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51

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What's the difference between a level 30 and a level 40 player?

« on: January 12, 2012, 11:12:35 am »

If there was no difference in opponent skill,
All games   1.355
would not be rated lower than
All games   1.220
because 67% is more than 61%. 

(BTW, before anyone asks the question:  52+/-6 vs 48+/-9 ; yes, playing many thousands of games is a great deal of the difference, but certainly not the entirety of it)

It's not "gaming" the system to raise your skill by playing versus good players, because you still have to be better than good to have a good win rate against them, but since there are only two parameters in the skill calculation, (Win/loss, opponent skill), and the first parameter is higher in a 30 than a 40, the second parameter is clearly the difference between a level 30 and a level 40. 

WW is an excellent player and deserving of #1 in all respects.  I'm not trying to belittle him in any way, I'm just trying to give out some information that is, in my opinion, more relevant to the difference between level 30 and level 40 than "Play good cards at good times".

52

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What's the difference between a level 30 and a level 40 player?

« on: January 11, 2012, 11:02:51 pm »

Judging by the differences I just noted between
councilroom.com/player?player=rod-
councilroom.com/player?player=WanderingWinder

I think a lot of it may involve being selective about who you play with.  I've not moved much despite winning 70+% of my games over the last month, because i play with whoever i get paired with. (avg: level 10).  Meanwhile, Fabian and WW have leveled out at barely 60% win rates, but are selectively playing against people who aren't (on average) 1-2 turns slower than them.  The skill formula seems to recognize and reward that selectivity. 

TLDR: play selective automatch, +/- 5 or maybe +/- 10, if you're really looking to make level 40.

53

Simulation / Re: Simulation Challenge - Endgame Polish

« on: January 11, 2012, 10:07:58 pm »

Code: [Select]

<player name="BM - Big Money Ultimate">
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>

It's also possible that i just missed the duchy -> gold -> duchy trigger order in the other bot when i was clumsily copying it into this old version.  I'm a klutz!

54

Simulation / Re: Simulation Challenge - Endgame Polish

« on: January 11, 2012, 09:52:15 pm »

Humorously, the BMU bot in this old version of the simulator trounces the original BMU bot you have listed above, solely on the back of buying duchies way sooner.

Maybe the bot's been inbred a little too much already.

55

Simulation / Re: Simulation Challenge - Endgame Polish

« on: January 11, 2012, 09:30:27 pm »

I suppose I can use the old simulator for Big Money, I was just resigned to the simulator not working for me anymore because of the windows not working properly in OSX in the recent versions...I'll play around with it for awhile.

56

Simulation / Re: Simulation Challenge - Endgame Polish

« on: January 11, 2012, 08:54:44 pm »

Is PPR already hardcoded somewhere into the suicide mechanism?  I vaguely recall it was so i will operate under that assumption...If not, it's clearly a large improvement to be made.

I'd almost think that province buys shouldn't be automatic every time you have 8, but codified based on the number of provinces left.

If 8-4 provinces are left, just buy it. 
If 3 left, only buy if vp differential <-18 (this number is a bit sketchy, but when you're behind 4 provinces to 1...you only stand a chance if you get a 5-3 duchy split and they never get a province, so why not try to get that 5-3 split ASAP instead of giving them the extra turns) 

(Probably not worth a whole lot, but it has to come up a few times in 10000 games)

If 2 left, buy if vp differential >0 (>=0 if you're 2nd player) or if between -7 and-8.5 (you want to win if you get both of them in 2 turns, but assume your opponent will at least manage a duchy, and obviously you buy it if you're already winning)

Also, endgame sort of depends on your opponents last several turns, particularly in BM.  Maybe there needs to be a GetOpponentTotalMoney function?

In fact, if a GOTM function were implemented, there should also be one for OpponentTotalMoneyPlayedThisShuffle, and OpponentCardsInDeck / OpponentCardsPlayedThisShuffle so you can do something like: 
If (GOTM-OTMPTS) / (OCID-OCPTS) <8, Go for it, else take the duchy.

