: Solid - This thing enables other stuff, counters other stuff, you may or may not want it but you must carefully consider its viability
C: Mediocre - It has its moments, but it's unwieldy, not impactful or just eclypsed by better things in its cathegory (if its cathegory is common enough that competition is common)
D: Depressing - Hardly ever worth pursuing. The kind of card that you risk not noticing when you look at a Kingdom.
With plus and minuses as appropriate.
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I think ranking the cards by cost has always been a bit suspect, and now that there's debt, that makes it even less relevant. I suspect the original reason for that ranking system was to give players a sense of what cards they should usually look for first when they have an $X hand. Being able to identify the power level of cards in a kingdom is one step in evaluating what strategy to play. But it's a vanishingly small part of planning.
My suggestion would be a card database that lists a power level for the cards, from 1-10, with decimals (since it would be an average from a voting process.) That power level takes the cost into account. Expand would be one of the biggest power cards in Dominion at $3. It costs $7 for a reason. Chapel would be really marginal at $6 (I'd rather have a Count at that point.) The cost shouldn't be considered a separate thing from the rank.
The card database could be sorted, high/low or low/high, could be sorted by cost if that's what you're into, or even by set. There could also be checkboxes for card types and for card categories (draw, +actions, sifters, trashers, junkers, etc.) This starts seeming like a useful tool. It's not quite as useful as the Magic card database, which is set up much the same way, because you're not building decks from a collection, but still, a helpful study guide.
I realize that this might cause issues like Smithy having a higher power ranking than Nobles because of its cost. You usually wouldn't buy Smithy on $6 with Nobles in the kingdom (I said "usually" to avoid edge-case posts. I can think of a dozen.) But look at it this way: When you look at a kingdom with Smithy and Nobles on the board, the Smithy should jump out at you more than the Nobles, because it tells an important story about how quickly players are going to be drawing bunches of cards.
And that's really what it comes down to. When you look at a kingdom, which cards/events/landmarks should jump out at you as "pay-extra-attention-to-me" items due to their power level. Yes, sometimes there are a lot of different strategies in a kingdom and you should look for synergies and subtlety, and sometimes there are Goons.
This is only tangentially related, but I really wish we had a tier thing going on.
Like, you open "let's discuss"-like threads for each card to discuss where to put them. We have a good time, we discuss, we argue, strong feelings, a bit of lightearthed drama, yay.
Then if somebody is not satisfied with Forge being in the B tier they may open threads to motion for a change in tier, and we have more discussion, more arguments, more strong feelings, more drama, more yay.
The tiers could look something like:
S: You extremely rarely don't want to make use of this, and when you win without using this you want to post a thread in the Games Report.
A: Kingdom definer - This thing shapes the kingdom around itself
B: Solid - This thing enables other stuff, counters other stuff, you may or may not want it but you must carefully consider its viability
C: Mediocre - It has its moments, but it's unwieldy, not impactful or just eclypsed by better things in its cathegory (if its cathegory is common enough that competition is common)
D: Depressing - Hardly ever worth pursuing. The kind of card that you risk not noticing when you look at a Kingdom.
With plus and minuses as appropriate.
I use a system like this in my personal ranking spreadsheet (yeah I have problems). Mine are:
5 - Centralizing cards that typically dictate the strategy on a kingdom (Cultist, Rebuild)
4 - Cards you almost never pass up but don't typically dictate the strategy (Hunting Party)
3 - Cards that are generally good options in most kingdoms (Village, Smithy)
2 - Cards that have key uses and don't get bought all the time (Baron)
1 - Cards that actively hurt your deck unless you have a plan (Thief, Rats)
The thing about my system is that you have cases like Thief vs Rats where Rats is clearly a better card, but I still stick it in the same tier because the system is about general use, not strict power. I don't think there is a perfect system that speaks to everything, personally, and when you add in aggregate scores from multiple people it gets even messier. If people are interested I could share my list, but I've already accounted for Empires, so I'll probably have to keep that off so you don't get hot playstester strategy tips. (lol)
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It's not even the separation by cost that I think is the problem; it's the fact that it's impossible (in my opinion) to separate (for example) Mountebank, Cultist, and Rebuild. They're all power level 100. Others would likely disagree, and they'd end up in a ranking, but I wouldn't have to find some way of ranking them relative to each other.
In that case you would almost need to assume an A vs B vs C scenario. While it's not entirely realistic, it would give an indication of the strength of those cards relative to each other with zero support.
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I sternly object to switching to a point-based "rating" system or tier list. I like things the way they are, and I find it useful to have things ranked by cost. Harrumph.
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I sternly object to switching to a point-based "rating" system or tier list. I like things the way they are, and I find it useful to have things ranked by cost. Harrumph.
Well, until someone takes the time to do it, I don't think you'll need to worry! :)
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Separate quote/replies:
I sternly object to switching to a point-based "rating" system or tier list. I like things the way they are, and I find it useful to have things ranked by cost.
That's the point of the database. It could be filtered by cost, so you could tell it to show you, for example, all of the $5 cards, at which point they would be sorted by power level, and therefore ranked.
I think ratings from 0-100 (with a single decimal in the averages) would be nicer because of its granularity. It's not even the separation by cost that I think is the problem; it's the fact that it's impossible (in my opinion) to separate (for example) Mountebank, Cultist, and Rebuild. They're all power level 100.
That's part of why I suggested it. A rating vs. a ranking system is superior not just for this reason, but because comparing cards isn't just about if one is better than the other, but how much better can matter. #4 and #5 on the list could be rated 95 and 87, or 95 and 94 (although the likely bell-curve-shaped distribution of ratings is likely to be pretty smooth with a large population like the domain of Dominion cards.)
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I like the idea of power rankings. In the absence of a nice web-based database, just throw it into a table on the wiki and include costs as a column. Then they should be sortable by cost or power ranking.
My preference is a 10 point scale with 2 decimal points.
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The problem with grouping by cost is the cards have a literal cost different from its actual cost. For example, yesterday I played a game with Encampment/Plunder. The literal cost of Plunder is $5. The actual cost never dropped below buying/gaining 3-5 Encampments + the literal cost of Plunder.
If you're going by literal cost, then I'd just convert debt to coin cost. Playing debt off after buying the card is similar to saving up coin tokens before buying a card.
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I think tiers make more sense (and then you can rank within tiers if you want, which is a diluted "all cards" ranking that maintains the best of both worlds). Tiers, like that thread where everything was ranked A, B, C, D that I can't find right now.
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Is there a way to set up a table with all the cards and a vote-up/down option? I'm guessing something in Google Docs might be possible?
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Because you are going to have to pay for it with coins, I feel that debt cards should be ranked according to their cost in debt with the other cards that have that same value in coins.
As far as split piles are concerned, I believe like Chris Is Me that they have to be considered together because that is the only way they will be in a game.
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As far as split piles are concerned, I believe like Chris Is Me that they have to be considered together because that is the only way they will be in a game.
They do have to be considered together. They 100% do not need to be ranked together.
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Now that you put this idea into my head, I'd also like a tier list comparing all of the cards (not Events and Landmarks, though) by their objective power relative to their cost. I'm not sure whether it should be points- or categories-based but it would make sense to comprise all cards in a single list, then. Similar to the Hearthstone tier list which is mainly used for Arena but is generally a very useful indicator and guideline for a card's power level. Of course, the ultimate card value changes with regards to the other Kingdom cards, your deck composition and other factors, like Shelters and Events.
