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1

Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Countering Ill-Gotten Gains?

« on: August 22, 2016, 12:49:36 am »

Unless I'm losing my mind, this (simplified) does it:

• Buy a Smithy
• Play standard big money until your opponent has bought 4 IGGs
• Then green hard: make a bunch of Duchies disappear before the IGGs run out, but go for Provinces and Estates too

I've pasted a Smithy bot below that beats the stock IGG bot 74-22 and a Council Room bot that wins 79-18. So a blind rush with no building isn't best here, although I'm not claiming IGG should actually be ignored either.

Smithy

Code: [Select]

<player name="Smithy for IGG"
 author="h1402686"
 description="Smithy bot optimized to beat IGG">
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Curse"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="7.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Curse"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Curse"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Smithy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Smithy"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countAllCardsInDeck"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="22.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>

Council Room

Code: [Select]

<player name="Council Room for IGG"
 author="h1402686"
 description="Council Room bot optimized to beat IGG">
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Curse"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="7.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Curse"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Curse"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="7.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Council_Room">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Council_Room"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countAllCardsInDeck"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="16.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>


2

Simulation / Re: Bug Reports for Geronimoo's simulator

« on: August 09, 2016, 11:53:56 pm »

If you watch the built-in Smithy and Militia bots play each other long enough, you will see Smithy discard a Smithy when attacked even when it has two green cards in its hand. I don't know what heuristics the simulator uses to discard but unless the simulator is trying to protect against Masquerade or something equally exotic I can't think why this would be a desirable behavior. If you try to reproduce this and get tired of waiting for it to happen, try a bot that buys more than 3 Militias:

<player name="Relentless Militia"
 author="h1402686"
 description="Always buys Militia over Silver">
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Attacking"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Militia"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>

3

Simulation / Re: Chapel/Festival/Smithy engine

« on: August 07, 2016, 01:16:01 pm »

Awesome!

This drives home something for me that @JW said earlier: the engine can go for Provinces or (seemingly the better default based on this bot's performance) Gardens. It's hard for a money player to know when to start greening when they don't know whether Provinces will be contested.

4

Simulation / Re: Bug Reports for Geronimoo's simulator

« on: July 30, 2016, 11:01:09 am »

When I have the built-in Develop/IGG bot play the built-in Gear bot, the Develop bot will turn its Estates into Gears rather than Silvers. It should not do this given that Gear is not on its buy list, right? (However, it does end up being a decent strategy)

5

Simulation / Re: Chapel/Festival/Smithy engine

« on: July 28, 2016, 10:34:52 pm »

However, all of this adds very few percent to the win rate at the cost of increased complexity.  If the OP or others using it want to keep things simple, I think the engine is fine as is.

I cannot claim I was trying to avoid complexity. I simply didn't figure this out. Would you mind posting or sending me your more complex bot? I'd be particularly interested to see how you make more aggressive trashing work since I'm told that slow trashing is one thing my bot does that is observably wrong.

6

Simulation / Re: Chapel/Festival/Smithy engine

« on: July 28, 2016, 10:06:34 am »

I'm at work and can't run the simulator now, but when I was building the bot a threshold of $22 to start greening was only very weakly preferred to $24. Two reasons I know of why $22 might at least not be as crazy as it sounds are:

• This engine does not, in fact, draw the whole deck consistently
• The deck only has even numbers of coin (once it's trashed its coppers and bought its two Gold), so $22 is the same as $21, good enough for 2xProvince+Duchy or 2xProvince+Festival, the latter of which gives enough money to triple Province on the next turn (and if you pull that off, that's the majority of the Provinces)

It's good to know that the bot isn't trashing aggressively enough. I'll see if I can nudge it to do better. I hadn't thought about the cycling benefit of Market for trashing. I did try the "aggressive trashing" setting for Chapel and couldn't get that to work; the system didn't seem to preserve enough economy, and adding a second Silver buy didn't fix it.

7

Simulation / Re: Chapel/Festival/Smithy engine

« on: July 28, 2016, 08:14:53 am »

Thank you both. You've pointed out two important blind spots in my consideration of this kingdom. I can't get Library to simulate as well as Smithy, but playing the card correctly does involve a non-trivial choice of which actions to discard which the simulator can't make as well as a human, so I suspect the Library strategy is actually a bit stronger. It would be really strong with a sifter. At the moment once you get a stop card in your hand there's no way to get rid of it.

Here's the problem I face with Throne Room: it seems to make the engine less reliable. In order for the engine to fire I need both a village (usually a Festival) and a Smithy in each five card starting hand. Starting with Throne Room-Festival or Throne Room-Smithy leads to a dead turn. Throne doesn't simulate well, but that could easily be because the simulator chooses the wrong action to Throne.

