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Messages - Kelume

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1
I'm not sold on trashing Coppers over Estates. You want the extra bit of money offered by those Coppers, and you already have a plethora of Rats to trash for benefit which are a much better target than Estates.

Otherwise, it could certainly work. Time will tell!

2
Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Rats: weak? Maybe, but what CAN they do?
« on: August 20, 2012, 06:13:07 pm »
So, the consensus seems to be in on Rats, and it's bad. Like, really bad - predictions are anywhere from bottom quarter $4 to the worst card since Scout. I'm here to defend it! (Please note that this is all speculation.)

Rats is obviously terrible in money. Like, so bad, really really bad. But that's not its purpose. Well, what is? Assuming good collision, Rats will clear your deck of starting Estates by your third shuffle. But, now you have four useless Rats instead of 3 Estates and a $4 card. Is that better? Not by itself, certainly.

Consider though that each time you trash a Rats, you get Labbed for free. Rats lets you choose to trash two AND draw two with Steward. Rats turns Junk Dealer into some kind of crazy Lab-Peddler-trasher hybrid monster. Quite possibly, the +1 card on trash is the biggest draw of Rats: if you could have otherwise built an engine by trashing your starting cards, you can gain +10 cards by doing so if you eat them with Rats first. (Note that this is however offset by the -10 cards you lose at the moment of trashing those cards; still, in many cases you would have trashed them voluntarily with no recompense.)

Perhaps more importantly, there are several cards which notably it will combo nicely with (Apprentice and Death Cart have been raised as examples), and I want to find more:
  • Scrying Pool: Accelerates the removal of coppers/estates so you can reach deck-drawing faster
  • Watchtower: On collision, turns Rats into trashing Labs
  • Trader: Trade Rats for 4 silvers and 1 card
  • Forge, Remake, Apprentice, Salvager, Remodel, Develop, Expand, Graverobber, Bishop, Governor: Adds $2-4 to cards which you would otherwise wish to be rid of, and also draws one additional card upon trashing
  • Against Saboteur, Knights, Rogue, Swindler (to a lesser degree): Causes the risk of Labbing you and makes further Rogues useless
  • Fortress: Makes Rats drastically safer to play to remove Coppers/Estates; with deck in hand, can pile Rats in one turn while trashing no other cards (ideally, to end the game)
  • Poor House: Managing just two of these with no treasures in deck is a Province.
  • Vineyards: In combination with some of the above.

All I'm sayin' is, don't discount it yet.

What are your thoughts on potential uses for this card?

3
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Adapting Dominion to asynchronous play
« on: August 20, 2012, 11:49:19 am »
It seems that the main conflict occurs when the top of the opponent's deck changes non-mandatorily (FG, Ghost Ship, etc) followed by an attack that depends upon the top of the opponent's deck (Spy, Swindler, Thief, etc).

In that case, after the second attack is played, the game could present the turn to the opposing player (player B) as though it is his turn, asking for the decisions to be made, and then give control back to player A to finish his turn. This should occur more infrequently than just the single attack case.

The other issue is opponent gains or trashes which may have to be handled similarly; if the players want true async play, they'd have to ban those cards, I suppose.

4
Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Join me on my quest to level 40!
« on: August 18, 2012, 12:13:52 pm »
Everyone's favourite Toronto-based graphic novel/movie? ...It is now!

5
Dominion: Dark Ages Previews / Re: Procession Interactions
« on: August 17, 2012, 02:58:25 pm »
Those all sound correct to me, though you may have wanted to trash the Silver first in the final example. But otherwise, yes, your understanding is right (provided that mine also is).

6
Dominion Videos and Streams / Join me on my quest to level 40!
« on: August 17, 2012, 02:28:10 pm »
So, even though Goko's out already, I put some Iso games up on YouTube - mostly as a test to see how much effort it was and to make sure it worked. Audio quality took a hit midway through (my air conditioning apparently has odd effects on my mic), and also Camtasia does some random zoom-ins in the first couple videos, so I apologize for that.

I'd love any feedback you have; certainly the ones I played against "the World" were not stellar in terms of both my strategies and my play, but nevertheless I would love any criticisms or comments on both the commentary and the play. : )


7
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Clasic_Cards #28 - Studio
« on: August 15, 2012, 06:53:13 pm »
Surely has to be too strong in big money? On top of being usually a silver worth 1vp, it also gives 1vp periodically at the cost of only 1 coin, and more often toward the end of the game when you need it most. Not only that, hitting itself makes it a non-terminal Monument for $1 less.

