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1

Innovation General Discussion / Re: make "I Demand" effect more noticeable

« on: April 20, 2013, 01:37:22 pm »

Even on the cards themselves, the I demand effects are not noticeable enough. At least imo.


I think maybe it's time we resurrected the dominion red dot. =)

2

Innovation General Discussion / Re: what is the most important symbols?

« on: April 19, 2013, 05:45:57 am »

IMHO

1) Crowns, Leaves
2) Factories
3) Castles, clocks
4) Lightbulbs

The thing to note about crowns, leaves, and factories, are that they're the only symbol with "I demand" dogmas. The trick to I demand dogmas is that they're worthless if you don't have more icons than your opponents; regular dogmas can still be shared, often very profitably, if you have fewer cards.
-Crowns have many attacks, and some powerful attacks, like Gunpowder, Pirate code, and Combustion, that can lock opponents out of the game, and score enough to end it.
-Leaves have fewer attacks, but a greater ability to interact with a large number of cards. Drunk Protestants (Fermenting-Reformation) is the quintessential leaf combo.

-Factories are powerful scorers and are the first icon you build up from 0. Because of the variance (there are 3 factory cards in age 4), the first person to draw one gets a lead that's difficult to displace. It doesn't hurt that factories tend to splay and tuck more factories (while sometimes destroying your other icons).

-Castles have very strong I demand effects, but there are only 3 castle dogmas out of the 4 cards with castle icons in age 3, and 0 past that. There are a ton of them, then suddenly, there are none of them and they're a liability on your board. You don't necessarily have to work to accumulate castles - it kind of just happens naturally. You manage castles. You exit out of castles. You generally don't hope to draw more castles.
-Clocks have no I demand effects. The game is often over before clocks come into play. I don't think I've ever deployed clocks to avoid sharing a clock ability. If you ever do need to "accumulate clocks" to avoid sharing/force sharing, it'll generally dictate a single decision, rather than an overall strategy. The main reason you will ever accumulate clocks is because it's tied to two achievements: 3 clocks for Empire, 12 for World. Note that even if you get perfect splays and every clock card, you cannot get 12 clocks before age 9.

-Bulbs have no I demand effects. What's more, about half of the bulb effects are situational or effects you don't mind sharing. One of them is even a kind of attack when shared (physics). What's more, a number of bulb effects are focused on teching and skipping ages. If you share bulb dogmas with a teching player, the extra draws will help you deplete the lower piles and nullify his teching advantage. Now there are a couple of bulb cards that are great and worth keeping to yourself, but I wouldn't work on building up a bulb lead to avoid sharing it. Your opponents don't have much reason to challenge your bulb lead in a vacuum.

3

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Though Experiment: Fastest win

« on: April 19, 2013, 03:11:09 am »

4: Dogma Astronomy, draw and meld Atomic Theory, draw any 6; Dogma Math, draw and meld Electricity

Pretty sure you can't dogma Math while it's underneath Atomic Theory. You can dogma Atomic Theory though.

Starting meld: Writing
1: Dogma Writing, draw Math; meld Math
2: Draw any 2; Dogma Math. draw and meld Paper
3: Dogma Paper, splay blue, draw any 4; Dogma Math, draw and meld Astronomy

4: Dogma Astronomy, draw and meld Atomic Theory, draw any 6 (may also draw and meld any green to claim Universe achivement); Dogma Atomic Theory, draw and meld Electricity
5: Dogma Electricity, return Atomic theory, draw any 8; Dogma math, draw and meld Computers
6: Dogma Computers, draw-meld-dogma-win with any 10 (I believe Bioengineering, Globalization, Self-Service, and Robotics->Software->AI all win in solitaire games).

