Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Puzzles and Challenges => Topic started by: -Stef- on June 22, 2016, 04:39:49 pm
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We're playing a weird variant of two player Dominion where all the piles are of infinite size.
The challenge in this puzzle is to set up a turn (you get full control over all shuffles and both players) in a kingdom (you get to choose it) that gains you as many cards as you can.
Let's call the number of cards you can gain X.
However, there is a restriction. In order for your solution to be valid some number Y has to exist (which is bigger than X, you can choose whatever you like) that is impossible to reach using your kingdom. So you claim "Y cannot be reached using my cards" and then someone else gets to use your kingdom, uses perfect shuffle luck and all the time in the world to set up his magic turn, and still cannot reach your number Y.
You have to use the basic victory cards and treasures, but apart from that you can use any kingdom size you like with any number of events and/or landmarks. In case you want to use piles that aren't all the same card (like ruins, or Catapult/Rocks, or knights, or...) use the regular rules to generate a pile, then use multiple copies of the entire pile.
This applies to all the piles, even the ones that usually have a unique feel like prizes or black market cards.
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it may help u to imagine donkey kong giving out the challenge
(http://www.donhodges.com/images/dk/how_high_can_you_get.jpg)
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Kingdom is just Squire. Play 2 for +2 Actions, then 3 for +2 buys. So X=7, Y=8.
Taking an early (and temporary) lead!
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Kingdom is just Squire and Village. Play 4 Villages, then 5 Squires for +2 buys. X=11, Y=12.
Stealing JW's early (and temporary) lead!
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Is this thread now a Necro Wars variant with gaining instead of necroing?
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Kingdom is just Squire, Village, and Tactician. Play Tactician the previous turn. Play 10 Villages, then 10 Squires for +2 buys. Tactician gives another +Buy. X=22, Y=23.
Taking the lead back from Deadlock39!
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Kingdom is just Squire. Play 2 for +2 Actions, then 3 for +2 buys. So X=7, Y=8.
Taking an early (and temporary) lead!
It's amazing!
oh dang, forgot to add meta-rules:
- You win if your claim stands for 48 hours.
- If you feel like it you can add your solution in spoiler tags, or you can wait until the 48 hours pass by
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Kingdom is just Squire, Village, and Tactician. Play Tactician the previous turn. Play 10 Villages, then 10 Squires for +2 buys. Tactician gives another +Buy. X=22, Y=23.
Taking the lead back from Deadlock39!
Shamelessly stealing this and adding Travelling Fair to give 5 more buys. X=27, Y=28.
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Kingdom is just Tactician, Bank, platinum/colony, Travelling Fair. Play tactician the previous turn, play 5 platina, play 5 banks for 25 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 = 65 coins. Buy 32 traveling fairs, and you have your original buy and a tactician buy for 34 buys. X = 34, Y = 12345
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Kingdom: Squire, Tactician / Travelling Fair, Lost Arts, Seaway, Training
Put +Action, +$ and +Buy tokens on Squire. Play Tactician, next turn, draw a hand of 10 Squires. Play all 10 Squires for +Buys, you now have 32 buys and $20. Buy Travelling Fair 10 times. X = 42, Y = 43.
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tactician, bank, haunted woods, crossroads, p/c, travelling fair
(x,y) = (75, 420)
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Kingdom is Tactician, Bank, Crown, Gladiator, Capital, Bank, Travelling Fair. Play Tact previous turn, then play Capital->Crown->Crown(x2)->Crown(x2)->Crown(x2)->Capital(x2)->Bank(x2)->Bank(x2)->Bank(x2)->Fortune.
This gives +4 buys, (+6+12+14+16+18)*2=132 coins. Buy 66 Travelling fairs, so +70 buys, +1 from tact, +1 initial, so 72 buys
X=72 Y=73 (probably Y is higher, but if it is, I don't win anway.)
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Kingdom is just Tactician, Bank, platinum/colony, Travelling Fair. Play tactician the previous turn, play 5 platina, play 5 banks for 25 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 = 65 coins. Buy 32 traveling fairs, and you have your original buy and a tactician buy for 34 buys. X = 34, Y = 12345
Shamelessly stealing this, but adding Haven. The previous turn, start with a Tactician in play and play 8 havens that each set aside Bank, then Tactician (discarding your last card). Total of 181 coins for 5 Platina and 13 Banks. Buy 90 Traveling Fairs, plus your original buy and a Tactician buy for 92 buys. X=92, Y=92^92.
This doesn't work; with an infinite Haven pile, you can gain an arbitrarily large number of cards if you build long enough.
Turn A: Play 3 Havens and a Tactician.
Turn B: 13 card hand. Play 11 Havens and a Tactician.
Turn C: 21 card hand. Play 19 Havens and a Tactician.
Repeat as long as desired, then draw a bunch of Banks on the last turn.
schadd is currently winning.
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Tact squire throne embargo tfair x=567 y=568
Derp
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Tact squire throne embargo tfair x=567 y=568
With infinite Curse and Embargo piles, Embargo doesn't work either.
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Kingdom: Crossroads, Haunted Woods, Bank, Tactician / Travelling Fair / Colonies, Shelters
With Necropolis you can get an extra HW in, which gives you a 19 card hand next turn, which gets you up to $200, so 100 Travelling Fairs. X = 102 (can't we just leave out Y?)
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tactician, bank, haunted woods, crossroads, p/c, travelling fair
(x,y) = (75, 420)
add royal blacksmith, capital, fortune, remove p/c, x becomes exactly 400 (it's like woooooow)
y thus remains 420
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tactician, bank, haunted woods, crossroads, p/c, travelling fair
(x,y) = (75, 420)
add royal blacksmith, capital, fortune, remove p/c, x becomes exactly 400 (it's like woooooow)
y thus remains 420
shelters, lmao. (487, 69420)
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tactician, bank, haunted woods, crossroads, p/c, travelling fair
(x,y) = (75, 420)
add royal blacksmith, capital, fortune, remove p/c, x becomes exactly 400 (it's like woooooow)
y thus remains 420
shelters, lmao. (487, 69420)
oh god, border village/gain cache. you have to optimize that v. travelling fairs. sounds too much harder than adding numbers together.
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tactician, bank, haunted woods, crossroads, p/c, travelling fair
(x,y) = (75, 420)
add royal blacksmith, capital, fortune, remove p/c, x becomes exactly 400 (it's like woooooow)
y thus remains 420
shelters, lmao. (487, 69420)
oh god, border village/gain cache. you have to optimize that v. travelling fairs. sounds too much harder than adding numbers together.
But if you add Border Village, we can draw unlimited cards with Royal Blacksmith, so we probably don't have to worry about that one.
Cache is $5 for 3 gains though, so that is cheaper than 3x Travelling Fair, so it is better until you have less than $5.
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I believe that I can gain 1841274 cards, and the minimum Y has to be higher still. The kingdom isn't optimized at all either. Should I post it? Really worried that I missed a way to get arbitrarily many gains in this kingdom...
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Kingdom is just Squire. Play 2 for +2 Actions, then 3 for +2 buys. So X=7, Y=8.
Taking an early (and temporary) lead!
It's amazing!
oh dang, forgot to add meta-rules:
- You win if your claim stands for 48 hours.
- If you feel like it you can add your solution in spoiler tags, or you can wait until the 48 hours pass by
I think I'd have a better chance of winning by posting a different solution, because there are lots of trivial ways to improve mine.
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I believe that I can gain 1841274 cards, and the minimum Y has to be higher still. The kingdom isn't optimized at all either. Should I post it? Really worried that I missed a way to get arbitrarily many gains in this kingdom...
man, we were having a moment
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oh heck. does it have talisman? if not i think talisman would be pretty good
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oh heck. does it have talisman? if not i think talisman would be pretty good
brb, adding extra digits to my solution.
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I believe that I can gain 1841274 cards, and the minimum Y has to be higher still. The kingdom isn't optimized at all either. Should I post it? Really worried that I missed a way to get arbitrarily many gains in this kingdom...
Into the second gear! (no that's not a hint ;))
I think I'd have a better chance of winning by posting a different solution, because there are lots of trivial ways to improve mine.
This (minor improvements to go slightly higher) is exactly why I stated you only have to post your solution after the 48 hours. Off course posting it sooner helps in the sense that other people will try to find its flaws.
About 15 years we tried some similar puzzle in the magic universe. We eventually got to numbers with more digits than atoms in the universe. I'm convinced Dominion won't go that high, but so far I'm not surprised by liopoils claim. And back then we also started with a cute day-one with three-digit-solutions.
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oh heck. does it have talisman? if not i think talisman would be pretty good
brb, adding extra digits to my solution.
how wonderfully trivial
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Oh so if I can post what my X and Y are, and nobody beats that after 48 hours, I can just claim my prize? I will do that, after I increase X a lot with Talisman.
Most of the ideas in my solution are posted in some form or another already.
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i think you do have to post the kingdom to redeem your prize
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tactician, bank, haunted woods, crossroads, p/c, travelling fair
(x,y) = (75, 420)
add royal blacksmith, capital, fortune, remove p/c, x becomes exactly 400 (it's like woooooow)
shelters, lmao. (487, 69420)
Add Borrow (adds $1), Banquet, and Cache. Use Banquet to gain Caches buying Travelling Fairs as needed. For every $5 (including $2 for Travelling Fair), you gain 5 cards. This is better than buying only Travelling Fairs (only gets an additional gain for every $2). X= 975, Y=9999.
Add Masquerade so the other player can give you his Necropolis. Add Crown (since n Crowns then n doubled Banks gives more money than just 2n banks)
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tactician, bank, haunted woods, crossroads, p/c, travelling fair
(x,y) = (75, 420)
add royal blacksmith, capital, fortune, remove p/c, x becomes exactly 400 (it's like woooooow)
shelters, lmao. (487, 69420)
Add Borrow (adds $1), Banquet, and Cache. Use Banquet to gain Caches buying Travelling Fairs as needed. For every $5 (including $2 for Travelling Fair), you gain 5 cards. This is better than buying only Travelling Fairs (only gets an additional gain for every $2). X= 975, Y=9999.
Add Masquerade so the other player can give you his Necropolis. Add Crown (since n Crowns then n doubled Banks gives more money than just 2n banks)
crown has that annoying action component that makes it capable of drawing infinite cards with the blacksmith
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If we had the normal rules about number of events/kingdom piles, my kingdom would fit exactly right now.
tactician, bank, haunted woods, crossroads, p/c, travelling fair
(x,y) = (75, 420)
add royal blacksmith, capital, fortune, remove p/c, x becomes exactly 400 (it's like woooooow)
shelters, lmao. (487, 69420)
Add Borrow (adds $1), Banquet, and Cache. Use Banquet to gain Caches buying Travelling Fairs as needed. For every $5 (including $2 for Travelling Fair), you gain 5 cards. This is better than buying only Travelling Fairs (only gets an additional gain for every $2). X= 975, Y=9999.
Add Masquerade so the other player can give you his Necropolis. Add Crown (since n Crowns then n doubled Banks gives more money than just 2n banks)
Every time someone posts a good idea like this I have to revise my solution again! Crown doesn't work for me though because of its ability to throne actions too.
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You could do something with Bridge Trolls to get extra buys and cost reduction on the trigger turn.
Is it easier to generate tons of coins than tons of buys (probably with Bank and Fortune)? If so, remember Masterpiece...
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You can also put tokens on cards involved via events (+1 action will kill things though)
Counterfeiting the last Bank should be better than playing the last 2 banks.
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Also add Council Room so the opponent can make your hand larger
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Also add Council Room so the opponent can make your hand larger
I'm never going to finish at this rate...
Update: It's looking like at least 10 digits here...
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Masterpiece with at least 3 Bridge Trolls in play is 1 card per $1. This is comparable to Banquet+Cache+Travelling Fair, which doesn't have the Bridge Troll requirement but might not get full use of every $1.
Is Crossroads+Haunted Woods more valuable than bringing King's Court into the mix? KC should be fine as long as you have no draw cards (other than Tactician).
Also add Council Room so the opponent can make your hand larger
I'm never going to finish at this rate...
Update: It's looking like at least 10 digits here...
Are you sure you don't have a way to get unbounded gains in there? o.O
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Masterpiece with at least 3 Bridge Trolls in play is 1 card per $1. This is comparable to Banquet+Cache+Travelling Fair, which doesn't have the Bridge Troll requirement but might not get full use of every $1.
Is Crossroads+Haunted Woods more valuable than bringing King's Court into the mix? KC should be fine as long as you have no draw cards (other than Tactician).
Also add Council Room so the opponent can make your hand larger
I'm never going to finish at this rate...
Update: It's looking like at least 10 digits here...
Are you sure you don't have a way to get unbounded gains in there? o.O
Okay, it's clue time. The actions are bounded, but I can draw a large finite number of cards with those few actions.
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Add save for another card in your hand
You can gain 6 cards for $5 by using Ball to gain ferried Caches.
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Okay, it's clue time. The actions are bounded, but I can draw a large finite number of cards with those few actions.
Hm, current thought is Crossroads + Inheritance.
On my own ideas -- just realized that Talisman is going to be better than Haggler, since it doesn't limit the number of Bridge Trolls you can have and allows you to get 6 cards per buy (double Cache).
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Add save for another card in your hand
You can gain 6 cards for $5 by using Ball to gain ferried Caches.
Ferry only works on actions.
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Okay, so I thought I had a good thing going here, but then someone had to point out that the Crown/Bank thing doesn't work with any drawing cards :( I only got to 673230, so liopoil is way ahead anyway.
Per that, I am going to post the thing I was using that I don't see here yet.
You should be able to add Highway to make Cache free since it shouldn't be able to increase hand size. This gives you 3 gains for each Cache buy, which costs $2 via Travelling Fair. With Banquet, you only gain 5 cards for $5 (Banquet + $2 for the buy). Of course, Talisman doesn't work with Banquet, so maybe liopoil is already on this track or something better.
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I think the largest finite amount of action you can get (provided there is draw) is 6: Tactician, Crossroads, 2 Necropolis
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Is Crossroads+Haunted Woods more valuable than bringing King's Court into the mix? KC should be fine as long as you have no draw cards (other than Tactician).
I can get to 548 cards in hand with Crossroads/Haunted Woods, and that was without the 2nd player's Necropolis, so I think I would get to like 1088(more than this because of an extra Haunted Woods on the setup turn...) so probably King's Court is out.
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Oh, the opponent should probably play Swamp Hags on his turn, not Council Rooms. He can play 4 Swamp Hags, if we want the acting player to have 6 actions, so that would add 4 gains for every buy.
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I just realized that Black Market is the key to this puzzle, because you can gain a single copy of every card that isn't in the Supply.
You have to use the basic victory cards and treasures, but apart from that you can use any kingdom size you like with any number of events and/or landmarks. In case you want to use piles that aren't all the same card (like ruins, or Catapult/Rocks, or knights, or...) use the regular rules to generate a pile, then use multiple copies of the entire pile.
This applies to all the piles, even the ones that usually have a unique feel like prizes or black market cards.
You can gain arbitrarily many of each, there are multiple copies of the Black Market pile.
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Okay, so I thought I had a good thing going here, but then someone had to point out that the Crown/Bank thing doesn't work with any drawing cards :( I only got to 673230, so liopoil is way ahead.
Per that, I am going to post the thing I was using that I don't see here yet.
You should be able to add Highway to make Cache free since it shouldn't be able to increase hand size. This gives you 3 gains for each Cache buy, which costs $2 via Travelling Fair. With Banquet, you only gain 5 cards for $5 (Banquet + $2 for the buy). Of course, Talisman doesn't work with Banquet, so maybe liopoil is already on this track or something better.
I am currently using highway with death cart/travelling fair for three gains per 2 coins, but that is not the main part of the solution.
Is Crossroads+Haunted Woods more valuable than bringing King's Court into the mix? KC should be fine as long as you have no draw cards (other than Tactician).
I can get to 548 cards in hand with Crossroads/Haunted Woods, and that was without the 2nd player's Necropolis, so I think I would get to like 1088(more than this because of an extra Haunted Woods on the setup turn...) so probably King's Court is out.
Hmm is it possible to use necropolis on the setup turn? I guess it is as long as you shuffle right afterwards.
I think the largest finite amount of action you can get (provided there is draw) is 6: Tactician, Crossroads, 2 Necropolis
This is what I have too, and with two necros on the setup turn the maximum hand size before playing any cards is 29, yes?
Oh, the opponent should probably play Swamp Hags on his turn, not Council Rooms. He can play 4 Swamp Hags, if we want the acting player to have 6 actions, so that would add 4 gains for every buy.
Actually believe it or not I believe the starting hand size is more important
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Is Crossroads+Haunted Woods more valuable than bringing King's Court into the mix? KC should be fine as long as you have no draw cards (other than Tactician).
I can get to 548 cards in hand with Crossroads/Haunted Woods, and that was without the 2nd player's Necropolis, so I think I would get to like 1088(more than this because of an extra Haunted Woods on the setup turn...) so probably King's Court is out.
Whaaaaat. What's the general idea behind that combo? I am drawing a blank...
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I think the largest finite amount of action you can get (provided there is draw) is 6: Tactician, Crossroads, 2 Necropolis
This is what I have too, and with two necros on the setup turn the maximum hand size before playing any cards is 29, yes?
I think it's 33 (5 normal, 5 tactician, 18 from 6 haunted woods, 4 from opponent's Council Rooms, 1 from Save)
Oh, the opponent should probably play Swamp Hags on his turn, not Council Rooms. He can play 4 Swamp Hags, if we want the acting player to have 6 actions, so that would add 4 gains for every buy.
Actually believe it or not I believe the starting hand size is more important
Yeah, I jsut figured that out as well
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Okay, so I thought I had a good thing going here, but then someone had to point out that the Crown/Bank thing doesn't work with any drawing cards :( I only got to 673230, so liopoil is way ahead.
Per that, I am going to post the thing I was using that I don't see here yet.
You should be able to add Highway to make Cache free since it shouldn't be able to increase hand size. This gives you 3 gains for each Cache buy, which costs $2 via Travelling Fair. With Banquet, you only gain 5 cards for $5 (Banquet + $2 for the buy). Of course, Talisman doesn't work with Banquet, so maybe liopoil is already on this track or something better.
I am currently using highway with death cart/travelling fair for three gains per 2 coins, but that is not the main part of the solution.
Cool, hadn't thought of Death Cart and another option
Is Crossroads+Haunted Woods more valuable than bringing King's Court into the mix? KC should be fine as long as you have no draw cards (other than Tactician).
I can get to 548 cards in hand with Crossroads/Haunted Woods, and that was without the 2nd player's Necropolis, so I think I would get to like 1088(more than this because of an extra Haunted Woods on the setup turn...) so probably King's Court is out.
Hmm is it possible to use necropolis on the setup turn? I guess it is as long as you scheme the necropolis.
I don't see why not. Your setup turn is the last cards before you shuffle, then you shuffle and have everything you need in whatever order on the payload turn.
I think the largest finite amount of action you can get (provided there is draw) is 6: Tactician, Crossroads, 2 Necropolis
This is what I have too, and with two necros on the setup turn the maximum hand size before playing any cards is 29, yes?
Oh, the opponent should probably play Swamp Hags on his turn, not Council Rooms. He can play 4 Swamp Hags, if we want the acting player to have 6 actions, so that would add 4 gains for every buy.
Actually believe it or not I believe the starting hand size is more important
Are you sure? 4 extra gains more than doubles your total. I guess payload does not grow linearly with handsize, so I could see that being true.
29 sounds correct to me. 5 Haunted Woods + Tactician + 4 Opponent Council Rooms.
