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1

Dominion General Discussion / Traveller Spelling

« on: June 14, 2015, 11:45:58 am »

I just noticed that Traveller has two 'l's, which is the British spelling of the word. Rio Grande is an American company. Donald X. sports an American flag on BGG. Who chose the British spelling?

I have not searched through the other cards looking for other American/British words. Did I miss this before?

2

Goko Dominion Online / Goko Store Math: A twisted story of deceit and misincentives

« on: April 29, 2013, 10:44:42 am »

I don't think anyone has posted a similar topic, sorry if I missed it in search.

So, you've decided to buy the online dominion cards. You spent ~$45 to get 540 gokoins, and are eyeing the megapack, which is very conveniently priced at - wait for it - 540. But, as some posters have alluded to, it's a trap! (insert amusing star wars meme here)

Some set-covering math has revealed the best way to buy your cards:

• Intrigue at 70
• Seaside at 70
• Prosperity at 70
• Super Pack 2 at 140, covers the next 3 expansions
• Dark Ages at 110

Total cost, 460. So, you should not buy Super Pack 1 as far as I can tell, and it just flat out lies to you about saving 15%. You SHOULD buy Super Pack 2, but it doesn't save you 10%. And then get Dark Ages.

If you buy the Megapack, you get coins and zaps. Yay. 10 zaps and 735 coins. 10 zaps cost 700 coins (not gokoins), so you are getting 1435 coins. That's 'worth' about $10. For which you pay 80 gokoins. You can pay $7 to just buy 70 gokoins. And anyway, who's buying coins? It's not like the adventures are fun after you play the same thing 30 times in a row. At least the campaign mode of the slightlymagic.net implementation was interesting.

Summary: Goko takes your money and lies to you about how best to spend it. The honest best way to spend it is to buy some expansions individually, and one superpack. Because that's not confusing at all. 

3

Dominion General Discussion / Alchemist vs Margrave

« on: December 22, 2011, 02:34:24 pm »

Played IRL with Alchemist, Scrying Pool, Lookout and Margrave. We both like drawing decks, so I opened silver/potion while my friend opened lookout/potion. I got a Margrave first (and my own lookout), and off we went. My margrave hit early and often while we both collected alchemists and scrying pools. I won.

Checked with the simulator, turns out lookout is somewhat of a dead card here. Better to just open silver (55 - 42) like I did and get an early margrave & money lead (and skip the lookout), supported by card draw.

But guess what dominates both? Margrave + BM (75 - 22). Take that Alchemist.

Lesson learned: be wary of Alchemist. A shiny distraction at times, for sure. Being forced to discard your alchemists will make you sad.

4

Variants and Fan Cards / A new way to include Colony & Platinum

« on: December 15, 2011, 03:50:59 pm »

My IRL Dominion buddy and I have noticed that the shuffler is not including Colony & Platinum very often, now that we have more post-Prosperity sets. Specifically, it includes them 15.9% of the time (figure found using 10% per prosperity card rule and the combin function).

This is too little for us, so we come up with another way to do it. Counting Potion as 2.5, and peddler as 8, the average cost of a dominion card is 4.2. The average cost of a prosperity card is 5.1, and the average cost of the non-prosperity cards is 4.0. You can fuss about my valuations of potion and peddler, but they won't affect the averages across 157 cards much.

Here is our method:
Add up all the costs of your tableau (if you play dominion, you should be able to add 10 small numbers together quickly).
Subtract 40.
Multiply by 10%
Randomly determine if you play with Colony of Platinum based on that probability.

Example: costs add up to 47. Use 70% chance to play with Colony.

A quick simulation shows this increases the chance of playing with Colony & Platinum to about 30% total. The chance of playing with them increases as the cards get more valuable, as intended with Prosperity. Me likey.


Other options:
Don't like the random option? Use 45 as your tipping point.

Like rolling dice?
Use 42, 44, 46, 48, 50 and 52 as your break points, with 1/6,2/6,... 6/6 probability of playing.

5

Dominion Isotropic / Losing Focus!

« on: November 14, 2011, 01:26:09 pm »

not that kind of focus. the other kind.

I'm using Firefox 3.6 and I am having a hell of a time setting required cards. Every time the lobby updates with a new player or new game announcement, the text box loses the focus. I do not have this problem with the chat box, only the text box where I can choose specific cards.

Argh.

6

Dominion General Discussion / Handicapping

« on: November 09, 2011, 03:30:00 pm »

There is a thread that discussed this briefly: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=95.0

My friend and I are pretty good at IRL dominion. We are both 20+ on iso. We want to play more multiplayer games with our not so experienced friends. They sometimes play with us, but tease us about how good we are and don't play again for a while.

A handicap system interests us. There were some suggestions in the thread, such as:
a) start with 6 coppers / 4 estates
b) start with 6 coppers / 3 estates / 1 curse
c) add a curse
d) play like a goof ball
e) play a normal game, then the winner adds a curse (or replaces a copper with a curse)
f) like (e), but also allow losers to keep a <$6 card from previous game

All are good ideas, except for (d), which is tough to enforce for both of us simultaneously (you know, maybe i will play like a goof ball, but my buddy won't, so he will probably win).

So, has anyone tried these various handicapping options? More specifically, has anyone tried them with TWO good players in a multiplayer game? Other ideas?

7

Rules Questions / Ironworks + Trader

« on: October 28, 2011, 02:08:34 pm »

In case you are wondering, if you Ironworks something (like a Great Hall), then reveal Trader to gain a Silver instead of the Great Hall, you are opening a can of worms.

The correct result is You get the silver, but no bonus. You don't claim the bonus from the first card (+1 card, + 1action for Great Hall), or the +$1 Silver bonus. . So quoth Mr. X.

http://boardgamegeek.com/article/7742414#7742414

Edited