Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Puzzles and Challenges => Topic started by: sudgy on August 09, 2013, 03:15:11 pm
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I don't know why I like thinking up of next-to-impossible puzzles, but this one seems fairly interesting. Without Monument, Fortress, Trader, Rogue, or Graverobber (so you can't get infinite points), what is the maximum amount of points you can get in a solitaire game?
Alright, easier definition (suggested by SirPeebles): Among kingdoms with an upper bound on available VP, what is the highest attainable score?
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Just a few tips I've noticed:
1. You want Goons ASAP. You probably should just open Silver/Nothing, get a $6 hand then play as many Goons as you can at a time to buy them all. Villages are probably needed for this somewhat. You probably want Shelters for that Necropolis.
2. In the end you will Bishop most or all your cards, then buy a copper or something to end the game.
3. you want to get as many cards as possible, so Colonies/Platinum, Ruins even, Potions, Black Market.
4. You want the kingdom to include really expensive cards, so the Bishops will give you as many points as possible.
2 and 4 are crossed out because I forgot that Bishop still gives you one VP...
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I assume you're also banning Goons/Trader/Watchtower?
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And bishop?
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I assume you're also banning Goons/Trader/Watchtower?
I forgot about Trader. What's so bad about Watchtower?
And bishop?
Goons and Bishop, after a long time, finally get depleted. That's the hardest part of this...
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You don't have to ban Goons/Watchtower because that still depletes piles. You DO have to ban Goons/Trader because it does not deplete piles after Silvers are gone.
You have to ban Possession or else you can do solitaire self-Possession tricks.
You have to ban Bishop (and can thus un-ban Fortress) because Bishop can earn infinite points on its own, e.g. a hand with just 1 Bishop gets you 1VP without trashing anything. It's better if you get down to KC-Bishop for 3VP per turn though.
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I think that the cleanest way to pose the challenge is: Among kingdoms with an upper bound on available VP, what is the highest attainable score?
This formulation doesn't ban cards per se, but rather bans any kingdom or setup which permits arbitrarily high scores.
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Also Ambassador/Goons has to go out, I guess?
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I think that the cleanest way to pose the challenge is: Among kingdoms with an upper bound on available VP, what is the highest attainable score?
This formulation doesn't ban cards per se, but rather bans any kingdom or setup which permits arbitrarily high scores.
I'll change it to that, that is what I was looking for.
You have to ban Bishop (and can thus un-ban Fortress) because Bishop can earn infinite points on its own, e.g. a hand with just 1 Bishop gets you 1VP without trashing anything. It's better if you get down to KC-Bishop for 3VP per turn though.
Yeah, I didn't think of that...
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Pretending that victory point tokens are worth 0 and hoping that there is some way to gain all of the cards on the last turn, I got 2439.
Gardens, Silk Road, Fairgrounds, Feodum, Island, Nobles, Black Market, Knights, Great Hall, Vineyard, Duke. (Colony, Shelters)
760 points from Fairgrounds.
80 points from Feodum.
424 points from Gardens.
-1 point from Curse.
216 points from Silk Road.
16 points from Island.
16 points from Nobles.
2 points from Dame Josephine.
8 points from Great Hall.
64 points from Duke.
688 points from Vineyards.
160 points from basic VPs.
2 points from Harem.
2 points from Tunnel.
2 points from Farmland.
There is probably some way to squeeze a few more points out, and making tokens count as points and killing ambassador and trader and bishop and monument allows you to get almost eleven times this score.
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Why omit VP tokens? You can't use Monument or Bishop because they become unbounded but you can still use Goons (just not with Trader).
The question is how to maximize the various VP with a Goons megaturn.
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I omitted VP tokens because I was feeling lazy.
I might modify the solution later to use goons though. I would guess that the maximum is about 26650. (made a stupid errror)
It is not really that hard to figure out: Just swap out Knights or something from my kingdom and use goons instead. Use baker (in the BM) to buy the first goons, then just buy goons, BM, golem, goons, crossroads, goons, goons, etc.
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Why omit VP tokens? You can't use Monument or Bishop because they become unbounded but you can still use Goons (just not with Trader).
The question is how to maximize the various VP with a Goons megaturn.
The thing is, you could get multiple Goons megaturns if you want. Try to get as many Goons as you possibly can while playing as many as you can, then keep on playing all then every turn. You can get a LOT.
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Why omit VP tokens? You can't use Monument or Bishop because they become unbounded but you can still use Goons (just not with Trader).
The question is how to maximize the various VP with a Goons megaturn.
Bishop is not unbounded as long as there is no way to recover cards from the trash (Fortress, Rogue, Graverobber).
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Why omit VP tokens? You can't use Monument or Bishop because they become unbounded but you can still use Goons (just not with Trader).
The question is how to maximize the various VP with a Goons megaturn.
Bishop is not unbounded as long as there is no way to recover cards from the trash (Fortress, Rogue, Graverobber).
I thought that too, but you still get one vp every time you play it even if you don't trash.
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Why omit VP tokens? You can't use Monument or Bishop because they become unbounded but you can still use Goons (just not with Trader).
The question is how to maximize the various VP with a Goons megaturn.
The thing is, you could get multiple Goons megaturns if you want. Try to get as many Goons as you possibly can while playing as many as you can, then keep on playing all then every turn. You can get a LOT.
Well sure, but there's still a limit to how much you can do. Goons itself only takes up one kingdom card slot. Then you have to figure out how to put together a Goons engine in as few kingdom card slots as possible so that the rest can be alt VP. Probably cobble something together out of the BM. And you have to figure out which alt VP have the best returns.
There was an older thread about getting the most VP. Might have been without Goons, and it was almost certainly before DA.
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Once you have 10 Goons and 8 Native Villages + Necropolis, you can always guarantee to eventually have all Goons in play (just put everything on the mat first). Only buy anything when you have 10 Goons in play, otherwise do nothing besides putting things on the mat. Keep buying stuff until all supplies have 1 card left, and then you can empty them all during your last turn (you have all Platinums on your mat, and you should include some other thing that gives +buy besides Goons).
Obv. use Black Market, Rats (never play them), Marauder, Vineyards, Fairgrounds, Gardens, Silk Roads, YW (prob CM as bane for +buy). And while acquiring the Goons and NVs, you should again only buy any of those when you have all your current Goons in play, and only buy a NV when you need it to play the Goons.
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Some thoughts on heron's solution, which may or may not be completely misguided:
1.) We could probably use Young Witch and have Great Hall be the bane...that would pump up a few of the cards.
2.) Probably Goons has to get in there somewhere, and that possibly means subbing out one of the green cards...possibly Island? Not sure about that one, but it seems like even with the reduction to the Vineyards that this might be the least overall point sacrifice.
3.) So yeah, we want to get all the goons really fast. Probably we would like to buy a silver, then get a Goons. Then we'd like to play one Goons and get our second Goons (and nothing else), play two Goons and get our third Goons (and nothing else), and so on until we have all 10 Goons, then just play them all and buy everything. Can we do this?
Of course we need actions. There are actions already in the Supply with Nobles, and we already have a Necropolis, plus we can take what we need from the Black Market deck. What's the fastest way to be able to play 10 Goons?
Here's the fastest thing I can think of:
Tactician hand starts us with 10 cards:
1 Crossroads, 8 Nobles, and 1 Goons.
All right, actually, I'm sure that is wrong, it could certainly be improved just by subbing in regular style villages from the Black Market I'm sure. Somebody optimize that for me.
That would be enough to play all 10. I'm not sure if there's a way to do it with fewer acquired cards, or if there's a most efficient progression to get to this point. Then you just buy everything else, making sure you play all 10 Goons before you buy anything. I'm not going to calculate this quantity but I'm sure it is a buttload.
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You don't need CM for +Buy. If you are using your strategy, you don't really need any +Buy besides what the Goons give.
So you want Goons, NV(?) and BM in the kingdom for sure. That leaves 8 more slots. Can you put all 10 Knights in the BM? Knights does have special rules with the BM because you aren't supposed to use the randomizer. If you can't put them all in the BM, is it worth it to have them in the kingdom? They are worth approximately 32 points for boosting Fairgrounds 2 stages, not to mention points for Vineyards...
Big ticket VP cards are Feodum, Gardens, Silk Road, Duke, Fairgrounds.
