Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Dominion Online at Shuffle iT => Topic started by: Chris is me on July 30, 2019, 08:43:43 am
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With the new card list feature rolled out this morning, I figured it would be cool if we shared our Like, Dislike, and Ban lists and some reasons why we're putting what we do onto them. I know there was a similar thread for just ban lists but this gives us a chance to share the other two lists plus any changes of opinion we might have on them.
I haven't totally decided on my lists but here is what I was gonna open with:
Likes:
Bridge - I just love cost reduction and getting them sick gains bro
Cursed Village - Probably my favorite new card, enables all sorts of draw to X.
Dislikes:
Ghost Ship - It's fine sometimes but other times it just results in a momentum lock against second player more than any other discard attack. Would like to see it less.
Urchin - it's not that it's Too Good or whatever; it's just that when Mercenary trashing is essential it can produce the same degenerate state as Ghost Ship - you need to keep Merc and two junk when you discard down to 3 and then you don't do much that turn. Kind of bored with it.
Tax - It's just gross.
Bans:
Possession
Rebuild - It's either bad or it's good and I don't really wanna play with it in either case.
Swindler - Finally I can be rid of this demon card
Harvest - It's filler until I get mad at another card, but I'd rather it not get in the way of good cards.
Bureaucrat - See above; it's just in the way, eventually I'll be sick of another card.
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Likes:
Vassal: base mvp
Scrying pool: general mvp
Butcher: no need to say why!
Page: for when your warrior hits opponent's warrior
Peasant: To teach stuff.
Dislikes
Sauna:...
Ambassador: takes time
Ghost ship: easily onesided
Treasure map: no idea
Night watchman: as well as with scouting party, dont know how to opent hem with travelers.
Baths: irrelevant
Annex: Same, unless its rebuild or last turn
Scouting party: aint good with it
Bans
Possession: no idea what the card does
Pooka: I am horrible with cursed gold.
Feodum: I am even worse with this one
Miser: I dont get it
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What an awesome feature! Thanks to the team for making this possible. I think my favorite part of these lists might be hearing players' explanations for why they like/dislike/ban certain cards. Should make for some great conversation. Having said that, here I go (for now)
Like: I don't have anything on this list because I enjoy the variety and challenge of giving (almost) every card a chance to shine. If I did have cards on this list, I don't know how I could possibly limit it to 5. My instinct is to put Worker's Village just so there's always a source of +actions and +buys, but I prefer the randomness of it all. I might also think about putting Black Market on here, but having it show up more often than usual would probably wear it out and lead to increase swinginess.
Dislikes: These are the cards I could do without, but I wouldn't say that I "never" want to see them again. They belong in Dominion from time to time and I'm glad that they get their occasional chance to shine.
Familiar- It just leads to sloggy and uncomfortable games. You have to dedicate your first 2 turns to hitting $3P, and if you don't hit it on turns 4 and 5, you're probably hosed. Before you know it, you're most likely sitting there with 7 coppers, 3 estates, a potion, a couple silvers, and a bunch of curses.
Pooka- I don't like Cursed Gold. That's all there is to it. I wish it wasn't in the game. I do like Pooka, though. That's what makes it a dislike rather than a ban.
Urchin- I find that it's often a race to get Mercenary and then a money-ish situation after that. I also feel like it's usually the best thing to open urchin/urchin and I'm just not all that excited about that.
Swindler- It's the swinginess. It's a fun card, but one that can absolutely determine the outcome of the game on turn 3. A perfect example of a card I would like to see half as much as the others.
Smugglers- I kind of stink with this card. It's probably all in my head, but it feels like my opponent is always smuggling Golds and Goons and Grand Markets with this thing while I'm either gaining silvers or gaining nothing because my opponent bought an event or a province. However, "I'm bad at playing with it" doesn't seem like a good reason to ban a card outright.
Ban List: A very short list, but these are the cards I'm 100% sure I would be cool with never seeing again. The fact that there are only 4 card shaped things here should speak to how well I believe Dominion is balanced.
Possession- Built in already, but this card does not belong in the game for me.
Knights- The only kingdom card. I've gone into more detail on this before, but Knights take away the balance of fairness. If you have 3 Knights and I have 7, I trash all your Knights and then I'm trashing everything else of value in your deck and there is literally nothing you can do about it. Ghost Ship, Mountebank, and Cultist are nasty, but there's always the opportunity to return the favor for your opponent. Knights can and will take away that opportunity. The only true no-brainer on my personal ban list.
Tax- This is here because of the setup clause. Everything about that is gross. I've never played a game with Tax and been glad that it's there.
Keep- I mean, maybe if it was like 2VP for each treasure, but 5?!?! Holy cow it just turns Dominion into a completely different game, and one that is much less fun than the normal one. Counting silvers and buying coppers (shudders) is just a chore I could do without.
That's what I've got! I expect to see a lot Rebuild, Ambassador, Cultist, etc. on other list, but I don't really mind them as much as others do. Curious to see how my list differs/compares to the majority.
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I haven't yet thought about filling up my like/dislike lists.
Bans:
Advisor: I just intensely dislike this card, its too spammable for an interaction card and too often involves making a lot choices that don't end up mattering and just taunt the other player.
Catapult: Causes way too many 2$ hands early in the game. Easy to pick up discard to 3 without a decent upside like militia's to pay for it.
Swindler: Out! OUT FOUL DEMONSPAWN!
Smugglers: grumble grumble.
Pooka: I feel bad about this and might move it to just dislike. I actually really like Pooka games when there are cards that can trash the curses. I just run into games where there's no other trashing too often and I hate it.
Defiled Shrine: Annoying cluttery setup, don't love the feel of the play where one turn its a bad play to take the points but then the next turn just because people are building naturally its worth 4vp more and the other player gets a huge cheap lead.