I come up with a max handsize of 1728, but there may be restrictions from the payload that make that setup non-viable.
Edit: Save I guess... adds one to the start so a bit bigger.
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Im getting a handsize of 4014, with half of the cards being Victory cards (but they can be Harems):
Start with
33 cards, 2 actions
Crossroads ->64 cards, 4 actions
Crossroads ->126 cards, 3 actions
Crossroads ->252 cards, 2 actions
Crossroads ->504 cards, 1 action
Necropolis, Crossroads ->1004 cards, 1 action
Necropolis, Crossroads ->2008 cards, 1 action
Crossroads -> 4014 cards, 0 actions (2007 of the cards are Victory cards)
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Im getting a handsize of 4014, with half of the cards being Victory cards (but they can be Harems):
Start with
33 cards, 2 actions
Crossroads ->64 cards, 4 actions
Crossroads ->126 cards, 3 actions
Crossroads ->252 cards, 2 actions
Crossroads ->504 cards, 1 action
Necropolis, Crossroads ->1004 cards, 1 action
Necropolis, Crossroads ->2008 cards, 1 action
Crossroads -> 4014 cards, 0 actions (2007 of the cards are Victory cards)
I don't think you can play 6 Haunted Woods and Tactician with 6 Actions, so you should start with 3
Also, I had Great Halls, and Royal Blacksmith to get 4 more of any card in hand, but ~2000 Harems is probably better than 4 of whatever you want.
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Aaaand OK, things make more sense now. I misread Deadlock's post as meaning 500+ cards at the start of the turn with just Crossroads + Haunted Woods.
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I think the largest finite amount of action you can get (provided there is draw) is 6: Tactician, Crossroads, 2 Necropolis
This is what I have too, and with two necros on the setup turn the maximum hand size before playing any cards is 29, yes?
I think it's 33 (5 normal, 5 tactician, 18 from 6 haunted woods, 4 from opponent's Council Rooms, 1 from Save)
Oh, the opponent should probably play Swamp Hags on his turn, not Council Rooms. He can play 4 Swamp Hags, if we want the acting player to have 6 actions, so that would add 4 gains for every buy.
Actually believe it or not I believe the starting hand size is more important
Yeah, I jsut figured that out as well
I think you can only play 5 haunted woods because you need to play tactician too. But I forgot about save. 30 it is then. I have to start over every time this happens... and I still haven't figured out how to optimize the buy phase either.
I am getting a 7-digit max hand size in the end, but I do have one strategy that has not been mentioned in the thread yet. If you can come up with that then the rest of my solution is already put together in the thread pretty much.
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I am getting a 7-digit max hand size in the end, but I do have one strategy that has not been mentioned in the thread yet. If you can come up with that then the rest of my solution is already put together in the thread pretty much.
Hmmmm, yep, that is a few orders of magnitude higher, I don't see any cards that get me there at first glance...
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So that is 30 cards, 2 actions
Crossroads ->58 cards, 4 actions
Crossroads ->114 cards, 3 actions
Crossroads ->226 cards, 2 actions
Crossroads ->450 cards, 1 action
Necropolis, Crossroads ->896 cards, 1 action
Necropolis, Crossroads ->1788 cards, 1 action
Crossroads -> 3574 cards, 0 actions (1787 of the cards are Victory cards).
However, we can start with 33 cards, since the opponent bought a Mission and played 3 more council rooms.
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So that is 30 cards, 2 actions
Crossroads ->58 cards, 4 actions
Crossroads ->114 cards, 3 actions
Crossroads ->226 cards, 2 actions
Crossroads ->450 cards, 1 action
Necropolis, Crossroads ->896 cards, 1 action
Necropolis, Crossroads ->1788 cards, 1 action
Crossroads -> 3574 cards, 0 actions (1787 of the cards are Victory cards).
However, we can start with 33 cards, since the opponent bought a Mission and played 3 more council rooms.
Can you also buy a bunch of Expeditions on your previous turn for more cards?
But then you can buy even more Expeditions on this turn, and then even more the next turn and....
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Why didn't the opponent play tactician as well as buy mission so that they can play 4 council rooms?
How are we saving something if we played tactician? We also don't have any money to buy expeditions or save for that matter.
Oh wait, oops, expedition is broken anyway. It lets us build up progressively larger hand sizes forever, so that can't work.
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The opponent doesn't play Council rooms. he plays 3 Swindlers+tactician, buys Mission, then plays 4 more Swindlers. He trashes 7 of our cultists, we draw 21 cards.
This gives us a starting hand size of 47.
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Why didn't the opponent play tactician as well as buy mission so that they can play 4 council rooms?
They need an action to play Tactician, so they can only play 7 Council Rooms across the 2 turns.
How are we saving something if we played tactician? We also don't have any money to buy expeditions or save for that matter.
I think you are right, we can't save.
The opponent doesn't play Council rooms. he plays 3 Swindlers+tactician, buys Mission, then plays 4 more Swindlers. He trashes 7 of our cultists, we draw 21 cards.
This gives us a starting hand size of 47.
Cultist can draw non-terminally, and can give an unlimited handsize
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Oh, I guess you're right we cant save after tactician. Money is no issue though, we played some harems.
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I have no idea what is going on here.
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Oh no, could we possess our opponent five times and play 15 council rooms?
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Ok, opponent plays 6 council rooms, 1 urchin , we set aside 11 Horse Traders. Then he plays another Council room. We have 23 cards, 11 of which are horse Traders. We draw 15 from Haunted Woods + 5 from tactician. That's 43 cards, 42 after we cellar away the Horse Traders for something useful.
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Oh no, could we possess our opponent five times and play 15 council rooms?
But then we can't play huanted woods or Tactician.
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Oh no, could we possess our opponent five times and play 15 council rooms?
No, you can't use Possesison. Possession + Councilroom + Crossroads is enough to get to any number.
(you play 2 possessions, in their 2 turns they play 4, then they make you play 8, ...)
You can use Mission and Outpost though, to make them have 3 turns before it's yours again.
I'm currently sitting at 265843082805650 coins. I guess I could use them to overpay for Masterpiece, but there has to be something more advanced.
Also there might be a mistake, but I don't think so. Anyway, time to sleep :)
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Oh no, could we possess our opponent five times and play 15 council rooms?
But then we can't play huanted woods or Tactician.
Oh right, forgot how turn-order worked with Possession.
Ok, opponent plays 6 council rooms, 1 urchin , we set aside 11 Horse Traders. Then he plays another Council room. We have 23 cards, 11 of which are horse Traders. We draw 15 from Haunted Woods + 5 from tactician. That's 43 cards, 42 after we cellar away the Horse Traders for something useful.
I think I will just do my solution with 29 cards at this point and we can adjust this bit later. Even though the difference is probably a full order of magnitude.
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I think I found a potentially better way for the payoff: Hand is 1 Cellar, rest is tunnels. We Discard all the tunnels, draw 1 cellar and tunnels. iterate. This converts n+1 cards in hand into n*(n-1)/2 gains.
Ok, bought just playing banks gives the same amount of coins, and we are already converting 1 coin into more than 1 buy, so this isn't good.
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I'm currently sitting at 265843082805650 coins.
oh zut. I just realized I can get way higher. How am I supposed to sleep now? :(
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I'm currently sitting at 265843082805650 coins.
oh zut. I just realized I can get way higher. How am I supposed to sleep now? :(
Wow, and that's already 15 digits. I'm not done yet, but I'm expecting to end with 14-16 digits too. I'm not using masterpiece though... so probably you have found something else.
Stef, how sure are you that this will end up staying under the number of atoms in the universe? I am not so sure anymore.
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You should be able to add Highway to make Cache free since it shouldn't be able to increase hand size. This gives you 3 gains for each Cache buy, which costs $2 via Travelling Fair. With Banquet, you only gain 5 cards for $5 (Banquet + $2 for the buy).
This is the best coin to gains conversion we have atm i think.
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I'm currently sitting at 265843082805650 coins. I guess I could use them to overpay for Masterpiece, but there has to be something more advanced.
Also there might be a mistake, but I don't think so. Anyway, time to sleep :)
liopoil was getting 1.5 cards per $1 with Highway+Death Cart+Travelling Fair.
But here's an improvement: 3 cards per $1 via Doctor+Hunting Grounds.
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You can use Mission and Outpost though, to make them have 3 turns before it's yours again.
So that lets them play 9 Council rooms, urchin, Council Room, giving us 14 Horse Traders to set aside. Then we have 29 cards(14 of which are Horse Traders) + 20 from haunted Wood+tactician.
So 48 cards after cellaring the Horse traders.
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You can use Mission and Outpost though, to make them have 3 turns before it's yours again.
So that lets them play 9 Council rooms, urchin, Council Room, giving us 14 Horse Traders to set aside. Then we have 29 cards(14 of which are Horse Traders) + 20 from haunted Wood+tactician.
So 48 cards after cellaring the Horse traders.
I don't think that you can use outpost and mission. Mission specifies the previous turn not being yours and outpost can't let you take more than two consecutive turns. What happens if they play outpost and buy mission in the same turn?
I suppose we can't use outpost/mission ourselves right, since that would count as a separate turn?
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I'm currently sitting at 265843082805650 coins. I guess I could use them to overpay for Masterpiece, but there has to be something more advanced.
Also there might be a mistake, but I don't think so. Anyway, time to sleep :)
liopoil was getting 1.5 cards per $1 with Highway+Death Cart+Travelling Fair.
But here's an improvement: 3 cards per $1 via Doctor+Hunting Grounds.
9 cards for $1 provided you have a Watchtower in hand: Play 5 Highways, spend every $ overpaying 1 for Stonemason, gaining 2 Hunting Grounds, and trashing each of them for 3 estates.
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You can use Mission and Outpost though, to make them have 3 turns before it's yours again.
So that lets them play 9 Council rooms, urchin, Council Room, giving us 14 Horse Traders to set aside. Then we have 29 cards(14 of which are Horse Traders) + 20 from haunted Wood+tactician.
So 48 cards after cellaring the Horse traders.
I don't think that you can use outpost and mission. Mission specifies the previous turn not being yours and outpost can't let you take more than two consecutive turns. What happens if they play outpost and buy mission in the same turn?
I suppose we can't use outpost/mission ourselves right, since that would count as a separate turn?
You can, from the Wiki:
If you buy a Mission and play an Outpost on the same turn, both extra turn effects try to happen at the same time. If you resolve Mission's first, your Mission turn will start with 3 cards, and you won't get an Outpost turn (and Outpost stays in play until the Clean-up phase of the player to your left). If you resolve Outpost first, you get the normal 3-card Outpost turn, then your Mission turn, giving you three turns in a row.
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I'm currently sitting at 265843082805650 coins. I guess I could use them to overpay for Masterpiece, but there has to be something more advanced.
Also there might be a mistake, but I don't think so. Anyway, time to sleep :)
liopoil was getting 1.5 cards per $1 with Highway+Death Cart+Travelling Fair.
But here's an improvement: 3 cards per $1 via Doctor+Hunting Grounds.
9 cards for $1 provided you have a Watchtower in hand: Play 5 Highways, spend every $ overpaying 1 for Stonemason, gaining 2 Hunting Grounds, and trashing each of them for 3 estates.
11 gains for $1 with watchtower in hand: Play 4 highways, spend every $ overpaying 1 for Stonemason, gain 2 Catacombs, trash them for 2 ferried Hunting grounds, trash these for 6 estates
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I'm currently sitting at 265843082805650 coins. I guess I could use them to overpay for Masterpiece, but there has to be something more advanced.
Also there might be a mistake, but I don't think so. Anyway, time to sleep :)
liopoil was getting 1.5 cards per $1 with Highway+Death Cart+Travelling Fair.
But here's an improvement: 3 cards per $1 via Doctor+Hunting Grounds.
9 cards for $1 provided you have a Watchtower in hand: Play 5 Highways, spend every $ overpaying 1 for Stonemason, gaining 2 Hunting Grounds, and trashing each of them for 3 estates.
But you can't use talisman for this, so I think death cart still is best. I'm currently trying to figure out the best way to balance talismen with banks...
EDIT: Actually, just trashing free hunting grounds with watchtower is best, since that works with talisman.
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I'm currently sitting at 265843082805650 coins. I guess I could use them to overpay for Masterpiece, but there has to be something more advanced.
Also there might be a mistake, but I don't think so. Anyway, time to sleep :)
liopoil was getting 1.5 cards per $1 with Highway+Death Cart+Travelling Fair.
But here's an improvement: 3 cards per $1 via Doctor+Hunting Grounds.
9 cards for $1 provided you have a Watchtower in hand: Play 5 Highways, spend every $ overpaying 1 for Stonemason, gaining 2 Hunting Grounds, and trashing each of them for 3 estates.
You'd need Travelling Fair for that though?
And oh, I guess this and overpay tricks won't win once Talisman is factored in? Seems likely, though I'm not sure because Talisman might drastically reduce the max coin as well.
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We want to find the point where a talisman play is as valuable as a bank play. Banks are more valuable the more talismen are in play and talismen are more valuable the more coins you have, so there should be a balance point. Suppose coins and buys are interchangeable. Then each bank contributes buys on the order of how many cards are in your hand. So if you have n cards and t talismen, a bank is worth roughly n*t gains. A talisman is worth one gain for every buy, and there is roughly a buy for every coin. So a talisman is worth roughly n*b, where b is the number of banks.
Therefore I think we want about the same number of banks as talismen? And that this is way way better than all banks or all talismen?
EDIT: Yeah. The total value from banks is bnt and the total value from talismen is tnb, so we are getting around 2bnt total gains. Since n is constant and b + t ~ n, we definitely want b ~ t, and this should result in O(n^3) gains.
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...and this should result in O(n^3) gains.
nope, not sleeping, I'm currently at 26247947549846681740155978489132936614812436891329462040272643457209803707073094981329951743596 coins. So that would mean uh... a lot of gains :)
And that number of atoms in the universe is certainly going out of the window. But a number with more digits than atoms in the universe? not so sure yet.
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note that watchtower+hunting grounds stops us from using inheritance since that would allow inheriting hunting grounds for infinite estate gaining. We can use feodum instead though
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...and this should result in O(n^3) gains.
nope, not sleeping, I'm currently at 26247947549846681740155978489132936614812436891329462040272643457209803707073094981329951743596 coins. So that would mean uh... a lot of gains :)
And that number of atoms in the universe is certainly going out of the window. But a number with more digits than atoms in the universe? not so sure yet.
Why are you going for coins rather than gains? Are you not using talismen? Are getting more coins than the number of cards you draw cubed? I haven't bothered to count your number, but it's more than 20, which is around the best-case scenario for me. EDIT: It's 94 digits, so listen up atoms in the universe, you each need to comprise trillions of cards... each.
A number with more digits than atoms in the universe would require a tetration sort of operation, which I have not seen in dominion.
note that watchtower+hunting grounds stops us from using inheritance since that would allow inheriting hunting grounds for infinite estate gaining. We can use feodum instead though
What was inheritance for?
Unrelated: I think that we don't want a giant counterfeit chain for the banks? Because even though the early banks would get a boost from more counterfeits in play, the later banks would suffer from trashed banks and counterfeits.
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Okay, I finally finished calculating it all. I can get 9109511287936000000 gains total, and that's without too much optimization. Optimizing and starting with 40+ cards in hand rather than 29 should add a couple digits. Right now it is 18 (almost 19) digits long. Clearly Stef has found something I haven't.
EDIT: going back to the maximum starting handsize, could we call guide at the start of our turn, since we have at most one card in our hand (after setting aside horse traders)?
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Are you using Cellar to swap Horse Traders out for Victory cards? I'm still not sure how you are getting so many more cards than the process Watno posted.
Nevermind, Watno posted that when he first mentioned it.
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Are you using Cellar to swap Horse Traders out for Victory cards? I'm still not sure how you are getting so many more cards than the process Watno posted.
Nevermind, Watno posted that when he first mentioned it.
I'm actually still using just a 29 card starting hand. Using a 40+ card starting hand would probably just about double my gains.
Right now I'm trying to think about if there is something I can inherit that is better than harem. It needs to be non-terminal but also can't draw cards.
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Well, I'm not even winning anymore, so maybe if I reveal my solution we can work together to beat stef. The key card is... SCOUT! That's right, Roadrunner. Here you go:
Kingdom: Haunted Woods, Tactician, Counterfeit, Bank, Fortune, Talisman, Highway, Watchtower, Hunting Grounds, Crossroads, Scout, Harem, Masquerade, Council Room, Shelters, Traveling Fair
Start the turn before with a tactician in play. Play Crossroads, 2 Necros, 5 Haunted Woods, and Tactician. Shuffle. Have your opponent’s necropolis via masquerade. Opponent has Tactician in play, plays crossroads and four council rooms, we draw four. Our real turn:
Start with 29 in hand. Play 6 highways.
Play 28 scouts, drawing 112 victory cards.
Play crossroads, drawing 111 scouts and a crossroads
Play 111 scouts, drawing 444 victory cards
Play crossroads, drawing 555 scouts and a crossroads
Play 555 scouts, drawing 2220 victory cards
Play crossroads, drawing 2775 scouts and a crossroads
Play 2775 scouts, drawing 11100 victory cards
Play crossroads, drawing 13874 scouts, a necropolis, and a crossroads
Play 13874 scouts, drawing 55496 victory cards and play necropolis
Play crossroads, drawing 69370 scouts, a necropolis, and a crossroads
Play 69370 scouts, drawing 277488 victory cards, and play necropolis
Play crossroads, drawing 346859 scouts and a crossroads
Play 346859 scouts, drawing 1387436 victory cards
Play crossroads, drawing 1734296 treasure cards
Now it's the buy phase with 3468592 cards in hand, split evenly between victories and treasures. Luckily, all of the victory cards are Harem, so play them all for 3468592 coins.
Now play 999999 Talismen for as many coins.
Now play 734295 banks. We started with 2734295 treasures in play, so we get coins from banks equal to 734295*2734295 + 734295*734294/2 = 2277373353390.
We have 2277377821981 total coins. I still have two cards left in hand though, and they are fortune and watchtower. I double my coins with fortune. Then I buy 2277377821981 travelling fairs. I also have an original buy, a buy from fortune, and a buy from tactician for 2277377821984 total buys. Hunting Grounds are free, so get a ton of them, and trash each with watchtower for 3 estates. Four cards are gained each time and a million copies are gained each time, for a total of 9109511287936000000 gains.
Scout allows me to roughly quintuple my hand size with each crossroads instead of double. It only works because scout is only capable of drawing cards that don't draw more cards, which is what bounds it. The ideas to improve that I have right now are:
- Make opponent play urchin and use outpost/mission to get a larger starting hand. This currently can't even get to 50 cards in hand and so wouldn't make a huge difference.
-Adjust the talisman/bank numbers to be more optimal, probably should be playing some counterfeits too
That might get it over 10^20, but certainly not over 10^25, and we need to be closer to 10^100 to beat stef.
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In case you want to use piles that aren't all the same card (like ruins, or Catapult/Rocks, or knights, or...) use the regular rules to generate a pile, then use multiple copies of the entire pile.
This applies to all the piles, even the ones that usually have a unique feel like prizes or black market cards.
So essentially, given long enough, I can set up a turn with an arbitrarily large kingdom(i.e. arbitrarily many different named cards), so long as my solution doesn't rely on the cards I'm playing being in the Supply?
i.e. I play Black Market, buying Scout
(I play Black Market many times over many turns)
I play Black Market, buying Scout...