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Now that you put this idea into my head, I'd also like a tier list comparing all of the cards (not Events and Landmarks, though) by their objective power relative to their cost. I'm not sure whether it should be points- or categories-based but it would make sense to comprise all cards in a single list, then. Similar to the Hearthstone tier list which is mainly used for Arena but is generally a very useful indicator and guideline for a card's power level. Of course, the ultimate card value changes with regards to the other Kingdom cards, your deck composition and other factors, like Shelters and Events.
Categories are really tricky. You have cards like steward, which is a good trasher and weak terminal draw, but wouldn't be as good without both powers.
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Now that you put this idea into my head, I'd also like a tier list comparing all of the cards (not Events and Landmarks, though) by their objective power relative to their cost. I'm not sure whether it should be points- or categories-based but it would make sense to comprise all cards in a single list, then. Similar to the Hearthstone tier list which is mainly used for Arena but is generally a very useful indicator and guideline for a card's power level. Of course, the ultimate card value changes with regards to the other Kingdom cards, your deck composition and other factors, like Shelters and Events.
Categories are really tricky. You have cards like steward, which is a good trasher and weak terminal draw, but wouldn't be as good without both powers.
Maybe category was the wrong term. I meant something like JSH suggested, basically 4 to 6 tiers in which cards can be ranked. But a number system (from 1 to 100) would be nice as well.
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I agree with this post. I agree with it so much, that I am willing to make my own rating list and do the work. Yes, it will take absolutely forever, but whatever. I will probably do this once Empires has seen a lot more playing time. Possibly this Fall. Who knows. I might ask for volunteers to help count up certain cards each as well, so I won't spend an entire weekend. I might also consider having some of the top players in Dominion have weighted scores, so that their opinion is worth more, but that might not be fair.
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I think of splits cards as pretty similar to Travellers and Hermits and Urchins for this purpose. If we didn't rank Mercenary as its own card, I wouldn't rank Rocks as its own card. After all, if you ranked Rocks without considering it as specifically part of a Catapult engine, it would be terrible.
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Okay, but Fortune is very much it's own card, so is Emporium. Also, urchin and travellers upgrade themselves. Split piles do not. You are literally gaining or buying cards every step of the way which is very different from upgrading.
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Rocks can absolutely be ranked on its own, it's just that you take into account that Catapult is always available in games with Rocks. It's like how you always take into account that Gold is available when you rank Cache (or any other card).
You can absolutely gain Rocks without having gained any Catapults. You cannot (edge cases aside) gain Page/Peasant upgrades, Madman, or Mercenary without buying their respective Kingdom cards.
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Fair enough, those are both persuasive arguments.
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I bet Donald X's creative process always starts with "how to screw up Qvist's lists this time?".
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I bet Donald X's creative process always starts with "how to screw up Qvist's lists this time?".
"I think I'll make a card cost that changes every turn with the roll of a die. Try putting that in a ranking! Hahahaha!" -Donald X. Villain
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I just realized - the power ranking of the top cards of split piles has to include the bottom card, not just because of potential synergy, but because you can't get the bottom card until the top card is gone. This will make you want to buy more Gladiators than you might in a game with a pile of 10 Gladiators and a pile of 10 Fortunes, simply because you want to access the Fortunes, not because Gladiator has any particular synergy with Fortune.
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So based on the results it seems that split cards should definitely be ranked separately. For debt cards it's not so clear but a small majority wants to rank them with the $6+ cards (Engineer with the $4 cards of course). I won't be making this soon though, probably in 3-4 months when everybody had the opportunity to play enough, but definitely still this year before we can all play it online. I also have to make some adjustments to my submission site but I'm currently not in the mood for programming.
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One thing to note is that the three 8 Debt cards all feel like $6+ cards even if you can initially pay less for them. And, Engineer feels like a $4 card. Fortune no matter should still go in the $6+ category.
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So based on the results it seems that split cards should definitely be ranked separately. For debt cards it's not so clear but a small majority wants to rank them with the $6+ cards (Engineer with the $4 cards of course). I won't be making this soon though, probably in 3-4 months when everybody had the opportunity to play enough, but definitely still this year before we can all play it online. I also have to make some adjustments to my submission site but I'm currently not in the mood for programming.
I jut realized I misunderstood in formulation in the poll; I thought "ranked for both cards" meant both cards be ranked as a single pile (and voted for that). Nowhere in the poll does it say they be ranked separately. I did not assume that was what the poll was about. After all, the alternative option was just ranking the top card (which seems nonsensical to me so of course I wouldn't choose that). Did anyone else get it wrong?
Also, I stated that the ranking by cost was outdated and it was time to introduce a new ranking system. And I'm definitely not the only one thinking this.
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Also, I stated that the ranking by cost was outdated and it was time to introduce a new ranking system. And I'm definitely not the only one thinking this.
The problem is that there are no real alternatives. You have again the option to vote all the cards in a whole list. The problem is that this is very time consuming and very hard to do. What is better: Lost Arts or Chapel? But if you want to do it, you have the opportunity and I will present the results. Categorizing the cards other than cost is just not possible or at least there will be a lot of disagreements. Let's say we rank the villages. Is Ironmonger a village, is Throne Room one, and Tribute and how about Crossroads? And some cards either don't fit into categories like Outpost and Possession or belong into lots of categories, like Jack of All Trades or the Travellers. If you have a good suggestion, I'm open for it, but I haven't yet come across one.
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The problem is that there are no real alternatives.
Well, there is one: A rating system instead of a ranking system. Ratings are more useful, and could be used in conjunction with a multi-category database system for sorting and viewing cards. Sure, maybe both systems have their place, but currently, there is no Dominion rating system, and it's long past time we had one.
When you're thinking about going to the movies, or buying a new game, you probably read reviews. They probably include a rating, not a ranking. The Metacritic percentages, or rotten tomatoes, or classic number-of-star reviews, all give you a big-picture idea of what people think of the item you're considering. Things like "list of top 200 movies of all time" rankings are considerably less useful. They're a novelty popularity contest, not a reasonable metric of quality.
If you were a relatively new Dominion player reading about the cards and trying to get some idea of how useful they were, what's a more sensible way to see that at a glance?
Saboteur is better than Harvest, but worse than Mandarin
Witch is better than Hunting Party, but worse than Wharf
-- or --
Harvest 2.1/10, Saboteur 2.5/10, Mandarin - 3.2/10
Hunting Party 8.4/10, Witch 8.5/10, Wharf 9/10
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I have been convinced that Debt cards should be ranked in their "converted $" cost bracket. But I still think it's trivially true that split piles should have both their cards ranked separately. I mean let's say that Card A (the top card of the pile) is strong, but Card B (the bottom card of the pile) is weak. How do you rank that in a way that's better than ranking them separately?
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Voting by cost seems the fairest, but I have thought of a solution that may solve some problems, and this is what I will likely do (I've put a lot of thought into this)
Have a rating of 1-100 for each card, just in terms of how players think of the card. Obviously, on average $2 cost cards will be weaker than $3, and so forth. After everyone votes from 1-100 on each individual card (rather than voting which card is better than another), then the next step can be done: Compile all of the votes on all card costs (group $2s, $3s, etc), and then find out the average of each card cost group. Cards that are above the average are better, and cards below the average are not as good.
