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1

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best strategy on this board?

« on: September 19, 2012, 12:33:31 pm »

I recently taught someone how to play Dominion at my school's gaming club, using Intrigue only, and after getting the base cards out, told them to pick any 10 piles. The board ended up being:

Courtyard
Great Hall
Shanty Town
Bridge
Wishing Well
Steward
Coppersmith
Scout
Swindler
Conspirator

Since my opponent was new to the game, I purposely avoided playing Big Money, and instead played a Shanty Town/Courtyard/Bridge engine, and won 26-19 after 3-piling those cards, though I'm sure Big Money would have been stronger. I'm curious, though, is there any strategy that could beat Big Money?

Definitely. One of the obvious ones is a Conspirator engine; you've got Great Hall, Wishing Well and Shanty Town, any of which can set up Conspirator nicely.

(Also, Big Money will get killed on this board by just about any strategy involving Swindler. You can't effectively run Big Money when your Coppers get turned into Curses and your Silvers get turned into Shanty Towns/Great Halls/Wishing Wells.)

I did buy a few Conspirators, but I guess I didn't quite realize their full potential.

I purposely avoided playing Big Money, and instead played a Shanty Town/Courtyard/Bridge engine, and won 26-19 after 3-piling those cards, though I'm sure Big Money would have been stronger.

This sounds like a weird situation to three-pile on. Why didn't you exhaust the Provinces?

That aside, I figured at least one player would use Swindler to give out some curses early game. Another strategy (not totally separate) might be to use Steward to trash coppers/curses/estates down, maybe picking up a shanty town for +actions and bridge for +buy, and then focus on conspirators, maybe supported by wishing-wells and/or shanty towns. Finally, that might lead to more bridges.

Then again, I'm a level 28...anybody better want to weigh in? I'd be interested to see what you think.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Jack Rudd.

I 3-piled the game because my opponent was also buying some of those cards, and knew that I was in the lead. My opponent tried the typical new-player "buy everything" mentality, but neglected to buy Swindler, and I didn't because I forgot how it interacted with Coppers. In hindsight, though, it probably would be very strong here.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Best strategy on this board?

« on: September 19, 2012, 11:50:53 am »

I recently taught someone how to play Dominion at my school's gaming club, using Intrigue only, and after getting the base cards out, told them to pick any 10 piles. The board ended up being:

Courtyard
Great Hall
Shanty Town
Bridge
Wishing Well
Steward
Coppersmith
Scout
Swindler
Conspirator

Since my opponent was new to the game, I purposely avoided playing Big Money, and instead played a Shanty Town/Courtyard/Bridge engine, and won 26-19 after 3-piling those cards, though I'm sure Big Money would have been stronger. I'm curious, though, is there any strategy that could beat Big Money?

3

Dominion FAQ / Re: Dominion Lingo Dictionary

« on: May 16, 2012, 12:14:23 pm »

Cantrip is actually older than MtG, I remember on an MtG forum someone said it comes from D&D.

Correct; it refers to a 0th level arcane spell.

4

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Multi Player Collusion

« on: May 02, 2012, 11:54:09 pm »

Bloat their Gardens deck using Ambassador, Jester (somewhat risky), etc.

5

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Project: Three-Sentence Overviews of Every Card

« on: April 04, 2012, 12:41:53 am »

Gardens
Victory - $4
Worth 1 VP for every 10 cards in your deck (rounded down).

A powerful alternative to Provinces. However, make sure the board is right. Only buy it if you have a very good enabler to quickly end the game.

6

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Solitaire exploit: any way to take advantage of it?

« on: March 15, 2012, 09:58:50 pm »

Bishop doesn't work - the possessed player receives the victory chips, not the possessing player.

Right, but I'm talking about specifically in solitaire games, where you're both the possessing player and the one being possessed.

7

Dominion General Discussion / Solitaire exploit: any way to take advantage of it?

« on: March 15, 2012, 07:56:46 pm »

When in Iso's solitaire mode, you make the choices for cards like Envoy that you play. This gets more interesting with Possession: namely, the fact that all trashed cards are instead discarded. Immediately, I thought of using Bishop. Any other ways to abuse this? Obviously, this doesn't work in real game, but I still think it's an interesting thought experiment.

