Dominion Strategy Forum
Archive => Archive => Innovation General Discussion => Topic started by: popsofctown on July 16, 2013, 01:08:16 am
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I hadn't come to the site in a long time, and was rather surprised when the number of people hanging around seemed to be more or less the same.
Due to the "networky" effect of lobbies like this, I figured it would either die due to fading interest + difficulty in finding a game, or would grow to a larger size that more consistently pairs you with an opponent and stabilize there.
I guess one reason it might be capable of stabilizing at a lower size is because it's not competing directly with very much. Isotropic has a unique ability to be played from internet cafes, borrowed computers, work computers, school computer labs, rather easily. I know ksasaki plays from work a lot, iirc.
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The proportion of players who stick to base and those willing to play echoes seems similar to before. I think that's kind of disappointing and doesn't create a good outlook for isotropic popularity. We even have high level players like theory and yaron opting out of the expansion. I really really really think Chris Cieslik and Chuck (the creator's name is Chuck, right? I can't remember offhand, I own a box though I swear) should consider this phenomenon in isotropic a "focus group" and approach the way they make expansions, to this game and any others, differently.
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I've played about 300 games of inno, and really like it, but the learning curve does feel a lot higher than dominion. Even to play 1 game at a high level say 25 or higher, you really need to know all the cards, and 105 cards is a ton to learn. For dominion, you really only need to think about 10 cards at a time (edge case Black Market).
For me right now its really frustrating to play Echos since I don't know all the cards, and don't understand them very well. I've played maybe 10 games of echos and it just feels like a totally different game. I'm not sure how to start getting used to it. I guess i just need to jump in, but i'm not real excited to.
Also I would love to see this get more popular, but I'm not sure why it hasn't.
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I like the game, but I have found I prefer playing it with friends. I bought it and both expansions (I'm in the demo for the third too). We pull it out on game meetups all the time. There's also a huge skill gap online, and I just never feel like learning the game well enough to compete.
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I like the game, but I have found I prefer playing it with friends. I bought it and both expansions (I'm in the demo for the third too).
I found that the multiplayer expansion games play really smoothly over Isotropic. Haven't tried to play the more complicated settings at the table but I would guess I'd overlook all these extra achievements, and not follow shard dogmas with echo effects properly.
Playing higher ages with 3p echoes on Isotropic is a bit of "what happens when I use this switch ... oh I lost ... how did this come about".
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The skill gap is just crazy. I think because the user base is small but there are a lot of higher level player on all the time that it is intimidating. Also, I think the game is more enjoyable as a 3 player (or 4 player team) game and I would rather play that with my friends than on iso in the more hyper competitive 2 player environment.
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But why didn't that happen with Dominion?
I rocketed to level 25 way faster in inno than I did at dominion.
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I think the larger size of the Dominion community makes it easier to find some one of your skill level, which makes the game a lot less intimidating. Also in dominion, its pretty easy to describe a simple strategy, like BM, HP/X, Workshop/Gardens. In innovation every game is more complicated.
I would say that Dominion is easier to to learn than Innovation, but harder to master. I also made it up to level 25 much faster at Innovation than Dominion.
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I think the larger player base for Dominion helped a lot of people.
Also, I am just better at Dominion. I reached the low 20s in 3 days on Dominion whereas with Innovation I don't know what to do against a higher level player (or really against anyone as the only real strategy I can manage well is some form of FRX.
As for game specific, I feel like Innovation lends itself to feeling helpless against a better player more often, even with just the base game. Compare that to Dominion where a good bit of the time you can win a lucky game or just find a board that suits you.
All that said, I haven't had a lot of time to play lately so maybe I will be better than I thought once I start playing again.
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Larger player base always helps any multiplayer game stay popular, but how did isotropic dominion grow to that size in the first place.
I mean, I was a late adopter, I really don't know, maybe dougz gave away free hotdogs the first week.
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As for game specific, I feel like Innovation lends itself to feeling helpless against a better player more often, even with just the base game. Compare that to Dominion where a good bit of the time you can win a lucky game or just find a board that suits you.
Really? I feel like Innovation is more likely to produce swingy games where a weaker player can win by luck.
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You two are talking about different things.
When a really good innovation player plays a really newbie innovation player, his odds are closer to 50% than when a Dominion expert plays a Dominion newbie.
However Dominion games more often become unwinnable and hopeless, while in innovation games, there is always some sort of way out you can try for.
