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1

Rules Questions / Forager and Possession

« on: August 01, 2013, 01:03:00 pm »

Assume that there are no treasures in the trash yet.

If I possess my opponent and then on the possession turn force my opponent to trash a Copper with Forager, does the Forager give +$0 or +$1? I think +$0 because the trashed Copper doesn't go to the trash pile, but I wanted to check.

2

Dominion: Guilds Previews / What else *should* Guilds have included?

« on: July 10, 2013, 09:23:09 am »

I've seen a bunch of folks post in other threads that there's more Guilds could have done with the set mechanic and that Guilds should have been a full set. I'm not convinced yet. What else would you like to do with coin tokens or overpaying?

3

Dominion: Guilds Previews / Masterpiece or Gold?

« on: June 19, 2013, 04:36:29 pm »

The question of whether to go for Masterpiece or Gold will obviously depend on the board, but here's a first approximation using a simple test: which gives your deck a better average card value? Remember that Province games need to hit $1.6/card and $5 rushes or slogs need $1/card.

From crunching the numbers, I have a couple of general observations. First, bigger decks prefer Masterpiece+overpay, since the impact of adding additional cards is smaller. Second, decks with a low total coin value prefer Masterpiece as well, since each additional Silver adds to the deck's coin total.

The threshold depends on both of these things. The actual math is not the kind of stuff you'd want to use in a real game, but we'll build an approximation from it. The formula: If 3*money in deck (prior to purchase) + 5 < 4*cards in deck (prior to purchase), buy Masterpiece.

The more realistic version: when the money:card ratio exceeds 5:4, prefer Gold. So, a 12 card deck with 15 or more coin should lean Gold, less than 15, Masterpiece.

4

Dominion: Guilds Previews / Guilds is here!

« on: June 13, 2013, 10:46:53 am »

Photos on this twitter stream
TAXMAN
Cost 4
Action - Attack
You may trash a Treasure from your hand. Each other player with 5 or more cards in hand discards a copy of it (or reveals a hand without it). Gain a Treasure card costing up to $3 more than the trashed card, putting it on top of your deck.

STONEMASON
Cost 2+
Action
Trash a card from your hand, Gain 2 cards each costing less than it.
-----
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. If you do, gain 2 Action cards each costing the amount you overpaid.

PLAZA
Cost 4
Action
+1 Card
+2 Actions
You may discard a Treasure card. If you do, take a Coin token.

SOOTHSAYER
Cost 5
Action - Attack
Gain a Gold. Each other player gains a Curse. Each player who did draws a card.

MASTERPIECE
Cost 3+
Treasure
$1
--------
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. If you do, gain a Silver per $1 you overpaid.

MERCHANT GUILD
Cost 5
Action
+1 Buy
+$1
--------
While this is in play, when you buy a card, take a Coin token.

CANDLESTICK MAKER
Cost 2
Action
+1 Action
+1 Buy
Take a Coin Token

ADVISOR
Cost 4
Action
+1 Action
Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. The player to your left chooses one of them. Discard that card. Put the other cards into your hand.


Already known:
BAKER
Cost 5
Action
+1 Card
+1 Action
Take a Coin token.
---------
Setup: Each player takes a Coin token.

DOCTOR
Cost 3+
Action
Name a card. Reveal the top 3 cards of your deck. Trash the matches. Put the rest back on top in any order.
-------------
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpaid, look at the top card of your deck; trash it, discard it, or put it back.

JOURNEYMAN
Cost 5
Action
Name a card. Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal 3 cards that are not the named card. Put those cards into your hand and discard the rest.

BUTCHER
Cost 5
Take 2 Coin tokens. You may trash a card from your hand and then pay any number of Coin tokens. If you did trash a card, gain a card with a cost of up to the cost of the trashed card plus the number of Coin tokens you paid.

HERALD
Cost 4+
+1 Card
+1 Action
Reveal the top card of your deck. If it is an Action, play it.
-----------
When you buy this, you may overpay for it. For each $1 you overpaid, look through your discard pile and put a card from it on top of your deck.

5

Power Grid General Discussion / How much do plants get bid up?

« on: June 05, 2013, 10:58:15 am »

This is a survey-type question rather than a strategy question. My group doesn't have a ton of experience with Power Grid, and so we're not sure if the way we're playing is typical or not.

Leaving aside endgame bidding in which winning a specific plant decides the game, how much are contested plants typically bid up? Is it unusual during a game to see a plant go for 10 more than its face price, or would you be shocked to see a game where plants aren't regularly bid up at least that much?

6

Dominion General Discussion / Combo: Forager/Draw-to-X

« on: April 24, 2013, 11:51:37 pm »

Forager/draw-to-X seems like a strong tempo-building combo. The premise is simple: use Forager to clean out your hand, and draw back up. Forager serves the same purpose as any virtual coin, but it cleans out two hand slots instead of one. Plus, it gives a buy and thins your deck.

