Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => The Bible of Donald X. => Topic started by: theory on June 17, 2011, 05:18:10 pm
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Source (http://boardgamegeek.com/article/5885174#5885174)
Estate and Duchy are unchanged from the very first versions (I guess technically the first versions had no names). Province was originally worth 5 VP.
The idea originally was that you could pursue strategies of different speeds. It didn't work out as envisioned. The game has to last long enough to let you build your deck and have fun. If Duchy is good enough to "go for" (without a special board situation), it's too good. You don't get to build your fun deck.
With the 1 / 3 / 5 values and previous end condition (any empty vp pile; before that it was any empty pile, with 12-card actions piles, but only looking at vp piles let the action piles go down to 10 cards), the Duchy rush was too good, provided you got someone to go in on it with you. So I changed the end condition and upped Province to 6 VP.
If it had been necessary to really cut back on the number of cards in the game, then Estates could have gone. You would have starting Estates but no Estate pile. With room for it, it seems more natural to have it, even though it's such a weak card. Duchies though have value; they create the decision point of "is it time to buy Duchies," and they give you something to fall back on in oppressive games, where Province may be too hard to get to.
In order to have multiple vanilla VP cards without making rushes too good or the cards weak, you have to make them expensive, i.e. Province / Colony.