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You two are talking about different things.
When a really good innovation player plays a really newbie innovation player, his odds are closer to 50% than when a Dominion expert plays a Dominion newbie.
However Dominion games more often become unwinnable and hopeless, while in innovation games, there is always some sort of way out you can try for.
...I feel like those are both what I was talking about. Which was Wingnut talking about?
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Larger player base always helps any multiplayer game stay popular, but how did isotropic dominion grow to that size in the first place.
I mean, I was a late adopter, I really don't know, maybe dougz gave away free hotdogs the first week.
At least I decided rather to make the transition to Innovation than to Goko. Before dominion.isotropic closed down I did not care much about Innovation.
And tonight I'll be able to pickup the game plus both expansions. Joyous day.
Edit: Joyous day not just for me. (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=8897.0)
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You two are talking about different things.
When a really good innovation player plays a really newbie innovation player, his odds are closer to 50% than when a Dominion expert plays a Dominion newbie.
However Dominion games more often become unwinnable and hopeless, while in innovation games, there is always some sort of way out you can try for.
...I feel like those are both what I was talking about. Which was Wingnut talking about?
I'm lost now, I dunno.
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Innovation is kind of a fringe-y game, I kind of got that impression from BGG as well.
There are some people who hate the "randomness" and compare it to Fluxx. For myself, I found innovation totally by accident, I think I was looking for through the ages information or something and somehow stumbled on innovation. Needless to say, it has been the perfect game for me, the right mix of strategy / tactics / randomness / trolliness for me to be in my element. I'd be happy to share my thoughts on echoes after ~1000 games, but in essence it boils down to how many actions you can churn out per turn. The more the better. Here would be a few basic pieces of advice for echoes.
-Code of laws and flute are "must-haves" that I try to get if possible.
-Try to draw echoes as much as possible. Remember, no echoes in your hand + at least 1 card are the conditions for drawing echoes. Multiple echo tuck / meld / foreshadows are super powerful, Industrialization might be the most powerful card in echoes.
-the "power 4" in age 1, ruler, umbrella, chopsticks, flute. These are the four with left splay echoes (i.e. you can see the echo effect if the stack is splayed left). Flute under code of laws can become a "double splay," or under mysticism becomes a splay / meld /draw. if you get ruler under writing it becomes a wheel that draws 2s, if you have umbrella under the wheel or chopsticks under domestication, they become wheel + meld, or domesti + draw a card. 3 actions for the price of 1! Bell is pretty good too (score a card from your hand), if you can combine that with novel's splay left echo (draw a 3) watch out!
-I once had a purple pile with monotheism, bell, novel, and flute. Splay left 1 color, draw a 3, score a card, tuck a 1 potentially scoring a non-color from your opponent's board. You get the picture...
If anyone wants to do "learning" games with me where I discuss what cards I look for / why I do certain things, I'd be happy to.
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You two are talking about different things.
When a really good innovation player plays a really newbie innovation player, his odds are closer to 50% than when a Dominion expert plays a Dominion newbie.
However Dominion games more often become unwinnable and hopeless, while in innovation games, there is always some sort of way out you can try for.
Is it possible to have one without the other?
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Not really. The downside to late wins is that it matters less how well you do before the last move, the upside is that the outcome is not a foregone conclusion from the middle game. Whether player strength enters the equation about "how well you do" is secondary. Beginner's luck in the endgame would be mitigated by late wins that are not obvious how to convert. I don't know if having most leaves or twenty bulbs really fits the bill but I think not. The winning conditions set by Human Genome, Sudoku, Puzzle Cube are a bit more sophisticated.
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There are some people who hate the "randomness" and compare it to Fluxx.
Wow :o
People are so stupid sometimes. I mean, I understand that Innovation can seem uncontrollable, but still, the part of tactic and skill immediatly appeared to me in my first game. Then I needed a dozen of game to understand that it's not just tactic, but also strategy.
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I think a big part of Innovation's lack of 'take-off' online is the game's lack of overall appeal. For example, look at the Board Game Geeks listing for it: it's ranked #158. Dominion, by contrast, is rated #17. Sure, BGG isn't necessarily the same community that would play online Innovation, but imo it's a good rough sampling of the overall gamer community. Dominion is a lot more accessible of a game than Innovation is.. not to mention prettier. In my opinion, Innovation also suffers from a few balancing issues that can really keep casual players from enjoying it, in particular how poor the game is with more than two players, but that's a topic for another thread. ;)
Just as an aside, the game I'd most like to see made isotropic-style (or more preferably made with the option of AI play)? 7 Wonders. It's ranked #15 on BGG, and imo is very solid (and accessible). It replaced Dominion for the most part in my RL gaming group.