The only possible problem is that people can rate each card 100 or 0, just out of spite or glee or to mess with the data. Perhaps what could be done for that is to do both options, your list and potentially mine (for example), and then figure out the average from there.
I'm considering taking the mode of rankings into consideration as well, but I don't have a degree on statistics, so I might just stick with averages.
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I have been convinced that Debt cards should be ranked in their "converted $" cost bracket. But I still think it's trivially true that split piles should have both their cards ranked separately. I mean let's say that Card A (the top card of the pile) is strong, but Card B (the bottom card of the pile) is weak. How do you rank that in a way that's better than ranking them separately?
My only problem is that with things like Rocks, Rocks are so bad that you'd never buy them if not as part of a Catapult engine. So is it really accurate to rank them that bad? They would be WORSE THAN SCOUT.
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1-100 is a huge range though. Do I really know where Rabble falls on this range? A 1-10 scale should be sufficient.
I still like ranking by cost. I guess because I still have my list and recently updated it to reflect my wisdom gained from playing Adventures more. Also, for me, my list is more accurate this way. But, would a list that had Mountebank, Cultist, and Rebuild all ranked at 10 be wrong though?
Two ranking systems might not be bad though. One system that ranks on a scale and then Qvist rankings system. We could try both out and see which one seems the best.
PPE
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Just want to post to say I won't participate in a number ranking system for cards. It's too much effort.
We already have 400 things to rank, and Qvist's direct compare method makes it easy to digest for humans but still very time consuming. There's no way in hell I'm going to have the patience to come up with a numerical ranking of the strength of a bunch of cards, and I think the results will be less accurate in the long run just because of the sheer volume and subjectivity of the whole thing. People will have different opinions of what 70/100 means, but everyone has the same definition of "card X is better than card Y".
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I have been convinced that Debt cards should be ranked in their "converted $" cost bracket. But I still think it's trivially true that split piles should have both their cards ranked separately. I mean let's say that Card A (the top card of the pile) is strong, but Card B (the bottom card of the pile) is weak. How do you rank that in a way that's better than ranking them separately?
My only problem is that with things like Rocks, Rocks are so bad that you'd never buy them if not as part of a Catapult engine. So is it really accurate to rank them that bad? They would be WORSE THAN SCOUT.
Sure. If you think Rocks is worse than Scout, then rank it worse than Scout.
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1-100 is a huge range though. Do I really know where Rabble falls on this range? A 1-10 scale should be sufficient.
I agree, 1-100 is too granular. It should be 1-10, but allow people to use a single decimal place in addition to the integer.
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I have been convinced that Debt cards should be ranked in their "converted $" cost bracket. But I still think it's trivially true that split piles should have both their cards ranked separately. I mean let's say that Card A (the top card of the pile) is strong, but Card B (the bottom card of the pile) is weak. How do you rank that in a way that's better than ranking them separately?
My only problem is that with things like Rocks, Rocks are so bad that you'd never buy them if not as part of a Catapult engine. So is it really accurate to rank them that bad? They would be WORSE THAN SCOUT.
Sure. If you think Rocks is worse than Scout, then rank it worse than Scout.
Any ranking system that makes Scout not the worst card in its category is a flawed ranking system. :P
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1-100 is a huge range though. Do I really know where Rabble falls on this range? A 1-10 scale should be sufficient.
I agree, 1-100 is too granular. It should be 1-10, but allow people to use a single decimal place in addition to the integer.
That's literally exactly the same thing as 0-100
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Just want to post to say I won't participate in a number ranking system for cards. It's too much effort.
We already have 400 things to rank, and Qvist's direct compare method makes it easy to digest for humans but still very time consuming. There's no way in hell I'm going to have the patience to come up with a numerical ranking of the strength of a bunch of cards, and I think the results will be less accurate in the long run just because of the sheer volume and subjectivity of the whole thing. People will have different opinions of what 70/100 means, but everyone has the same definition of "card X is better than card Y".
This is how I feel on the matter. I do think the Qvist ranking method is the most accurate.
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I have been convinced that Debt cards should be ranked in their "converted $" cost bracket. But I still think it's trivially true that split piles should have both their cards ranked separately. I mean let's say that Card A (the top card of the pile) is strong, but Card B (the bottom card of the pile) is weak. How do you rank that in a way that's better than ranking them separately?
You rank them as if the top card that was a single pile containing 5cards (so a bit weaker than the card on its own, if it is a card that you want several copies of) plus the little strength the bottom card has that might become available. The end result will probably be that the combined pile will be rated a little lower than the strong top card, or quite a bit lower if you really want more tha three copies of the card (for example Lab/Scout would be quite worse than lab, Rebuild/Scout would probably be almost as good as rebuild alone).
I agree that this is not necessarily better because in this scenario, ranking them seperately does no harm, but if you turn the example on its head it becomes obvious to me why they should be ranked together:
If the bottom card is better, how do you rank that one? You have to consider the availability of the card which is the strongest feature of the card in this case, so the rank for the bottom card would be nearly equal to the joint rank for that reason. Due to this, you have two ranks for the split pile: One bad rank for the bad card, and one rank for the whole split pile (since its ranking is equivalent to the bottom card).
Of course, you can disagree with the last paragraph and say the availability of the card shouldn't matter, but what good does your ranking do if you say the bottom card is the best in the game, you'll just never buy it since you have to buy five garbage cards?
In other words, regardless whether the bottom card or the top card is the stronger one, the ranking of the strong card is equivalent to the ranking of the whole pile, you'll just get an extra ranking for the weak card which doesn't sound very appealing.
If we won't rank them together, I would argue that the bottom cards should get their own list. One could argue that having to buy 5 other cards is simply another form of cost like Potion and Debt are but I wouldn't really like that either as much.
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I have been convinced that Debt cards should be ranked in their "converted $" cost bracket. But I still think it's trivially true that split piles should have both their cards ranked separately. I mean let's say that Card A (the top card of the pile) is strong, but Card B (the bottom card of the pile) is weak. How do you rank that in a way that's better than ranking them separately?
You rank them as if the top card that was a single pile containing 5cards (so a bit weaker than the card on its own, if it is a card that you want several copies of) plus the little strength the bottom card has that might become available. The end result will probably be that the combined pile will be rated a little lower than the strong top card, or quite a bit lower if you really want more tha three copies of the card (for example Lab/Scout would be quite worse than lab, Rebuild/Scout would probably be almost as good as rebuild alone).
I agree that this is not necessarily better because in this scenario, ranking them seperately does no harm, but if you turn the example on its head it becomes obvious to me why they should be ranked together:
If the bottom card is better, how do you rank that one? You have to consider the availability of the card which is the strongest feature of the card in this case, so the rank for the bottom card would be nearly equal to the joint rank for that reason. Due to this, you have two ranks for the split pile: One bad rank for the bad card, and one rank for the whole split pile (since its ranking is equivalent to the bottom card).
Of course, you can disagree with the last paragraph and say the availability of the card shouldn't matter, but what good does your ranking do if you say the bottom card is the best in the game, you'll just never buy it since you have to buy five garbage cards?
