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1

Tournaments and Events / Re: Mono-Set Tournament

« on: December 21, 2016, 06:30:13 pm »

Hey,

I believe the wishing wells should be gained on this board, otherwise you lose. The thing is that you both chose the wrong card to trash here. Wishing wells work well only when their density in your deck is very high, or when there are 2 cards in the deck. This means that you should clearly prefer the trading post as it gets out of the way 2 cards and always give you the same card. Ideally you end up with wishing wells and silvers here before you green. There are other cards of course to consider here and maybe a late upgrade to turn the post into a gold and the ironworks in a duchy is good, depending on how fast your deck cycles, or in other words on how many wells you have and how well they work. But you should expect that after 3 provinces your deck will not cycle good if you split the wells. With all the wells and just silvers, this should not be a problem though.

I agree that wishing well density is crucial to the deck functioning. I like opening Wishing Well/Wishing Well into 2-3 upgrades and piling the wishing wells. After getting thin with upgrades, they can upgrade themselves into gold before greening.

Log:
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20161219/log.0.1482183217935.txt

Very nice, thanks for the log
The circulation that the wishing wells offer ensure that you play the upgrades often enough!

I was wondering about getting more golds after you double province once though. Is it clear to you that they help the deck? My initial feeling is that by keeping less gold your wishing wells can succeed more often by wishing for them selves and therefore you have better reliability.

Maybe though as you want only 3 golds for a province you buy the golds as finding one of them is 1/3 of your mission, but if you were having silvers in your deck instead of golds you would not buy more and keep their number to the minimum (4), since now finding a silver is only a fourth of your goal, or would you still buy silvers?

2

Tournaments and Events / Re: Mono-Set Tournament

« on: December 14, 2016, 11:18:58 am »

Hey,

I believe the wishing wells should be gained on this board, otherwise you lose. The thing is that you both chose the wrong card to trash here. Wishing wells work well only when their density in your deck is very high, or when there are 2 cards in the deck. This means that you should clearly prefer the trading post as it gets out of the way 2 cards and always give you the same card. Ideally you end up with wishing wells and silvers here before you green. There are other cards of course to consider here and maybe a late upgrade to turn the post into a gold and the ironworks in a duchy is good, depending on how fast your deck cycles, or in other words on how many wells you have and how well they work. But you should expect that after 3 provinces your deck will not cycle good if you split the wells. With all the wells and just silvers, this should not be a problem though.

3

Game Reports / Re: How Could I have Won this Game?

« on: November 13, 2016, 10:36:33 am »

I would have gotten an early salvager instead of a lookout and open silver spice merchant to buy minions earlier here. Salvager helps to hit 5 as well while lookout does not. The question of how many silvers is a good one, but because also of spice merchant 2 seems optimal. You will hit 5 even without the third. An earlier outpost would look nice, at the point where you are sure to hit 5 on your main turn even with outpost in your deck and maybe hit it with a 3 cards hand. I think this is the point where you have 3 minions in your deck. Regarding the province trashed, i think it would have been better to not trash the minion at all and just buy a duchy. You should have expected 3ple province from your opponent at this point. Regarding how to think about your last turns, keep in mind that outpost perplexes the endgame.


Eventually this becomes a question of how often I expect to miss buying province if I do not build further vs how often I expect to reach double province, or will i reach double province when I need it? Building further for a total of 3 turns to reach double province by buying a market, then 2 markets, then another 2 or 1 and a small bonus seems a bit slow to me, but could be best here, if the path to green on your outpost turn was not successful often enough.


Going for a double province turn with the outpost (buy 1 province at a normal turn and 1 at an outpost turn)  seems best, even if it does not always work. The way I can see it is by playing 3 minions on your outpost turn for coins, 2 to discard and draw and hopefully you use your silver or your salvager on something, as you have enough salvager food after turn 10. So assuming you reach turn 11 with your deck, I would buy an outpost turn 11 and turn 12 and beyond province and a salvager at the first turn I miss province.

Edit: Looking at it again, it seems like trashing the minion and buying province is best instead of buying a duchy as I proposed. Reaching 13 to buy province duchy next turn for CIM is not as likely as I thought and so it is difficult for him to get 2 provinces 2 duchies and an estate for the win.

