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1

General Discussion / Sample Uniformly from ~Normal Distribution

« on: April 04, 2015, 01:02:57 am »

So I'm trying to do this thing for my research and struggling with finding the best way to do it. But I thought maybe some of the people here might know of a good way (especially since we seem to have so many statisticians).

So I have some data that is approximately uniformly distributed wrt to a variable x. I would like a sample of that data that is approximately uniformly distributed wrt x on the range from the minimum to maximum. Specifically, I want to sample without replacement about a third of this data. I tried to bin things, but in order to have enough samples in each bin, I can only use 3 bins, which is not ideal. Is there a good way to do this? Obviously, since I want to draw without replacement I can't really get a uniform distribution, since the ends will quickly be depleted, but something "sort of uniform" would be good. Any thoughts?

2

Goko Dominion Online / Dominion Online on Steam Greenlight

« on: February 24, 2015, 10:07:39 pm »

So... This is interesting:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=398496969

3

General Discussion / Evaluation Function for Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe

« on: January 09, 2015, 07:51:37 pm »

So one of my winter break projects has been teaching myself C. I've made it through K&R. For fun I also wrote an AI for tic-tac-toe. So pretty straightforward.

Now what I want to do is write one for ultimate tic-tac-toe (description). Unlike tic-tac-toe, I'm probably not going to be able to build the full decision tree, so I'm struggling to come up with a good evaluation function for a given UTTT game state. Obviously I could give some sort of bonus for having won the mini-boards. Probably weighted with center > corner > side, but what about evaluating incomplete boards? I could give a point value to squares in there and see how that turns out. I could also give points for every miniboard where you're one away from winning, though this is a little harder to evaluate and might not be worth the time. I'm curious though if any fuhduhsies have some clever ideas. I'm storing each miniboard as two shorts (one for x and one for o) where each of the bottom 9 bits represents the square being taken by that player. Any ideas?

4

Goko Dominion Online / Update 28 August 2014

« on: August 28, 2014, 08:47:08 pm »

http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?5097-Release-Notes-8-28-2014

This update includes these improvements:

Added Prince promo card. Now available in the store. Notes:

    You can now choose the order of cards that take effect at the start of the turn if the ordering would make any difference. The cards that do this are Prince, Horse Traders played as a reaction, and duration cards. For example, you may choose to play your princed Menagerie, then your Caravan duration card, then your princed Chapel.
    A princed Hermit follows the same pattern as is already used for a schemed Hermit: if you didn't buy anything on a turn where a princed Hermit is played, the Prince's on-discard effect for the Hermit takes place before the Hermit's own effect. This will cause you to gain a Madman, but the Hermit won't be trashed because the Hermit will have lost track of itself.


Fixed bug: Changing email in "Edit Profile" was not working correctly.

Fixed bug causing guests to sometimes not be able to play games.

Adventures

    Changed adventures so each player starts with the same starting hand, so you do not need to zap down your opponent. There are also no starting zaps.
    Fixed: Adventures in Dark Ages begin with three estates AND the three shelters.
    Other improvements involving required cards.


Bots

    Play vs. Bots now uses the Pro rating system, which is used for fair games. If you want to play bots under the Casual system, you still can by creating a table with the casual system and inviting a bot.
    Fixed bug when AI trashed a Catacomb during the Buy Phase (via Farmland or Doctor).
    Fixed bug: AI would sometimes waste coin tokens when it could buy a Grand Market but decided not to.
    Improvements for Highway and Courtyard.


Fixed bug: Coppersmith wouldn't change coin display of Coppers until the Buy Phase.

Changed sound for Gold/Platinum to occur only when gaining the card, not when playing it.

Messages

    Changed status message and log message for Philosopher's Stone to show the count of your deck plus discards pile.
    Fixed discard message for Count.


"Support" link on home screen replaced by "Forum" and "Report a problem" links.

Optimizations, especially in the size of internal messages during a game.

So how does making "Play Bots" pro make things more fair? I really don't see any reason why you shouldn't get an option when clicking "Play Bots" to choose pro, casual, or unrated. Opening the multiplayer, setting up a game, and adding a bot is actually significantly more work (mostly because the lobby is so absurdly slow).

And finally semi-fixed Adventures!

