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Messages - Amac

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1
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Favorite Expansions in 2018
« on: February 12, 2018, 07:00:35 am »
I still have to play beyond Guilds, so this is it for me:

1. Seaside: Clearly the best expansion for me. The duration mechanic is a really interesting mechanic, especially on 'easy-to-understand' cards. Sure, there are some misses, but I like cheaper and easy-to-play cards
2. Dark Ages: Shelter mechanic is really good, most of the cards are fine too, nothing too complex overall. There are some miss cards, hurting a little more than Seaside overall
3. Prosperity: Gears towards engine-building and I feel kingdom treasures are pretty interesting. I only dislike the 7-cost actions except for Forge.
4. Cornucopia: Many people do not like the 'different cards'-concept, but I honestly do. Tournament, Menagerie, these type of cards are really distinguishing and interesting in general
5. Base: Solid set. Nothing more to say
6. Hinterlands: Another solid set, but you expect an expansion to have more 'oomph'
7. Intrigue: Too many real 'miss' cards alongside a few very nice and fun-to-play cards.
8. Guilds: I do not see many special cards in here
9. Alchemy: Potion mech just does not work

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Poor Scout
« on: February 12, 2018, 04:47:39 am »
I still play with Scout and the other Intrigue v1 cards. They were fine.

In hindsight most of the cards in Intrigue and Base v1 that have been cut out were pretty lackluster and had either little moments to shine or just felt pretty tedious. I still play with them too, but Scout is almost never useful. Thief is rarely useful in 2 player. Adventurer is, bar something like Chapel/Treasure Map-shenanigans, completely useless. Saboteur can be good, but it is never fun.

On the other hand, Woodcutter is all right. Tribute is fun to play. Feast has some cute tricks. Chancellor is all right if you forget about Scavenger existing. But Scout, in all honesty, it was just  a case of a card that looked all right on paper but didn't work out, just because it is too weak even in the situations is should shine. At least in those situations something like Coppersmith actually IS good.

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Talking about awful translations, I really dislike 'Nieuwe Versie' for Remake. Like, come on. 'Vernieuwen' would be way better. I think they should've seen the trend of verbs being used for tfb, instead of it being a weird noun. I feel like it shouldn't be thát hard to translate a game like Dominion? But somehow they screw up a lot. Like, how did they not read a list of improvements for the second edition, so as to not make the mistake with Moneylender, Throne Room etc. By the way, didn't they accidentally print Moneylender correctly the first time?

Did they screw up Moneylender and Throne Room again? Yikes. Not as bad as the Bandit mistake though.

I seriously regret not just buying the English version of Dominion years ago. Mixing languages just looks weird, I used to own the English version of Adventures but if only half of your cards are English it's actually even worse, so I sold it again.

I have only English versions but I'm currently searching for Cornucopia/Guilds, Hinterlands or Dark Ages and I have no luck at all.... I really can't find them anywhere in Eindhoven or Tilburg. (Which is where I usually look)

4
Feodum should have been seen by now.

I respectfully disagree.  Feodum can be a game-winning card if it appears with a good silver-gainer or with trash-for benefit.

Are any of these cards in the bottom rank ever game-winners?  Counting House if combined with Travelling Fair, sure, but that's a very specific circumstance.  I guess Pirate Ship in 3-4 player, but who plays 3-4 player?

Coppersmith can be pretty game-changing if it is a terminal yielding 7, although nowhere near the state of a serious brutal combo. Apart from Coppersmith though, I can't see any of these cards being a game-changer.

There is Counting House, but that is a 5. You at least expect a 5 to have some serious qualities. Although there is Harvest..

5
Dominion General Discussion / Re: The psychology of playing Dominion
« on: December 07, 2016, 03:20:00 pm »
Probably an agree-to-disagree situation on the luck part (I do think the form of your opponent, their readiness to respond to your tactics, etc. can be 'luck' up to a certain point, although in fact it really is a skillset, basically), but I agree with Tyranitarwiththehardname here that psychology is a basic part of every and any single game, and it becomes more and more important in direct confrontation.

This can be seen in three ways:
- Psychology during a match
- The way one thinks about the opponents skill disregarding the current match
- The way one thinks of their own skill

I think that the latter does kick in here (or at least possibly kicks in here). If you think 'I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do, how can I still win games, etc.', and you try to rush adapting your game style rather than thinking through what you're doing thoroughly, you can make poor choices in adapting your playing style. This also can happen during a match - if you're annoyed because of some bad play, you often try to make up for that, but very frequently rush to make even more mistakes, especially given your anger/annoyance.