So no point in even limiting kingdom to 10, just say Kingdom: Black Market and 9 other irrelevant cards, Black Market deck: Haunted Woods, Tactician, .....
That said, take Liopoil's solution, add in Horse Traders and Cellar, and start the turn with twice as many cards. Factor of two isn't much when we're dealing with orders of magnitude, but any little bit helps.
EDIT: And if we're on the topic of tiny irrelevant savings, add Save to the kingdom to get that one extra starting card.
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In case you want to use piles that aren't all the same card (like ruins, or Catapult/Rocks, or knights, or...) use the regular rules to generate a pile, then use multiple copies of the entire pile.
This applies to all the piles, even the ones that usually have a unique feel like prizes or black market cards.
So essentially, given long enough, I can set up a turn with an arbitrarily large kingdom(i.e. arbitrarily many different named cards), so long as my solution doesn't rely on the cards I'm playing being in the Supply?
i.e. I play Black Market, buying Scout
(I play Black Market many times over many turns)
I play Black Market, buying Scout...
So no point in even limiting kingdom to 10, just say Kingdom: Black Market and 9 other irrelevant cards, Black Market deck: Haunted Woods, Tactician, .....
That said, take Liopoil's solution, add in Horse Traders and Cellar, and start the turn with twice as many cards. Factor of two isn't much when we're dealing with orders of magnitude, but any little bit helps.
It already isn't limited to 10. And it actually probably ends up being more like a full order of magnitude extra to do that, but I don't feel like recalculating it so I'll wait until there's some other new innovation.
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So no point in even limiting kingdom to 10, just say Kingdom: Black Market and 9 other irrelevant cards, Black Market deck: Haunted Woods, Tactician, .....
It already isn't limited to 10.
Hmmm, wow, I really need to learn to read the whole problem....
Anyway, might still be sometimes useful to have cards outside the Supply e.g. if you want to Inherit something specific, but can't Inherit something else because it would hit infinity. Still can't do it with Hunting Grounds, though, cause you have to actually buy those.
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new challenge: how low can you go
kingdom: catacombs, trade route
x:0 y:-1
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Is there a reason you can't Seaway Scout? And Training?
Oh, Highway. Duh.
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Is there a reason you can't Seaway Scout? And Training?
Oh, Highway. Duh.
But perhaps ephesos is onto something... if Highway is in the Black Market, can we have Seaway, and get a ton more buys?
Of course after typing that I realize, the number of times Scout is played is many orders of magnitude smaller than number of buys you end up with, so it can't really make an impact.
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Is there a reason you can't Seaway Scout? And Training?
Oh, Highway. Duh.
But perhaps ephesos is onto something... if Highway is in the Black Market, can we have Seaway, and get a ton more buys?
Of course after typing that I realize, the number of times Scout is played is many orders of magnitude smaller than number of buys you end up with, so it can't really make an impact.
I'm unclear on the rules for Black Market. Does the Black Market contain infinite cards, or is it truly limited? If it's limited, you could get your starting hand size much larger with singleton draw cards and start with way more actions with singleton villages.
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use the regular rules to generate a pile, then use multiple copies of the entire pile.
This applies to all the piles, even the ones that usually have a unique feel like prizes or black market cards.
So you can pick what is in the black market, but those cards repeat infinitely.
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use the regular rules to generate a pile, then use multiple copies of the entire pile.
This applies to all the piles, even the ones that usually have a unique feel like prizes or black market cards.
So you can pick what is in the black market, but those cards repeat infinitely.
Oops, somehow I missed that it mentioned Black Market by name.
Hm, there must be a way to take advantage of this. Maybe a trick with Inheritance could work, so that all those drawn Victory cards would be something better than Harem. It would mean that Hunting Grounds and Scout would both have to be in the Black Market...
Edit: Hm, maybe there really isn't anything better, since Harem boosts all the Banks.
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Play 69370 scouts, drawing 277488 victory cards
This is incorrect, isn't it?
69370*4 = 277480
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Scout stops us from using Cellar and Inheritance, since we'd get arbitrary hand sizes then.
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We can use inheritance if Scout is in the BM though
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Is there a reason you can't Seaway Scout? And Training?
Oh, Highway. Duh.
But couldn't you just replace Highway with Quarry?
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Well, I'm not even winning anymore, so maybe if I reveal my solution we can work together to beat stef.
Dang, now I don't know how to respond. On one hand this seems like the best strategy, because a collective can achieve so much more by working together.
On the other hand, I can now just see what you're doing and use all your tricks as well. Should I post my temporary solution?
Anyway, I added another 30-ish digits, now at 116165114499503764718033856255079030270920004267173727491432301641093449874974422531169444876036782864071616563892742971866741.
It was't your scout-trick though, the main difference is some better execution and the increased starting hand with Horse Traders.
Using Scout would make my main trick impossible, and handsize*4 a couple of times doesn't make up for it.
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So you are getting a lot bigger handsize?
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Okay, so I came up with another idea, but my estimation looks like it is coming up with a smaller handsize than what liopoil is getting so far, so it might not be useful.
I was looking through the card list and found Golem. The friendly splitter that can't split itself. There are some problems. We can't have any non-terminals, because then he becomes a Village. This means, no Scout, no Highway, no Cellar.
With Council Room + Horse Trader tricks, I am finding a max handsize of 51 to start the turn. We have to use up our extra Tactician action to Storeroom away the Horse Traders (because Cellar is out). Now you can Golem into Crossroadsx2 three times, then Crossroads+Necro, Crossroadsx2, Crossroads+Necro, Crossroadsx2 twice.
That gets me to 797260 cards in hand (half Harem). As mentioned, this is lower than the currently discussed solution, so it is no good, but maybe there is something of use here. The lack of cost reduction could hurt this too. (Edit: Can use Quarry for cost reduction, so this one is probably okay)
I'm not sure where we are at on the thing we are buying, and this is only a minor improvement in the grand scheme of things, but I think we can Inherit Death Cart to gain 2 Ruins for every Estate that we gain from trashing Hunting Grounds.
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Shouldn't the starting handsize be way higher than that, since both we and the opponent can Golem on the Setup turn? I think the best thing to Inherit is Horse Traders, since if we can't use Cellar, it's to costly to replace the Horse Traders in our starting hand, and we don't really need to do it if they're VP cards.
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be careful with golem + ruined village
Edit: whowa golem is a great suggestion. I'll have to puzzle a lot on that. But keep in mind that it also does require removing tactician.
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oh, and just to lift your spirits, I added another 50 digits to my solution :)
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Shouldn't the starting handsize be way higher than that, since both we and the opponent can Golem on the Setup turn? I think the best thing to Inherit is Horse Traders, since if we can't use Cellar, it's to costly to replace the Horse Traders in our starting hand, and we don't really need to do it if they're VP cards.
You are definitely right about the setup turn... I didn't think to rework those. Being able to Golem into more Haunted Woods and more Council Rooms for the opponent is great. That will increase the starting hand above where liopoil is now for sure, but it doesn't seem like it will reach the numbers Stef has posted.
My gut says you are probably right about the HT Inheritance because each action gets us ~4x the handsize now. as compared to getting 2.5x more gains in the end. It does give us less treasures in play, but the magnitude of that probably doesn't matter.
...and as Stef has pointed out, Deathcart is banned when using Golem because it brings a non-terminal Ruin with it.
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golem + tactician + council room lets us play multiple tacticians, leading to more actions the next turn and letting us get arbitrarily large handisizes. I thought of golem, but we have to drop tactician for it.
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Our Setup turn plays 6 Golems->11 Haunted Woods and 1 tactician.
If Golem has the +Coin token, the opponent can have 3 setup turns with 4 actions each
first 2 setup turns play 4 Golems->7 CR+1 Tact, last is 7CR+1 Swindler, trashing our overgrown Estate
So we have 5+22 estates inheriting horse traders in hand, giving us 54 cards before we draw another 38 from our Haunted Woods and Tactician.
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We'll use feodum+watchtower for all of our gaining needs. No issues there with inheritance or ruins.
Looks like scout is going to have to go :'(
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But then Feodum costs 4? I think we can't do Cost reduction and just gain coppers, with all the Talismans, it deosn't matter anyway.
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Our Setup turn plays 6 Golems->12 Haunted Woods, Opponent's 3 setup turns play 3 Golems->6+6+5 Concil Rooms+1 Swindler Trashing overgrown estate.
23 Horse Traders get set aside, so we have 46 cards before drawing another 36 for a total of 82 (23 of which are Horse Traders/Estates)
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But then Feodum costs 4? I think we can't do Cost reduction and just gain coppers, with all the Talismans, it deosn't matter anyway.
Oops, talisman doesn't work on victory cards. But using hunting grounds instead of copper quadruples our gains. So unless there's a big innovation it's not worth it.
Keep in mind that linear increase in starting hand only results in linear increase in final handsize, which is currently O(n^3) in gains.
So if we ise golem and drop tactician and scout, we still only get 14 plays of crossroads, and 2^14 < 5^7 which is what we currently have with scout. The increase in initial handsize isn't worth it.
I think stef has found a way to get more coins than just banks.
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It does hardly matter what we buy, for each buy we get 1+#talismans+c gains, where c is some constant that is at most 43 i think. The gains from DeathCart/Hunting Grounds/whatever aren't multiplied by talisman.
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Maybe we should put in some IGGs to get more treasures into play for the Banks? don't think that does much though.
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Anyway, I added another 30-ish digits, now at 116165114499503764718033856255079030270920004267173727491432301641093449874974422531169444876036782864071616563892742971866741.
It was't your scout-trick though, the main difference is some better execution and the increased starting hand with Horse Traders.
This makes me believe the starting hand size is more than a linear factor in Stef's solution.
Also, I'm really confused that the number is odd, so apparently the last Treasure played isn't a Fortune.
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However, there is a restriction. In order for your solution to be valid some number Y has to exist (which is bigger than X, you can choose whatever you like) that is impossible to reach using your kingdom. So you claim "Y cannot be reached using my cards" and then someone else gets to use your kingdom, uses perfect shuffle luck and all the time in the world to set up his magic turn, and still cannot reach your number Y.
I assume this exists so that you can't spam a hand of just one Rats and no other cards in hand or the deck forever.
116165114499503764718033856255079030270920004267173727491432301641093449874974422531169444876036782864071616563892742971866741.
...Yeah, I don't think I could do anything better than this.
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Since the number of differently named cards is rather big but still limited Menageries can be used to increase the handsize in the beginning of the turn.
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It does hardly matter what we buy, for each buy we get 1+#talismans+c gains, where c is some constant that is at most 43 i think. The gains from DeathCart/Hunting Grounds/whatever aren't multiplied by talisman.
Yes they are. We gain more HG/Deathcarts each of which gain estates/ruins. In my solution I have 999999 talismen and play and am gaining 4000000 cards per buy.
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I also had the idea to use Menageries to start your hand. If I'm not mistaken, there are 195 different cards that are compatible with the puzzle, i.e., don't lead to infinite solutions.
Start with a hand of Menagerie + X and continue playing and drawing Menageries until one copy of every card that does not lead to infinite solutions is in hand. Then play a cellar discarding all unneeded cards and replace them with crossroads, scouts, or whatever you need to start off.
copper
silver
gold
platinum
potion
estate
duchy
province
colony
curse
hovel
necropolis
overgrown estate
cellar
chapel
moat
chancellor
woodcutter
workshop
bureaucrat
feast
gardens
militia
moneylender
remodel
smithy
spy
thief
council room
library
mine
witch
adventurer
courtyard
pawn
secret chamber
masquerade
steward
swindler
baron
bridge
coppersmith
scout
duke
saboteur
torturer
trading post
harem
lighthouse
pearl diver
ambassador
lookout
smugglers
warehouse
cutpurse
island
navigator
pirate ship
salvager
sea hag
treasure map
explorer
ghost ship
merchant ship
outpost
tactician
wharf
transmute
vineyard
herbalist
familiar
loan
trade route
watchtower
bishop
monument
quarry
talisman
contraband
mint
mountebank
rabble
royal seal
vault
goons
hoard
bank
expand
forge
fortune teller
menagerie
horse traders
remake
young witch
harvest
horn of plenty
jester
fairgrounds
crossroads
duchess
fools gold
develop
oasis
oracle
scheme
jack of all trades
noble brigand
nomad camp
silk road
spice merchant
trader
cache
cartographer
embassy
haggler
highway
ill gotten gains
mandarin
margrave
farmland
abandoned mine
ruined library
ruined market
ruined village
survivors
spoils
mercenary
poor house
beggar
forager
sage
storeroom
urchin
mercenary
armory
death cart
feodum
marauder
rats
scavenger
bands of misfits
catacombs
count
counterfeit
graverobber
junk dealer
pillage
altar
hunting grounds
stonemason
doctor
masterpiece
taxman
journeyman
soothsayer
ratcatcher
raze
amulet
dungeon
gear
guide
messanger
ranger
bridge troll
distant lands
giant
haunted woods
relic
swamp hag
wine merchant
engineer
overlord
royal blacksmith
catapult
rocks
chariot race
enchantress
farmers market
gladiator
fortune
temple
capital
charm
forum
groundskeeper
legionary
wild hunt
Humble Castle
Crumbling Castle
Small Castle
Haunted Castle
Opulent Castle
Sprawling Castle
Grand Castle
King's Castle
black market
envoy
stash
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golem + tactician + council room lets us play multiple tacticians, leading to more actions the next turn and letting us get arbitrarily large handisizes. I thought of golem, but we have to drop tactician for it.
Boo, I thought I was actually getting somewhere by doing exactly this (Golem into Tactician+Wharf), but totally spaced that getting more actions on the next turn could compound in a limitless way.
Losing Tactician hurts the payload turn quite a bit. With just Haunted Woods for setup, and 1 less action on that turn, I am ending up with 1649228 cards in hand at the end. I'm not sure that is doing better than Scout did. Didn't you have a 7 digit handsize there?
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golem + tactician + council room lets us play multiple tacticians, leading to more actions the next turn and letting us get arbitrarily large handisizes. I thought of golem, but we have to drop tactician for it.
Boo, I thought I was actually getting somewhere by doing exactly this (Golem into Tactician+Wharf), but totally spaced that getting more actions on the next turn could compound in a limitless way.
Losing Tactician hurts the payload turn quite a bit. With just Haunted Woods for setup, and 1 less action on that turn, I am ending up with 1649228 cards in hand at the end. I'm not sure that is doing better than Scout did. Didn't you have a 7 digit handsize there.
Woah, how did you manage 7 digits without scout?
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It does hardly matter what we buy, for each buy we get 1+#talismans+c gains, where c is some constant that is at most 43 i think. The gains from DeathCart/Hunting Grounds/whatever aren't multiplied by talisman.
Yes they are. We gain more HG/Deathcarts each of which gain estates/ruins. In my solution I have 999999 talismen and play and am gaining 4000000 cards per buy.
Oh right.
Regarding menagerie: We can't use Cellar if we have Scout.
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golem + tactician + council room lets us play multiple tacticians, leading to more actions the next turn and letting us get arbitrarily large handisizes. I thought of golem, but we have to drop tactician for it.
Boo, I thought I was actually getting somewhere by doing exactly this (Golem into Tactician+Wharf), but totally spaced that getting more actions on the next turn could compound in a limitless way.
Losing Tactician hurts the payload turn quite a bit. With just Haunted Woods for setup, and 1 less action on that turn, I am ending up with 1649228 cards in hand at the end. I'm not sure that is doing better than Scout did. Didn't you have a 7 digit handsize there.
Woah, how did you manage 7 digits without scout?
Setup turn you play 15 Haunted Woods.
Opponent plays 21 Council Rooms, and a Terminal attack
Set aside 26 HT
Call Guide (5)
return HT and draw (57)
draw 45 cards from HW (102)
Then do the Golem into Crossroads thing for 14 Crossroads plays
(It is possible I messed something up here...)
Edit: I did mess something up. My sheet is still giving a Tactician action at the start of the setup turns.
Edit2: 13 HW plays and 19 Council Rooms from the opponent still has 7 digits: 1485388
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Also you cant have Guide if you have Golem.
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Also you cant have Guide if you have Golem.
You're right :(
-5 starting cards
ending hand size drops to 1403468
If there is another way have the opponent draw us cards... (If Crossroads is the only draw) then maybe we can add Tactician back which helps. Adding more actions to the payload turn is the best way to increase handsize (as shown by the somewhat minor effect dropping the starting hand had on this.)
Edit: Swindling Overgrown Estate brought that to mind, which I also realize gets me 1 starting card back from losing Guide: 1419852
This still seems not quite as good as using Scout...
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Yeah, this stuff isn't large-scale enough. Let's ditch scout for now. Probably golem too. stef didn't use those.
Is there a way to get a starting handsize with at least four digits? I'm thinking no.
Then, is there a way to multiply the starting handsize by significantly more than 5^7? Maybe.
Is there a way to get more than O(n^3) coins/gains from n cards? Maybe.
Those last two are the ones we should work on. Specifically, there is probably a way to get more coins than bank.
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golem + tactician + council room lets us play multiple tacticians, leading to more actions the next turn and letting us get arbitrarily large handisizes. I thought of golem, but we have to drop tactician for it.
Boo, I thought I was actually getting somewhere by doing exactly this (Golem into Tactician+Wharf), but totally spaced that getting more actions on the next turn could compound in a limitless way.
Losing Tactician hurts the payload turn quite a bit. With just Haunted Woods for setup, and 1 less action on that turn, I am ending up with 1649228 cards in hand at the end. I'm not sure that is doing better than Scout did. Didn't you have a 7 digit handsize there?
Don't be sad, golem is great. It increased my solution with almost 100 digits. Now at
644503462064339691320893988101397183386916627871658730731090840701592208350494927857604712534214146747656606291383195334413968884723506307376928010976060955365409470217364268534760821127116356396275266530923739838989156691286369712695731456473173007335036637008350123620
Happy hunting :)
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More small scale, but it's all I've got for now. Removing Council Room only lets us set aside 7 Horse Traders, but lets us bring back Tactician. (This might be bad because we can't buy Hunting Grounds, and Death Cart is already out, and Cache can't be cost reduced with Quarry... I don't know)
Getting Tactician gives an action back, which bumps Crossroads plays up to 16. I got a handsize of 3910220 doing that. (but 2^16 still falls slightly short of 5^7)
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Confirmed that stef only uses terminals...
ooo, we can use crown now, right? That should be helpful. I don't think its throne room ability ruins anything? In fact it is extremely helpful?
Yes, we should be using crown.
Or, hmm, I think a crown-crossroads chain could lead to unbounded draw, so nvm :(
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Don't be sad, golem is great. It increased my solution with almost 100 digits. Now at
Lol... happy to be of service. I look forward to seeing this thing once the competition is over.
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Don't be sad, golem is great. It increased my solution with almost 100 digits. Now at
Lol... happy to be of service. I look forward to seeing this thing once the competition is over.
We have 35 hours to get to 10^100, then a bit longer to get to 10^200. I think we can do it!
Now convinced it's a better way to use the cards we draw. Fortune is only once per turn. What generates more coins than bank?
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Don't be sad, golem is great. It increased my solution with almost 100 digits. Now at
Lol... happy to be of service. I look forward to seeing this thing once the competition is over.
We have 35 hours to get to 10^100, then a bit longer to get to 10^200. I think we can do it!
Now convinced it's a better way to use the cards we draw. Fortune is only once per turn. What generates more coins than bank?
I can only think if really minor things like Counterfeiting the last Bank gives 1 more coin and a buy.
That and things that go infinite like Venture. IGG was mentioned, but the effect would have to be minimal there if it even gives anything.