8
Game Reports / Re: What did he do right?
« on: August 15, 2012, 11:04:48 am »
Agreed with the above. Also Trading Post is a very strong open, even with Grand Markets; the benefit of Vault is that you can discard your coppers and estates to still get money, but since he was trashing Estates (all of which were gone by t6) for Silvers and Coppers and you were only trashing Coppers, he still had money on non-Vault turns and was able to make his cantrips line up better. Your loan also missed the initial shuffle so by turn 10 he had 2 coppers and no estates compared to your 4 coppers and 3 estates.

The scout was a terrible buy but it worked out on turn 6 and after that was still more useful than an Estate.

9
Dark Ages aside, if you have a bunch of coppers in play (say, for use with Banks) and some +buys, you could in theory get a Mandarin to remove them from play and then buy Grand Markets?

I... did not even think of that before. Is that allowed?

10
Game Reports / Re: A Gardens rush in which I end up with 6 Provinces
« on: August 14, 2012, 10:17:46 am »
That is a crazy game. The Governor draw was helping it along quite a bit but still, 55 points that quickly with pretty much only 3 silvers and a Festival for money is pretty unbelievable. The power of Crossroads!

11
Simulation / Re: Simulating Dark Ages
« on: August 09, 2012, 01:26:55 pm »
Whipped up a simple Remake/Poor House/FV bot that goes around 50/50 with the built in DoubleJack. Very cool and probably easily improvable. :)

Code: [Select]
{
    name: 'Remake Poor House FV'
    author: 'Kelume'
    requires: ["Remake", "Poor House", "Fishing Village"]
    gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
        "Province"
        "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
        "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
        "Remake" if my.countInDeck("Remake") < 1
        "Poor House" if my.countInDeck("Fishing Village") > my.countInDeck ("Poor House")
        "Fishing Village"
    ]
}

12
Let's imagine Possession is an Attack for a second.

Both players open Chapel/Squire, get a Possession.

I Possess you.  Oh.  You only have an Estate in your deck.  <.<
It would basically be terrible for whoever did not get the Possession, and terrible if both did. It's a lose-lose.

Equally likely, one person will get the squire and chapel to collide on the first shuffle, the other won't, and player A will end up with two or more possessions (by trashing their opponent's squire).

All in all, I am thankful it is not a possible target. xP

13
Oh my gosh, Chapel/Squire or Remake/Squire with Possession on the board... talk about your degenerate games.

Possession isn't an attack, so unless there are other attack cards available, this wouldn't be so bad.

Never before have I been so happy to be wrong.

14
Oh my gosh, Chapel/Squire or Remake/Squire with Possession on the board... talk about your degenerate games.

15
Just wanted to thank popsofctown for defending my poor Carambola. :)

While it's true that I didn't consider 5-6 player (I did not know these were official possibilities and have never seen them played), I am a little baffled that it's regarded as far too strong. I've tested $4 terminal golds a few times and they never pan out to be quite as strong as one would think due to the risk of collision and worthlessness in combination with terminal draw.

In money games, the silver is the obvious choice; in engine games, the trashing. So, if you are going for the same strategy as your opponent, this card is deceptively weak. Where it shines is when strategies diverge, and indeed I feel like it promotes that nicely (and then provides interesting opportunities to deny your opponent options they need.) With more players it only becomes more interesting as often you gain a small early benefit in exchange for your opponents' choices slightly altering your needed gameplan.

Anyway, I thought it worked nicely, I'll try for something more appealing next challenges. : )

16
General Discussion / Re: My wacky cousin (puzzle)
« on: August 02, 2012, 04:11:17 pm »
He likes Sony but not Toshiba.
He likes Apple but not Microsoft.
At least he likes Asus and Samsung... but not Android. He is indeed a curious one.

If he did like Dominion, he'd probably be an alright player - he's predisposed to Chapel (though he sure doesn't like damn near any other card).

edit: never mind, he likes Chancellor, I take it all back.

17
General Discussion / Re: Stoners
« on: July 30, 2012, 12:57:43 pm »
What if Dominion is my drug of choice... does that count?

18
This challenge raises the question: Is FV too strong, or funstrong?

I feel it is too strong.
I'm of the (possibly controversial) opinion that as long as a card is funstrong, it (almost) cannot be too strong. Many favourite cards tend to be the ones that change the landscape of the game, Fishing Village included!

19
Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: My Challenge #5 Card: Seer (Laurel)
« on: July 27, 2012, 05:26:03 pm »
Agreed with the above - consider that in a Province-capable deck, your average card value needs to be $1.6 for a given 5-card hand. If you meet that requirement, then it is even preferable to discard Gold (two random cards give $3.2 of value), so you would pretty much always want to discard 4.