Tax: Annoying cluttery setup. While I admire the attempt to rectify FPA thats sorta present, it more often feels like you just get even less than the standard 7$ on open and that feels sad and I hate it.
Keep: CBA to track that nonsense.
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Dislike:
Lurker: annoying political card, you buy it just because the opponent did so you both don't use it. Has some 3-pile shenanigans potential but it usually just sucks.
Governor: monopolizes the game too much and is luck-based. Not banning because I suppose I have to get better at using it, but I hate it.
Urchin: can't remember a single card that's so reliant on getting the right stuff early, and isn't that fun to play with anyway (too much handsize reducing)
Keep: I dislike counting cards and how political this card also is, you buy bad cards just so the opponent has less of them.
Defiled Shrine: also a very political card that often punishes players for having good hands.
Ban:
Sauna: often it's bad, but when it's good, merely touching any of the other 9 piles is game-throwing. I've played enough Sauna games for a lifetime, they are all identical.
I'll add more if I come up with them. Also I've never played with Posession before so I wanna see it first before I decide if I hate it.
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Ban:
Sauna: often it's bad, but when it's good, merely touching any of the other 9 piles is game-throwing. I've played enough Sauna games for a lifetime, they are all identical.
Much like IGG and Rebuild before it, this is one of those cards that (1) is a lot more powerful when both players go for it and (2) grows less essential the higher level of play you get.
I've lost count of the number of games where I get my one Sauna to trash and I watch the opponent choke on racing to get to Avanto while I do more productive things with my time.
If there's no other draw or villages, it can be centralizing, true.
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Bans:
Mountebank, Witch: I just hate games with tons of junk and little to no trashing.
Cultist: for the above reason, and also too one-sided and boring gameplay.
Rebuild: extremely boring; buying anything but rebuild or green is usually a mistake.
Keep: too annoying to keep track of, but maybe I'm just bad. On the banlist anyway.
Dislikes:
Goons: Too boring of a payload card. Basically does everything you could want a payload card to do; whoever gets their Goons(es?) up and running faster wins.
Black Market: way too swingy, have played more than one no-trashing game where the other person got a curser and I didn't.
Tournament: also way too swingy and boring. First person to connect and get Followers/Steed/Princess or whatever basically wins.
Hamlet: Too much clicking.
Page: way less interesting than Peasant and also potential for stuff like getting your Warrior trashed by the other person's Warrior.
Wall: This card is fine, I just don't like playing with it.
Likes:
I haven't really decided on a lot here yet.
Necromancer: I really like the concept of this card, and haven't played a lot with it.
Fortress: ya gotta have at least one village for a kingdom to be fun imo, plus all the fun tfb combos.
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I looked at the site and the FAQ (quickly) and couldn't find the answer to this:
How are these lists used? I do see "Respect Liked / Disliked / Banned cards" as an option when you create a table, but how exactly will it work?
Banned seems pretty obvious, but I'm unclear on the other two. Does it just increase / decrease probabilities of those cards showing up?
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Yes it says it decreases the probability of the card being chosen.
But on my first 3 plays after this my two disliked cards both turned up once.
They were
Sauna as it seems to be the one way (althoughif only one person goes for it it might be OK
Feodum as I can't see itr being useful. *although I did have a game with masterpiece and other players did not understand the cards so I emptied the silver pile before buying any :(
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I looked at the site and the FAQ (quickly) and couldn't find the answer to this:
How are these lists used? I do see "Respect Liked / Disliked / Banned cards" as an option when you create a table, but how exactly will it work?
Banned seems pretty obvious, but I'm unclear on the other two. Does it just increase / decrease probabilities of those cards showing up?
Here is the link to the announcement:
http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=3552.msg15575#msg15575
(http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=3552.msg15575#msg15575)
Every player gets to make three small lists that will influence the kingdoms you play.
You can make a banned list, a liked list and a disliked list. Cards on these lists will increase or decrease the likelihood a card will appear in your kingdom. Banned cards will be gone completely (0%), while liked cards have 200% chance and disliked cards 50%. If several players have the same cards on their lists, these percentages will be multiplied with each other. On every list you can put a maximum of 5 cards and 3 landscapes (Events, Landmarks and/or Projects). You don't need a subscription to these cards to put them on your lists.
If you play a regular automatched game, the banned list and the disliked list will be respected, but the liked list ignored. If you play a practice game or a game with a bot, all lists will be respected. If you create your own table, you can manually select which lists you want to be respected. An automatched game that doesn't use expansions will ignore all lists. The rationale here is that we want to increase the fun for players as much as possible, while still not allowing/forcing them to game the system too much.
When this feature was released, we removed the global ban on Possession but put it on everyone's personal list. New accounts will start with empty lists.
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Like: Black Market, Vault
Dislike: Scrying Pool
Ban: Familiar, Cultist, PStone
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Ban:
Possession - Duh.
Rebuild - Duh.
Urchin - OP, irritating to play with.
Page - Luck-based, makes the game boring.
Familiar - You have to get it, and then it has no more impact when the Curses are gone.
Tax - Makes the beginning painful.
Keep - Creates a tedious, never-ending tug-of-war situation.
Dislike:
Governor - Too centralizing and I suck at using it.
Knights - Fighting against your constantly crumbling deck makes you feel like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up a hill over and over. And you're screwed if you lose the split.
Smugglers - Few feelings in Dominion are worse than an opponent leeching a Grand Market off of you.
Sea Hag - Makes things too painful.
Militia - Just not fun.
Like:
Not sure at the moment. I like diversity, which points to adding Black Market and nothing else.
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I have no issue with Possession. I only plan on banning Tax because, well, eurgh. Other than that, I'm not putting anything on any list.
