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1
Automatch-able games with control over the kingdom is the one feature that would get me to start paying again.

2
Dominion General Discussion / Re: New Player-Strategy Question
« on: April 25, 2019, 03:41:19 pm »
This is a super complex kingdom, and all the considerations others have raised are valid.

Something to consider when deciding to buy Wharf or Torturer is that Torturer becomes a plain Smithy once the Curse pile is empty (you can choose to "gain a Curse" and let that action fail). Some curses will come out early with Swindler, and there's strong enough draw with Wharf and trashing with Forager + Upgrade that you can also accept Curses from Torturer more easily than most Torturer games. So I'm not as scared of Torturer as I might normally be here, definitely favoring Wharf.

BUT emptying curses plus the presence of Lurker, Haggler and to a lesser extent Swindler means this game is gonna be very heavy on pile ending threats. OP talked about games ending 40-9 or 50-18 but it could just as easily end 1-0 or 0-negative on piles. If both players get engines running, I might buy a couple Torturers late if I want to apply pressure by running out Curses, or if I need draw but the Wharf pile is dangerously low (Minion is also a draw option, with an attack that's weaker than a still-active Torturer but better than nothing).

I'd probably open Swindler + Forager and look to get a second Forager pretty quick. First time I hit $5 would probably be Haggler, so I could focus on buying the great $5 cards and look to gain Fishing Village, Lurker and maybe the second Forager or Swindler incidentally.

Still another thing to consider, with all the available gains, is Forager as Payload. Taking time to buy a Silver and a Gold to trash might be a little slow, but maybe Haggler makes it easy. Haggler and Lurker definitely make it easy to keep a bunch of Foragers well fed.

3
Situations where I resign: Any time starting a different game would be more fun for me.

"Will resign" is different from "already lost" but technically I haven't lost until the games ends. My opponent could make a huge mistake, or lose their connection. I guess if I cared about rating I'd play everything to the end for those little chances. Instead I play rated because that's where the best opponents are, and resign whenever it's time for the next game.

4
Dominion General Discussion / Re: A Question About First-Player Advantage
« on: February 26, 2019, 07:52:41 pm »
markus says:



[fixed from earlier version]

I'm probably dumb, I don't get these stats. They seem to say that out of 43,898 games, P1 won 3,419 games. But that would be crazy.
I read it as: Out of 43898 games, 20121 end on P2's turn. Of those 20121, 541 are ties, 3419 are P1 wins. Makes sense that P2 would not often choose to end the game with a P1 win. 1125 of those 3419 end by anything other than P2 resigning, and of those 1125, 1085 include Fleet.

5
Automatch on unrated tables is my #1 wanted feature on ShuffleIt, but I think I'm in a minority there...
I'm in a similar minority for wanting rated-and-automatched games with kingdoms chosen the way you choose yours.

6
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Pearl Diver buff acceptable?
« on: November 28, 2018, 02:03:54 pm »
... two Witches for less than $5 in one set. You get endless games with junking.

After I had to look up what the other Witch might be, I must say that Ambassador rather than Sea Hag causes games with endless junking, while Sea Hag may account for some endless games with junking.

Ambassador causes games with flinging the same Copper back and forth between two thin and functional decks, and games with an early resignation.

For me almost every online game of Dominion is either between two thin and functional decks or someone resigns, but I digress. DXV's description of Ambassador as a sub-5 "Witch" got me wondering if it might be good for a hypothetical update to get rid of the potentially endless junking. Like what if it said, "Trash up to two copies of the same card from your hand. Each other player gains a Curse." The Curse pile would run out about as fast as with any other curser, no copper tennis, less chance to get buried in copper, etc.

Edit: I guess you'd lose the fancy uses of Ambassador to empty piles for a win but maybe that's acceptable?

7
Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Request: Randomize button in Create Table
« on: November 27, 2018, 07:41:54 pm »
The way I create kingdoms IRL is to start with a randomizer, then tweak the random board (optionally change one or two cards). I'd like the tools to do the same online.

My pipe dream: getting automatched opponents for kingdoms made this way. If I could do that, I'd start paying for expansions again.

8
Automatic undo behavior would be fine. Auto-deny, auto-allow without new information, and universal auto-allow should all be options. It could even be possible to make undo rules part of your automatch criteria but I'm not sure how I feel about possibly fragmenting the player base that way.