The weakness of Forager is the same as any of the discard-for-coin cards (Horse Traders, Secret Chamber [but not Vault because Vault draws too])—you're paying for the cash with both the discarded/trashed card slots in your hand and the card itself. By default, Horse Traders has a per-card value of $1 (use 3 cards to get $3); Secret Chamber is a max of $0.8 without draw; Forager is $0.5 if there's a Copper already in the trash, which makes it worse than Copper. But, because the draw-to-X cards love handsize reduction, Forager's drawback of shrinking your hand ends up as a benefit.

It's especially potent with Jack because Jack can't trash your starting Coppers, while Forager prefers to eat at least one Copper before starting in on the Estates. And, since Jack is flooding your deck with Silver, it's not a huge loss to chop a Silver in the mid-game to power up all your Foragers. Use Forager, and Jack becomes +3 cards (with filtering), +1 coin, gain a Silver.

The drawback is that your opponent can benefit from you powering up the Forager, especially if you trash a Silver or more valuable coin. But, the tempo lead from the increased cycling (copper trashing as well as the extra draw-to-X benefit) probably makes it worthwhile in most circumstances.

7

Dominion General Discussion / Combo: Fortress/Farmland

« on: April 24, 2013, 07:51:16 pm »

This isn't a full-on combo but is a nice interaction: Farmland lets you "trash" a Fortress into a Farmland, while retaining your Fortress. This makes it easier to run the Farmland pile or get Farmlands->Province going.

8

Help! / How did I lose this Minion game?

« on: April 23, 2013, 02:41:25 pm »

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130423/log.50ad02dae4b0fb8e18c1ae6b.1366742328447.txt

I'm not sure how I lost this game—my opponent went for mostly alt-VP cards while I raced Minions. Despite a 7-0 Minion and giving my opponent 4 card hands for the whole game, I still lost.

The only move that I wasn't sure about was the Potion, but when I hit $4 and didn't want to activate my opponent's cities by buying the last Island, it seemed like a decent move since it would virtually guarantee a double Minion hit.

9

Goko Dominion Online / Goko regrets

« on: April 09, 2013, 11:44:16 am »

As someone who watched Goko trying to fix their issues and hoped that the current status of the software was good enough, I wanted to share that I am now seriously regretting purchasing their product. Besides the UI issues like bane cards and the lobby (oh my god, the lobby), I regularly and unpredictably have to deal with issues like getting a solid black page instead of a login screen, or having the gear spin indefinitely while attempting to login.

I'm sharing this here not to complain, per se, nor to file a bug report (I've been quite busy on getsatisfaction), but simply to strongly discourage anyone who is undecided about Goko from buying their product. At this point, it's a pain, and not only has it felt like wasted dollars but it's actually dulled my love for the game Dominion.

10

Other Games / Race for the Galaxy - help!

« on: April 08, 2013, 04:57:28 pm »

I've recently been introduced to RftG. Although I understand the mechanics of the game, I am awful at playing it.

I've been playing a number of games against the AI recently and putting them on YouTube. I am hoping that there are folks here who can provide feedback to help me improve my play.

The video playlist starts here. Please feel free to comment with any suggestions.

(I hope that I'll be able to continue recording for a while and eventually have a RftG channel much like the YouTube Dominion players. To that end, any thoughts on screencasting in general are welcome. I already know that I need to get a microphone that won't pick up the mouse click sound.)

11

Goko Dominion Online / Goko adventures help

« on: April 02, 2013, 01:46:54 pm »

I desperately need help with the Goko adventures. I was a mid-20s level player on iso, but I cannot win Goko's adventures to save my life. On the sets that I did well on iso (e.g., I was +3.43 on Alchemy), I can win a Goko adventure on the second or third try, usually. On sets where I didn't do as well, I can play the same set five or more times and still not figure out how to beat the bot.

So, what gives? These bots can't be that good, right? I know that my win rate drops precariously as soon as the starting conditions change (and yes, I'm using zaps to either take away Silvers from my opponent or give myself Silvers, rather than playing with the victory cards), but even on the adventures that start with identical decks I'm barely scraping by with a win.

Without getting into strategy for specific sets: how do you need to change your playing strategy in order to succeed at adventure mode?

12

Goko Dominion Online / Goko lagging?

« on: March 15, 2013, 07:45:16 pm »

Is it just me, or is Goko lagging horribly right now? I'm playing a solo game and it's borderline unplayable.

13

Innovation General Discussion / How to tell if you're on the right Innovation track?

« on: March 14, 2013, 07:07:43 pm »

I've now played a handful of games of Innovation. I'm getting really confused because I don't have a sense for how to tell whether I'm moving in the right direction. In Dominion, a general rubric is: is my average buying power increasing?