I found that I can restore the engine to beating the Gardens/Festival bot solidly by adding the rule "Buy Provinces if the Festival pile is empty." Otherwise, the engine never starts buying Provinces because it never gets to its $22 threshold.

8

Simulation / Chapel/Festival/Smithy engine

« on: July 27, 2016, 09:49:18 pm »

Kingdom: Chapel, Village, Bureaucrat, Gardens, Smithy, Throne Room, Festival, Library, Market, Adventurer
I believe I need gokosalvager.com to post a visual Kingdom, and they seem to be down right now, but I've attached a screenshot from the online game showing the Kingdom.

Sages of all walks of life know that simulators don't play engines well, but, emboldened by Geronimoo's first game engine post and dissatisfied with the Chapel+Village+Festival+Smithy engine I had built in a Base set only game against the computer, I decided to try anyway. After a lot of messing around I got something that narrowly beats the built-in Smithy bot on 4/3 starts, 51% to 46% (it's easy to build an engine on a 5/2 start that crushes Smithy by opening Festival/Chapel). I thought it what I came up with was interesting enough to be worth posting, in part because the scenario is so fundamental. Here's the buy list from Geronimoo's simulator:

• Buy Province if you have $22 in your deck or there are no more than 2 Provinces left
• Buy Duchy if there are no more than 3 Provinces left
• Buy Estate if there are no more than 2 Provinces left
• Buy Festival if you have at least $9 to spend and at least 2 buys
• Buy Gold unless you already have 2 Gold
• Buy Festival if count_t(Village) < count_t(Terminal) + 1
• Buy Silver unless you already have a Silver or a Festival
• Buy a single Chapel (play strategy standard)
• Buy Smithy if count_t(Village) > count_t(Terminal) - 2
• Buy Village

This bot waits until it has $22 in the deck (7 Festivals) to green and often buys as few as 3 Smithies. Its peak average $ generated per turn is $15 at turn 14. It sometimes buys no vanilla Villages but their availability is critical to the engine working, statistically.

I've been unsure whether to post this here or on the game reports forum (since I don't exactly have a game report), but my questions are:

• Is this an engine board on a 4/3 opening? If so, is this the right way to build an engine, with 7 Festivals if you could get them?
• Would you (a strong human player) buy any Throne Rooms?

9

Simulation / Re: Dominiate: a Dominion simulator that runs on the Web

« on: May 17, 2015, 04:47:24 pm »

I made the following updates to the code:

• Fixed the Lookout bug
• Fixed another bug, this one related to trashing
• Implemented Forager

I'm new to GitHub and am not sure I submitted the patch the right way, as I can't tell if anyone has seen it. So I'm posting it here as well: https://github.com/rspeer/dominiate/pull/86.

For fun, here's my first Forager result. When running SeaHag vs. a Forager/SeaHag bot, the Forager bot dominates, 89-11 (not surprisingly). Maybe more interesting, the Forager/SeaHag bot wants three Foragers and only one SeaHag. Code for the bots is attached.

10

Game Reports / Re: Worth buying King's Court?

« on: April 27, 2015, 09:17:00 pm »

Interestingly, although @SheCantSayNo's bot beats either of my original bots 60-40, its average VP is lower at every turn. The games in which SheCantSayNo's bot is ahead must tend to end early.

11

Game Reports / Re: Worth buying King's Court?

« on: April 26, 2015, 05:55:53 pm »

I'm not sure double Tactician is so dominant here. If I have my EmbassyBot play itself in Geronimoo's simulator, which reports average game length, the reported average is 20.4 turns. That's looks like a mean--a median would not end in 0.4. The distribution of game lengths must be skewed right, so the median is probably under 20 turns. And in my log, where I think I had decent shuffle luck, I buy my first Colony on turn 15. So double Tactician is a little ahead, but the Embassy bot is not as good as my King bot, which in turn is not as good as a human who can use Lookout intelligently. And that's without considering the havoc a Rogue will wreak.

12

Game Reports / Re: Worth buying King's Court?

« on: April 26, 2015, 05:43:07 pm »

Here's a double Tactician game I just played against the computer.

I didn't think through the possibility of double Tactician, and it sounds like experts feel that it is the best. It does leave you quite vulnerable to Rogue, though, right?