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I have no issue with Possession. I only plan on banning Tax because, well, eurgh. Other than that, I'm not putting anything on any list.
I’m like this, except Rebuild is on my ban list instead of tax
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This is my listing right now all though I am thinking of downgrading some of the band to dislike
Banned List
Lurker
Catapult
Sauna
Ambassador
Haunted Woods
Donate
Disliked List
Chapel
Remake
Rebuild
Black Market
Governor
My Reasoning:
Lurker and Ambassador are game warping cards very rarely in a good way, if one player takes one, the other players need to follow suit - in most matches.
Catapult and Sauna are more often than their fair share tilt cards. Catapult degrades quickly and isnt much fun to fight against. There are matches where the lone Sauna player will be too slow or can be caught with a depleted deck and exploited but in most matches this is the dominant strategy.
Haunted Woods - I like this card, but the Haunted Woods lock isnt worth playing with this card all that often.
Donate - I have abused this card way too often. Donate/Robin Hood among the worse. (Possibly should just be dislike - but for now a rest is warranted)
Chapel, Remake, and Rebuild - In most games these cards are super under costed.
Black Market - I think this is a weak card, but in paper I ban it as it is too slow. Online it can be fun, but seems a feel bad for my opponents when they desperately cling to a multi-action or multi-buy game instead of occasionally enjoying the single action/buy game.
Governor- A somewhat interesting card, but it is a promo on the super strong side. Im kind of tired of the choice to quick race or Gold/Rebuild-to-6xProvinces.
I am considering Tax as it is often unfair to the starting player.
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Finally get to ban Black Market. You can't convince me that this isn't the most swingy card in the game. Maybe it's high-skill in that it's a good card to beat bad players with, but when both players are decent, it's just "who get's the missing engine pieces, trashers or junkers - and who doesn't? let's roll the die".
I also banned Tax, since it's annoying. On my dislike list I just put all the Doom cards. Tired of the hex swinginess.
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Finally get to ban Black Market. You can't convince me that this isn't the most swingy card in the game. Maybe it's high-skill in that it's a good card to beat bad players with, but when both players are decent, it's just "who get's the missing engine pieces, trashers or junkers - and who doesn't? let's roll the die".
People get matched against people of similar skill levels; the skill multiplier isn't the story of good players beating bad players. Black Market has a skill multiplier of 1.23, which is crazy high. It feels high-luck; it's actually high-skill. As further evidence, it's Stef's favorite card. Smithy meanwhile is high-luck and no-one complains about it. That's just how it goes. (Swindler is an example of a card that looks high-luck and is).
But, it's great that now you can ban the card if you don't like it.
The hexes have a skill multiplier of 1.00; they don't have an effect on our ability to predict the winner from skill level. Isn't that interesting.
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Just played 10 games with someone and they all had black market. I'm guessing both of us had market as "liked" and that's why it appeared 100%. Either way, it got pretty dull playing with that card every game, though I usually like it.
Anyway, I'm deleting my "liked" list because of it.
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Just played 10 games with someone and they all had black market. I'm guessing both of us had market as "liked" and that's why it appeared 100%. Either way, it got pretty dull playing with that card every game, though I usually like it.
Anyway, I'm deleting my "liked" list because of it.
That sounds extremely unlikely. The probabilities are supposed to be multiplicative so you would only have a 4x chance of seeing it each game, which doesn’t yield more than a minuscule chance of 10 in a row. This suggests that either something is going wrong with the feature or Black Market was actually set as a required card in those games.
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I'm always going to believe statistics over subjective opinions.
I can't think of a dominion card I'd dislike except maybe Rebuild.
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Ban:
Possession
Urchin
Cultist
Ambassador
Familiar
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Annex, Tax and Keep
Dislike:
Governor
Advisor
Knights
Sauna
Page
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Windfall, Save and City gate (lot of mistakes and "undos" with those events in play)
Like:
Upgrade
Peddler
Highway
Workers village
Grand market or Groundskeeper...
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Dominate, Training, Capitalism
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Just played 10 games with someone and they all had black market. I'm guessing both of us had market as "liked" and that's why it appeared 100%. Either way, it got pretty dull playing with that card every game, though I usually like it.
Anyway, I'm deleting my "liked" list because of it.
Ranked ladder games ignore the like list.
The top of the log shows exactly what factors influenced the odds of the kingdom randomizer, and by how much they were influenced.
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Ranked ladder games ignore the like list.
The top of the log shows exactly what factors influenced the odds of the kingdom randomizer, and by how much they were influenced.
Huh maybe the guy just forced it into every kingdom? Dunno, I was matching for rated games.
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I’m surprised that any of the lists would be respected for ranked games.
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People get matched against people of similar skill levels; the skill multiplier isn't the story of good players beating bad players. Black Market has a skill multiplier of 1.23, which is crazy high. It feels high-luck; it's actually high-skill. As further evidence, it's Stef's favorite card. Smithy meanwhile is high-luck and no-one complains about it. That's just how it goes. (Swindler is an example of a card that looks high-luck and is).
You can choose the level of the players you want to be matched with, right? I have +/- 10, so I'm usually matched with people 8-10 levels lower than me. That usually means I'm a better player. Still, I have very rarely seen an opponent choose the wrong cards from the BM deck. If a junker is missing, they buy the junker. If a village is missing, they buy the village. It's not that complicated. Maybe with very high-level play, the opportunity to construct a crazy engine via BM makes it a high-skilled card in that sense, but in most games where one of the players has my skill level (i.e. me), it's how I described. That's been my experience, which is all the evidence I have. Whether it's Stef's favorite card doesn't really say much, sorry.
I also really wonder what exactly it means that Smithy is high-luck? Seems odd. Maybe my definition of high-luck and whatever the skill multiplier signifies is different.