In other words, regardless whether the bottom card or the top card is the stronger one, the ranking of the strong card is equivalent to the ranking of the whole pile, you'll just get an extra ranking for the weak card which doesn't sound very appealing.
If we won't rank them together, I would argue that the bottom cards should get their own list. One could argue that having to buy 5 other cards is simply another form of cost like Potion and Debt are but I wouldn't really like that either as much.
You can use this same argument as to why each pile should be ranked separate. Of course, if I rank Encampment, I do so knowing Plunder is on the bottom. If I rank Gladiator, I do so knowing Fortune is on the bottom. When ranking Fortune, I do so knowing Gladiator is on the top. Sure, I am taking into account what's on top and what's on bottom, but each time, I am still ranking a separate card. When I buy Gladiator in a game, I know I'm just getting Gladiator, but I have the potential to get Fortune.
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Beyond Awesome is right. All cards should be ranked separately. You take the information of cards below and above into account.
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I would welcome either a tier similar to what JSH and Accattippi suggested;
I use a system like this in my personal ranking spreadsheet (yeah I have problems). Mine are:
5 - Centralizing cards that typically dictate the strategy on a kingdom (Cultist, Rebuild)
4 - Cards you almost never pass up but don't typically dictate the strategy (Hunting Party)
3 - Cards that are generally good options in most kingdoms (Village, Smithy)
2 - Cards that have key uses and don't get bought all the time (Baron)
1 - Cards that actively hurt your deck unless you have a plan (Thief, Rats)
or to assign a number from 1 to 10 to each card. Either way, you can easily make a comprehensive list of all the cards that could also be sub-divided by cost-groups. This should be simpler and more elegant than ordering every single card relative to each other card.
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@JThorne: Okay let's talk about this for a second because I have a little bit of experience with it.
Straight rating systems have their problems. Why? Because everybody has a different scale. On a scale of 1-10 someone might never rate a card a 10 because he thinks it's not a must buy on every board and therefore not worth a 10. For the same reasoning he decides to never give a 1 because there are situations where you might want to buy it. Another person has no problems giving out 10s and 1s. You might think it doesn't matter but it does. Someone goes through the list and starts let's say with Cartographer (just an example) and reasons "It's a really useful card on many boards, way above average, let's give it a 7." Later he compares the rating of 7 to stronger cards and he gives out a lot of 8s and 9s. Because he started so high he has a lot of high ratings and Cartographer ranks in his list below average even though he thinks it's an above average card. So he rated maybe a card actually worth around 4.5 a 7 which is a huge difference. Most people tend to rate higher anyway. IMDB has on some page written what the average movie rating is. The last time I checked I think it was at 6.7, so you see a movie with a 6.5 and might think it's a decent movie, but in fact it's slightly below average. I think BGG has the same problem although I can't prove that. And no way the voter is going to correct all of his ratings after he found out that he tends to rate higher. But ranking is way better. The numbers I give out with each ranking is like a rating, but only in percent instead of a number. We can say that the community thinks of a card with 50% as an average card, a card with 70% is a good card and so on. There is no difference in 70% and 7/10.
I can see that ranking is more cumbersome than rating. But there is a solution. Every rating can be converted into a ranking. Let's say you rated 101 cards and you gave 15 cards a 10 and 32 cards a 9 and so on. The 15 cards get then 101-(1+15)/2 = 93%, the 32 cards get 101-(16+47)/2=69.5% which is fine as you rated almost half the cards a 9 or 10, so the ranked value has to be way lower. As you can see rating on a value of 1 to 10 isn't great when you evaluating 101 cards, but it's up to you if you rate 1 to 10 or 1 to 100. I already plan to give another option to rate the cards. Not everyone wants to do the ranking, so that's fine, but if someone rates it, we at least get more votes and more accurate data. Also it gives the option to rate the cards from like 1 to 10 and then use the vote method to finer rank the cards within the same rating. That means less comparisms should be made to get a full ranked list.
But that still gets not rid of the grouping problem. Even if you rate all the cards from 1 to 10, and you rate a Cartographer and then a Bonfire you have trouble finding a right rating while you ask yourself which of those is better automatically. So I stand by that. Grouping the cards by cost is still the best method as they are more comparable. If you rate your cards 1-10 and don't care about grouping, fine, you can do that (now I basically promise to program the new rating feature until next time, I hope I can manage that!).
Edit: Well I wrote that while eating dinner, so some time has passed and 14 new replies, but glancing over them, some of the stuff I wrote was already covered. I hope that by adding that feature we get a better result because more people vote.
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1-100 is a huge range though. Do I really know where Rabble falls on this range? A 1-10 scale should be sufficient.
I agree, 1-100 is too granular. It should be 1-10, but allow people to use a single decimal place in addition to the integer.
That's literally exactly the same thing as 0-100
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSUKKdM5CL1c52dd63ZJwaN58I-Kj-VAWv9ZyWA4etrOGkE-AXcK4b6nsg)
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1-100 is a huge range though. Do I really know where Rabble falls on this range? A 1-10 scale should be sufficient.
I agree, 1-100 is too granular. It should be 1-10, but allow people to use a single decimal place in addition to the integer.
That's literally exactly the same thing as 0-100
Actually there is an argument to be made that they aren't the same. I think with the 1-10 system, people will tend to rank in whole numbers, and only use the decimal when they want to make a slight distinction, or when they want to place a card in between 2 other cards that have consecutive integers. But with the 1-100 system, people will spend longer trying to decide exactly which of the 100 options to use for each card.
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I'm planning to release a video article series on this soon. Hopefully it isn't terrible.
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I have thought of the problem of ranking systems from 1-100 and a lack of accountability when it comes to consistency and the ranking system. Therefore, I propose two different systems, and I will use 1-10 over 1-100 so it is easier to understand and write.
First proposal: Rate things in terms of strength, 1 being never buy, and 10 being a must buy. This is incredibly vague, but it gets rid of the problem.
Second proposal: Rate things in terms of many variables, such as relevance in Big Money (a few points), relevance in Engines (much more points), how good it is for it's cost (some more points), etc. The problem with this system is that while way more accurate, it is also a whole lot more work for each user, and fatigue may set in, leading to inaccurate results and less submissions.
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The problem with 1-100 is that people think like it's school grades, and that 50 is bad, when it is really literally average. There would have to be some "retraining" in the thinking of people in order for the rating system to work. Qvist's system may be the best, but I still want certain cards to be ranked high, even if they end up with ties, such as Cultist and Rebuild, etc.
The best system of all is just to take the top 50 players or so, and ask them what they think with the scale of 1-100 (or 1-10), but then there's the entire point of people submitting things gone, and it doesn't feel 'fair' even though that would likely be the best ranking.
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I have been convinced that Debt cards should be ranked in their "converted $" cost bracket. But I still think it's trivially true that split piles should have both their cards ranked separately. I mean let's say that Card A (the top card of the pile) is strong, but Card B (the bottom card of the pile) is weak. How do you rank that in a way that's better than ranking them separately?
You rank them as if the top card that was a single pile containing 5cards (so a bit weaker than the card on its own, if it is a card that you want several copies of) plus the little strength the bottom card has that might become available. The end result will probably be that the combined pile will be rated a little lower than the strong top card, or quite a bit lower if you really want more tha three copies of the card (for example Lab/Scout would be quite worse than lab, Rebuild/Scout would probably be almost as good as rebuild alone).