9
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Question- What is an Engine
« on: July 27, 2018, 03:33:19 pm »
On the other hand, it seems odd that a deck which draws itself every turn but still can only gain one VP card a turn is not an engine ("draw-your-deck money"?), but then you add a single source of +gain and suddenly it becomes an engine. So like a Scrying Pool one-terminal-per-turn deck with a single Expand as the only source of additional points (an example to reflect an actual game I played), and that stops becoming an engine if you remove the Expand?
So thinking about engine in contrast to money, we usually refer to money decks by a single card, e.g. Embassy-BM, Swindler-BM, etc. Even if there might be another kingdom card in the deck, that's not the focal card and doesn't interact with much with the focal card, like maybe there's a trasher that does its job early and then turns dead.

Extra gains don't generally turn a non-engine into an engine, or else we'd have to call a deck with a bunch of Silver, Gold and a few Margraves an engine (I'd call it Margrave-BM).

Nonterminal stacks are a gray area, especially lab variants. Like would we say "Hunting Party BM" or "Hunting Party engine?" I think that depends: usually I say the former if the deck consists mostly of HP and treasures, with maybe one other terminal. But if I'm using HP to draw villages and terminals and play them, that's an engine.

So I think the defining feature of engines is interaction. A money deck has one action as its focal point (maybe two, depending on how we classify Lab-variant-plus-terminal), and mostly uses that card for its effect in isolation. In contrast an engine is built around interactions between different actions.

10
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Question- What is an Engine
« on: July 26, 2018, 09:20:54 pm »
The problem I have with the term "engine" is that with more expansions and better play, it's becoming increasingly clear that the vast majority of the time, an "engine" of some kind is the correct build on a board.
I don't even find that the majority of random boards have the possibility of an engine. Sure if the engine is possible, it's usually also the strongest strategy. But like, no anti-terminals, no engine. No draw, probably no engine (edge cases notwithstanding). Junking stronger than the available trashing? Good luck connecting the parts. We don't need a super specific definition of engine to note that it has pretty steep requirements for what's needed in the kingdom.

11
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Question- What is an Engine
« on: July 26, 2018, 09:10:01 pm »
An engine is a collection of cards that can repeatedly be used together for extra benefit. I think main critieria of an engine definition is not to define specific ideas but to exclude
  • A good stuff deck that succeeds because individual cards are working well in a suitable environment
  • A planned deck that never uses cards together (like workshop - gardens)
  • Some megaturn decks that do little apart from hitting the megaturn
I like this list of things that are not engines. It's not too hard to complement it and come up with a definition for engine. Something like: a planned deck based on interactions between multiple cards, with the goal of having consistent production  for several turns (of money, attack plays or whatever the payload is).

12
Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Re: Frozen Rats
« on: July 24, 2018, 04:55:42 pm »
Graverobber is a known bug for the AI.
Doesn't happen often, as it doesn't usually buy it.
Usually happens when it gets passed one with Masq.
In this case it was a Black Market buy.
Noted. The AI didn't buy Graverobber even from Black Market, a live opponent did. I continued with bot after the live opponent resigned. Guess I should stop doing that.

13
Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Frozen Rats
« on: July 21, 2018, 07:11:20 pm »
"Waiting for Lord Rattington." Game 16587615. Never saw it stop to think before.

14
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Reactions
« on: July 17, 2018, 04:18:13 pm »
Favorite: Diplomat. The most fun engines are the ones that need some care in operating, Diplomat enables those.
Least Favorite: Beggar.
Most Useful: Watchtower.

15
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Question- which one tilts you?
« on: June 01, 2018, 06:58:39 pm »
Show of hands here-- which one is more frustrating,
You getting a bad draw or your opponent getting a good one?

Just curious how people feel about this (and we're not talking about how they're the same thing).

Depends on the board. Like if it's a simple money game, whatever draws are gonna happen, maybe someone hits $5 or $6 or $8 or whatever number they need more often than someone else. What's frustrating about that game imo isn't shuffle luck, it's that I somehow wound up playing that kindgom. Draws are more frustrating for me in games where the decks ought to be more reliable, stalled engines are the worst (probably has something to do with how often a dead turn loses the game).

16
If you do mean something like 'percentage of games this card is in in which you gain the card by choice at least once in the game' then, off the top of my head, Butcher comes to mind (Dungeon in your case). There are probably fewer games that I ignore Butcher than there are games where I ignore Cultist and Monty. But I'd still say Cultist and Monty are "stronger" -- air quotes, because as this thread suggests, I don't really know what makes a card strong.

This was what I proposed above, and I still suspect it's better -- because it's both feasible and 'good enough' -- than the other proposed metrics.

Maybe it's not powerful or precise enough to distinguish Mountebank/Cultist/Butcher, but maybe it is! And maybe it would lead to some more interesting discussions about what makes a card 'strong'.