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Banlist:
Possession
Urchin
Peddler
Lurker
Swindler
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Defiled Shrine
Tax
Keep
Possession: I've seen enough degenerate stuff with this card to not be thrilled about seeing it anytime soon, and this includes both players "debt locking" themselves. For every good Possession game, there are at least two others that will feel dumb.
Urchin: the disparity that can arise despite both players opening the same way is absurd, and I am never happy about being called a "lucker" for luck being on my side with it.
Peddler: player A gets 3 peddlers, then player B gets 3 peddlers, then player A gets another 4 peddlers and wins the split 7-3. This is the most likely sort of outcome in any game where Peddler actually matters. Bonus points if Remodel or similar is on the board.
Lurker: the cool pileouts are not worth the standoff where neither player plays their lone Lurker. Honestly though, this card is a headache for me to use properly.
Swindler: Having your opening $5 turned into a Duchy (or Goat to Estate) feels like too much of a handicap in many cases. Where are my Goko zaps? Bonus points if the $5 swindled on the second shuffle was the Treasury you opened with (true story).
Defiled Shrine: it goes from bad buy to great within the span of a turn start to buy phase and one player gets first dibs at that tipping point, but also the setup is messy.
Tax: A messier setup than Defiled Shrine and messes with openings in an annoying, non-symmetric way.
Keep: Counting Coppers? I'll leave that to the misers and those guys who settled at the house of counting. Having to win the Contraband split is funny for only so long.
Dislikes:
Cultist
Margrave
Scrying Pool
Ghost Ship
Advisor
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Donate
Save
Fleet
Regarding the vertical cards here, they either have too much snowball potential that is not very well offset by the games where they are interesting, or they involve too much clicking (and some have both, you know who you are). Ambassador gets a pass because often times both players can get thin, and there there is an interesting balancing act to play.
Donate, it's too much of a headache sometimes, and it can heavily favour first player. Save, it's too automatic a decision to get It, and then you often have to avoid hitting "play all treasures" and it's a bit annoying to worry about that every turn. Fleet, uh, I'm not comfortable with it yet and it's kind of a downer card, either creating imbalances or just making things way too mathy. I'll probably fill this with something else in the future.
Likes:
Stonemason
Castles
Pixie
Procession
Border Village
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Innovation
Ball
Orchard
Stonemason: Actions galore, "true" splitter, out of nowhere pileouts. Nice!
Castles: it's funky alt-VP, without making things too sloggy.
Pixie: This card leads to lots of interesting decisions, and risk/reward assessments, with Goat making life easier all around.
Procession: I like fireworks. Procession delivers.
Border Village Lots of actions. Yay! Not too swingy, as it mainly shows its strength when multiples are gained.
Innovation: It feels so good to meld the first card I gain in my turn and get a free activation of its dogma effect.
Ball: Perfectly ballanced, as all things should be.
Orchard: Orchard encourages fulfilling the Dominion dream - getting lots of stuff, and gettings lots of that stuff. Any hall of oddities carny can get a single copy of some throwaway card on the last few turns of a game, but Orchard involves more finesse. You need to commit to those Mines and Trading Posts if you want Orchard points off them.
Thank you for reading.
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People get matched against people of similar skill levels; the skill multiplier isn't the story of good players beating bad players. Black Market has a skill multiplier of 1.23, which is crazy high. It feels high-luck; it's actually high-skill. As further evidence, it's Stef's favorite card. Smithy meanwhile is high-luck and no-one complains about it. That's just how it goes. (Swindler is an example of a card that looks high-luck and is).
You can choose the level of the players you want to be matched with, right? I have +/- 10, so I'm usually matched with people 8-10 levels lower than me. That usually means I'm a better player. Still, I have very rarely seen an opponent choose the wrong cards from the BM deck. If a junker is missing, they buy the junker. If a village is missing, they buy the village. It's not that complicated. Maybe with very high-level play, the opportunity to construct a crazy engine via BM makes it a high-skilled card in that sense, but in most games where one of the players has my skill level (i.e. me), it's how I described. That's been my experience, which is all the evidence I have. Whether it's Stef's favorite card doesn't really say much, sorry.
Stef is the highest rated player. That doesn't prove his favorite card wouldn't be a luck-fest; but, the odds are against it.
The philosophy, "x is missing, buy x" sounds like a poor way to do well with Black Market. What does your deck need now, is where to start. "!stats black market buys" on the discord will get you a chart of how Black Market buys correlate with winning (for a small number of games, minimum of 50). You didn't give "trasher" as an example, but trashers from the Black Market tend to suck. That's not obvious to everyone, as we can see from the people who bought a Black Market Chapel anyway. If a junker is missing, they like to buy the junker; Mountebank is one of the most-gained cards on the list. It's not at the top in terms of how it performs for you though (though it's fine), just for how often people take it.
If a village is missing, Black Market is doing way less, may not be worth having.
I also really wonder what exactly it means that Smithy is high-luck? Seems odd. Maybe my definition of high-luck and whatever the skill multiplier signifies is different.
The skill multiplier means that our ability to predict the outcome of a game with that card, based on the ratings of the players, is that much affected. There's a video by aku chi that explains all of the stats at length; it was way long and I haven't sat through it. markus made the charts and well on the discord you can ask questions about it in #skynet.
It seems clear that there are luck-based scenarios for Smithy, e.g. do you draw it with a village or not, that could affect its skill multiplier. However Laboratory also has a low skill multiplier. So probably a bigger factor is, these cards are so simple. They don't give you anything to finagle well.
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Stef is the highest rated player. That doesn't prove his favorite card wouldn't be a luck-fest; but, the odds are against it.
BM is my least favorite card, so going by this metric, I should be among the lowest rated players. But I'm among the highest. Just like Stef, I'm exactly one person. As I said, this doesn't say much.