Other VP cards are Great Hall, Tunnel, Island, Farmland, Harem, Nobles. We can pick 3 of these to put in the kingdom itself.
Nobles and Island are easy choices because they also boost Vineyards. Great Hall should take the last slot. 8 GH are worth 8VP alone, plus 21.33VP for Vineyards. That easily beats out the max 16VP from the others.
I note now that these are approximations -- to get very technical, you'd have to consider various minor considerations, e.g. that not putting it in the kingdom still allows one to be in the BM deck.
We can also compare it to those Knights. If we do that, we also have to count SR (which I had omitted because they would amount to the same between two VP cards). 8 VP cards will add 16 points to the SR total. So GH contributes a total of 8+21.33+16 = 45.33 points. Knights would make ~32 for Fairgrounds and 26.67 for Vineyards for nearly 60 points, so it actually beats out GH!
We should also consider Rats, which is a pile of 20. That's worth 53.33 for Vineyards, plus an extra 10 cards towards Gardens for 8 points.
Hmm... Nobles and Islands are very similar to GH, contributing just an extra 8 points for a total of 53.33. That means Knights and Rats beat them!
Now, you could probably replace NVs with something else anyway because it's likely possible to put all 10 Goons into play without the help of NV. You just have to rely on perfect shuffle luck, or else have tremendous patient to get everything lined up. But NV certainly makes it more plausible.
Without NV taking up space, you can pop in whatever is missing. So the Kingdom looks to be:
Shelters game (thanks to Rats) with Colonies (thanks to Goons)
Goons, Black Market
Feodum, Gardens, Silk Road, Duke, Fairgrounds
Rats
Nobles, Island
Knights if they can't all go in the BM, Great Hall otherwise
and replace Island with NV if that is wanted, but it's probably not necessary.
Stack the BM deck with one of every card that is allowed in this challenge. Notable cards include Tournament for Prizes, Marauder for Ruins and Spoils, Hermit for Madman, Urchin for Mercenary, and Graverobber to bring back Hermit and Urchin after they are trashed.
Note that the kingdom can contain 11 piles thanks to the BM-Young Witch trick.
Game plan is to buy one Silver and then wait until shuffle luck gets you Goons. Then wait until you can buy the second Goons. Then you need Necropolis to line up with 2 Goons to get Black Market, and you also only buy from the BM when you have Goons in play...
The specifics of this last part are pretty annoying to figure out, but you probably buy some Nobles to give more +actions so you can put more Goons in play... but is it more cost effective to go through the BM deck for pieces that are better than Nobles? Meh.
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Trickier thing to work out:
If you put NV in the kingdom, it makes it way easier to maximize Goons plays for the entire game. That is, you can open with a single NV and pile Copper onto the mat until you can afford Goons. Then you can ensure playing Goons to buy the second Goons. You can even ensure having 3 Goons in play when you buy the fourth because of Necropolis. Then you can alternate buying NV and Goons so that you always buy the next piece with the maximum possible number of Goons in play.
The tough question is, does this optimized Goons play generate more points than leaving the kingdom space for another card? Without NV in the kingdom itself, there will be many more buys where you DON'T have the most possible Goons in play. Not quite sure how many sub-optimal buys there would be though.
I think having NV in the kingdom might actually work out better than having Nobles. On the board, Nobles are worth ~27 points more than NV (accounting for Silk Road and Vineyards, where NV means 2 more action cards over Nobles). I expect that the optimal Goons plays would make up for those 27 points. Even if they did not, it just makes it so much easier and actually makes the solution free of shuffle luck (replacing it with turns spent doing nothing but NV-ing your whole deck).
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I think NV is better too, for the reasons eHalcyon said. You don't even need the starting silver, then you can play three goons by the time when you need more.
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Using the suggestions above, I did some calculations, and this is what I got:
Kingdom: Native Village (Bane), Goons, Black Market, Rats, Nobles, Gardens, Silk Road, Feodum, Duke, Fairgrounds, Vineyard (include Shelters, Colony, Platinum, Potion, Ruins due to Looters in the Black Market deck)
Black Market deck: every kingdom card except Bishop, Monument, Trader, Ambassador. There are 205 different kingdom cards and 9 extra knights (this is assuming you can put all knight in the Black Market deck), so subtracting the kingdom cards already used this makes 199 kingdom cards in the Black Market deck
Non-Supply cards: Spoils, Madman, Mercenary, Prices
How to play: Use first hand of five coppers to buy Goons (using coin token from Baker). Then proceed to get as many Goons as your deck can supply, then a single Native Village, then another Goons, only buying stuff when all Goons are in play. Go on this way until you have 10 Goons and 8 Native Villages. This should net 89 victory tokens. From then on, buy out Ruins before buying Death Cart, buy all cards possible without ending the game, gain all prices, Spoils and Mercenaries (using Rogue or Graverobber), gain a single Madman. Trash all except one Curse. For your last turn, set your whole deck aside with Native Villages, putting it all into hand. This should give you enough buys and money to empty all remaining cards in the supply.
Final victory points:
89 victory tokens from the early game
752 points from Fairgrounds
712 points from Vineyards
408 points from Gardens
168 points from Silk Roads
104 points from Feoda
64 points from Dukes
80 points from Colonies
48 points from Provinces
24 points from Duchies
8 points from Estates
16 points from Nobles
11 points from victory cards in the Black Market (Dame Josephine, Island, Farmland, Harem, Tunnel, Great Hall)
4880 points from buying cards with 10 Goons in play
-1 point from Curse
If my calculations are correct (I just used pen and paper), this sums up to 8355 victory points.
(side note: I tried not using Native Village and just grabbing one from the Black Market. Then you could include Great Hall or Tunnel as Banes, using Nobles for the actions. Turns out though it's not worth the loss of having to buy one Black Market with a sub-optimal number of Goons in play, as it also powers down Gardens and Vineyards.)
All of which of course leads to the next question: Assuming perfect shuffle luck, what is the minimum number of turns to get to 8355 victory points on this board?
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Well done. One minor error: you don't want to gain any Madman since playing Hermit forces you to gain a card from the supply, which costs you 10VP as it's one card less you can buy with all Goons in play. For the same reason I don't think you want to gain Border Village from the BM, unless it's really necessary to up Fairgrounds.
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@faust -- Forgot about that Baker coin token -- good call!
@SCSN -- Interesting point about Hermit gaining Madman. It may also apply to BV, as you point out. There may be other cards where it matters as well -- Cache and Death Cart come to mind. Some of this can be played around by gaining certain things first. For example, if all the Copper have already been purchased, Cache can be safely gained. Likewise for Ruins and Death Cart.
Actually, this is probably better dealt with using Trader. Then your 2 empty piles can be Goons and Silver and you don't have to worry about emptying Copper or Ruins. The same goes for Border Village! Buy BV, choose to gain X, reveal Trader to gain Silver instead, but all Silver are gone. And I think this trick works with Hermit too!
Any other cards where this matters? Any cards that can't be solved with Trader?
Earlier I said that Possession should be banned, but I guess it doesn't. Self-possessing would allow you to trash things with Bishop without acually trashing them, but Bishop itself needs to be banned so Possession can be allowed back in.
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@faust -- Forgot about that Baker coin token -- good call!
@SCSN -- Interesting point about Hermit gaining Madman. It may also apply to BV, as you point out. There may be other cards where it matters as well -- Cache and Death Cart come to mind. Some of this can be played around by gaining certain things first. For example, if all the Copper have already been purchased, Cache can be safely gained. Likewise for Ruins and Death Cart.
Actually, this is probably better dealt with using Trader. Then your 2 empty piles can be Goons and Silver and you don't have to worry about emptying Copper or Ruins. The same goes for Border Village! Buy BV, choose to gain X, reveal Trader to gain Silver instead, but all Silver are gone. And I think this trick works with Hermit too!
Any other cards where this matters? Any cards that can't be solved with Trader?
Earlier I said that Possession should be banned, but I guess it doesn't. Self-possessing would allow you to trash things with Bishop without acually trashing them, but Bishop itself needs to be banned so Possession can be allowed back in.
Trader + Goons is banned, you can keep on buying cards and use trader.
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@faust -- Forgot about that Baker coin token -- good call!
