Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Donald X. on June 01, 2022, 03:00:10 am

Title: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Donald X. on June 01, 2022, 03:00:10 am
How would you describe the tension, right about now? That's right. It's palpable.

(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/946677362215518218/981449273822564382/prosperity2e_WED1.PNG)

Royal Seal has a great ability, with too high of an opportunity cost. It plays well when there's really nothing better for $5.

Tiara has the Royal Seal ability, and also is a Throne Room for Treasures. And hey, +1 Buy. It really wants you to like it.

(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/946677362215518218/981449343762567188/prosperity2e_WED2.PNG)

Talisman was okay, but was going to need two kinds of errata: not being a while-in-play, and not triggering on buys. At some point I thought, why not just replace it. It was borderline already.

Anvil then is a very simple Treasure Workshop.

(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/946677362215518218/981449417955622922/prosperity2e_WED3.PNG)

Ah, Goons. You've made me so many VP tokens. It's good times. Except for the Militia part. And then you get Goons first and Militia them so they can't afford Goons. And then Militia every turn. It just sucks the fun out of the other part, which is so good.

Collection is trying to be, not just a Goons replacement, but also a different card. I didn't just want Goons minus the Militia. So it's a Treasure, making it easy to play multiples, but cares about Actions specifically, so you can't buy up Coppers for it, or Victory cards. It's a different version of the Goons experience.

There are also three tweaked cards. Another general rule for me was, to not do when-buy triggers anymore. If it all possible, those became when-gain triggers. In a few cases I felt stuck and did "when you gain this, if you bought it."

So Hoard is one of those. Now both a this-turn and a when-gain. It was too problematic without the "if you bought it" part. Mint though could just trigger on gain, so it does. And it doesn't trash Duration cards because that would be confusing with e.g. Astrolabe. And then Quarry is another one converted to this-turn style. This incidentally means you can use Tiara on Quarry and Hoard, which is ideal.

Here are those cards plus the rest of the set:

(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/946677362215518218/981449730305429605/prosperity2e_full.PNG)

And that's Prosperity 2E.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Meta on June 01, 2022, 03:04:27 am
Anvil seems like a really fun card. But I'm wondering if it wouldn't have been more interesting in say Nocturne, where it could've handed out a different Boon each time instead of always giving the Earth's Gift.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Erick648 on June 01, 2022, 03:13:21 am
So Collection only combos with Watchtower to the extent there are Ruins or other non-spammable cheap Action cards, but Collection’s VP clause does work with Tiara (or Crown).  It also has more of a cap on its VP since you don’t have a huge pile of Coppers to get VP from.  It will be interesting to see how often it gets strong games like Goons did.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: dz on June 01, 2022, 03:14:04 am
Goons and Talisman are some of the worst cards in the game and their deaths will be celebrated. Well, at least by me.

DomBot doesn't have the faq's for errata'ed Lighthouse/Treasury/Mint/Quarry/Hoard yet, but I think you can figure out the differences. So instead you get the faq for the 3 new cards.

Tiara:
• If you gain multiple cards later in the turn after playing Tiara, you may put any or all of them onto your deck.
• This applies both to cards gained due to being bought, and to cards gained other ways, such as with War Chest.
• If you play a Tiara with a Tiara, you will be able to play two Treasures from your hand twice each - you don't play one Treasure four times.

Anvil:
• Discarding a Treasure is optional.
• If you discard one, you gain a card costing up to $4 which comes from the Supply and goes to your discard pile.

Collection:
• You get +1VP for each Action card you gain, whether bought, or gained some other way.
• Multiple copies of this are cumulative; if you have two Collections in play and buy a Village, you'll get +2VP.

I shared my expansion tier list on discord to uh mixed reactions, so I thought, why not share it here too. Honestly it feels bad to put those 3 expansions in B tier, cause I really like them. On the other hand, I do not feel bad at all about where Dark Ages ended up.

S Tier: Prosperity 2E, Menagerie, Allies, Empires
A Tier: Intrigue 2E, Renaissance, Seaside 2E
B Tier: Nocturne, Adventures, Dominion 2E
[there is a very large gap between B and C tier]
C Tier: Prosperity 1E, Guilds, Intrigue 1E, Dominion 1E
D Tier: Seaside 1E, Dark Ages, Hinterlands
F Tier: Cornucopia, Alchemy, Promos
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Augie279 on June 01, 2022, 03:15:50 am
Anvil seems like a really fun card. But I'm wondering if it wouldn't have been more interesting in say Nocturne, where it could've handed out a different Boon each time instead of always giving the Earth's Gift.

Wouldn't that have literally just been Treasure-Tracker?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: urza on June 01, 2022, 03:31:35 am
At first I was shocked by Goons being out, but I totally follow the logic of replacing it with Collection.  Also surprised that Hoard survived, I never liked that card, but at least changing it to "this turn" makes it a little better.

Also, I'm wondering about the upgrade pack.  I assume it will just contain the 9 new cards, but there are quite a few old cards that have functional changes that might be confusing to explain to people.  Is the general rule to just play the cards as written?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Tables on June 01, 2022, 04:20:23 am
I don't know if it's just me but I don't like Hoard's new wording. I understand the rules confusion it was trying to fix, but it sounds very clunky to me.

It also removes the interaction with Trader where you could play Hoard, buy Estate and reveal Trader, to gain Silver and a Gold, which was maybe not the strongest thing ever but quite a fun little interaction.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: CaptainTheo on June 01, 2022, 04:20:57 am
I'm not going to miss either Royal Seal or Talisman. I'm pretty surprised at Goons being removed but the replacement card is quite a good substitute especially as I was never really fond of the attack part of Goons. I quite like the other replacement cards too.

Glad that Hoard stayed, and approve of the tweaks to it and Quarry.

One thing that puzzles me is that although Prosperity started with the same number of cards as Base Game, Intrigue and Seaside, it has not increased the number of cards in the set by one, remaining at 25 rather than 26. Hence I thought there would only be two more cards removed from this collection, rather than three.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Ingix on June 01, 2022, 04:37:08 am
It also removes the interaction with Trader where you could play Hoard, buy Estate and reveal Trader, to gain Silver and a Gold, which was maybe not the strongest thing ever but quite a fun little interaction.

That isn't changed, it still works. Note that Trader changed, so you now do gain the bought Estate (triggering Hoard and Trader), so you gain a Gold and can exchange the Estate for a Silver, in either order.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 01, 2022, 07:03:48 am
I'm not going to miss either Royal Seal or Talisman. I'm pretty surprised at Goons being removed but the replacement card is quite a good substitute especially as I was never really fond of the attack part of Goons. I quite like the other replacement cards too.

Glad that Hoard stayed, and approve of the tweaks to it and Quarry.

One thing that puzzles me is that although Prosperity started with the same number of cards as Base Game, Intrigue and Seaside, it has not increased the number of cards in the set by one, remaining at 25 rather than 26. Hence I thought there would only be two more cards removed from this collection, rather than three.

Prosperity has two extra piles (Colony and Platinum) which take up space. All expansions have a total number of cards (including blanks) divisible by 50, and most have a total number of cards divisible by 100 (presumably due to printing issues). So a single extra kingdom card was possible for Base, Intrigue and Seaside (since those sets each had 11+ blank cards or unnecessary "base card randomizers"), but not for the already "full" 300-card Prosperity set.

I would have liked the set to be increased to 350 (or even 400) cards by keeping some of the removed cards, though. I'd have liked to keep Venture and Loan at least, and Contraband is a fun interactive card for casual players...
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: ClouduHieh on June 01, 2022, 10:11:38 am
That’s it prosperity is trash! Now that goons is gone my opinion of dominion goes way down. My love of dominion is no longer a game I like. Goons was one of my most favorite cards. For the creator of the game to remove a powerful card, because it’s simply an attack. I’m not going to need to waste my money on these new cards. I ban every card for dominion online that is from prosperity.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: 4est on June 01, 2022, 10:14:47 am
Really happy with all the removals and additions here. I'll definitely miss those wacky games where getting all the Talismans is the right play, but it's weak otherwise. And glad to see Goons gone, I'll miss the bonkers amounts of VP tokens, but the average Dominion game is more fun without it.

Love Tiara's connection to Crown as a Throne for Treasures. And there are now so many more Treasures worth Tiara-ing. Topdecking two $5s with Quarry will be grand.

Anvil is clean and simple, though I'm mostly glad we didn't leave Watchtower lonely as the only $3 in Prosperity.

And then Collection is exactly what I'd hope a new Goons would be, no attack, easier to play multiples of, but much harder to get a majillion VP tokens with. It also brings the game to an end much faster than Goons by only working on Action cards.

All the new while in play and when gain changes are good, especially for Quarry and Mint, though I don't totally get the Hoard one--is there a reason this can't just be on-gain?

Overall, some fantastic new 2E sets! Dominion is getting better every year.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: emtzalex on June 01, 2022, 10:55:36 am
Collection + Stampede
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Cuzz on June 01, 2022, 10:57:01 am
All the new while in play and when gain changes are good, especially for Quarry and Mint, though I don't totally get the Hoard one--is there a reason this can't just be on-gain?

Utterly OP with Hunting Grounds and Sprawling Castle.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Imrahil3 on June 01, 2022, 11:00:38 am
All the new while in play and when gain changes are good, especially for Quarry and Mint, though I don't totally get the Hoard one--is there a reason this can't just be on-gain?

Utterly OP with Hunting Grounds and Sprawling Castle.
Isn’t it generally a bad idea to throw 8 stop cards into your deck all at once?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Cuzz on June 01, 2022, 11:05:51 am
All the new while in play and when gain changes are good, especially for Quarry and Mint, though I don't totally get the Hoard one--is there a reason this can't just be on-gain?

Utterly OP with Hunting Grounds and Sprawling Castle.
Isn’t it generally a bad idea to throw 8 stop cards into your deck all at once?

Well keep in mind when you trash the Hunting Grounds you free up a terminal slot.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Imrahil3 on June 01, 2022, 11:16:25 am
All the new while in play and when gain changes are good, especially for Quarry and Mint, though I don't totally get the Hoard one--is there a reason this can't just be on-gain?

Utterly OP with Hunting Grounds and Sprawling Castle.
Isn’t it generally a bad idea to throw 8 stop cards into your deck all at once?

Well keep in mind when you trash the Hunting Grounds you free up a terminal slot.
You also just trashed one of your draw cards. I don’t think an engine can pull off a Hoard gold dump and be better off on the other side.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: grrgrrgrr on June 01, 2022, 11:38:04 am
All the new while in play and when gain changes are good, especially for Quarry and Mint, though I don't totally get the Hoard one--is there a reason this can't just be on-gain?

Utterly OP with Hunting Grounds and Sprawling Castle.

I think it is also just future proofing. If there is a card that allows you to exchange a gained Gold for a Duchy, for example, then things could get quite hairy. (and honestly, I think Harem should have the added effect "in games using this, when you gain a Gold, you gain a Harem instead". But that'd mandate Harem to have two horizontal lines, which is a big no-no)

Anvil seems like a really fun card. But I'm wondering if it wouldn't have been more interesting in say Nocturne, where it could've handed out a different Boon each time instead of always giving the Earth's Gift.

With most boons, this would be pretty bland and weak (especially considering this is a Treasure). So no, bad idea.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: X-tra on June 01, 2022, 12:10:13 pm
That’s it prosperity is trash! Now that goons is gone my opinion of dominion goes way down. My love of dominion is no longer a game I like. Goons was one of my most favorite cards. For the creator of the game to remove a powerful card, because it’s simply an attack. I’m not going to need to waste my money on these new cards. I ban every card for dominion online that is from prosperity.
I realize that this is most likely a troll comment, but I’m procrastinating at work anyway, so I might as well take the bait to fight the good internet fight. Also I’ve always wanted to do something like this, tee-hee. So, uh, let’s dissect this wonderful love letter to Dominion which is in no way at all abrasive and rude.

That’s it prosperity is trash!
To kick things off, we got ourselves a beautiful ad hominem. Also that’s a massive overreaction.

Now that goons is gone my opinion of dominion goes way down. My love of dominion is no longer a game I like. Goons was one of my most favorite cards.
You have every right to personally love certain cards. But let us remind ourselves that this one card. One card! Among a sea of amazing content. We have 400+ Dominion cards; Goons accounted for 0.25% of Dominion. You cannot argue in good faith that this ridiculously small percentage of the game was the only thing that kept you hooked.

More to the point, Goons is not gone. If you play physically, you still own your cards. Donald won’t rock up to your house personally to rip your cards. The Temple Gates app on Steam/Android/IOS also keeps the removed cards. As a Copper strategist, you can even buy Coppersmith there!!!

For the creator of the game to remove a powerful card, because it’s simply an attack.
That is not why Goons got removed. Did you even read Donald’s blurb above? A Militia Attack is fine. Plenty of cards in Dominion use it. Just check the most recent expansion, Allies. There’s Skirmisher there, that’s a Militia Attack! It’s all about execution though. Goons has a steep price point. Combined with the Militia Attack, that’s where the problem arises. Like Donald said, you can lock someone out of buying Goons long enough. That wouldn’t be so bad if Goons wasn’t so centralizing. As your opponent struggles to acquire a Goons of their on, meanwhile, you score enough (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/92/VP.png/16px-VP.png) for them to never be able to close that gap for the rest of the game. So it’s not just the Attack that was problematic: It’s the combination of the Attack, the price of the card and the (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/thumb/9/92/VP.png/16px-VP.png) farming effect.

I’m not going to need to waste my money on these new cards.
You do you. You’re the customer, you control your wallet. Though if I may, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice here, since the new Prosperity cards are damn good. Including Collection. Collection is objectively a better card than Goons design and gameplay wise in any way imaginable. Try it! It’s actually really fun to build around this card! Plus, as a Copper strategist, you get Charlatan now. There’s fun stuff there, right?

I ban every card for dominion online that is from prosperity.
You can only ban up to 5 cards. Luckily this new edition of Prosperity means you’ll have a new free slot where Mountebank used to be!
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Meta on June 01, 2022, 12:28:47 pm
Now that goons is gone my opinion of dominion goes way down. My love of dominion is no longer a game I like. Goons was one of my most favorite cards.
You have every right to personally love certain cards. But let us remind ourselves that this one card. One card! Among a sea of amazing content. We have 400+ Dominion cards; Goons accounted for 0.0025% of Dominion. You cannot argue in good faith that this ridiculously small percentage of the game was the only thing that kept you hooked.

More to the point, Goons is not gone. If you play physically, you still owe your cards. Donald won’t rock up to your house personally to rip your cards. The Temple Gates app on Steam/Android/IOS also keeps the removed cards. As a Copper strategist, you can even buy Coppersmith there!!!