4

2016 DominionStrategy Championships / Re: Round 2 Matchups & Results

« on: October 15, 2016, 01:52:16 pm »

Calamitas - smcrtorchs 2-4

Thanx for the games

5

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The most missed removed card.

« on: October 03, 2016, 10:02:33 am »

I will miss adventurer, because it is the easiest dead card to replace an existing one when you want to try a board against a bot without that card.

I will miss spy, because it enables some engines on boards that otherwise would not be possible.

I will miss thief, because I just had so much fun with it, before I learned it was a bad card.

I will miss feast from boards where kings court is around.

I will miss chancellor from the boards with a 4 cost or less key card and no other shifter.

I will miss woodcuter, because the question another terminal or a + buy is not always that easy and because it is the only + buy many times on the board

I will miss secret chamber, because of its weird defensive mechanic that works so well against swindler, knights and maybe ok versus cursers to help you reach a pricepoint, but also because its discarding effect sometimes enabled a different strategy on the board, like reach a 9 cards hand and get a province no matter what those cards are.

I will miss great hall as a cheap 3rd pile to empty that does not harm your deck and because it enables a vagrant great hall engine sometimes.

I will miss tribute... well actually no, I am not  going to miss tribute.

I will miss Saboteur, because it can wreck a potion based deck like a scrying pool deck or a deck with only 1 very powerful card like minions and because it is a considerable addition to a deckbwith many villages.

I will miss coppersmith, because it does work better than people think in many boards. Enabling you to reach a desired pricepoint more often can be game defining and coppersmith had this.

I will miss scout, because roadrunner is going to cry.

6

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Improving my game

« on: October 01, 2016, 07:53:10 am »

Well about the 2 provinces or 1 province issue in 2 players games, I think that you can follow the guidelines below. Unless I am missing something, it must be more or less what you do with more players as well.

Let's try to quantify this.

If you can take 2 turns to build up to double province and manage to double province twice you get 24 points in 4 turns. If you can buy 1 province for those 2 turns that you would build otherwise and 1 province at the next 2 turns, then again you have 24 points in 4 turns.

So the questions to ask right before you decide greening or after your opponent bought a single province, are:

1. How many turns does it take to build from single to double?
2. How reliably you can double province after building?

If the answer at question number 1 is just one turn and the answer at question number 2 is that you can double province reliably for two turns, then you want to go for double province.

If the answer to question number 1 is more than two and the answer to question number 2 is that you will double province only once, then almost always you will not want to build up to double province, unless you really stall very hard if you green now. However even in those cases you might want to build a little more, but not necessarily up to double province. It is common to want to build up to the point where every turn you can buy a province and another card that will help you not to stall, like an alchemist, a cartographer, or even a silver in some cases. Again the question you ask your self is:

Will I need more turns to build for my target, or will I stall more turns if I do not try and build?
Most of those cases, where you build for a price point greater than 8 but lower than 16 are the cases where you would stall quite hard otherwise and also the build up to double province is pretty unstable. Apothecary decks come easily to mind as an example.

If the answer to question number 1 is more than two and the answer to question 2 is that you will be able to double province twice, then you should compare the number of extra turns that you need to build to the number of the turns you expect to stall if you start greening now. Follow the option with the smaller number. If the 2 numbers are equal, build more as a province and another card can at least be a province and an estate as a tiebreaker if needed.

If the  answer to question number 1 is two turns and the question to number 2 is that you expect to double province only once and not twice, then you expect to get 24 or 27 or 30, depending on the number of duchies you expect to buy. So if you expect to stall once or more within the next four turns if you green now, you should go for double province.

If it happens that I believe that the two decisions are pretty close, then I usually just build more

There might be some PPR, or other considerations that I did not took into account here, but in general this is what I use and have found that it works more or less fine. I have not been in close end games lately though, so maybe I am missing something important as well.