Also, you should be able to choose the order of the schemed/princed hermit's effects. If you want to trash it you should be able to. There probably aren't many situations when you do, but what if you don't want to gain any more 3-costs? Ah well; a minor issue and in most cases this way of doing it makes the game more playable with fewer decisions.

5

Dominion General Discussion / When to play Wishing Well

« on: May 28, 2014, 03:15:49 am »

In his stream of a lesson to Jerni at 38:45 while playing a mass WW and Grand Market deck SCSN says that you should always play wishing well first because then if you wish wrong you can pick up the missed card with the GM. I had thought quite the opposite and was wondering the whole time why he kept playing WW instead of GM first. My thinking is that the more other draw cards you play first, the more information you have about the rest of your deck, and therefore the more accurate your wish. So say that you have a deck full of WW, silvers, and GM. Your hand has 1 GM and 1 WW. Which do you play first?

My thought is play GM first because then when you play WW you will have more information about your remaining deck composition. By this method you draw 1 from GM, 1 from WW, and 1*P(guess right) from WW. SCSN says to play WW first because then if you're wrong you can draw the remaining card with GM. By this method you draw 1 from WW, 1*P(guess right), and 1 from GM. So I don't see how playing WW first is the better move. As far as I can tell you are more likely to guess right and draw more cards by playing GM first.

So what are your thoughts on this? I'm especially interested to hear from SCSN, since he was the one who made the original claim with which I disagree. Am I missing something?

6

General Discussion / Buying a New Computer

« on: May 20, 2014, 02:16:28 am »

I am in the market for a new laptop and finding that nothing I look at quite has what I want. I thought I would pick the collective brain of us WanderingWinder alts to see if anyone has any advice.

My current machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad T410. I would love to stick with Lenovo and ThinkPad as I've really liked my past two machines which have been ThinkPads. I will not buy a Mac. Don't even suggest it.

My "needs": I'm a college student who just declared a double major in chemistry and computer science.
I'd like a machine with the performance to run a browser with a bunch of tabs, some software like Origin, a terminal emulator, excel, an IDE (I like geany), mathematica, etc. comfortably, something my computer currently struggles with (Origin especially just slows everything down a ton. I think that problem might lie with the software, not my computer). Also being able to execute some computationally intensive scripts would be nice, though anything too big I can run remotely on a cluster. I don't do much gaming, though it would be nice if games would run and be playable.
I'm thinking about trying to dual-boot with W8 and Ubuntu. So in addition to the >300GB of stuff I probably want to store (250GB filled up on my current machine) it would be nice to have the space to partition the hard drive.
I also have a set up with an external monitor and usb hub attached to an external keyboard and mouse. Currently that takes a VGA port and 1 usb port on my laptop. The wifi at my school is terrible (even with my probably-not-allowed wireless access point in my apartment), so being able to plug into ethernet at my desk is desirable.
To further complicate things, I would like to, if possible, transition to paperless notes and therefore it would be awesome to have a convertible laptop/tablet with a stylus. The more I look into this, the more it looks like the performance sacrifices might not be worth it, but the idea of having all of my notes electronically is very appealing.

Any advice or suggestions are most appreciated.

7

Help! / Is YW so obvious here? (KC/BV/Wharf)

« on: May 20, 2014, 01:32:54 am »

In one of my league games I got absolutely obliterated by amalloy. The Kingdom:

Code: [Select]

Courtyard, Nomad Camp, Treasure Map, Young Witch, Counterfeit, Highway, Saboteur, Wharf, Border Village, Farmland, King's Court
The Log: http: https://www.gokosalvager.com:8889/static/logprettifier.html?20140519/log.50ca9bbae4b0c3bfb6b97227.1400554562955.txt

He opened YW/Silver and I went Silver/Silver figuring that hitting 5/6/7 was more important than the cursing. After that I feel like I played reasonably well and there weren't very many difficult decisions to be made, but I got utterly destroyed. I never even played a King's Court. Where did I go wrong? Was YW just obviously the right call here? Did I mess something else up?

8

Game Reports / Cultist/Rebuild

« on: March 16, 2014, 01:16:29 am »

So I played a game irl with this kingdom today:

Code: [Select]

Beggar, Secret Chamber, Squire, Bishop, Mining Village, Contraband, Count, Counting House, Cultist, Rebuild
It was a shelters game with plat/colony.

What do you go for here? Rebuild is strong, especially with Count, but is it strong enough in a colony game, especially facing off against Cultist?