Goons accounted for 0.25% of Dominion as 1/400=0.0025 not 0.000025
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: mxdata on June 01, 2022, 12:46:50 pm
Collection + Stampede

Collection + Supplies will be good too
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 01, 2022, 12:53:13 pm
Collection + Stampede

With any trasher in the kingdom, this is a 50 VP/turn golden deck.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: mxdata on June 01, 2022, 01:00:02 pm
To be honest, I'm kind of sad to see while-in-play being phased out. In most of the cards that had that clause, it seems more logical than this turn. In fact, if anything, I've long felt that a few this-turn cards, such as Livery, would make more sense as while-in-play. Also, I don't understand why Hoard has the new wording, when there's no functional difference. Were there really that many people confused about the difference between "when you buy" vs "when you gain"? Seems like anyone confused by that would be just as confused by the new Hoard phrasing
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: spineflu on June 01, 2022, 01:02:07 pm
More to the point, Goons is not gone. If you play physically, you still owe your cards. Donald won’t rock up to your house personally to rip your cards. The Temple Gates app on Steam/Android/IOS also keeps the removed cards. As a Copper strategist, you can even buy Coppersmith there!!!

AND depending on your printing of Prosperity, your cards will still match in a feel way, in a way the 1E Original and Intrigue cards don't, since there's no cardstock upgrade this time.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: faust on June 01, 2022, 01:17:14 pm
Seeing how much "When you buy" is being phased out, I wonder what will happen to Guilds' overpay mechanic.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: grrgrrgrr on June 01, 2022, 01:33:01 pm
I'm also curious to what the fate of Haggler will be when its set will be revisited. That card has while-in-play effect that really shouldn't be throneable (though I also believed that with Merchant Guild). I kinda suspect that this card will get a stronger on-play effect, but only gains one extra card per play.

Also, when is Highway getting the throneable glory it deserves?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: mandioca15 on June 01, 2022, 01:34:52 pm
Tiara goes well with Bank - you can play Bank twice for (hopefully) lots of coins, and Tiara even provides the Buy Bank really needs. Tiara also contributes $1 to Bank's total, and you can topdeck any gains you make!
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Jack Rudd on June 01, 2022, 02:09:40 pm
Black Market/Collection looks like a fun combo.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Dominionduke on June 01, 2022, 02:22:31 pm
Collection + Stampede

With any trasher in the kingdom, this is a 50 VP/turn golden deck.
If both players do this the game never ends.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: vidicate on June 01, 2022, 03:15:15 pm
Anvil seems like a really fun card. But I'm wondering if it wouldn't have been more interesting in say Nocturne, where it could've handed out a different Boon each time instead of always giving the Earth's Gift.

Wouldn't that have literally just been Treasure-Tracker?

I was thinking wimpy Idol.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: emtzalex on June 01, 2022, 03:15:46 pm
Collection + Stampede

With any trasher in the kingdom, this is a 50 VP/turn golden deck.

Technically, you can make this into a Golden Deck without trashing. If there's no handsize/drawing attacks, the 10 Horses you will gain will eventually turn into 15 cards. If those are your starting 10 + 5 copies of Collection, you still get the 50 VP per turn Golden Deck. This will rarely be the optimal strategy, as it prevents you from buying any other non-one-shot card. Being able to play 3-4 (and occassionally 5) Collections and making the rest up with Silver is good enough, especially if you can win the Collections split. On the other hand, in a Collections - Stampeded - Ride - Experement deck, if you open $5/$2, it might we worth trying to grab 5 Collections without buying anything else.

Collection + Stampede

With any trasher in the kingdom, this is a 50 VP/turn golden deck.
If both players do this the game never ends.

Unless one wins the split and gets 6 copies. Then the other person can either resign, or the split winner can run up the score so much (able to score 50 points per turn to their opponent's 40) that the other player can't make it up in 8 turns, and the first player can buy out the Provinces (or whatever). But that would take forever, so the split loser should probably resign.

But if there was a clean split, you are correct.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: NoMoreFun on June 01, 2022, 03:58:39 pm
Seeing how much "When you buy" is being phased out, I wonder what will happen to Guilds' overpay mechanic.

Probably left alone right? It's clear the act of buying is being called on with overpay, no confusion there. I think it's in the same category as Animal Fair. Being able to pay $ on gain could also work but may also disappoint new players (can you gain a Doctor and overpay 1 with just a workshop?).

Haggler is a card where figuring out a non clunky "when gain" wording might be tricky. I think Noble Brigand is a goner in Hinterlands 2E. Farmland may be too (the design could be done similarly in an event - maybe an expensive "Gain a Duchy and Expand" event), or maybe Fortress will be removed from Dark Ages 2E.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: vidicate on June 01, 2022, 04:11:31 pm
or maybe Fortress will be removed from Dark Ages 2E.

Infinite/degenerate combos have to be considered, whether it involves removed cards or not. Taking out Fortress won’t help here.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Meta on June 01, 2022, 04:31:05 pm
To be honest, I'm kind of sad to see while-in-play being phased out. In most of the cards that had that clause, it seems more logical than this turn. In fact, if anything, I've long felt that a few this-turn cards, such as Livery, would make more sense as while-in-play. Also, I don't understand why Hoard has the new wording, when there's no functional difference. Were there really that many people confused about the difference between "when you buy" vs "when you gain"? Seems like anyone confused by that would be just as confused by the new Hoard phrasing

I was really confused when I saw the new wording on hoard. I thought it was an errata because you could somehow buy cards without gaining them or something and that that would maybe lead to emptying out the gold pile. I would have never figured out it was simply meant to mean the same as the old Hoard.
It's a similar issue the german cards had though, where the old HIG rules treated gaining and buying as two distinct things, before correcting them for Hinterlands.
I'm kinda sad too see such unnecessarily clunky wording appearing on new cards though, and hope the german cards don't follow suit, as this change seems utterly stupid to me.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 01, 2022, 04:38:33 pm
With Hoard, is there some big issue with just being a normal on-gain? Is it only because you didn’t want to change power level with the errata? But why not on-gain from the start?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: kieranmillar on June 01, 2022, 04:52:57 pm
This is answered in the Prosperity 2E secret history that just came out.

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=21263.0

Quote
Hoard: Dropped "while in play" in favor of "this turn"; now triggers on gains not buys, though it still only works on cards you bought. This is a general change; when-buy triggers confuse things for casual players. Why not just "when gain"? The issue is loops. Hoard can happen multiple times a turn, and lets you go up in value - you gain an Estate, it comes with a Gold. Reasonable-looking cards - and I've playtested multiple cards like this - can loop with Hoard, so that you empty the Estates and Duchies. Well those cards don't exist so who cares? I decided in the end that I cared.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: NoMoreFun on June 01, 2022, 05:54:53 pm
Doesn't Skulk have the same problem? (Card that comes with a card more expensive than it)
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 01, 2022, 06:38:21 pm
Doesn't Skulk have the same problem? (Card that comes with a card more expensive than it)

Being able to gain 10 Skulks for free is probably not going to break the game in most situations.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: JW on June 01, 2022, 07:20:37 pm
Doesn't Skulk have the same problem? (Card that comes with a card more expensive than it)

This interaction already exists. Guildmaster + Architect's Guild means that you can buy a Skulk and get the other 9 for free. Play Guildmaster twice and you can also gain 10 non-Victory cards costing $5 in this loop, and 10 non-Victory cards costing less than $4, often letting you empty 3 piles immediately. However, it doesn't come with any VP, so if all you are going to do with that loop is pile out, you'll need a points lead first (unlike a hypothetical interaction that enabled emptying the Duchies and Estates).
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: beri on June 01, 2022, 07:26:06 pm
Collection + Stampede
Yup, will make games quite stupid. Would Collection suck if on-buy?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: LastFootnote on June 01, 2022, 07:44:26 pm
Collection + Stampede
Yup, will make games quite stupid. Would Collection suck if on-buy?

Nothing gets to be on-buy anymore. It's being phased out everywhere, due to casual players not understanding the distinction between buying and gaining.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Imrahil3 on June 01, 2022, 08:36:34 pm
Collection + Stampede
Yup, will make games quite stupid. Would Collection suck if on-buy?

Nothing gets to be on-buy anymore. It's being phased out everywhere, due to casual players not understanding the distinction between buying and gaining.
Which still bothers me - they need to learn this distinction anyways because they have to learn they can still buy after playing Workshop.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: JW on June 01, 2022, 09:37:30 pm
Nothing gets to be on-buy anymore. It's being phased out everywhere, due to casual players not understanding the distinction between buying and gaining.

And, even for players who understand the distinction, it can be confusing how the timing of on-buy and on-gain effects differ.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: ClouduHieh on June 01, 2022, 10:44:42 pm
Yeah of course I’m exaggerating. However how would you feel if your most favorite card also got replaced. Out of over hundreds of cards goons is one of my most favorite cards it’s in my top 10. For it to be removed from dominion online and future physical copies is absolute drag for me. Not only that but my most hated card in the whole set gets to stay! Mint is in my top 10 most hated dominion cards. And as matter of fact it also happened to seaside. Embargo is in my top 25 most loved cards and lookout is in my top 10 most hated cards.  When I bought prosperity the there were very few cards I liked from the set to begin with. Goons was prosperity s one redeeming quality in my eyes. Without it it’s a ruined expansion in my eyes. And yes I’m well aware that goons has its pros and cons. But for me the pros outweigh the cons. As for me I wasn’t interested in an expansion with tons of different treasure cards. And now that it was removed, well it won’t be the same without goons my favorite militia variant. And I’m sure I’m not the only one on dominion online that’s going to miss it. Goodbye goons this is cruel world indeed. And not replacing mint is criminal.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: LastFootnote on June 01, 2022, 10:46:39 pm
Nothing gets to be on-buy anymore. It's being phased out everywhere, due to casual players not understanding the distinction between buying and gaining.

And, even for players who understand the distinction, it can be confusing how the timing of on-buy and on-gain effects differ.

Well that’s fixable by making them both happen after the gain.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Gherald on June 01, 2022, 11:29:32 pm
There was never anything wrong with Mint, and it's an even better card now that nearly all Prosperity's treasures are something you may want more than a single copy of.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Sade on June 01, 2022, 11:42:51 pm
And not replacing mint is criminal.

Well, technically, Mint was replaced in Prosperity 2E. The 2E Mint is functionally different (however slightly) from the 1E Mint, so you could say that the 2E Mint is a new card that replaced an older one, not unlike Goons --> Collection.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Donald X. on June 02, 2022, 12:15:26 am
Doesn't Skulk have the same problem? (Card that comes with a card more expensive than it)

Being able to gain 10 Skulks for free is probably not going to break the game in most situations.
That is certainly the hope. It does come up for some cards though, as a specific thing to check.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: NoMoreFun on June 02, 2022, 02:29:56 am
Doesn't Skulk have the same problem? (Card that comes with a card more expensive than it)

This interaction already exists. Guildmaster + Architect's Guild means that you can buy a Skulk and get the other 9 for free. Play Guildmaster twice and you can also gain 10 non-Victory cards costing $5 in this loop, and 10 non-Victory cards costing less than $4, often letting you empty 3 piles immediately. However, it doesn't come with any VP, so if all you are going to do with that loop is pile out, you'll need a points lead first (unlike a hypothetical interaction that enabled emptying the Duchies and Estates).

Border Village, Ferry, and a when-gain Hoard would enable this loop while gaining Estates.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: faust on June 02, 2022, 03:40:34 am
Doesn't Skulk have the same problem? (Card that comes with a card more expensive than it)

This interaction already exists. Guildmaster + Architect's Guild means that you can buy a Skulk and get the other 9 for free. Play Guildmaster twice and you can also gain 10 non-Victory cards costing $5 in this loop, and 10 non-Victory cards costing less than $4, often letting you empty 3 piles immediately. However, it doesn't come with any VP, so if all you are going to do with that loop is pile out, you'll need a points lead first (unlike a hypothetical interaction that enabled emptying the Duchies and Estates).

Border Village, Ferry, and a when-gain Hoard would enable this loop while gaining Estates.
Or, for Duchies: Ferry, Hunting Grounds, Watchtower in hand.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: majiponi on June 02, 2022, 05:15:02 am
Collection is brokenly strong with Supplies, isn't it?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: faust on June 02, 2022, 06:26:47 am
Collection is brokenly strong with Supplies, isn't it?
Feels like it has major problems with Horses in general. It's also quite insane with Livery. Would it have been good to restrict it to "when you gain an Action from the supply"?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: urza on June 02, 2022, 12:21:27 pm
Yeah of course I’m exaggerating. However how would you feel if your most favorite card also got replaced. Out of over hundreds of cards goons is one of my most favorite cards it’s in my top 10. For it to be removed from dominion online and future physical copies is absolute drag for me. Not only that but my most hated card in the whole set gets to stay! Mint is in my top 10 most hated dominion cards. And as matter of fact it also happened to seaside. Embargo is in my top 25 most loved cards and lookout is in my top 10 most hated cards.  When I bought prosperity the there were very few cards I liked from the set to begin with. Goons was prosperity s one redeeming quality in my eyes. Without it it’s a ruined expansion in my eyes. And yes I’m well aware that goons has its pros and cons. But for me the pros outweigh the cons. As for me I wasn’t interested in an expansion with tons of different treasure cards. And now that it was removed, well it won’t be the same without goons my favorite militia variant. And I’m sure I’m not the only one on dominion online that’s going to miss it. Goodbye goons this is cruel world indeed. And not replacing mint is criminal.

There are several things in this post I find baffling, but the main one is: how can anyone hate Lookout?  To be honest, I've never played with it, but it has no interaction.  So if you hate it... just don't buy it?  Same with Mint, mostly, though I guess Mint can provide some explosive starts that you might feel are unfair or something.  Still feels weird to hate it.

And while I can empathize with not wanting Goons to get cut (to a degree), it's really hard to take this post seriously when you say the whole expansion is ruined now.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Gherald on June 02, 2022, 12:31:40 pm
No more goon slogs where I get to sit there for a half hour with hand sizes barely able to afford anything and we eventually have nothing better to do but buy out all the coppers? My dominion experience has been ruined!!!!1 ::)
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 02, 2022, 12:56:06 pm
There are several things in this post I find baffling, but the main one is: how can anyone hate Lookout?  To be honest, I've never played with it, but it has no interaction.  So if you hate it... just don't buy it?  Same with Mint, mostly, though I guess Mint can provide some explosive starts that you might feel are unfair or something.  Still feels weird to hate it.

He has already talked about that elsewhere:

Lookout, and Seahag have no real benefit. And lookout can destroy your deck at the end of the game. One time I drew 2 duchies and province with lookout and it was online when it happened.talk about bad luck!

So I am a copper strategist, yes I know that’s not really a real strategy. So yes I hate mint because I would rather keep my coppers
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 02, 2022, 01:01:57 pm
Nothing gets to be on-buy anymore. It's being phased out everywhere, due to casual players not understanding the distinction between buying and gaining.

And, even for players who understand the distinction, it can be confusing how the timing of on-buy and on-gain effects differ.

Well that’s fixable by making them both happen after the gain.

Wouldn’t this just then be equally confusing to all the players who assume that buy happens first?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 02, 2022, 01:09:48 pm
Nothing gets to be on-buy anymore. It's being phased out everywhere, due to casual players not understanding the distinction between buying and gaining.

And, even for players who understand the distinction, it can be confusing how the timing of on-buy and on-gain effects differ.

Well that’s fixable by making them both happen after the gain.

Wouldn’t this just then be equally confusing to all the players who assume that buy happens first?