4

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Though Experiment: Fastest win

« on: April 19, 2013, 03:06:50 am »

Solo base game (7 achievement win in 8 turns):

0 Clothing over Metalworking. (Green)

1.1 Clothing dogma metalworking (Red), score Code of laws, Pottery.
1.2 Metalworking dogma 8 castle age 1 techs, claim Monument, draw agriculture.
(score 10)

2.1 Clothing dogma agriculture (Yellow), score Sailing, Writing(1), Calendar(2).
2.2 Metalworking dogma 5 castle age 2 techs, draw math.
(score 23)

3.1 Clothing dogma Math (Blue), score canal building, currency, philosophy(2), compass(3).
3.2 Metalworking dogma 4 castle age 3 techs, draw education.
(score 44)

4.1 Clothing dogma education (Purple), score last 4 age 3 cards, Any age 4 card
4.2 Education dogma age 4 card from score, draw any age 5 card.
(score 56)

5.1 Dogma Math age 5 card to meld any age 6 card.
5.2 Claim Achievement 1

6. Achievement 2/3
7. Achievement 4/5
8. Achievement 6...

5

Goko Dominion Online / Is the Feedback form not working?

« on: August 08, 2012, 02:48:42 am »

I can't seem to login to the feedback site, though I can log into the game and not-play with the 3 other people in there.

The passwords they send me after reset don't work, and I can't report any bugs. And there are plenty to report. =/


Animations are pretty though.

6

General Discussion / Re: Is the Diablo3 RMAH illegal?

« on: June 16, 2012, 01:57:24 pm »

TacoL- technically, the same argument could be made for and digital goods (books, mp3, movies, software).

Eula's aren't enforceable if they overreach. Saying "we can do whatever we want" might be an overreach. I believe that the customer would have civil recourse if MS or Appl decided to remotely shut down their OSes or if Amazon pulled a digital book without offering a refund.


As for gambling, why not? Players can spend money and win money *without* direct control over how much they win.

How different is it from a casino offering all you can play on a slot machine for a day for $100, or from them renting out poker tables with dealers?

7

General Discussion / Is the Diablo3 RMAH illegal?

« on: June 15, 2012, 05:00:13 pm »

Short answer, probably not as a whole, but the Real Money Auction House is unprecedented legally, and this is the smartest forum I know. I was hoping to generate some legal discussion.

With the RMAH, ActiBlizzard tacitly endorses its virtual items as having monetary value, and encourages players to exchange those items with each other while profiting via a transaction fee.
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5826223021


1) What can and can't ActiBlizzard do to affect the value of its items? It probably can't shut down the game, and it probably can't have its employees selling stuff in the RMAH. Can it nerf items? Can it "purchase" items off of the Gold AH to stem inflation if it would shrink supply and drive up Real money?

2) Is Diablo 3 subject to gambling regulation as a game of chance? The game involves some skill, but it's very loosely tied to the quality of the drop.

The EULA has all kinds of language about how items are owned by Blizzard and are only leased to players, but in that case, items aren't that different from casino chips, which are "leased" to players.

8

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why don't we have Dominion Game Notation yet?

« on: May 15, 2012, 05:08:48 am »

PSGarak> I agree that showing alternatives is important for a notation system - that's why I feel strongly about showing "with $4" on silver buys. Additionally, my original notation had a section for discarded cards (#C, #Joat) precisely to capture clashing terminals, but there're two serious problems with it.

1. It's painfully time consuming to figure out what the two clashing terminals were. You generally have to walk backwards through a turn to reconstruct what was played and what wasn't.
2. Warehouse. It's not actually possible to know what was drawn and what was discarded with a large number of cards - Isotropic simply doesn't log them. If I discard a clashing terminal to warehouse, there's just no way to know from the logs.


Herein lies the beauty of using '*' to delimit shuffles. You can't precisely know what cards were available for a turn or what cards are left in the deck from the logs, but by tracking gains and trashes, you can know what cards are in the deck between two shuffles. If a player buys three swindlers and only plays two between two shuffles, that should tell you what you need to know most of the time.

In particular cases where a subtle trick cannot be captured by notation (say, not triggering a shuffle with a draw card while buying a gold, or re-drawing discarded estates for Baron), I think it's best to concede that it cannot be captured by notation. Just briefly describe the trick in parentheses: "(discard Smithy)". There's a blog-full of neat tricks in the game, and I don't think there's enough commonality between them to warrant encoding them.