@SCSN -- Interesting point about Hermit gaining Madman. It may also apply to BV, as you point out. There may be other cards where it matters as well -- Cache and Death Cart come to mind. Some of this can be played around by gaining certain things first. For example, if all the Copper have already been purchased, Cache can be safely gained. Likewise for Ruins and Death Cart.
Actually, this is probably better dealt with using Trader. Then your 2 empty piles can be Goons and Silver and you don't have to worry about emptying Copper or Ruins. The same goes for Border Village! Buy BV, choose to gain X, reveal Trader to gain Silver instead, but all Silver are gone. And I think this trick works with Hermit too!
Any other cards where this matters? Any cards that can't be solved with Trader?
Earlier I said that Possession should be banned, but I guess it doesn't. Self-possessing would allow you to trash things with Bishop without acually trashing them, but Bishop itself needs to be banned so Possession can be allowed back in.
Trader + Goons is banned, you can keep on buying cards and use trader.
Whoooops, I am dumb. Forgot about that.
So yeahhhh, you can make it work for one card (e.g. empty Coppers, buy Cache) but probably not more than that. Since you're buying Cache/Death Cart/BV/Hermit from the BM, you can't empty those piles first. And as for Hermit/Madman, you can't gain the Madman unless you buy nothing so you definitely wouldn't be doing that on your last turn anyway, because you'd want to be emptying every pile with Goons.
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All of which of course leads to the next question: Assuming perfect shuffle luck, what is the minimum number of turns to get to 8424 victory points on this board?
CC, can you hear us? It is we, the puzzlers on f.DS. Please help us CC.
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(http://i.imgur.com/j1NhZ7e.png)
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I edited my post to correct the errors pointed out by SCSN and eHalcyon. Now you only gain a single Madman (necessary for Fairgrounds). Including or not including Border Village actually doesn't make a difference - if it's in there, you have to gain one card that you thus can't buy, but if it's not in, there's one card less to buy anyway. Including it ups Fairgrounds.
As for Death Cart and Cache - you have to buy them before three piles are empty, as they're Black Market buys. So you could buy out ruins and leave a single Copper (the Goons pile is already empty, so Coppers can't be out). Including or not including Cache makes no difference in terms of buys then, and it's good for the Fairgrounds.
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Using Scheme you can get all ten Madmen without losing your Hermit.
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Using Scheme you can get all ten Madmen without losing your Hermit.
The reason not to do that is playing Hermit gains a card, which means one less card you can buy with Goons. One Madman can earn 0.43 VP via Vineyards and Gardens, which is far less than the 10VP you can earn by buying the card that Hermit would have gained with 10 Goons in play.
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Right, that is an excellent point. It is possibly worth doing once if it brings up the value of Fairgrounds.
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Using Scheme you can get all ten Madmen without losing your Hermit.
You can't. Scheme only allows you to put cards back on top that you have in play, so you can't put back a trashed Hermit, a Pillage or a Feast.
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Using Scheme you can get all ten Madmen without losing your Hermit.
You can't. Scheme only allows you to put cards back on top that you have in play, so you can't put back a trashed Hermit, a Pillage or a Feast.
That's not what goko does. You can topdeck a scheme and get a madman. i think donald said that somewhere too...
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Using Scheme you can get all ten Madmen without losing your Hermit.
You can't. Scheme only allows you to put cards back on top that you have in play, so you can't put back a trashed Hermit, a Pillage or a Feast.
You just need to choose to topdeck Hermit before trashing Hermit.
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Using Scheme you can get all ten Madmen without losing your Hermit.
You can't. Scheme only allows you to put cards back on top that you have in play, so you can't put back a trashed Hermit, a Pillage or a Feast.
"When you discard this from play" is what it says on Hermit and Scheme. You choose which to do first, so if you choose to put the Hermit on top before you trash it, the Hermit has lost track of itself. But it still gains the Madman.
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This has been discussed at great length more than once... not since Guilds (or maybe even Dark Ages) was released... but even back then it was pretty much determined that the complexity is far too great to calculate. Even without Victory Tokens; just with green cards, people were not about to find a definite maximum number, just some large lower bounds. So add in Victory Tokens, Coin Tokens, other new cards.... you are dealing with a very large number of calculations and permutations, that will result in a very, very large number of possible points.
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Well done. One minor error: you don't want to gain any Madman since playing Hermit forces you to gain a card from the supply, which costs you 10VP as it's one card less you can buy with all Goons in play. For the same reason I don't think you want to gain Border Village from the BM, unless it's really necessary to up Fairgrounds.
We just need to reduce its cost to zero before we buy it. We've got Quarry, Highway, Bridge, and Princess, we should be set.
It seems wrong to include Black Market and implement it in a, strictly speaking, variant way. Really you can't include it because the rules for Black market say a Bishop needs to be available.
Am I being a killjoy?
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Fortunately for those who do not have Prosperity, Black Market does not require Bishop.
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I thought the rules for BM allowed you to set it up however you want. OK, the card itself suggests one of each Kingdom card not in the supply, but I don't think that is a strict instruction. If I don't have every expansion, I could not create a BM that satisfied that instruction. Am I now playing a variant?
The official BM FAQ says this:
To use the Black Market Kingdom card, you must create a Black Market deck before starting the game. The Black Market deck is made up of Kingdom cards that are not in the Supply of the current game. The players should agree before the game which cards will be used to create the Black Market deck (for example, you could agree to use one of every Kingdom card you own that is not a part of the Supply).
Probably more Variant-like is including all 10 Knights in the BM, because the official Knight FAQ says this:
If you choose to use the Knights with Black MarketBlack Market.jpg (a promotional card), put a Knight directly into the Black Market deck, rather than using the randomizer card.
But you could invoke the BM FAQ that says you can choose the deck composition however you want, where you choose to include all 10. :P
Source for the quotes is the DS Wiki, and presumably their sources are the official manuals.
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Originally, Donald used his randomizer deck for Black Market. After selecting ten random cards for the kingdom, the remaining randomizer deck was the Black Market deck. However, there is no rule that says your randomizer deck must contain all published kingdom cards. Thus I believe that the implementation closest to Donald's original (although by no means official), is to first choose which cards are in your randomizer deck (e.g. I brought two promos, Intrigue, Prosperity, and Cornucopia, but Susan hates Tournament so that one is out...) and then any cards not chosen for the kingdom will be in the BM deck.
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Originally, Donald used his randomizer deck for Black Market. After selecting ten random cards for the kingdom, the remaining randomizer deck was the Black Market deck. However, there is no rule that says your randomizer deck must contain all published kingdom cards. Thus I believe that the implementation closest to Donald's original (although by no means official), is to first choose which cards are in your randomizer deck (e.g. I brought two promos, Intrigue, Prosperity, and Cornucopia, but Susan hates Tournament so that one is out...) and then any cards not chosen for the kingdom will be in the BM deck.
Like you said, original is not official. Also, if you do it this way, you really can't include all 10 Knights in the BM.
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Correct me if I am wrong, isn't the AI programmed to not buy a card that would end the game with a loss for the bot? With that logic, and you have a 5 card hand of Kings Court, Kings Court, Masquerade, Monument, Monument allow for an unlimited amount of points to be gained?
I imagine you would want to pin your opponent with KC, KC and a card that brings their handsize to 3, aka possibly with goons. Then switch to Monuments and keep the opponents hand size at 0-1, then the ai would buy all copper until there was none left, then do nothing
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Correct me if I am wrong, isn't the AI programmed to not buy a card that would end the game with a loss for the bot? With that logic, and you have a 5 card hand of Kings Court, Kings Court, Masquerade, Monument, Monument allow for an unlimited amount of points to be gained?
I imagine you would want to pin your opponent with KC, KC and a card that brings their handsize to 3, aka possibly with goons. Then switch to Monuments and keep the opponents hand size at 0-1, then the ai would buy all copper until there was none left, then do nothing
This is trying to figure out the maximum number of points where you can't get points infinitely, so monument can't be in the solution.
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Alright, easier definition (suggested by SirPeebles): Among kingdoms with an upper bound on available VP, what is the highest attainable score?
Old theme, but new cards!
Kingdom:
Platinum/Colony, no Shelters
Ferry
Inheritance
Travelling Fair
Capitalism
Lost Arts
(The last three Events are not a necessity, but they speed things up considerably.)