57

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Scheme/Trading Post

« on: January 11, 2012, 08:25:22 pm »

I didn't think that scheme/silver would be that great an opener, but i've run about 8 tests and never failed to get a 2nd shuffle TP (...SEECC and ECCCC, with a copper on bottom, would be the only possible outcome, i suppose...)  I've failed to draw that TP in the 3rd shuffle about 3/4 of the time, but the schemes make that not matter too much in the grand scheme of things.  Missing 2 turns then hitting every turn instead of missing 4 and then hitting every 2.5 turns is a huge difference.

I ran into problems making 6 provinces in 16 but never before i already had 4ish provinces.  It's a solid one.

58

Dominion General Discussion / Re: My love and hate relationship with Dominion

« on: January 11, 2012, 05:25:25 pm »

This is me mentioning that some substantial fraction of poker hands are not even skill-testing at all, but just "fold now".  Presumably the marginal winner does not have an edge over a marginal loser in all of these "auto-lose" hands.  100k hands does not equate to 100k flips of a slightly-biased coin. 

59

Simulation / Re: count gains needed to end game or Provinces left?

« on: January 06, 2012, 05:15:06 pm »

Related question:  what would the proper syntax be to code in something like :

If #buys needed to end the game <= #buys & cost=#coins, buy #thingsneededtoendthegame (If score > oppscore)

60

Help! / Re: Chapel / Conspirator vs Chapel / Silver

« on: January 05, 2012, 11:23:15 pm »

If someone's trying to build up to a megaturn, expand is in the kingdom, there's nothing stopping you from buying expand on 7 (or even after 4 provinces.  No more choking.

Also, how are you getting a megaturn from this set?  You have to pull *everything* you need out of the black market.  No buys whatsoever.  So you have to pull out 3 different cards that all give buys!  Then you have to pull something that will draw you into them all together with the KC, unless you're just throwing everything onto the native village mat, presumably from KC'd native villages...I'm just not seeing it.  I'll solitaire it a few times on either side just to prove my point.

And as it happens, i was pretty wrong ; BMEnvoy is slow when you can chapel down to KC.  The black market deck needs to have 2 cards that give +buys, but that usually happens.

61

Help! / Re: Chapel / Conspirator vs Chapel / Silver

« on: January 05, 2012, 09:45:03 pm »

I think I'd likely just go Envoy on this board ; there's nothing to chapel into.  If envoy wasn't on the board, i'd probably just open trader/silver and go nuts.  I've played a lot of SingleTrader solo games recently and its nearly as fast as DoubleJack, certainly nothing to sneeze at and certainly faster than anything I can come up with for chapels here.

62

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ill-Gotten Gains - bad for the game?

« on: January 05, 2012, 02:43:18 am »

Jack's not an engine card, don't treat it like one.  These complaints about the *FILTERED* draw occasionally drawing a card dead is like complaining that smithy sometimes draws cards dead.  Sure it can, but if it does, you're not playing the best strategy for that card.  DoubleJack is even more of an unalterable strategy than SingleSmithy.

63

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Feature Request: Timer

« on: January 04, 2012, 12:48:45 am »

Even my most complicated "play 24 actions in a turn, drawing my entire deck and buying 4-5 new things" turns don't take much more than 40 seconds.  A properly-balanced timer should barely affect a good player playing even the most complicated strategy, except in the case where the player was playing at less than full speed.

A timer should simply un-enable people to play frustratingly slow all the time.

64

Simulation / Re: Simulations I'd like to see

« on: January 03, 2012, 05:12:56 pm »

Did a few simulations per request:  http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1340.0

65

Simulation / A day at the simulators

« on: January 03, 2012, 05:09:05 pm »

First, I was interested in finding out why DoubleJack was the defacto standard for all jack plays ; I'd done several solitaire games yesterday comparing different methods of early estate trashing + BM strategies, and i found that SingleJack was a much more consistent strategy, although slower by ~.5 turns in the BEST case. My 10 solitaire matches found that SingleJack was 4provinces in 13.6+/-0.9 turns while DoubleJack was 14.14+/-2.95.