I agree that this is not necessarily better because in this scenario, ranking them seperately does no harm, but if you turn the example on its head it becomes obvious to me why they should be ranked together:
If the bottom card is better, how do you rank that one? You have to consider the availability of the card which is the strongest feature of the card in this case, so the rank for the bottom card would be nearly equal to the joint rank for that reason. Due to this, you have two ranks for the split pile: One bad rank for the bad card, and one rank for the whole split pile (since its ranking is equivalent to the bottom card).
Of course, you can disagree with the last paragraph and say the availability of the card shouldn't matter, but what good does your ranking do if you say the bottom card is the best in the game, you'll just never buy it since you have to buy five garbage cards?
In other words, regardless whether the bottom card or the top card is the stronger one, the ranking of the strong card is equivalent to the ranking of the whole pile, you'll just get an extra ranking for the weak card which doesn't sound very appealing.
If we won't rank them together, I would argue that the bottom cards should get their own list. One could argue that having to buy 5 other cards is simply another form of cost like Potion and Debt are but I wouldn't really like that either as much.
You can use this same argument as to why each pile should be ranked separate. Of course, if I rank Encampment, I do so knowing Plunder is on the bottom. If I rank Gladiator, I do so knowing Fortune is on the bottom. When ranking Fortune, I do so knowing Gladiator is on the top. Sure, I am taking into account what's on top and what's on bottom, but each time, I am still ranking a separate card. When I buy Gladiator in a game, I know I'm just getting Gladiator, but I have the potential to get Fortune.
I don't see why. I feel your point could support the argument that you can rank them together aswell. I assume our disagreement stems from the fact that we value the availability differently?
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Just a random thought.
It would probably become more feasible to rank the entire set of cards if you were able to give 1-10 rankings first, and then only did the direct comparisons within each group.
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Just a random thought.
It would probably become more feasible to rank the entire set of cards if you were able to give 1-10 rankings first, and then only did the direct comparisons within each group.
Also it gives the option to rate the cards from like 1 to 10 and then use the vote method to finer rank the cards within the same rating. That means less comparisms should be made to get a full ranked list.
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Just a random thought.
It would probably become more feasible to rank the entire set of cards if you were able to give 1-10 rankings first, and then only did the direct comparisons within each group.
Also it gives the option to rate the cards from like 1 to 10 and then use the vote method to finer rank the cards within the same rating. That means less comparisms should be made to get a full ranked list.
Another random thought...
I could read better. ;)
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Ranking split piles as one entry gives less information than ranking them separately. Consider two pairs A/B and C/D. Suppose AB is ranked 4th and CD is ranked 5th. Is A stronger than C? Is B stronger than D? Is AB ranked 4 because A is really strong on its own, or because B is strong enough that it's worth it to tear through the weak A cards on top?
If instead you have A ranked 42nd in its tier and B ranked 2nd in its tier, you start to see a clearer picture. B is strong and needs to be considered, but maybe it won't become available since A is weak. Or if you see C is ranked 5th in its tier and D is ranked 50th, then you understand that C is powerful and D is probably a non-factor once it's uncovered.
When ranking the top card, you can keep in mind that there are only 5 copies and then something else underneath. When ranking bottom cards, you can keep in mind that whatever was on top was available in the kingdom. For example, Rocks should rank higher than just it's text would suggest because you know that Catapult is around for synergy. But you can certainly give each half of a split pile a different ranking, because they are different cards. You can gain Fortune without ever gaining a Gladiator.
Note that the rankings have already done this without issue: Looters and Ruins are ranked separately without problem.
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When you buy Settlers, you know that Bustling Village is under it; that may be part of your plan or not, but it's there, adding value to Settlers.
When you buy Bustling Village, you know how many copies of Settlers you got; sometimes it's zero. You still might buy it.
So, to me it only makes sense to evaluate them as separate cards, separate entries. Each can take into account the other, but you full-on have the option of only getting one of them (even the bottom one, it just takes help).
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count me in as a vote for tier lists (nice to see somebody else use "S tier", haha) and counting potion as +$2 for cost purposes
i strongly disagree with making potion +$3 because that doesn't reflect how likely you are to buy a familiar on the 2nd shuffle. +$2 is a fairly accurate representation of that.
also this would mean the $4 group finally gets a legit S-tier card with scrying pool, and that was the only group that never truly had one. in the $2 group i would have vineyard 4th after chapel & the travelers. interesting to think about it this way...
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Thing is, you can't open Familiar. You can open a $4-cost
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If you had to create a one-size-fits-all converted $ cost for Potion cards, I think adding +$3 is the most sensible option. It creates reasonable costs for all Potion-cost cards except Scrying Pool, but that's because Scrying Pool is already severely undercosted with its Potion cost.
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I'm for doing Tier Lists, a la Smash Bros or Pokemon. :p
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I'm for doing Tier Lists, a la Smash Bros or Pokemon. :p
I am against doing anything the way Smogon does it. :P
But for reals, tier lists would be fine for Dominion if that's what people really want to do. As long they won't impact the way boards are randomized, it seems OK.
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I'm for doing Tier Lists, a la Smash Bros or Pokemon. :p
I am against doing anything the way Smogon does it. :P
Smogon's tiers are entirely usage based, excluding banned Pokemon. Since nothing is banned here, it would just be a list of cards sorted by gain rate, I guess. That would be pretty boring.
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
Not everything has to be consistent. We can rate the Knights together because they all do the same attack, with different little bonuses. Castles is just an alt VP, to consider one you must consider them all. However, with split piles, you can have one, but not the other, and have it potentially be a viable strategy.
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
We also really need a list for all the $0-cost cards, and why the heck doesn't Poor House get its own list? Also for years people have been talking about cards passing 'the Silver test', so why isn't Silver in the $3-list? And why don't we rank the other basic Supply cards for that matter?
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
Knights and Castles both have the same type. All Knights have the same unifying attack. And, Castles are all VP cards that affect each other.
Plunder is not like Encapment. Gladiator is not like Fortune. And, I could go own.
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
I've had difficulty forming an opinion here. I started writing a response, and now I think I have a side here.
Split piles? Well...I feel that the existence of the bottom cards is a feature of the top cards. You rate Catapult knowing you can get Rocks. You rate Encampment knowing you can save them with Plunder. Similar story with Patrician and Gladiator (remember you gain Gold with Fortune for each Gladiator you have in play, and you can help reveal Fortune with Gladiator's on play).
So, I personally prefer the strength of the bottom card adding to the overall value of the top card and have then rated together as one card pile. Sure, you can get the bottom cards without getting the top cards, but you can see that as a sort of penalty your opponent gets for emptying the top card and factor that into the rating of the top card.
You may never get to the bottom cards in a game, but like sometimes you never get to play an activated City. The potential to activate City is still relevant to the strength of City.
You can rate the two cards in the split pile separately if you really want, but I'm left wondering if you really gain much from doing that. I think a unified ranking gives a better sense of how the pile will impact the game.
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
It would be sensible and fine to rank the Castles and Knights individually; here the idea would be, when you have $5, what's a good thing to buy? Small Castle? Dame Molly? Market? Herald with $1 overpay? We can continue on to, Ironmonger, even though it costs $4?