Young Witch
Native Village (bane)
Goons
Band Of Misfits
Overlord
Page/Travellers
Peasant/Travellers
Scrying Pool
Count
Cultist/Ruins
Rats
Steps:
Buy Ferry for Goons. Goons now has a price of 4 and can be selected by Band Of Misfits, Overlord, and Inheritance.
Buy a Goons.
Buy a Native Village.
Use Native Village to transfer cards to the mat until they can be pulled in for a 7 coin buy. Buy Inheritance for Goons. Our 3 starting Estates are now Goons.
Buy Capitalism. Goons and Estates can now be played without actions in the buy phase.
Buy a Page.
We will cycle the Page to a Champion. Only play Treasure Hunter and exchange to Warrior after a turn which did not gain a card; we don't want to gain any Silver. When playing Hero, we are forced to gain a treasure; pick Potion. We will only obtain 1 Champion. That Potion, along with the Goons set aside for Inheritance will be the only two cards in the entire kingdom that we will not purchase. When we get around to buying the other travellers, we will do the maximum exchanges on the other Pages, up to Hero. Since Pages get returned to the supply, buying the last Page will be the 26th purchase. We will also do the maximum number of exchanges on Peasants. That pile therefore represents 30 purchases. I will mention that it is possible to play an Overlord (or BoM or Inherited Estate) as a Page. And when it is exchanged, the Overlord is returned to the Overlord supply pile, not the Page pile. This does not allow any unbounded purchasing, as the number of possible exchanges is still bounded by a small fixed number. It is disadvantageous to do this.
While cycling for our Champion, buy Estates (but don't empty the pile), buy a Count, buy Lost Arts for Count.
Start moving all Copper to the Native Village mat one at a time by using Count to topdeck, followed by Native Village.
After the Potion is gained, buy 2 Scrying Pools, then move the Potion to the Native Village mat.
After the Champion is in place, play proceeds as follows:
Play Scrying Pool, draw entire deck.
Play Count, topdeck a Scrying Pool (for next turn).
Play all Goons, Estates (Goons), Band of Misfits as Goons, Overlords as Goons.
Buy more actions.
Repeat.
After buying all but one Estate, buy all but one Goons. (One must remain for enabling BoM and Overlord). Then you can empty the Band of Misfits and Overloard piles. You should not empty any more piles until the last turn.
Next, buy 4 more Counts and 3 more Native Villages.
Now we continue to buy all the actions we can, but also start buying non-action cards. We will be limited to buying four per turn. First buy Travelling Fair, then we can topdeck the non-action cards, draw them into our hand for the next turn, use Counts and Native Villages to transfer them to the mat.
Priority on non-action cards should be 7 more Potions, then the Platinum, Gold, Silver.
Priority on action cards should be Page and Peasant to start the long exchange cycles.
When we gain Teachers, we might as well benefit: +1 coin to Band of Misfits, +1 buy to Overlords.
There is no need to buy any Colonies, Provinces, Duchies, or Copper by using this relatively slow method.
After all but one Platinum, Gold, Silver remain, and only one card in each of the kingdom piles remain (excepting the 8 Scrying Pools), we can jump right to the last turn.
Play Scrying Pool, draw deck.
Play all 9 Counts, topdecking actions and gaining +3 coins each.
Play the second Scrying Pool to redraw the topdecked actions.
(We may not need those actions, but Scrying Pool is an attack card.)
Play all 38 Goons variants as usual.
Play all 9 Groundskeepers.
Play all 9 Peasants for +buys, +coins.
Play all 5 Warriors. Does nothing, but they are attack cards.
Play Abandoned Mines.
Play all 5 Soldiers (this generates 245 coins!)
Play a Native Village, pull in all of the cards from the mat.
Play all of the Patinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, and Potions you have.
You have enough coin to buy all of the Duchies, Provinces, Colonies, Copper, and all other remaining cards.
You have only 57 buys and there are 92 cards left, but there is sufficent money to buy Travelling Fair as needed for the extra buys.
Scoring analysis:
8 Colony - 80 VP
8 Province - 48 VP
8 Duchy - 24 VP
11 Estates - 11 VP
10 Curses - -10 VP
80 + 48 + 24 + 11 - 10 = 153 VP
9 Groundskeepers * 25 victory cards gained (only 1 Estate is counted) = 225 VP
Number of each card (out of total in kingdom) purchased with 38 effective Goons in play.
Copper - 46 of 53
Silver - 40
Gold - 30
Platinum - 12
Potion - 15 of 16
Colony - 8
Province - 8
Duchy - 8
Estate - 1 of 11
Curses - 10
Peasant/Travellers - 30
Page/Travellers - 25 of 26
Cultist/Ruins - 20
Rats - 20
Young Witch - 10
Goons - 1 of 10
Band of Misfits - 0 of 10
Overlord - 0 of 10
Native Village - 9 of 10
Scrying Pool - 8 of 10
Count - 9 of 10
463 cards * 76 VP each = 35,188 VP
Ignoring the not insubstantial VP earned while buying the cards for the engine (over a thousand), we end up with a total of 35,188 + 225 + 153 = 35,566 VP
Any of the following Landmarks would add some VP, noted in parentheses:
Tower (281)
Palace (90)
Museum (76)
Orchard (76)
Keep (75)
Obelisk (40)
Triumphal Arch (30)
Defiled Shrine (22)
Aqueduct (16)
Fountain (15)
Arena (12)
Basilica (12)
Baths (12)
Battlefield (12)
Colonnade (12)
Labyrinth (12)
Mountain Pass (eight)
Final note: I expected Vineyards to be one of the final kingdom piles. With Groundskeepers being played and all of the action cards gained, I expected 8 Vineyards to beat out a pile of 10 action cards. And it does. But it does not beat out a pile with 20 cards, hence Rats wins.
An obvious way to increase the score would be to add a Black Market deck, but I'll leave that to someone else.
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Tower.
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Other landmarks too.
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The exhaustive, and large, solution above has been broken by the changes to Command cards. You can now only have 10 Goons in-play effects.
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I think Triumph and Conquest are very important point sources to consider. Triumph can get a lot of points per buy, but the real winner here is probably Conquest, as it is only limited by our money+buys.
The best way I can think of to get lots, but not infinite money, is with Priest/Fortress/Watchtower and Travelling Fair. In our action phase, we can play a lot of Priests on Fortress, and then also buy everything with Watchtower in hand to get money for every card left in the supply.
At the very least, we can play 66 Priests in a turn with 10 King's Courts, 10 Band of Misfits, 9 Priests, and 9 Scepters (on Priest). (And we could definitely get more with Overlords and Throne Rooms and Captains). Let's say we can play X Priests. The first Priest gives 2 coin, then the next gives 4 coin, and so on, for a sum of 2+4+6+...+2X = X*(X+1) coin, and every card we trash will give us 2X more coin. Every card remaining in the supply will give us a net of 2X-(2+(its base cost)) coin, to buy Travelling Fair and then the card (then trashing to Watchtower). To get a quick lower bound, let's just say each card we buy gives us at least 66*2-12=120 coin. (Colony would only give 119 coin, but it's more than balanced out by all the other cheaper cards.)
If we buy 10 Curse, 46 Coppers, 40 Silvers, 30 Gold, 16 Potion, 12 Platinum, 8 Duchy, 8 Province, 8 Colony, that is 178 cards giving at least 120 coins each for 21360 coin. Add that to the 66*67 to get 25782 coin. With that, we could buy floor(25782/8) Conquests, or 3222 of them. Each one is worth 40 points, giving at least 128880 VP.
I didn't include Estate in the above since we'll likely want to Inheritance them for Priest.
One nice thing about the errata relating to command cards is that all the cards calling Priest can get the benefit of the tokens. With the +buy and +coin token, we would effectively get 3 extra money per Priest we play, as the buy is effectively 2 coins here. And we probably won't need to worry about +Actions with the +action token.
Some other things to consider in such a setup:
- I realized I forgot to about Ruins and Young Witch in the kingdom.
- We might not want the travellers, since we only care about the number of cards we can gain/trash in a single turn.
- By including Sinister Plot, we can buy cards in any order we want during our setup and not worry about draw, by just waiting enough turns in between.