Some things I learned:

• Avoid Rogue. It will steal treasure and other cards you don't want from your opponent. If your opponent starts stealing engine pieces from you, I don't know if there's a good way to deal, but you might then want your own Rogue to grab your old stuff back from the Trash
• Embassy, despite being terminal, is a good friend. It adds consistency, even once you have double Tactician going, and you can use it to discard three treasures to gobble up with KC-Lookout
• KC-Festival, KC-Festival (the obvious way) seems like the right way to get to Colony. This means you will have +Actions coming out your ears for much of the game unless you get a bad draw
• You way end up way behind and have to start buying Silk Roads and Duchies to avoid ending the game by exhausting Provinces or Colonies while you're still behind

Things I believe but am less sure of:

• Assuming a 4/3 opening, open Silver-Lookout and buy another Silver before you start buying Caravans. You're eventually going to trash those Silvers, but first you need to get to $5 several times
• Buy a Festival before your first Tactician, so you have enough good cards to justify a 10 card hand
• Don't buy your second Tactician until you have $10 worth of disappearing money and an Embassy for reliability
• Don't be shy about getting a second Embassy for consistency
• Buy a third KC when it's convenient for consistency and so you can play KC-Lookout without interrupting your KC-Festival, KC-Festival for buys

[/list]

13

Game Reports / Worth buying King's Court?

« on: April 26, 2015, 03:49:40 pm »

Earlier today I played a game with Colonies and this Kingdom:

Code: [Select]

Herbalist, Lookout, Caravan, Silk Road, Bazaar, Embassy, Festival, Rogue, Tactician, King's Court
After words I spent a while running sims to see if it's worth buying King's Court or just pursuing more or less a money strategy. Since I invested a decent chunk of time in it I thought people might be interested in the results: the King's Court bot wins, but only at 54%. Here are some lessons from the bot:

• A single Rogue is helpful against the money bot, despite the concerns that a) cards costing $3 to $6 are less important in Colony games and b) you may end up stealing stuff you don't want, such as Silvers that gum up the engine
• Lookout is harmful (though the simulator doubtless plays it imperfectly)
• Buy a couple Festivals (for +Buy) and then go for Bazaars (for hand size)
• You want a fair bit of money ($40). Maybe this isn't even really an "engine" in a strict sense
• Despite the presence of Colonies, which means you may end up buying both Colonies and Provinces before the game ends, you can't assume the Silk Roads are going to be at least as valuable as Duchies

Here's the simple (no King) bot:

Code: [Select]

{
  name: 'Embassy'
  requires: ['Embassy', 'Herbalist', 'Silk Road']
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Colony" if my.countInDeck("Platinum") > 0
    "Province" if state.countInSupply("Colony") <= 6 \
               or state.countInSupply("Province") <= 6

    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Silk Road" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Platinum"
    "Gold"
    "Embassy" if my.countInDeck("Embassy") < 2 \
             and my.numCardsInDeck() >= 14
    "Embassy" if my.countInDeck("Embassy") < 1
    "Festival"
    "Bazaar"
    "Caravan"
    "Silver"
    "Copper" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 3
  ]
}

And here's the King bot:

Code: [Select]

{
  name: 'KingEngine'
  requires: ['Herbalist', "King's Court", 'Bazaar', 'Caravan', 'Lookout', 'Rogue', "Festival", "Embassy"]
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Colony" if my.countInDeck("Platinum") > 0
    "Colony" if my.getTotalMoney() >= 40
    "Colony" if state.countInSupply("Colony") <= 6 \
             or state.countInSupply("Province") <= 6

    "Province" if state.countInSupply("Colony") <= 6 \
               or state.countInSupply("Province") <= 6
   
    "Silk Road" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5 and my.getVP("Silk Road") >= 3
    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Silk Road" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Platinum" if my.getTotalMoney() < 40
    "King's Court" if my.countCardTypeInDeck("Action") >= 7
    "Gold" if my.getTotalMoney() < 40
    "Rogue" in my.countInDeck("Rogue") == 0
    "Embassy" if my.countInDeck("Embassy") + my .countInDeck("Rogue") < \
            my.countInDeck("Bazaar") + my.countInDeck("Festival") + 2
    "Bazaar" if my.countInDeck("Festival") >= 2
    "Festival"
    "Bazaar"
    "Caravan"
    # "Lookout" if my.countInDeck("Lookout") == 0 # Hurts, even after bug fix: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=619.msg486204#msg486204
    "Silver" if my.getTotalMoney() < 40 or state.gainsToEndGame() <= 3
    "Copper" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 3
    "Herbalist" if my.countInDeck("Herbalist") < 0 and my.countInDeck("Gold") + my.countInDeck("Platinum") > 0
  ]
}


14

Simulation / Re: Dominiate: a Dominion simulator that runs on the Web

« on: April 26, 2015, 03:21:13 pm »

I ended up downloading the code and making the fix. As far as I can tell I couldn't push the fix so I created an issue instead: https://github.com/rspeer/dominiate/issues/85

15

Simulation / Re: Dominiate: a Dominion simulator that runs on the Web

« on: April 26, 2015, 02:08:57 pm »

Thanks, DStu. Is there a way I can patch it for myself if I'm running from a browser? Just dumping the fixed makeCard code into the "Player 1" window in my browser doesn't work.