For Innovation, I don't know whether as a beginner I should be paying attention to what age I'm drawing from, how many of some icon I have, whether my score is increasing, or something else. I know that eventually all of that stuff is relevant, but is there a Big Money equivalent benchmark for how to see the progress in this game?

14

Innovation General Discussion / Innovation IRL questions

« on: March 13, 2013, 08:24:05 pm »

After playing Innovation on iso, I'm liking a lot of things about the online implementation. But, I'm not sure how it will translate to real life. Does anyone have experience playing with the actual cards? I'm immediately wondering if it's going to be tedious figuring out which dogma effects would be shared if I played them, but there's probably a host of other concerns too.

15

Council Room Feedback / What info do you need from logs?

« on: February 14, 2013, 05:52:13 pm »

I'm still working on the Goko log parser, and the next major step will be setting the logs so it is easy to extract whatever info is needed to run councilroom stats. The goal would be to seamlessly integrate councilroom's iso logs with goko, and to include the goko info in the data analysis that is run.

Anyone with knowledge of the councilroom backend—what info do you need from each game? Is there a way that info should be formatted in order to make it easier to integrate with what CR already does for iso?

16

2012 / Suggestion: annotated games from Final Four

« on: February 07, 2013, 10:53:36 am »

Since the Annotated Games have been such popular features on this site, I wanted to suggest having some of the games from the Final Four annotated by either the players themselves or by other top players (like, tournament final 8 or 16). I for one thought there were some great kingdoms in these rounds and would love to see some discussion of those matches.

17

Goko Dominion Online / Goko log parser - now for Chrome!

« on: February 04, 2013, 01:45:37 pm »

Thanks to the efforts of many others, the parser is now available as an extension for Google Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goko-log-viewer/kaignighoceeemhinbbophdeogpnedjn

v1.5 allows you to specify input and optionally output files, so you can interface with other scripts or just keep files organized on your computer.

v1.4 addresses player names. Get it here

EDIT: v1.3 deals with the Black Market cases. Attached here

EDIT: v1.2 has been optimized and fixes a bunch of omissions. It's attached to this post in this thread.

EDIT: v1.0 of the Goko log parser is now complete and is attached to this post. Enjoy, and please let me know if you find any bugs!

I am working on a program to parse the Goko logs and add coloring like the Iso logs. I'd appreciate some help from anyone who understands command line scripting, because I'm trying to work from man pages and it's a mess.

What I have so far: I've got a css style sheet that defines the fundamental card types and adds background colors

What I need: a script template for searching a file line-by-line and doing a search-and-replace on a regex script. I can fill in the details for all the card types if I get a template for the following two replace functions:
a) find end of line, add "<br />"
b) find "text string" and the next character can't be an <, replace with <tag>text string</tag> (the "next character can't be an <" rule is necessary so e.g., Village doesn't find Fishing Village. I'll do all the variations first (e.g., Ruined Library, Fishing Village), then the plain versions (Library, Village).

What would be awesome: if anyone knows how to do split colors (like Action-Victory cards) in CSS, that would be great. My guess is it will require images rather than background text coloring, and I don't know how to figure out what size image is needed.

The final version of the script will take a Goko log text file as input, add the HTML document tags and link to the style sheet, and then wrap all the card names with the appropriate tag.

If anyone wants to try it on their own, here are the CSS tags I've established so far:

Code: [Select]

action
 { background-color:rgb(240,240,240) ; }
treasure
 { background-color:rgb(253,225,100) ; }
reaction
 { background-color:rgb(64,168,227) ; }
duration
 { background-color:rgb(254,143,78) ; }
victory
 { background-color:rgb(146,193,125) ; }
curse
 { background-color:rgb(215,138,219) ; }
ruins
 { background-color:rgb(150,104,51) ; }
shelter
 { background-color:rgb(230,108,104) ; }

18

Goko Dominion Online / UI issue: Ruins and piling out

« on: February 03, 2013, 03:03:31 pm »

One thing that I didn't realize about the Goko interface until just recently is how easy it is to miss that the Ruins have run out as a pile because they're on the second page. Goko folks: is there any way to move the Ruins pile to the first page? That's the only card I've seen where the piles are likely to run and the info about whether the pile is dead (or how many are left) is not immediately obvious, and since it impacts the endgame I think it's significant enough to warrant putting on the main page.

19

Goko Dominion Online / Adventure mode strategy thoughts

« on: February 01, 2013, 08:24:03 pm »

The more I play in Adventure mode, the more I realize that I'm struggling with how the changes to the initial starting cards changes the game tempo. How do you adjust your play to compensate for the different starting decks (e.g., opponent's Duchy instead of Estate or Silver instead of Copper)? What differences seem to make the most difference?