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Also, I think Innovation is a harder game to just pick up than Dominion. It's a lot harder to learn online than Dominion is. I learned Innovation online, and I really had no idea what I was doing... I still don't. But Dominion, it just feels more manageable online. Especially since in Innovation, there is so much information on screen that you need to be able to see, and I know having a tiny screen is not conducive to playing innovation well. Those are just my reasons why I don't play it much... It also, as others have said, doesn't have the same likability as Dominion, and I think that's a part of it too. Also, the expansions are overwhelming. They change the game so much and I get totally lost playing echoes.
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Also, the expansions are overwhelming. They change the game so much and I get totally lost playing echoes.
This, is something I have really struggled with. Each expansion seems like you are learning the game all over again. I think figures it a little less overwhelming than echos.
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Also, the expansions are overwhelming. They change the game so much and I get totally lost playing echoes.
This, is something I have really struggled with. Each expansion seems like you are learning the game all over again. I think figures it a little less overwhelming than echos.
I have had the opposite experience playing with friends IRL. Everyone hates Figures except me--I feel like I have to explain that rules are being changed instead of actions happening every time (and for that matter nobody can keep track of the figure effects, which I think is a legit problem with the game). OTOH, people seem to universally think Echoes improves the game.
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I know everyone says echoes improves the game... But I still don't get it. Granted, I have not played that many echoes games, and I'm still not even that great at base, but I really just have no idea what's going on half the time in echoes... especially when playing online... IRL at least I can see what's going on better, but that doesn't mean I know what to do. I'm to the point where I have many of the base cards memorized, at least the ones that play a large role in many/most of the games they're in, but echoes, I really don't know. And I haven't had an opportunity to try figures yet... It is encouraging to hear others struggle with echoes, because I feel like it is universally praised, but I just don't get it.
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I think a big part of Innovation's lack of 'take-off' online is the game's lack of overall appeal. For example, look at the Board Game Geeks listing for it: it's ranked #158. Dominion, by contrast, is rated #17.
With thousands of games on the market, #158 is brilliant IMO. It's up there with Clash of Cultures and Modern Art. Part of the impression is that games last a short while. Consider boardgaming-online.com, where fewer matches (of a game ranked #3) per day are started. Granted, those games last two to six weeks so you don't get the impression that the site is dead, or even smells funny.
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I caved and moved to Goko, cursing myself ever since.
I feel like Gollum. I loathe Goko and still play on it to get my "fix".
Plus, Innovation just doesn't scratch my itch the same way Dominion does.
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I caved and moved to Goko, cursing myself ever since.
I feel like Gollum. I loathe Goko and still play on it to get my "fix".
Plus, Innovation just doesn't scratch my itch the same way Dominion does.
I know :( I hate it. But I have not had access to my Dominion cards since August, so all I have at the moment is goko. I can't wait to go home and not have to play on goko :P
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AHoppy: I would be willing to give strategy primers to people including yourself. Echoes was a little hard for me to pick up too (we went back to base after playing like 10 games initially back before online, we only revisited it after they amended the rules).
But a couple simple rules to consider in echoes:
- In general, try to draw the echoes card
- Look for splaying left cards early (code of laws and flute), also look for the "golden four" flute ruler chopsticks umbrella which have echo effects that are visible on a splay left. Wheel / umbrella and chopsticks / domestication. Perfume is a perfect card for tucking those useful echoes.
- teching ahead is fun and can cascade, but it is dangerous because you leave all the juicy age 1s for your opponent. An early writing I would not recommend. However, a turn 1 ruler I would say is a reasonable move, since you can hope for linguistics, watermill, horseshoes, lever.
- NEVER EVER open with an echoes card with bonus >1. The danger of turn 1 candles into an age 3 is way too dangerous.
I wish the log was a little more "interactive" so it would be easier for me to annotate it, so I could maybe circle moves and try to explain my rationale behind it. However, my strategy is definitely a "power and control" strategy, there are scoring strategies like an early chopsticks / pottery that actually work. I'm just not very good at it.