In Dutch, the German term "Angstgegner" (which sort of translates into nemesis) has become part of everyday speech. An angstgegner is basically an opponent who has beaten you over and over again, even though their skill is usually even at best, and it is not unusual that their skill is even lower. Still, the psychological penalty you pay is high, this is actually a thing. Mainly because you think that you maybe have to adapt to their playing style, which is often not that good.

Although this is certainly not purely dominion-based, psychology plays a part in every competition one participates in, for better or worse. The best way to contest this is concrete analysis - what are the core mistakes and how do I change them, and definitely not rushing things and adapt your style and strategy on a whim.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Themed Kingdoms
« on: November 16, 2016, 04:08:04 pm »
I don't know how to create those fancy picture-kingdoms anymore, but this idea ticked here somewhat:

Pawn
Knights
Bishop
King's Court
Swindler
Castles
Fortress
Tournament
Outpost
Mill

Plan
Dominate

Thanks, Amac! What do you think is a good theme name for this one?

"White versus black"

Or just chess would suffice. There are a lot of chess terms hanging around in all those dominion cards.

7
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Themed Kingdoms
« on: November 16, 2016, 03:24:21 pm »
I don't know how to create those fancy picture-kingdoms anymore, but this idea ticked here somewhat:

Pawn
Knights
Bishop
King's Court
Swindler
Castles
Fortress
Tournament
Outpost
Mill

Plan
Dominate

8
Donate

Champion

9
Donate is a no-brainer. So much better than Kings Court it isn't even funny.

Pretty indifferent about the other one. I'm inclined to Champion

so Champion, Donate.

10
City Quarter
Teacher
Donate
Chapel

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Prettiest Card - Nominations Open
« on: October 29, 2016, 05:51:53 pm »
Yeah, I hate it when people try to steal the spotlight by ranking cards using inferior methods.

...what's that you say, tier lists? Never heard of them. :P

Unseeded tournaments are way more fun. What now, Tournament vs Remake and Scout vs Thief in a 'best 4-cost card' tournament. We should be happy that Thief gets a chance to shine.

12
Champion
City Quarter
Teacher
Disciple
Goons
Donate
Chapel
Kings Court

13
Do people ever use trusty see *not* as a lost city?

In a Feodum game.

Also, the +2 coin is a decent option in games with lots of actions or draw.

All these Steed over Ambassador votes are baffling to me.


Same, with Scrying Pool over Fortune.  Perhaps many people haven't played much Empires yet?

I don't see it being good without draw, but I haven't played Empires yet. Both don't seem like ever-dominant cards to me, although they feel dominant in quite some situations.

14
1 Champion

16 Trusty Steed

8 Mountebank

9 City Quarter

4 Teacher

13 Mercenary

5 Cultist

12 Rebuild

11 Wharf

6 Goons

19 Tournament

3 Donate

10 Chapel

26 Scrying Pool

18 Followers

2 King's Court

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Greatest Card -- NOMINATIONS OPEN
« on: October 21, 2016, 01:45:06 pm »
Champion
Donate
Chapel
Rebuild
Teacher
Wharf
Mercenary
Goons
Cultist
King's Court

I guess. These are the cards that are the least ignorable, in my view. In that sense, I don't regard Fortune thát high (although I didn't play with it). It is very good, but I feel it also has a very high cost in games with lack of draw. King's Court is the most debatable, but there's almost always a card it is at least solid to use on.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Meta?
« on: October 19, 2016, 08:32:37 am »


I contend that even though there's less impact in Dominion, it's not totally absent.  Sometimes you have boards with A>B>C>A, so that already supports my point, even if it's rare.  But more commonly -- and more importantly! -- I believe that players usually won't perfectly identify and execute the optimal strategy.  Moreover, I reject the idea that Dominion is merely "multiplayer solitaire".  Your opponents choices matter and should be considered in your strategy.

The fact that we can't even determine for sure what the optimal play would be in quite some situations here on the site, and that the game is not 'score the most points', but 'score more points than your opponent', does imply there must be metagaming (possibilities) of some sort.