The problem with it is just one of effort expended ranking things, vs. reward produced looking at the results. Ranking the $5's is already giving up some on "what can I get with $5" in favor of "let's get this done with already."
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The most compelling argument for ranking split piles separately is that people have already done it that way in the threads discussing impressions and power predictions, without even thinking about it. Apparently most people find that to be intuitive.
Of course, most people in those threads are also mixing cards of different costs, and also using ratings rather than rankings.
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
Why would it be silly to rank all the castles individually? I don't even know which price list they should go on, because it seems silly to put them on any such list when only 1-2 cards of the pile is at that price point. It makes more sense to me to give Castles their own list, where the ranking is about which specific Castles are most significant on any given board. Maybe stick Castles as a whole onto a regular list as well, but again -- at what cost??
Your last line about ranking the Knights is funny because we have in fact ranked all of the knights individually (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=14293.0).
You can rate the two cards in the split pile separately if you really want, but I'm left wondering if you really gain much from doing that. I think a unified ranking gives a better sense of how the pile will impact the game.
I think we would gain a lot from ranking them separately, and stand to lose a lot if we only rank them together:
Ranking split piles as one entry gives less information than ranking them separately. Consider two pairs A/B and C/D. Suppose AB is ranked 4th and CD is ranked 5th. Is A stronger than C? Is B stronger than D? Is AB ranked 4 because A is really strong on its own, or because B is strong enough that it's worth it to tear through the weak A cards on top?
If instead you have A ranked 42nd in its tier and B ranked 2nd in its tier, you start to see a clearer picture. B is strong and needs to be considered, but maybe it won't become available since A is weak. Or if you see C is ranked 5th in its tier and D is ranked 50th, then you understand that C is powerful and D is probably a non-factor once it's uncovered.
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I think we would gain a lot from ranking them separately, and stand to lose a lot if we only rank them together:
Ranking split piles as one entry gives less information than ranking them separately. Consider two pairs A/B and C/D. Suppose AB is ranked 4th and CD is ranked 5th. Is A stronger than C? Is B stronger than D? Is AB ranked 4 because A is really strong on its own, or because B is strong enough that it's worth it to tear through the weak A cards on top?
If instead you have A ranked 42nd in its tier and B ranked 2nd in its tier, you start to see a clearer picture. B is strong and needs to be considered, but maybe it won't become available since A is weak. Or if you see C is ranked 5th in its tier and D is ranked 50th, then you understand that C is powerful and D is probably a non-factor once it's uncovered.
I don't see it this way. If I rank B 2nd in its tier it would be because its that good despite having to get through the trashy A. Likewise, giving you and your opponents access to the bottom card factors into the overall worth of gaining A over other cards.
Like, the $5 cost card you get from Banquet can be really good, but the Coppers might really suck. I can rate the $5 cost card as being really good, and the Coppers as being really bad. But I'm interested in ranking Banquet itself.
Edit: your description really suggests that we need both an individual ranking for the cards and a combined ranking.
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I think we would gain a lot from ranking them separately, and stand to lose a lot if we only rank them together:
Ranking split piles as one entry gives less information than ranking them separately. Consider two pairs A/B and C/D. Suppose AB is ranked 4th and CD is ranked 5th. Is A stronger than C? Is B stronger than D? Is AB ranked 4 because A is really strong on its own, or because B is strong enough that it's worth it to tear through the weak A cards on top?
If instead you have A ranked 42nd in its tier and B ranked 2nd in its tier, you start to see a clearer picture. B is strong and needs to be considered, but maybe it won't become available since A is weak. Or if you see C is ranked 5th in its tier and D is ranked 50th, then you understand that C is powerful and D is probably a non-factor once it's uncovered.
I don't see it this way. If I rank B 2nd in its tier it would be because its that good despite having to get through the trashy A. Likewise, giving you and your opponents access to the bottom card factors into the overall worth of gaining A over other cards.
Like, the $5 cost card you get from Banquet can be really good, but the Coppers might really suck. I can rate the $5 cost card as being really good, and the Coppers as being really bad. But I'm interested in ranking Banquet itself.
Edit: your description really suggests that we need both an individual ranking for the cards and a combined ranking.
Sure, that explanation for ranking B 2nd makes sense too. The point is that this consideration is lost in a combined ranking.
I don't think a combined ranking is necessary because you can just figure it out by looking at the two individual rankings.
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Maybe stick Castles as a whole onto a regular list as well, but again -- at what cost??
(https://media.giphy.com/media/zDyVp3FAkfkI0/giphy.gif)
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Thing is, you can't open Familiar. You can open a $4-cost
That's why I proposed dumping all the 2P and 3P cards with the 5-costs, since you can't often open with a 5er either. LastFootnote's suggestion of treating Potion as +3$ also works and it is less arbitrary, but it raises Vineyards and Transmute to the 3$s, while I feel they fit better in the 0-2$ group.
Or we could dump everything in the 6$+ group, rename it "cards not costing less than 6$" and be technically correct.
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
Why would it be silly to rank all the castles individually? I don't even know which price list they should go on, because it seems silly to put them on any such list when only 1-2 cards of the pile is at that price point. It makes more sense to me to give Castles their own list, where the ranking is about which specific Castles are most significant on any given board. Maybe stick Castles as a whole onto a regular list as well, but again -- at what cost??
Your last line about ranking the Knights is funny because we have in fact ranked all of the knights individually (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=14293.0).
That ranking only pits knights against each other, while I think the topic here is about including the Knights in the 5$ and 4$ groups.
(I would be in favor of that, the only problem being that it might not be worth the hassle)
Also Ruins in the 0-2$ groups could be fun.
And each Castle in their own group would be allright, I think. Most of them would end up in the same group, but having the three cheap Castles in their proper price group would enable us to answer some questions like how often we'd pass on a Swindler to get that Humble castle, how often we are happy to give up a 5$ buy to get Small castle, and how bad we think Crumbling castle is.
So yeah, I'd take a more literal approach to costs. If it's in the supply and has a cost, rank it with its peers.
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Here's the thing - you're going to rate the Castles as a single pile all together, right? It would be silly to rank them all individually. But the same logic you're using on Split piles can be used on them. They all have different costs, you don't need to buy one to get another one, and there are even multiples of some of them with more than 2 players! While we're at it, why don't we rank all of the Knights individually as well, putting Sir Martin on the $4 list for good measure?
We also really need a list for all the $0-cost cards, and why the heck doesn't Poor House get its own list? Also for years people have been talking about cards passing 'the Silver test', so why isn't Silver in the $3-list? And why don't we rank the other basic Supply cards for that matter?
The last time we talked about this the majority didn't want basic treasures being included in the lists. I don't know, maybe this has changed.
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Please tell me it was understood that I was being sarcastic about including Knights, doing so as a method of hyperbole to get my point across. Please don't actually put each individual Knight on the ranking.
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That's why I proposed dumping all the 2P and 3P cards with the 5-costs, since you can't often open with a 5er either. LastFootnote's suggestion of treating Potion as +3$ also works and it is less arbitrary, but it raises Vineyards and Transmute to the 3$s, while I feel they fit better in the 0-2$ group.
When Vineyard didn't have P in the cost, it cost $4.
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Thing is, you can't open Familiar. You can open a $4-cost
You can open a $7-cost.