The philosophy, "x is missing, buy x" sounds like a poor way to do well with Black Market. What does your deck need now, is where to start.
I meant that if an engine can be built but something is missing (engine pieces or payload), BM is usually worth going for, because if you get what you need, obviously the earlier the better, you will probably win (given that the other player is less lucky with BM). Yes, obviously that missing piece might not be worth buying if it's too late. Of course you always look at what your deck needs.
The skill multiplier means that our ability to predict the outcome of a game with that card, based on the ratings of the players, is that much affected. There's a video by aku chi that explains all of the stats at length; it was way long and I haven't sat through it. markus made the charts and well on the discord you can ask questions about it in #skynet.
It seems clear that there are luck-based scenarios for Smithy, e.g. do you draw it with a village or not, that could affect its skill multiplier. However Laboratory also has a low skill multiplier. So probably a bigger factor is, these cards are so simple. They don't give you anything to finagle well.
I have not tried to understand how the skill multiplier is calculated, nor what that actually means in practice (which are two different things) - and I won't. I think it's not very unlikely that it doesn't actually mean what you (not just meaning you Donald) think it means. At the very least it's clear that, even if we assume that a high score identifies a "high-skill card", the opposite of such a card is not a "high-luck card", since it's absurd to say that Laboratory (or even Smithy) is high-luck.
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BM is my least favorite card, so going by this metric, I should be among the lowest rated players.
No, there's no sense to what you're saying. If you want me to take what you say seriously, I don't understand why you would say something like this. I'll guess that you don't. That's a bummer, since you're that rules guy.
I have not tried to understand how the skill multiplier is calculated, nor what that actually means in practice (which are two different things) - and I won't. I think it's not very unlikely that it doesn't actually mean what you (not just meaning you Donald) think it means. At the very least it's clear that, even if we assume that a high score identifies a "high-skill card", the opposite of such a card is not a "high-luck card", since it's absurd to say that Laboratory (or even Smithy) is high-luck.
The presence of Laboratory in a game reduces the chance that the higher-ranked player wins. I don't need to argue over what we call that.
It sounded like you were interested, but man no-one needs you to understand or care about it. It's real data; I trust it way more than gut feelings.
People are incredible at believing false things. At this point I'd tell you to look up cognitive biases, but I mean, let's guess that you don't care about those either. Most people don't. I always think of how Paul Erdos couldn't believe the answer to the Monty Hall problem. He didn't accept it until seeing a computer simulation. How is his name on so many math papers, we might wonder.
No-one needs you to understand or like Black Market. It's great that you can not play with it, as in real life.
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BM is my least favorite card, so going by this metric, I should be among the lowest rated players.
No, there's no sense to what you're saying. If you want me to take what you say seriously, I don't understand why you would say something like this. I'll guess that you don't. That's a bummer, since you're that rules guy.
I am taking you seriously. That's why I'm replying directly to what you wrote. Even though you didn't, I'll explain my point. I'm saying that it doesn't matter much what one person views as his favorite card. If Stef's being a good player and having that as a favorite card is evidence that the card is high skill, why isn't my being a good player and having it as my least favorite card evidence to the contrary? Of course I'm not as good as him, but I'm still among the best players. This tells us that there is something lacking with taking this as evidence.
I have not tried to understand how the skill multiplier is calculated, nor what that actually means in practice (which are two different things) - and I won't. I think it's not very unlikely that it doesn't actually mean what you (not just meaning you Donald) think it means. At the very least it's clear that, even if we assume that a high score identifies a "high-skill card", the opposite of such a card is not a "high-luck card", since it's absurd to say that Laboratory (or even Smithy) is high-luck.
The presence of Laboratory in a game reduces the chance that the higher-ranked player wins. I don't need to argue over what we call that.
It sounded like you were interested, but man no-one needs you to understand or care about it. It's real data; I trust it way more than gut feelings.
Sure, but data can be interpreted in many ways.
We were both talking about whether BM was a high-luck card. You used the term high-luck as the opposite of high-skill. Maybe "the presence of Laboratory in a game reduces the chance that the higher-ranked player wins" doesn't mean that Laboratory is high-luck. Maybe "the presence of Black Market in a game increases the chance that the higher-ranked player wins" doesn't mean that Black Market is not high-luck. In fact there was a thread about BM where someone was saying that a card could be both high luck and high skill.
We might also be using our cognitive biases when we interpret data.
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Yes it says it decreases the probability of the card being chosen.
But on my first 3 plays after this my two disliked cards both turned up once.
They were
Sauna as it seems to be the one way (althoughif only one person goes for it it might be OK
Feodum as I can't see itr being useful. *although I did have a game with masterpiece and other players did not understand the cards so I emptied the silver pile before buying any :(
Trader + Feodum is crazy good. But it's hard to get both cards in the same kingdom, statistically.
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I'm saying that it doesn't matter much what one person views as his favorite card.
It does not matter what one person views as their favorite card.
Like any argument-by-authority, it was an attempt to get somewhere faster than having a long real argument. I also gave a real argument, but then, maybe this argument by authority would do something for you, is what I thought.
I am confident that Stef views Black Market as high skill (in addition to it being his favorite card). But, I didn't want to go ask him, to have up-to-the-minute data, and improve what would still be an argument by authority. He does cite it as tricky to play well in his article on it.
If Stef's being a good player and having that as a favorite card is evidence that the card is high skill, why isn't my being a good player and having it as my least favorite card evidence to the contrary? Of course I'm not as good as him, but I'm still among the best players. This tells us that there is something lacking with taking this as evidence.