Perhaps it's the best we've got (for now). In which case Border Village looks like a REALLY strong card .. but maybe it just is? ???
I think we can do better. Two things that come to mind are measuring how often one "safely" ignores the card, and how often it makes the difference in a win. We can approximate those respectively by: percentage of games with the card where the loser gains it by choice and the winner doesn't, and percentage of games with the card where the winner gains it by choice and the loser doesn't (the third category to make this add to 100% is games with the card where both players gain it).

More generally, I think we could be looking at which events correlate with winning the game: gaining a card at all, gaining more copies than the opponent, playing the card more often than the opponent, etc. We might end up with a "power" measurement that includes a bunch of metrics, or even finding numbers to back up intuitive statements like: Chapel is most powerful in singles but Scrying Pool is most powerful in stacks.

17
Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Feature Request: Mute the chat
« on: April 23, 2018, 02:50:42 am »
I wanna be able to turn this shit off...


18
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Would you trash an estate worth 2VP?
« on: April 11, 2018, 11:49:20 am »
I frequently still trash starting estates with Inheritance on the board, or when I intend to use Baron as payload later. Getting rid of a stop card early is usually that helpful.

19
Dominion General Discussion / Re: When are Travellers ignorable?
« on: March 22, 2018, 09:25:08 pm »
Obvious silly case: They're in the Black Market.
Edge case to the edge case: Peasant in the Black Market, no +Buy on the board.

20
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Anthology/Fan edtion PLEASE
« on: March 18, 2018, 02:42:37 pm »
Maybe-unpopular opinion: I kinda think there's enough Dominion cards, and I hope instead of expansions we get spinoffs or just new games from Donald X.

21
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Extending the game
« on: March 14, 2018, 04:20:43 am »
Make the Province pile bottomless. Use any card that's not part of the current game as a proxy. Or if your cards are sleeved, you could even stuff index cards in extra sleeves. Now the game can only end on piles, and you can spend lots of turns jockeying for position where it feels right to try to end the game.

22
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why Dominion Sucks!
« on: March 12, 2018, 04:51:21 pm »
The way I see it is: Temporum did what you're describing, at got lots of flak for it. There are three necessary mechanics in it, and it's laid out such that each board has those three mechanics. And Dice Tower was all, "These cards feels too samey, bloo hoo hoo!"

I think Dominion does about as good a job as it can with making Kingdom cards more desirable than Silver and Gold. I do agree that it would be nice to have a mode online that e.g. pulls 5 cards from each of two random expansions, for folks who like to see more of the intra-set interactions. I wish Shuffle iT could somehow make that happen, but man they're so far behind with priorities that are so much greater (good animations, offline support, etc.).

Aeon's End does fine without basic cards. Quarriors has the starting dice in the supply but I've never seen anyone get more of them. Maybe those games would break under the scrutiny Dominion gets here, maybe not.

"Kingdom cards more desirable than Silver and Gold" isn't really what I'm getting at. It's more like kingdom cards that make other kingdom cards more/less desirable. Like splitters and non-terminal actions "play well with others" in an obvious way; if the kingdom lacks those, you'll tend to use fewer kingdom cards and probably more Silver.

5 from each of two sets might be cool. I proposed in another thread a mode where for an N-player game, you get 10-N at random, then each player picks one card (after seeing the random cards). I'm curious what you think of that, but also agree that ShuffleIt has higher priorities.

23
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why Dominion Sucks!
« on: March 12, 2018, 04:30:09 pm »
I'm not discounting it because of your rating, I'm discounting it because I don't agree. I just looked up your rating to get an idea of how you've been approaching the game.
Discounting an opinion because you disagree with it isn't any better. But if you want an idea how I approach the game: My current way of getting kingdoms I like against decent opponents is to resign automatches until I like a kingdom. Resigning half my games before turn 1 makes my rating pretty meaningless.

24
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why Dominion Sucks!
« on: March 12, 2018, 02:59:28 pm »
Silver/Gold are the reason it's possible to play any random board. If random boards were impossible, the game would've had to ship with standard ways to seed a board, which I think would be a positive difference by itself, and have positive knock-on effects on how cards were designed. Tacking on a board-seeding system now, to get away from random rated, would be nice but not as good.

But if we're at the point where my opinion is discounted because of my rating, the discussion is probably over.

25
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why Dominion Sucks!
« on: March 12, 2018, 01:21:24 pm »
If you want to play designed kingdoms you should uh stop playing exclusively rated automatch.

Play online -> get better than IRL friends -> only decent competition is rated. I'm sure I'm not the only such person. Even Donald X acknowledged full random isn't good enough by advocating a ban list.

Anyway I don't want to play designed kingdoms. That would be broken online too, as we saw back in the Iso Masq pin days. I want something between random and designed that works for rated games. I posted one possibility here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=18270.0

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