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Maybe something can be done with a black market play?
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Can we set up the Black market so we can only get a finite amount of Villas? If there are 13 different cards in the black market, each villa allows us to play 2 Golems=4 black Markets, so it allows us to dig 12 cards deep into the BM pile. This should mean we can repeat this at most 13 times, doesn't it?
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Can we set up the Black market so we can only get a finite amount of Villas? If there are 13 different cards in the black market, each villa allows us to play 2 Golems=4 black Markets, so it allows us to dig 12 cards deep into the BM pile. This should mean we can repeat this at most 13 times, doesn't it?
But villa gives two actions and we can stockpile them beforehand.
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Can we set up the Black market so we can only get a finite amount of Villas? If there are 13 different cards in the black market, each villa allows us to play 2 Golems=4 black Markets, so it allows us to dig 12 cards deep into the BM pile. This should mean we can repeat this at most 13 times, doesn't it?
But villa gives two actions and we can stockpile them beforehand.
Should I make a ruling about this? Liopoils point is valid so you can't use villa, but in my mind this trick was entirely impossible. Must admit the rules aren't super clear.
Anyway:
You get to specify which cards go in the black market deck, but the person trying to spoil your solution gets to shuffle it any way he likes before the game starts.
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Can we set up the Black market so we can only get a finite amount of Villas? If there are 13 different cards in the black market, each villa allows us to play 2 Golems=4 black Markets, so it allows us to dig 12 cards deep into the BM pile. This should mean we can repeat this at most 13 times, doesn't it?
But villa gives two actions and we can stockpile them beforehand.
Should I make a ruling about this? Liopoils point is valid so you can't use villa, but in my mind this trick was entirely impossible. Must admit the rules aren't super clear.
Anyway:
You get to specify which cards go in the black market deck, but the person trying to spoil your solution gets to shuffle it any way he likes before the game starts.
Do they shuffle it before or after you stack infinitely many of them? Are the decks shuffled independently?
I think it should be legal. In theory you can do something analogous with the knights or castles pile.
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Can we set up the Black market so we can only get a finite amount of Villas? If there are 13 different cards in the black market, each villa allows us to play 2 Golems=4 black Markets, so it allows us to dig 12 cards deep into the BM pile. This should mean we can repeat this at most 13 times, doesn't it?
But villa gives two actions and we can stockpile them beforehand.
Should I make a ruling about this? Liopoils point is valid so you can't use villa, but in my mind this trick was entirely impossible. Must admit the rules aren't super clear.
Anyway:
You get to specify which cards go in the black market deck, but the person trying to spoil your solution gets to shuffle it any way he likes before the game starts.
I don't see a problem either.
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It seems impossible to take advantage of to me. Having a limit on the number of something that you can gain mid-turn while being able to have an unlimited number of them already seems not helpful.
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For those of you who thought that 270 digits would be unbeatable I have good news: you can get to at least that times the number of atoms in the known universe.
man, this puzzle is sick :P
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So, 10^350?
Want to give any clues? I went through the full list of dominion cards...
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Want to give any clues? I went through the full list of dominion cards...
I just did.
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use doctor
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So, 10^350?
whoopsie, add another 100+
22186167940820749635721732196794612861528071563046601133333781854350832239742460929456023924680697208178471097944950275135628345387678500185350617320633146473875542794856037478750344528062104016649754082809246257225393532306899307046807471628514607723323256341983808942875162182182088355288888482261713973703801786770887081960196650816387647896726990511973139259867300464091082711887798557734814858785698622303384596952968183755310828103806356548518559464396982685761560
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I thought of this yesterday evening, but it unfortunately doesn't use golem. That means it can't be Stef's solution. however, it is a major improvement on the Scout-Crossroads draw we were using previously.
Cellar and Counting House. The procedure is straightforward: Discard a hand of X coppers with cellar, and draw a hand of X-1 coppers with cellar. Continue doing this until you reach a hand of Counting house and Cellar. Draw coppers with counting house, repeat. The growth on each cycle of this is approximately (X squared) / 2. The addition of cellar or counting house unfortunately prevents the use of Golem or Scout, and is therefore certainly different from Stef's solution, but nontheless struck me as a better model than the Crossroads one we were using previously.
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I thought of this yesterday evening, but it unfortunately doesn't use golem. That means it can't be Stef's solution. however, it is a major improvement on the Scout-Crossroads draw we were using previously.
Cellar and Counting House. The procedure is straightforward: Discard a hand of X coppers with cellar, and draw a hand of X-1 coppers with cellar. Continue doing this until you reach a hand of Counting house and Cellar. Draw coppers with counting house, repeat. The growth on each cycle of this is approximately (X squared) / 2. The addition of cellar or counting house unfortunately prevents the use of Golem or Scout, and is therefore certainly different from Stef's solution, but nontheless struck me as a better model than the Crossroads one we were using previously.
You can start your turn with an arbitrary large number of coppers in your discard, so I don't think you can use Counting House in any useful way. At least if you do you can't have anything that translates handsize or coins into gains.
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Dang. I bet everyone else had already thought of that. Back to the drawing board!
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An exhaustive list of all dominion cards which can add a variable number of cards to your hand which isn't obviously bounded:
counting house
madman
storeroom
cellar
cultist
scrying pool
storyteller
native village
city quarter
crossroads
An exhaustive list of all dominion cards which can generate a variable number of coins which isn't obviously bounded:
philosopher's stone
pirate ship
secret chamber
vault
venture
bank
storeroom
soldier
fortune
opulent castle
diadem
I'm not seeing how any of these can be used effectively while keeping coin generation bounded.
EDIT: okay, not literally exhaustive; I didn't define what makes it onto the list very well. But I put down everything which seemed plausibly relevant, and none of them work.
Lots of ways to get coins by discarding cards, but the only ways to draw things back don't stay bounded.
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Want to give any clues? I went through the full list of dominion cards...
I just did.
What?
use doctor
I assume you mean the overpay? I still don't see what you can get from that.
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About 15 years we tried some similar puzzle in the magic universe. We eventually got to numbers with more digits than atoms in the universe. I'm convinced Dominion won't go that high, but so far I'm not surprised by liopoils claim. And back then we also started with a cute day-one with three-digit-solutions.
You may like reading the write-ups at http://www.mezzacotta.net/magic/goldfish/
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use doctor
I assume you mean the overpay? I still don't see what you can get from that.
There are multiple cards (most of them in Dark Ages) which draw you cards when you trash them. Fortress, rats and cultists lead to unbounded solutions, and are therefore off limits.
But we still have Rocks.
We need a Black market deck consisting entirely of copies of doctor. On each golem play, choose Black market and Storeroom. Purchase doctor in Black Market and overpay with everything you have. Trash Rocks equal to the overpay, gaining silvers in hand equal to the overpay. With Storeroom, replace the Silvers with a single Golem and a disgusting number of Banks. Repeat. This basically converts coin into draw every time without using Storyteller. Under this model, it could be useful to play Fortune sooner rather than later, to get the ball rolling faster.
Putting card, coin and buy tokens on the few cards we have wouldn't cause too big a problem.
And a tiny setup idea: We don't need a seperate terminal attack after the Council Rooms to trigger Horse Traders. Just end with a Soothsayer.
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One final thought: Inheriting Catapult means we can effectively turn the estates we gain at the end into Rocks, and get two Silvers through gaining and trashing.
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Now that's a great idea! I definitely believe that's way better than what we have now. I'll try to calculate an estimate...
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Now that's a great idea! I definitely believe that's way better than what we have now. I'll try to calculate an estimate...
Need some way to compute max money from number of Treasures played, using Banks, Fortune, etc.
Supposing it's f(x)~O(x^2), then the solution should be something like
g(x)=x+f(x)
max cards: g(g(g(g(g(g(x))))))~O(x^64) edit: math..... powers multiply, not add
because you have 6 actions max(1+Tactician+2 Necropoli+2 from Crossroads)
That definitely gets you into universe size, and maybe up to Stef's level.
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An fairly easy lower bound: 2.4x10^173 gains.
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We can't use tactician. So we have 5 actions (crossroads and two necros). Setup turn is just 5 golems for 10 haunted woods and a save. Opponent plays 16 council rooms over three turns and then soothsayer, so we reveal 22 horse traders. Then we have 75 cards to start, but 22 of them are horse traders, but luckily they are also estates. We play crossroads to draw fortune, golem, and 73 banks. Then we can start with golem into BM and storeroom, and we play 52 harems, 73 banks, and fortune to overpay for doctor and start the cycle. Any ideas to improve this starting handsize?
We then play four more golems, and our last storeroom can draw an obscene number of cards. Those last cards are half banks and half talismen, and we just buy travelling fairs and coppers.
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Simple tweak: replace first 6 Banks with Capital. Great idea using Inheritence on Horse Traders for Crossroads!
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Simple tweak: replace first 6 Banks with Capital. Great idea using Inheritence on Horse Traders for Crossroads!
We have 52 harems so bank is way better.
Actually:
Golem into crossroads and black market --> 3 actions
Golem into storeroom and black market --> 2 actions
Golem into storeroom and black market --> 1 action
Golem into storeroom and necropolis --> 2 actions
Golem into black market and storeroom --> 1 action
Golem into black market and necropolis --> 2 actions
Golem into storeroom and black market --> 1 action
Golem into storeroom and ??? --> buy phase
Here we are getting 6 plays of black market instead of 5 and have an extra action left over to do something with. This should push us up to at least 10^350.
EDIT: I once again have exactly one idea which has not been mentioned yet in the thread...
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(X,Y) = (10487,999)
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I'm a bit of lurker on this forum but I found this puzzle very interesting.
I think you can improve the setup turn:
Golem into necro plus crossroads --> 5 actions
Golem into necro plus hauted woods--> 6 actions
6x golem into double haunted woods
So 13 haunted woods.
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We can get more CR plays for opponent if we let him have both necros first:
normal turn: 13 CR plays in a fashion like Chaos posted
Mission turn: 12 CR plays and 1 Outpost
Outpost turn: play Crossroads, play two Masks giving the necros away, play Soothsayer
totalling in 25 Council Room plays.
Edit: wait, we still use Golems on Outpost turn so that means 3 more CR = 28.
Second edit: wait, not having necros previous turn = not being able to play as many Haunted Woods = my whole post sucks
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and... we're back in business :) Great to see such a community effort.
Golem->Black Market->Doctor->Rocks->Storeroom was exactly what I was doing as well.
ok, back to the drawing board...
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We can't use tactician. So we have 5 actions (crossroads and two necros). Setup turn is just 5 golems for 10 haunted woods and a save. Opponent plays 16 council rooms over three turns and then soothsayer, so we reveal 22 horse traders. Then we have 75 cards to start, but 22 of them are horse traders, but luckily they are also estates. We play crossroads to draw fortune, golem, and 73 banks. Then we can start with golem into BM and storeroom, and we play 52 harems, 73 banks, and fortune to overpay for doctor and start the cycle. Any ideas to improve this starting handsize?
We then play four more golems, and our last storeroom can draw an obscene number of cards. Those last cards are half banks and half talismen, and we just buy travelling fairs and coppers.
The attack needs to be Swindler trashing overgrown estate or Rocks. With soothsayer, we only draw a card after setting aside the Horse Tarders.
I think we can put the +1 card token on something, since we still won't get unbounded hand size increase. Also +1 coin and + 1 buy
Why are we playing Harems? because the initial hand needs to be all VP cards.
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Simple tweak: replace first 6 Banks with Capital. Great idea using Inheritence on Horse Traders for Crossroads!
We have 52 harems so bank is way better.
Actually:
Golem into crossroads and black market --> 3 actions
Golem into storeroom and black market --> 2 actions
Golem into storeroom and black market --> 1 action
Golem into storeroom and necropolis --> 2 actions
Golem into black market and storeroom --> 1 action
Golem into black market and necropolis --> 2 actions
Golem into storeroom and black market --> 1 action
Golem into storeroom and ??? --> buy phase
Here we are getting 6 plays of black market instead of 5 and have an extra action left over to do something with. This should push us up to at least 10^350.
EDIT: I once again have exactly one idea which has not been mentioned yet in the thread...
Are we sure it isn't better to storeroom once before the first BM instead of playing that last action?
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The setup turn can also be better i think :
Golem->Crossroads, Necro: 5 actions
Golem->Necro, Haunted Woods: 6 actions
6*Golem->12 Haunted woods
That's 13 haunted woods.
Same for our Opponent:
Golem->Crossroads, CR: 3 actions
3*Golem->5 CR+Outpost
buy Mission
Golem->Crossroads, CR: 3 actions
3*Golem->6 CR
Golem->Crossroads, CR: 3 actions
3*Golem->5 CR+Swindler trashing OGE
19 CRs played
We have 5 cards+1 from save+19 from CRs+1 from OGE=23 Horse Traders set aside.
46 cards+13*3=87 initial handsize
(oops, this has already been said)
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Can we do something like this for the oppoenent
Golem->Crossroads, Masquerade (getting necro): 3 actions
Golem->Masquerade (getting Necro), Outpost: 2 actions
play 2 Necros: 4 actions
4*Golem->8 CR
buy Mission
second turn is 13 CRs as in our setup turn.
third turn:
Golem->Crossroads, CR: 3 actions
3*Golem->2 CR, Swindler trashing OGE, masq (giving Necro back),CR, masq (giving Necro back)
this would be 24 CRs played before the attack, and 2 more handsize increase after that (we don't have anything to pass for the first masquerade
I think the opponent should be able to trash down enough to allow him to have the Necros in hand again on both the second and third turn.
This increases our starting hand by 5 Horse Traders, 2 Necros and 5 other cards to 99 cards (29 of which are Horse traders, and 2 Necros).
Then we should be able to Storeroom away the Necros at appropriate times to still be able to hit them with Golem hopefully (or we need to squeeze in a Ghost ship into the opponent's turn, not sure how to best do this).
(CR=Council room, not Crossroads)
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We don't necessarily need Golem. If you eliminate Golem you still have 6 Black Market plays (Tactician + Necro(2) + Crossroad(2) + 1). You can buy a Doctor to reveal Rats and trash them with Watchtower to draw cards. Then you don't need Storeroom to swap them into useful cards. Because you eliminated Golem, you are also allowed to use cellar to swap cards without using an action.
Menagerie start ~200 cards
Double cards with Crossroads ~400 cards
Black Market with Capital + Banks + Fortune ~ 10^5 coins
Every further play of Black Market doubles the exponent (roughly) so after 5 more plays we end up with 10^( 2^5 * 5 ) ~ 10^160 coins = cards. Split these between banks and talismans to get 10^160 gains per buy and 10^320 buys and you'll end up with ~10^480 gains.
There are a few rounding that happened along the way so the actual number that I calculated is 10^465 gains, still a bit smaller than what liopoil found.
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...
Rats implies unbounded gain.
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I also think it's highly likely that there is some way to get unbounded in your list of 200 different cards for Menagerie.
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...
Rats implies unbounded gain.
And also Magpie + Watchtower
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(X,Y) = (10487,999)
(X,Y) = (10530,10X)
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a new idea:
(X,Y) = (10679,10X)
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We can't use tactician. So we have 5 actions (crossroads and two necros). Setup turn is just 5 golems for 10 haunted woods and a save. Opponent plays 16 council rooms over three turns and then soothsayer, so we reveal 22 horse traders. Then we have 75 cards to start, but 22 of them are horse traders, but luckily they are also estates. We play crossroads to draw fortune, golem, and 73 banks. Then we can start with golem into BM and storeroom, and we play 52 harems, 73 banks, and fortune to overpay for doctor and start the cycle. Any ideas to improve this starting handsize?
We then play four more golems, and our last storeroom can draw an obscene number of cards. Those last cards are half banks and half talismen, and we just buy travelling fairs and coppers.
The attack needs to be Swindler trashing overgrown estate or Rocks. With soothsayer, we only draw a card after setting aside the Horse Tarders.
I think we can put the +1 card token on something, since we still won't get unbounded hand size increase. Also +1 coin and + 1 buy
Why are we playing Harems? because the initial hand needs to be all VP cards.
Does swindler really let us reveal horse traders after it attacks? Also, while we could add the tokens it would barely do anything because we don't actually play very many action cards at all. I suppose a +card on golem would be useful (barely) for an extra card before playing crossroads.
Those initial handsize increases should help a lot, but not sure if it'll get to 679.
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We can't use tactician. So we have 5 actions (crossroads and two necros). Setup turn is just 5 golems for 10 haunted woods and a save. Opponent plays 16 council rooms over three turns and then soothsayer, so we reveal 22 horse traders. Then we have 75 cards to start, but 22 of them are horse traders, but luckily they are also estates. We play crossroads to draw fortune, golem, and 73 banks. Then we can start with golem into BM and storeroom, and we play 52 harems, 73 banks, and fortune to overpay for doctor and start the cycle. Any ideas to improve this starting handsize?
We then play four more golems, and our last storeroom can draw an obscene number of cards. Those last cards are half banks and half talismen, and we just buy travelling fairs and coppers.
The attack needs to be Swindler trashing overgrown estate or Rocks. With soothsayer, we only draw a card after setting aside the Horse Tarders.
I think we can put the +1 card token on something, since we still won't get unbounded hand size increase. Also +1 coin and + 1 buy
Why are we playing Harems? because the initial hand needs to be all VP cards.
Does swindler really let us reveal horse traders after it attacks?
It doesn't help, somehow i thought the OGE would draw before Swindler resolves as well, but of course it doesn't.
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Now up to a starting hand size of 103 (31 horse traders, 2 necros), 23848 coins by the first black market, and 10^522 gains in the end.
Stef, is your number gains or coins? My number is gains, and I can't get anywhere close to that many coins...
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Stef, is your number gains or coins? My number is gains, and I can't get anywhere close to that many coins...
Yes it's gains for me too. I switched from reporting coins to reporting gains when I stopped using Masterpiece.
(A while ago I was using only 1 buy in the payload turn, because I was using Wharves rather than Haunted Woods in the setup turn. Being able to generate a limited number of buys results in enabling Expeditions, which means a lot larger starting hand. Now I dropped that idea because it can't compete at all to having a huge amount of buys in your payload turn).
Now up to a starting hand size of 103 (31 horse traders, 2 necros), 23848 coins by the first black market, and 10^522 gains in the end.
Be careful here. There might be a way around it, but having those necro's in hand means your golem can't just find them.
You get one reshuffle for free, but not two. (I don't know what your setup turn(s) look like)
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Hey, so this maybe goes nowhere, but... Rats.
If Rats is in the supply, it can gain an unlimited number of Rats. But if Rats is in the Black Market, it can't gain any Rats.
If you have Rats available, you can't have Golem because they combine to make a Village, but trashing Rats with the Doctor overpay gets you whatever cards you want, so you don't have to use Storeroom, so the number of cycles would remain the same.
I think this also allows you to use your Necros for the first 2 cycles and use Crossroads when your handsize is much larger. Not sure if that is better, but maybe it allows something else to be optimized.
PPE: Regarding the Necros in hand, if it is an issue, You can use Margrave instead of Council Room I think.
Edit: I want to credit ghostofmars here because he said basically the same thing, and I only pointed out that we can use Rats if it is sourced from the Black Market. Looking back at the details of his post, it looks like we don't get an extra Black Market play from Tactician, so it isn't looking like an improvement.
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I don't think rats is worth losing golem since it makes the starting hand size so much bigger.
With rats you get tactician and 5 haunted woods but with golem you get 13 haunted woods.
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I don't think rats is worth losing golem since it makes the starting hand size so much bigger.