I was not factoring in any skill level on your part; that is not information I had before, and all I know now is that you say you're good, though I can believe you're at whatever level you say. Stef is good; I know that. If I had started out thinking e.g. "Jeebus is basically 2nd best to Stef" then I would not have offered up, in addition to my real argument, that argument by authority.
So far my estimate of how good you are goes down due to seeing that you think Black Market is low-skill. But, that could just be your weak point; the leaderboard tells a better story.
Sure, but data can be interpreted in many ways.
We were both talking about whether BM was a high-luck card. You used the term high-luck as the opposite of high-skill. Maybe "the presence of Laboratory in a game reduces the chance that the higher-ranked player wins" doesn't mean that Laboratory is high-luck. Maybe "the presence of Black Market in a game increases the chance that the higher-ranked player wins" doesn't mean that Black Market is not high-luck. In fact there was a thread about BM where someone was saying that a card could be both high luck and high skill.
We might also be using our cognitive biases when we interpret data.
Luck is not the opposite of skill; they are two different axes. Poker is high skill high luck, as is Dominion; Chess is high skill low luck; Tic-Tac-Toe low skill low luck, Chutes and Ladders low skill high luck.
But, making the better player lose more often is just what people in general, but who knows about present company, would call "high luck." In conversations about cards being swingy, it is rare that anyone is interested in getting into the fine details of luck and skill. And your initial post called Black Market out as being low skill, not just high luck.
Finally get to ban Black Market. You can't convince me that this isn't the most swingy card in the game. Maybe it's high-skill in that it's a good card to beat bad players with, but when both players are decent, it's just "who get's the missing engine pieces, trashers or junkers - and who doesn't? let's roll the die".
If that is not you saying that Black Market is low skill, then we have a significant language barrier.
We are all affected by cognitive biases constantly; there's even a cognitive bias that makes you think you're less affected by cognitive biases due to knowing about them. One thing I do is ask disinterested third parties what they think about situations where I'm trying to rule out bias on my part.
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This article sold me on BM:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11896.msg428733#msg428733
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But, making the better player lose more often is just what people in general, but who knows about present company, would call "high luck." In conversations about cards being swingy, it is rare that anyone is interested in getting into the fine details of luck and skill. And your initial post called Black Market out as being low skill, not just high luck.
It's just that you called Smithy (and then Lab) high-luck. I saw this as a weakness in the data, or rather the interpretation of it. Like you, and most people, I was confounding high-luck and low-skill (and vice versa) when I wrote what you quoted from me about BM. I do think that it's high-luck, and I do think that it's not particularly high-skill, but as we have learnt those are not necessarily related. Smithy/Lab is certainly neither high-luck or high-skill.
But later I was mainly talking about the data and why I don't really trust the way people normally use it. I was saying that even if we assume that the data is correct in how it flags high-skill cards (which would mean I'm wrong about that aspect of BM), the data doesn't seem to say much about a card's luck level. Maybe we agree on that part?
But regarding the data in general. I don't really have that great of an impression about how accurate it is (meaning how it's interpreted - I assume the data itself is correct). Maybe if I took the time to delve deep and research it thoroughly, I would be converted, but I want to use my time... arguing in the forum instead. :p Isn't it the same data being used in the "best card" threads to talk about how good a card is based on how likely buying it makes you win? There have been some crazy claims based on that data that nobody seemed to understand.
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This article sold me on BM:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11896.msg428733#msg428733
Interestingly, Stef said there that a trasher from the BM deck is a "bomb" (an "exceptionally strong card") - which matches my experience, of course if a strong trasher is missing from the kingdom. But Donald said they tend to suck, based on the data I assume. Is Stef wrong or the data?
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People get matched against people of similar skill levels; the skill multiplier isn't the story of good players beating bad players. Black Market has a skill multiplier of 1.23, which is crazy high. It feels high-luck; it's actually high-skill. ... Smithy meanwhile is high-luck and no-one complains about it. That's just how it goes. (Swindler is an example of a card that looks high-luck and is).
...
The hexes have a skill multiplier of 1.00; they don't have an effect on our ability to predict the winner from skill level. Isn't that interesting.
I'm super interested in this data, can a kind soul direct me to the best way to find it?
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This article sold me on BM:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11896.msg428733#msg428733
Interestingly, Stef said there that a trasher from the BM deck is a "bomb" (an "exceptionally strong card") - which matches my experience, of course if a strong trasher is missing from the kingdom. But Donald said they tend to suck, based on the data I assume. Is Stef wrong or the data?
Many of the "tempo" trashers seem to do well off the BM. This includes Butcher, Junk Dealer, Sentry, Masquerade, Counterfeit, and Recruiter, among others. The trashers that don't do so well include Forager, Remake, Sacrifice, Spice Merchant, Raze. It's an odd pattern.
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Many of the "tempo" trashers seem to do well off the BM. This includes Butcher, Junk Dealer, Sentry, Masquerade, Counterfeit, and Recruiter, among others. The trashers that don't do so well include Forager, Remake, Sacrifice, Spice Merchant, Raze. It's an odd pattern.
I noticed that all the trashers that do well, except Masq, cost $5. The ones that don't do well, cost less. I have no idea what that means. I was going to say opportunity cost, but then I would expect it to be the reverse.
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Many of the "tempo" trashers seem to do well off the BM. This includes Butcher, Junk Dealer, Sentry, Masquerade, Counterfeit, and Recruiter, among others. The trashers that don't do so well include Forager, Remake, Sacrifice, Spice Merchant, Raze. It's an odd pattern.
I noticed that all the trashers that do well, except Masq, cost $5. The ones that don't do well, cost less. I have no idea what that means. I was going to say opportunity cost, but then I would expect it to be the reverse.
I suppose you have $5 when you draw BM? Is that the missing link, that you can pretty much always afford the 5 cost trashers, and since they're stronger, you win more with them?