- The most important things are playing as many Priests as humanly possible and trashing as many cards as humanly possible, but there is some balance, as every card we play is a card we don't get to trash. Besides cards that play Priest as many times as possible, other cards to consider are Bridge, Forge, and Count, the latter two being used to trash 9 or 10 Fortresses each.
- Is Fortune worth it? We lose the ability to buy some cards on the last turn, but can double our money (if we also include Villa).
- Bonfire.
- Procession, and possibly Procession + Lurker. Gaining from the trash definitely pushes us into possibly infinite point territory, but Lurker can't gain Silver from the trash, so this wouldn't bring us to infinite by itself. With Bonfire and Villa in the mix, this definitely gets more concerning though.
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The best way I can think of to get lots, but not infinite money[...]
I don't see any reason infinite money is a no-no, here, provided there's no way to convert it into an infinite number of VP?
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The best way I can think of to get lots, but not infinite money[...]
I don't see any reason infinite money is a no-no, here, provided there's no way to convert it into an infinite number of VP?
If you have infinite money and Travelling Fair, you can buy Conquest an arbitrary number of times for infinite points. (Note that unlike Triumph, Conquest still gives points even when you have emptied the Silver pile.)
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Oh geez, I just realized Capitalism + Mandarin will let you play a lot more Priests as well. There needs to be a way to gain them midturn (or Villa). If you include Lurker, you should be able to play at least 180 more Priests this way (returning 9 Priests and 9 Crowns every time).
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... the real winner here is probably Conquest, as it is only limited by our money+buys.
The best way I can think of to get lots, but not infinite money, is with Priest/Fortress/Watchtower and Travelling Fair.
Kudos to Bitwise for suggesting Conquest. It is an excellent way to acquire VP, granted that you can buy the event many, many times after acquiring all of the Silver in the same turn. I worked on an alternative to using Priest and trashing to generate coin. I decided to just use Copper!
In a nutshell, it went like this:
King's Court a ton of Coppersmiths (with the help of Overlords, Band of Misfits, Inheritance, Crowns, and Scepters)
Play 52 Copper for a ton of coin
Buy a Mandarin; Coppers all return to deck.
Buy a Villa
Play a Messenger; Coppers go to the discard pile
Play a Counting House; Coppers go back to my hand
Repeat.
I managed to buy Conquest more than 10,500 times for ~420,000 VP.
How does this compare to Bitwise's strategy? I decided to flesh it out more to find out.
TO BE CLEAR, this strategy has all been suggested by Bitwise. Use of Priest, Forge, Mandarin, Villa, Crown were all spelled out by him. I just put it all together in a (hopefully) optimal implementation.
The kingdom will have:
Platinum/Colony
Action cards
Priest
Fortress
Forge
Mandarin
Villa
King's Court
Overlord
Band Of Misfits
Scepter
Crown
Young Witch
Events
Delve
Inheritance
Ferry
Pathfinding
Lost Arts
Seaway
Training
Travelling Fair
Projects
Capitalism
Sinister Plot
Setup to be done before the megaturn (in no particular order):
Ferry on King's Court (allows play by Overlord)
Inheritance, Pathfinding, Lost Arts, Seaway, and Training on Priest (it ought to be Pope by now!)
buy Capitalism
buy Sinister Plot
Acquire
All the Priests
All the Overlords
Other than leaving the Silver, Mandarin, and Villa piles alone, buy everthing else you can without emptying a third pile.
Acquire sufficient tokens on Sinister Plot to draw your entire deck.
Megaturn:
Trigger Sinister Plot to draw our entire deck.
(Every time we play a Priest, we will trash a Fortress, so that will not be mentioned again.)
(action phase)
Play 9 King's Courts and 8 Overlords as King's Courts
Play 10 Priests, 2 Overlords, 10 Estates, and 9 Band of Misfits as Priests (3 times each).
The 1st time we play a Priest, we get 3 coins
The 2nd time we play a Priest, we get 3 coins + 2 coins for trashing
The 3rd time we play a Priest, we get 3 coins + 4 coins for trashing
The nth time we play a Priest, we get 3*n + 2*(n-1) coins
[Priest has been played 93 times]
(treasure phase)
Play 8 Crowns (saving one), each playing Scepters, replaying Priest each time.
Play the last Scepter, replaying Priest.
[Priest has been played 110 times]
(buy phase)
Buy Mandarin; all Priests, Crowns, Scepters, Villas that are in play are put on deck.
Alternate Priests and Crowns on top, then remaining Priests, then Scepters.
Buy Villa
(action phase)
Play Crown on Fortress; draw a Crown and a Priest
Crown the Priest; draw another Crown and Priest
Repeat until you draw the last pair, then just play the Priest (saving the last Crown); draw another Priest.
Play that Priest to draw the last Priest.
Play the last Priest to draw a Scepter.
Play Scepter to replay Priest; draw another Scepter.
Repeat until you've played all Scepters.
[Priest has been played 137 times]
Buy Mandarin, Villa, do it all again.
On the 8th iteration and beyond, we do the same, except we save one Scepter along with the one Crown.
On the 9th and 10th iterations, we do not want to play our last Fortress, so we Crown the Scepter instead to replay a Fortress twice.
After we buy the last Mandarin and Villa, the loop stops. We play all of our Crowns, Priests, but not Scepters for the last time.
Priest has been played ~350 times for about 1,750 coins and 350 buys. Trashing a card gains ~700 coins.
Our hand now contains:
{10 Mandarin, 10 Villa, 9 Forge, 1 Fortress, 1 Scepter (others are on deck), 9 Young Witch,
52 Copper, 29 Gold, 11 Platinum, 7 Duchy, 7 Province, 7 Colony, 9 Curse}
Play one Forge and trash everything left in our hand for 161 x 700 = 112,700 coins, bringing our total to around 114,450.
Buy Delve 38 times
Use Travelling Fair to buy Conquest ~14,300 times for ~572,000 VP.
And thus my strategy has been beaten. Curses Bitwise, I have been foiled again! (good job)
You also mentioned Lurker, but it becomes possible to repeat the iteration an unbounded number of times.
Something like: Crown Scepter, replay Priest twice, trash Mandarin, trash Villa.
Crown Scepter, replay Lurker twice, gain Mandarin, gain Villa.
I suppose this could be sufficiently crippled by limiting the draw into the hand, but I'm busy working on a different scheme.
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Nice work going through all that!
Some thoughts I had:
- If we use Inheritance, then we have to set aside a Priest and can't use that 10th Priest in our looping. Given that, it might not be worth it to have it on Priest?
- Bonfire lets us also trash all the cards we've played for money without enabling an infinite combo.
- Does Forge really work out better than Watchtower? Getting to pay beforehand for things is definitely nice, but we don't get to trash all those silvers that we're buying.
Also, there is some non-infinite strategy with Lurker if you take out Scepter. You can buy Mandarin, returning Crowns/Priests to your deck, Bonfire everything else in play, buy Villa, then do some KC+Lurker-ing to recover your actions and play those again. This doesn't seem obviously better though.
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Nice work going through all that!
Some thoughts I had:
- If we use Inheritance, then we have to set aside a Priest and can't use that 10th Priest in our looping. Given that, it might not be worth it to have it on Priest?
Darn. You're right. I originally had it that way for that very reason; choosing to empty the Estate pile rather than the Priest pile. But then I forgot and changed it when I realized that Mandarin doesn't return Estates back to the deck. It means that we'd play two less Priests every iteration. I still think Inheritance is the way to go as it increases the number of Priests that we can play.
- Bonfire lets us also trash all the cards we've played for money without enabling an infinite combo.
A good addition. I missed it.
[/li][li]Does Forge really work out better than Watchtower? Getting to pay beforehand for things is definitely nice, but we don't get to trash all those silvers that we're buying.[/li][/list]
Watchtower is nice, but we'd be using coins and buys at the end. I don't think you end up trashing any more cards, so the total VP would be less, unless I'm missing something.
[/list]
Also, there is some non-infinite strategy with Lurker if you take out Scepter. You can buy Mandarin, returning Crowns/Priests to your deck, Bonfire everything else in play, buy Villa, then do some KC+Lurker-ing to recover your actions and play those again. This doesn't seem obviously better though.