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Interestingly, I never got into dominion. I remember playing it one evening at a friend's house, of course I got crushed (I believe it was a 4P game). The whole deckbuilding theme is interesting to me, but I never did grasp the strategy like I did with innovation. It was like magic, you needed some kind of ratio of "lands" to "enchantments" and "creatures" and I could never figure out what was the right balance. I also feel like I tended to get hand screwed more often than not. I think the other thing is I tend to do better in zero-sum games (innovation / chess), and this whole 3-5 player aspect just throws me off. Maybe if I played more 2P dominion I would like it more, but apparently according to BGG it is best with 3....
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If you took a poll here the results would be very different. Almost all high level Dominion is played 2 player.
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AHoppy: I would be willing to give strategy primers to people including yourself. Echoes was a little hard for me to pick up too (we went back to base after playing like 10 games initially back before online, we only revisited it after they amended the rules).
But a couple simple rules to consider in echoes:
- In general, try to draw the echoes card
- Look for splaying left cards early (code of laws and flute), also look for the "golden four" flute ruler chopsticks umbrella which have echo effects that are visible on a splay left. Wheel / umbrella and chopsticks / domestication. Perfume is a perfect card for tucking those useful echoes.
- teching ahead is fun and can cascade, but it is dangerous because you leave all the juicy age 1s for your opponent. An early writing I would not recommend. However, a turn 1 ruler I would say is a reasonable move, since you can hope for linguistics, watermill, horseshoes, lever.
- NEVER EVER open with an echoes card with bonus >1. The danger of turn 1 candles into an age 3 is way too dangerous.
I wish the log was a little more "interactive" so it would be easier for me to annotate it, so I could maybe circle moves and try to explain my rationale behind it. However, my strategy is definitely a "power and control" strategy, there are scoring strategies like an early chopsticks / pottery that actually work. I'm just not very good at it.
I would love some strategy lessons :P I need to master base a little more first though... Or do I? I don't know... But right now is not the best time. Maybe when I'm home for Christmas, that would be fun
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So i just played my first game of figures, no echoes. And I really enjoyed it (winning may have factored in...). I really think that figures "fixes" base innovation. I'm not saying base is broken, but I feel like it does fix the things that can make base innovation feel like a runaway game. What I mean, is sometimes in innovation it feels like the player who is winning keeps winning. Maybe that's because I'm not very good at the game, but sometimes I feel like that happens. It doesn't have negative utility nearly as much as Dominion. You do give up an action to claim an achievement, but that's not really negative utility because at the same time you are denying that achievement from your opponent. Base innovation fixes this by offering 105 paths to victory. But sometimes you just don't get those draws that you need to foil the opponent's plans/further your own. I feel like Figures fixes this by allowing your opponent to draw a figure (which I feel like are very powerful) giving them some compensation for you jumping ahead. Also, increasing the benefit from sharing gives you a boost when your opponent is ahead in icons, again more negative utility. In addition, it doesn't add overly complicated things, like echoes did. Although, I guess it can create some very complicated interactions with karmas and echoes and such, but because there are far fewer expansion cards in play. Overall, I enjoyed that one game of Figures than all the games of echoes I have played, because I felt like I knew what I was doing more. I may have to get figures, just from that one game.
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In addition, it doesn't add overly complicated things, like echoes did.
Well it does utilize most of the novel rules in Echoes (echo stack, forecast, bonuses ...) so my feeling with figures only is that it is a bit inefficient with its rules. A large part of the domain opened up by the rules is taken by Echoes, and leaving this part out feels weird and makes the game harder to explain. I agree that it works better than Echoes.
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True, it does have most of the echoes things, but it doesn't feel as prevalent because you play far fewer figures than echoes. And the draw rules are much simpler. What do you mean that it "is a bit inefficient with its rules"?
