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1

Dominion General Discussion / Re: newbie question on mandarin

« on: February 18, 2014, 09:24:17 am »

i always wondered but i never took the time to make the stat myself.

How good is a Mandarin/Potion opening to reach 3P on the first reshuffle? It may be one turn slower but if it is more stable it can be worth it if reaching that 3P early is the key to the match.

2

Dominion Articles / Re: Strategies in intrigue

« on: February 11, 2014, 01:58:57 pm »

Scout.

Bridge builder, I'm just letting you know, this is a joke.  It is a common joke here to say scout is amazing (when it actually isn't).

Which is sad because base + intrigue have actually some chance to have a board where scout could be useful.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Attack against other attacks

« on: February 03, 2014, 05:25:51 pm »

True that makes it way less overpower while still being quite unique. i like that.

I think i should rename it Serial Killer or even Dexter too

4

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Attack against other attacks

« on: February 03, 2014, 05:18:18 pm »

Nice. I like your version too. I hope it will test well.

5

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Attack against other attacks

« on: February 03, 2014, 04:55:28 pm »

Wow, both of those seem really overpowered. +$3 for $4, by itself, is almost certainly way too strong. And boring, as you say.

Serial Poisoner is essentially an activated Conspirator that always draws an Attack card. And if these are the only Attack card in you deck, playing one plays all of them that aren't in your hand. For $4. Even at a cost of $6, that seems nuts.

And none of that even counts the poisoner mechanic.

Too be honest they probably are. I think +3$ is probably too luck based as an opening anyway. and the chaining version should only look in a set number of card on top of the deck (i would say 4). But you have to take into account that they get killed by other players poisoner. So that if the effect needs to be around a 5 cost cards at the least for you to buy them in the first place.

Anyway that was just idle thought, i was just wandering if someone at looked into that direction yet ^^

6

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Attack against other attacks

« on: February 03, 2014, 04:40:45 pm »

Poisoner
Action - Duration - Attack
Cost 4$

+2$
Until the beginning of your next turn, each time an other player discard an attack card from play: Trash it.

It's got tracking issues with Moat and Lighthouse. You have to remember if you successfully blocked the attack by the time your turn comes around.

Also, it has the "bad ratio" issue that most "Reaction that hurts the attacker"-type cards have. You're only "attacking" the player of the attack instead of all other players. With this on the table, I'd rather forgo Attack cards rather than have them be either dead or one-shots. The fact that Poisoner is just a terminal Silver when not trashing Attacks seals the deal. I can make your Poisoners worse by not buying Attack cards.

I think it might work better if it also had some sort of attack effect that worked regardless of whether your opponent is playing Attack cards. That way you're incentivized to buy one even if the opponents don't have any Attack cards. That may in turn incentivize them to buy Poisoners. I haven't thought it through that thoroughly, though. (Dang, that was an unintentional tongue-twister.)

Ok that's fair enough remarks.

For tracking issue i think they are actually more easy than you think. If you have a Moat in your hand at the start of the turn you know you are protected for that turn. same for lighthouse you know at the beginning of any turn if you are under poisoner for that turn or not.

But you are right that it needs to be good enough in its own right to warrant playing it in the first place especially if its the only attack in the kingdom.
And actually since it is a risky card by design we can probably go a little overboard for a 4 cost card with it.

So i would say either the boring way:

    Boring Poisoner
    Action - Duration - Attack
    Cost 4$

    +3$
    Until the beginning of your next turn, each time an other player discard an attack card from play: Trash it.


Or the more crazy way:

    Serial Poisoner
    Action - Duration - Attack
    Cost 4$

    +2$
    Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal an Attack card. Discard the other cards then play the attack card.
    Until the beginning of your next turn, each time an other player discard an attack card from play: Trash it.

I think i really like that last version ^^ but i am probably craaaazy

7

Variants and Fan Cards / Attack against other attacks

« on: February 03, 2014, 04:11:42 pm »

I have seen a lot of posts saying that you should not design a fan card that will punish other player for playing attacks.
The reasoning behind it being that by having such a card on the board the other player would not buy an attack cards in the first place thus prevent interaction and leads to less interesting boards instead of creating interaction.