My opponent was first player and got 5/2 and went for Count/Squire. I opened Silver/Silver. I picked up a Count first and then we both went for Cultists. His FPA helped him out in a big way when his 4-cultist turn emptied the ruins pile and my 4-cultist turn immediately afterward did nothing. We split the ruins 6/4 and he was able to trash all of his pretty soon afterward. We both got a platinum. I grabbed a colony and made a desperate attempt to 3-pile on ruins, cultists, and squires (the first two already being empty, and the third had five and I bought three in one turn), but his superior deck won out. What do you guys think on this one? I toyed briefly with Beggar/Counting House/Squire before deciding that there was no way to make it consistent. Poor Counting House.

I think I probably should have gone straight for Cultist (as should he actually), but Count's trashing with Squire's on-trash seemed really nice. The turn before he piled out the ruins, he trashed a hand with 3 squires to pick up 3 cultists.

9

Feedback / Unable to Connect

« on: January 09, 2014, 02:23:51 pm »

Yesterday evening into late night (~6PM-3AM PST) I was unable to connect to the forum at all. I got "couldn't find the server" response from my web browser (I tried firefox and chrome). There didn't seem to be a problem with any other sites (including the main blog). Anyway, not sure what was going on, but thought I'd give you a heads up in case it was on your end.

10

Variants and Fan Cards / Copper as a Reaction

« on: September 14, 2013, 04:32:42 pm »

Bargain
$3 - Reaction
When you would gain a card, you may reveal and discard this. If you do, instead, gain a card costing exactly one more than it.

For buying one card, this is just a copper, but it interacts strongly with gainers, multiple buys, swindler, cursers etc. I originally priced it at $2 before looking at the list of cards and seeing just how many things it interacts with. What do you guys think? Are there any broken combos I'm missing?

Also, can someone think of a better name? I think a location where you can get things for a reduced price with a medieval theme would be good. I would have called it Black Market if that didn't already exist.


Edit: I'm an idiot. It doesn't interact with multiple buys at all because you have to discard it.

11

Game Reports / Familiar vs. Sea Hag

« on: September 11, 2013, 04:40:36 pm »

I played a game the other day with this kingdom:

My opponent opened potion, and after a little thought I decided to go for sea hag instead because I saw little potential for an engine and decided to set up for a sloggy game with beggar reacting to his frequent familiar for bonus silvers and not being too bad as a terminal gold in a sloggy deck. I lost the curse split 7-3 and he was able to trash all of his curses with salvager, but I ultimately won, I think largely due to poor endgame play on his part (those last several Harems should have been duchies in my mind). What do you guys think? Is Sea Hag the way to go on this board? And how could I have played it better?


Edit: forgot to post the log. Oops. http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130910/log.50ca9bbae4b0c3bfb6b97227.1378849840361.txt

12

Game Reports / Strange Kingdom. Two games

« on: August 15, 2013, 03:06:19 am »

So I just played a weird couple games with the same kingdom and still couldn't really wrap my head around the kingdom:

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130814/log.516d1bb2e4b082c74d7ae70b.1376547210085.txt

The first game my opponent opened Amb and since the top knight was Dame Anna (trasher) I decided that Masq/Silver for the early five would be better. He got an urchin T2 (presumably for mercenary). I got Dame Anna T3. From there it was a lot of trashing and passing and returning for a while. We each got some shanty towns then mystics (he got more of the former, I of the latter). I got the first platinum. I think we both picked up a jester to no great effect. I got more green and slogged through for 82/42 win.


http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130814/log.516d1bb2e4b082c74d7ae70b.1376548704769.txt

He asked if I wanted to play the same kingdom again, so I said sure. This time he opened Monument/Masq and I had a 5/2 split with Sir Michael (discard) on top, so I decided to pick him up thinking to slow him down and possibly combo discard attack with masq (which never happend). I got a shanty town to work on that and quite a few $2 hands (not a huge surprise considering no silver). I decided to go for mystic/shanty town synergy which worked alright. We traded points off throughout the game and he pulled through with a 64/63 win.

Afterwards, I don't think either of us knew what the best strategy on that board was, so... Here you go. What do you guys think? Masq or Amb? and then what? No draw other than masq and activated shanty town.