Simulations of the two (unoptimized?) strategies against each other find a 48/52 in favor of SingleJack:
Default DoubleJack:

Code: [Select]

# Buys two Jacks of All Trades and otherwise plays a version of Big Money.
#
# This has no Colony rules, because it would be a terrible strategy in
# Colony games.
{
  name: 'DoubleJack'
  author: 'rspeer'
  requires: ["Jack of All Trades"]
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province" if my.getTotalMoney() > 15
    "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Gold"
    "Jack of All Trades" if my.countInDeck("Jack of All Trades") < 2
    "Silver"
  ]
}
SingleJack simply changes the < 2 to < 1 for Jack-buying.

However, from the solitaire matches, I'd found that the biggest obstacle to getting fast provinces was an early duchy, which had a way of ruining the deck's ability to function (worst being a game in which I was stuck at 7 from turns 13-19, primarily due to quick reshuffles making those duchies and extrajacks come back to haunt me).  After playing around with the "how soon can i buy duchies" I found that no strategic play could make DoubleJack beat SingleJack. 

Obviously, attack cards and other strategic combinations such as oasis may have a different result, but the simple "always buy two jacks" rule is one that can be challenged.   





Second:  Warehouse/Tunnel:


RR asked if Warehouse/Warehouse aiming to get tunnel was better than Warehouse/Tunnel in sims.  The first step was getting a good combo Bot to start out with:


Do you even buy golds?  It doesnt seem to make much difference, but 52-48 in favor of the gold-buying bot.
What order do you buy tunnels and warehouses AFTER the opening?  They really more or less tied here too.
How many warehouses do you buy?  Apparently 1 more than you have tunnels. 
How hard do you fight for tunnels in the mirror?  If you open W/T you need to fight hard to get a 5/3 split, but opening W/W you almost don't care if you get more than 3. 


Overall, I couldn't come up with anything that would make warehouse/tunnel better than 47/53 versus warehouse/warehouse:


Bots Below:

Code: [Select]


# Open Warehouse/Tunnel/Warehouse For Warehouse/Tunnel Board then fights for Tunnels
{
  name: 'WareTunnel'
  author: 'rod-'
  requires: ["Warehouse", "Tunnel"]
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province" if my.getTotalMoney() > 15
    "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Gold"
    "Duchy" if state.countInSupply("Tunnel") == 0
    "Tunnel" if my.countInDeck("Tunnel") < 1
    "Warehouse" if my.countInDeck("Warehouse") < 2
    "Tunnel" if my.countInDeck("Tunnel") < 6
    "Warehouse" if my.countInDeck("Warehouse") < my.countInDeck("Tunnel")+1
    ]
}


Code: [Select]

{

# Open Warehouse/Warehouse/Tunnel then maintains warehouse/tunnel parity on Warehouse/Tunnel Board
name: 'DoubleWareTunnel'
author: 'rod-'
requires: ["Warehouse", "Tunnel"]
gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province" if my.getTotalMoney() > 15
    "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Gold"
    "Duchy" if state.countInSupply("Tunnel") == 0
    "Warehouse" if my.countInDeck("Warehouse") < 2
    "Warehouse" if my.countInDeck("Warehouse") < my.countInDeck("Tunnel")+1
    "Tunnel" if my.countInDeck("Tunnel") < 6
  ]
}

It's possible that both of these bots get too many warehouses/tunnels, but whenever i lowered the count of warehouses, it was a bad thing.

66

Simulation / Re: Simulations I'd like to see

« on: January 03, 2012, 02:58:03 pm »

Naively, a warehouse/tunnel opening is going to get a gold on t3-4 in 2/3 of cases, plus or minus a few percent in the edge cases around warehouse-caused reshuffles.  It will also be more able to get >4 tunnels in a head-to-head matchup with warehouse+warehouse.

I'd still be interested in seeing sims, so maybe i'll give it a go.  (As it turns out, GMOO's new version is unusable in OSX due to various interface issues - i'd been running a pre-hinterlands version - so I suppose I'll be learning dominate today)

67

Help! / Re: 9-1 Grand Market split: How did I lose?

« on: December 31, 2011, 05:15:24 pm »

The silver buys struck me as quite odd in this game ; you already had a ton of good virtual coin sources yet you bought 3 silvers, including 1 after turn 10.  These silvers increased the # of "stopper" cards in your deck from 12 to 15. 