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So i just played my first game of figures, no echoes. And I really enjoyed it (winning may have factored in...). I really think that figures "fixes" base innovation. I'm not saying base is broken, but I feel like it does fix the things that can make base innovation feel like a runaway game. What I mean, is sometimes in innovation it feels like the player who is winning keeps winning. Maybe that's because I'm not very good at the game, but sometimes I feel like that happens. It doesn't have negative utility nearly as much as Dominion. You do give up an action to claim an achievement, but that's not really negative utility because at the same time you are denying that achievement from your opponent. Base innovation fixes this by offering 105 paths to victory. But sometimes you just don't get those draws that you need to foil the opponent's plans/further your own. I feel like Figures fixes this by allowing your opponent to draw a figure (which I feel like are very powerful) giving them some compensation for you jumping ahead. Also, increasing the benefit from sharing gives you a boost when your opponent is ahead in icons, again more negative utility. In addition, it doesn't add overly complicated things, like echoes did. Although, I guess it can create some very complicated interactions with karmas and echoes and such, but because there are far fewer expansion cards in play. Overall, I enjoyed that one game of Figures than all the games of echoes I have played, because I felt like I knew what I was doing more. I may have to get figures, just from that one game.
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9048.0
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So i just played my first game of figures, no echoes. And I really enjoyed it (winning may have factored in...). I really think that figures "fixes" base innovation. I'm not saying base is broken, but I feel like it does fix the things that can make base innovation feel like a runaway game. What I mean, is sometimes in innovation it feels like the player who is winning keeps winning. Maybe that's because I'm not very good at the game, but sometimes I feel like that happens. It doesn't have negative utility nearly as much as Dominion. You do give up an action to claim an achievement, but that's not really negative utility because at the same time you are denying that achievement from your opponent. Base innovation fixes this by offering 105 paths to victory. But sometimes you just don't get those draws that you need to foil the opponent's plans/further your own. I feel like Figures fixes this by allowing your opponent to draw a figure (which I feel like are very powerful) giving them some compensation for you jumping ahead. Also, increasing the benefit from sharing gives you a boost when your opponent is ahead in icons, again more negative utility. In addition, it doesn't add overly complicated things, like echoes did. Although, I guess it can create some very complicated interactions with karmas and echoes and such, but because there are far fewer expansion cards in play. Overall, I enjoyed that one game of Figures than all the games of echoes I have played, because I felt like I knew what I was doing more. I may have to get figures, just from that one game.
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=9048.0
Yeah, while I was writing it I figured someone had probably written an article like that when figures came out. So I agree with you pops!
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What do you mean that it "is a bit inefficient with its rules"?
Uses a lot of rules without employing them often. Some of them may even never appear throughout the whole game. It is reminiscient of classic Ameritrash, where some rules are introduced for the sake of flavour/theme.
The expansions are not orthogonal. One can use Figures w/o Echoes, may even for the better of the game. But you would have to introduce Echoes before you want to introduce Figures, which is a bit of a shame. (To illustrate where I am coming from: My wife lost interest in the whole game after the first couple of Echo matches, and we never came around to play Figures.)
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Ah gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense... It would be much harder to teach without knowledge of echoes, especially since the echoes rules wouldn't always come up.
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I love Innovation. I think it's a great game with great mechanics. Echoes is fantastic, II love the echoes effect when you splay, it makes the game very creative and creativity is one of the things that makes me love Dominion.
But the game is seriously unbalanced. Almanac and Industrialisation are broken. Echoes cards are usually too strong compared to base cards and thus you almost ignore the base cards in echoes games, by just keeping a base card in hand and using the echoes cards. So the drawing rule with echoes is weird and not very efficient.
I like figures, but I don't play with it because it add so many new weird rules, new complicated achievements and too much unpredictability that was not needed (base and echoes are already very unpredictables).
There should be new "fixed" edition of Innovation, really. With simpler rules, balanced cards (Feodalism, Industrialization, Almanac are the most important), fewer special achievements (or the same number but using only 5 of them in each game) Especially online, for the most experienced players.
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Echoes cards are usually too strong compared to base cards and thus you almost ignore the base cards in echoes games, by just keeping a base card in hand and using the echoes cards. So the drawing rule with echoes is weird and not very efficient.
I think it takes a bit off effort to draw echoes on a regular base. Go and draw three cards. Easy, Smithy, i mean Fermenting or Paper. Now go and draw three Echoes.
Precisely because of that it is justified that Echoes are better than their base counterparts.
Almanac needs fixing as it is so self-sufficient. Completely ignoring the tech tree, it shoves around a couple of cards where they can't be touched by my opponents (forecast), scores a lot and inevitably reaches the draw-beyond-10 condition.
Industrialization would less of an Echoes juggernaut with the rewording "Draw floor(factories/2) cards. Tuck them."
