Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Dominion Online at Shuffle iT => Topic started by: PortlandSkye on March 17, 2020, 05:09:08 pm

Title: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: PortlandSkye on March 17, 2020, 05:09:08 pm
How do I set up a game with three friends of my choice on Dominion Online? In other words, not random players, but people I've invited to a game.
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: Ingix on March 17, 2020, 05:33:11 pm
Make your own table with "New Table", then "Create Table". Set the number of Max players to 5.  Add a bot.

The last step makes it very unlikely somebody else is coming into your table by accident. If they do, just kick them.

For the following to work, it is necessary that your friends have declared you as their in-game "friend". They can do that by going into the "Friend List" tab, typing your username into the edit field below (says "Username" while empty) and click "Add".

Now they can see you when you are online while they are in the "Matching" tab. When they see you at a table, they can press the "Join" button. Then they are at your table, at the moment just as spectators and can press "Play" to becomes a player. Once the last player has joined, you kick the bot, and everybody clicks "Ready" and the game starts.
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: PortlandSkye on March 17, 2020, 05:51:13 pm
Hey, Ingix. Very helpful. Thank you.

Another question: I have a gold sub, so if I set up the table, everyone will have access to all the cards when playing with me, even if they have a minimal sub. Is that correct?
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on March 17, 2020, 06:10:09 pm
Hey, Ingix. Very helpful. Thank you.

Another question: I have a gold sub, so if I set up the table, everyone will have access to all the cards when playing with me, even if they have a minimal sub. Is that correct?

That's correct, but also I don't think it's even a requirement that you be the one to set up the table. One of your friends could be the table host and if you are a player the cards are still available.
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: hhelibebcnofnena on March 17, 2020, 11:46:24 pm
How do I set up a game with three friends of my choice on Dominion Online? In other words, not random players, but people I've invited to a game.

Follow up on that question: can I choose the cards I want to play with? I like being able to choose which games have Attacks in them, and other things like that.
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: Mic Qsenoch on March 17, 2020, 11:55:31 pm
How do I set up a game with three friends of my choice on Dominion Online? In other words, not random players, but people I've invited to a game.

Follow up on that question: can I choose the cards I want to play with? I like being able to choose which games have Attacks in them, and other things like that.

When you create a table, there is a "Select Kingdom Cards" button. Which allows you to control the kingdom in various ways. You can specify some/all of them (can take a comma separated list), or say 3 cards from Menagerie expansion, or just check which expansions you'd like cards from, or control the number / type of landscapes, colonies/shelters.
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: Ingix on March 18, 2020, 07:11:57 am
There isn't a way to say "No attacks" or "At least 1 Village" or "2 Trashers", though. If you have "positive" requirements (like the last two), you can just select cards on your own that meet the criteria, and leve the other slots open. But in order to ensure the first condition, you must select all kingdom slots yourself, as (as I said) there is no way to prevent any slot to be randomly filled with an attack.
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: hhelibebcnofnena on March 18, 2020, 10:10:55 am
There isn't a way to say "No attacks" or "At least 1 Village" or "2 Trashers", though. If you have "positive" requirements (like the last two), you can just select cards on your own that meet the criteria, and leve the other slots open. But in order to ensure the first condition, you must select all kingdom slots yourself, as (as I said) there is no way to prevent any slot to be randomly filled with an attack.

Got it. I use an online randomizer when I play IRL that does allow for these kind of criteria, so I can just use that and then plug the cards right back into Dominion online.
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: Shard of Honor on March 18, 2020, 11:23:39 am
Another nice trick is to set the min and max relative rating in the advanced options of a new table both to zero.
Friends can join your table regardless of their rating, but for random players it is very unlikely that they have exactly the same rating as you  ;)
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: Holger on April 30, 2020, 08:53:21 am
Another nice trick is to set the min and max relative rating in the advanced options of a new table both to zero.
Friends can join your table regardless of their rating, but for random players it is very unlikely that they have exactly the same rating as you  ;)

Thanks for the tip, that should usually work.

But is there no "in-built" option to limit your table to only allow friends to join it? On most other online boardgame platforms, there is. I'd like to play Dominion online with a friend without having to "jump through loops" like this to set up a "private" table...
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: dane-m on May 05, 2020, 12:47:48 pm
But is there no "in-built" option to limit your table to only allow friends to join it? On most other online boardgame platforms, there is. I'd like to play Dominion online with a friend without having to "jump through loops" like this to set up a "private" table...
Alas there isn't a built-in option.   A 'Create private table' option would be nice, set to create a table with maximum privacy, which the player could then relax to whatever extent was appropriate once the table was created, a task that could be done at leisure rather in the rush that's currently needed to stop players turning up a newly created table (I'm astonished how quickly some do).  But in the (potentially infinite) meantime at least there are the workarounds and the (to me seemingly impolite) Kick option to get rid of interlopers.
Title: Re: Dominion Online in the time of COVID and social distancing
Post by: Holger on May 18, 2020, 10:58:08 am
Another nice trick is to set the min and max relative rating in the advanced options of a new table both to zero.
Friends can join your table regardless of their rating, but for random players it is very unlikely that they have exactly the same rating as you  ;)

Thanks for the tip, that should usually work.

It turns out this doesn't actually prevent all "strangers" from entering - after all, there's only about 67 different rating levels after rounding, so about 1.5% of all players have the same rating as you; and many more if you are an average player (I assume the number of players with a given rating will roughly follow a bell curve). Also, others can apparently already join my table while I'm still busy choosing the options for the game (including the rating restriction)...

BTW, what is the starting rating for new players, zero? This will likely be the most common rating of all...