Another possibility that would have required a different design from the start; don’t make make buying a card cause a gain. Make “gain” effectively mean “take without buying”. All cards that now say “when you gain” would have to be “when you buy or gain” instead. But then again I’m not a game designer so I wouldn’t trust my opinions here.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 02, 2022, 01:33:45 pm
As someone mentioned in the previous thread; I’m surprised by the lack of VP token cards. It always felt weird to me that a new mechanic that needed its own tokens was only used for 3 cards in the set. Now with second edition it’s still only 4 cards.

Also surprised that Goons, the card known for generating insanely huge scores, has been replaced with a card that is likely to generate even higher scores. Granted, the loss of the ability to buy Coppers for points might just balance it out; but hard to say.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: CaptainTheo on June 02, 2022, 04:28:17 pm
I notice that Collection is very similar to and compares favourably with Plunder, which costs the same. Collection isn't covered up at the start of the game, offers an extra buy and is only worse if you don't gain any Action cards in the turn after playing Collection.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: 4est on June 02, 2022, 04:39:23 pm
All true, although: Collection doesn't let you keep your $2 Lost Cities.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: ClouduHieh on June 02, 2022, 08:45:11 pm
I played lookout quite a few times online and have had to trash a lot of good cards with it. I also drew 3 provinces in a row. It was the only trasher that game and there were a ton of minus point cards, and had absolutely no luck in trashing a single curse. Then I used it one final turn and drew 3 provinces causing me to lose a province. Because it forces you to trash. And then I played it again in another game and drew 2 duchies and a province. Even if it’s my fault for playing it at the end of the game. Lookout is a gamble. And it could cause you to not only trash a good card but also discard a good card. Now whenever lookout is in the game it just sits there collecting dust. It’s a waste of space. Any card that becomes a waste of space I absolutely hate. Mint is the same way it just sits there collecting dust.  I do not like most cards that force me to trash cards, with an exception. Dark ages has lots of forced trash cards like rats and junk dealer which forces you to trash a card from your hand. For one thing it’s from my hand, so it’s easier to choose if I should play it or not. It’s easier to mitigate trashing cards in dark ages simply because of all the synergy that trashing has in dark ages. Plus there’s tons of cards that have effects if they are trashed. There’s lots of different benefits to trashing the various cards. Plus lookout and mint have no trashing synergy with their expansions.  Plus I prefer to trash cards from my hand or discard pile. If it forces you to trash from your deck like lookout then I hate it. I would rather be forced to trash a card if someone attacked me with giant. I don’t have any problems with my opponents dismantling my deck, but I absolutely hate playing with cards that force me to dismantle my deck based on a gamble. And it’s another reason why I hate mint because it forces you to trash all treasures in play, for an action card I find tedious at best. For instance if goons had mints trash all treasure cards in play effect to buy it, I would still love goons. Because like I said I find mints action effect boring. If I’m going to trash all my treasures in play to buy a card, the action itself better be powerful and exciting. I don’t find lookout exciting either. Both lookout and mint are completely boring to me.

Which is why when I get the new cards. I’m removing mint instead of goons and I’m removing lookout instead of embargo. Honestly I don’t understand why any of you like these cards. And I don’t think I ever will. I guess I’m just a different kind of dominion player. I see dominion in a different light. For me dominion is like risk or memoir 44. If I want to play a peaceful game I’ll play Everdell or ark nova. If I want to play a competitive game I’ll play dominion or risk.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Imrahil3 on June 02, 2022, 09:43:45 pm
My friend played Lookout, revealed three Platina, and still won the game. If you haven’t had good luck with it that’s fine. Nobody’s forcing you to play it. Sounds like you’d have more fun leaving it out of your games entirely. With over 400 cards it’d be a miracle if every player found every card interesting and useful.

For the record, I have a hard time taking you seriously when you write a novel describing how Lookout is “a waste of space.”

But truly, enjoy your continued Goons games. I’ll be right there with you continuing to use the 1E cards.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Commodore Chuckles on June 02, 2022, 10:33:09 pm
Also surprised that Goons, the card known for generating insanely huge scores, has been replaced with a card that is likely to generate even higher scores. Granted, the loss of the ability to buy Coppers for points might just balance it out; but hard to say.

As Donald said in the OP, the problem with Goons wasn't the VP-gaining, it was the attack, which didn't fit with the rest of the card and could also lock the other player out of getting it.

Regarding replacing all on-Buy with on-Gain: I personally think it's a mistake. I never had trouble remembering that Goons, Hoard, Haggler, Merchant Guild and Port only worked with buying instead of gaining. Goons and Merchant Guild reminded you with the +Buy, Hoard is rarely played outside of the Buy phase, and Haggler and Port would be obviously stupid if they were on-Gain.

The only cards where I was ever tripped up by this were Noble Brigand and Farmland. In a Hinterlands 2nd Edition Noble Brigand is probably on the chopping block anyway, so that leaves Farmland. After I made the mistake with Farmland it made sense to me why it didn't work on-Gain, but it still annoyed me in the first few seconds after I gained it and realized I couldn't do the upgrading. Meanwhile, while original Merchant Guild never confused me, new Merchant Guild actually did! I actually thought I would get Coffers for gaining anything, until that didn't work and I had to read it carefully.

I think as long "Buy" and "Gain" are separate things, there's guaranteed to be at least some confusion. The only way out is this:

Market
Action - $5
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Gain
+$1
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: grrgrrgrr on June 03, 2022, 02:30:08 am
Also surprised that Goons, the card known for generating insanely huge scores, has been replaced with a card that is likely to generate even higher scores. Granted, the loss of the ability to buy Coppers for points might just balance it out; but hard to say.

As Donald said in the OP, the problem with Goons wasn't the VP-gaining, it was the attack, which didn't fit with the rest of the card and could also lock the other player out of getting it.

Regarding replacing all on-Buy with on-Gain: I personally think it's a mistake. I never had trouble remembering that Goons, Hoard, Haggler, Merchant Guild and Port only worked with buying instead of gaining. Goons and Merchant Guild reminded you with the +Buy, Hoard is rarely played outside of the Buy phase, and Haggler and Port would be obviously stupid if they were on-Gain.

The only cards where I was ever tripped up by this were Noble Brigand and Farmland. In a Hinterlands 2nd Edition Noble Brigand is probably on the chopping block anyway, so that leaves Farmland. After I made the mistake with Farmland it made sense to me why it didn't work on-Gain, but it still annoyed me in the first few seconds after I gained it and realized I couldn't do the upgrading. Meanwhile, while original Merchant Guild never confused me, new Merchant Guild actually did! I actually thought I would get Coffers for gaining anything, until that didn't work and I had to read it carefully.

I think as long "Buy" and "Gain" are separate things, there's guaranteed to be at least some confusion. The only way out is this:

Market
Action - $5
+1 Card
+1 Action
+1 Gain
+$1

I too think that the new wording of Hoard (the buy part) is torturous and more confusing-inducing than the old one. But you also have to think: what after the use of onbuy is phased out to the absolute minimum? Will there be then misconceptions when the use of "when you buy" suddenly pops up?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Meta on June 03, 2022, 02:48:17 am
Another possibility that would have required a different design from the start; don’t make make buying a card cause a gain. Make “gain” effectively mean “take without buying”. All cards that now say “when you gain” would have to be “when you buy or gain” instead. But then again I’m not a game designer so I wouldn’t trust my opinions here.

That's literally what happened with the german edition of the game, where buying and gaining were treated as two completely different things, until it was "fixed" in Hinterlands.
I think that'd be the only solution to make the distinction more clear to casuals without ruining the wording of every card with on-buy effects.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 03, 2022, 07:35:43 am
If I want to play a competitive game I’ll play dominion

...and if you want to win at a competitive game, you'll buy Lookout.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Donald X. on June 03, 2022, 02:05:53 pm
As someone mentioned in the previous thread; I’m surprised by the lack of VP token cards. It always felt weird to me that a new mechanic that needed its own tokens was only used for 3 cards in the set. Now with second edition it’s still only 4 cards.
The intention was to have more; but there were a lot of intentions, all competing, and in the end there are four.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: ClouduHieh on June 03, 2022, 10:28:30 pm
If you want to win at a competitive game you’ll buy goons, not lookout.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: spineflu on June 04, 2022, 07:34:41 am
If you want to win at a competitive game you’ll buy goons, not lookout.

both, honestly. heck, buy lookouts with goons - they're cheap - and then trash the extra lookouts with lookout.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 04, 2022, 07:47:25 am
If you want to win at a competitive game you’ll buy goons, not lookout.

Want to try a cage match? Lookout forced in the kingdom, I have to buy at least two of them by turn 4, you can play normally with no restrictions.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: dpm on June 06, 2022, 05:47:28 pm
Even more nuts than Collection + Stampede: Collection + Cavalry + Academy + Way of the Butterfly. 

Yes, this actually happened. 
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: NoMoreFun on June 06, 2022, 05:59:43 pm
Collection is the Goons experience. I like how there's no attack, and it's held back by not being able to buy a Collection for VP with a Collection. But it's so much easier to play multiples and get an enormous VP haul. Costing $5 instead of $6 is also a big help.

It could be a bad case of new toy syndrome, but I think it's the best card in the game. I wonder if it was playtested at $7?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: hedomedo on June 10, 2022, 08:54:40 am
Even more nuts than Collection + Stampede: Collection + Cavalry + Academy + Way of the Butterfly. 

Yes, this actually happened.

I just got into a game that was completely broken because of Collection + Stampede. It would be an endless game if the other player wouldn't resign. I think that's broken game design.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: LastFootnote on June 10, 2022, 09:41:43 am
Even more nuts than Collection + Stampede: Collection + Cavalry + Academy + Way of the Butterfly. 

Yes, this actually happened.

I just got into a game that was completely broken because of Collection + Stampede. It would be an endless game if the other player wouldn't resign. I think that's broken game design.

It was a known issue, but what’s your suggested solution? Would it be better for Collection to have a confusing, hard-to-remember wording? It would be be great if the combo never came up in random sets online.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: MrHepp on June 10, 2022, 10:51:05 am
It was a known issue, but what’s your suggested solution? Would it be better for Collection to have a confusing, hard-to-remember wording? It would be be great if the combo never came up in random sets online.

A possible solution could be to change the wording for Collection to "..., when you gain an Action card from the Supply, ...".
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: LastFootnote on June 10, 2022, 11:30:45 am
It was a known issue, but what’s your suggested solution? Would it be better for Collection to have a confusing, hard-to-remember wording? It would be be great if the combo never came up in random sets online.

A possible solution could be to change the wording for Collection to "..., when you gain an Action card from the Supply, ...".

That was considered, I believe. Is that worth losing all the other non-Supply combos with Collection though? And will casual players remember that clause when it comes up so seldom?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: trivialknot on June 10, 2022, 12:10:21 pm
Even more nuts than Collection + Stampede: Collection + Cavalry + Academy + Way of the Butterfly. 

Yes, this actually happened.

I just got into a game that was completely broken because of Collection + Stampede. It would be an endless game if the other player wouldn't resign. I think that's broken game design.

It was a known issue, but what’s your suggested solution? Would it be better for Collection to have a confusing, hard-to-remember wording? It would be be great if the combo never came up in random sets online.
Is that an invitation to post fan variants here?  That's what it sounds like.

Oh, how about a rule that there are a finite number of VP chips available.  Automatically resolves all the VP-chip related stalemate problems.  Easy to house-rule IRL because you do, in actual fact, have a finite number of VP chips.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: silverspawn on June 10, 2022, 12:15:28 pm
Even more nuts than Collection + Stampede: Collection + Cavalry + Academy + Way of the Butterfly. 

Yes, this actually happened.

I just got into a game that was completely broken because of Collection + Stampede. It would be an endless game if the other player wouldn't resign. I think that's broken game design.

It was a known issue, but what’s your suggested solution? Would it be better for Collection to have a confusing, hard-to-remember wording? It would be be great if the combo never came up in random sets online.
Is that an invitation to post fan variants here?
No
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: kieranmillar on June 10, 2022, 12:29:39 pm
The real solution is horses trash themselves on-use instead of being an infinitely large source of action gains, but the time for that is long gone.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: weretheruler on June 10, 2022, 04:46:40 pm
Goons was the best engine payload in the game.

Collection is weaker, but also easier to get and play.

Not sure which is "better" but seems like Collection is relevant in more games. Plus goons BM was not a fun strategy (especially if one person locked the other out of getting one with the attack.)

I like Collection better - while Goons was powerful (and the watchtower goons combo was fun to pull off in the ONE game I ever got to do it in - but my opponent just sat there and was bored - he never let me play with that combo in the kingdom again) I never really thought it was fun.

I think it was a good choice to replace Goons with something this crazy. I might actually buy the update pack just for this card. (I buy about 1 expansion per year, that's about how often I get to play, more than that and I never really get comfortable with the new cards before there are more new cards.)
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Titus on June 10, 2022, 07:36:14 pm
Even more nuts than Collection + Stampede: Collection + Cavalry + Academy + Way of the Butterfly. 

Yes, this actually happened.

I just got into a game that was completely broken because of Collection + Stampede. It would be an endless game if the other player wouldn't resign. I think that's broken game design.

It was a known issue, but what’s your suggested solution? Would it be better for Collection to have a confusing, hard-to-remember wording? It would be be great if the combo never came up in random sets online.

What if Collection said:

-This turn, when you gain an action card, +1vp, unless you gained another copy of it already.-

No pegasusstampede and overall collection wouldn't be that centralizing at all.
It somewhat is a must buy like goons used to be in most games..

Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 10, 2022, 08:33:37 pm
I haven't seen mentions of Collection (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Collection) + Populate (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Populate). I suppose because Populate is just so expensive compared to something like Stampede. But still, seems a bit nuts.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: LastFootnote on June 10, 2022, 08:34:43 pm
I haven't seen mentions of Collection (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Collection) + Populate (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Populate). I suppose because Populate is just so expensive compared to something like Stampede. But still, seems a bit nuts.

Well Populate moves the game toward a conclusion. Collection/Stampede is a golden deck.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 10, 2022, 08:36:21 pm
I haven't seen mentions of Collection (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Collection) + Populate (http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Populate). I suppose because Populate is just so expensive compared to something like Stampede. But still, seems a bit nuts.

Well Populate moves the game toward a conclusion. Collection/Stampede is a golden deck.

Ah I see.

Also, Cost reduction + Forum + new Trader... this lets you gain every Silver + every Forum, right? With a couple Collections in play...
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 10, 2022, 10:07:38 pm
It was a known issue, but what’s your suggested solution? Would it be better for Collection to have a confusing, hard-to-remember wording? It would be be great if the combo never came up in random sets online.

A possible solution could be to change the wording for Collection to "..., when you gain an Action card from the Supply, ...".

A far better solution would be just excluding horses. You can set up some version of Golden deck with just about any good horse gainer. Supplies, Paddock, Livery, and Ride all can generate golden setups without much trouble (e.g. Ride just sets up a turn or two slower and does the same thing as Stampede once you have 5 or more Collections). Sleigh and Cavalry just need some village support and they can also manage the endless golden deck.