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I love Innovation. I think it's a great game with great mechanics. Echoes is fantastic, II love the echoes effect when you splay, it makes the game very creative and creativity is one of the things that makes me love Dominion.
But the game is seriously unbalanced. Almanac and Industrialisation are broken. Echoes cards are usually too strong compared to base cards and thus you almost ignore the base cards in echoes games, by just keeping a base card in hand and using the echoes cards. So the drawing rule with echoes is weird and not very efficient.
I like figures, but I don't play with it because it add so many new weird rules, new complicated achievements and too much unpredictability that was not needed (base and echoes are already very unpredictables).
There should be new "fixed" edition of Innovation, really. With simpler rules, balanced cards (Feodalism, Industrialization, Almanac are the most important), fewer special achievements (or the same number but using only 5 of them in each game) Especially online, for the most experienced players.
The alpha versions of no place like home have made me kind of pessimistic about Carl's direction with things. I've given up hoping about things like this.
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There should be new "fixed" edition of Innovation, really. With simpler rules, balanced cards (Feodalism, Industrialization, Almanac are the most important), fewer special achievements (or the same number but using only 5 of them in each game) Especially online, for the most experienced players.
The alpha versions of no place like home have made me kind of pessimistic about Carl's direction with things. I've given up hoping about things like this.
The alpha version wasn't that bad a direction. The re-worked special achievements in No Place took the wrong direction. Too many benefits for actions you were going to perform anyway allow players to freeload and completely ignore regular achievements. I don't mind the endorse mechanism too much, and I disagree about the lack of options it creates.
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I think a good idea would just be to have 5 random achievements available from all of the sets used in a game.
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I think a good idea would just be to have 5 random achievements available from all of the sets used in a game.
The basic idea would be something I sympathise with (discourage strategies that ignore standard achievements).
There are a couple of issues I have. First, this approach does not discourage these strategies, it shuts them down. Would Dominion be a better game if threepiling approaches were nerfed? Many paths to victory is good, what's bothersome is the en passant manner some of these achievements are claimed (Invoke Industrialization, meld Dublin, BAM, five achievements). Also, with all the Expansions, it has become very hard to rely on standard achievements only. And I think the board-consuming, consistent scoring strategies of Steam Engine and Coal require skill and should not be discouraged.
All Karmas involving "You may issue a XXX Decree" where XXX is not in play would be seriously curtailed.
Also, I don't think I would like to have Monument and Supremacy in base. This would make a Masonry-based opening too powerful for my taste.
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I agree that industrialization in echoes+ would be a lot weaker if you drew X cards first, then tucked them. The ability to tuck multiple echoes allows one to collect all the special achievements from both base AND echoes in short order (in addition to drawing those key 6 cities which start splaying things right / flag achievements in cities). I felt that industrialization wasn't actually that strong in base, it was stuff like coal and canning.
Measurement is kinda the same idea; with base alone, it is a pretty good but not game-breaking card, simply because the stacks don't get that large in base. But add even echoes and I felt like measurement was already kinda OP.
I felt like figures was a good expansion in the sense of balance (boy am I glad that figures was implemented online though, keeping track of all the figures exceptions in real life is a nightmare), and had less of a "runaway leader" phenomenon.
Cities, however, says here, have DOUBLE the effect of the ridiculous card. So now the runaway leader is running twice as fast...
It is admittedly difficult to seamlessly integrate a new expansion while overlooking some OP possibilities from the base set. But almanac came in OP, and now with endorsements, it is majorly OP. Even figures is useful to almanac, because shared almanac is a figure share, so you can spam it even shared without having to rid your hand of the bonus echoes draw from before.
I also liked the initial city cards as non-achievements, and so your opponent had to be careful about putting cities out. Now it's just a race to who can reach the ages of the special achievements first (and it's usually the runaway leader....)
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I feel like the lobby is slowly withering. Even after the summer break I find myself being the only one there more often than not.
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Yeah, it's pretty dismal sometimes to want to play a quick game and no one is there. I see that there is a French site as well, just from looking at it, it looks pretty active, and has both Base and Echoes implemented. Anyone know anything about it? polpoul.com (http://polpoul.com)
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Yeah, it's pretty dismal sometimes to want to play a quick game and no one is there. I see that there is a French site as well, just from looking at it, it looks pretty active, and has both Base and Echoes implemented. Anyone know anything about it? polpoul.com (http://polpoul.com)
Interesting... when I play on isotropic evening (european time) I always get a game. Daytime I have to wait.