With rats you get tactician and 5 haunted woods but with golem you get 13 haunted woods.
Good call. I have this problem with forgetting about all the other parts of the solution...
Might depend on if playing the Crossroads later has a significant effect or not... Also getting the Tactician back could be huge if it gets us another cycle.
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Might depend on if playing the Crossroads later has a significant effect or not
Shouldn't it be better to play it earlier? The CRossroads increases our hand size less than a BM.
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Now up to a starting hand size of 103 (31 horse traders, 2 necros), 23848 coins by the first black market, and 10^522 gains in the end.
Be careful here. There might be a way around it, but having those necro's in hand means your golem can't just find them.
You get one reshuffle for free, but not two. (I don't know what your setup turn(s) look like)
We can discard them with Storeroom at some point, along with all the other cards we need to play later in the turn, as well as cards that we used in our setup turn (which is just 1 attack and cards we need anyway I think).
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Might depend on if playing the Crossroads later has a significant effect or not
Shouldn't it be better to play it earlier? The CRossroads increases our hand size less than a BM.
I'm really not sure here because I haven't wrapped my head around the way Black Market increases hand size. The Banks give O(n^2) coins right?, so Black Market squares hand size, and Crossroads doubles hand size. (Okay, so now I figured it out and am sure you are correct.)
I guess that does mean that the earlier the better for Crossroads.
But if we get an additional Black Market play from being able to have Tactician, that should square the total gains, which should be worth more than some initial hand size right?
Edit: It is probably only a x3ish improvement on the end, but this route allows for Highway also, to get free Hunting Grounds buys (are we even still buying Hunting Grounds?)
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I have no idea if we're still buying hunting grounds but without highway it is still possible to use ferry and two quarries.
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Tactician, crossroads, 2 necros gives 6 actions. So we only get 6 cycles with tactician/rats instead of golem. With golem instead of tactician/rats we had 6.5 cycles. So unless I'm missing something it isn't worth it yet, but maybe there is another trick to make it work.
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The main issue is getting all of the buys you need, really. You can just buy Hunting Grounds en mass and trash them with Watchtower for 3 Estates.
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The main issue is getting all of the buys you need, really. You can just buy Hunting Grounds en mass and trash them with Watchtower for 3 Estates.
Yes, and the easiest way to get buys by far is travelling fair. So the main issue is getting all the coins you need.
Stef's idea to limit the buys in order to open up expedition and other ideas is certainly interesting. But now Stef and I are probably both gaining cards in the same way, which requires buys. It isn't hunting grounds.
EDIT: A while ago somebody had the idea to have both tactician and golem but remove all draw cards. I think that should work now actually. We just remove council room and hunting grounds now when golem hits tactician and something else, there is no 'something else' which could cause the turn to continue. Even if it hits black market into doctor into rocks, you just have a hand full of silver. Haunted woods doesn't draw, crossroads and storeroom don't draw with an empty hand... oops what about masquerade. We can't remove masq because the only point of tactician was to give us another action, and we need both necros. Oh well, I don't think this works.
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Stef's idea to limit the buys in order to open up expedition and other ideas is certainly interesting. But now Stef and I are probably both gaining cards in the same way, which requires buys. It isn't hunting grounds.
Are you providing a clue or fishing for a response from me? ;)
I am a bit intrigued by your starting hand of 103 though. That's about 10 more cards than what I have. So far I haven't been able to use passing the necros during the setup turn usefully, but the fact that you have them in hand suggests that you do.
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Stef's idea to limit the buys in order to open up expedition and other ideas is certainly interesting. But now Stef and I are probably both gaining cards in the same way, which requires buys. It isn't hunting grounds.
Are you providing a clue or fishing for a response from me? ;)
I am a bit intrigued by your starting hand of 103 though. That's about 10 more cards than what I have. So far I haven't been able to use passing the necros during the setup turn usefully, but the fact that you have them in hand suggests that you do.
I'm just doing a slightly modified version of what watno suggested. You might be right that there could be a problem with finding the necros again. I need to shuffle after the setup turn to re-draw the necros, then when I discard the necros later my golem might not be able to find them. There's got to be a way around that though.
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What if the other player has Outpost, and plays a few more council rooms with that extra turn?
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What if the other player has Outpost, and plays a few more council rooms with that extra turn?
We're already having them take three turns with outpost and mission.
I just had an idea to try to use summon to get an extra play, but I think with enough time you could just buy arbitrarily many summons the turn before.
EDIT: Came up with a convoluted way to fix the necropolis problem, which I'll keep secret from stef.
EDIT: Up to 104 starting cards, 24594 coins for the first black market, and 10^524 gains.
EDIT: Another idea! Up to 10^599 now! My spreadsheet is going to get unhappy with me soon...
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having another close look at the setup turn improved it to:
(X,Y) = (10702,10X)
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Well, I now have 10^600, and my kingdom explicitly uses ~28 cards/events. Oh hey I got another idea, great. I am going to need to find a better calculating system soon though.
EDIT: 10^616, my idea wasn't as awesome as I had hoped.
EDIT: 10^631...
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Here, have an idea for free, because I'm in a good mood.
In the setup turns of your opponent, start by buying Messenger, handing out Rocks.
Doesn't work in the mission turn, but should gain you two free Silvers in hand.
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What if the other player has Outpost, and plays a few more council rooms with that extra turn?
We're already having them take three turns with outpost and mission.
Wait... I thought it was impossible to stack those.
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What if the other player has Outpost, and plays a few more council rooms with that extra turn?
We're already having them take three turns with outpost and mission.
Wait... I thought it was impossible to stack those.
Apparently it works if you play outpost and buy mission on the same turn.
Here, have an idea for free, because I'm in a good mood.
In the setup turns of your opponent, start by buying Messenger, handing out Rocks.
Doesn't work in the mission turn, but should gain you two free Silvers in hand.
Good idea! Unrelated, but it shouldn't be possible to gain more than 5 rocks consecutively right, because there will be catapults?
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Good idea! Unrelated, but it shouldn't be possible to gain more than 5 rocks consecutively right, because there will be catapults?
1. You need only 4 Rocks on the pile to make this work ?
2. As long as you don't have a reason to block ambassador&moat, you can get that pile in any state you like.
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Actually, hold up. Suppose you buy your opponent a whole bunch of rocks with messenger. Then on their turn they can buy you even more rocks, and it's unbounded. So I don't think that's allowed.
EDIT: Now 10^637, without using Stef's messenger trick yet, but it does work, thanks ephesos.
EDIT: Okay I used the messenger trick, now I have 10^638, wow that was huge.
EDIT: 10^640 with a little optimization. Just 62 orders of magnitude to go!
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Actually, hold up. Suppose you buy your opponent a whole bunch of rocks with messenger. Then on their turn they can buy you even more rocks, and it's unbounded. So I don't think that's allowed.
You can only give your opponent Rocks with Messenger once per turn though.
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Actually, hold up. Suppose you buy your opponent a whole bunch of rocks with messenger. Then on their turn they can buy you even more rocks, and it's unbounded. So I don't think that's allowed.
EDIT: Now 10^637, without using Stef's messenger trick yet, but it does work, thanks ephesos.
EDIT: Okay I used the messenger trick, now I have 10^638, wow that was huge.
Hey, if it would have been huge I wouldn't give it to you for free ;)
Here, have another one that sounds cool but does very little:
Instead of putting your Pathfinding/Training/Seaway tokens on your most popular action, include BandOfMisfits and put the tokens on that one.
In the meanwhile, I think it's only one idea that separates us. I have two important idea's that haven't been mentioned in this thread before, and I'm suspecting you have at least one of those two. Currently at
(X,Y) = (10725,10X)
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Okay, I think I have a method that is O(X*9^X). Which means that given a large enough starting X, it should beat X^64.
So Crown. Crown is an Action and a Treasure. Which means you can play it when you Black Market.
Start by nixing all the +Cards from the game, so no Haunted Woods, Council Room, etc. Probably makes X a lot lower.
Also put +$1 token on Overlord
Then, start by playing Black Market
Play Crown
Now you can play whatever Action you want, for example Overlord as Crown.
Repeat ~X times.
Play Black Market with Crown, buying Doctor(overbought by ~X), trashing X Rocks and gaining X Silver in hand
Play Black Market again, playing X Silver for $3X, buying Mint, trashing X Overlords
Play Overlord again. It's trashed, so choose to play it as Black Market, overbuying Doctor by ~3X, trashing 3X Rocks and gaining 3X Silver in hand
Repeat ~X times
You end up with ~X*3^X. Buy X*3^X/7 Travelling Fairs and X*3^X/7 Balls, to gain you X^2*(3^X/7)*3^X Silver, or X^2*(9^X)/7 Silver.
The limiting factor here is +Cards; since you can't draw any more Overlords than you start with, you're stuck.
Easier to understand variant is +Action +Buy +$ on Black Market and just overbuy Doctor like that. But then your starting $ is really low.
Tactician, Horse Traders and Scout are allowed, I think. Council Room, Golem, Crossroads, and Haunted Woods are out. Cellar is out because Cellar Rocks.
So to beat 10^679, I would need X~711 cards in the opening hand; right now, I can only figure out how to get to ~10^17. Open to suggestions as to how to get higher/have a better return rate. In theory it should outscale, but only if the opening hand can be made large enough without +Cards.
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Hey, that one also added exactly one order of magnitude, stef. @ephesos, I believe my strategy is actually O(X^256), but more importantly you aren't allowed to play overlord as crown during a buy phase according to the wiki. I actually don't follow your plan much at all right now.
Also, stef I definitely have exactly one big idea not in the thread, but I also now have a few smaller tricks (that it sounds like you don't have) which added 10-50 orders of magnitude each, so hopefully when I find your last big one I'll be ahead.
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You end up with ~X*3^X. Buy X*3^X/7 Travelling Fairs and X*3^X/7 Balls, to gain you X^2*(3^X/7)*3^X Silver, or X^2*(9^X)/7 Silver.
I'm not sure I follow the whole process (why do you need to buy Mint? I assume that you only do that once?), but shouldn't you be buying Raid, not Ball, to maximize gains?
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My initial hand size is still hovering around 100 and it turns out that slightly improving that doesn't make a big enough difference, so I will look somewhere else.
I don't think it is possible to play golem more than 8 times. 3 of the 16 slots are claimed by crossroads and 2 necros, and in the other 13 I don't think we can do better than 6 black markets, 6 storerooms, and one ___.
I already have some tricks going on in the black market phases and with the ___ at the end.
Maybe there is something better to do with the silvers than just storerooming them? Those are taking up 6 slots. Playing black market just results in twice as many silvers.
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Hey, that one also added exactly one order of magnitude, stef. @ephesos, I believe my strategy is actually O(X^256), but more importantly you aren't allowed to play overlord as crown during a buy phase according to the wiki. I actually don't follow your plan much at all right now.
Black Market isn't a Buy phase. You can play Crown after Black Market because it's a treasure. Since it's still the action phase, Crown lets you play an action from your hand twice, e.g. Overlord. Since Crown is an action costing up to $5, Overlord can be Crown.
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Okay, I think I have a method that is O(X*9^X). Which means that given a large enough starting X, it should beat X^64.
disclaimer: I don't fully understand what you're doing, so maybe I talk nonsense.
If you call the size of the starting hand X with both strategies, then yes, your strategy out-scales the currently dominant one.
But I don't think that's really a fair comparison. In your strategy, the limiting factor is starting hand so you should write your profit as a function of that.
In "our" strategy the limiting factor is this number of actions you get to play.
About your strategy: Why are you including the Overlord, Crown & Mint? It seems to be equivalent to just using King's Court and Black Market straight away.
I don't see a way to draw more than 14 useful cards at the start of your turn (5 regular, 5 from tactician, 4 from expedition), which would allow for 25 black market plays.
You can easily add ~70 Silvers to that hand (opponent playing a lot of KC Swindler, always hitting Rocks and replacing with Rocks) but that doesn't really help.
The real limiting factor is that you have no way of replacing these silvers with the much more useful banks.
am I missing something? Any chance Adventurer can help your plan? It draws Crowns, but not Overlords or Black Markets.
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You end up with ~X*3^X. Buy X*3^X/7 Travelling Fairs and X*3^X/7 Balls, to gain you X^2*(3^X/7)*3^X Silver, or X^2*(9^X)/7 Silver.
I'm not sure I follow the whole process (why do you need to buy Mint? I assume that you only do that once?), but shouldn't you be buying Raid, not Ball, to maximize gains?
I think the Mint is to cause the Overlord-as-Crown to revert to Overlord, so that when you play it a second time you can choose a different action to copy.
Also, I think this thread gave me a headache. :)
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I think the Mint is to cause the Overlord-as-Crown to revert to Overlord, so that when you play it a second time you can choose a different action to copy.
Also, I think this thread gave me a headache. :)
Couldn't you instead play Black Market - Crown - a number of Overlords (as Crown) - a number of Overlords (as Black Market)? Stef pointed out that King's Court-Black Market may be superior regardless, though.
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My initial hand size is still hovering around 100 and it turns out that slightly improving that doesn't make a big enough difference, so I will look somewhere else.
I don't think it is possible to play golem more than 8 times. 3 of the 16 slots are claimed by crossroads and 2 necros, and in the other 13 I don't think we can do better than 6 black markets, 6 storerooms, and one ___.
I already have some tricks going on in the black market phases and with the ___ at the end.
A Crossroads at the end will double your hand size, though all of the additional cards will be Harems (turn Silvers into Harems with your last Storeroom, then draw Banks with the Crossroads).
I don't think that's as good as my current ____, which squares my gains. Doubling handsize isn't worth much in terms of orders of magnitude. It's also not worth it to play storeroom before then first black market after crossroads, and also not better to play the crossroads later. The only way I can imagine improving the actions played is substituting... something... for storeroom.
Or, being able to play just one more golem would easily break 10103
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I'd like to propose a different strategy to get as high as possible. It uses the following kingdom:
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/5/5e/Overlord.jpg/200px-Overlord.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/26/Herbalist.jpg/200px-Herbalist.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/70/Peasant.jpg/200px-Peasant.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/6/69/Apothecary.jpg/200px-Apothecary.jpg)
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/2/22/Alchemist.jpg/200px-Alchemist.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/e/e2/Spice_Merchant.jpg/200px-Spice_Merchant.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/b9/Baker.jpg/200px-Baker.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/b/b2/Wine_Merchant.jpg/200px-Wine_Merchant.jpg)
And it culminates in buying Bonfire 420 times.
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/90/Bonfire.jpg/320px-Bonfire.jpg)
My mind is a bit muddled though so I'm having trouble optimizing it.
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eHalcyon, with Teacher + any cantrip, you can get unbounded gains. Just put your +buy token on the cantrip.
Yes, but how high he gets is still bounded by how long it takes for the wine merchant to pass out.
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eHalcyon, with Teacher + any cantrip, you can get unbounded gains. Just put your +buy token on the cantrip.
I suppose you could dump all the cantrips into the BM.
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eHalcyon, with Teacher + any cantrip, you can get unbounded gains. Just put your +buy token on the cantrip.
I suppose you could dump all the cantrips into the BM.
If this involves peasant upgrades (which i strongly assume since there would be no point in peasant without the upgrades), peasant needs to be in the kingdom, since otherwise you can't exhange it. But then you can put +1 action token on peasant, and together with the unbounded draw from alchemist, you get unbounded buys.
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I'm just watching this thread to see when you guys start using up-arrows.
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I'm just watching this thread to see when you guys start using up-arrows.
Well, peasant is highly problematic as we just saw, and page gives unlimited draw and actions easily, so it doesn't work either.
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eHalcyon, with Teacher + any cantrip, you can get unbounded gains. Just put your +buy token on the cantrip.
I suppose you could dump all the cantrips into the BM.
If this involves peasant upgrades (which i strongly assume since there would be no point in peasant without the upgrades), peasant needs to be in the kingdom, since otherwise you can't exhange it. But then you can put +1 action token on peasant, and together with the unbounded draw from alchemist, you get unbounded buys.
Absolutely not. We just need Peasant for the art; it never needs to be exchanged.
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Baker effectively gives unbounded coins when you go off.
Edit: it's a drug joke. Dangit.
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I'm just watching this thread to see when you guys start using up-arrows.
Well, peasant is highly problematic as we just saw, and page gives unlimited draw and actions easily, so it doesn't work either.
I see what you did there.
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Okay, I think I have a method that is O(X*9^X). Which means that given a large enough starting X, it should beat X^64.
disclaimer: I don't fully understand what you're doing, so maybe I talk nonsense.
If you call the size of the starting hand X with both strategies, then yes, your strategy out-scales the currently dominant one.
But I don't think that's really a fair comparison. In your strategy, the limiting factor is starting hand so you should write your profit as a function of that.
In "our" strategy the limiting factor is this number of actions you get to play.
About your strategy: Why are you including the Overlord, Crown & Mint? It seems to be equivalent to just using King's Court and Black Market straight away.
I don't see a way to draw more than 14 useful cards at the start of your turn (5 regular, 5 from tactician, 4 from expedition), which would allow for 25 black market plays.
You can easily add ~70 Silvers to that hand (opponent playing a lot of KC Swindler, always hitting Rocks and replacing with Rocks) but that doesn't really help.
The real limiting factor is that you have no way of replacing these silvers with the much more useful banks.
am I missing something? Any chance Adventurer can help your plan? It draws Crowns, but not Overlords or Black Markets.
Hmmm, I thought that because you're always writing like starting hand and number of coins for Black Market buy, that your strategy is a function of that number, as well as the exponent on that number being hard capped by number of Actions i.e. X^2^(2*A), where A is at most 6. Like, if your strategy has 20 starting cards, you can do something like 2^256 times as well as starting with 10 cards, because you can use your 6 actions to square 12 times. So it makes sense to use starting cards as X, since your gains are limited by starting cards in hand as well.
Another thing is your limit on Black Market plays is Actions available, mine is cards in hand, which is a heck of a lot higher. However, your Black Markets square and mine just multiply by 3.
The Overlord trickery was mostly because I thought of it and it seemed cool. However, there's also the issue of the initial seed money being low, which I didn't think of using Rocks+trashing to solve before. So KC/Black Market is probably better.
With that, you need like 1/3 of your cards to be King's Court, but you play the other 2/3 of your Black Markets three times, so you get up to 2X plays of Black Market. If I is your initial money from $ token, Silver in starting hand, etc. then you get an I*3^2X ending hand of Silvers, and O(I^2)O(81^X) gains using Raid.
Expedition is unlimited with Travelling Fair and Platinum, so that's out unless there's a different better end payload than squaring(which, if you do it out, is like doubling the hand size).
Properly done out:
Setup: Play Tactician. Opponent, on a Tactician turn, plays 3 King's Courts and 5 Swindlers. He then plays Tactician and buys Messenger for Rocks and Mission. For the next hand, he plays 3 King's Courts and 4 Swindlers, Outpost, and Tactician, and the third he plays 3 King's Courts and 5 Swindlers, buying Messenger for Rocks. Total, that's 14 Swindlers tripled for 42 Silver in hand. (No Watchtower because another Black Market is just loads better.)
Then, we have a hand of 4 King's Courts and 6 Black Markets. So that's 3^18*3*42 ending Silver, 3^18*3*42/7*3^18*3*42 gains is a paltry 10^20....
Main issue really is X is different, because different cards are being used to reach it. If X was like 760 it would work... but the loss of stuff like Haunted Woods and Council Room might just be too great to bear.
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I think the Mint is to cause the Overlord-as-Crown to revert to Overlord, so that when you play it a second time you can choose a different action to copy.