16

Simulation / Re: Dominiate: a Dominion simulator that runs on the Web

« on: April 26, 2015, 01:29:42 pm »

I can't get Dominiate to play Lookout. The code in cards.coffee looks like the simulator should be happy to play Lookout until it gets close to the end of the game:

Code: [Select]

makeCard "Lookout", action, {
  ...

  ai_playValue: (state, my) ->
    if state.gainsToEndGame >= 5 or state.cardInfo.Curse in my.draw
      895
    else
      -5

}
Yet the following bot buys Lookout, but never plays it:

Code: [Select]

{
  name: 'LookBug'
  requires: ['Lookout']
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Colony" if my.countInDeck("Platinum") > 0
    "Province" if state.countInSupply("Colony") <= 6 \
               or state.countInSupply("Province") <= 6
    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Platinum"
    "Gold" if my.countInDeck("Gold") < 2
    "Lookout"
    "Silver"
  ]
}

17

Goko Dominion Online / How to specify a game with Shelters (or Colonies) in the Salvager Extension

« on: April 22, 2015, 10:44:36 pm »

I have a specific Kingdom that I'd like to play with Shelters. When I start a new game on Goko and the "Select a Kingdom" dialog box comes up, I can put my ten Kingdom cards in, but the tool doesn't recognize "Shelter" nor the names of the individual Shelters. Sticking "99*Dark Ages" at the end of my list also doesn't do the trick. I don't see an answer in the help at http://dom.retrobox.eu/kingdomgenerator.html. Is there a way I can force Shelters to show up in the game?

18

Game Reports / Re: IGG strategy defeated by a surprising pair of cards

« on: April 14, 2015, 12:53:19 pm »

If your opponent isn't contesting you, opening IW to only get Great Halls is kind of like opening Province. It takes a slot in your deck, and all it does for you is score points.

Ironworks does soak up an early $4 when you could be getting something else, but as far as taking up a slot in your deck it's not as bad as it seems. As long as you're buying Great Halls, Ironworks is a cantrip. The key is that Great Halls are both an action and a victory card, so they get two of the Ironworks bonuses.

But cantrips aren't very good in decks that consist of mostly money, and are taking on Curses. They are just nothing.

Right, they Ironworks and the Great Halls are all "nothing," whereas I think WanderingWinder was saying that the Ironworks is like a regular victory card (a dead card in your hand).

19

Game Reports / Re: IGG strategy defeated by a surprising pair of cards

« on: April 14, 2015, 10:14:34 am »

If your opponent isn't contesting you, opening IW to only get Great Halls is kind of like opening Province. It takes a slot in your deck, and all it does for you is score points.

Ironworks does soak up an early $4 when you could be getting something else, but as far as taking up a slot in your deck it's not as bad as it seems. As long as you're buying Great Halls, Ironworks is a cantrip. The key is that Great Halls are both an action and a victory card, so they get two of the Ironworks bonuses.

20

Game Reports / Re: IGG strategy defeated by a surprising pair of cards

« on: April 14, 2015, 07:58:15 am »

Some simulator results:

• IGG+Ironworks is a small improvement over IGG when played head-to-head. In this case the Ironworks will be used to gain Silvers until late in the game when it will switch to Estates
• IGG+Bureaucrat is a little worse than IGG when played head-to-head
• IGG+Ironworks beats IGG+Bureaucrat 49% to 41% head-to-head
• IGG+Ironworks+Great Hall clobbers IGG+Ironworks 75% to 18%
• IGG+Bureaucrat loses to IGG+Ironworks+GreatHall 74% to 18%
• Bureaucrat (no IGGs) loses to IGG+Ironworks 72% to 27% BUT beats IGG+Ironworks+GreatHall 77% to 21%

Giving either Bureaucrat or IGG+Bureaucrat a Lookout doesn't change things much.

Code for Geronimoo's simulator is attached (though none of the bots are very complicated).