13

Goko Dominion Online / "Should I buy in?" and other questions about Goko

« on: August 11, 2013, 10:56:46 pm »

So I've been played Dominion for a few years, I played on Iso, I own a couple sets and my friends own others, and this summer I decided to give Goko a shot. I got the extension (thank you so much, you guys), and boosted my rating by beating up on bots with base (boring), and am now high enough to enter the 5k+ restricted games people host with all the cards. Finding a game can be difficult, however, as it involves entering several lobbies from different tabs and switching between them to hunt for a game. One of the things I liked about Iso is that it took maybe 10-15min to find and play an average game, so it was a quick break, whereas playing on Goko feels like somewhat of a chore.

So now I'm considering buying in. As I understand their strange currency system, it costs me $45 to get all the expansions, which isn't unreasonable, but I'm a poor college student, so it isn't nothing either. So I was thinking I might ask the f.ds community for their input.

For those who have bought all the cards, was it worth it? Is it significantly easier to find a quick game?

I remember there being security issues with Goko in the past, so when I signed up when they initially launched (or rather when they relaunched in such a way that I was actually able to make an account), I used an old junk email address. If I'm going to buy the things I want to be able to move the account to my real gmail/google+ (based on their FAQ it looks like one-time account merges are possible), and I'd like to know that it's safe to enter my credit card information. It looks like payment is powered by "ultimate pay." Does someone with more knowledge about web security and the Goko situation know if it would be secure to use my credit card info and my real email address?

Thanks!

14

Help! / Why did I lose this Rebuild mirror?

« on: August 03, 2013, 04:50:00 pm »

He opens militia/sage and I open militia/silver thinking this will be more likely to get me the early $5 for rebuild. It just seems like his militia hits all my $5 hands so I'm stuck with one rebuild until turn 11 and never buy a duchy. Was this sage working for him? I pick up a sage turn 5 and 6 and 9 instead of silver. How much of this was luck and where did I go wrong. Should I have opened sage? Thanks!

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130803/log.5145f20ce4b0de86766be2fd.1375561246488.txt

15

Goko Dominion Online / So how do I get into the 4000+ range?

« on: July 13, 2013, 09:54:42 pm »

I recently decided to give goko a try and ran into the problem that my pro rating was 0 and so no one wanted to play with me. (Also, for some reason my quit % is 12% maybe from the adventures? Not sure what's going on here because I'm pretty sure I haven't quit that often).
Based on what I read here I figured I needed to play the bots to get my rating up. After an embarrassing not-high win rate for a while (I only have base on goko and I'd forgotten how dominant BM is in base-only games) I've beaten the bots enough that I'm rated at 3693, but I just beat defender bot again and my rating actually dropped 5 points! 
How am I supposed to get any higher if beating the bots no longer increases my rating? Help!

16

Game Reports / Knights may lose you friends

« on: January 26, 2013, 09:06:52 pm »

Just bought IRL Dark Ages, and played a game today against my friend.

The Kingdom: Masquerade, Sage, Wishing Well, Fortress, Procession, Band of Misfits, Knights, Mystic, Torturer, Trading Post

I'm not sure if this was the best strategy, but I was so excited by the Procession/Fortress combo. I opened masq/silver and then proceeded to Procession and BOM-as-procession Fortress to win the knight split 8/2. With my million actions I played basically all of them every turn (there were only about 3 more turns after the pile emptied) to trash most of his deck, playing Sir Michael last so that he had to discard any fortresses that had been hit by the knights and been put in his hand. Then I played masquerade and sometimes BOM-as-Masq to make him pass me his good stuff. On the last turn I (BOM) processioned fortress to gain the remaining 8 mystics (3rd pile after Knights and BOM). Since they were all that was in my discard at that point I guessed mystic every time and drew them all then played them for $24 to triple province.

He left me to clean up the game...
I think he's still mad...

17

Game Reports / Wharf, FV, IW, Tournament

« on: January 14, 2013, 03:45:51 pm »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/14/game-20130114-123923-d90048e6.html

Just won this game (though I wouldnt've if my opponent had seen to end the game by buying out the tournaments on his last turn while ahead) and thought it was an interesting set. The dominant strategy seemed clear--FV/Wharf and then tournament for some prizes--but I wasn't sure how to set it up the fastest. I'm sure that I wasn't even close, but I'd be interested to see people's take on the best way to approach this. Also, Princess was stronger than Followers on this board, right? I think my opponent made a mistake picking the latter.