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why don't we have Dominion Game Notation yet?

« on: May 14, 2012, 12:11:52 pm »

I agree with you now that columns and abreviations are too cumbersome. I was trying to mono-space the format, but it looks like that's a lost cause given the very nature of the game.

A couple of points:
1. Nitpicky: "deals out a curse to" is functionally the same as "deals a curse to".
2. The VP differentials can be confusing because the context of +VP vs -VP changes depending on which line it's on. I think posting both VP totals is less ambiguous.
3. I think "with $4" is important for consistency. While buying a $4 card is usually terrible, it's still an option that the player declined.

4. I think we need to resolve how to denote shuffles that occur as the result of actions. The nice thing about using a symbol like '*' (or '#', whatever, but I find '#' more visually distracting, and it tends to denote checkmate or script comments rather than something that happens regularly, but I digress) is that it visually separates when bought cards become available in the draw deck.

If you buy a card, the '*' nicely tells you that it becomes immediately available for draw on the next turn:
    Silver *

HOWEVER, if you shuffle as a result of actions, where should the * go?
    *Smithy draw, Silver
    Smithy draw*, Silver
...imply different things. If a draw action causes a reshuffle, should the * go before the action (because previously gained cards were not available when choosing to play that action), or after the action (because those previously gained cards can now be drawn by the action)?
I'm not sure what the right answer here is.


I still believe strongly that there's much profit to condensing the format to be readable without scroll. This is still possible without mono-spacing for a 22 turn game. Tweaking Geronimoo's log:

(I used the * for reshuffle)

MMM - Apprentice Chain
        theory - Mine Platinum, into panic
   
1. Silver with $4
        Silver
2. Silver *
        Baron *
3. Silver
        Silver with $4
4. Apprentice with $7 *
        Gold with $7 *
5. Silver with $4
        Gold
6. Apprentice with $7 *
        Gold *
7. Apprentice an Estate Gold with $7 (2-3VP)
        Mine with $7
8. Apprentice an Estate Apprentice * (1-3VP)
        Platinum
9. Gold
        Embargo with $3
10. Apprentice an Estate and a Copper Gold with $7 * (0-3VP)
        Embargoes the Platinums Mine with $10!?
11. Apprentice a Silver and a Copper Gold with $7
        Apprentice with $8
12. Apprentice a Silver Colony * (10-3VP)
        Mine Gold into Platinum Apprentice with $9 *
13. Apprentice 2 Silver Colony * (20-3VP)
        Apprentice an Estate, Mine Copper into Silver Embargo with $4 (20-2VP)
14. Apprentice a Gold Colony (30-2VP)
        Mine Silver into Gold Tactician?
15. Apprentice an Apprentice and a Gold Colony * (40-2VP)
        Apprentice an Estate Colony with $16 (40-12VP)
16. Apprentice a Colony Colony *
        Province with $10 (40-20VP)
17. Apprentice a Colony Colony *
        Embargoes the Colonies Province with $11 (40-28VP)
18. Apprentice a Colony Colony (Curse gained) * (39-28VP)

10

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why don't we have Dominion Game Notation yet?

« on: May 13, 2012, 06:48:38 pm »

Chess notation is also extensible. If it's ambiguous which knight or rook is advancing to a space, the notation must expand to specify which is moving, but the vast majority of the time, it's explicit what happened. I feel the same about dominion.




I think I didn't communicate my goal well enough.


The point of a notation system isn't to replace the isotropic logs, but to summarize them into a format that's readable WITHOUT scrolling. We don't need to manually & losslessly compress the data - we have gzip for that. I want to compress the data in the physical space it takes on the page. As much information as there is in a game of dominion, the vast majority does not affect the decisions you make as a player. We can compromise a bit on fidelity of information for the sake of readability.


If the first two buys were S and S, and if turns 3 and 4 resulted in $5 and $4, it doesn't matter if they were 5C or 3CSE or C2S2E for the $5 or some other combination for the $4. The last 2 cards of the deck contain $2. Noting turns 3 and 4 as simply $5 and $4 does introduce ambiguity, but it's an ambiguity that doesn't actually affect your decision making in game. If a kingdom card in your hand (say, Upgrade), does make that ambiguity matter, the ambiguity can be clarified by the notes on the action.