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Interestingly, Stef said there that a trasher from the BM deck is a "bomb" (an "exceptionally strong card")
I don't consider Bomb to be exceptionally strong, but it does strongly effect gameplay, particularly in a destructive way.
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Skill multiplier is not a very difficult concept: you are say 1 mu (roughly 7.5 levels) ahead of your opponent on the leaderboard. This has some implications for how much you win on an average board (73%). A skill multiplier of 0.8 means that with that card on the board, you only win as if the skill difference was 0.8*1 (resulting in 69%).
"The better player winning less than the worse player" would only happen if the skill multiplier was negative - that is by far not the case for any card, and I doubt that such a card will ever exist (e.g. "The weaker player tosses a coin and wins the game on heads.").
A high skill multiplier might mean that it's difficult to master the card, or it involves little luck such that small skill differences really matter, or that it's better known to good players (e.g. some players might know the base cards but not the expansions). A single number can't really tell apart 3 reasons, but for Black Market the total effect is that the better player wins more than expected. Hence, even if there was more "luck" involved, there is even more "skill" needed.
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I always think of how Paul Erdos couldn't believe the answer to the Monty Hall problem. He didn't accept it until seeing a computer simulation.
This is the most interesting thing I've read all day. How did I not know this before?
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A high skill multiplier might mean that it's difficult to master the card, or it involves little luck such that small skill differences really matter, or that it's better known to good players (e.g. some players might know the base cards but not the expansions). A single number can't really tell apart 3 reasons, but for Black Market the total effect is that the better player wins more than expected. Hence, even if there was more "luck" involved, there is even more "skill" needed.
To add another possibility: a card isn't that good (or it's fine to get one, but you shouldn't buy a lot), but it takes a more skilled player to recognize that. For example, less skilled players often overvalue coffers, and therefore go for mass Candlestick Maker strategies (which are usually terrible), and mass Baker strategies (which are often sub-optimal).
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Liked:
Captain and Church, since they are new and I want to see how they impact the game. (Despite being on the list, I still haven't had a game with them.)
Disliked:
Ill-Gotten Gains and Governor warp the game too much towards one particular strategy.
Cultist is too swingy: if you and I both go for Cultist and manage to buy two of them, and you luck into a chain where you play them both on the same turn while I don't, you now have a huge advantage. 7-3 splits on the Ruins are quite common, and too hard to come back from.
Knights: Just annoying.
Wall: Likewise.
Banned:
Rebuild: Same objection as IGG and Governor, but even more so. As others above have noted, Rebuild lets you skip building your deck: just get $5 a couple of times and go straight to greening. Since the fun of the game is in building your deck, why would I want to play this game?
Scrying Pool: leads to games with too much downtime between your turns.
Keep: Someone upthread said this warps the game too much, and I agree. (He actually prompted me to add this to my list just now.)
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Banned:
Possession
Tournament
Sea Hag
Lurker
Disliked:
King's Court
Page
Ill Gotten Gains
Pillage
Taxman
Keep, Tax, Salt the Earth
Liked:
Black Market
Throne Room
Scepter
Save, Piazza, Star Chart
and Captain and Church just to see what they're like
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The skill multiplier means that our ability to predict the outcome of a game with that card, based on the ratings of the players, is that much affected. There's a video by aku chi that explains all of the stats at length; it was way long and I haven't sat through it. markus made the charts and well on the discord you can ask questions about it in #skynet.
It seems clear that there are luck-based scenarios for Smithy, e.g. do you draw it with a village or not, that could affect its skill multiplier. However Laboratory also has a low skill multiplier. So probably a bigger factor is, these cards are so simple. They don't give you anything to finagle well.
Yeah, considering that (if I recall correctly) those stats are built on the top percentile or so of players, we probably can assume that the effectiveness of simple cards like those has already plateaued at top levels. That said, non-elite players have a lot to finagle with there.
The skill multiplier really proxies the question: what cards are top top players using more effectively than slightly-less-top top players?
Looking at it from a different point of view, a card having a low skill multiplier means that to become a top player you must play that card almost as well as currently possible. A higher skill multiplier, conversely, indicates that perfecting your use of that card is important to rise to the top of the top.
Anectodally, I'm sure that that one time I played with Stef, his handling -my mishandling- of Wharf (Skill Multiplier 1.00) was determinant to me being trounced.
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It's just that you called Smithy (and then Lab) high-luck. I saw this as a weakness in the data, or rather the interpretation of it. Like you, and most people, I was confounding high-luck and low-skill (and vice versa) when I wrote what you quoted from me about BM. I do think that it's high-luck, and I do think that it's not particularly high-skill, but as we have learnt those are not necessarily related. Smithy/Lab is certainly neither high-luck or high-skill.
You have one card instead of having another. The presence of Laboratory in a kingdom means there's one less slot that could be something that favored the better player. However innocent it looks, it being in a game, again instead of something else, reduces our ability to predict the winner based on ranking.
But later I was mainly talking about the data and why I don't really trust the way people normally use it. I was saying that even if we assume that the data is correct in how it flags high-skill cards (which would mean I'm wrong about that aspect of BM), the data doesn't seem to say much about a card's luck level. Maybe we agree on that part?
Skill multiplier is simply the card's effect on our ability to predict the winner based on ranking. It can't separate out luck vs. skill. Randomness on the part of the card will make us less able to predict the winner based on ranking; trickiness will make us more able to.
There's lots of other data to look at too, to try to understand the impact of the card.
But regarding the data in general. I don't really have that great of an impression about how accurate it is (meaning how it's interpreted - I assume the data itself is correct). Maybe if I took the time to delve deep and research it thoroughly, I would be converted, but I want to use my time... arguing in the forum instead. :p Isn't it the same data being used in the "best card" threads to talk about how good a card is based on how likely buying it makes you win? There have been some crazy claims based on that data that nobody seemed to understand.