But i am a little obstinate so i will try my version of it anyway ^^

Poisoner
Action - Duration - Attack
Cost 4$

+2$
Until the beginning of your next turn, each time an other player discard an attack card from play: Trash it.


The exact wording may need to be refined but i think the concept is clear.

Why do i think that would work:
1) It is a duration and not a reaction so you have to play it beforehand and you opponent knows that the effect will be there for that turn.
2) It doesn't prevent the attack for that turn, the penalty for playing the attack is only seen on the next shuffle.
3) Mostly because it is an attack card itself. Being a duration it even kill the opponent poisoner played the turn before so that if you want to play that attack card you should go and grab the poisoner for yourself.

So what do you think. Should i move that idea in the bad card idea thread or is viable?

8

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Beginner's heuristics for evaluating engines

« on: February 03, 2014, 02:44:48 pm »

Also you will need +1 card to get a +buy if none of the +action or +cards you are using have a +buy.

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Beginner's heuristics for evaluating engines

« on: February 03, 2014, 02:43:09 pm »

OK that makes more sense now.

few remarks:
You are talking about the gainer but what about the +buy?
They are more tricky because their effects highly depends on the costs of the cards you needs. (hamlet can be gained easily with +buys but worker's village would be way harder).

in general you don't count into account the costs of cards for your engine (if all cards you need costs 5: you will have a lot of miss turns that will add to your Z quite a lot without adding more cards that you need).

Also it seems you are prepping for an engine that will get province + estate if i followed correctly, while possible i don't think that it is a good idea to push the beginner to learn engine on such tight engine.
I would have done the heuristic to prep for double province turns before BM guys got its fourth province.

10

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Beginner's heuristics for evaluating engines

« on: February 03, 2014, 02:19:15 pm »

I am sorry but i find that pretty unreadable as it is.

Can you give us an explanation of what X, Y  and Z represents so we can follow the reasoning behind that heuristic?
Right now it feels like reading un-commented recursive code.

It seems X is the total drawing power you need to reach to draw your whole deck. but i have no idea what the other 2 values are.

11

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Question about 'trash' cards

« on: February 03, 2014, 10:14:57 am »

I think the OP issue with costs are just coming from the idea that cost are a function of the power of the cards.
I don't think that is the case in Dominion.

Costs are a function of accessibility in term of Timing and Accumulation.

Timing:
- cards costing 4 or less are early game cards, cards that will ramp up your starting deck (Removing the starting cards while Gaining/Buying better ones) or slow down the start of your opponents.
- cards costing 5 are more middle game cards: cards that will ramp you up further and quicker, so that one of your first goal in a game is to reach 5 several time to gain those.
- cards costing 6 or more are end game cards: They should either be the goal of your strategy until you reach them (Goons/ King's court) or a way to gain Big Green cards.

Accumulation:
Mostly important for the low level cards:
- cards costing 1 or 2: can have 3 flavor: strong but no interest in being accumulated (Chapel), Strong if accumulated in great quantities (Fool's gold, Native Village), weak and neutral to the deck (pearl diver). In all 3 cases the fact that they are easily accumulated by any sort of +buy is a good thing.
- cards costing 3: are harder to get with +buy until late in the mid game but are easy to accumulate anyway (since 3 is nearly impossible to miss in an hand). So you will find there cards that can be accumulated in early game easily without strong consequences)
- cards costing 4: are the hardest of the early game to accumulate so you can have cards there that will be fairly strong (Caravan for example or Tournament) where the goal of the mid game will be to win the split. But mostly you have cards in the 4 range that could cause issue by being opened in double.

For the case of the trasher:
- chapel cost 2 because opening chapel/Something should always be a possibility (even if you start 5/2) and it is no consequences since accumulating more chapel is useless anyway.
- Moneylender costs 4 so that you can not open double moneylender (if you don't conflict that could be a very great boost very early). By the way Moneylender is more dangerous as a double opening than pure trasher because you don't lose the turn in which you trash so that you keep the same tempo as someone who had just opened silver.
- Trading post is a very great opening: (Even better than moneylender but basically the same idea, trashing bad cards while keeping the tempo) as such it needs to costs 5 because otherwise it would be an opening an all board it is in. It is a little sub par in mid-game and even worse as late game so that it terms of power it is overpriced but in term of accessibility it is where it should be.
- Forge: By designing it with a cost of 7, Donald X basically forced it to be only an end game card. in term of power it could easily have been a 5 but the choice have been made to not use it in mid game. In end game it is an ok way to gain provinces or to improve your deck. The price of 7 instead of 6 means for me that he wanted to avoid getting an early one by chance on the turn 3-5. It is possible that it would have been too strong then (forging your whole hand a la chapel plus gaining a card)