The big advantage to Lurker is not gaining Crowns/Priests, but regaining Mandarins. Without gain-from-trash, you can only gain Mandarin 10 times. Each time enables the entire loop. But reclaiming trash gets really complicated. There's probably something brilliant Lurking there though. (see what I did there?)
I'm also wondering if there is some action I can drop to add Black Market. We only need one Forge or Watchtower. If we had an alternate drawing scheme, we'd only need one Fortress.
Also, if we drop one of the Projects, we could add Sewers and double the number of trashes.
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Does Forge really work out better than Watchtower? Getting to pay beforehand for things is definitely nice, but we don't get to trash all those silvers that we're buying.
Watchtower is nice, but we'd be using coins and buys at the end. I don't think you end up trashing any more cards, so the total VP would be less, unless I'm missing something.
The net advantage is that you would be able to trash all the silvers you buy, and the disadvantage is having to pay money and buys for every other non-playable card we're going to trash. (For the cards that are playable, we can have them ready in the deck, play them in our turn, then eventually trash them to Bonfire.) This should be an advantage to Watchtower since each card trashed is worth quite a lot of coin.
Also, there is some non-infinite strategy with Lurker if you take out Scepter. You can buy Mandarin, returning Crowns/Priests to your deck, Bonfire everything else in play, buy Villa, then do some KC+Lurker-ing to recover your actions and play those again. This doesn't seem obviously better though.
The big advantage to Lurker is not gaining Crowns/Priests, but regaining Mandarins. Without gain-from-trash, you can only gain Mandarin 10 times. Each time enables the entire loop. But reclaiming trash gets really complicated. There's probably something brilliant Lurking there though. (see what I did there?)
Good point. This seems quite promising and almost certainly worth dropping Scepter for.
I'm also wondering if there is some action I can drop to add Black Market. We only need one Forge or Watchtower. If we had an alternate drawing scheme, we'd only need one Fortress.
Also, if we drop one of the Projects, we could add Sewers and double the number of trashes.
We can probably drop Sinister Plot for Expedition--it should work but might be a little annoying to think about. If we're allowing Black Market, then the redraw for the loop can just be "drawing Treasures", e.g. Peddler, Junk Dealer (lol that extra value), City, Bazaar. We only need 4 to be able to use all but 2 and keep at least 2 for the next loop.
Also as a random thought, adding a Changeling pile would multiply our final point total by about 5/4, if it works the way I think it does. I would guess that doing everything possible to make as many looping possibilities will end up being than that though.
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Some thoughts I had:
- If we use Inheritance, then we have to set aside a Priest and can't use that 10th Priest in our looping. Given that, it might not be worth it to have it on Priest?
- Bonfire lets us also trash all the cards we've played for money without enabling an infinite combo.
- Does Forge really work out better than Watchtower? Getting to pay beforehand for things is definitely nice, but we don't get to trash all those silvers that we're buying.
Also, there is some non-infinite strategy with Lurker if you take out Scepter. You can buy Mandarin, returning Crowns/Priests to your deck, Bonfire everything else in play, buy Villa, then do some KC+Lurker-ing to recover your actions and play those again. This doesn't seem obviously better though.
Redo of my previous post. Improved strategy with suggestions from Bitwise.
The kingdom will have:
Platinum/Colony
Action cards
Priest
Fortress
Watchtower
Mandarin
Crown
City
Lurker
Overlord
Band Of Misfits
Death Cart
Young Witch
Events
Inheritance
Pathfinding
Seaway
Training
Lost Arts
Travelling Fair
Bonfire
Projects
Capitalism
Sinister Plot
Setup to be done before the megaturn (in no particular order):
Inheritance on Lurker
Pathfinding, Seaway, Lost Arts, and Training on Priest
buy Capitalism
buy Sinister Plot
Acquire only these cards (should be easy using Lurker)
10 Overlords
10 Band of Misfits
9 Lurkers
9 Priests
9 Crowns
9 Cities
8 Death Carts (comes with 10 Ruins)
7 Estates (for a total of 10)
1 Fortress
1 Watchtower
1 Mandarin
Acquire sufficient tokens on Sinister Plot to draw your entire deck.
Megaturn:
Trigger Sinister Plot to draw our entire deck.
Play 8 Cities, leave 1 in hand
Play Crown on Priest, trash Mandarin, trash Fortress
Play 5 Crowns on 5 Priests, trash the 10 Ruins
Play all remaining Crowns on Priests, trashing Fortress
Play the 8 Death Carts, trashing Fortress
Play Lurker, gain Mandarin from trash, trash with Watchtower
All Cities, Crowns, Priests, and Death Carts are returned to deck.
Put Cities on top, followed by an alternating sequence of Crowns and Priests, and then the Death Carts.
------- 2nd iteration, same play sequence -------
Play 8 Cities, leave 1 in hand
Play 9 Crowns on 9 Priests, trashing Fortress
Play 8 Death Carts, trashing Fortress
Play Lurker, gain Mandarin, trash with Watchtower, stack deck as before
--------------------------------------------------
We continue to play this loop until we are out of Lurkers.
Then we continue with Estates, then Band of Misfits, then Overlords as Lurkers.
The sequence is thus repeated 39 times for a total of 40 executions.
We play Priest 18 times and we trash 27 cards per iteration. (Only 26 for the last iteration)
Death Carts and Cities add coins and buys.
Everytime we play Priest, the reward we get for trashing a card goes up, hence the earnings go up with every iteration of the loop.
[edit: Due to a late night spreadsheet error, my original earnings were way too big. They have been corrected.]
The 1st iteration earns 698 coins.
The 2nd iteration earns 1,634 coins.
The 3rd iteration earns 2,570 coins.
...
The last iteration earns 37,202 coins for a grand total of 758,000 coins and also 1,040 buys.
Additional trashing earns 1,440 coins per card.
Finally, play the Fortress.
(treasure phase)
Play your 7 Copper
(buy phase)
There are 206 cards left in the kingdom.
{1 Priest, 9 Fortress, 9 Watchtower, 9 Mandarin, 1 Crown, 1 City, 1 Lurker,
2 Death Carts, 10 Young Witch, 10 Curses, 46 Copper, 40 Silver,
30 Gold, 12 Platinum, 1 Estate, 8 Duchies, 8 Provinces, 8 Colonies}
Buy everything and use Watchtower to trash them.
There are 55 cards in play, buy Bonfire to trash them all.
{ 10 Overlords, 10 Band of Misfits, 10 Estates, 9 Lurkers, 8 Death Carts, 1 Fortress, 7 Copper }
Total money spent so far = 860 coins.
All the trashing earns another 261 x 1440 = 375,840 coins for a total of 1,132,987 coins remaining.
Use Travelling Fair to buy Conquest 141,623 times for 5,664,920 VP.
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Use Travelling Fair to buy Conquest 141,623 times for 5,664,920 VP.
I have a minor tweak to the method in my last post.
Remove Death Cart from the kingdom and add Upgrade.
Setup is the same as before, except 9 Upgrades in hand instead of 8 Death Carts.
The City, Crown, Priest, Lurker loop sequence is the same (except no Death Carts).
We get fewer coins per iteration, but after all the Lurkers and Lurker variants have run out, we can play an Upgrade, trash Fortress, and gain a Mandarin from the kingdom, and trash it with Watchtower.
This lets us iterate the sequence 9 more times.
Total earnings is now 808,592 coins and trashing additional cards now gains 1,764 coins each.
Trash the remainder of the kingdom and Bonfire the cards in play, and we end up with 1,268,193 coins.
We can buy Conquest 158,524 times for 6,340,960 VP.
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EDIT: This post was in response to the one two before it and doesn't account for Upgrade.
I see that you recently edited the calculation--I was wondering how it got so high, although I believed it before checking.
As an estimation, if P is the number of priests we play per loop, X is the number of extra trashes we get per loop (e.g. the Death Carts), and L is the number of loops, then the average trash is worth about P*L (at first worth around 0, then at the end worth around 2*P*L, growing linearly), and in each loop, we trash X+P cards. Putting that all together gives around P*L*(X+P) for the average loop, or P*L*(X+P)*L = P(X+P)L^2 for all loops.
Your solution has P=18, L=40, X=9 for 18 * 27 * 40^2 = 777,600 which looks consistent with your 758,000 figure.