When aku chi types "!stats lurker" and an image with lots of stats comes up, yes, it's that data. You can also see some of it in chart form covering multiple cards. markus wrote the software that assembles the charts.
The stats are a lesson in how tricky statistics can be. For example, one thing we saw early on was cards where it was good to have 2 or 4 or 6 more copies than your opponent, but bad to have 3 or 5 more copies than your opponent (good/bad meaning, how often does a player in that situation win). We realized that this was because if you have 2 or 4 or 6 more copies, maybe the pile emptied, but if you have 3 or 5 for, it didn't (except in exotic situations). And markus added a line for when the pile is empty so you could see that on the chart.
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I'm super interested in this data, can a kind soul direct me to the best way to find it?
On the Dominion discord, you can type !help to get a list of dombot commands, and one of them is !stats. With e.g. "!stats fishing village" you get a page of stats for fishing village. There are also some special pages you can get, e.g. trashers, black market buys. And you can private message dombot if you don't want to share the stats with whatever channel.
A magical link: https://discord.gg/jNTnqm
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Interestingly, Stef said there that a trasher from the BM deck is a "bomb" (an "exceptionally strong card") - which matches my experience, of course if a strong trasher is missing from the kingdom. But Donald said they tend to suck, based on the data I assume. Is Stef wrong or the data?
Many of the "tempo" trashers seem to do well off the BM. This includes Butcher, Junk Dealer, Sentry, Masquerade, Counterfeit, and Recruiter, among others. The trashers that don't do so well include Forager, Remake, Sacrifice, Spice Merchant, Raze. It's an odd pattern.
I think the key thing is that you get Black Market cards later. You don't get them turns 1-2; you only have one shot at getting them turns 3-4 (well two shots if you open with two Black Markets). Many of the trashers just aren't good enough (typically) if you don't get them right away (and people get them from the Black Market anyway).
The data for Black Market buys is scant though, 50-150 games per card.
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i think black market is indeed a very high skill and high luck card, but the skill is the main thing there. the decisions related to if you buy it, when you buy it, why you buy it, if you play it compared to another terminal if there is a collision and finally and most importantly, what you choose or you dont choose from it are extremely skill dependent and completely different on each kingdom. that being said, i dont think an article from 5 years ago, even if it is from stef which means its top notch, can be taken into full account. the evolution of dominion and i can only account for the last year and take the previous years into consideration only through articles etc, is huge and many major changes in thinking have taken place. therefore, taking into consideration the time of sth should allways be the start. finally, i would like to add that you very often see even the very top players do mistake with what they choose or dont choose from black market, so you know that is a place where a lot of improvement can be made.
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If a village is missing, Black Market is doing way less, may not be worth having.
If there's no Village on the board, that's all the more reason to get Black Market because there's probably one in there. I ignored Black Market on a Villageless board once, and wow did I get burned. Black Market is pretty close to being the most must-buy card in the game. It's still one of my favorite cards, by the way.
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So guys did you know that magic has a format where you get to handpick every single card you would like in your deck, and every player has every card equally available to them?
And it has another format where you open six packs of cards, build a deck out of the random cards in that pack, sometimes have no access to certain types of effects in the game, and go play against other people who got six packs?
And that decades of time and a preponderance of data shows the second format has a far higher skill multiplier?
One thing to consider about this whole, "one guy gets a thing only available in the Black Market", is that his winrate is not set to 100%. If we're generous, his winrate is set to say, 80%. How much choice/player agency was taken away from the "grabbing a thing only available in the black market" option? DXV made a colorable argument that you don't even necessarily take it, but let's say you just always do, it's so good. That takes away the player agency from 1 purchase of the whole game, you'll buy like 20 things all game.
But that 80% isn't sticky. The losing player is now in a novel gamestate where he knows an unequal card availability has impacted the game, and so is the winning player. If you leverage that advantage, you'll get lots of win%, if you don't, you'll lose a lot. When is that last time you were absorbing curses but not also designing a deck that is designed to play its curser frequently? Probably 50 games ago, the last time there was a black market. So there's this novel situation and a lot of adaptation going on and it's a hard calculus. You are playing the opposite of a game where all 10 kingdom cards are Laboratory, for sure.
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Now that I know that disliked cards affect ranked, is there a way I can be a jerkward and look up my personal win% by card and dislike all the cards I'm bad at? I care about that way more than fun factor preferences.
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Like: Grand Market, City, Black Market, Prince, Captain, Inheritance, Summon, Innovation
Dislike: Wall, Wolf Den
Banned: none
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Banned: Possesion, Masquerade, Smugglers, Lurker
Disliked: Legionary, Rebuild, Urchin, Mountebank, Familiar
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Liked:
Recruiter - Phenomenal trasher, but not as much of an auto-buy as Chapel.
Raze - Same reason as Recruiter.
Royal Carriage - My favorite Reserve and my favorite Throne Room variant.
Fortress - Can be used for amazing, fun combos.
Mountain Village - Hands down the best Village variant in the game, and one of if not my absolute favorite cards.
Disliked:
Torturer - Slows the game down by making it into a painful slog.
Knights - Same reason as Torturer, and can be swingy depending on which Knight is on top, especially if one player has a (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/7/7d/Coin5.png/16px-Coin5.png)/(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/3/3d/Coin2.png/16px-Coin2.png) split.
Treasure Map - Swingy/luck-based.
Hireling - Too swingy based on who wins the split.
Banned:
Chariot Race - Way too swingy. Would be leagues better if it discarded your opponent's card.
Lookout - Forced blind trashing.
Sauna/Avanto - Games with it are determined by who wins the split.