7

Dominion League / Re: Season 17 - Game Reports & Discussion

« on: August 31, 2016, 01:44:38 pm »

Game 4, the HP split is not that important, because of storyteller. Storyteller excels at connecting such decks, where there are many bad cards and quite a few good ones. It looks like your early game play is very good, but you green a bit early. As the decks are thick, there is no guarantee you will hit 6 next turn, when you choose to buy a province. This check probably means that you get the gold first inst ead of province. Building a little longer seems necessary to me, 2 storytellers with an early gold would do well here. At the late game also bridge troll can help a bit, as it prepares next turn as well. The spies are not that super here. Such HP decks seem to be about adding coins up to 8 and this means that silver is also quite strong, so at the late game when your deck needs the spy the most, your money density is around 1 and from the 2 cards that you see with the spy you have about 50% chance of each to be useful. This gives again a value close to 2 for the spy, probably a little higher when the game goes longer, but their presence would not be decisive.

Game 6, from what i remember at least native village and apothecary are supposed to work together when you have a few apothecaries already, otherwise the NV are not that great. Your log, confirms this, as you do not really care to take the coppers out of the deck at the early game and it is not easy to line up NV apothecary in hand and estate in the next few cards early. In the meantime, a soothsayer really destroys apothecary and the NV's are taking you further from a sooth. You get your first very very late. I think your turn 3 apothecary should have been a soothsayer.

8

Help! / Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)

« on: August 16, 2016, 06:31:46 am »

Hey,

This forum is huge, which is why I reply so late.

I do not believe that you need to do log analysis to get better. Your way of getting better might not be the quickest, but still there is no reason why it would not work.

I tried to read your previous posts as well to understand your gaming problems better, but I am not sure I still have a good understanding as such things are pretty complex. From what I understand you could still keep your way of getting better, using intuition and brute force, as long as you understand that you need different approaches for different boards. You can see the whole thing of dominion as having many different subgames. You certainly do so anyway, like rushes engines slog etc. The thing is that you should categorize the boards to many more subcases, like tournament, inheritance, or wherever you seem to play weak. You should consider it a different area were you will have to get another model of intuition and not use the previous ones.

Also, once your intuition tells you what to do on a board, stop and ask your self, how all the other cards could interact with what you want to do and if there is a trick to make it quicker. Eventually this is another subgame where you can develop your intuition.

I am not a very intuitive dominion player my self, but I do understand how it works and cannot really see it being that limited as you seem to think at the moment. Yes it does take work to build many different models, but I do not think there is any shortcut to help you there.

9

Game Reports / Re: Opponent saved by an outpost turn

« on: August 12, 2016, 07:37:17 am »

Here is a game where double doctor should be best, the 2 of the 3 BM (big M's) that play the game, both go for that opening.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160730/log.0.1469895238288.txt


Governor is a very tricky card. I defenitely do not expect to lose the governor split by going double doctor here, but I could be wrong to this. In fact if you would like to play the board a couple of times with me to test this point, then I would also like it. If you go aggro with the governors here and I go double doctor, you help me a lot, as those initial silvers or extra cards are a big deal to me. But certainly it is not the end of the world if I do lose the split, in a game containing outpost which enables me to play 8 governors per turn.

According to what I understand, the 6th governor is often toxic to buy even on other boards as it also helps the opponent and you are often ready to fire when the decks are thin with 5 governors and some golds. Keep buying governors after those 5 and opp will come closer to a win. It is often the case that you win a governor board on more turns but you have a higher chance to win it, as you buy/use governors less and help opp less in that sense.

The problem with governor is that I cannot really post any logs that make sense to see, as you need a series of logs, where you not only take in mind your result, but also your opp's result as you help him a lot with the governors.

The hamlet is here more to help the doctors to trash and even 2 can be handy on this board. By opening double doctor, you do not help opp until the end. If you go aggro with the governors, and I have no silvers in my deck, but you have 2 or 3 silvers, it makes a huge difference as there is no alternative draw here and if you use a governor to draw a silver and 2 more cards which is like a curse in the end game and draw opp a card, then effectively your governor play does not benefit you at all more than the opp, it is a lab for both of you. So you do care to be as thin as hell here.

Anyway, I do give some logs to check the first turns of the double doctor opening if you want, as I said before it really does not make sense to look at the end results, if you have nothing to compare them with. And also I do not add the outpost at the optimal point in many cases, so this is another point, not to look at the end results.