20

Goko Dominion Online / Goko game speed

« on: February 01, 2013, 02:01:46 pm »

It's apparent that Goko Dominion games play a lot slower than Isotropic games. Since fast play is important to this community, I'd like to work collectively to identify a) specific elements of the Goko experience that are slowing down the game, and b) propose solutions to speed up gameplay.

One area that I noticed is that anything requiring dragging cards to a specific location is slow. Watchtower, for example, requires either dragging the gained card to the deck or trash. Can buttons be added for these options (and for anything else that requires choosing where to put a card)? The Pearl Diver interface is a good way to handle that.

21

Dominion Strategy Wiki Feedback / Wiki Suggestion: Games where X shines

« on: January 25, 2013, 01:21:51 pm »

I'd like to suggest a wiki page (or maybe pages) on the theme of "Games where [X] shines." The idea would be to collect games (iso/goko logs and/or YouTube videos) in which players make normally bad cards useful, ideally with some commentary of why they used the card in that situation.

For instance, Stef's recent post on buying a Spy with his first $6 would be a phenomenal entry to the "Games where Spy shines" page.

I'm thinking this belongs on the wiki rather than just the forum because it would be easier to accumulate games and commentary for specific cards. I don't know if it would be better to have a single page (e.g., Games Where Weak Cards Shine) or make separate pages for specific cards. Thoughts?

Admin fixed broken link

22

Help! / IRL game thoughts

« on: January 21, 2013, 04:39:38 pm »

Last night I played a IRL game with one of my friends on a very complex board: Fool's Gold, Embargo, Chancellor, Salvager, Masquerade, Familiar, Navigator, Salvager, Pirate Ship, Death Cart

Power cards: Fool's Gold, Masquerade, Familiar. FG suffers from poor +Buy (Salvager). Masquerade is probably stronger than Familiar, right?

Either Masquerade or Fool's Gold lead towards money-dense decks (and thin decks, in the Masquerade case), which Pirate Ship can be a counter for. But, there's no +Actions, so Pirate Ship is going to be slow in building up and probably can't be an economy unto itself.

Embargo can be brutal against Fool's Gold and can potentially deter a Familiar.

How would you play this set? I opted for Masquerade/Embargo on a 5/2 into BM. Had awful shuffle luck (Embargo and Masquerade collided turn 3, played the Masquerade to cycle faster and had to pass a Copper, leaving me with another $2 hand turn 4). I ended up losing by a couple of Estates to a "little bit of everything" deck that somehow collided Fool's Golds regularly despite having no trashing AND buying an early Death Cart that was never played until we were Duchy dancing. I don't know how much of that to blame on the shuffling; I probably should have Embargoed Fool's Golds but went for Pirate Ship instead.

23

Dominion General Discussion / The +2 cards engine

« on: January 20, 2013, 03:49:26 pm »

Common wisdom for a long time was that +2 cards wasn't enough to build a draw engine around. But lately, I've been seeing more instances in which top players make dominant engines out of +2 card drawing, like Moat and Stewart. So, my overall question is: what needs to change in order to make a +2 cards engine deck viable, vs. a +3 or more card engine deck?

The biggest thing I noticed in game logs (and Councilroom isn't working for me right now, so I can't pull up examples) is Peddler-type cards that provide money without increasing the effective deck size, but surely there's more to making this kind of deck function reliably than cantrip coin.

24

Dominion General Discussion / Losing the Province split

« on: January 18, 2013, 02:02:51 pm »

How do you go about playing a game in which you are planning on coming back from losing the Province split? (I'm contrasting this plan with a desperation Duchy-dance: think Marin rather than oh-crap.) If there are no alt-VP, you need all of the Duchies and 2 Provinces to come back; you need 6 Duchies and 3 Provinces vs. 5 Provinces and 2 Duchies. How do you make that happen? Do you rely on your opponent's deck to stall while you double Duchy, then go for the Provinces to seal the deal?

Obviously this depends on the board, but I'm curious how players like Marin manage to green later, while behind on the Provinces, and still pull out the win.

25

Dominion General Discussion / What's in the Black Market?

« on: January 16, 2013, 11:21:10 am »

How do you decide when to go for Black Market? I can immediately think of three questions: what is in the BM that isn't on the normal board (e.g., cursing, trashing); how many worthwhile cards are in the BM, and whether there's competition for the BM itself in terms of $3 cards or terminals. But, I have no idea how to weigh these things. I've seen Youtubers play a strategy based around getting the Goons out of the BM and I've seen BM decks fall apart because they couldn't get any of three villages out of the BM.

So - if you are good with BM, how do you evaluate the BM deck part of the card (as opposed to just playing BM as a terminal Silver)?