Also, I think this thread gave me a headache. :)
Couldn't you instead play Black Market - Crown - a number of Overlords (as Crown) - a number of Overlords (as Black Market)? Stef pointed out that King's Court-Black Market may be superior regardless, though.
Yeah, I could. But this is much cooler :)
Also, this way you get to play all the Overlords as Crown first, allowing you to start with all that extra $ from the +$ token on Overlord. The other way, your first BM comes when you're like halfway through. So that was why it was better. Your way and you get pretty much just as many Black Market plays as playing them all just from the starting hand with a +Action token. Which is cool, and all that. KC-BM still beats both though.
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Baker effectively gives unbounded coins when you go off.
Edit: it's a drug joke. Dangit.
I legitimately can't believe it took this entire forum like nine posts to figure this out. Nerrrrrrds. :P
I would contend that the kingdom needs Raze, because you can't #420BlazeIt without #420RazeIt.
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Properly done out:
Setup: Play Tactician. Opponent, on a Tactician turn, plays 3 King's Courts and 5 Swindlers. He then plays Tactician and buys Messenger for Rocks and Mission. For the next hand, he plays 3 King's Courts and 4 Swindlers, Outpost, and Tactician, and the third he plays 3 King's Courts and 5 Swindlers, buying Messenger for Rocks. Total, that's 14 Swindlers tripled for 42 Silver in hand. (No Watchtower because another Black Market is just loads better.)
Then, we have a hand of 4 King's Courts and 6 Black Markets. So that's 3^18*3*42 ending Silver, 3^18*3*42/7*3^18*3*42 gains is a paltry 10^20....
Main issue really is X is different, because different cards are being used to reach it. If X was like 760 it would work... but the loss of stuff like Haunted Woods and Council Room might just be too great to bear.
FWIW I think you can do better with this strategy if you add golem (I think it's fine with no actual card draw) if you start with a hand of entirely golems you can play one hitting KC and X (swindler for the opponent, black market for us). Then use KC first on a golem again hitting KC plus 5X and repeat for as many golems as you have in hand. With a 10 card hand (tactician) this leads to (I think) 47 plays of either black market or swindler. Using coin token on golem should help increase the starting coin. Buy token on black market cause why not?
The number of golems can get up to 12 using save and overgrown estate but we still don't get anywhere near as high as stef/liopoil.
Also, buying raid is way better than ball.
One question: how are you trippling with each black market play? Isn't it double since each coin becomes a silver.
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Starting with a 12 card hand of KC and 11 golems gets you 33 golem plays and so 66 slots, 10 of which are occupied by KC for 56 plays of black market. You can get 13 coins fromgolem/black market and your opponent can give you 56 silvers for 125 coins. After 55 more plays if black market how many gains do you end up with?
EDIT: Now that you all are talking about raid I'll tell you about my main extra thing I'm doing with my strategy:
After playing 6 black markets and 6 storerooms I am left with b banks, and b is around 10^150. I play a black market and play all the banks again for around b^2 silver in hand. I play all these silvers and buy around b^2 raids each gaining b^2 silvers so I end up with b^4 ~ 10^600 gains.
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12 golems is better than 11+KC right? Since the first golem is a KC and an extra black market.
Your opponent can give you more like 150 silvers using outpost and mission. First turn:55 silvers. (57 minus 2 for tactician (discard a silver from a swindler on our previous turn) and outpost) buy mission and messenger (another silver) and donate (this should give a five card outpost turn right?) second turn: 40 silvers (9 golems and a card to discard to fact) buy messenger. Third turn: 47 silvers (10 golems) buy messenger.
Total: 55+1+40+1+47+1=145 silvers.
So the starting coin is 290+12(golems with coin token) + 2(black market) = 304coins.
I'll edit with the number of gains once I do the calculation.
EDIT: 2.67E38
So not very high (relatively)
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Baker effectively gives unbounded coins when you go off.
Edit: it's a drug joke. Dangit.
I legitimately can't believe it took this entire forum like nine posts to figure this out. Nerrrrrrds. :P
I would contend that the kingdom needs Raze, because you can't #420BlazeIt without #420RazeIt.
Nah, there were certainly some who caught on earlier. I'm just surprised that people were so concerned about Teacher. Baker was mentioned late and Alchemist wasn't mentioned at all even though both would be unbounded even in the Black Market. Apothecary too, though that's slightly less obvious.
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Total, that's 14 Swindlers tripled for 42 Silver in hand. (No Watchtower because another Black Market is just loads better.)
5 of the Swindlers can give us new Rocks for 5 extra silvers I think
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Baker effectively gives unbounded coins when you go off.
Edit: it's a drug joke. Dangit.
I legitimately can't believe it took this entire forum like nine posts to figure this out. Nerrrrrrds. :P
I would contend that the kingdom needs Raze, because you can't #420BlazeIt without #420RazeIt.
Nah, there were certainly some who caught on earlier. I'm just surprised that people were so concerned about Teacher. Baker was mentioned late and Alchemist wasn't mentioned at all even though both would be unbounded even in the Black Market. Apothecary too, though that's slightly less obvious.
I don't see it. Unbounded cards and coins are no problem in that kingdom, since you can convert them into gains.
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Baker effectively gives unbounded coins when you go off.
Edit: it's a drug joke. Dangit.
I legitimately can't believe it took this entire forum like nine posts to figure this out. Nerrrrrrds. :P
I would contend that the kingdom needs Raze, because you can't #420BlazeIt without #420RazeIt.
Nah, there were certainly some who caught on earlier. I'm just surprised that people were so concerned about Teacher. Baker was mentioned late and Alchemist wasn't mentioned at all even though both would be unbounded even in the Black Market. Apothecary too, though that's slightly less obvious.
I don't see it. Unbounded cards and coins are no problem in that kingdom, since you can convert them into gains.
Oh yeah, that's a fair point. I retract my criticism!
Anyway, apologies for the distraction. I contributed (or at least, participated) earlier but it's all beyond me now. You guys are ridiculous, in the best way possible.
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Well, stef wins in under 12 hours if I can't add another 38 orders of magnitude. 53 extra starting cards would get me there. Or just one extra trick during the action phase.
EDIT: For anyone who wants to help, here is my current kingdom: Golem, Haunted Woods, Messenger, Crossroads, Council Room, Storeroom, Black Market, Catacombs, Saboteur, Bridge Troll, Horn of Plenty, Ambassador, Moat, Horse Traders, Catapult/Rocks, Bank, Fortune, Watchtower, Masquerade, Band of Misfits, Crossroads, Harem, Shelters, Travelling Fair, Outpost, Mission, Raid, Save, Pathfinding, Training, Inheritance, Doctor in the black market deck
No particular order there. All of the cards mentioned are relevant somehow. I'm afraid this may give stef another leg up here, but well it is possible that he will have to reveal his solution soon too anyway.
EDIT: I forgot to Borrow!!!11!!1! Wow I have been missing out on one coin all this time.
Also, my calculations are very sloppy after the first two black market plays. I'm pretty sure the number of digits is still correct, as well as at least the first two digits of the number, so it's not really relevant.
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Just give up. Embrace the inevitability of your loss.
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Properly done out:
Setup: Play Tactician. Opponent, on a Tactician turn, plays 3 King's Courts and 5 Swindlers. He then plays Tactician and buys Messenger for Rocks and Mission. For the next hand, he plays 3 King's Courts and 4 Swindlers, Outpost, and Tactician, and the third he plays 3 King's Courts and 5 Swindlers, buying Messenger for Rocks. Total, that's 14 Swindlers tripled for 42 Silver in hand. (No Watchtower because another Black Market is just loads better.)
Then, we have a hand of 4 King's Courts and 6 Black Markets. So that's 3^18*3*42 ending Silver, 3^18*3*42/7*3^18*3*42 gains is a paltry 10^20....
Main issue really is X is different, because different cards are being used to reach it. If X was like 760 it would work... but the loss of stuff like Haunted Woods and Council Room might just be too great to bear.
FWIW I think you can do better with this strategy if you add golem (I think it's fine with no actual card draw) if you start with a hand of entirely golems you can play one hitting KC and X (swindler for the opponent, black market for us). Then use KC first on a golem again hitting KC plus 5X and repeat for as many golems as you have in hand. With a 10 card hand (tactician) this leads to (I think) 47 plays of either black market or swindler. Using coin token on golem should help increase the starting coin. Buy token on black market cause why not?
The number of golems can get up to 12 using save and overgrown estate but we still don't get anywhere near as high as stef/liopoil.
Also, buying raid is way better than ball.
One question: how are you trippling with each black market play? Isn't it double since each coin becomes a silver.
:P I meant Raid. It's an event that costs 5, hands out a negative token, and gains you cards that cost less than 4. Like, it's pretty much the same thing.
Also yes, I'm silly, Silver costs 3 and is worth 2. Make that exact same mistake all the time when I play, it gets annoying.
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Well, stef wins in under 12 hours if I can't add another 38 orders of magnitude. 53 extra starting cards would get me there. Or just one extra trick during the action phase.
EDIT: For anyone who wants to help, here is my current kingdom: Golem, Haunted Woods, Messenger, Crossroads, Council Room, Storeroom, Black Market, Catacombs, Saboteur, Bridge Troll, Horn of Plenty, Ambassador, Moat, Horse Traders, Catapult/Rocks, Bank, Fortune, Watchtower, Masquerade, Band of Misfits, Crossroads, Harem, Shelters, Travelling Fair, Outpost, Mission, Raid, Save, Pathfinding, Training, Inheritance, Doctor in the black market deck
No particular order there. All of the cards mentioned are relevant somehow. I'm afraid this may give stef another leg up here, but well it is possible that he will have to reveal his solution soon too anyway.
There's an optimal Banks to Silver ratio in the final hand to get the most out of Raid. I think it's like 2/3 Silver, 1/3 Bank, empirically. So if you can end on Storeroom, you can get a bit better.
Figured this out when I was ending on Storeroom, but I just realized you get a 7th Black Market out, so you probably end on it.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the last Storeroom out after the 7th Black Market... probably not doable. With 6 Black Markets, I was up to 10^443 though(where all Silver would've been 10^297). But 7 Black Markets is like 10^592, beats it out by a bit.
EDIT asdkfjalsdjas I forgot Fortune 10^628
EDIT 2 10^632. Man, so this is what Stef and Liopoil have been doing for the last 2 days...
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What if the other player has Outpost, and plays a few more council rooms with that extra turn?
We're already having them take three turns with outpost and mission.
Wait... I thought it was impossible to stack those.
Apparently it works if you play outpost and buy mission on the same turn.
Here, have an idea for free, because I'm in a good mood.
In the setup turns of your opponent, start by buying Messenger, handing out Rocks.
Doesn't work in the mission turn, but should gain you two free Silvers in hand.
Good idea! Unrelated, but it shouldn't be possible to gain more than 5 rocks consecutively right, because there will be catapults?
Is it just me, or can other people see that this post somehow has -1 respect? When I ask it to show the post voters, it says "No one has voted." If I upvote it, will it have 0 points?
Here's the screenshot:
(http://i.imgur.com/SAqinZX.png)
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Here's the screenshot:
(http://i.imgur.com/SAqinZX.png)
Stef is trying to sink his dangerous competitior.
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What if the other player has Outpost, and plays a few more council rooms with that extra turn?
We're already having them take three turns with outpost and mission.
Wait... I thought it was impossible to stack those.
Apparently it works if you play outpost and buy mission on the same turn.
Here, have an idea for free, because I'm in a good mood.
In the setup turns of your opponent, start by buying Messenger, handing out Rocks.
Doesn't work in the mission turn, but should gain you two free Silvers in hand.
Good idea! Unrelated, but it shouldn't be possible to gain more than 5 rocks consecutively right, because there will be catapults?
Is it just me, or can other people see that this post somehow has -1 respect? When I ask it to show the post voters, it says "No one has voted." If I upvote it, will it have 0 points?
Here's the screenshot:
(http://i.imgur.com/SAqinZX.png)
Oh that was me. I'm not sure how it happened, but my internet was flaking out as I tried to upvote. Somehow it ended up at -1.
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A small trick: if there's ever any reason to play Silver from hand(when it could have been something else instead), instead play Loan, trash Rocks, and then play Silver.
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Well I guess I give up too. Hopefully Stef has something interesting for that extra 60 or so orders of magnitude.
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A small trick: if there's ever any reason to play Silver from hand(when it could have been something else instead), instead play Loan, trash Rocks, and then play Silver.
When is there a reason to play silver from hand? I think you have to play the 7th black market. We could try having 7 storerooms instead but I really doubt it could be better.
10^632 is close enough to what I have (10^642) that you are probably doing something I'm not. Before the black market I have 75 treasures in play and 101 treasures or choice. What about you ? I also make 2/5ths of them horn of plenties...
Another helpful trick is to trash catacombs instead of rocks, gaining rocks from the supply, then trashing those rocks with watchtower for double the silver. Oh hey I could use swindler for four silver that way...
I noticed the -1 respect thing too. Anyone feel like upvoting it? :D
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Another helpful trick is to trash catacombs instead of rocks, gaining rocks from the supply, then trashing those rocks with watchtower for double the silver. Oh hey I could use swindler for four silver that way...
I already mentioned this before, but the problem is that there are Catapults in the Rocks pile (it alternates 5 Rocks, 5 Catapults,...). ButI think we can fix thsi with Ambassador.
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Another helpful trick is to trash catacombs instead of rocks, gaining rocks from the supply, then trashing those rocks with watchtower for double the silver. Oh hey I could use swindler for four silver that way...
I already mentioned this before, but the problem is that there are Catapults in the Rocks pile (it alternates 5 Rocks, 5 Catapults,...). ButI think we can fix thsi with Ambassador.
Yep, I asked about this already and ambassador (moat is optional) lets us put arbitrarily many rocks on top. Anyway, now stef has to show us a strategy to get at least 10^679 gains.
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Ok, there we go. I'm presenting my solution to gain 1144984654515892827802567314832769041691676863703131934603190188997614567578185624581386001307608095799276860334911251291698220220124267149219119259379847134047965330424563783312811937771607123581116388968371135803349729156312659169172550861545293360578603315678770088698740345651496923537838329278268646846918631291238187081449787678296076025654416968734506964357922542056120438195935493686733002703535684515870737600547923211804992822638054047480607618340221073896765506754445939988036352567644956492571362257210164493681791996415538665998509593878443259663136974182438382670373276114935342739800093147793641723534331508332889243431764867853726235461445918410783841767574478283420722697738019398918273507776666078694781664920 silvers on a single turn, and I'll write big numbers like that as 1.14E727 from here on.
First of all, I should say that the forum caught up with all but one of my tricks, and I caught up with most things liopoil included. (I don't quite get the catacombs but I figured they didn't help much - I might not have everything else optimized and I'm sure people will find bigger numbers if they keep looking). We exchanged some ideas left & right, provided some clues, there you go.
For those of you unaware of the plan to reach 630-ish digits, I'll present that as well. After all, I'm supposed to give a full solution.
We put Pathfinding, Seaway and Training on Band of Misfits (use ferry).
We put Inheritance on Horse Traders.
We use some Ambassador/Moat-ing to get 6 Rocks on top of the Catapult/Rocks pile, then use masq to trash that Amb+Moat.
Turn T-3 by opponent:
play crossroads, play 3x councilroom
Turn T-2 by us:
8x golem, play all, finding 2x Necro, crossroads, 13 * Haunted Woods. Buy save (set aside estate).
at the end of this turn you reshuffle and redraw both your necros. Everything else you draw is inherited Estate.
Turn T-1A (Regular) by opponent:
golem into masq + crossroads (give estate, get necropolis)
golem into masq + storeroom (give estate, get necropolis, discard both necropolis)
golem into necro + necro
golem into outpost + councilroom
4x golem into councilroom + councilroom
opponent buys Messenger (getting us rocks, drawing Silver) and Mission.
Turn T-1B (Outpost) by opponent
golem into councilroom + crossroads
golem into necro + necro
6x golem into councilroom + councilroom
Turn T-1C (Mission) by opponent
golem into councilroom + crossroads
golem into councilroom + councilroom
golem into councilroom + swindler
golem into masquerade + masquerade (Sending Necro, getting Silver)
-> Our hand was 2x Necro, 4x Estate at the start of T-1A.
Our Necro's were replaces by estates.
We got 26 more Estates from Councilrooms.
We got 4 Silvers in hand (2 from Messengers on Rocks, 2 from a Swindler replacing Rocks with Rocks)
We set aside all 32 Estates on the Swindler play.
The last two masquerades replaced 2 Silvers with 2 Necro's
-> At the start of our turn we have 2 necropolis and 2 silver.
We return the 32 Esatetes and draw 31 Harems with them and a Golem
We also draw 13*3 = 39 Harems from the Haunted Woods.
This part of the 1E638 and the 1E727 plan are identical. Now it's time for the payload turn, and on this turn we get to play 13 actions with golems. The idea is very much the same as on Turn T-1B(outpost): We play 8 golems: the first finds a Crossroads, the 4th and the 6th find a Necropolis.
In the 1E638 plan we use those 13 "payload slots" on alternating Black martket and Storeroom. There are some details to keep in mind:
1) on the first black market play, we add a Fortune. Doubling the money early is better than doubling it later.
2) we can't just find those Necropolises with our Golem, because they will be in our discard and our drawpile is huge. However, the drawpile is mostly rocks, and we simply skip over all the actions with the last storeroom before the golem that needs to find necro. Skipping over ~100 cards is no problem when our handsize is already having 100 digits.