Hope that will help you understand how costs in Dominion are tricky and works in a strange ways.

ps: Je pense qu'il y a pas mal de francais sur le forum et autre europeen d'une maniere general. Ne t'inquiete pas pour ton anglais, tant que tu est comprensible personne ne va te tenir rigueur d une faute ou deux. 

12

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What cards would you happily do without?

« on: February 03, 2014, 09:32:11 am »

I could do without Black Market because it is:
1) Badly worded (buy phase in the middle of an action phase)
2) Unfair (Fair being determined by both player having the same game play opportunity)
But Mostly:
3) Unplayable in IRL once you have all the extension (All the setup rules for it are really really silly)

I also really hate Tournament but the card is probably fine and should stay, I will just continue to hate it with a passion and lose every board it is on.

13

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Introductory kingdoms with Intrigue/Seaside (and not base)?

« on: January 28, 2014, 04:20:11 pm »

One other issue I have with Davio, itchiko, and Polk5440's sets are that they only have two options at $5 and neither is a powerful terminal. Tribute is close, but I wouldn't count it. I actually think that the fact that the Base Set's suggested first set has only two options at $5 is also less than ideal, but at least it has Mine. The Base Set dates from back when Donald thought $4 was the most important cost, so there you go.

Polk, I do like your set in general. I might swap out Minion for Ghost Ship just to have a $5 terminal.

While i understand the theory i thing that learning that terminal 5$ are usually critical is the same as learning to trash your starting deck: an important lesson if you want to go and play Dominion Correctly but something that can be left out of the first game. The first game should be all about exploration of possibilities and having fun with under-optimized decks.

Plus on the 2 sets available the option for terminal 5 are:
Trading Post, Tribute, Explorer, Merchant Ship, Wharf
Saboteur, Torturer, Ghost Ship

So removing the strong attack that will be pretty unfun for beginner especially in multi-players game.
I would vote Trading Post out since its purpose is not very easy to understand for beginner. And i would definitely veto Wharf: way too strong a card for a first game, and the card is not especially fun anyway, just stupid strong.

Of the 3 left my preference was to Tribute, but i guess Explorer or Merchant Ship would work as well but am i not sure either of those 3 qualify as powerful terminal anyway.

14

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Introductory kingdoms with Intrigue/Seaside (and not base)?

« on: January 28, 2014, 03:33:27 pm »

Here would be my proposition:
Haven, Lookout, Warehouse, Shanty Town, Treasure Map, Cutpurse, Bridge, Treasury, Tribute, Harem

Why those cards:
- Treasure Map: i think that's a very good card for beginner, very easy to understand and very rewarding to make it work. That can give them a starting point to have an idea of what their short term strategy will be.
- Lookout: voluntarily the only trasher because it is pretty easy to understand that will doing nothing for you now it will help you next hand. The fact that trashing is actually good lo,g term should be left out of the first games, as it is often confusing for new players.
- Haven: good Treasure Map enabler. The duration is easy to explain. The fact that it rets in place between turn is very self explanatory.
- Warehouse: another good treasure map enabler. and easy card to pick understand. Plus since they will certainly not trash any coppers, it will works okay on non optimized deck.
- Shanty Town: the village of the board, plus they can potentially find the combo with warehouse/haven which are nothing great but would be rewarding for those that makes it work.
- Cutpurse is the simplest, less damaging attack of those 2 sets and helps seeing the interaction. (plus it gives an incentive to trash copper with lookout)
- Bridge is the +buy of the set to understand the concept of +buy.The good thing with bridge is that it is immediately rewarding of actually using that +buy even without a mega turn.
- Treasury because that is a strong 5 cost card that could not go wrong. It also may give some player the plan to try to accumulate plenty of it.
- Tribute: because that is a great card to show interaction between players that is not too aggravating for the receiving player. Since the deck will be a bit of everything anyway it should work correctly and offer a swingy luck based card for the high risk high rewards type of players.
- Harem: a good and simple alternate victory point card. To explain dual-type cards and to give mid terms objective to the player, without penalizing them for greening too early. It also give some good reward to play tribute that should be fun for new players.