All of them revolve around quickly getting a deck that uses horses to draw through and then getting as many Collections as one can before repeating ad infinitum. Livery is the only thing that requires a push toward game end, but any sort of trashing can make that an epic slog through the gold pile.

Stampede is the quickest and most fraught offender, but if this really is game breaking, may as well just house rule out horses.

Certainly, there are far worse edge cases. For instance, you can generate infinite points off a single Collection and a single Villa with Seaway, any cost reduction barring Princess, and Way of the Butterfly. Once you get villa to zero cost with the +buy token on it, just buy (return to Action phase), Butterfly it for every $5 left in the game, and then fail to gain $5s until you get bored of generating VP.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Jack Rudd on June 11, 2022, 05:43:41 am
Villa + cost reduction is fun times in general. I remember one game where Villa, Quarry and Pathfinding were all present, and I was the first to get two Quarries in the same hand. By the end of that turn, my deck was now full of Bazaarkets.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: grrgrrgrr on June 11, 2022, 06:26:51 am
I personally would suggest to reduce the price of Horse to $2 and to change Collection into "when you gain an Action card costing $3 or more, +1 VP" (or just restricting Collection to cards costing $4 or more). Another idea is to add a below-the-line clause to Horse that states "Gaining this cannot make you gain other cards or tokens", so that horses also aren't busted with Merchant Guild. But both of these ideas have their own ramifications, of course.

Poster below me is right. Live and let live.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Imrahil3 on June 11, 2022, 08:57:58 am
Guys, just let the game have wild combos.

There are plenty of cards in the game that warp it so much your usual strategies go out the window.  Both players have equal access to the Collections and the Horses. If both show up at the same time, guess what? You get to contest a pile of good cards, just like every other game of Dominion.

If you’re playing for fun, there are exactly 0 people forcing you to use this combo. Replace Collections or replace the Horse gainer. If you’re playing ranked, the whole point of that game mode is to test your skills against other players in a variety of circumstances and see who is better able to adapt to unusual strategies.

No more errata. No more replacements or rules changes. Let the game be. If there’s a combo you don’t like, don’t put it on the board.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: LastFootnote on June 11, 2022, 03:33:30 pm
Guys, just let the game have wild combos.

There are plenty of cards in the game that warp it so much your usual strategies go out the window.  Both players have equal access to the Collections and the Horses. If both show up at the same time, guess what? You get to contest a pile of good cards, just like every other game of Dominion.

If you’re playing for fun, there are exactly 0 people forcing you to use this combo. Replace Collections or replace the Horse gainer. If you’re playing ranked, the whole point of that game mode is to test your skills against other players in a variety of circumstances and see who is better able to adapt to unusual strategies.

No more errata. No more replacements or rules changes. Let the game be. If there’s a combo you don’t like, don’t put it on the board.

I would say there's a difference between wild combos and game-breaking combos. What I mean by that is, Collection-Stampede lets all players get into a stalemate by racking up VP forever. That's not just a wild combo.

But in general I prefer some craziness to awful clauses like "$3 or more", which seemed fine at the time but in retrospect is awful especially on Band of Nomads.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: LastFootnote on June 11, 2022, 03:35:47 pm
Is that an invitation to post fan variants here?  That's what it sounds like.

I think there's a big difference between "I wish this card worked this way instead" and "Hey Donald X., check out these fan cards I made!" I mean maybe there's not a specific line between the two, but I'm not worried at all about what's being discussed here.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: 4est on June 11, 2022, 04:00:33 pm
Personally, I think Collection is fantastic as it is, and easily one of the best 2E changes. Yeah, it's got some bonkers combos, but man, bonkers games are fun sometimes, and Collection gets all the fun parts of Goons without the swingy parts of costing $6 and the Militia attack. It is indeed a very strong and often centralizing card, but it does so without being unfair or ignoring the rest of the kingdom, which is exactly what you want in a strong card--you still need draw and trashing and actual good Actions to gain for Collection to really help you.

I'll admit, Collection does compare very favorably to cards like Plunder, Spices, Groundskeeper, and Merchant Guild which I know some folks may not like. My one potential nerf isn't to limit the VP bonus (guys, that's the fun part, don't nerf that) but to actually just make it give $1 instead of $2. You'd still want these for the VP, but you'd then need other sources of $ to support it. You can still go nuts with Horses, but not quite as nuts. Again though, I still like Collection as it is, and am super happy it exists. (Also, the Stampede combo is super rare you guys, and if you're IRL, just uh pick a different card?).
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: LastFootnote on June 11, 2022, 04:09:23 pm
Collection actually did make only $1 for a while, I believe. It got bumped up to $2.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Imrahil3 on June 11, 2022, 04:13:48 pm
But in general I prefer some craziness to awful clauses like "$3 or more", which seemed fine at the time but in retrospect is awful especially on Band of Nomads.

Totally agree.

I respect not wanting unending combos. I didn't at all mean to say I think Collections + Stampede is good for the game.

I don’t like limiting clauses on cards that only exist to stop hyper-optimized players from going too far with it but make life worse for the rest of us who are just having fun.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 11, 2022, 04:43:26 pm
I seem to remember reading this exact same conversation many years ago, when Prosperity first came out and people discovered KC+Goons+Masquerade.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 11, 2022, 05:03:35 pm
I seem to remember reading this exact same conversation many years ago, when Prosperity first came out and people discovered KC+Goons+Masquerade.

KC+Goons+Masquerade was fine because as soon as someone was doing that, you had a clear winner and the other player could resign. Collection+Stampede results in both players starving to death, unless one of them failed to do it.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Gherald on June 11, 2022, 08:20:01 pm
Quote
Collection+Stampede results in both players starving to death
I don't know how it is for you but I can eat and play Dominion at the same time. Sleep deprivation will play a bigger factor ;)
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: ehunt on June 12, 2022, 02:00:31 pm
Am I right that Collection + Stampede is only a starve-to-death if they split 5-5?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 12, 2022, 02:54:09 pm
What makes Collection + Stampede different than Fortress+Bishop, for example? Even if Collection gives far more points-per-turn, that shouldn't matter, should it? All that matters is that you've build a deck which generates any number of points per turn where you don't want to buy any card to add to the deck.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 12, 2022, 03:46:42 pm
Am I right that Collection + Stampede is only a starve-to-death if they split 5-5?

Yes. It also might not be if a player isn't thin enough early enough.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 12, 2022, 03:51:32 pm
What makes Collection + Stampede different than Fortress+Bishop, for example? Even if Collection gives far more points-per-turn, that shouldn't matter, should it? All that matters is that you've build a deck which generates any number of points per turn where you don't want to buy any card to add to the deck.

The difference is that you can beat Fortress+Bishop by building an engine that uses Fortress and Bishop to score points faster than the golden deck can, whereas Stampede's 5-card limit prevents you from incorporating it in an engine, and nothing can beat 50 VP/turn.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: infangthief on June 13, 2022, 02:17:51 am
Quote
Collection+Stampede results in both players starving to death
I don't know how it is for you but I can eat and play Dominion at the same time. Sleep deprivation will play a bigger factor ;)
The full post from Awaclus did allow for the possibility that one of the players might not starve to death:
, unless one of them failed to do it.
:P
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Gherald on June 13, 2022, 02:58:03 am
My comment was not about the case of "one of them failing to do it" so no idea why you're quoting me, but ok.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: infangthief on June 13, 2022, 03:56:50 am
My comment was not about the case of "one of them failing to do it" so no idea why you're quoting me, but ok.

It was a joke, which I will now try to explain.

[explanation]
Awaclus's post said "Collection+Stampede results in both players starving to death, unless one of them failed to do it". The caveat was clearly intended to refer to doing the Collection+Stampede thing. But I wanted to deliberately misinterpret it as if it referred to starving to death. Then you said you could eat while playing Dominion, so it sounds like if any player could fail to starve to death in a Collection+Stampede game it would be you.
[/explanation]
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 13, 2022, 05:08:13 am
What makes Collection + Stampede different than Fortress+Bishop, for example? Even if Collection gives far more points-per-turn, that shouldn't matter, should it? All that matters is that you've build a deck which generates any number of points per turn where you don't want to buy any card to add to the deck.

The difference is that you can beat Fortress+Bishop by building an engine that uses Fortress and Bishop to score points faster than the golden deck can, whereas Stampede's 5-card limit prevents you from incorporating it in an engine, and nothing can beat 50 VP/turn.

I think most Bishop/Fortress kingdoms won't have an engine alternative that gets more than 12 VP per turn and can be set up as fast as the Golden deck.

IMO, the best solution is to just add an official rule to resolve games in which neither player can force a win - which can happen not just with golden decks, but also with Possession, Smugglers and others.
 
Such games should either be declared a tie, or the game should end after a certain number of turns in which the game does not make any progress - say, when the total number of cards in the supply has not decreased over 20 consecutive turns, and the VP difference between the players has not changed either.

Either solution would mirror chess rules (the stalemate rule / the 50-turns rule), a game which has been known for centuries to produce lots of "un-endable" games by design.

Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 13, 2022, 05:30:45 am
I seem to remember reading this exact same conversation many years ago, when Prosperity first came out and people discovered KC+Goons+Masquerade.

KC+Goons+Masquerade was fine because as soon as someone was doing that, you had a clear winner and the other player could resign. Collection+Stampede results in both players starving to death, unless one of them failed to do it.

Yes, the Masquerade pins did not usually* lead to unending games (only to very unfun ones). But still Donald later changed Masquerade to a much more complicated wording just to get rid of those pins...

*Except in combination with VP tokens, when the pinned player has an unsurmountable lead...
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: dpm on June 13, 2022, 10:15:56 am
How about just adding a new end condition: if someone amasses 1000 VP tokens, the game is over? 
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: GendoIkari on June 13, 2022, 10:45:56 am
What makes Collection + Stampede different than Fortress+Bishop, for example? Even if Collection gives far more points-per-turn, that shouldn't matter, should it? All that matters is that you've build a deck which generates any number of points per turn where you don't want to buy any card to add to the deck.

The difference is that you can beat Fortress+Bishop by building an engine that uses Fortress and Bishop to score points faster than the golden deck can, whereas Stampede's 5-card limit prevents you from incorporating it in an engine, and nothing can beat 50 VP/turn.

I think most Bishop/Fortress kingdoms won't have an engine alternative that gets more than 12 VP per turn and can be set up as fast as the Golden deck.

IMO, the best solution is to just add an official rule to resolve games in which neither player can force a win - which can happen not just with golden decks, but also with Possession, Smugglers and others.
 
Such games should either be declared a tie, or the game should end after a certain number of turns in which the game does not make any progress - say, when the total number of cards in the supply has not decreased over 20 consecutive turns, and the VP difference between the players has not changed either.

Either solution would mirror chess rules (the stalemate rule / the 50-turns rule), a game which has been known for centuries to produce lots of "un-endable" games by design.

There's also the unrealistic but possible situation where it's literally impossible for the game to end, as opposed to the game won't end because a player would have to choose to lose in order to end the game. Both players trashed all their Copper and then bought a debt-cost card, etc.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 13, 2022, 11:41:43 am
What makes Collection + Stampede different than Fortress+Bishop, for example? Even if Collection gives far more points-per-turn, that shouldn't matter, should it? All that matters is that you've build a deck which generates any number of points per turn where you don't want to buy any card to add to the deck.

The difference is that you can beat Fortress+Bishop by building an engine that uses Fortress and Bishop to score points faster than the golden deck can, whereas Stampede's 5-card limit prevents you from incorporating it in an engine, and nothing can beat 50 VP/turn.

I think most Bishop/Fortress kingdoms won't have an engine alternative that gets more than 12 VP per turn and can be set up as fast as the Golden deck.

It doesn't have to be set up as fast as the golden deck, you have infinite time as long as you can, at some point in the future, play more than 4 Bishops per turn on average.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Honkeyfresh on June 13, 2022, 12:33:37 pm
Collection + Stampede

With any trasher in the kingdom, this is a 50 VP/turn golden deck.

Technically, you can make this into a Golden Deck without trashing. If there's no handsize/drawing attacks, the 10 Horses you will gain will eventually turn into 15 cards. If those are your starting 10 + 5 copies of Collection, you still get the 50 VP per turn Golden Deck. This will rarely be the optimal strategy, as it prevents you from buying any other non-one-shot card. Being able to play 3-4 (and occassionally 5) Collections and making the rest up with Silver is good enough, especially if you can win the Collections split. On the other hand, in a Collections - Stampeded - Ride - Experement deck, if you open $5/$2, it might we worth trying to grab 5 Collections without buying anything else.

Collection + Stampede

With any trasher in the kingdom, this is a 50 VP/turn golden deck.
If both players do this the game never ends.

Unless one wins the split and gets 6 copies. Then the other person can either resign, or the split winner can run up the score so much (able to score 50 points per turn to their opponent's 40) that the other player can't make it up in 8 turns, and the first player can buy out the Provinces (or whatever). But that would take forever, so the split loser should probably resign.

But if there was a clean split, you are correct.

Now imagine it also has storyteller and tribute.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Honkeyfresh on June 13, 2022, 12:43:10 pm
Collection is brokenly strong with Supplies, isn't it?
Feels like it has major problems with Horses in general. It's also quite insane with Livery. Would it have been good to restrict it to "when you gain an Action from the supply"?

good suggestion!  This fixes the horses/collection debacle.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: trivialknot on June 13, 2022, 02:11:54 pm
There's also Collection / Way of the Horse, which only uses actions from supply piles.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Imrahil3 on June 13, 2022, 05:52:54 pm
So I feel like Stampede is probably the worst offender here, since you can’t Collect Horse Spam while also out-engining your opponent. Any Way of the Horse board with a couple of $2 Actions like Pearl Diver allows you to essentially stampede but can scale to how many Buys you have.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Gherald on June 13, 2022, 06:54:35 pm
Can we just errata Collection to be excluded and replaced with another 5 cost pile anytime the word "Horse" is mentioned anywhere else on the board and be done with this nonsense forever?

(this includes Horse Traders or the like.. no I don't care :P )
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Imrahil3 on June 13, 2022, 07:28:10 pm
Can we just errata Collection to be excluded and replaced with another 5 cost pile anytime the word "Horse" is mentioned anywhere else on the board and be done with this nonsense forever?

(this includes Horse Traders or the like.. no I don't care :P )

Absolutely not.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 14, 2022, 08:24:40 am
What makes Collection + Stampede different than Fortress+Bishop, for example? Even if Collection gives far more points-per-turn, that shouldn't matter, should it? All that matters is that you've build a deck which generates any number of points per turn where you don't want to buy any card to add to the deck.

The difference is that you can beat Fortress+Bishop by building an engine that uses Fortress and Bishop to score points faster than the golden deck can, whereas Stampede's 5-card limit prevents you from incorporating it in an engine, and nothing can beat 50 VP/turn.

I think most Bishop/Fortress kingdoms won't have an engine alternative that gets more than 12 VP per turn and can be set up as fast as the Golden deck.

It doesn't have to be set up as fast as the golden deck, you have infinite time as long as you can, at some point in the future, play more than 4 Bishops per turn on average.