Here is the output from my computer program alternating Black Markets and Storerooms:
13 duration haunted woods increases Harems by 39 to total of 39
returning horse traders to hand increases EstateHorseTraders by 32 to total of 32
returning horse traders draws increases Harems by 31 to total of 70
from opponent messengers into rocks increases SilversInHand by 2 to total of 2
Playing a Golem
Playing a Crossroads
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
drawing a bank for each harem increases Banks by 70 to total of 71
drawing a bank for each horse traders increases Banks by 32 to total of 103
requiring 1 golems decreases Banks by 1 to total of 102
requiring 1 fortune decreases Banks by 1 to total of 101
crossroads draws it increases Fortunes by 1 to total of 1
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 102
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
playing all Harems increases TreasuresInPlay by 70 to total of 70
playing all Harems increases Coins by 140 to total of 144
playing all reset Harems to 0
playing all SilversInHand increases TreasuresInPlay by 2 to total of 72
playing all SilversInHand increases Coins by 4 to total of 148
playing all reset SilversInHand to 0
I'm playing 102 of my 102 banks
Average bank is worth half of 247
playing 102 banks increases Coins by 12597 to total of 12745
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 102 to total of 174
played banks decreases Banks by 102 to total of 0
Playing fortune increases Coins by a factor of 2 to total of 25490
just played it reset Fortunes to 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 25489 to total of 25489
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Golem
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
discarding all to storeroom reset EstateHorseTraders to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 25520 to total of 25521
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 25522
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 25522 of my 25522 banks
Average bank is worth half of 25871
playing 25522 banks increases Coins by 330139831 to total of 330139835
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 25522 to total of 25696
played banks decreases Banks by 25522 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 330139834 to total of 330139834
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Golem
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 330139833 to total of 330139834
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 330139835
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 330139835 of my 330139835 banks
Average bank is worth half of 330191228
playing 330139835 banks increases Coins by 5.44E17 to total of 5.44E17
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 330139835 to total of 330165531
played banks decreases Banks by 330139835 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 5.44E17 to total of 5.44E17
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Golem
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 5.44E17 to total of 5.44E17
Playing a Necropolis
Playing a Golem
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 5.44E17
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 5.44E17 of my 5.44E17 banks
Average bank is worth half of 5.44E17
playing 5.44E17 banks increases Coins by 1.44E34 to total of 1.44E34
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 5.44E17 to total of 5.44E17
played banks decreases Banks by 5.44E17 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 1.44E34 to total of 1.44E34
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 1.44E34 to total of 1.44E34
Playing a Golem
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1.44E34
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 1.44E34 of my 1.44E34 banks
Average bank is worth half of 1.44E34
playing 1.44E34 banks increases Coins by 1.11E67 to total of 1.11E67
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 1.44E34 to total of 1.44E34
played banks decreases Banks by 1.44E34 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 1.11E67 to total of 1.11E67
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Necropolis
Playing a Golem
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 1.11E67 to total of 1.11E67
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1.11E67
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 1.11E67 of my 1.11E67 banks
Average bank is worth half of 1.11E67
playing 1.11E67 banks increases Coins by 6.00E132 to total of 6.00E132
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 1.11E67 to total of 1.11E67
played banks decreases Banks by 1.11E67 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 6.00E132 to total of 6.00E132
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Golem
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 6.00E132 to total of 6.00E132
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 6.00E132
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 6.00E132 of my 6.00E132 banks
Average bank is worth half of 6.00E132
playing 6.00E132 banks increases Coins by 1.88E264 to total of 1.88E264
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 6.00E132 to total of 6.00E132
played banks decreases Banks by 6.00E132 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 1.88E264 to total of 1.88E264
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
ran out of actions
playing all SilversInHand increases TreasuresInPlay by 1.88E264 to total of 1.88E264
playing all SilversInHand increases Coins by 3.77E264 to total of 3.77E264
playing all reset SilversInHand to 0
I'm playing 0 of my 0 banks
Average bank is worth half of 3.77E264
Use travelling fair to get 5.22E263 buys
Raid is worth 9.77E526 silvers
Raid is worth 9792714001821727000070107334949971686771078749904813765885453908814580748804177525075179323487691615697973940873964165126139583785005470784439416206017754876198357521361240030641781258784600843630065615714511786325079708202071648458563198365972098015067392607921171333887579103558357285950169478882391212601296212552569126941055145110203744766705831134004787763014441730857259485433594481004383783931943030045532447473863185796087824311361295287040597787912773676267522052313043003362484230907158938492930844176496787623104284 silvers
As you can see I get to 6.00E132 banks, resulting in 9.77E526 gains. Somehow lio got up to 1E150 banks with what should be the same plan, so maybe he has a few more tricks up his sleeve. However, now let's finally get to the improvements for the last 100 digits.
The whole clue of that trick is that it's better to not play all your banks. This might sound strange at first, but let's have a look at what happens on the last black market play.
Suppose of those 6.00E132 banks I play "only" 4.00E132 and keep the other 2.00E132 in my wallet. Now of course I can overpay for the doctor less, so I draw 8.22E263 Silvers instead of the 1.88E264 Silvers I would have drawn had I played all of my banks. But now I go to my buy phase, and after playing those 8.22E263 Silvers I still have the 2.00E132 banks I saved up and now they make much more money!
Using this idea on the last buyphase I get to 1.99E657 gains. Ephesos was using the same idea but got to 1E638, I don't know whats up with that.
But the real beauty is that we can use this trick multiple times throughout our solution. Instead of going
BlackMarket -> Storeroom-> Black Market -> Storeroom-> Black Market -> Storeroom
we will be using
BlackMarket(2/3) -> Black Market (all) -> Storeroom-> Black Market (2/3) -> Black Market(all) -> Storeroom.
This means the average black market play is a bit worse than it was in the original plan, but we do manage to get in 9 Black Market plays instead of just 7. Enough to make up for another 80-ish digits.
after doing a bit of fiddling with the numbers this now is my plan:
Card[][] plan = {
{new Crossroads(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL)},
{new StoreRoom(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(2)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new Necropolis()},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(2)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new Necropolis()},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(1)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new BlackMarket(Mode.MAJORITY)},
};
It results in these numbers:
13 duration haunted woods increases Harems by 39 to total of 39
returning horse traders to hand increases EstateHorseTraders by 32 to total of 32
returning horse traders draws increases Harems by 31 to total of 70
from opponent messengers into rocks increases SilversInHand by 2 to total of 2
Playing a Golem
Playing a Crossroads
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
drawing a bank for each harem increases Banks by 70 to total of 71
drawing a bank for each horse traders increases Banks by 32 to total of 103
requiring 1 golems decreases Banks by 1 to total of 102
requiring 1 fortune decreases Banks by 1 to total of 101
crossroads draws it increases Fortunes by 1 to total of 1
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 102
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
playing all Harems increases TreasuresInPlay by 70 to total of 70
playing all Harems increases Coins by 140 to total of 144
playing all reset Harems to 0
playing all SilversInHand increases TreasuresInPlay by 2 to total of 72
playing all SilversInHand increases Coins by 4 to total of 148
playing all reset SilversInHand to 0
I'm playing 102 of my 102 banks
Average bank is worth half of 247
playing 102 banks increases Coins by 12597 to total of 12745
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 102 to total of 174
played banks decreases Banks by 102 to total of 0
Playing fortune increases Coins by a factor of 2 to total of 25490
just played it reset Fortunes to 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 25489 to total of 25489
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Golem
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
We draw 2 extra banks because we discard 2 necropolis
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
discarding all to storeroom reset EstateHorseTraders to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 25522 to total of 25523
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 25524
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 16998 of my 25524 banks
Average bank is worth half of 17347
playing 16998 banks increases Coins by 147432153 to total of 147432157
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 16998 to total of 17172
played banks decreases Banks by 16998 to total of 8526
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 147432156 to total of 147432156
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Golem
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 8527
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 3
playing all SilversInHand increases TreasuresInPlay by 147432156 to total of 147449328
playing all SilversInHand increases Coins by 294864312 to total of 294864315
playing all reset SilversInHand to 0
I'm playing 8527 of my 8527 banks
Average bank is worth half of 294907184
playing 8527 banks increases Coins by 1.22E13 to total of 1.22E13
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 8527 to total of 147457855
played banks decreases Banks by 8527 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 1.22E13 to total of 1.22E13
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
We draw 100 less banks because we need to skip over some actions
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 1.22E13 to total of 1.22E13
Playing a Golem
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1.22E13
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 8.33E12 of my 1.22E13 banks
Average bank is worth half of 8.33E12
playing 8.33E12 banks increases Coins by 3.55E24 to total of 3.55E24
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 8.33E12 to total of 8.33E12
played banks decreases Banks by 8.33E12 to total of 4.22E12
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 3.55E24 to total of 3.55E24
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Necropolis
Playing a Golem
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 4.22E12
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 3
playing all SilversInHand increases TreasuresInPlay by 3.55E24 to total of 3.55E24
playing all SilversInHand increases Coins by 7.00E24 to total of 7.00E24
playing all reset SilversInHand to 0
I'm playing 4.22E12 of my 4.22E12 banks
Average bank is worth half of 7.00E24
playing 4.22E12 banks increases Coins by 1.44E36 to total of 1.44E36
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 4.22E12 to total of 3.55E24
played banks decreases Banks by 4.22E12 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 1.44E36 to total of 1.44E36
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 1.44E36 to total of 1.44E36
Playing a Golem
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1.44E36
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 9.88E35 of my 1.44E36 banks
Average bank is worth half of 9.88E35
playing 9.88E35 banks increases Coins by 4.88E70 to total of 4.88E70
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 9.88E35 to total of 9.88E35
played banks decreases Banks by 9.88E35 to total of 4.99E35
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 4.88E70 to total of 4.88E70
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a Necropolis
Playing a Golem
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 4.99E35
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 3
playing all SilversInHand increases TreasuresInPlay by 4.88E70 to total of 4.88E70
playing all SilversInHand increases Coins by 9.66E70 to total of 9.66E70
playing all reset SilversInHand to 0
I'm playing 4.99E35 of my 4.99E35 banks
Average bank is worth half of 9.66E70
playing 4.99E35 banks increases Coins by 2.33E105 to total of 2.33E105
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 4.99E35 to total of 4.88E70
played banks decreases Banks by 4.99E35 to total of 0
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 2.33E105 to total of 2.33E105
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a StoreRoom
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 1
discarded all to storeroom reset SilversInHand to 0
drawing with storeroom increases Banks by 2.33E105 to total of 2.33E105
Playing a Golem
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 2
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 2.33E105
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 4
I'm playing 1.55E105 of my 2.33E105 banks
Average bank is worth half of 1.55E105
playing 1.55E105 banks increases Coins by 1.22E209 to total of 1.22E209
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 1.55E105 to total of 1.55E105
played banks decreases Banks by 1.55E105 to total of 7.99E104
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 1.22E209 to total of 1.22E209
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
Playing a BlackMarket
training increases Coins by 1 to total of 1
pathfinding increases Banks by 1 to total of 7.99E104
playing black market increases Coins by 2 to total of 3
playing all SilversInHand increases TreasuresInPlay by 1.22E209 to total of 1.22E209
playing all SilversInHand increases Coins by 2.44E209 to total of 2.44E209
playing all reset SilversInHand to 0
I'm playing 6.88E104 of my 7.99E104 banks
Average bank is worth half of 2.44E209
playing 6.88E104 banks increases Coins by 8.55E312 to total of 8.55E312
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 6.88E104 to total of 1.22E209
played banks decreases Banks by 6.88E104 to total of 1.11E104
Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks increases SilversInHand by 8.55E312 to total of 8.55E312
used all money on doctor reset Coins to 0
ran out of actions
playing all SilversInHand increases TreasuresInPlay by 8.55E312 to total of 8.55E312
playing all SilversInHand increases Coins by 1.77E313 to total of 1.77E313
playing all reset SilversInHand to 0
I'm playing 1.11E104 of my 1.11E104 banks
Average bank is worth half of 1.77E313
playing 1.11E104 banks increases Coins by 9.44E415 to total of 9.44E415
playing banks increases TreasuresInPlay by 1.11E104 to total of 8.55E312
played banks decreases Banks by 1.11E104 to total of 0
Use travelling fair to get 1.33E415 buys
Raid is worth 1.11E727 silvers
Raid is worth 1144984654515892827802567314832769041691676863703131934603190188997614567578185624581386001307608095799276860334911251291698220220124267149219119259379847134047965330424563783312811937771607123581116388968371135803349729156312659169172550861545293360578603315678770088698740345651496923537838329278268646846918631291238187081449787678296076025654416968734506964357922542056120438195935493686733002703535684515870737600547923211804992822638054047480607618340221073896765506754445939988036352567644956492571362257210164493681791996415538665998509593878443259663136974182438382670373276114935342739800093147793641723534331508332889243431764867853726235461445918410783841767574478283420722697738019398918273507776666078694781664920 silvers
And for those of you who like to play around with my program, here is the source:
package dominion.main;
import java.math.BigInteger;
public class Main {
public static final BigInteger MINUS_ONE = BigInteger.valueOf(-1);
public static final BigInteger TWO = BigInteger.valueOf(2);
enum Mode {TWO_THIRD, ALL, MAJORITY}
/*
Setting it up
We put Pathfinding, Seaway and Training on Band of Misfits (use ferry).
We put Inheritance on Horse Traders.
We use some Ambassador/Moat-ing to get 6 Rocks on top of the Catapult/Rocks pile, then use masq to trash that Amb+Moat.
Turn T-3 by opponent:
play crossroads, play 3x councilroom
Turn T-2 by us:
8x golem, play all, finding 2x Necro, crossroads, 13 * Haunted Woods. Buy save (set aside estate).
at the end of this turn you reshuffle and redraw both your necros. Everything else you draw is inherited Estate.
Turn T-1A (Regular) by opponent:
golem into masq + crossroads (give estate, get necropolis)
golem into masq + storeroom (give estate, get necropolis, discard both necropolis)
golem into necro + necro
golem into outpost + councilroom
4x golem into councilroom + councilroom
opponent buys Messenger (getting us rocks, drawing Silver) and Mission.
Turn T-1B (Outpost) by opponent
golem into councilroom + crossroads
golem into necro + necro
6x golem into councilroom + councilroom
Turn T-1C (Mission) by opponent
golem into councilroom + crossroads
golem into councilroom + councilroom
golem into councilroom + swindler
golem into masquerade + masquerade (Sending Necro, getting Silver)
-> Our hand was 2x Necro, 4x Estate at the start of T-1A.
Our Necro's were replaces by estates.
We got 26 more Estates from Councilrooms.
We got 4 Silvers in hand (2 from Messengers, 2 from a Swindler replacing Rocks with Rocks)
We set aside all 32 Estates on the Swindler play.
The last two masquerades replaced 2 Silvers with 2 Necro's
-> At the start of our turn we have 2 necropolis and 2 silver.
We return the 32 Esatetes and draw 31 Harems with them and a Golem
We also draw 13*3 = 39 Harems from the Haunted Woods.
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
new Main().start();
}
Variable coins = new Variable("Coins");
Variable horseTraders = new Variable("EstateHorseTraders");
Variable harems = new Variable("Harems");
Variable banks = new Variable("Banks");
Variable treasuresInPlay = new Variable("TreasuresInPlay");
Variable silvers = new Variable("SilversInHand", 0);
Variable fortunes = new Variable("Fortunes", 0);
Variable talisman = new Variable("TalismanInHand");
Variable talismanInPlay = new Variable("TalismanInPlay");
/*
Card[][] plan = {
{new Crossroads(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL)},
{new StoreRoom(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(2)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new Necropolis()},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(2)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new Necropolis()},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(1)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new BlackMarket(Mode.MAJORITY)},
};*/
Card[][] plan = {
{new Crossroads(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL)},
{new StoreRoom(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(2)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new Necropolis()},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(2)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new Necropolis()},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(1)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD), new BlackMarket(Mode.MAJORITY)},
};
Card[][] planB = {
{new Crossroads(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL)},
{new StoreRoom(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL)},
{new StoreRoom(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL)},
{new StoreRoom(1), new Necropolis()},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new StoreRoom(2)},
{new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL), new Necropolis()},
{new StoreRoom(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.ALL)},
{new StoreRoom(1), new BlackMarket(Mode.TWO_THIRD)},
};
private void start() {
harems.add(13 * 3, "13 duration haunted woods");
horseTraders.add(32, "returning horse traders to hand");
harems.add(31, "returning horse traders draws");
silvers.add(2, "from opponent messengers into rocks");
System.out.println();
for (Card[] golemPlan : plan) {
System.out.println ("Playing a Golem");
for (Card card : golemPlan) {
card.describeExecute();
}
}
System.out.println("\nran out of actions");
BigInteger silversInPlay = silvers.getValue();
playTwoCoinTreasures(silvers);
playBanks(banks.getValue());
BigInteger buys = coins.getValue().divide(BigInteger.valueOf(7));
System.out.println("Use travelling fair to get " + toE(buys) + " buys");
BigInteger raid = buys.multiply(silversInPlay);
System.out.println("Raid is worth " + toE(raid) + " silvers");
System.out.println("Raid is worth " + raid + " silvers");
}
private void playTwoCoinTreasures(Variable variable) {
if (variable.greaterThan(0)) {
treasuresInPlay.add(variable.getValue(), "playing all " + variable.getName());
coins.add(variable.getValue().multiply(TWO), "playing all " + variable.getName());
variable.reset("playing all");
}
}
private void playBanks(BigInteger playedNumber) {
System.out.println("I'm playing " + toE(playedNumber) + " of my " + toE(banks.getValue()) + " banks");
BigInteger doubleAverageBank = treasuresInPlay.getValue().multiply(TWO).add(playedNumber.add(BigInteger.ONE));
System.out.println("Average bank is worth half of " + toE(doubleAverageBank));
coins.add(playedNumber.multiply(doubleAverageBank).divide(TWO), "playing " + toE(playedNumber) + " banks");
treasuresInPlay.add(playedNumber, "playing banks");
banks.subtract(playedNumber, "played banks");
}
public abstract class Card {
void describeExecute() {
System.out.println("Playing a " + getClass().getSimpleName());
bandOfMisfitsPlay();
System.out.println();
}
void bandOfMisfitsPlay() {
coins.add(BigInteger.ONE, "training");
banks.add(BigInteger.ONE, "pathfinding");
execute();
}
abstract void execute();
}
public class Crossroads extends Card {
private final int golems;
public Crossroads(int golems) {
this.golems = golems;
}
@Override
void execute() {
banks.add(harems.getValue(), "drawing a bank for each harem");
banks.add(horseTraders.getValue(), "drawing a bank for each horse traders");
banks.subtract(golems, "requiring " + golems + " golems");
banks.subtract(1, "requiring 1 fortune");
fortunes.add(1, "crossroads draws it");
}
}
public class Necropolis extends Card {
@Override
void execute() {
}
@Override
void bandOfMisfitsPlay() {
}
}
public class BlackMarket extends Card {
private final Mode mode;
public BlackMarket(Mode mode) {
this.mode = mode;
}
@Override
void execute() {
coins.add(TWO, "playing black market");
playTwoCoinTreasures(harems);
playTwoCoinTreasures(silvers);
talismanInPlay.add(talisman.getValue(), "play all talisman");
treasuresInPlay.add(talisman.getValue(), "played all talisman");
talisman.reset("just played all");
BigInteger playedBanks = banks.getValue();
if (mode == Mode.TWO_THIRD) {
playedBanks = playedBanks.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(666)).divide(BigInteger.valueOf(1000));
} else if (mode == Mode.MAJORITY) {
playedBanks = playedBanks.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(86)).divide(BigInteger.valueOf(100));
}
playBanks(playedBanks);
if (fortunes.equalTo(1)) {
coins.multiply(TWO, "Playing fortune");
fortunes.reset("just played it");
}
silvers.add(coins.getValue().subtract(BigInteger.ONE), "Overpaying Doctor, trashing Rocks");
coins.reset("used all money on doctor");
}
}
int storeroomCounter = 0;
public class StoreRoom extends Card {
private final int golems;
private final int storeroomCount;
public StoreRoom(int golems) {
this.golems = golems;
this.storeroomCount = ++storeroomCounter;
}
@Override
void execute() {
BigInteger banksDraw = silvers.getValue().add(horseTraders.getValue().subtract(BigInteger.valueOf(golems)));
if (storeroomCount == 1) {
banksDraw = banksDraw.add(TWO);
System.out.println("We draw 2 extra banks because we discard 2 necropolis");
} else if (storeroomCount == 2) {
System.out.println("We draw 100 less banks because we need to skip over some actions");
banksDraw = banksDraw.subtract(BigInteger.valueOf(100));
}
silvers.reset("discarded all to storeroom");
horseTraders.reset("discarding all to storeroom");
banks.add(banksDraw, "drawing with storeroom");
}
}
public static String toE(BigInteger value) {
if (value.compareTo(BigInteger.valueOf(1000000000)) < 0) return value.toString();
return String.format("%s.%s%sE%d", value.toString().charAt(0), value.toString().charAt(1), value.toString().charAt(1), value.toString().length());
}
}
package dominion.main;
import java.math.BigInteger;
import static dominion.main.Main.toE;
public class Variable {
private BigInteger value;
private String name;
public Variable(String name, BigInteger value) {
this.value = value;
this.name = name;
}
public Variable(String name, int value) {
this(name, BigInteger.valueOf(value));
}
public Variable(String name) {
this(name, BigInteger.ZERO);
}
public void add(BigInteger addition, String reason) {
if (!addition.equals(BigInteger.ZERO)) {
value = value.add(addition);
System.out.printf("%s increases %s by %s to total of %s\n", reason, name, toE(addition), toE(value));
}
}
public void add(int addition, String reason) {
add(BigInteger.valueOf(addition), reason);
}
public void subtract(BigInteger subtraction, String reason) {
if (!subtraction.equals(BigInteger.ZERO)) {
value = value.subtract(subtraction);
System.out.printf("%s decreases %s by %s to total of %s\n", reason, name, toE(subtraction), toE(value));
}
}
public void subtract(int subtraction, String reason) {
subtract(BigInteger.valueOf(subtraction), reason);
}
public void multiply(BigInteger multiplication, String reason) {
value = value.multiply(multiplication);
System.out.printf("%s increases %s by a factor of %s to total of %s\n", reason, name, multiplication, toE(value));
}
public void reset(String reason) {
if (!value.equals(BigInteger.ZERO)) {
value = BigInteger.ZERO;
System.out.println(reason + " reset " + name + " to 0");
}
}
public void multiply(int multiplication, String reason) {
multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(multiplication), reason);
}
public boolean greaterThan(int someValue) {
return value.compareTo(BigInteger.valueOf(someValue)) > 0;
}
public boolean equalTo(int someValue) {
return value.equals(BigInteger.valueOf(someValue));
}
public BigInteger getValue() {
return value;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
}
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I don't know if people are still looking now, but last night I thought of some things for "the other strategy", with KC-Golem-Black Market
1. It's hard to play both tactician and buy Save. That was now part of the plan but doesn't really work.
2. Your setup turn can be improved a lot by doing KC-Golem into 3x {tactician, draw silver}. You get to play 3 tacticians that way.