Fundamentally, once upon a time some people tried working out the "value" of +1 Card, +1 Action, etc. then costing cards accordingly; deliberately Dominion's not as simple as that. Now we have potions, and conditions on buying a card, and effects on buy/gain, and overpay, and debt, and split piles and Castles and Knights and Prizes and Travellers and things you can't cost-reduce...
What is the cost of purchasing a card is now every bit as thorny a question as what is the value of purchasing it. I'm not sure there's a good answer to this question any more, and I'm pretty sure that's deliberate.
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You can open Familiar with this opening:
(Borrow-Travelling Fair-Potion)/(Borrow-Familiar)
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This whole debacle is like the American Federalists and Anti-Federalists. It's great. Fun thing to try: Read all of these arguments over cards as if they were arguing for or against a major event to be decided, like the formation of the F.DS State.
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when you have $5, what's a good thing to buy?
You know, maybe this is my problem with this whole ranking vs. rating system. I think this statement, from Donald X of all people, underscores a significant problem with gauging the usefulness of the system.
Ranking the cards by cost encourages this sort of thinking (what should I buy with $5) and this sort of thinking is fundamentally flawed.
I've watched people in my playgroup plunk down $5 on the table and then, one by one, stare at the $5-cost cards trying to figure out what to buy next. That's after having bought six or seven cards already. And time and again, I berate them: "Don't you have a plan?"
Sometimes (well, a LOT of the time, actually) the best buy for your deck with $5 is a $4-cost card, or even a $3-cost card. (Or that Herbalist you forgot to get earlier for the extra buy. Don't wait and pay $10 for it. Better yet, pay attention to the fact that it's the only +buy and open with it if you're engine-building.)
Cards simply shouldn't be compared to other cards at the same cost. Cards should be compared to other cards, PERIOD. A strong $5 on the board means that opening with at least one Silver might be more important than a strong $4 and a strong $3. When you look at a kingdom, the first thing you need to do is make note of the power cards, then look for special combos, then figure out what the kingdom wants to do (engine/rush/slog/other.) Don't wait until you have money on the table, then look at the most expensive cards you can buy and figure out which ones are better. If that's how you're making your decisions, you've already lost.
Now, you might say, yes, Dominion is a complex game and you can't just rate cards in a vacuum, so why do we even bother having ratings and rankings at all?
Because the cards really do have different power levels that are not immediately obvious to all players, even ones with some experience. Certain cards are very situational. Certain cards seem like they should be good, but no matter how many different combinations of strategies you throw at them, they just don't seem to get you there (I'm looking at you, Counting House.)
And for the record, I do think that split piles, castles and knights should all be rated separately, in that they have the same problem as every other Dominion card: They are only good when you take other cards into account, and they have a cost that can be measured in more than just coin. (Even a simple card like Village can measure its worth only in terms of the Terminals available in a Kingdom, and has a cost that can be measured in coin and opportunity.) Some castles are useful even if you're not trying to piledrive the castles. The bottom split pile cards should be downgraded somewhat if the top card isn't that great, in the same way that potion cards should be downgraded if potion is a prohibitive opportunity cost.
If the presentation of the data were user-selectable, allowing users to sort cards by cost, type, etc., and filter by a number of other parameters, then it would be possible to do things like look at a whole stack of knights or castles and see their ratings relative to each other. Maybe you're planning on playing a knight or two, but the top knight is one of the weaker ones; it might be better to allow your opponent to buy it so you can buy the second one. This is useful information. It might also be worth knowing that Bridge is such a colossally game-warping card in the right kingdom that wasting terminal space on any knight at all would be foolish.
But maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse.
Perhaps I should simply ask the question: Why rate the cards? What exactly are we trying to accomplish here, and who is the information for, and for what purpose? I may be misunderstanding the entire exercise.
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(Or that Herbalist you forgot to get earlier for the extra buy. Don't wait and pay $10 for it. Better yet, pay attention to the fact that it's the only +buy and open with it if you're engine-building.)
Even better yet, pay attention to the fact that it's a stop card that doesn't do anything for you in the early game aside from slowing down your cycling, and only buy it when you can actually utilize the +buy. Even if it means paying $10 for it when the time comes.
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All of this is very well thought out. I will have to put this into consideration, and question myself what the goal of the ranking is. The endpoint of the ranking will determine the method used, or whether I even bother at all. If there is no point to ranking cards, then why do it?
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That's why I proposed dumping all the 2P and 3P cards with the 5-costs, since you can't often open with a 5er either. LastFootnote's suggestion of treating Potion as +3$ also works and it is less arbitrary, but it raises Vineyards and Transmute to the 3$s, while I feel they fit better in the 0-2$ group.
When Vineyard didn't have P in the cost, it cost $4.
And it sounds like a fine price for it, if a bit low. I'm not arguing that Vineyards' value converts to 0-2$.
What I'm saying is that after you got a Potion, Vineyards won't compete for your coins but only for your Buys. Other P-cards should get a group accounting for the fact that the Potion will make it slower to get your first copy of them. That's not an issue for Vineyards, because you don't want it early and I think it plays much more like a 0$ than like a 3$.
Transmute, I think it actually would be fine with the 2P cards in the 5$ group, because that's what you're probably giving up if you open Potion for your Transmute plan (we've all done that once).
As I said, it's a bit arbitrary, but that's how I'd like it. :)
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when you have $5, what's a good thing to buy?
You know, maybe this is my problem with this whole ranking vs. rating system. I think this statement, from Donald X of all people, underscores a significant problem with gauging the usefulness of the system.
Ranking the cards by cost encourages this sort of thinking (what should I buy with $5) and this sort of thinking is fundamentally flawed.
Donald X., of all people, was not saying in that quote that people should buy the highest ranked card they can afford each turn, or any such nonsense. Perhaps those words did not gain as much clarity from the other words around them as he intended, but man.
Ranking everything is too much work. To me that's the core idea behind ranking the $5's, as opposed to everything together. It's a more manageable list, and the similar costs make it easier to compare the cards (even if costs can include "your deck needs high action density" or whatever other thing). Ranking $5's makes the categorization easier than say ranking villages, although ranking villages sounds interesting too.
Sometimes (well, a LOT of the time, actually) the best buy for your deck with $5 is a $4-cost card, or even a $3-cost card. (Or that Herbalist you forgot to get earlier for the extra buy. Don't wait and pay $10 for it. Better yet, pay attention to the fact that it's the only +buy and open with it if you're engine-building.)
Donald X., of all people, actually flat-out cited the possibility of buying a $4 with $5, noted directly that ranking the $5's already gives up on that comparison.
Perhaps I should simply ask the question: Why rate the cards? What exactly are we trying to accomplish here, and who is the information for, and for what purpose? I may be misunderstanding the entire exercise.
The point is to have fun ranking cards and then seeing how they ended up.
It should be obvious to anyone that "card A ranked better than card B" doesn't mean "therefore always buy card A over card B." People are so aware of this at f.ds that there is a saying that encapsulates it: it depends on the board.
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You can open Familiar with this opening:
(Borrow-Travelling Fair-Potion)/(Borrow-Familiar)
You can also open (Travelling fair-Watchtower)/(Squire->Familiar) (pretty unlikely: 5/2 split, then 3/5 chance of lacking the money to get the squire.)