All in all it is a pretty weakish board with nothing crazy. It has a lot of nice interaction here and there and new player would not be penalized too much to try all the card they wants. It also introduce most of the base concept. But everything should be working nicely, there are 2 plans that are easy to spot for beginners (Treasure Map, Treasury stack). Most of the cards are cheap so bad decision at the start of the game should not be penalizing too much and plenty of interaction.

15

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 206th card

« on: January 27, 2014, 05:45:56 pm »

I think the best promo ever would be either a corrected version of either scout or rebuild but i would not count on that.

So instead i will bet the new promo will be an alternate victory card.

You correct those cards by making them more powerful and weaker, respectively, so if they got corrected, the original versions would get even worse.

I really was thinking new card named Scout and/Or Rebuild with the same previous art. So a real Errata to replace the previous cards completely and not just new cards with the same kind of idea but at a correct power level/ price (there have been already several of those for scout already)

But yes i know we will not see actual errata of cards that really would need them (even if there's only very few of those). But one can dream ^^

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 206th card

« on: January 27, 2014, 04:09:30 pm »

I think the best promo ever would be either a corrected version of either scout or rebuild but i would not count on that.

So instead i will bet the new promo will be an alternate victory card.

17

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Edge Case Me

« on: January 08, 2014, 01:17:34 pm »

• Open Silver/Throne Room

6 player game with IGG on the board. You are first player and open silver to do a silver/silver opening to IGG when you realize all 5 other players have a 5/2 split and open IGG.
You know realize all 10 IGG and all 50 curses will be gained by the time of the second shuffle. That means the game will be ending in am estate/duchy rush and willl probably end around before the third shuflle. You need an high risk/ high reward plan to have a chance.

Luckily for you there is one: in the form of poor house. With some warehouse support. But their is no village so your best chance to grab an early lucky province (which would probably put you in a favorable sit) is to throne room that poor house using Warehouse to remove the copper. So by the end of the T5 and the 2nd reshuffle you plan to have: 1 throne room, 1 poor house and 2 warehouse in your deck. Problem is there is a chance that you may not reach 4 again during the next 3 turns (you have 9 coins in 17 cards) there is also a chance that you got a 2 coin or 1 coin hand in those 3 turns so you want to keep the poor house buy for such an hand. (plus you don't want other player to see what you are doing right now to avoid copycat).

18

Dominion General Discussion / Re: "Fixing" Tournament

« on: October 23, 2013, 03:39:06 pm »

maybe i am strange but i would actually have fixed it the other way around. The prizes are fun and are what make Tournament a really special card. The problem is that it is also a very good card anyway (a market variant costing 4 for the early game that is very strong).

My fix would be to remove the +1$ out of it.

Early game it is now just a cantrip. It doesn't help you buy provinces or anything else. So now except a few edge case you will have to define a game plan with out it at first and then when you will be in measure to buy your first province (or probably a little before) you will have the choice to add some in your deck or not but that will be a strategic decision which will be decided by kingdom and board decision. The effect is still strong: if everything goes perfect you win your shining price in hand but the card is now not an auto play any longer.

That said i also really like the idea of the return the prize to the pile after use.

19

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The thread where the current topic always gets derailed

« on: August 01, 2013, 01:09:39 pm »

20

GokoDom / Re: GokoDom II: Suntastic Summerish Season Signups Sthread

« on: July 31, 2013, 01:54:15 pm »

i'm in, own the sets but no promos.

21

Dominion: Guilds Previews / Re: Preview #5: Herald

« on: June 07, 2013, 10:35:13 am »

That's a real sweet counter to ghost ship.

other than that it seems like a better version of wishing well with an added inn on buy effect.

22

Dominion General Discussion / Re: My disappointment with all of you.

« on: May 29, 2013, 09:25:55 pm »

Further, telling people in advance what decks you have costs you a slight competitive advantage you get from hosting the game.

What.

Thank you, i am not the only one.

23

Goko Dominion Online / Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model

« on: May 17, 2013, 05:23:10 pm »

My biggest problem with Goko business model is that it doesn't make any sense in term of business >_>

To make money you need to make benefit so you sell a product such that you sell it at an higher price that what it costs you.