Bot opens governor and gives me early silver
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160811/log.0.1470927835802.txt

No help from the bot at the early game

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160811/log.0.1470928188049.txt


Being lucky enough to buy a governor at turn 4 even with double doctor and no help. Things like this can happen and should be taken to account

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160811/log.0.1470928472666.txt

Here I have 6 governors by turn 8, getting the first on turn 5. I am not saying that if opp chose to draw instead of giving me silvers I would have that many, but did you expect that after a double doctor opening?

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160811/log.0.1470925604245.txt

Here is a doctor silver opening, where I forgot to get an outpost and which does manage to give me a governor by turn 4 and does pretty well. I just feel that I help opp more than in the other cases, and if opp had given me more silvers and my luck with the doctor was not that good, then probably things would have been different. These are a lot of things that do add up eventually and favor the duble doctor, which I feel also has a lower bad variance in comparison to the doctor silver opening. In other words, it is less affected by bad luck which in the case of silver doctor would be mainly having bad doctor luck and to a secondary extent, not reaching 5 turn 3 or 4 anyways. With 2 doctors it is more difficult to have bad doctor luck as well.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160811/log.0.1470925357769.txt

Here is another silver doctor opening, but I am not lucky there, or I make a wrong doctor choice, but it is not clear to me what it is best to say copper or estate there.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160811/log.0.1470921927229.txt

Here is the last silver doctor opening I tried, here I trash 1 estate instead of 2 coppers in the similar decision of naming copper vs estate above, but my next doctor is also not that lucky.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160811/log.0.1470922346554.txt


I do not hink I have any other meaningful logs to share, even though the logs are to get an idea of the few next turns after the openings and not to compare end results.

10

Game Reports / Re: Opponent saved by an outpost turn

« on: August 11, 2016, 11:24:26 am »

This is a nice board, I gave it a few tries, as governors seem to puzzle me quite a bit lately. I believe this is a double doctor opening, while you aggresively trash silvers as well at the end game, as you do not care at all about drawing them and they are like curses. A hamlet is essential here to help the doctor trashing. Outpost seems necessary as well. The decks that come up in a mirror are too thin and therefore the important of a sixth governor is much much smaller. The initiative of starting getting provinces on the other hand is very important. Therefore in most cases, you probably do better by giving up getting a sixth governor if you could, just to grab the initiative.

11

2016 DominionStrategy Championships / Re: Signups 2016 f.ds Championship

« on: July 30, 2016, 06:26:03 am »

Sounds great

In

12

Help! / Re: Seprix's Game Report Centre

« on: July 08, 2016, 04:02:24 am »

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160707/log.0.1467910925390.txt

Code: [Select]

Wishing Well, Bishop, Mining Village, Nomad Camp, Procession, Scavenger, Walled Village, Baker, Inn, Tactician
Very tense game. I wanted to win the Baker split, as that would allow me a lot more flexibility. We ended up splitting them. My opponent first went for Procession (which I should have done), and then proceeds to go for a Double Tac engine. I think he also misplayed here. There's the objection that you could simply go and pick up Scavengers and Inns for virtual coin, but that is so slow. If I had won the Baker split 6/4, I would have gone with a Bishop double Tac Golden deck, which was the plan.

As it stands, I did not win the split. So my plan became to just speed up to the finish line before it was too late. My opponent opted to go for Gold trashing, which was a viable strategy. He also stocked up on Mining Villages, which allowed him to triple Province eventually, snagging the win. However, he misplayed. Instead of continuing what he was doing, he instead opted to buy double Gold, losing all of his tokens, preventing him from punishing my taking the 4th Province with a forced win. Because of this, I ended up being able to snag the next two Provinces on the very next turn, denying him the win.

I feel like I misplayed though. I could have done the same strategy as him with my slight lead, and it would have been a guaranteed win instead of a win off of his misplay.

This looks like a double tac.

Your payload should be processing 2 bishops per turn, killing 2 inns and 2 coppers, while you gain 2 inns and rebuy the 2 bishops at the end of the turn. This is 8 points per turn for as long as the bishops are available. Then you can switch to provinces. An early bishop does not look good here as it also helps opp. The baker split is nice, but I would go for the same deck anyway.