This ambiguity can extend to engine chains. As difficult as it can be to keep an engine running, most engines do run themselves. That is to say, a best-decision tends to exist. Even the most complex King's Court chain can be easily defined by the end-state - what cards were played and what cards weren't - who gained what and how many times you shuffled. Whether you draw your deck or fizzle rarely has anything to do with your decision making while running the engine - if you do accidentally kill your own engine, the fizzle is fully described by the cards you drew but did not (could not) play.




This may be a bit overambitious, as the isotropic logs do not show what got discarded. If a player bought warehouse-militia, it's hard to know whether the milita is getting discarded to warehouse or to the opponent's militias.





I've tried cleaning up my example w/ monospacing & tabs here:

Code: [Select]

Vine(Vineyard);  Perl (PearlDiver);  Look(Lookout);  Vil; Pot (Potion), Joat (JackOfAllTrades);  HoP (HornOfPlenty), Gov, Lab, Tres(Treasury);  GM (GrandMarket)

cassandre ;  GenericKen
1. +Joat ;  +Joat
2. +Look * ;  +S *
3. +S ;  +[Joat,S], -E
4. $4 +[S,S], -C, *Look ;  +Lab *
5. +S, -C ;  +G
6. $7 +[G,S] *Look ;  $1 +S,  #Joat *
7. +GM ;  +[P,S]
8. $7 +G, -C ;  +Lab *
9. +[P,S], -E * ;  $7 +G
10. $10 +[P,S] ; $9 +[P,S],  *
11. +Tres, -S * ;  +[P,S]
12. $7 +[D,E] ;  $7 +D
13. +[G,S] ;  +[D,S] *
14. $9 +P * ;  $11 +P
15. $9 +P
Points: 29 ;  30



It's better, but it can still stand improvement. Adoption is important, and most people understand 4/3 vs 2/5 openings. I had great hopes for listing the total $ each turn, as people can extrapolate from turns 1 and 2, but all those '$'s were very distracting. Joat might not be the best example of a simple game log, as the card does like 4 things.


It's also still hard to read when the turns are so uneven - some turns have nothing but treasure, and some turns draw the deck several times.

11

Dominion General Discussion / Why don't we have Dominion Game Notation yet?

« on: May 13, 2012, 04:48:22 am »

It seems bizarre that the annotated games on the site are such a pain to read and write. Why haven't we developed a standard notation system for dominion games? The isotropic logs are nice and (somewhat) comprehensive, but they're cumbersome. Most games don't last longer than 22 turns - we shouldn't have to scroll to review a game.

Here's my proposal. I've put maybe 40 minutes of thought into this, so I'll try to keep it short.
-Most of the information available in a dominion game is unnecessary. +buys are only important in some games. Cursers and trashing are only important in some games. The most important thing about a dominion notation system will be extensability.
-It almost never matters if you draw 5 coppers or if you draw 3 coppers, a silver, and an estate. It also almost never matters if you end the turn with extra + actions or extra + buys. For treasures, VPs, terminal silvers and villages, the only things that matter are what you buy, what you could have bought, and what's left in your deck.
-It almost never matters what order your action cards are played in. A lab chain is a lab chain. While the decisions made during the turn may be important to prolonging the engine's run that turn, they generally will not affect the next turn outside of what actions are played and what actions are discarded, which tells us what's left in the deck. If the order is important


Rough notation format:
<turn#>. $<coins>(-$<costReduction>), +[<cardsGained>(<top>)], -[<cardsTrashed>], @+[<cardsGivenToOpponent>], @-[<cardsTrashedByOpponent>], <#played><*onShuffle><KC played>(mode, reaction(mode)) #<#discarded><KC discarded> <*onShuffle>

Details:
-A * goes at the end of turn if we shuffle drawing our 5 cards for the next turn, and a * prefixes an action if it causes a shuffle in turn.
-When multiple gains/trashes are made, the most expensive should listed first.
-CSGP, EDPCol are copper, silver... and Estate, Dutchy... adb$ are +action, draw, buy, and coin.