I thought you were referring to an engine that gets >12 VP at least partially from VP cards, which would have to be fast enough to compete against the golden deck.
However, if you manage to play more than 4 Bishops per turn forever at some point, you've just created an even better golden deck. If the opponent also mirrors that better deck, you get the same stalemate problem, only at a later point. ;)
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 14, 2022, 09:10:32 am
I thought you were referring to an engine that gets >12 VP at least partially from VP cards, which would have to be fast enough to compete against the golden deck.
However, if you manage to play more than 4 Bishops per turn forever at some point, you've just created an even better golden deck. If the opponent also mirrors that better deck, you get the same stalemate problem, only at a later point. ;)

You haven't created a golden deck (the moment you add the fifth Bishop, there's a chance of drawing a hand of five Bishops, which means you don't get to play the functionally equivalent turn that turn), you've created an engine. You can play 5 Bishops per turn and buy Provinces.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: grrgrrgrr on June 14, 2022, 01:38:40 pm
I think the development team just should work on a third ending condition, namely if there have been 10 or 20 rounds with no progress (which obviously needs to be concreted), the game ends (and the winner is determined as usual).
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Titus on June 14, 2022, 02:27:03 pm
ban stampede lol
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 14, 2022, 06:04:11 pm
I thought you were referring to an engine that gets >12 VP at least partially from VP cards, which would have to be fast enough to compete against the golden deck.
However, if you manage to play more than 4 Bishops per turn forever at some point, you've just created an even better golden deck. If the opponent also mirrors that better deck, you get the same stalemate problem, only at a later point. ;)

You haven't created a golden deck (the moment you add the fifth Bishop, there's a chance of drawing a hand of five Bishops, which means you don't get to play the functionally equivalent turn that turn), you've created an engine. You can play 5 Bishops per turn and buy Provinces.
No matter what we call such a "better than golden" deck, when both players build it, it will still produce a stalemate in many cases. Buying a province reduces the likelihood of drawing your deck, so you should only do it when your deck draws and plays your bishops very reliably. And buying the penultimate province is a losing move unless you have a lede of at least 21 VP, as the opponent can also play 5 bishops and buy the last province.

But if you have played a game where the Bishop/Fortress golden deck loses against an engine also based on Bishop and Fortress, I'd be very interested to see the log. ;)
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 14, 2022, 07:07:47 pm
I thought you were referring to an engine that gets >12 VP at least partially from VP cards, which would have to be fast enough to compete against the golden deck.
However, if you manage to play more than 4 Bishops per turn forever at some point, you've just created an even better golden deck. If the opponent also mirrors that better deck, you get the same stalemate problem, only at a later point. ;)

You haven't created a golden deck (the moment you add the fifth Bishop, there's a chance of drawing a hand of five Bishops, which means you don't get to play the functionally equivalent turn that turn), you've created an engine. You can play 5 Bishops per turn and buy Provinces.
No matter what we call such a "better than golden" deck, when both players build it, it will still produce a stalemate in many cases. Buying a province reduces the likelihood of drawing your deck, so you should only do it when your deck draws and plays your bishops very reliably. And buying the penultimate province is a losing move unless you have a lede of at least 21 VP, as the opponent can also play 5 bishops and buy the last province.

But if you have played a game where the Bishop/Fortress golden deck loses against an engine also based on Bishop and Fortress, I'd be very interested to see the log. ;)

Well, it is evidently a kingdom where trashing all of your starting cards is reasonably easy, since otherwise the golden deck wouldn't be playable. It's not hard to build a reliable engine when that is the case.

I don't see why PPR would be particularly stalematey here; requiring a 21 VP lead is not anything special in a game where you can gain 21 VP per turn (i.e. you only need a 1 VP lead at the start of your turn, and p2 only needs 0). What does make it special is that drawing your deck is beneficial on its own, so as soon as one player fails to do that, the other wins, which could mean that in some cases where you would normally break PPR for a small chance of winning, you instead keep playing in hopes of having your opponent dud first, so it can make the game take longer, but it also means that someone will inevitably dud sooner or later and that breaks the stalemate.

The only time I remember rolling a kingdom with Bishop and Fortress, I played the golden deck and got rekt. I'll try to see if I can retrieve the log but it might have been on Goko or Making Fun.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: NoMoreFun on June 14, 2022, 09:50:28 pm
Guys, just let the game have wild combos.

There are plenty of cards in the game that warp it so much your usual strategies go out the window.  Both players have equal access to the Collections and the Horses. If both show up at the same time, guess what? You get to contest a pile of good cards, just like every other game of Dominion.

If you’re playing for fun, there are exactly 0 people forcing you to use this combo. Replace Collections or replace the Horse gainer. If you’re playing ranked, the whole point of that game mode is to test your skills against other players in a variety of circumstances and see who is better able to adapt to unusual strategies.

No more errata. No more replacements or rules changes. Let the game be. If there’s a combo you don’t like, don’t put it on the board.

Agree on most of it. But there are cards that are so powerful and are powerful in such a way they render the rest of the Kingdom irrelevant, or where the winner comes down to FTA and shuffle luck. Cards that aren't fun to play. Cards that never get bought, taking up space, or give a sense of buyers remorse ("why doesn't this card work properly? Why do I lose when I buy it?). So replacements are good.

Dominion is a very resilient game but the sets as they existed on first print weren't perfect.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Honkeyfresh on June 15, 2022, 04:18:20 pm
Collection can lead to some pretty quick bonkers scores.

(https://brianclune.nimbusweb.me/box/attachment/7094962/6a07lublbsz38eqwpfaz/TSv86KP9Mq3a5VEO/screenshot-dominion.games-2022.06.15-15_23_15.jpg)

Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 16, 2022, 05:55:01 pm
What makes Collection + Stampede different than Fortress+Bishop, for example? Even if Collection gives far more points-per-turn, that shouldn't matter, should it? All that matters is that you've build a deck which generates any number of points per turn where you don't want to buy any card to add to the deck.

The difference is that you can beat Fortress+Bishop by building an engine that uses Fortress and Bishop to score points faster than the golden deck can, whereas Stampede's 5-card limit prevents you from incorporating it in an engine, and nothing can beat 50 VP/turn.

Both of these depend on the state of the board. E.g. a Bish/Fort deck is the maximum VP possible on a board without any net draw. And if the Bish/Fort player sees any tricksy engine building, they can just mill a Bish or three from the pile and still make more than any possible setup.

Beating 50 VP/turn is quite doable. The simplest shot being Possession. Even absent truly bonkers stuff like Masq or Amb, it takes exactly one play per turn to nuke their deck and score 50VP for you should they be so foolish as to leave you the opening.

Attacks also allow you leeway. Afterall, absent trashing, Stampede slowly dies once you start junking them. A Stampede hand only draws 15 total and if you dump the curse pile they will fall apart. Militias will at least drop the VP gain/turn. Things like Barbarian, Swindler, and Bandit can shut the whole works down permanently.

And getting into edge-case territory, there are many ways to score well over 50 points per turn. Collection/Villa/Butterfly/Seaway/cost reduction is unbounded points per turn (and needs only a single copy of everything except the cost reduction). Treasurer/Bishop can build out to 5 VP per combo with Plats which can go above 50 VP with things like Kc. Cost reduction/Grand Castle/trash diving (e.g. Graverobber), and gain 20 VP per trash & gain per cycle (e.g. Inheritance can easily put 20 VP cards into play/hand). And Kc/Treasurer/Cache/Tomb/Donate clocks in at 27 VP/turn without draw/+buys.

And I have already won a game by going Paddock/Collection instead of Stampede/Collection. Splitting the Collections results in 100 VP per turn if they don't contest the Paddocks at all.

The problem with Collection/Stampede is just that the combo is easy, obvious, and quick. There are many, many setups out there where you can generate truly insane amounts of VP repeatedly for turns. And many of those do not reward further engine building (e.g. at some point your deck caps out for Grand castle cycling). We don't care because they show up in something like 1/10,000 games once we account for alternative enablers.

Frankly, I think this will go the way of the pins, most likely by dropping errata onto Horse at some point, but with a bunch of weird edge cases floating out there (e.g. you can still pin your opponent with Masq/B-crat or Masq/Cutpurse if you get the exceedingly rare combos for enablers to do it before the game ends).

The difference with Bishop/Fort and Stamped/Collection is just one of degree. Many times there will be nothing that can beat the quick and dirty golden run, sometimes there will be something that can. While I grant there are many more times where Stampede/Collection is untouchable, I doubt that there are all that many more boards where the other cards could beat Bish/Fortress all that often and if the raw point total is the concern, Paddock/Collection is a far worse offender.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 16, 2022, 08:21:39 pm
Both of these depend on the state of the board. E.g. a Bish/Fort deck is the maximum VP possible on a board without any net draw. And if the Bish/Fort player sees any tricksy engine building, they can just mill a Bish or three from the pile and still make more than any possible setup.

The Bish/Fort player can't just mill a Bish or three from the pile without temporarily breaking the golden deck. Which is not a huge problem, but it slows down that process since you have to spend a turn trashing a Bishop every time your golden deck gets broken, unless you have good draws.

Beating 50 VP/turn is quite doable. The simplest shot being Possession. Even absent truly bonkers stuff like Masq or Amb, it takes exactly one play per turn to nuke their deck and score 50VP for you should they be so foolish as to leave you the opening.

I suppose Possession is a significant pain in the ASS if you haven't banned it and get matched against someone who also hasn't banned it, which probably isn't too often. You can't score the VP, however, you can only nuke the Horses.

Attacks also allow you leeway. Afterall, absent trashing, Stampede slowly dies once you start junking them. A Stampede hand only draws 15 total and if you dump the curse pile they will fall apart. Militias will at least drop the VP gain/turn. Things like Barbarian, Swindler, and Bandit can shut the whole works down permanently.

Trashing is not absent, it's not a golden deck without trashing unless you open 5/2 and never buy anything besides Collections and Stampedes (you don't technically have to open 5/2 to do that, but opening nothing/nothing is almost certainly a bad idea). The fact that you have to play your trasher and therefore can only play 4 Collections that turn could be annoying, but it's a temporary annoyance at worst.

Militias will not drop the VP gain/turn, they just force the golden deck to be a bit thinner than it otherwise would have to be.

Barbarian and Swindler can eventually deplete the Horse pile and therefore get the game to end (probably still in the Collection/Stampede player's favor, but that's fine, at least the game will end), but Bandit probably just discards two Horses, unless you can play at least three of them per turn, which is a lot of Gold to deal with.

And getting into edge-case territory, there are many ways to score well over 50 points per turn. Collection/Villa/Butterfly/Seaway/cost reduction is unbounded points per turn (and needs only a single copy of everything except the cost reduction). Treasurer/Bishop can build out to 5 VP per combo with Plats which can go above 50 VP with things like Kc. Cost reduction/Grand Castle/trash diving (e.g. Graverobber), and gain 20 VP per trash & gain per cycle (e.g. Inheritance can easily put 20 VP cards into play/hand). And Kc/Treasurer/Cache/Tomb/Donate clocks in at 27 VP/turn without draw/+buys.

I'm not very confident any of those will be present in a typical Collection/Stampede game, especially with Stampede (which is always present in a typical Collection/Stampede game, surprisingly enough) taking up half the landscape slots on its own.

And I have already won a game by going Paddock/Collection instead of Stampede/Collection. Splitting the Collections results in 100 VP per turn if they don't contest the Paddocks at all.

Sure, but you need a way to play the Collections before the Paddocks, which is not usually present, and neither is Paddock.

The problem with Collection/Stampede is just that the combo is easy, obvious, and quick. There are many, many setups out there where you can generate truly insane amounts of VP repeatedly for turns. And many of those do not reward further engine building (e.g. at some point your deck caps out for Grand castle cycling). We don't care because they show up in something like 1/10,000 games once we account for alternative enablers.

2-card combos show up a lot more than 1/10k games. Collection/Stampede also needs a trasher, but that's pretty often there. I have already had a Collection/Stampede kingdom and I can't have played more than like a hundred games with Prosperity 2E yet, even that's probably an overestimation. Sure, people get it disproportionately often right now since you can automatch for extra 2E, but even under normal circumstances, 2-card combos happen. I just had a Hermit/Market Square game not too long ago, and that was while automatching for extra 2E.

The difference with Bishop/Fort and Stamped/Collection is just one of degree. Many times there will be nothing that can beat the quick and dirty golden run, sometimes there will be something that can. While I grant there are many more times where Stampede/Collection is untouchable, I doubt that there are all that many more boards where the other cards could beat Bish/Fortress all that often and if the raw point total is the concern, Paddock/Collection is a far worse offender.

It's also one of kind. Bishop/Fortress can do other things in addition to the Bishop/Fortressing, Stampede/Collection can't. Even if the "other things" doesn't involve building up to a bigger turn, it can e.g. involve a 3-pile ending with Fortresses and two other cheap cantrips which means you only have to be one full turn ahead of your opponent for the game to end.

The raw point total is not the concern, the concern is the stalemate. I don't see any reason why Paddock/Collection would lead to stalemates particularly often, since you can do it while you build an engine that buys VP and that will beat your opponent who is just playing Paddocks and Collections and whatever the thing is that lets them play the Paddocks after they have already played their Collections. I can see why Bishop/Fortress could theoretically lead to stalemates, but while I do remember people talking about this theoretical possibility a lot, I do not remember it ever happening to anyone in practice because the golden deck is far from unbeatable, and even in a mirror match, the player who gets ahead can almost always end it somehow.

I just did a quick search, skimming over posts that didn't look like reports, and found like a dozen game reports where a stalemate didn't happen, of which only a minority were golden deck mirrors at all, and the closest thing to a stalemate I found was this (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=386.msg693444#msg693444) which was probably not a stalemate either because it doesn't mention being one, but it also doesn't say how it ended so I guess it could have been one. Not a very scientifically rigorous result obviously, but I would nonetheless expect stalemate reports to show up a lot more than they seem to if that was a thing that actually happened to a substantial degree.

You could argue that I'm just being theoretical about Collection/Stampede stalemates too and that it won't turn out to be a thing that happens in practice either, and I suppose that is true so far, but a lot of the reasons why Bishop/Fortress stalemates don't happen don't apply to Collection/Stampede or require the player who's ahead to be ahead by a lot more in order to happen.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 21, 2022, 04:43:39 pm
Both of these depend on the state of the board. E.g. a Bish/Fort deck is the maximum VP possible on a board without any net draw. And if the Bish/Fort player sees any tricksy engine building, they can just mill a Bish or three from the pile and still make more than any possible setup.

The Bish/Fort player can't just mill a Bish or three from the pile without temporarily breaking the golden deck. Which is not a huge problem, but it slows down that process since you have to spend a turn trashing a Bishop every time your golden deck gets broken, unless you have good draws.

Not at all. Golden deck is 5 Forts, 4 Bish. You can buy a 5th Bish and lose out only in the event that you bottom deck 2 Forts (i.e. 25% of the time). Unless the other guy is racing you to a golden deck, you still win out.

You can most certainly force endgame by sacrificing expected VP and depleting the Bish pile until they cannot gain enough VP/turn to matter.