In case of board/card game, your cost are:
- investment costs to create the game/expansion
- production cost to print and assemble the boxes
- structural costs (sales, IT, administration)

In that case your structural costs are negligible towards the production cost:
That make you do a business decision based on risks: you published a game at risks and get your money back each time a box is sold. Your are winning money when a certian number of boxes have been sold.

Now you have Goko a web server based installation, your cost structure become:
- Investment costs to create the implementation
- On going development (Debug, new expansion)
- IT infrastructure

Now the last items the cost of maintenance of the IT infrastructure become the main concerns because it will be very expensive to keep several thousands connections at the same time.

So now you have your costs that are out of your control and mainly time based. so you have to compensate by having regular gain. basically keeping higher revenues than costs during the life time of your server.

And what do you chose to do as a business model:
You take the same model as the Board/Card game industry !!!!!!

But that means you have revenues that are now unrelated to your costs.

So that after a certain time when most of the initial buy are done it will now cost you some money to keep the server alive because the revenue are already done and all you see in your future are maintenance cost.
So that the optimal business strategy is to shut down the server at this point.

So you basically ask your client to take the business risk for you >_> and that they will still buy your product hoping that you will be honest even if it is not in your business interest.

That still could work but that's clearly very ill thought. It just demonstrate very short business vision and a non versatile behavior to new business environments.

24

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How many women do you think are on dominion cards?

« on: May 10, 2013, 02:17:54 pm »

Actually not sarcastic. Overstated though, yes (my biggest personal problem with messageboards is that I post in a hurry and sometimes say things in a pretty goofy way).

But here's my explanation:

My daughter likes Dominion (although we haven't played in a few months, so much going on)
 
I hadn't really thought about the implications of the card name until she played her first Cornucopia game and we played with Tournament. She really wanted to win a prize. She was 5. She didn't manage her deck very well, so it took her awhile.

She also really sees herself in the media she consumes. She prefers band with female singers. She prefers movies with female leads (and have you noticed how most kids' movies are dominated by male leads? random example: it took pixar 13 films to make one where the main character is female).

Many little girls her age are into the princess thing (not sure if it's big internationally or not, but in the US disney does a TON of branding of the 'disney princess' line), and so people are always talking about girls being princesses, calling them 'Princess', etc.
And we were playing Dominion, and I just had that 'huh' moment when it clicked in that Princess was a prize, like a bag of gold, a crown...

Yeah, I know it's a standard medieval storyline... but that doesn't mean I don't wince when I see it and generally aspire for media to have different storylines.
Dominion is generally pretty good about gender... females are depicted on cards (unlike Castle Panic for example). I know Donald has posted that he wanted ambiguous gender description (players described as "they" instead of "he") but that the publisher changed it.

Witch is one of her favorite cards to play with, even though she hates being cursed. I'm pretty sure it's because she wants to buy a powerful female card.

I will play the Devil's advocate here a little but i think the problem may not be Dominion related.
The idea of offering the hand of the princess to the winner of a Tournament is a pretty common representation of the image of the courteous chivalry. It is also a clear reminder of the gender roles that are linked to it.

The problem you have here is more related to the fact that society is still conveying that symbol of Princesses to our children to this days.
The simple fact that your daughter identify herself as a princess is already a potential alteration of her personality construction in a more passive role (cf/ fairy tales, video games,...).
I know that Disney (and others Nintendo for example face the same issue) has tried really hard to change that representation in the last decades, trying to give them more active roles. I am thinking of "Brave" and "Tangled" for example, but there is other examples.

My 2 cents would be: don't avoid the subject and use that occasion to illustrate the history of Women's liberation. I am pretty sure you can at least explain it in simple enough concept that a five years old can understand.

But of course that's your daughter so your the one making the call here. Educate her the way you think is best. ^^

25

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: May 10, 2013, 11:35:31 am »

Since you are the government:
Isn't counterfeit negative for the economy of your kingdom. So that it boost your economy of the short terms but breaks it a little on the long terms. I always understood the counterfeit card this way.

I also always considered treasures are representing your source of income (like taxes on your kingdom i guess) more than real hard treasure. because otherwise it doesn't really make sense to reuse them again and again.