Or a much more viable option is (Travelling Fair-Squire)/(Bonfire), which can also thin away one Copper.
Edit: ack, I forgot to mention the two-card combo that will always let you open Familiar: Squire/Donate! (also, probably a very bad idea)
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What I'm saying is that after you got a Potion, Vineyards won't compete for your coins but only for your Buys. Other P-cards should get a group accounting for the fact that the Potion will make it slower to get your first copy of them. That's not an issue for Vineyards, because you don't want it early and I think it plays much more like a 0$ than like a 3$.
It doesn't at all though. Vineyard competes for your Potions and buys.
If Vineyard cost $0 you could suddenly gain a bunch with extra buys sans money. It would have been a worse-for-gameplay cost than $4. It didn't cost $0. It cost $4.
Vineyard at $P costs a buy... and a Potion, there it is, I see it there. You can't just buy a bunch at once because you don't have that many Potions.
Vineyard does not play at all like a $0. It plays more like a $3 than like a $0, if we have to compare those things; it requires resources to buy, not just a buy.
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Sometimes (well, a LOT of the time, actually) the best buy for your deck with $5 is a $4-cost card, or even a $3-cost card.
Similarly, novices seldom open with two $3 purchases.
After a couple of recent games, I've begun to think that new players would find it instructive to play with Alms early on, in the same way that Chapel can be an eye-opener. Many times, you have no further use for $4-and-under cards, so if you can't reach $5 you don't buy anything. Having Alms just sitting there, tempting people to load up on cheap stuff is a valuable excercise in self-control. (-8
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A sudden incidental thought...
A new candidate for "least likely expansion ever": Alchempires. Introducing potion-debt tokens that can only be paid off with Potions, and cards with potion-debt costs.
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What I'm saying is that after you got a Potion, Vineyards won't compete for your coins but only for your Buys. Other P-cards should get a group accounting for the fact that the Potion will make it slower to get your first copy of them. That's not an issue for Vineyards, because you don't want it early and I think it plays much more like a 0$ than like a 3$.
It doesn't at all though. Vineyard competes for your Potions and buys.
If Vineyard cost $0 you could suddenly gain a bunch with extra buys sans money. It would have been a worse-for-gameplay cost than $4. It didn't cost $0. It cost $4.
Vineyard at $P costs a buy... and a Potion, there it is, I see it there. You can't just buy a bunch at once because you don't have that many Potions.
Vineyard does not play at all like a $0. It plays more like a $3 than like a $0, if we have to compare those things; it requires resources to buy, not just a buy.
What can I say, you fail to see my point, probably due to excessively literal understanding.
For the purpose of choosing how to use your resources every turn*, the fact that a Vineyard buy doesn't consume coins makes its competition for your resources more similar to that of a 0$ than of a 3$. The fact that the number of buys you can spend on it is limited by the number of Potions you played is pretty evident, as is the fact that you're not spending any coins when buying it.
*which is the approximation we've chosen to divide the cards into groups for practical reasons.
That said, I'm fine wherever it ends up. It will still feel like a 0$ to me. :)
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What can I say, you fail to see my point, probably due to excessively literal understanding.
For the purpose of choosing how to use your resources every turn*, the fact that a Vineyard buy doesn't consume coins makes its competition for your resources more similar to that of a 0$ than of a 3$. The fact that the number of buys you can spend on it is limited by the number of Potions you played is pretty evident, as is the fact that you're not spending any coins when buying it.
The fact that Vineyard consumes income, in the form of Potion as it happens instead of $, makes its competition for your resources more similar to $3 than to $0.
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Ah, but maybe you should instead Save your Potion for next turn?
Even having a Potion to spend ain't so simple these days.
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A sudden incidental thought...
A new candidate for "least likely expansion ever": Alchempires. Introducing potion-debt tokens that can only be paid off with Potions, and cards with potion-debt costs.
As you can read in the secret history, Capital's ability was once to just make all cards "Debt" cards. So at least conceptually, if you bought e.g. Golem, you'd have 4 Debt and 1 Potion-Debt. Obviously that was less than ideal.
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You can open Familiar with this opening:
(Borrow-Travelling Fair-Potion)/(Borrow-Familiar)
You can also open (Travelling fair-Watchtower)/(Squire->Familiar) (pretty unlikely: 5/2 split, then 3/5 chance of lacking the money to get the squire.)
Or a much more viable option is (Travelling Fair-Squire)/(Bonfire), which can also thin away one Copper.
Edit: ack, I forgot to mention the two-card combo that will always let you open Familiar: Squire/Donate! (also, probably a very bad idea)
Also, (Summon-Squire)/(Bonfire).
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You can open Familiar with this opening:
(Borrow-Travelling Fair-Potion)/(Borrow-Familiar)
You can also open Travelling Fair/Squire. Play Squire next turn and Bonfire it.
Edit: Looks like someone beat me to this one.
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Donald X., of all people, was not saying in that quote that people should buy the highest ranked card they can afford each turn, or any such nonsense.
Indeed! Sorry if that sounded like a criticism. It probably didn't read as I intended. I realize you were saying that the ranking system doesn't answer that question (what should I buy with $5.) My point was that the ranking system that groups by cost encourages the thinking that that question should be answered by consulting the rankings, and that the question itself should be re-framed simply as "what should I buy" which should really be reframed "what do I want my deck to look like when all is said and done, and how do I get there?"
The point is to have fun ranking cards and then seeing how they ended up.
If that's the case, I'll stop harping. I thought part of the point was to take the vast experience of this community and share it in a format that can be useful to other players in evaluating cards and considering their power level. I've been playing less than a year, mostly IRL, and it didn't take me long before I found the wiki, and by extension this forum, and started reading, eventually reading every card/combo article, and a great deal of the forum threads discussing strategy, including the rankings.
It may be that a rating system would be more useful for this purpose, but I would be hard-pressed to argue that it would be less work or more fun!
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Donald X., of all people, was not saying in that quote that people should buy the highest ranked card they can afford each turn, or any such nonsense.
Indeed! Sorry if that sounded like a criticism. It probably didn't read as I intended. I realize you were saying that the ranking system doesn't answer that question (what should I buy with $5.) My point was that the ranking system that groups by cost encourages the thinking that that question should be answered by consulting the rankings, and that the question itself should be re-framed simply as "what should I buy" which should really be reframed "what do I want my deck to look like when all is said and done, and how do I get there?"
The point is to have fun ranking cards and then seeing how they ended up.
If that's the case, I'll stop harping. I thought part of the point was to take the vast experience of this community and share it in a format that can be useful to other players in evaluating cards and considering their power level. I've been playing less than a year, mostly IRL, and it didn't take me long before I found the wiki, and by extension this forum, and started reading, eventually reading every card/combo article, and a great deal of the forum threads discussing strategy, including the rankings.
It may be that a rating system would be more useful for this purpose, but I would be hard-pressed to argue that it would be less work or more fun!
If it makes you feel better, you've effectively stated my first video in fewer words!
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Sometimes (well, a LOT of the time, actually) the best buy for your deck with $5 is a $4-cost card, or even a $3-cost card.
Similarly, novices seldom open with two $3 purchases.
Opening with $2/$3 isn't so uncommon for me with a 3/4 split either.