Even chess has metagaming (so-called 'plugging' is the most common way), and there have been many, many years of analysis on chess.

I'm inclined to say that every game that lacks a clear dominant strategy has possible hidden information and therefore implies the existence of metagaming.

17
Dominion Articles / Re: MDMA: deck types
« on: October 18, 2016, 03:52:04 pm »
I like how our views of a bishop golden deck span the gamut.  WW considered it a combo, Aleimon Thimble considers it a good stuff deck, Chris is me says it's an engine, and I said it was a slog.

I consider golden decks slogs because they have the property of sustainability.  Usually a slog deck involves a very large deck, which isn't slowed down much by greening.  As a result, the slog wins the long game.  Another way to achieve sustainability is with VP chips.

But perhaps golden decks based on a single bishop are too fast, and should be considered rushes rather than slogs.  I think that's something missing from the OP: the way rushes and slogs bleed into each other.

I actually consider a Bishop golden deck sort of a rush as well. If your opponent can't buy provinces consistently, the idea is to finish the game as fast as possible. It's not a rush from the get-go, but if you get there considerably faster than your opponent, it becomes sort of a rush - piling out the provinces to finish quickly.

But yeah, that's not usually how it plays out. Still, it is pretty quick and can end the game quickly, whilst not really aiming to get a maximum of points out of all those provinces, which I do see as a rush.

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Dominion Articles / Re: MDMA: deck types
« on: October 18, 2016, 11:18:08 am »
Do we interpret an engine basically as a deck that either double provinces in the greening process (at worst) or draws the deck almost every other turn? Because I feel like I would call a lot of 'good stuff' decks just engines, then. Although I understand there is some middle point between an engine, that is built around action chaining (which eventually determines the payload), and big money, which is all about having the largest amounts of coin possible for one single buy as quickly as possible.

My interpretation of this is that "good stuff deck" means an engine that uses Treasures for payload, and may not necessarily have +Buy?

It means that you don't have any Scouts in your deck.

Look at my good stuff deck with 8 thieves and 7 harvests.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The most missed removed card.
« on: October 18, 2016, 05:50:33 am »
(I think Adventurer still is worse than, let's say, Margrave if it would cost 5.)
You're giving Adventurer too much credit, If it would cost 5 it would be very similar to Harvest, probably worse than Harvest. Adventurer is the only card in Dominion that I never really understood the cost (specially since it's so heavily outclassed by gold...)

It was not my intention to say Adventurer is almost as good as Margrave there. I just wanted to say it is worse than a random pretty good 5, whilst costing 6. (and 5 or 6 doesn't face the problem of brokenness problems in the early game and such. Furthermore, Adventurer isn't that good in the early game anyway) Even as a 5, it would be very situational. I guess it would be better than Mandarin, just maybe. But roundabout that level. At least it doesn't face competition from gold here.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The most missed removed card.
« on: October 16, 2016, 07:43:16 pm »
I'm going to make a list out of this:

12. Adventurer - This card, honestly, I never found it useful or fun to play. I don't even understand how a card that draws 2, and not even actions, was priced at 6. Yeah, it skips over victory cards and it doesn't get actions if you have none, but as draw it is weak and it doesn't do anything else. Also, it doesn't work well without (treasure) trashing, but those horrendous victory cards don't need to be trashed to make it even semi-useful. There are so few cards who cannot trash victory cards but can trash copper.. (I think Adventurer still is worse than, let's say, Margrave if it would cost 5.)
11. Sabouteur - Ugh. Slow to resolve, slow to play, not good if you play it yourself and not good if someone else plays it. This card is only annoyance and enormously slow-paced. I played it in 4p once, it wasn't fun. It just wasn't. As much as I love Swindler (the game-changing aspect of it makes it one of my 5 favourite cards in all of dominion), Saboteur doesn't get any of this love.
10. Thief - Just not fun. I honestly only like it somewhat as the chapel payload destroyer in situations with no virtual coin. And maybe Thief-Gardens. Other than that, I just don't think the card felt ever fun or useful.
9. Scout - Another instance of a very poor card, this and Adventurer are clearly the two worst cards ever printed. But Scout at least is fun. You get to arrange some cards, get annoying victory cards out of the way. And in mono-intrigue games it can get to the point where it goes from very bad to 'meh, maybe it is not so bad after a-- oh it still is not good enough'.
8. Spy - A slow-to-resolve cantrip that is Scrying Pool without the coolness value. It is bland and I honestly don't think I have ever seen a board where I thought 'Spy is a killer card here, man'. At least it sometimes can be good, but this is one of those 'yeah a fun card but if it was never printed I don't miss it'-cards
7. Great Hall - Same as Spy, but I at least like the double card type-concept of this card. It was maybe too easy, but not all cards have to be hard to understand. In the end, it did add too little, like my #6
6. Woodcutter - Suffers from the 'too easy'-problem, but also from the fact that it is almost always the worst possible option for +Buy. It is an option, but really, only Herbalist is worse usually. The only reason I rank this at 6 is Woodcutter-Gardens, which was much more fun to play that Workshop-Gardens in my base only days. But now we have Squire-Gardens and Beggar-Gardens, so who cares about Woodcutter-Gardens.
5. Secret Chamber - This is the good part. Fun cards to play with unique concepts. This unique concept is probably where Secret Chamber goes wrong. Its reaction is fun, but it is seldom game-breaking and furthermore, can be somewhat confusing. The discard option is all right but not interesting, it is the reaction part that is fun. The largest reason is that it makes topdeck attacks much less worthwile. Just put that estate on top when your opponent tries to Swindle. Sadly, usually it just prevents those attacks from being bought, it doesn't help Secret Chamber to be used more often.
4. Feast - Procession/Feast is awesome. TR/Feast is great. But that's the largest part of the fun. Buying a 4 to trash it and get a 5 is only nice if one doesn't need that silver, usually. Still, the card idea is the thing I like. Sort of like mathematics in Innovation. (But that is actually a huge card)
3. Tribute - Still not the most memorable card, but I think it is fun to just play something and see what happens. It is dicy, but can be very good. Randomness in the game can be fun, as long as the games are more casually oriented.
2. Chancellor - Back in the day this was a pretty unique concept. Chancellor is also one of the few cards that doesn't face from poor opportunity cost or the fact that it is unnecessary; it is strictly better than silver providing one has the actions to spare. Also, it is a fast card. It speeds up your own game and the wording doesn't slow the game down. The only problem is Scavenger, really.
1. Coppersmith - Just because Coppesmith is the most unique card and it is fun with large hands. Just playing an action and saying 'well that's +7 coin' (in the end, at least) feels really great. It was too strong with TR/KC in my view, but that was also really fun in a sense - copper worth 4 feels pretty crazy. It was somewhat the problem of this card anyway; either it is completely hopeless (in boards without possible large hands or boards with (copper) trashing), or really good.

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I think I'd go for something like this:
- take a bunch of games involving the top x players into account (where x is at least 100 to avoid gross biases, I'd say)
- look at the deck of the winner of those games, even when the winner is not the topX player (this also avoids biases. If the winner beat the topX player without an Engine themselves, we can safely call that board a nonEngine one)
- if the winner has drawn more than half of their deck on at least three turns, and has had at least three different nonruin Actions in their deck, it was an Engine board.

My guess would be around 2/3 of the boards are won by an engine.

I would at least give a constraint to the 'drawn more than half of their deck'-property here. I mean, playing a turn 3 Smithy means the player has drawn half of their deck, but this doesn't necessarily provide an engine deck. I would say that this only counts after turn 4, and if there are at least 10 cards in the deck.

But it is hard enough to give the idea of engines a concrete property.

22
At first, one needs to consider how large the probability is that at least one of the cards give more than 1 extra action on a play (villages or some other means). Yeah, cantrip engines are a possiblility, but they are at least a lot more scarce. I guess that this probability is roundabout the amount of valid engine situations.

Another option is to randomize boards and optimize their strategies, but this is much harder to accomplish, I guess. Still, it can be tried, at least.

Another problem is: What do we consider engines? Minion stacks, HP stacks, etc, are they engines? Some combo's, are they engines?

23
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Meta?
« on: October 16, 2016, 05:19:41 pm »
In an optimal strategy, you don't need to make any presumptions of your opponent's strategy.  You watch what they do, and react to that.  If you react to what you predict your opponents will do, then they can just not do the thing.

However, people don't play optimally, therefore there is meta.  The fact that there is meta is proof that people aren't playing optimally.

The most obvious kind of meta is when newbies think Thief is really devastating, so the best strategy is to prepare for some Thieves.  However, I suspect that the metagame online is more subtle, since the players are better?  I dunno, I play offline only.