21

Game Reports / IGG strategy defeated by a surprising pair of cards

« on: April 13, 2015, 11:31:22 pm »

Code: [Select]

Squire, Stonemason, Great Hall, Lookout, Woodcutter, Bureaucrat, Ironworks, Ill-Gotten Gains, Mystic, Outpost
I looked at this Kingdom and barely saw past the IGG stack. My plan was to buy Ironworks to pump out Great Halls and a single Woodcutter as my terminal action to give me +Buys so I could tack coppers onto my IGGs. The bot I was playing against came up with the perfect response, but perhaps should have waited a little longer to let me dig myself in deeper. The response was a Bureaucrat on turn 2, a card that I had basically ignored when looking at the board. So much for that game plan. I checked with a simulator and the built-in Bureaucrat strategy works wonders against my Ironworks/Great Hall idea.

In fact, 9 of the 10 supply cards got bought in the course of the game: only Lookout was left out. I love it when Kingdoms play like that. And the key card on the board ended up being not IGG but Stonemason, with largely but not entirely for its overpay ability.

I still don't know what the best strategy is with this Kingdom, but the computer got a lot closer than I did.

Here's the log: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150411/log.516cccebe4b082c74d79df9b.1428796850902.txt

22

Help! / Re: Can Ironworks+Caravan+Conspirator+Treasury beat Council Room?

« on: April 11, 2015, 03:47:41 pm »

I also think the engine is difficult here for the mentioned reasons, but if I'm forced to play it I would like the Advisor better.  Point is that with Consp/Treasury, you play a cantrip engine that doesn't increase handsize.  And you don't have trashing, and 12+x stop cards in your deck that interupt the Cantrips (7 Copper, 3 Estates, 2 Ironworks, x Provinces).  1 Caravan increases your handsize by 1/2 (you can only play it every other turn at best), 1 Advisor by 2.  Without trashing, you need every bit of handsize you can get. You can gain the higher valued discarded cards by the Consp/Treasury.  This is of course still not optimal, but should work out better.

OTOH, Advisor wants trashing too. With a non-trimmed deck an opponent can stick you with Estates and Coppers. I tried playing against the computer and even though I'm gaining one or two spammable action cards a turn there's still enough junk to hurt the Advisors pretty badly even before I start greening.

23

Help! / Re: Can Ironworks+Caravan+Conspirator+Treasury beat Council Room?

« on: April 11, 2015, 11:57:50 am »

I suppose I also could have been more canny about controlling my reshuffles. There is probably a lot of opportunity with this deck to keep Caravans and Conspirators from missing reshuffles (though Caravan, being a Duration card, doesn't make this easy).

24

Help! / Can Ironworks+Caravan+Conspirator+Treasury beat Council Room?

« on: April 10, 2015, 08:54:35 pm »

Code: [Select]

Courtyard, Moat, Advisor, Caravan, Conspirator, Feast, Ironworks, Council Room, Journeyman, Treasury
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150410/log.516cccebe4b082c74d79df9b.1428709884985.txt
* Also: how do I get my kingdom to show up graphically in my post?

I played a game against a Goko bot in which I tried to build an engine and the bot beat me with no Kingdom cards besides a single Council Room.

The ability to gain Caravans and Conspirator with Ironworks, and to perhaps have a Treasury hanging around to help me buy yet more pieces, seemed like it would be pretty powerful against BM+terminal draw. But it wasn't. I couldn't beat Council Room in Geronimoo's simulator. "Well, Council Room makes for very short games," I thought. So I tried my simulator bot against Smithy. No better.

If I let my bot buy Woodcutter (so it can get +Buy for $3 instead of from a Council Room for $5) I can get it to win, but not by that much. Warehouse or Cellar is a little better still. But is the engine really so weak that with the given board that it can't win?

Two other notes:

• I realize that Advisor is also an option on the board. I didn't pursue it during the game because I preferred Caravan. But perhaps that was a mistake. The simulator doesn't support Advisor.
• Perhaps also I should have snagged a Courtyard. The simulator doesn't benefit from Courtyard and doesn't seem to play it that well. For example, I've seen it put a Caravan on top of its deck when just playing the Caravan seems like the obvious route.

Here's my simulator code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playerCollection>
<player name="Ironworks/Caravan/Conspirator"
 author="Chadeos"
 description="">
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Conspirator"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Treasury">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Treasury"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Ironworks">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ironworks"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Conspirator">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Conspirator"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Conspirator"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Caravan"/>
         <extra_operation type="minus" attribute="2.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Caravan"/>
   <buy name="Conspirator"/>
   <buy name="Silver">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Silver"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Treasury"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Ironworks"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>

</playerCollection>

25

Game Reports / Re: Can you play this board better than my sim?

« on: April 05, 2015, 12:56:27 pm »

Baron is indeed nice because (among other things) it means you can potentially grab the last four Provinces (if you KC a Baron) to end the game.

EDIT: and as I result I find myself using Islands to purge Coppers instead of Estates.