Here is a log if you are interested. I gave the board a few tries, first I got 10 bakers, then in the second I believe I made some silly mistakes, then i thought what am I doing with the bishops and it struck me. In the log I bought only 5 bakers and did not trash to any of the bot's bishop plays to simulate human conditions as much as possible.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160708/log.0.1467963493987.txt

The points tally could be 4 points higher, had I not forgotten to process the bishop last turn. I am also not claiming that this is an optimal solution, just what I managed to come up with.

13

Help! / Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)

« on: June 11, 2016, 05:04:19 am »

As far as I am aware, Backgammon is like chess, where there is no/little luck involved. Bad draws happen in Dominion, and even a good strategy can lose to a poor one.

How do you really study Dominion anyways? Reading logs isn't all that helpful, as the situations are going to be different every time because of shuffles. If there really is a way, sign me up! I'd love to study Dominion much more.

The best three things that can be done in a nutshell with Dominion is how to end the game while you are ahead, have a plan to go about it, and learn how to minimize your mistakes.

Backgammon is probably more luck based than dominion, as it includes dices which roll. But this is a small detail. There are always things you can study, the question is how much you get out of them. This was why I only mentioned studying logs. If you understand what is really happening, then this is definitely much faster than seeing videos and maybe the fastest of all.

However studying should be based on each person separately and his habits and needs. For dominion it could probably also include:

1. Reading material. The help thread of this forum is really good I think.
2. podcasts and videos
2. Studying games.
3. Asking questions to others.
4. Testing scenarios by playing them out (takes time, but might be necessary, if after the above you still have doubt and care to check it). If Stef and SCSN implement the "play game from here feature", this will become much easier in the new version.
5. However at the moment you can test opening scenarios pretty quickly and there are plenty of those.
Experimenting with units (actions, cards, coins) etc. and trying to understand the impact of an extra or a less unit in different cases and scenarios.
6. Writing down your mistakes in each game and analyze them.
7. Try to guess more or less the whole game in shuffles, especially for games which are like rushes or hermit megaturns, or big money something (I chose these categories because they are easier to start with) and write what you have found out.
8. Try to find the differences a small thing makes when you develop strategies. An easy example here is using similar, but different cards for the same strategy over and over again and see how this affects the game. Write down what you find.
9. The most important one, revise everything at your own pace, but tactically.

The question is how much you get out of each and what mix you should use. This is different for every player and his level and it also depends on your goal. Is your goal to get better as fast as possible; is it to have fun while you become a bit better; As a general guideline, of you want to improve faster, I believe that as you progress you want to read and watch less videos and study more logs and do more from the 5 to 9 things.

14

Help! / Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)

« on: June 10, 2016, 08:31:40 am »

I will get a bit out of topic and share a bit of my past while I also try to reply. I had no map when I was learning dominion, as I did not knew of this community. It took me much more time I guess, to learn what others could learn by reading. By the time I was introduced to the forum (I believe by Jeebus during a game we played on goko), most of the articles were of no real help.

Looking at what you do (trying to obtain a more "feel" approach for dominion) certainly sounds a step towards the right direction and is something I probably have not worked on.
Intuition can work along dissecting boards. It is not either the one or the other. I was introduced to the power of intuition from a friend when we both played corridor which is a really fun game to try. He was able to somehow "see" what was correct and what was not. Eventually he helped me to understand how he was doing it and I was getting much better with it.

The other game that I was able to use intuition was backgammon, but it happened in a very strange way. I have studied the game, putting many many hours in to it, but I always did it either from a calculations point of view, or trying to analyze the factors that affect a position, or learning what works and what not by heart, even memorizing positions and winning percentages and so on (serious players do so in backgammon). However it was not until i stopped playing backgammon that I developed an intuitive understanding of the game and it happened on its own. I have no idea how or why it happened. I can only say that it helps me greatly to keep my level of play close to the level I had before I stopped studying.