If there is no dominant strategy, the optimal strategy is dependent on the plays of the other player(s). This is the core of game theory. Meta is trying to optimize if there is no dominant strategy: either beating a large as possible set of strategies (in ccg's, as you can't change your starting deck you just need to build a deck that beats the largest set of predicted strategies. Meta comes in when you have to predict the probability of a certain deck being played: One includes TeCH to try and beat the strategies with largest probabilites), or trying to adapt to your opponents strategy.

Adapting to your opponents strategy is all what dominion is about. If your opponent is playing a rush, you want your engine to go off earlier than if he plays big money. If Tunnel and Militia are on the board (and no other Tunnel enablers), you don't want to buy Tunnel except if your opponent buys 5 Militia, for instance. This is just adapting the strategy set to what the other player buys.

Anyway, I guess there is meta, it predominantly comes from the approach of greening. There is some optimal way to green, but it is not easy to understand it. The meta evolution made greening an ever-changing process. I don't know if there are other large meta-changes. Maybe the acceptance of JOAT and Rebuild after time (and simulations) as good cards can considered to be changing the metagame. But also the inclusion of new sets changes the approach of some cards. I take Upgrade as an obvious example. At first, everybody accepted Upgrade as a bona-fide copper-trasher if it wasn't used for anything better and the copper wasn't completely necessary. But then came Poor House, a card costing 1. It suddenly changes the approach of the card when that was on the board: the copper-trashing ability then is posed with the obvious problem of needing to gain a Poor House.

The small problem is that because of the 'we only use 10 cards'-approach, these additions can change the game, but don't necessary do it. Still, having the cards around in the selection procedure does change the value of some cards. This is most obvious with Alchemy. Most Alchemy cardss are better when fewer sets are included in the selection procedure.

So, there is meta in both ways: The decision making of the players given a certain set is meta, as well as the change in used cards in the selection procedure. It is not as huge as in a CCG like Hearthstone or Magic, or something like Pokemon battling. Also contributing to that is that there is no banlist or something: In Pokemon we consider Mewtwo to be way overpowered battling in Ubers, whilst Tauros is declined to the depth of Never Used. Both metagames with complete different banlists. Dominion doesn't consider these banlists, or rather, has a randomized banlist consisting of all of the kingdom cards except 10 of them. If one considers that, there are an enormous amount of possible metagames. Therefore, we can't analyse them (well, we can, but we don't consider all individual kingdoms obviously), and subsequently don't feel like considering a metagame analyzing kingdoms at all (or at least I do). But I guess they each include their own meta, strictly speaking.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Favorite cards, and why
« on: June 10, 2015, 03:13:44 pm »
1. Swindler - Because I think the action is just... cute. Okay, it's swingy, but it's pretty funny to turn a good card into a worse card of the same cost.
2. Library - Draw up to X - but the extra mechanic makes it cool. Watchtowers defensive powers are awesome as well, but I don't like it's topdeck mechanic
3. City - I really, really like the 'growing' aspect that it provides
4. JoaT - Maybe it destroys the fun of quite some games, but I like how powerful a card combined of mediocre powers can be..
5. Bridge - The cost reduction gives some neat interactions

25
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards you hate!
« on: June 03, 2015, 11:41:30 am »
There are two I absolutely detest, the Knights pile (for both their main action and their extreme variety making especially Anna and Michael really really strong sometimes) and Rebuild for completely controlling the game. I cannot stress over how boring I find Rebuild as a card, even though it needs strategy. I hate the Knights much much more though.

Then there are a couple I don't like, Tournament and Black Markey for variety, curses that work especially sloggy (Sea Hag in particular, but Familiar comes a close second), Kings Court for the reason that almost every KC game is a game about who can either play KC+X or KC-KC-X first. Possession because it's just a troll, Treasure Map because it can help people without many skill so much.

And I don't like Gardens. I really, really, really don't like Gardens. Silk Roads, Dukes, Vineyards, at least you need a decent plan for them (although Silk Road can turn into a rush very much.) But I hate Gardens rushes or slogs for some reason. Contraband is another card I don't really like, but it's rather easy to play around it, contrary to most of the other named cards. Most of the universally hated cards are either very strong (gamebreaking strong in some cases) or a certain winner in certain types of games.

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