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On my feel - there is alwayes someone but only for base :( Sadly, to play with exps I have to wait for several minutes
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Hopefully it will stay around for a while, if only to be able to troll Dominion related threads with side remarks like "after playing some games on Isotropic yesterday ...".
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Hopefully it will stay around for a while, if only to be able to troll Dominion related threads with side remarks like "after playing some games on Isotropic yesterday ...".
What do you mean? Is isotropic going down or something?
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Hopefully it will stay around for a while, if only to be able to troll Dominion related threads with side remarks like "after playing some games on Isotropic yesterday ...".
What do you mean? Is isotropic going down or something?
It's been down for more than a year, haven't you heard?
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Hopefully it will stay around for a while, if only to be able to troll Dominion related threads with side remarks like "after playing some games on Isotropic yesterday ...".
What do you mean? Is isotropic going down or something?
It's been down for more than a year, haven't you heard?
Hey, I just played some games on Isotropic yesterday!
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Due to reading this thread i started learning innovation
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On my feel - there is alwayes someone but only for base :( Sadly, to play with exps I have to wait for several minutes
The thing I don't understand is the 4 or 5 very highly rated players that will only play with the base set. They are really good at evaluating what to do in the narrow range of situations that occur in the base game. I don't really see how that can be fun in the long term for them.
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Due to reading this thread i started learning innovation
Props! What is your username on there?
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Zappie ofc!
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Zappie ofc!
Well I will be happy to play you if you are ever on there!
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Does anybody know what happened to DYER (competing with ksasaki for the #1 position in the past weeks)? The username is gone from the leaderboard. As far as I know, you cannot delete / reset your user, can you? Or did they get banned? Do people get banned? What would even get you banned?
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I recently dropped down a level after not playing for a couple of days. How does that work? I actually did read the paper on the TrueSkill ranking algorithm - from what I understand, you would have to play games to change your ranking? It kind of makes sense to include some sort of decay function to prevent high ranking players from just stopping to play, but I did not find a description of that.
Is the specific implementation that is used by isotropic available or documented somewhere? I would also like to understand how the first 150 games or so (while I was still learning) will keep affecting my level. Since I started understanding the game, I have gained levels rapidly, so recent games seem to be weighted more heavily.
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The username is gone from the leaderboard.
IIRC, players are hidden from the board if they spend a long time without playing any games. They're not actually erased, though, and will show up again as soon as they play another game.
It kind of makes sense to include some sort of decay function to prevent high ranking players from just stopping to play, but I did not find a description of that.
IIRC, that is exactly what Isotropic does (technically, your uncertainty increases every day and that's why your level appears to drop). It was mentioned in the FAQ for Dominion, and we may assume that Innovation does the same.
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It also, as others have said, doesn't have the same likability as Dominion...
Just found this thread. I think the above statement is an almost complete answer to the original question. I haven't played a lot of games of Inno, so I'm certainly no expert, but for me it is simply not a very likeable game. There are multiple reasons for this, most of which have been discussed, but it had nothing that drew me in the way Dominion did immediately, nor did it provide me with any sort of "carrot" that made me willing to undertake the learning curve necessary to a) get better or b) enjoy it more. I usually need one or the other to continue investing time in a given game. Getting both is a bonus, but I'm competitive enough that "a" usually leads to "b".
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Can I just say how funny it is, this is the most-read topic on the forum?
As for me, I think one main reason is there's still a lot of nostalgia for isotropic dominion. That keeps people coming back at a slow but relatively stable rate. Still, though, you're right - I'd expect it'd either die or thrive, and it did neither. Not that I'm complaining!
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... but it had nothing that drew me in the way Dominion did immediately, nor did it provide me with any sort of "carrot" that made me willing to undertake the learning curve necessary to a) get better or b) enjoy it more.
For me, the enjoyable element is the rodeo feeling of trying to control a machine gone haywire. Very rarely you cruise a juggernaut, sometimes you feel like crossing the Atlantic while feeding the engine with the ship as Phileas Fogg did. You are much less in control than in Dominion with its ten cards kingdoms, but still the expert vs novice win rate is higher than in, say, Backgammon.
Also, the online version beats the ftf-version by a margin when you play multiple expansions. Keeping abreast of every figure karma in play or en-passant achievements like Supremacy or Heritage can be a daunting task.