Here's a standard doublejack:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120507-234742-e0c1d27c.html

Vineyard; PearlD; Look(Lookout); Vil; Potion, Joat; HoP, Gov, Lab, Tres(Treasury); GM
cassandre  ;  GenericKen
1. $4 +Joat  ;  $4 +Joat
2. $3 +Look *  ;  $3 +S *
3. $3 +S  ;  $4 +[Joat, S], -E, 1Joat
4. $4 +[S,S], -C, 1*Look, 1Joat  ;  $5 +Lab *
5. $3 +S, -C, 1Look  ;  $6 +G, 1Lab
6. $7 +[G,S], 1*Joat  ;  $1 +S, 1Joat, #1Joat *
7. $6 +GM  ;  $8 +[P,S], 1Joat
8. $7 +G, -C, 1Look, 1GM  ;  $5 +Lab, 1Joat *
9. $8 +[P,S], -E, 1Joat *  ;  $7 +G
10. $10 +[P,S], 1Joat ; $9 +[P,S], 2Lab, 1Joat *
11. $5 +T, -S, 1Look *  ;  $8 +[P,S], 1Joat
12. $7 +[D,E], 1GM  ;  $7 +D
13. $6 +[G,S], 1Joat  ;  $5 +[D,S], 1Joat  *
14. $9 +P *  ;  $11 +P, 2Lab
15. $9 +P
Points: 29  ;  30

Here it is again w/ some unnecessary info stripped out ($ amounts when not overspent, 1s on single actions). I'm not sure if this makes it easier or harder to read:
cassandre  ;  GenericKen
1. +Joat  ;  +Joat
2. +Look *  ;  +S *
3. +S  ;  +[Joat, S], -E, Joat
4. $4 +[S,S], -C, *Look, 1Joat  ;  +Lab *
5. +S, -C, Look  ;  +G, 1Lab
6. $7 +[G,S], *Joat  ;  $1 +S, Joat, #Joat *
7. +GM  ;  +[P,S], Joat
8. $7 +G, -C, Look, 1GM  ;  +Lab, Joat *
9. +[P,S], -E, Joat *  ;  $7 +G
10. $10 +[P,S], Joat ; $9 +[P,S], 2Lab, Joat *
11. +Tres, -S, Look *  ;  +[P,S], Joat
12. $7 +[D,E], GM  ;  $7 +D
13. +[G,S], Joat  ;  +[D,S], Joat  *
14. $9 +P *  ;  $11 +P, 2Lab
15. $9 +P
Points: 29  ;  30


And again with no played actions (shuffles should tell you the rate of draw):
cassandre  ;  GenericKen
1. +Joat  ;  +Joat
2. +Look *  ;  +S *
3. +S  ;  +[Joat, S], -E
4. $4 +[S,S], -C, *Look  ;  +Lab *
5. +S, -C  ;  +G
6. $7 +[G,S] *Look ;  $1 +S,  #Joat *
7. +GM  ;  +[P,S]
8. $7 +G, -C  ;  +Lab *
9. +[P,S], -E *  ;  $7 +G
10. $10 +[P,S] ; $9 +[P,S],  *
11. +Tres, -S *  ;  +[P,S]
12. $7 +[D,E]  ;  $7 +D
13. +[G,S]  ;  +[D,S] *
14. $9 +P *  ;  $11 +P
15. $9 +P
Points: 29  ;  30