3. In fact, if you start with KC-KC-Golem into tact, and trash overgrown estate during setup, you can activate 6 tacticians.
-> that means starting hand goes up to 35 from just 12. I don't really have a good feel for the consequences though. I think it's still not enough to beat the 1E727 unless something else shows up.
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Didn't quite have the exact same trick, but I figured that having a bunch of Banks on the last play was good, though you still needed Silver. Couldn't figure out how to get them without ending on Storeroom though.
Another trick I was using was HoP for Rocks instead of Silver. I had Loan for a bit, but Gain+trash is double. So you get triple the Treasure and double the Silver.
Saving the Banks between plays is really cool. I wonder if there's a way to just go all Black Markets, or like cut down to one Storeroom every 3 or stuff like that. Did some math to get out the optimal ratio; I'm sure there's a way to do the same for an arbitrary sequence of Black Market/Storeroom, but it probably requires Mathematica.
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I don't know if people are still looking now, but last night I thought of some things for "the other strategy", with KC-Golem-Black Market
1. It's hard to play both tactician and buy Save. That was now part of the plan but doesn't really work.
2. Your setup turn can be improved a lot by doing KC-Golem into 3x {tactician, draw silver}. You get to play 3 tacticians that way.
3. In fact, if you start with KC-KC-Golem into tact, and trash overgrown estate during setup, you can activate 6 tacticians.
-> that means starting hand goes up to 35 from just 12. I don't really have a good feel for the consequences though. I think it's still not enough to beat the 1E727 unless something else shows up.
Gonna recompute it anyway, but I don't think it's the sort of drastic change needed.
Start with 56 Silver and 35 Golems
35 times: Golem into KC into Golem....
So that's 103 Golem plays playing 206 actions: 34 KC plays and 172 Black Market plays
Each Black Market doubles the money, so it's around 56*2*2^172=10^53 ending Silver for 10^105 gains. Still not that close. Wish you could Watchtower or Catacombs for double gains, but that's infinite of course.
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I don't know if people are still looking now, but last night I thought of some things for "the other strategy", with KC-Golem-Black Market
1. It's hard to play both tactician and buy Save. That was now part of the plan but doesn't really work.
2. Your setup turn can be improved a lot by doing KC-Golem into 3x {tactician, draw silver}. You get to play 3 tacticians that way.
3. In fact, if you start with KC-KC-Golem into tact, and trash overgrown estate during setup, you can activate 6 tacticians.
-> that means starting hand goes up to 35 from just 12. I don't really have a good feel for the consequences though. I think it's still not enough to beat the 1E727 unless something else shows up.
Unfortunately I think this leads to an unbounded solution:
1. Tactician
2. 10 golems into king's court golem chain and play alternating tacticians and black markets (or any way to gain cards in hand)
3. keep repeating to put ever more tacticians in play leading to an arbitrarily large hand size (over the course of many turns)
This works because tactician never discards golems. You can get the golems all in play before resolving a tactician by always resolving the king's courts first.
So basically the KC golem plan is useless.
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That's pretty slick! I don't have anything like that program; just a spreadsheet and a text file.
I have a feeling that isn't totally optimized though, and there are a couple of tricks you aren't using. I'll see what I get when I adapt to the new play-order. The catacombs add a multiple of about 2^31 (~2x10^9) I believe, but I'll need to check that. You should also use horns of plenty.
For your deck cycling you discard some action cards for coins with storeroom? That works, but I liked my way better, oh well.
Why is the 2/3-1/3 ratio optimal? HoPs also make it more complicated.
Also @ephesos, what's wrong with watchtower/catacombs?
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...So basically the KC golem plan is useless....
hmm afraid you're right.
I have a feeling that isn't totally optimized though, and there are a couple of tricks you aren't using. I'll see what I get when I adapt to the new play-order. The catacombs add a multiple of about 2^31 (~2x10^9) I believe, but I'll need to check that. You should also use horns of plenty.
Ahhhhh.... catacombs. I was thinking about opponents swindler hitting it and didn't understand why it helped at all. But now I just figured out my own doctors can be trashing catacombs all the time as well... actually that matters a lot more than what you just said. Now at a full 100 extra digits for 2.99E838 gains.
I still don't get what the horn of plenty is doing.
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I still don't get what the horn of plenty is doing.
They give you 2 silver in hand for a total of 3 treasures played per HoP while resolving black market I think.
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Also @ephesos, what's wrong with watchtower/catacombs?
He's using KC as well.
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Just read this thread now. These are some very impressive solutions! I enjoyed the incremental improvements in this thread.
@Stef: is there a reason the opponent doesn't buy Messenger on every turn the Outpost turn?
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I don't know if people are still looking now, but last night I thought of some things for "the other strategy", with KC-Golem-Black Market
1. It's hard to play both tactician and buy Save. That was now part of the plan but doesn't really work.
2. Your setup turn can be improved a lot by doing KC-Golem into 3x {tactician, draw silver}. You get to play 3 tacticians that way.
3. In fact, if you start with KC-KC-Golem into tact, and trash overgrown estate during setup, you can activate 6 tacticians.
-> that means starting hand goes up to 35 from just 12. I don't really have a good feel for the consequences though. I think it's still not enough to beat the 1E727 unless something else shows up.
Unfortunately I think this leads to an unbounded solution:
1. Tactician
2. 10 golems into king's court golem chain and play alternating tacticians and black markets (or any way to gain cards in hand)
3. keep repeating to put ever more tacticians in play leading to an arbitrarily large hand size (over the course of many turns)
This works because tactician never discards golems. You can get the golems all in play before resolving a tactician by always resolving the king's courts first.
So basically the KC golem plan is useless.
I was thinking about this before, it's not unbounded because you have to have a Golem in hand at each step in the Golem chain, in order to play it with KC. But when you play a Tactician, you discard all your Golems, and Black Market doesn't let you get a Golem in hand, only Silver. So you can only get another Golem with another source of limited draw i.e. Overgrown Estate.
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Why is the 2/3-1/3 ratio optimal? HoPs also make it more complicated.
I tried to do out the math on it, you can say something like:
Start with M cards, M constant, let X be the number of Silver and M-X the number of Banks.
Then you have 2X+(M(M+1)-X(X+1))/2 money, 2X^2+X*((M(M+1)-X(X+1))/2) gains (or -(X^3)/2+(3/2)X^2+(M^2*X)/2 when you eliminate the 1 for being too small)
Derivative of that is -3/2*X^2+3X+M^2/2, set it equal to 0, and you get X~=M/sqrt(3), or .58 M
Hmmm, when I did that before, it came out to 2/3. Looks like I flipped a sign before :P
Anyway, you can do the same math with HoP Rocks, just have M-(X/2) be the number of Banks and account for an extra X HoP treasures when figuring the Bank value. Did it out and got something like X=(8+2sqrt(31))/15 M (where the number of HoPs is X/2), or 63% HoP, 37% Banks
-
When using both the banks and the horns I end up around 1E930.
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I don't get the assignment: if all piles are infinite, how is the answer not always: 'infinite amount of gains'?
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I don't get the assignment: if all piles are infinite, how is the answer not always: 'infinite amount of gains'?
You want to find the highest number of gains you can get in a single turn, such that it is not possible to get more gains than that. I don't think there's anything in Dominion that lets you get infinity gains in one turn. There are a ton of kingdoms that have unbounded amounts of gains you can get. For example, a Village Smithy kingdom has no solution, because for any number I try to say is the maximum number of gains, you can get more gains than that. The goal is to set up a kingdom which has a bounded, but still huge, number of gains, in one turn. It reminds me of the busy beaver problem.
Here's a simple example of a kingdom with a bounded number of gains in one turn:
Kingdom is just Squire. Play 2 for +2 Actions, then 3 for +2 buys. So X=7, Y=8.
Taking an early (and temporary) lead!
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I don't think there's anything in Dominion that lets you get infinity gains in one turn.
You just need a single card for that: Rats.
Also, if there's just Village and Smithy in the kingdom, you can't gain more than one card.
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Also, if there's just Village and Smithy in the kingdom, you can't gain more than one card.
Yeah, this tripped me up earlier with my Baked kingdom. The goal is to get a large but bounded number of gains. An unbounded number of coins and/or cards (which easily translates into coins) is actually fine unless there is a way to translate those into an unbounded number of gains. Village-Smithy is unbounded cards/coins, but not gains since there's no source of +Buy or other gaining.
But the most efficient ways to get tons of gains are such that they are only bounded if coins/cards are also bounded, and the solutions so far have been able to achieve huge hands that are bounded by keeping +actions very limited: Crossroads, Necropolis, Golem (which can't play itself).
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Why is the 2/3-1/3 ratio optimal? HoPs also make it more complicated.
I tried to do out the math on it, you can say something like:
Start with M cards, M constant, let X be the number of Silver and M-X the number of Banks.
Then you have 2X+(M(M+1)-X(X+1))/2 money, 2X^2+X*((M(M+1)-X(X+1))/2) gains (or -(X^3)/2+(3/2)X^2+(M^2*X)/2 when you eliminate the 1 for being too small)
Derivative of that is -3/2*X^2+3X+M^2/2, set it equal to 0, and you get X~=M/sqrt(3), or .58 M
Hmmm, when I did that before, it came out to 2/3. Looks like I flipped a sign before :P
Anyway, you can do the same math with HoP Rocks, just have M-(X/2) be the number of Banks and account for an extra X HoP treasures when figuring the Bank value. Did it out and got something like X=(8+2sqrt(31))/15 M (where the number of HoPs is X/2), or 63% HoP, 37% Banks
When I did it I got that it was definitely 2/5ths horns, assuming that you have a negligible number of treasures in play beforehand. Reasoning:
You have t treasures to play, and choose h of them to be HoP. Turning a bank into a HoP results in losing 3*h coins and gaining 2*(t - h) coins. When is this a fair deal? When 3h = 2t - 2h, or h = 2/5 * t.
If you have x treasures in play beforehand (particularly for the first black market), then it comes out to h = (2t - x)/5.
EDIT: Okay, so I got 10^1192, but I'm pretty sure I calculated it wrong.
EDIT: Now 10^448, so still doing something wrong...
EDIT: Now 10^673, which, while reasonable and better than anything I had before, is clearly unoptimized and possibly miscalculated still.
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When I did it I got that it was definitely 2/5ths horns, assuming that you have a negligible number of treasures in play beforehand. Reasoning:
You have t treasures to play, and choose h of them to be HoP. Turning a bank into a HoP results in losing 3*h coins and gaining 2*(t - h) coins. When is this a fair deal? When 3h = 2t - 2h, or h = 2/5 * t.
If you have x treasures in play beforehand (particularly for the first black market), then it comes out to h = (2t - x)/5.
Don't you optimize gains instead of coins? i.e. losing a HoP loses you twice the number of Raids you are buying in gains, but gaining the Bank helps you buy more Raids.
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I don't think there's anything in Dominion that lets you get infinity gains in one turn.
You just need a single card for that: Rats.
Also, if there's just Village and Smithy in the kingdom, you can't gain more than one card.
Rats doesn't give infinity gains, only one. As stated in the sentence directly after the one you quoted,
There are a ton of kingdoms that have unbounded amounts of gains you can get.
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When I did it I got that it was definitely 2/5ths horns, assuming that you have a negligible number of treasures in play beforehand. Reasoning:
You have t treasures to play, and choose h of them to be HoP. Turning a bank into a HoP results in losing 3*h coins and gaining 2*(t - h) coins. When is this a fair deal? When 3h = 2t - 2h, or h = 2/5 * t.
If you have x treasures in play beforehand (particularly for the first black market), then it comes out to h = (2t - x)/5.
Don't you optimize gains instead of coins? i.e. losing a HoP loses you twice the number of Raids you are buying in gains, but gaining the Bank helps you buy more Raids.
Considering raid is only remotely relevant on the last black market play, and you'll want to max out coins then anyway because one coin turns into two silvers
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I don't get the assignment: if all piles are infinite, how is the answer not always: 'infinite amount of gains'?
You want to find the highest number of gains you can get in a single turn, such that it is not possible to get more gains than that. I don't think there's anything in Dominion that lets you get infinity gains in one turn. There are a ton of kingdoms that have unbounded amounts of gains you can get. For example, a Village Smithy kingdom has no solution, because for any number I try to say is the maximum number of gains, you can get more gains than that. The goal is to set up a kingdom which has a bounded, but still huge, number of gains, in one turn. It reminds me of the busy beaver problem.
Here's a simple example of a kingdom with a bounded number of gains in one turn:
Kingdom is just Squire. Play 2 for +2 Actions, then 3 for +2 buys. So X=7, Y=8.
Taking an early (and temporary) lead!
So the trick is: creating a kingdom that even with infinite amount of supply piles still is only limited in the amount of cards you can have in your hand and, thus, the amount of gains you can have?
Is that the idea?
So smithy/champion/squire is not an option, because, well, that will have infinite gains. (Smithy eternally and than squire eternally.)
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Yes. Our solutions work because it's impossible to get, say, 10^827382927 coins in a single turn even though it is possible to get 10^600+. And converting coins to gains is the only way to gain a very large number of cards while staying bounded.
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I don't think there's anything in Dominion that lets you get infinity gains in one turn.
You just need a single card for that: Rats.
Also, if there's just Village and Smithy in the kingdom, you can't gain more than one card.
Rats doesn't give infinity gains, only one. As stated in the sentence directly after the one you quoted,
There are a ton of kingdoms that have unbounded amounts of gains you can get.
I thought what Scott wanted to say that he tought on any given turn, the amount of gains you have would still be finite (but you can get arbitrarily high finite numbers here). However, with Rats there is a single turn (with a finite amount of turns taken before) where you can gain any number of cards you wnat (with that number being picked after the turn).
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I just discovered this thread and spent the last hour reading it. It is amazing.
Why did this thread stop? Is 1E930 really the max? I was hoping it would end over 1E1000.
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I just discovered this thread and spent the last hour reading it. It is amazing.
Why did this thread stop? Is 1E930 really the max? I was hoping it would end over 1E1000.
Well, I don't think I ever got above 10^673 and it would take a lot of work for me to try to replicate what stef did... so it kinda died off.
EDIT: this was before empires and the seconds editions though I think... so maybe it's worth coming back to.
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I just discovered this thread and spent the last hour reading it. It is amazing.
Why did this thread stop? Is 1E930 really the max? I was hoping it would end over 1E1000.
Well, I don't think I ever got above 10^673 and it would take a lot of work for me to try to replicate what stef did... so it kinda died off.
EDIT: this was before empires and the seconds editions though I think... so maybe it's worth coming back to.
It included Empires, since the best solution included Rocks, which is Empires. Looks like it was before second editions.
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Sorry to necropost, but I just read through this and I can't work out if I'm stupid, or everybody who posted in this thread is (I suspect the former). Once you can convert money to gains, surely Catapult + Pathfinding leads to a trivial infinite combo. You put your +1 card on Catapult, then all your Rocks give you +1 card (as they're from the same pile), which draws you another Rocks, so you can play an unbounded number of Rocks in a single turn, and gain unbounded money. What am I missing here?
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Sorry to necropost, but I just read through this and I can't work out if I'm stupid, or everybody who posted in this thread is (I suspect the former). Once you can convert money to gains, surely Catapult + Pathfinding leads to a trivial infinite combo. You put your +1 card on Catapult, then all your Rocks give you +1 card (as they're from the same pile), which draws you another Rocks, so you can play an unbounded number of Rocks in a single turn, and gain unbounded money. What am I missing here?
You're not wrong, we just missed that. Removing pathfinding from the solution won't reduce it by much but it was certainly invalid in its current form.
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Sorry for the necro. I tried to go through this thread and I think I mostly understand the solution, though I skimmed through the pre-turn setup.
With the somewhat recent Errata, using Estates for the Horse Traders reaction should no longer work, weakening the beginning of the turn. On the other hand, there's been a lot of new cards that could help this solution. Adding Conclave and almost every terminal draw card should be allowed and gives a lot of +Cards and a couple +Actions. Captain is really interesting as well and I believe is valid to add as is? If so, that would be a big gain. Also, the Renaissance cards are pretty interesting. Obviously, Villagers aren't allowed, but at the very least we could add Piazza, Citadel, or Barracks.
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I remember seeing this thread a couple years ago when Renaissance was new, and had an idea involving Priest and Capitalism. So with a hand of some ratio of black markets to priests, you'd first play a BM to get a ton of silver, then trash it all to priests. Then, you can nest a chain of all the remaining black markets you have, then for each one you can buy the doctor and get a ton of money back from all the priests, as well as a ton of silver, the money from which is negligible compared to the money from preists.
Storeroom wouldn't work with capitalism, however I believe the only issue with nonterminals is Golem, so removing that allows the use of something like a bunch of Warehouses to discard all the silver we end up with into more black markets and priests. This can only be done outside of a black market, meaning the next one does cost an action. (edit: a Cellar would be a simpler way of doing it)
Then, Conclaves could also be used inside black markets to play almost every card in the game that isn't a village or nonterminal draw.
How much money/gains can this make?
Well, say you have played P priests this turn, have a chain of B black markets deep, and M money.
Each doctor buy trashes M-3 rocks, gaining (2*P+2)*(M-3) money total (from priests and silvers), which can be approximated as 2*P*M when the numbers are large enough. (or simply using a cost reducer to make doctor cost 0; and treating P as number of preists + 1 instead, to make the approximation exact). Repeating this B times gets you (2*P)^B * M total money, and approximately that many cards in hand too.
Using 1 action cycles away the hand into mostly black markets (as increasing the exponent does a lot more than increasing the base), thus replacing B with (something greater than) (2P)^B. With A actions, this nets you (2P)^^A, where ^^ represents 2 arrows of Knuth's Up Arrow Notation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up-arrow_notation).
So (2P)^^A approximates the number of cards in hand, which in turn approximates the amount of money available at the end, which in turn approximates the final number of gains.
A can be made so be somewhere in the hundreds thanks to Conclave.