We can replace City with Sacrifice since our kingdom doesn't have any Victory cards that can be recovered from the trash. Sacrifice gives us the card draw we need but also lets us trash. This should change X=9 to X=17, which will make the total around 18 * 35 * 40^2 = 1,008,000, which is around a 230,400 money improvement.
Also, we could replace Death Cart with Junk Dealer. Even though it gives 4 less money, it draws, so we would be able to put 9 of them in instead of 8, increasing X by 1. This would mean we don't get the ruins though.
For some micro-optimizations (things that give at least 100 more VP):
- We should buy as many Treasures as possible beforehand and just play them in our Buy phase, since we can Bonfire them (and they give money!). Not the Silvers, of course.
- The same would apply to all the other actions that we could play at the very end of the turn, except...
- If we include Plan, then buying actions gives double the value from before.
- Delve
- Triumph on the last Estate
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For your solution with Upgrade instead of Death Cart:
If we use Sacrifice instead of City, this would be P=18, X=9, L=49 approximately (not accounting for the Upgrade iterations having an extra trash), for 18*27*49^2 = 1,166,886. I believe that spending two Upgrades at the beginning to gain Crown/Priest (Upgrade a Fortress and an extra Watchtower) would be slightly better, as it gives P=20, X=9, L=47 for 20*29*47^2 = 1,281,220, and this gives 20*47 = 940 total priests played instead of 18*49 = 882, making the buy phase also give more money.
It's also possible to use Procession instead of Upgrade for a similar role. At the beginning of the turn we can Procession a Lurker (with Ferry on Crown) to trash/gain the Priest and gain the Crown. Subsequent Processions can be used on Fortress just like Upgrade, with a bonus of drawing an extra card. In subsequent Processions, we could also Procession a Lurker to gain a Lurker from the trash, and gain the Mandarin. This replaces the Lurker in the trash with a new one. It has the disadvantage of forcing us to gain a 3 cost action, which is currently bad (the Watchtowers), but has the positive effect of enabling Necromancer to be another source of playing Lurkers, if we had more piles. If we're allowing Black Market, this would be an improvement.
I've also tried doing a Villa/Bonfire/KC/Lurker loop stacked on top this loop and it works, but it seems to be worse because the setup is using up too many piles.
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As an estimation, if P is the number of priests we play per loop, X is the number of extra trashes we get per loop (e.g. the Death Carts), and L is the number of loops, then the average trash is worth about P*L (at first worth around 0, then at the end worth around 2*P*L, growing linearly), and in each loop, we trash X+P cards. Putting that all together gives around P*L*(X+P) for the average loop, or P*L*(X+P)*L = P(X+P)L^2 for all loops.
Your solution has P=18, L=40, X=9 for 18 * 27 * 40^2 = 777,600 which looks consistent with your 758,000 figure.
Nice equation. I should have done something similar to sanity check my spreadsheet.
We can replace City with Sacrifice since our kingdom doesn't have any Victory cards that can be recovered from the trash. Sacrifice gives us the card draw we need but also lets us trash. This should change X=9 to X=17, which will make the total around 18 * 35 * 40^2 = 1,008,000, which is around a 230,400 money improvement.
Yes. A good improvement.
- We should buy as many Treasures as possible beforehand and just play them in our Buy phase, since we can Bonfire them (and they give money!). Not the Silvers, of course.
Yes.
- The same would apply to all the other actions that we could play at the very end of the turn, except...
- If we include Plan, then buying actions gives double the value from before.
Yes. Plan would be the way to go.
Yes. I only took it out to simplify things.
- Triumph on the last Estate
I actually did the math on this one to see if VP from Triumph beat VP from trashing the Estate and gaining more Conquests. D'oh. I forgot you could do both.
I believe that spending two Upgrades at the beginning to gain Crown/Priest (Upgrade a Fortress and an extra Watchtower) would be slightly better
I really like the idea of picking up the 10th Crown and Priest at the beginning. Big win.
It's also possible to use Procession instead of Upgrade for a similar role. At the beginning of the turn we can Procession a Lurker (with Ferry on Crown) to trash/gain the Priest and gain the Crown. Subsequent Processions can be used on Fortress just like Upgrade, with a bonus of drawing an extra card. In subsequent Processions, we could also Procession a Lurker to gain a Lurker from the trash, and gain the Mandarin. This replaces the Lurker in the trash with a new one. It has the disadvantage of forcing us to gain a 3 cost action, which is currently bad (the Watchtowers), but has the positive effect of enabling Necromancer to be another source of playing Lurkers, if we had more piles. If we're allowing Black Market, this would be an improvement.
Not sure about Procession. You'd have to give up a Lurker (one iteration) for more trashes. Also, playing Procession on a Lurker to gain a Lurker and Mandarin is not a benefit unless you can use the 3 cost action.
Necromancer is a great idea and one I hadn't thought of. But we're out of piles.
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It's also possible to use Procession instead of Upgrade for a similar role. At the beginning of the turn we can Procession a Lurker (with Ferry on Crown) to trash/gain the Priest and gain the Crown. Subsequent Processions can be used on Fortress just like Upgrade, with a bonus of drawing an extra card. In subsequent Processions, we could also Procession a Lurker to gain a Lurker from the trash, and gain the Mandarin. This replaces the Lurker in the trash with a new one. It has the disadvantage of forcing us to gain a 3 cost action, which is currently bad (the Watchtowers), but has the positive effect of enabling Necromancer to be another source of playing Lurkers, if we had more piles. If we're allowing Black Market, this would be an improvement.
Not sure about Procession. You'd have to give up a Lurker (one iteration) for more trashes. Also, playing Procession on a Lurker to gain a Lurker and Mandarin is not a benefit unless you can use the 3 cost action.
Necromancer is a great idea and one I hadn't thought of. But we're out of piles.
We can start the turn with Procession+Lurker to trash/gain the last Priest and gain a 3 cost (Crown with Ferry on it). This would do the same thing as starting the turn with two Upgrades to get the Priest and Crown, but is slightly better as we don't need to have the extra Watchtower in our deck to start. Subsequent Processions can just go on Fortress to do the same thing that Upgrade would (except draw an extra card).
Agreed on Procession on Lurkers not helping unless Necromancer is in the kingdom or we want to gain 3 costs.
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Here's an argument that we can use Expedition instead of Sinister Plot:
We would like to be able to build our deck without trashing any of the cards in it, and wind up being able to buy enough Expeditions before our mega-turn to draw our deck.
Near the start of the game, we can Expedition on some turn, then hit 6 or 7 on the following turn to buy Lost Arts on Priest.
After that, it is possible to get a hand with Fortress and 4 Priests, hitting 2+4+6+8=20, which lets us buy Pathfinding (and Training and Seaway) on Priest.
Then, it is possible to buy 9 Crowns, 9 Priests, 9 Band of Misfits, and 9 Overlords, and use them all as Priest on Fortress in the same turn. This will play 36 priests for 36 + 36*37=1368 money and 1+36=37 buys. It is possible to buy 288 Expeditions with that, which is more than enough. (Also, we could buy slightly fewer Expeditions, and buy some of the other cards we need to build up our deck.)
As pitythefool suggested, this allows us to include Sewers instead of Sinister Plot, which doubles all the trashing we can do. I'm fairly sure that over 99% of our generated money comes from trashing, so this approximately doubles our money and VP.
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It's also possible to use Procession instead of Upgrade for a similar role. At the beginning of the turn we can Procession a Lurker (with Ferry on Crown) to trash/gain the Priest and gain the Crown. Subsequent Processions can be used on Fortress just like Upgrade, with a bonus of drawing an extra card. In subsequent Processions, we could also Procession a Lurker to gain a Lurker from the trash, and gain the Mandarin. This replaces the Lurker in the trash with a new one. It has the disadvantage of forcing us to gain a 3 cost action, which is currently bad (the Watchtowers), but has the positive effect of enabling Necromancer to be another source of playing Lurkers, if we had more piles. If we're allowing Black Market, this would be an improvement.
Not sure about Procession. You'd have to give up a Lurker (one iteration) for more trashes. Also, playing Procession on a Lurker to gain a Lurker and Mandarin is not a benefit unless you can use the 3 cost action.