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I suppose Possession is a significant pain in the ASS if you haven't banned it and get matched against someone who also hasn't banned it, which probably isn't too often. You can't score the VP, however, you can only nuke the Horses.
I don't play much Possession, but it does indeed counter.

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Trashing is not absent, it's not a golden deck without trashing unless you open 5/2 and never buy anything besides Collections and Stampedes (you don't technically have to open 5/2 to do that, but opening nothing/nothing is almost certainly a bad idea). The fact that you have to play your trasher and therefore can only play 4 Collections that turn could be annoying, but it's a temporary annoyance at worst.
Nonsense, you can use draw instead of trashing. Way of the Horse, Experiment, and even a single card of dead draw (e.g. Hunting grounds) off a Star chart.

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Militias will not drop the VP gain/turn, they just force the golden deck to be a bit thinner than it otherwise would have to be.
More they slow down the setup so you can do a megaturn or something else instead. Militia makes it quite painful to get the Collections, trash down, and draw through all while only ever playing 5 non-horse cards.

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Barbarian and Swindler can eventually deplete the Horse pile and therefore get the game to end (probably still in the Collection/Stampede player's favor, but that's fine, at least the game will end), but Bandit probably just discards two Horses, unless you can play at least three of them per turn, which is a lot of Gold to deal with.
Depends on how much you play them. Kc/Bandit/Apprentice can hunt and kill the Collections.

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I'm not very confident any of those will be present in a typical Collection/Stampede game, especially with Stampede (which is always present in a typical Collection/Stampede game, surprisingly enough) taking up half the landscape slots on its own.
The point is that we have many, many other combos that replicate all the major concerns of Collection/Stampede. Highest possible repeatable point total? Not even close. Unable to deplete piles without taking a knock on VP/turn? Not close again. Immune to a lot of attacks? There are far better. Each and every supposed flaw is present somewhere else with some combo of cards.

The fact that one some boards Fort/Bish is utterly dominant is not a sign that the combo is utterly broke.

The difference with Stampede/Collection is one of degree, not kind. There are many, many ways to setup recurring VP loops and many of those are both the most powerful source of points and fragile to buying more cards. What makes Stampede/Collections "unique" is that it is quick and simple.

But we see the exact same dynamics with Collection/Ride. Assuming a 5/5 collection split, your deck can support 7 non-Collections (provided you generate $12 and have no discards) and once you file those slots up you just endless loop or risk missing out on 30 VP/Turn. Supplies generate 25 VP/turn and eat up all your draw slots. They again will have a lot of boards where it cuts into the VP gain to move the game further towards an end state.

Stampede/Collection is not the highest VP/turn possible (that is the unbounded VP from Villa/Butterfly). It is not uniquely prone to seizing it. It is not the only 2 card combo that can degenerate.

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Sure, but you need a way to play the Collections before the Paddocks, which is not usually present, and neither is Paddock.

2-card combos show up a lot more than 1/10k games. Collection/Stampede also needs a trasher, but that's pretty often there. I have already had a Collection/Stampede kingdom and I can't have played more than like a hundred games with Prosperity 2E yet, even that's probably an overestimation. Sure, people get it disproportionately often right now since you can automatch for extra 2E, but even under normal circumstances, 2-card combos happen. I just had a Hermit/Market Square game not too long ago, and that was while automatching for extra 2E.

I am still not seeing why Supplies/Collections is so terribly different. On a strict trashing/BM board both Stampede and Supplies generate far more VP/turn than alternatives. Both have very limited card slots and both cannot afford to much around with extraneous cards lest the VP train derail.

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It's also one of kind. Bishop/Fortress can do other things in addition to the Bishop/Fortressing, Stampede/Collection can't. Even if the "other things" doesn't involve building up to a bigger turn, it can e.g. involve a 3-pile ending with Fortresses and two other cheap cantrips which means you only have to be one full turn ahead of your opponent for the game to end.
How many boards have that? I mean you only need to buy one more Fort than your opponent to tank them instead. But same applies for Stampede, win the Collections split and call it a day.

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The raw point total is not the concern, the concern is the stalemate. I don't see any reason why Paddock/Collection would lead to stalemates particularly often, since you can do it while you build an engine that buys VP and that will beat your opponent who is just playing Paddocks and Collections and whatever the thing is that lets them play the Paddocks after they have already played their Collections. I can see why Bishop/Fortress could theoretically lead to stalemates, but while I do remember people talking about this theoretical possibility a lot, I do not remember it ever happening to anyone in practice because the golden deck is far from unbeatable, and even in a mirror match, the player who gets ahead can almost always end it somehow.

I just did a quick search, skimming over posts that didn't look like reports, and found like a dozen game reports where a stalemate didn't happen, of which only a minority were golden deck mirrors at all, and the closest thing to a stalemate I found was this (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=386.msg693444#msg693444) which was probably not a stalemate either because it doesn't mention being one, but it also doesn't say how it ended so I guess it could have been one. Not a very scientifically rigorous result obviously, but I would nonetheless expect stalemate reports to show up a lot more than they seem to if that was a thing that actually happened to a substantial degree.

You could argue that I'm just being theoretical about Collection/Stampede stalemates too and that it won't turn out to be a thing that happens in practice either, and I suppose that is true so far, but a lot of the reasons why Bishop/Fortress stalemates don't happen don't apply to Collection/Stampede or require the player who's ahead to be ahead by a lot more in order to happen.

There are many possible stalemates. Most people do not see them, ever. I mean many engine setups routinely reach a state where gaining anything useful risks a game end and both players would be better off waiting for someone else to buy anything.

This one might be more common and obvious, but it is simply not sui generis.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 21, 2022, 05:37:41 pm
This one might be more common and obvious, but it is simply not sui generis.

How many stalemates have you experienced? I have had exactly one in about 8–10k games so far and that was a 0 VP/turn Possession game.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 24, 2022, 07:29:35 am
Both of these depend on the state of the board. E.g. a Bish/Fort deck is the maximum VP possible on a board without any net draw. And if the Bish/Fort player sees any tricksy engine building, they can just mill a Bish or three from the pile and still make more than any possible setup.

The Bish/Fort player can't just mill a Bish or three from the pile without temporarily breaking the golden deck. Which is not a huge problem, but it slows down that process since you have to spend a turn trashing a Bishop every time your golden deck gets broken, unless you have good draws.

Not at all. Golden deck is 5 Forts, 4 Bish. You can buy a 5th Bish and lose out only in the event that you bottom deck 2 Forts (i.e. 25% of the time). Unless the other guy is racing you to a golden deck, you still win out.

You can most certainly force endgame by sacrificing expected VP and depleting the Bish pile until they cannot gain enough VP/turn to matter.

Yes, and the sacrifice is extremely small. I've just calculated the odds and VP gains going through all possible cases of deck orderings, and the result is that a deck with 5 Fortresses and 5 Bishops makes an expected value of 11.65 VP, only 0.35 VP less than the golden deck. In 50% of cases, the 5th Bishop is the bottom-most card and even gives you a 13th VP (played with an empty hand). In the other 50% of cases, the bottom-most card is a Fortress and you get between 3 VP (extremely rare, about 0.4%) and 12 VP (>25%) by trashing one Bishop, returning you to the golden deck.
So on average you sacrifice ony 2*0.35 =0.7 VP per extra Bishop you buy and trash, for a golden deck with 5 Fortresses.

I haven't done the math for a deck containing only 4 Fortresses (the minimum number necessary for the 12 VP golden deck) - probably you'll lose a bit more than 0.7 VP for milling a Bishop. 

This means that the B/F golden deck can actually three-pile with only one non-Fortress cantrip costing at most $4 in the kingdom. I don't know the total number/percentage of such cantrips among the kingdom cards, but I'd expect that in the majority of B/F games, you'll have one in the kingdom. (The probability is about (1-(5/6)^8)=77% in a B/F game using only Base, Prosperity and Dark Ages.)

However, even then you can still get a stalemate whenever each player has more VPs than the opponent after their own turn: As the three-piling player wins in this case, neither player will want to buy the penultimate card from the cantrip pile.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 24, 2022, 07:40:41 am
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I'm not very confident any of those will be present in a typical Collection/Stampede game, especially with Stampede (which is always present in a typical Collection/Stampede game, surprisingly enough) taking up half the landscape slots on its own.
The point is that we have many, many other combos that replicate all the major concerns of Collection/Stampede. Highest possible repeatable point total? Not even close. Unable to deplete piles without taking a knock on VP/turn? Not close again. Immune to a lot of attacks? There are far better. Each and every supposed flaw is present somewhere else with some combo of cards.

The fact that one some boards Fort/Bish is utterly dominant is not a sign that the combo is utterly broke.

The difference with Stampede/Collection is one of degree, not kind. There are many, many ways to setup recurring VP loops and many of those are both the most powerful source of points and fragile to buying more cards. What makes Stampede/Collections "unique" is that it is quick and simple.

But we see the exact same dynamics with Collection/Ride. Assuming a 5/5 collection split, your deck can support 7 non-Collections (provided you generate $12 and have no discards) and once you file those slots up you just endless loop or risk missing out on 30 VP/Turn. Supplies generate 25 VP/turn and eat up all your draw slots. They again will have a lot of boards where it cuts into the VP gain to move the game further towards an end state.

Stampede/Collection is not the highest VP/turn possible (that is the unbounded VP from Villa/Butterfly). It is not uniquely prone to seizing it. It is not the only 2 card combo that can degenerate.

AFAICS, Stampede/Collection gives by far the most VP/turn among all "stalemate-prone" 2-card combos, with 50 VP.

Collection/Supplies gives 25VP when both piles split 5/5 (otherwise you can get up to 100 VP/turn, but then there is no stalemate), and Collection/Ride also gives 25 VP in this case (or 30 in an almost golden deck with an extra Silver). Bishop/Fortress gives 12 VP, KC/Monument gives 9 VP, and the other examples given use more than 2 cards to achieve a golden deck.

This matters because a 2-card combo shows up orders of magnitude more often than a combo with 3 or more cards in full random games.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 28, 2022, 10:18:43 pm
This one might be more common and obvious, but it is simply not sui generis.

How many stalemates have you experienced? I have had exactly one in about 8–10k games so far and that was a 0 VP/turn Possession game.

Dozens, but IRL we either do a draft to start (alternating choices) or deal up 10 and then make alternating choices to keep 5 for sequential games. We often play a combo until we see something that is stronger or figure out some counter.

We got to the point where the majority of Possession games were stalemates (either that or games where no one would buy Possession at all).

We typically see Fort/Bish become a shuffle race with a sizeable minority going stalemate (this is why I know you can actually safely mill a Bish a turn if the other guy opts to try for an engine).

I realize there is this weird fascination with all random, all sets, but I do not recall that ever being part of the official rules.

In general, stalemates come where one player cannot force an endgame. They will likely become more common as folks get better at Dominion.

I fail to see how the precise point total matters for the dynamics. Exactly which decks can best 30 VP/turn but not 50/turn? I mean, I could be wrong, but Ride/Collections beats the entire Colony pile in 3 turns while Stampede does it in 2. Even Supplies wins out in 4.

And I am not at all convinced that 2-card combos represent the majority of potential stalemates. After all, Kc/Monument is the only "2-card" combo (ignoring the whole, needs trashing thing), but Mastermind/Monument/Cantrip results in the same dynamic (high points/turn, potential game loss if you break the combo). As does Kc/Farmer's market/trash diver (6 VP/turn on average, unless you build out with Necromancer and then get 9 VP/turn). As do a lot of Bish/trash diver options.

My experience is that most people just do not see the combos and fail to play them. We went years without finding the classic Masquerade pins and have yet to find an opponent who ever even considers building out a Cutpurse/Masquerade pin, yet it is possible on a sizeable minority of Masquerade/Cutpurse boards.

Stampede/Collections is quick and easy to spot, but it is categorically not all that different from Collections/Ride or even Collections/Supplies.

We are far from finding all the possible reciprocal zugzwang's and I submit it is far, far too early to note if the community can reliably say that this one particular combo is wildly overpowered compared to stuff that crops up nearly as commonly.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 29, 2022, 11:01:18 am
I realize there is this weird fascination with all random, all sets, but I do not recall that ever being part of the official rules.

It's not a weird fascination, it's the established standard way to play.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 29, 2022, 11:38:06 am
In general, stalemates come where one player cannot force an endgame. They will likely become more common as folks get better at Dominion.

I fail to see how the precise point total matters for the dynamics. Exactly which decks can best 30 VP/turn but not 50/turn? I mean, I could be wrong, but Ride/Collections beats the entire Colony pile in 3 turns while Stampede does it in 2. Even Supplies wins out in 4.

Sure, any golden deck gaining 20+ VP tokens per turn is usually unbeatable by a deck not gaining a similar amount of VP tokens. All the Collection/horse gainer golden decks mentioned will usually be dominant. Stampede is just the strongest of the group, as the higher VP gain means you need a much larger lede to be able to break the golden deck for a win, and the 5-card limit prevents you from incorporating it into an engine.
 
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And I am not at all convinced that 2-card combos represent the majority of potential stalemates. After all, Kc/Monument is the only "2-card" combo (ignoring the whole, needs trashing thing), but Mastermind/Monument/Cantrip results in the same dynamic (high points/turn, potential game loss if you break the combo). As does Kc/Farmer's market/trash diver (6 VP/turn on average, unless you build out with Necromancer and then get 9 VP/turn). As do a lot of Bish/trash diver options.

I suppose with your method of choosing kingdoms, strong multi-card combos will come up much more often. But in pure random games, it's simple math that 2-card combos come up much more often than 3-card combos (by a factor of about 50 given the current size of the total card pool), let alone combos with even more cards.

Maybe I should clarify that by "n-card combo" I mean a combo requiring n exact cards, i.e. not counting common card types. So Mastermind/Monument/Cantrip would be a 2-card combo rather than a 3-card combo for me, as most random kingdoms contain a cantrip anyway.

Edit: Actually, Mastermind/Monument also gives a 9 VP/turn golden deck on its own, without needing any cantrip (only a "disappearing trasher" to get there, same as with KC):

You build a deck of 3 Monuments and 5 Masterminds. 3 Masterminds will be in play at the start of each of your turns: Two Masterminds are chained so that you can triple-play the 3 Monuments, plus a single Mastermind that triple-plays a new Mastermind from your hand. Then you play the last Mastermind from your hand with your free action to set up an identical next turn. The "completed" chain of 2 Masterminds/3 Monuments will be discarded during clean up, so you draw exactly those 5 cards for your next turn.  :) :)

This golden deck might even be easier to set up than KC/Monument, as MM is cheaper than KC (and can thus be bought with the $ from a single MM'ed Monument).


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Stampede/Collections is quick and easy to spot, but it is categorically not all that different from Collections/Ride or even Collections/Supplies.

I tend to agree; it is somewhat "worse" than the other two in terms of VPs and its engine incompatibility, but not on a completely different level.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 29, 2022, 12:13:19 pm
I don’t see how KC and Monument could every lead to a stalemate. First of all, unless you trashed with Raze, there is a sixth card in your deck which prevents a flat 9VP per turn. Second, building an engine around that combo seems like the natural way to go.
It is highly unlikely that even in a mirror, players will arrive at the same deck situation symmetrically and then whoever was faster has an incentive to, well, yeah actually win the game.