Something else that people on this forum might find strange is that in backgammon the best ratio of studying/playing if you want to get better is 90% studying and only 10% of playing. There is no reason to believe that this ratio is pretty different at other games including dominion and this simply means that if you choose the "I will learn by playing method" you will learn a lot slower than if you tried to study the game. The closest I can think of however to studying dominion, is studying top player's logs assuming you can indeed understand well what is happening there and why.

15

Help! / Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)

« on: June 09, 2016, 05:38:01 am »

FWIW, IMO, etc. I think a lot of the high level stuff that people discuss is pretty useless. It can be fun to BS (I wrote this post after all) but really if you want to play better Dominion you have to eliminate mistakes from your play. And usually that mistake is some low level thing (you bought X but should have bought Y).

I strongly believe that the very top players can see much easier the possible game states after x shuffles of the game, whether they do it consciously or subconsciously and this is what differentiates them from the rest. Am I wrong to this? I believe it is important to also have this in mind along with the low level things, if you want to become a top player as funkdoc does.

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Shuffling a single card?

« on: May 17, 2016, 06:52:00 pm »

I can see two approaches. First is to do what feels more intuitive and the second is to go by the dictionary. In this case however, my intuition agrees with the dictionary, because I just cannot see how I can shuffle a deck of 0 or 1 card. Being able to shuffle a deck with only stashes also feels intuitive. Sure the outcome will always be the same, but so what? The dictionary I used, uses plurar in its definition of shuffle:

"10.  to mix (cards in a pack) so as to change the relative positions."

17

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Early Adventures Impressions

« on: May 05, 2016, 02:20:23 pm »

With adventures, it feels like I am a small kid again discovering the forest, instead of trying to see which tree is 2 turns shorter.

18

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion: Ultimate Balance Edition

« on: April 24, 2016, 09:38:39 am »

Completely out of the context of this thread, I wanted to point out that bad cards are still interesting for casual players which do not know how bad they are. If their effect is interesting, people can still have fun while not caring that much for competitiveness. I had a lot of fun with thief for example, before discovering he was bad. A few of such cards, could exist in every set and they could be excluded from random online play, unless people decided to include those cards in their game purposefully.

It is possible of course that a card has an interesting effect and attracts casual players as well. But still it looks like there is room to create cards that would appeal more to casual players, without hurting the core target group of dominion players.

19

Game Reports / Re: Procession Power

« on: April 13, 2016, 06:45:34 am »

The cartographer makes the engine viable here and consistent, unless I am missing something basic.

In the 4 logs below, whenever I buy an advisor, I make sure that either the bot discards the best card for me, or I do not use the best card if it did not. In fact I try to avoid the advisor, although this slows me down a bit, just to avoid the confusion. On a final note, training on such a board is a good exercise.

Summary

turn 14 VP 45

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160413/log.0.1460542944043.txt

turn 14 VP 45 again

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160413/log.0.1460542463238.txt

turn 14 VP 42

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160413/log.0.1460541630519.txt

turn 13 VP 54

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160413/log.0.1460540906487.txt

20

Game Reports / Re: Procession Power

« on: April 12, 2016, 05:50:22 pm »

Well, I gave this game another shot trying to get more than 5 advisors and it does not look as a good tactic as I originally thought, so this tactic should not be countered. This means that many of the advisors buys in the log were a big waste of time.

21

Game Reports / Re: Procession Power

« on: April 12, 2016, 05:03:07 pm »

The bot also probably misplays the advisor choices, though I did not check for this.

The engine in the log is quite a bit slower than usual, because I go out of my way a lot at the beginning to buy the 5 advisors which are pretty bad at that point, like it took a lot of time till the first butcher was played. But the log is played assumig opp also goes for advisors and therefore I try to counter this. Otherwise there are better buys than the advisors. I only played just 1 game on this board, so probably it can be played better.

22

Game Reports / Re: Procession Power

« on: April 12, 2016, 04:41:18 pm »

I  would go for a butcher HG megaturn. Openign advisor and trying to win the split, because if opp gets a lot of advisors things can turn bad. Adding a butcher as soon as possible and a procession before the fifth advisor for sure, to start the processing thing a bit earlier. I would get multiple processions and process the advisors to treasuries butchers and treasuries to hunting grounds. Then at a big megaturn you trash the HG with the buthcers for multiple provinces and duchies.