8

Simulation / Re: Not that complicated, but my first AI

« on: February 23, 2012, 04:14:01 pm »

You need something a bit more subtle than just "buy gardens if at least X woodcutters" to handle the mirror matchup. At present, if the woodcutters split 5-5, your bot will never buy a gardens at all!

True, hadn't thought of that. Fixed.

A first tip would be to shuffle some cards up and see how you would play it yourself so you have some idea when you're buying each type of card. Alternatively you can look at your simulator game logs and ask yourself "why is the bot doing that?". Some things you might consider are

- Do you need to buy estates right from the start? Can you set a condition to buy them later in the game? True, I'm thinking only after the Gardens are all gone
- Can you time your purchase of terminal actions a little better so that they don't collide so often? Good idea, but I'm not sure how.
- Are there times when you'd buy a duchy ahead of a gardens? Does it depend upon your opponent's strategy? It's virtually impossible for the bot to end up with less than 30 cards, so Gardens will always be a priority.
- If you have two buys can you check the available $ to make better purchases. Should 8$ be spent on province+copper, duchy+woodcutter, or gardens+gardens? Again, I'm not quite sure how I'd implement it.

9

Simulation / Re: Not that complicated, but my first AI

« on: February 22, 2012, 11:29:52 pm »

Good point about the Silver; I swapped them. As for the number of Woodcutters, 6 does happen to be a good balance, based on the (admittedly little) testing I did.

10

Simulation / Not that complicated, but my first AI

« on: February 22, 2012, 09:02:16 pm »

Just a basic Woodcutter/Gardens, since it seems to be missing. Any obvious changes?

Code: [Select]

<player name="Woodcutter/Gardens"
 author="Anonymous"
 description="">
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Gardens"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gardens">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Woodcutter"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gardens">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Woodcutter"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Woodcutter"/>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Gardens"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
   <buy name="Copper"/>
</player>

Note that I don't expect it to be able to buy Provinces, I just put it there in case there is some crazy fringe case where it can. Also, I have no idea what the magic number is for Woodcutters; this is just a complete guess.

11

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: February 21, 2012, 10:48:54 pm »

Wrong Game
$3
Action
Tap all lands your opponent has in play

Forbidden Limb
$3
Action/Victory: 1 VP
Trash this and four Forbidden Limbs from your hand. Gain 10000 VP.

12

Game Reports / Re: First win: I had read that Garden was a game-changer

« on: February 07, 2012, 09:15:59 pm »

Well said.

I think a good way to get a feel for it is to play solo games on isotropic with the "cards required" box used.

I'd try out:

Ironworks, Gardens.
Workshop, Gardens.
Woodcutter, Gardens.
Trader, Gardens.
Alchemist.

While you're there, also try out:

University, Vineyard.
Ironworks, Vineyard.

Note how long it takes you to get to a point where you'd have won the game. In Province games that means 4 provinces, normally, and 5 provinces to be sure. In Gardens games that normally means emptying three piles, though bear in mind that when you go live, the presence of your opponent may up to double that speed. A common mistake I see is for players to spend too long buying enablers, and to wait too long to buy the green cards, likely based on their single player practise. When you practise, its quick and consistent to buy 10 copies of your enabler first. When you're up for real, you normally want to buy 2 enablers and thats it. This is especially true of Vineyard games, I find, and against weaker players I'll often have started buying Vineyards several turns before the other player as they'll still be buying Universities...

I've been practicing some of these, but I ran into a problem: How should I decide the third pile to empty? True, in an actual game my opponent would be buying things as well, which would influence my decision, but what if they notice my strategy and start playing Big Money? Are there any guidelines for this?

13

Game Reports / First win: I had read that Garden was a game-changer

« on: January 28, 2012, 08:46:10 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/28/game-20120128-173750-0443614b.html

I would have gone for Walled Villages and Traders more aggressively, but I remembered reading somewhere on this site that Gardens changed the game, so I went for it. Then again, I also read you should never buy Copper, but I took a gamble. It paid off, but did I play well or was I just lucky?