The odds don't quite work out exactly as stated so you would probably keep gold, but this is just an illustration of how much it hurts most decks to keep anything at all.

While it's strong I wouldn't necessarily say it's overpowered, and (like most of the custom cards) the more I think about potential situations, the more I could see some where it presented an interesting choice, but by and large, this one seems to just boil down to "cycle 4 cards, +4 cards".

20
Mini-Set Design Contest / Re: My challenge #5 card : Farmer (Ford)
« on: July 27, 2012, 02:35:02 pm »
It just doesn't seem like something that is actually beneficial in most cases. After a few buys, what are the cards that you're going to have 4+ of (and thus be what this will get rid of)? Coppers - sure, for an engine, this is helpful. For money, it may not even be.

In a money game, it could ruin a province hand just as much as create one - discarding two silvers, putting gold/copper/estate back on top; exacerbated by curses. By the end of the game (buying Duchies) you want those coppers and they're still your most likely discard if you have say, 3 estates, 3 provinces, and a smattering of curses.

In a slimmed engine, you're quite likely to toss Peddlers, Villages, etc.

It just seems like a vastly less versatile/helpful version of Apothecary.

21
Just wanted to express my thanks for all the videos you've put up so far - I enjoyed them all, and will certainly watch any more you decide to put up. I feel like I learned a lot about the strength of alt VP in particular, but my play has improved substantially in a variety of subtle ways that I feel confident in attributing to these videos, so thanks.

22
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Gray's Cards #2
« on: July 26, 2012, 04:11:25 pm »
Let's compare to Mandarin, a terminal $3.  It's tough to compare, because the on-gain effect is a weird thing.  But once it's in your deck, it's a terminal $3 (worse than $4) that drops a card from this turn (worse than next turn) by putting a card on your deck (much worse than discarding) and costs $5 (more expensive).

However much you think Mandarin's on-gain ability affects its power level, does it really compensate for ALL of those things?
I'm not sure I agree with these premises. In a Big Money deck, Mandarin has a specific niche: you don't yet want to buy Duchies but you have $5 and a) aren't saturated with terminals yet and few/no other good BM terminals are on the board, or b) have a Gold in play that you'd like for next turn, or both.

In a big money case like this, I would argue that putting a card on deck in later turns is at worst breakeven, and is beneficial more often than not. In an engine I wouldn't consider Mandarin barring some edge cases.

I think it worthwhile to restate the idea of making the penalty a bit harsher (forcing a Treasure to be tossed if possible, or something similar) to weaken it. Tossing a single victory card is not a penalty at all, as you mention, but Cutpursing yourself (or worse) next turn has interesting implications.

Cutpurse gives $2 to you and -$1 to your opponent - net $3 advantage. $4 this turn and -$1 the next would be also $3 advantage at the same price level. Certainly it is a stronger card since the benefit is concentrated. That said I do still think it would be fun to play around with - I wouldn't want to turn it into a Woodcutter by making it too weak as I think there is a role to be played by strong cards of all functions.

23
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Gray's Cards #2
« on: July 26, 2012, 02:25:02 pm »
Mostly playing devil's advocate here, but I think $4 would be a fair price if it gave $3; I don't think it would be worthwhile as a $5 unless the bonus was $4 (at which point it's competing with Mountebank). Even at $4 for $4, it could be fun. Very strong, but then, we have other cards which are clearly stronger than others (hello Fishing Village) and they are sometimes the most fun. It has a number of downsides:

-Early on in the game, it will miss the reshuffle often since it is a duration.
-Deck-drawing engines will get the benefit only once per two turns.
-It's extremely handicapping when a discard attack is on the board.
-It's weak in multiples.

I do think it could use some kind of tweak for BM. Perhaps "Discard a Treasure or discard two cards" to actually impact future buying power. Otherwise, while it is very strong, as I mentioned before, I still think it could be fun.

24
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Chapel/Laboratory Strategy
« on: July 26, 2012, 02:14:41 pm »
It's because the 1 is a variable (so you could tweak it to be 0, 1, 2, ...) and you don't want to change the rule depending on what you end up assigning there.

As for the last bit, I think that should say "unless" before the rule... must be a typo.

25
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Chapel/Laboratory Strategy
« on: July 26, 2012, 02:06:22 pm »
That is correct. Which rule in particular does not make sense given your interpretation?

The [d], [e] and [f] symbols represent experimental variables which can be fiddled with, and have been optimized to make the bot as efficient as possible - see http://simulatedominion.wordpress.com/strategies/rule-based/ for more information.

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