Besides Raze, you can also get down to a 5-card, 9VP golden deck with either of the following: Banish, Donate, Death Cart*, Enhance*, Island, Way of the Butterfly*/Goat/Turtle*/Horse*, pre-Errata Bonfire, and possibly others (those with "*" require another general-purpose trasher in the kingdom, which they can then trash or otherwise remove from the deck).

But I agree that a 9 VP KC/Monument golden deck would come up less often than the other 2-card combos. However, when it does, the mirror should result in a stalemate at least on most boards with no +buy.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: faust on June 29, 2022, 12:17:14 pm
I don’t see how KC and Monument could every lead to a stalemate. First of all, unless you trashed with Raze, there is a sixth card in your deck which prevents a flat 9VP per turn. Second, building an engine around that combo seems like the natural way to go.
It is highly unlikely that even in a mirror, players will arrive at the same deck situation symmetrically and then whoever was faster has an incentive to, well, yeah actually win the game.

Besides Raze, you can also get down to a 5-card, 9VP golden deck with either of the following: Banish, Donate, Death Cart*, Enhance*, Island, Way of the Butterfly*/Goat/Turtle*/Horse*, pre-Errata Bonfire, and possibly others (those with "*" require another general-purpose trasher in the kingdom, which they can then trash or otherwise remove from the deck).

But I agree that a 9 VP KC/Monument golden deck would come up less often than the other 2-card combos. However, when it does, the mirror should result in a stalemate at least on most boards with no +buy.
I only leads to a stalemate if the board also doesn't have +Cards, since if there is any +Cards it will be better to keep building so you can play more Monuments. Kingdoms that do not have any +Cards are pretty rare.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 29, 2022, 01:45:47 pm
I don’t see how KC and Monument could every lead to a stalemate. First of all, unless you trashed with Raze, there is a sixth card in your deck which prevents a flat 9VP per turn. Second, building an engine around that combo seems like the natural way to go.
It is highly unlikely that even in a mirror, players will arrive at the same deck situation symmetrically and then whoever was faster has an incentive to, well, yeah actually win the game.

Banish, Butterfly, Bonfire ... and that is just the Bs, there are a lot of different ways to get to Kc/Monument. There are many ways to get a trasher out of your deck.

Building an engine requires some form of +cards. If you lack that, then the max per turn is 9 VP. And even if you have it, there is no assurance that greening is not a zugzwang move (e.g. Hireling can let you build out to 12 VP/turn when you play them, but at the risk of slowing your VP gain with bad shuffle luck).

Which is where the stalemate comes in. Even with a dead trasher, 6 VP/turn is dominant over going for greens with only one turn per hand. Big money monument runs will be hard pressed to score 7 VP all that many turns and even if you alternate with 4 VP using duchy, the 6 VP/turn golden deck wins out. If you have Kc/Mon/Banish, forget it, 9VP/turn will overtake provinces very shortly and once you have the setup, there is significant downside to buying more Kc, Mons, let alone something else.

Ending the game requires there to be piles that you can safely buy out before the opponent running the combo overtakes you. Which is not exactly easy. After all, say you get there 3 turns faster. Call it a 15 VP lead. How many turns does it take to pile out? Well, assuming 10 of 20 cards are bought for Kc/Mon, that only leaves you 20 more turns to pile down via three pile. Ending the game then requires you to average <1 VP lost per turn to shuffle concerns.

What stops this from showing up every time is:
1. Boards often have engine potential.
2. People often do not see utterly dominant combos
3. People tend to resign even when they are stalemated if they are unable to win.

Boards without engines are less common, but Stampede/Collections stalemates are not categorically different than something like Kc/Monument/Banish.

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It's not a weird fascination, it's the established standard way to play.
Established by whom?

It is the most popular way to play and the norm for competitions ... but on the former category the overwhelming response I get when I play a stalemating combo is for people to just resign after the first few cycles as my lead grows. On the latter it seems rather trivial to adopt some tournament rule to break the stalemate (e.g. a player who maintains a lead for 50 turns wins the game, with P2 leading in the event of ties) or to prevent whichever combos are deemed too likely to stalemate (e.g. shuffle up a new kingdom if Collections/Stamped comes up, maybe for Stampede/Ride and Stampede/Supplies absent engine enablers).

I mean I could be wrong, and maybe somehow ultracompetitive play with Possession does not become a degenerate mess where you want to instantly tank your own deck and just mass Possess the other guy's deck, but I would suspect that Possession has far, far more stalemates than some once-in-blue-moon two card combo.

Holger:
Any two card combo is more common than any particular 3 card combo, but there are almost always more of the 3 card versions and the question is if there are enough more of the 3-card variety to nonetheless be the dominant possible stalemate trap.

And I am not convinced that perfect play would not find more of the three or more varieties.

After all, those are hard to spot. People here are having trouble even being exhaustive about how to setup a simple 9 VP Monument deck. Yet it can be done with both Kc and Mm (though the latter cannot hit 9 VP/turn in a perfect mirror), but you can also manage similar shots with things like Tr/Mon/Outpost or Tr/Mon/Mission, and of course, Tr can be replaced by Rg or Rc in some circumstances. Even when trying to be exhaustive about something as simple ditching a trasher, people are missing things like Necromancer who can trash the trasher and 3 Mon to setup the 9 VP/turn option.

End of the day, the point is that we have had a LOT of very powerful things that went unnoticed for months or years. Masq pins (pre-errata) were possible from day 1 for Seaside (Minion/Tr/Tr/Outpost/Masq), yet it was years before somebody put the pieces together for Goons/Kc/Masq. Have we found all the stalemates yet? I doubt it. We may well find out that at skilled enough play (maybe some sort of alpha-star-dominion), stalemate is the normal endgame as both players reach a point dancing where buying the Nth kingdom card lowers the odds of winning more than passing and letting the opponent buy it.

Which is my main contention here. The simple errata is to remove Horses from token gaining. The simple solution to stalemates, in general, is just to adopt a 50 turn rule where anyone who leads for 50 rounds (P2 "leading" during ties), wins the game.

Stampede/collections is "solved" by either and nowhere near unique in its function.

Segura:
Even adding in draw does not negate the stalemate. You need two Kc to start the chain absent +actions. This means that roughly 40% of your deck needs to be Kcs to have decent odds of hitting off a chain. That means your deck needs to be <12.5 cards. Maximal VP gain is 15 VP/turn. Kc and Mon take up 10 slots and leave you with ~3 for draw cards before your expected VP total drops. If your opponent goes for 9 VP/turn and you opt for engine, your game ending deck is 7 Kc, 7 Mon, and 10 Draw. Median hand is ~5 VP/turn at that point. And absent additional gains, that means you played for 19 turns after a mirror setup absent additional gains.

Maybe these things are rare on all random, but I would submit that playing them more often gives me a much better feel for how a particular set actually plays to stalemate.

What makes the engine more viable is (+action and +cards) or (+cards and +buy/gains).

And again, it is not like 6 VP/turn is precisely bad on a board with no +buy. It generally wins out against the province piler absent enablers as 7 greens makes for a lot of 5VP losses per round.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: AJD on June 29, 2022, 02:13:22 pm
(@jomini, I think you're misusing the word "zugzwang". Zugzwang properly is a situation where all options available to you leave you in a worse position than doing nothing; but in Dominion doing nothing is almost always an available option. You're talking about a situation where ending the game leaves you in a worse position than prolonging it, but that's not zugzwang; it's just stalemate.)
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 29, 2022, 02:45:32 pm
Established by whom?

Probably by Iso, originally. Iso let you automatch for veto mode as well, but IIRC that was somewhat less popular and it was never available on any later online implementation. Nowadays respecting bans and dislikes is included in the established standard because that's the default table setting on ShiT, and a part of that standard is that Possession is on everyone's ban list by default so it's not going to appear unless both players have gone through the steps to remove it on purpose. Of course, ShiT could change its default table setting if people clearly had a preference for something else instead, so the fact that people are happy with it is a part of the establishing process.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 29, 2022, 03:51:22 pm
Way of the Butterfly Upgrades Actions and Bonfire cannot blow up Estates.
About the other point, as faust pointed out, with draw you want to build up your deck beyond two KCs and three Monuments.

Stalemates basically never occur in Dominion. Unless you play with some funky house rules that let you Butterfly your starting junk. :D

Butterfly works off any general trasher that costs <$4 or where you have a $6 action card. Similarly, Bonfire allows you to burn off the estates with some other trashing and then to get rid of the trasher. More esoteric options include Inheritance/Bonfire (pre-errata), Plan (preferably with a trasher as well), and Dame Anna (where you trash down to Kc/Kc/Anna/Mon, ditch Anna by trashing one of their Knights, and then buying Mon x2 to crank 9 VP/turn).

End of the day Kc/Mon for 9 VP is something like a 2.5 or 2.75 card combo.

Stalemates basically never occur in Dominion because people can only spot the most trivial of them, suck at understanding how to force a stalemate, and are very prone to resigning long before the opponent has a truly insurmountable lead.

People, even high-level players, spent years missing optimal strategies like Countinghouse/Travelling fair or Market square/Hermit or the aforementioned Pins.

And I always find it so odd that folks talk about 2-card combos being a problem (given that, you know the odds that any game will contain the combo rounds down to 0 out to three significant figures.

You can worry about Stampede/Collections as a stalemate. You can dismiss all the other stalemate setups as unlikely. You cannot do both.

I just never will understand people who are concerned about 1/400 events but do not care about ten 1/4000 events.


(@jomini, I think you're misusing the word "zugzwang". Zugzwang properly is a situation where all options available to you leave you in a worse position than doing nothing; but in Dominion doing nothing is almost always an available option. You're talking about a situation where ending the game leaves you in a worse position than prolonging it, but that's not zugzwang; it's just stalemate.)

Zugzwang is just a "compulsion to move" and refers to situations where any change in game state results in a detriment to the player instigating such a choice. It can be used with multiple levels of formalism and I am just using it as shorthand for any state in dominion where changing the game state results in significant (if not insurmountable) handicaps.

If we are going to be precise on the chess terms "stalemate" is incorrect as well as the refers specifically to a player who has not yet lost having no legal moves which never occurs in Dominion.

Awaclus:
Yes, I understand that all-sets, all-random is popular. I just do not understand why Dominion analysis that ever considers any other mode of play (including ones in the literal rulebooks) as illegitimate and worthy of only dismissal. It seems like saying Chess theory should not consider FIDE tournament matches because the overwhelming majority of games played are online Blitzes.

And regardless, it seems quite odd to me that the significance threshold for "too rare to care about" should be fixed right under 0.2% of games. We have what 400-odd cards now? The odds that any two of them happen in the same game are low enough as is that you can safely ignore every "overpowered" Collections setup and not have it impact your rating in a significant fashion.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 29, 2022, 04:53:42 pm
The notion that KC-Monument is a 2.5 card combo when you just pointed out that you need a trasher and an Event to get rid of the trasher is beyond ridiculous.
You need a trasher, a way to get rid of the trasher and no draw (respectively no gain/Buy options). The likelihood for that is smaller than that of 3 card combos.

You mentioned Raze as a disappearing trasher yourself, and I've given you a list of 4 other different cards/landscapes (Banish, Donate, Island, Way of the Goat) which don't require another trasher, making KC/Monument/(one of these 5) already 5 times more likely than a 3-card combo.
 
The fact that there's half a dozen other "disappearing trashers" that do require another trasher doesn't decrease the odds for KC/Monument to work, it increases them even further.

And the presence of draw or +buy does not negate the combo, though the latter may prevent stalemates.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Holger on June 29, 2022, 05:09:43 pm
You ignored the 4th element, the absence of draw. Chances for those 4 elements to come together are virtually nil. I probably played dozens of games with KC and Monument and none led to a stalemate.

By the way, good luck with getting rid of 20 starting cards with 12 Islands.

Good luck remembering that KC is in the kingdom, so each player can get rid of 12 cards with only 4 Islands.

As jomini said, the existence of draw doesn't negate the combo, as it's risky to increase your deck size above 5. E.g. if you add a draw card together with another KC and another Monument you'll only get 12 VP if you have the draw card and at least 2 KC in your starting hand. Otherwise, unless you've drawn exactly 2 KC and 3 Monument,  you'll only get 3 or 6 VP.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 29, 2022, 05:42:42 pm
Awaclus:
Yes, I understand that all-sets, all-random is popular. I just do not understand why Dominion analysis that ever considers any other mode of play (including ones in the literal rulebooks) as illegitimate and worthy of only dismissal. It seems like saying Chess theory should not consider FIDE tournament matches because the overwhelming majority of games played are online Blitzes.

And regardless, it seems quite odd to me that the significance threshold for "too rare to care about" should be fixed right under 0.2% of games. We have what 400-odd cards now? The odds that any two of them happen in the same game are low enough as is that you can safely ignore every "overpowered" Collections setup and not have it impact your rating in a significant fashion.

The thing about nonstandard ways to generate kingdoms is that you are probably the only one playing the game that way, at least out of the people reading your post. That does not make the analysis illegitimate, but it does make it of very little value to everyone reading it, if there are reasons to believe the analysis is not applicable to how people are actually likely to play the game, such as all expansions full random. Some people have e.g. posted analysis on base only full random; while that is not the standard way to play amongst high level players, it is a standard so the analysis is probably valuable to at least some people who read it.

A given 2-card combo is expected to happen to someone in a big tournament, and it is expected to happen to you in particular if you play somewhat actively for like a year. That's not a problem if the combo is merely overpowered while it also outputs a clear winner, and it's probably not a problem if the combo only results in a stalemate a minority of the time, but if it is very likely to result in a stalemate, that is probably a problem for the tournament organizer and at least mildly annoying for you.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 29, 2022, 10:06:30 pm
The notion that KC-Monument is a 2.5 card combo when you just pointed out that you need a trasher and an Event to get rid of the trasher is beyond ridiculous.
You need a trasher, a way to get rid of the trasher and no draw (respectively no gain/Buy options). The likelihood for that is smaller than that of 3 card combos.
It would be a three-card combo with something like Donate/Kc/Monument. Or Kc/Banish/Mon. Or Kc/Island/Mon. Or Kc/Necromancer/Mon. Or Kc/WotGoat/Mon. There are five different explicit three-card-combos that all equilibrate to the same end state if the game lasts long enough so it is definitely going to show up more commonly than a single three card combo. There are far too numerous to list four-card combos which also move up the number of boards where the 9 VP version of the combo is possible.

And you can get similar combos without the other pieces. E.g. Mastermind can substitute for Kc in some circumstances. Farmers' market/Necromancer/Kc can score ~7 VP turn.

The precise number is going to lie somewhere between a 2-card combo and a 3-card combo, and will be closer to three than two. But it is just a wee bit non-trivial to calculate out when each makes sense.

You ignored the 4th element, the absence of draw. Chances for those 4 elements to come together are virtually nil. I probably played dozens of games with KC and Monument and none led to a stalemate.