Another random one:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120406-224153-8d57b904.html
Haven, Pawn; Tunl(Tunnel); Envoy; Inn, Mine, Trib(Tribute), RS (Royal Seal); GM; Forge
gorney  ;  GenericKen
1. +Pawn  ;  +S
2. +Inn(shuf 2) *  ;  +Envoy *
3. +Envoy, Pawn(a,d), Inn *  ;  +RS, #S *
4. $4 +Tunn  ;  +Envoy
5. $4 +Tunn, #C *  ;  $7 +G, #RS *
6. $4 +Tunn, Inn  ;  +RS, #RS
7. +Haven, #P, #C  ;  $9 +GM(top), #RS
8. $4 +S *  ;  $9 +P, RS, #G, #Envoy
9. +S, Inn, Haven, #C  ;  +RS(top) *
10. +Inn(shuf 3), Pawn(a,$) *  ;  $9 +GM(top), #RS
11. $6 +Inn(shuf 1), 2Inn, Haven, #S  ;  $7 +G *
12. +[Tunn, 2G], *Inn, Pawn(d,$)  ;  $9 +P, #GM
13. +P, Haven, #Inn  ;  $7 +G(top)
14. +[Inn(shuf 4), G], Inn  ;  +[P, Trib(top)], #G
15. +[P, 4G], Inn, *Envoy, 2Inn, Pawn(d,$), #G  ;  $9 +P, Trib(2d,$2(G))
16. $7 +D *  ;  $9 +P, #Envoy, #RS
17. $6 +[D, 2G], Inn  ;  $6 +D
18. $7 +D  ;  +Tunn
19. $6 +D  ;  +[P,E], Trib(C,Haven)
Points: 35  ;  45

Unfortunately, Isotropic doesn't log what Inn discarded, so it's hard to know whether gorney was discarding coppers or green cards, and hard to know how much value was left in his deck.


This is just a rough idea. It would be nice to strike a balance between fidelity, ease of reading, and ease of writing (it's still a pain to transcribe, but if the rules are formal enough, we could write a parser).

Please contribute with any suggestions or amendments to my notation format.

12

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Fastest 5-province game - worst luck

« on: November 10, 2011, 02:36:07 pm »

I chose 5 provinces because it's a more pragmatic benchmark than 8. Most games are won with 5 or 4 provinces. A better puzzle would be to find the fastest game to get 4 provinces and 5 duchys, but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

I do not have a solution without trashing yet.

Worst-luck puzzles are notoriously difficult to do alone. You'll post a solution and get holes poked in it within an hour. I was hoping for more collaborative solutions for the without-trashing puzzle.

As far as I can tell, the key to worst-luck is the first 4 turns, where you can be locked into 3-4 spits. Buying silver turns 1-4, you can go 3-4-shuffle-4-4-shuffle-4-4-shuffle-10. Baring fanciness in the 3-4 coin range, have to wait until after your fourth shuffle to ever see a 5-cost card in hand (turn 15-17 or so? late).

With no trashing, you are guaranteed 10 dead cards in the deck. Provinces can bring it up to 14.

Multiple terminals are not possible. Even with fishing village, worst luck will stack the terminals on top of each other and 2 turns away from every village (except perhaps walled village. Worth keeping in mind).

Imo, you either go for cash saturation or for drawing the deck every turn. The philosophies can't mesh in the worst-luck case. Just from feel, I don't think cash saturation is the answer (7-7-6-7-15 shuffle rounds would hurt).

Caravan +throne room (eventually) made some sense to me, as it would help the next turn.
Navigator was also a thought, as it helps the next turn as well. You'll never toss the cards with it, but it constrains the worst-luck order. Very difficult to calculate though.
Cellar can help reach that bottom card. You may not ever play it (always drawing it with what you needed already in hand), but again, it constrains the worst-order.

We may have to make a special case for allowing feast but not other trashing. Not sure.

I'm curious about your chancellor solutions. Chancellor should always be the last card you draw before the shuffle, making it inferior to silver.

I played around with the idea of hunting party and stash as virtual-deck thinners, but could never get them to work in my head.

13

Puzzles and Challenges / Fastest 5-province game - worst luck

« on: November 08, 2011, 08:08:56 pm »

Ever have that game where buys 1 and 2 are cards 11 and 12 after the shuffle?

The puzzle is simple - how quickly can you get to 5 provincies in solitaire given any set of kingdom cards? The catch is that instead of stacking your deck, your deck is stacked against you on every shuffle.

1) With trashing.

2) Without.