Necromancer is a great idea and one I hadn't thought of. But we're out of piles.
We can start the turn with Procession+Lurker to trash/gain the last Priest and gain a 3 cost (Crown with Ferry on it). This would do the same thing as starting the turn with two Upgrades to get the Priest and Crown, but is slightly better as we don't need to have the extra Watchtower in our deck to start. Subsequent Processions can just go on Fortress to do the same thing that Upgrade would (except draw an extra card).
Agreed on Procession on Lurkers not helping unless Necromancer is in the kingdom or we want to gain 3 costs.
The original plan called for the Overlord and Band of Misfits to be emptied before the megaturn. Your plan to grab the last Crown and Priest right away is great, but we don't have to do it in that order. It would be slightly better to have the extra Crown and Priest first, so we can use them right away. Then with Ferry on Band of Misfits, we'd use your Procession on Lurker tick to get the last Overlord and Band of Misfits, which aren't needed until later.
That would mean that we could later do that Procession on Lurker trick to gain the Lurker, Mandarin, and Watchtower. We're forced to gain the Watchtower but we can save them, play them at the end and trash them with Bonfire for maximum trash benefit.
I had a similar argument for not trashing the Mandarins that we gain from the kingdom. But on further reflection, they should be trashed. It's a shame, since they generate coin and are considered treasure so they can be gained back from play, but the necessity to topdeck is a big nuisance.
Here's an argument that we can use Expedition instead of Sinister Plot:
We would like to be able to build our deck without trashing any of the cards in it, and wind up being able to buy enough Expeditions before our mega-turn to draw our deck.
Near the start of the game, we can Expedition on some turn, then hit 6 or 7 on the following turn to buy Lost Arts on Priest.
After that, it is possible to get a hand with Fortress and 4 Priests, hitting 2+4+6+8=20, which lets us buy Pathfinding (and Training and Seaway) on Priest.
Then, it is possible to buy 9 Crowns, 9 Priests, 9 Band of Misfits, and 9 Overlords, and use them all as Priest on Fortress in the same turn. This will play 36 priests for 36 + 36*37=1368 money and 1+36=37 buys. It is possible to buy 288 Expeditions with that, which is more than enough. (Also, we could buy slightly fewer Expeditions, and buy some of the other cards we need to build up our deck.)
As pitythefool suggested, this allows us to include Sewers instead of Sinister Plot, which doubles all the trashing we can do. I'm fairly sure that over 99% of our generated money comes from trashing, so this approximately doubles our money and VP.
On using Expedition/Sewers instead of Sinister Plot. Just some ideas.
Start with Ferry on Lurker. We will later move it to Band of Misfits. Priority should be Capitalism, not Lost Arts, as it is cheaper. Capitalism allows all Priests to be played in the treasure phase. I'd next go for Seaway on Priest. Buy Sewers early and put Plan on Lurker. Then Fortress and just 3 Priests, or 1 Priest with some combination of 2 (Priest/Overlord/Crown), yields 2 + 6 + 10 = 18 and 4 buys. Buying 3 Lurkers (zero cost) adds 18 coins (from additional trashing), leaving one buy. More buys are available from Travelling Fair. Just an example. So I think it is very doable.
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I thought of a couple improvements:
- The Procession/Lurker trick gains Lurker, Mandarin, Watchtower, but we don't want to gain the Watchtower. We can Procession/Overlord instead to gain Overlord, Mandarin to do a bit better.
- We can start the turn with Estate and Overlord piled out, and have 4 Watchtowers instead of 1. Near the start of turn, we can Procession Procession Procession Watchtower Watchtower Watchtower to gain the last BoM, Crown, Priest, Sacrifice, and Procession. (Note: we still leave a Lurker so that it can be emulated by Overlord/BoM.)
- As late as possible into the turn, we Procession an Overlord to regain the two Processions from the trash. This allows us to the Procession/Overlord trick.
I also replaced Sinister Plot with Expedition and Sewers; I'm satisfied with the argument we gave.
With these improvements, we are able to play 8 Lurkers, 11 Estates, 10 Band of Misfits, and 8 Overlords as Lurker (37 total). Then we can do 8 Processions on Overlord. Then we do one Overlord, for a total of 46 additional loops besides the first one, giving 47*20 = 940 total Priests played. To use the earlier terminology, this is P=20, X=9, L=47 for approximately 20*29*47^2 = 1281220. (well, double that because of Sewers).
I ran some calculations myself and was able to generate 3896751 converted money (money + 2 * # buys) for 19483720 Conquest points. With some penny pinching from landmarks and some events, this goes up to 19,483,900 total points.
I included every landmark that gives us VP (besides Tomb), under the constraint that our ending deck is 10 Fortress and 1 Watchtower. Some other penny-saving things are moving Ferry around, using Pilgrimage to get the last Copper/Gold/Plat, using Delve, and using Salt the Earth.
Here's a spreadsheet with my calculations.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DWxCZJj6KovasSzS8nmJj9L2Wv3ynD4kqQltLj087J8/edit?usp=sharing
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I had a similar argument for not trashing the Mandarins that we gain from the kingdom. But on further reflection, they should be trashed. It's a shame, since they generate coin and are considered treasure so they can be gained back from play, but the necessity to topdeck is a big nuisance.
Ah, I have a method of keeping all of the Mandarins and Watchtowers until the end. The key was getting rid of the 7 Copper. On the last 4 plays of Priest (with Sewers), trash all the Copper. We get near maximum benefit for trashing them and only lose the 7 coins they would have provided.
Then our final hand is 1 Fortress, 10 Watchtowers, 10 Mandarins.
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 3 Watchtowers, 2 Mandarins
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 2 Mandarins, 1 Watchtowers, Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw Watchtower, Fortress (the two cards we need to keep in hand)
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I had a similar argument for not trashing the Mandarins that we gain from the kingdom. But on further reflection, they should be trashed. It's a shame, since they generate coin and are considered treasure so they can be gained back from play, but the necessity to topdeck is a big nuisance.
Ah, I have a method of keeping all of the Mandarins and Watchtowers until the end. The key was getting rid of the 7 Copper. On the last 4 plays of Priest (with Sewers), trash all the Copper. We get near maximum benefit for trashing them and only lose the 7 coins they would have provided.
Then our final hand is 1 Fortress, 10 Watchtowers, 10 Mandarins.
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 3 Watchtowers, 2 Mandarins
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 2 Mandarins, 1 Watchtowers, Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw Watchtower, Fortress (the two cards we need to keep in hand)
I'm not sure I see the value in doing this, since we can keep the Mandarins in the supply. They are worth a lot more in the supply since Plan lets us get an additional trash from them.
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I had a similar argument for not trashing the Mandarins that we gain from the kingdom. But on further reflection, they should be trashed. It's a shame, since they generate coin and are considered treasure so they can be gained back from play, but the necessity to topdeck is a big nuisance.
Ah, I have a method of keeping all of the Mandarins and Watchtowers until the end. The key was getting rid of the 7 Copper. On the last 4 plays of Priest (with Sewers), trash all the Copper. We get near maximum benefit for trashing them and only lose the 7 coins they would have provided.
Then our final hand is 1 Fortress, 10 Watchtowers, 10 Mandarins.
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 3 Watchtowers, 2 Mandarins
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 2 Mandarins, 1 Watchtowers, Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw Watchtower, Fortress (the two cards we need to keep in hand)
I'm not sure I see the value in doing this, since we can keep the Mandarins in the supply. They are worth a lot more in the supply since Plan lets us get an additional trash from them.
Ooh. Quite right.
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Here's a spreadsheet with my calculations.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DWxCZJj6KovasSzS8nmJj9L2Wv3ynD4kqQltLj087J8/edit?usp=sharing
I checked the spreadsheet and it only is counting two trashes per action card in the buy phase. The majority of purchases are non-actions and that's correct, but for actions, it should be:
Buy Plan for <action>
Buy <action>, trash with Watchtower, trash Fortress (Sewers), trash Fortress (Plan), trash Fortress (Sewers).
You get nearly double for remaining actions.
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I have it accounted as 1 for every card left in the supply, then an additional 1 for each of those that could be bought with Plan. It should be the same that way, but was easier to add up the way I had it in the sheet.
Sewers is accounted for by making all trashing worth 4 times the number of priests played instead of 2.