Here is the log, I bought only 5 advisors, assuming opp would fight for split, although the bot did not care for them in the game.
The bot played more or less smithy big money, adding a cartographer and still being not far off from my points tally in 15 turns.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160412/log.0.1460492984554.txt

23

Help! / Re: Where did I go wrong?

« on: April 01, 2016, 04:58:27 pm »

Hey there,

I think that his opening is perfectly fine, it is not like he falls behind compared to your mercenary with his spice merchant at the early game, considering he starts trashing coppers earlier. This also allows him to better trash estates and curses with his mercenary. His second witch seems a must buy, because at that point he has not trashed his urchin and he wants to make sure he does so. However the interesting part is the comparison of the decks after turn 8.

You have 14 cards with one more village and he has 13, so let's call the number of cards even for simplification. The number of cards that both of you have that can either remove cards from your deck or add to the opponent is the same. You have 2 mercs and a witch for a total of 5 cards and he has 1 merc 2 witches and a spice merchant. The main difference between both decks is that he has 1 more card that shifts/draws. He has 4 and you have 3. He manages to play 3 of his 4 such cards on turn 9 buying a village and a nobles at turn 9 and 10 which really bring the deck together. This gives him also great turns at turn 11 and 12. By the end of turn 12 the difference in your decks is big.

Your draws seem worse during those turns, but I think he did have a more solid base to start from at turn 9.

24

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Adam's and WW's podcast

« on: March 24, 2016, 06:05:13 am »

Thanks for the nice looking logs. I should start including those in my posts (they become available a day after a game is played)

Remodel/Silver leads to a deck of Mountebank/Throne Room/Remodel/Forager, which is a nice set-up for engine. Playing Throne Room on any of the actions is nice (especially Mountebank), and going to continue to thin and Remodel estates into Throne Rooms.

Silver/Silver leads to a deck Mountebank/Mountebank or Forager/Silver/Silver, which will hit 5 and 6 a lot and is well set up to play money. Throne Room is a riskier proposition here, although maybe still worth it.

I do not think that after you open double silver and grab a mountenbank you would like to go money. You would like to add another mountenbank 3 foragers at least a butcher and so on. There are many great cards here to just go money. The silvers help here as you will also have foragers and junk in the deck and having 3 coins or 4 or 5 at your buy phase does make a serious difference on this board, even after you buy the mountenbanks. In my eyes it is more like a manouevre you make, going out of your way at the beginning of the game and giving up your edge if things go well to make sure you hit 5 and do not get unlucky.

25

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Adam's and WW's podcast

« on: March 23, 2016, 12:02:14 pm »

Here are dan's links with the prettifier

Hard game:
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160323/log.0.1458691766690.txt

Easy game:
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160323/log.0.1458692780758.txt


I am going to use the old line "I do not usually comment on strategies, but since I wrote on this thread, I will." Or is this line from another forum?

Anyway, I am not really convinced that remodel silver is the opening. Your easy game is convincing yes, but your hard game is not convincing at all with the bot buying 1 forager only at turn 13 when foragers trashing is worth 2 and also buying many villages which really do not help him. The components are nice, but being able to throne the correct components is not at all something certain and some of the components are expensive, so the whole thing looks too tricky for me.

I see the second shuffle being divided to 3 main cases and not only 2. The first is when your first two buys do not collide and you manage to reach 5 after your first shuffle you are a significant favorite here. The second is when your opening buys collide, in which case you are a slight underdog to an opp who opened silver silver and reaches 5 after his first shuffle if he plays it right. The third is when your opening buys do not collide, but you are not able to reach 5 at your second shuffle. You are a significant underdog here.

I do not exactly know the odds for each case and every number below is from my head. I do try to give you generous numbers though, just because of that. If you reach first case 40% of the time and you win 75% from, second case 30% of the time and win 40% from there and third case 30% of the time and you win 33% from there, then your total winning chances are 52% with your strategy. As we reach the 52% it seems like things are not clear and personally I would open double silver here assuming the numbers I gave you are indeed a bit generous and I am not wrong to this.