Thoughts?

18

Help! / Open Ironworks for Villages with wharf on board??

« on: January 05, 2013, 02:41:43 am »

I haven't tried posting here before, but an opponent took an opening that surprised me and then won, so I thought I'd try it out.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201301/04/game-20130104-232247-53a59d2a.html

cards in supply: Council Room, Ironworks, Nobles, Nomad Camp, Oasis, Shanty Town, Tactician, Village, Walled Village, and Wharf

I thought silver/silver was the best opening to get to the valuable expensive cards (wharf, nobles) quickly. My opponent opened ironworks/silver, which surprised me. Is that the correct opening in order to get villages to support the engine? I think it was a mistake to take nobles over wharf and gold on my T3 $6. Would Tactician have been worth pursuing instead/in addition to wharves, perhaps with oasis? Should I have bought gold sooner?

Also, can anyone see a reason to buy village over walled village on $4? I realize they're essentially equivalent, but walled is strictly better (excepting pedantic edge cases).

Thanks!

19

Game Reports / I somehow won despite eating ten curses

« on: September 06, 2012, 09:53:53 pm »

I can't link because no more CR  , but I entirely ignored sea hags and hunting parties and built a scrying pool-conspirator-warehouse engine that ate all 10 curses and still won. It was ridiculous.

20

Dominion General Discussion / Soo... Which expansion should I get.

« on: August 24, 2012, 06:51:34 pm »

I realize that there is already a post answering this question on ds, but I wanted to solicit the opinions of the f.ds community about my particular situation. I was introduced to Dominion by my sister and her boyfriend, who now have Base, Prosperity, and Seaside. I have another friend who has Base. I currently don't own any sets. I want to get one, as I'm going off to college and won't have access either Sister or Friend while there. I believe there will be people there with Base. I want to get a set that will add to the experience when I mix it with the others, and not a duplicate of the ones I could already play with when I come back home. However, if none are available, I would like to be able to play with it on it's own.

I think this leaves me with a few options:
Buy Intrigue

Buy Hinterlands, Cornucopia, or Dark Ages (!) and buy the treasure and victory cards separately.

Speaking of which, is the "base cards set" actually available? I'm looking on the RGG site, and it seems they haven't released it yet. Well maybe that makes my decision really easy.

Thoughts?

More info about me:
I've played a couple hundred games on Iso (can't look exactly now b/c CR is down)
I'm level 15
The people I'll be playing with IRL are likely not going to have the same level as experience as me.

21

Variants and Fan Cards / Demon - My first attempt at a fan card

« on: August 01, 2012, 10:32:43 pm »

Hello. This is my first attempt at a fan card. I was thinking about a duration card that lasts more than one turn and provides a repeated benefit as well as incurring a repeated cost. So here goes:

Demon
$4 - Action-Duration
If this is in play at the beginning of your turn +1 Card.
If this is in play at the start of your cleanup phase, trash a card from your hand. If you do, leave Demon in play. If you don't, trash Demon and gain a curse.

Maybe the wording would be better as:

Demon
$4 - Action-Duration
Now and at the start of every subsequent turn, +1 Card
If this is in play at the start of your cleanup phase, trash a card from your hand. If you don't, trash Demon and gain a curse.

I'm not sure if this wording encounters the weird throned feast behavior where, because Dominion doesn't have a "lose track" rule, the card continues to operate even after being trashed. Also, is it weird to have an "if you do/if you don't" when there's no may. The idea is that it forces you to trash if you can, but if you can't, you lose the card. Maybe it would be better with "may."

So sort of like an alchemist or a permanent caravan except that you have the cost (or benefit) of trashing.

Thoughts? I've had no opportunity to playtest this. Feel free to inform me that it is the stupidest idea ever, but please try to say it in a nicer way and explain why. 

22

Introductions / Hello

« on: July 24, 2012, 02:14:55 am »

Hi. Been playing Dominion for a year or so. Just a few games. I stumbled across DominionStrategy.com when one of my friends made the "hey wouldn't just buying money be good?" realization, and I decided to look up strategy. Been playing some on Iso and reading the articles on here and have improved my game considerably. Thanks! 

PS. Thank you for having the most straightforward and reasonable user agreement I have ever seen. What a relief.