By the way, good luck with getting rid of 20 starting cards with 12 Islands.

That is total nonsense. You get enough Coins to buy whatever you want, like another KC. And chances are extremely high that you actually got a cantrip in your deck (as double splitter plus Lab with KC).

It is not as if the supposed stalemate-inducing golden deck falls from the sky, there is a game before that.

And even if both players mirror, Dominion is not a deterministic game. A small lead in a KC Kingdom easily undos any vague stalemate possibilities. You are ahead, KC enhances the engine potential massively and a normal deck with draw, VP generation and one or two Provinces per turn easily beats the 9VP thingy.

The only nonsense is your inability to realize that:
A. 6VP/turn will eventually outscore all but the most reliable of greening, non-engine decks.
B. A big part of the value in the combo is the reliability which matters a lot more than you think.
C. You have specified 3 cards already for Kc/Mon/draw. The odds that there is any additional +gains in the remaining 7 is below 50%.

Suppose you have Kc/Moat/Mon. You want to build out to maximal points per turn. Okay, your hands will have one of the following outcomes: You have at least Kc/Kc/Moat in hand, draw deck, and get scads of VP; you have Kc/Mon and other stuff in hand and score 3 VP, you have Mon/other stuff and score 1 VP, you have Kc/Moat and other stuff and score zero. Maximum VP/turn in a mirror is 15 VP turn on your good hands. But how big can your deck be and have your deck draw through on ~45% of hands?

Not that big. After all, Kc needs to make up at least 40% of your deck (otherwise you whiff too many turns with only 1 Kc in hand) with 5 Kc & 5 Mons (i.e. the mirror option), you run out of Kc density on the third Moat. As you add Moats, the odds of getting 3, 1, or 0 VP on a turn start going up. So say we both build out to 5 Kc, 5 Mon, and 3 Moats. One of us keeps playing without buying. The one who breaks their engine by having too low of a Kc density can easily lose the game as the other guy more reliably hits more points.

And note this applies even more to decks with a general trashing card in the mix. You can absolutely take 6 VP/turn and call it a day. You can build out to 5 Kc/5 Mon and then hit the wall of unreliable draws that limits 3-piling.

End of the day, draw is not enough to avoid the stalemate. It may make it worthwhile to build past Kc x2/Mon x3. But at some point it becomes zugzwang  where any move towards end state results in lower odds of winning. You need a source of +action.

Beating 9, or even 15 VP/turn is of course quite doable. Colonies, 3 provinces/turn, etc. But assuming that every board, even every Kc board will always have the draw, buys, and time needed for the deadlock to be avoided is just silly. But with that sort of analysis we may as well say that every engine should build toward double provinces - it is after all, the most common engine outcome and is possible more often than not.

Awaclus:
Ahh yes, been here, heard these errors before. The analysis of any card(s) in Dominion is worthless for anyone reading these posts. Most of us have too much noise in our ratings for a single combo to be more than a literal rounding error in our rankings. If you completely ignore Market square/Hermit and lose every time, it manages to drop your rating, what 0.02? The odds that it will determine your tournament standing are exceedingly small and you are far better off just spending the time playing to get a better "feel" for end game play or whatever rather than even bothering to think about any combo.

I am not following why on earth it is a problem for the Tournament organizer or the players. Scrub the game and replay. If you see a stalemateable combo, be it something quick and easy like Collections/Stampede or something convoluted (like Kc/Caption/Monument/Butterfly) any tournament level player should be able to recognize the stalemate and just redo the game.

I avoid the tournament circuit, but unless I missed some setup where everyone gets identical shuffling seeds and kingdoms, it literally just means scrub the kingdom and play again. Marginally annoying.

And the whole thing is most readily avoided by either nerfing all the Horse/Collection stalemates or by just adding in a 50 turn lead rule.

Why exactly people are unable to realize that this is literally nothing more than a specific case of a more general phenomena is beyond me.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 29, 2022, 10:22:06 pm
Why exactly people are unable to realize that this is literally nothing more than a specific case of a more general phenomena is beyond me.

Because we have played thousands of games and the general phenomenon really does not appear to exist to any substantial extent, and there are reasons to believe that Collection/Stampede is different.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Donald X. on June 30, 2022, 12:15:03 am
Just in case I didn't make this clear: we did not miss Stampede / Collection. We played some games of it to see how they went. And also Ride / Collection and others.

In the end as you can see, how these played did not seem sufficiently bad for me to make Collection worse-to-print in some respect in order to fix them.
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 30, 2022, 10:29:04 am
Why exactly people are unable to realize that this is literally nothing more than a specific case of a more general phenomena is beyond me.

Because we have played thousands of games and the general phenomenon really does not appear to exist to any substantial extent, and there are reasons to believe that Collection/Stampede is different.

Oh please, we have empirical evidence that thousands of games were woefully insufficient to find the utterly dominant Pin combos. Pins were viable with Seaside (2009 release), we only found them in 2011. And lest you want to make some silly comment about the number of games being played, the possible game space was orders upon orders of magnitude smaller back then.

It took 9 months for the community to find Hermit/Market square when they were in the same set and had, literally, all the important words like "Trash", "Gain a Gold", "+1 card per" and on the text of the cards. And famously, the championships had Kc/Goons/Masq and neither player even noticed.

Nor is this discussion doing anything to convince me that the community actually knows the game well enough. People are talking about stalemate without mentioning Possession. They do not even know all the ways the create ultra-lean decks. They have no idea about how to go about actually forcing an end game with fragile VP generating deck.

Multiple people have been wrong in this thread about basic stuff: Can Bish/Fort afford to buy and trash extra Bishops? Yes, outside of a mirror. Can you use Necromancer to create an ultra-lean deck with great flexibility (whether or not that is the dominant option, is it possible)? Yes. Will buying non-cantrip draw stall out a Kc/Mon deck? Yes.

But again I ask, how is Stampede/Collections different? A stalemate with Ride/Collections runs into the exact same sort of end state. Bish/Fort can easily have the same limitations where doing anything other than playing the precise combo results in a loss. It is a simpler case, but the difference is strictly of degree, not kind.

Quote
A deck which buys a Province per turn and play a Monument or tripled Monument easily beats your supposed golden deck. Until you actually got to that supposed brilliant, dominating, stale-mate inducing situation, the other dudes and dudettes will have likely build something far better.

A static analysis ignored all the interesting and relevant intricacies of the game like, how fast can I thin and does the ordinary draw deck not deal better with slow thinning?

You can set up a random game with KC, Monument and a disappearing trasher and put your mouth were your money is.
I see, you will have 7 provinces in your deck and you expect to hit a significant number of Kc/Monuments? What is your deck going to look like? Hitting a monument every turn requires over 20% of your deck be Monument. Hitting Kc/Monument with any regularity requires 20% to be Kc. Hitting $8 requires either treasures or hands of Kc x2/Mon x2. I will submit that the treasure option is easier. So you want at least 20% of your deck to be some sort of treasure. That is a lot of buys to support the density needed to buy 8 provinces.

Because at the end of the day, we are talking about some sort of Big Money setup with that much green. End of the day Monument is, at best a silver for buy purposes. Kc/Mon is, at best, a pair of golds. This suggests that your best performance will be something like Big Money, which takes ~17 turns to hit 4 provinces and, if you just flat ignore the duchies, gains a province every other turn thereafter. All told I should expect something like 23 turns for you to hit 8 provinces. You buy your first province around T13 and I can safely say I will setup the combo by then. That means I will generate 90 VP. You get 48 VP from the province pile and assuming we have similar VP on T13 (I am very likely to be ahead if you are buying treasures, but whatever), you need to average 4.2 VP/turn to tie. With a 6 VP/turn setup, and ignoring the fact that I can setup the combo sooner, you will still need to average 1.2 VP/turn from Monuments (you can, of course, buy duchies, but that tanks your deck even more and I gain yet another round of VP.

How fast can I realistically setup the combo? Well Donate is about as fast as it comes. I open Silv/Mon, I buy a silver, I play $4 (below expectation), then have a deck with MonSSC left. I spend a turn paying off $4 debt. I buy a Kc. Then Mon/Mon/Kc in some order. Donate away the treasures. Even if it gets delayed a turn, I have the combo in full T11.

If you play Kc/Mon every turn, you need to pile the provinces by turn 19. If you play an average of 2 Mons/turn, you need to pile the provinces by T18. If you play an average of 1.5 Mons/turn, you need to pile by T17 (again, ignoring the fact that I likely generated a couple of more VP on T3-T10).

As far as why I will not play you:
1. Anyone who offers this sort of thing clearly does not understand Dominion. A single game is not statistically significant. Bottom decking (e.g. T3/T7 Chapel) can flip the win without telling us jack about the strength of the combo or the stalemate.
2. Player skill is a much larger determinant of outcome than strategy strength. Knowing when to trigger reshuffles, how to time buys, and the like will often mean that a strictly inferior strategy in the hands of a skilled player is better than a superior strategy in the hands of a master.
3. I am not convinced that beating you, even repeatedly will do a lick to change your mind.

If you really want to "prove" something, give me an example deck of Kc/Mon/Moat without +buys or other gains that scores an average of 7.5 VP/turn with 5 provinces in deck. Should be easy for you, so how many of each card (Silver, gold, Kc, Mon, Moat) are in your deck?
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: Awaclus on June 30, 2022, 11:52:41 am
Why exactly people are unable to realize that this is literally nothing more than a specific case of a more general phenomena is beyond me.

Because we have played thousands of games and the general phenomenon really does not appear to exist to any substantial extent, and there are reasons to believe that Collection/Stampede is different.

Oh please, we have empirical evidence that thousands of games were woefully insufficient to find the utterly dominant Pin combos. Pins were viable with Seaside (2009 release), we only found them in 2011. And lest you want to make some silly comment about the number of games being played, the possible game space was orders upon orders of magnitude smaller back then.

It took 9 months for the community to find Hermit/Market square when they were in the same set and had, literally, all the important words like "Trash", "Gain a Gold", "+1 card per" and on the text of the cards. And famously, the championships had Kc/Goons/Masq and neither player even noticed.

This evidence does not contradict my claim that the general phenomenon does not appear to exist to any substantial extent. On the contrary, it supports it. What would theoretically happen in games between players playing perfectly is irrelevant because real Dominion is not that. If it ever starts to look like the case that Bishop/Fortress stalemates are a substantial problem in high level play, I will start complaining about it, but until then, I'm not going to care. (I don't also particularly care about Collection/Stampede until it's been demonstrated to be a substantial problem that actually shows up in real games; I haven't e.g. banned Stampede yet.)

Nor is this discussion doing anything to convince me that the community actually knows the game well enough. People are talking about stalemate without mentioning Possession. They do not even know all the ways the create ultra-lean decks. They have no idea about how to go about actually forcing an end game with fragile VP generating deck.

Nobody mentions Possession because nobody plays with Possession anymore because it's on the ban list by default, not that many people remove it, and it only has like a few % chance of appearing in the kingdom when two such players get matched against each other. You can ignore segura, he's a known troll who has had several accounts banned and keeps making new ones.

Multiple people have been wrong in this thread about basic stuff: Can Bish/Fort afford to buy and trash extra Bishops? Yes, outside of a mirror. Can you use Necromancer to create an ultra-lean deck with great flexibility (whether or not that is the dominant option, is it possible)? Yes. Will buying non-cantrip draw stall out a Kc/Mon deck? Yes.

I will admit that I was envisioning a 4-Fortress golden deck and therefore overestimating the chance of having a bad draw compared to a 5-Fortress golden deck; I would normally expect the engine to actually win the Fortress split because it's just a better deck for the purpose of gaining stuff, but if it doesn't, then of course you can have the fifth Fortress and that changes the probability. It is also possible that I'm still overestimating the chance of having a bad draw even assuming only 4 Fortresses because I haven't done the math. However, if you take a look at what I actually said instead of making it up yourself, you might notice that I did specifically say that buying extra Bishops is not a huge problem for the golden deck, and it is unquestionably true that it can temporarily slow it down, so while I may or may not have misestimated the details, I definitely was not substantially wrong on the bigger point.

You are literally the only person who has talked about Necromancer in this thread, and I don't think it has been sufficiently demonstrated to be the case that buying non-cantrip draw stalls out a KC/Monument deck. I can play a KC/Monument cage match if you want a chance to demonstrate that though, or just the general idea that KC/Monument stalemates are a thing that happens at all.

But again I ask, how is Stampede/Collections different? A stalemate with Ride/Collections runs into the exact same sort of end state. Bish/Fort can easily have the same limitations where doing anything other than playing the precise combo results in a loss. It is a simpler case, but the difference is strictly of degree, not kind.

This is how:
(https://dl.dropbox.com/s/dtrn32vu2l01hlu/fewercards.jpg)
Title: Re: Prosperity 2E Preview 3
Post by: jomini on June 30, 2022, 04:31:00 pm
Awalcus:
I seem to be missing something here. I am saying that Stampede/Collections is just different in degree to other stalemate potentials. A higher percentage of its boards will stalemate at perfect play. Not all of them mind you, as some will be counterable (I have not enough experience to say exactly how small this percentage will be), some will have pile depleting enablers (e.g. Advance/Island is conceptually simple enough to grasp, I hope) that block the stalemate, and perhaps a majority will have a clear 6:4 Collections split thanks to some sort of P1 advantage.

But these are the same kind of things that happen Bish/Fort and the rest. The only difference I see is that the numbers are likely more extreme for Stampede/Collection.

Maybe Stamped/Collection will fall below your concern level, like all the rest. Maybe they will rise above. But fundamentally, the end state is functionally the same, the solutions are the same, and your analysis leaves me utterly unconvinced that this is somehow difference of kind. The fact that it is written on the card just makes it obvious that buying additional cards will lower your expected VP/turn enough to lose. The same dynamic can play out in other boards.

I mean consider something like Dismantle/Donate/Collections. You can open Dismantle/Donate, pop an estate for Copper/Gold, pop the other estate you kept for copper/Gold & pay off most of the debt, and then grab two Collections (one via Dismantle) the next turn. Turn after you can most likely grab 2 again and will certainly be able to do so the following turn if not. 7 Turns, 10 cards and you can Stampede twice per turn for the rest of the game. You need to kill 18 cards (16, if they mirrored on the Dismantle) and your deck supports gaining 6 estates and a Duchy on its final turn. You could gain a card or two instead of a second stampede each turn, but that costs 25 or 30 VP/turn. If your opponent is slow start (e.g. has 5/2 opening, bad shuffle on the post-debt turn) you may hit a 6:4 collection split and can safely build up a 1000 VP lead before you methodically destroy the piles to win. Or you might get an extra 75 VP from them being slow to setup. Can you pile everything out in 3 turns? Maybe

But the determining factors follow the same math. How many VP/turn do you expect to sacrifice to pile down? How many turns will it take you to pile all of that? The difference is that the numbers for Collections/Stamped are much, much bigger than for most other stalemate options. Which is pretty much the exact definition of the phrase "difference of degree".

Again, I can totally buy that the other stalemates will not rise to your level of concern any time soon (if every), I just cannot see Collections/Stampede doing so if they do not.