Dominion Strategy Forum

Miscellaneous => Introductions => Topic started by: Colgate on July 18, 2016, 06:23:40 am

Title: Hi everyone, n00b here trying to learn the game.
Post by: Colgate on July 18, 2016, 06:23:40 am

I'm Colgate in Dominion Online. I've played only in Dominion Online so far, but I will probably play paper Dominion eventually. I play mostly BM strategies, because they are easy, I'm bad at playing engines and slogs also rush and combo boards are rare.

I've read dominion strategy wiki and learnt BM is often bad strategy especially in Colony games. My own limited experience tells vice versa. I won often with BM in Province games and my only Colony game: https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160717/log.0.1468796089135.txt Was this brainless Ghost Ship BM, best strategy for that board? If not what was?

Title: Re: Hi everyone, n00b here trying to learn the game.
Post by: Awaclus on July 18, 2016, 07:18:48 am

Hi and welcome!

Here's the log and the kingdom presented in a way that's actually not unbearably painful to try to decipher:

gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160717/log.0.1468796089135.txt (http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160717/log.0.1468796089135.txt)

(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/c/cf/Talisman.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Talisman) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/e/e0/Taxman.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Taxman) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/5/51/Band_of_Misfits.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Band of Misfits) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/6/66/Cache.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Cache) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/0/0a/Ghost_Ship.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Ghost Ship) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/9/9d/Harem.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Harem)
(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/8/89/Raid.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Raid) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/d/df/Hamlet.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Hamlet) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/0/0f/Pawn.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Pawn) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/5/51/Farming_Village.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Farming Village) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/3/36/Smithy.jpg) (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Smithy)

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Raid, Hamlet, Pawn, Farming Village, Smithy, Talisman, Taxman, Band of Misfits, Cache, Ghost Ship, Harem

On that board, I would definitely build an engine. I'd buy a Talisman (only one copy) and get a ton of Smithies and Farming Villages, and at least one Ghost Ship on your first $5 turn. Taxman is probably good here, because that's a way to potentially get lots of payload without adding too many stop cards into your deck, which is important because there's no trashing so your payload should preferably take up as little space in your deck as possible. For that same reason, I would avoid buying any Treasures other than the first Talisman and maybe one Silver in the early game (you can buy Platinums later on when your engine is already working).

If you look at your opponent's deck, you can see that his mistake was that he had tons and tons of cards in his deck and not a lot of drawing power — he could only draw up to 16 of his over 30 stop cards by the end of the game, and for the longest time, he had hardly any draw at all. An engine that played a Ghost Ship every turn would be easily able to crush a big money strategy here, since it's so hard to do anything with just 3 cards in your hand as a big money player in a Colony game.

EDIT: Here's a pretty bad example of how it could play out, because I don't have all the expansions so I had to substitute a couple of cards for significantly weaker alternatives (this is one of the rare boards where Farming Village's ability is actually not entirely useless, and Squire is a lot worse than Hamlet) and the bot played horribly, but at least it's something: http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160718/log.0.1468842118724.txt

Title: Re: Hi everyone, n00b here trying to learn the game.
Post by: Deadlock39 on July 18, 2016, 09:47:54 am

Quote from: Awaclus on July 18, 2016, 07:18:48 am

the bot played horribly, but at least it's something

If you specify Banker Bot, you can play against BM, and he'll actually play it reasonably proficiently..

Title: Re: Hi everyone, n00b here trying to learn the game.
Post by: dedicateddan on July 18, 2016, 06:07:16 pm

Welcome to the forums!

Big money strategies tend to be stable, in that the goal is to buy money, money, more money, and then provinces. It's pretty hard to mess up

Engines on the other hand, rely on drawing most or all of the deck in one turn. This means maintaining a thin deck and buying a lot of villages and draw before adding payload

On this board you can pick up a bunch of Band of Misfits, Villages, and Smithies to gradually start drawing deck while upgrading treasure with Taxman. You can actually build up to double or triple colony fairly smoothly here, as Awaclus shows in the log