More concretely, there's the fact that on turn 18 you bought the penultimate province immediately after your opponent spent a turn doing nothing.  That's an endgame mistake, as you should be fairly confident that after a terrible turn, your opponent will have a good turn. 2 duchies and an estate would've given you 2 fewer points on turn 18, but allowed you a turn 19 that you could've used to gain 6-10 points. 

68

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Bringing Pearl Diver up from the bottom (see what I did there?)

« on: December 31, 2011, 05:19:04 am »

moving a province up from the bottom of your deck (where it's quite likely to miss the reshuffle) to the next turn isn't anything to sneeze at in a province game.  Consider:

Turn 7: buy province, reshuffle.  yay!(17card deck)
Turn 8: pearl diver, see province, move it up.
Turn 9: cut off opponents' tournament(s) & possibly get a prize
Turn 10: reshuffle&next opportunity to see that province
vs
Turn 7: buy province, reshuffle.
Turn 10: see province &possibly get a prize.  Misses reshuffle eitherway.
Turn 13-14: reshuffle & next opportunity to see that province.

It's a much more convincing argument when it's not a "blank victory card" like province...say, platinum, for example.

69

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Bringing Pearl Diver up from the bottom (see what I did there?)

« on: December 30, 2011, 02:08:31 pm »

If you pull up a card from the bottom of your deck, you're getting somewhere between 20% and 100% of an extra use of that card over the course of the next shuffle due to the fact that it's now definitely not going to miss the shuffle (unless you draw all the way to the bottom of your deck but already had a discard)

If you decide not to pull up a card from the bottom of your deck, you don't really have to worry about what cards are going to miss the shuffle, because you already know it's not a good one.  Cards missing the shuffle is my least favorite part of dominion, so pearl diver has a special place in my heart.  That doesn't mean i always buy it or anything, but i do like it.

70

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Hunting Party w/o Buys

« on: December 28, 2011, 04:20:23 pm »

If you already have all of your unique cards in hand (EG: your deck consists only of estates/copper/silver/gold/hp/militia/province) your choice should depend on how many of your HP you've already played.  If you've gone through 50% of them (including the one in hand), you should play the last HP as a chancellor, while otherwise you shouldn't.

71

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is it too early to speculate on the Spring 2012 expansion?

« on: December 28, 2011, 02:44:01 pm »

Cards that interact heavily with the bottom of your draw pile

On-buy trigger on top of, say, a village, that just lets you re-arrange the bottom 5 cards of your deck, or just gives you an immediate pearl-diver effect...Would make me a very happy camper.  Or...something that when in play adds such an effect to every card you play.

72

Variants and Fan Cards / Handicap alternative?

« on: December 28, 2011, 03:59:25 am »

I remember seeing one or two handicap posts awhile ago...for the people who're just too much more skilled than their opponents.  I had a thought that I felt was fairly elegant the other day.

Simply take 1 less turn.  In multiplayer, opponents will hardly notice, and in singleplayer, your opponent will likely forget by the end of the game anyway.  There's no obvious "oh right, he started with a curse" or whatever.

Issues:  You could get hit pretty hard by attacks.  You could be discarding cards on your 2nd turn or shuffling in curses as early as your 3rd turn. 

73

Dominion FAQ / Re: Dominion Lingo Dictionary

« on: December 26, 2011, 04:54:35 pm »

So does this make Tournament a cantrip? Even when the effect of +draw is negated?

It's more of a might-rip.  *ducks*

74

2011 / Re: Schedule and Results, Part II

« on: December 21, 2011, 03:10:59 pm »

G3 of chwhite vs. Exclams is one of the sickest games I've ever seen. Every decision by chwhite is so efficient. I'm really impressed.

Every turn was certainly highly efficient.  How much of that can actually be attributed to decisions, though?  How often, when you replay that board, are you going to be able to do as well?  If his remake / silver had simply come in the opposite order on turn 3-4, he would lose 1.5-2 turns and quite possibly the game.

I in no way mean to belittle the accomplishments of the game, but in over a dozen replays, i have not once managed to get a (productive) turn 4 inn from the same start.  Without that turn 4 inn, i'm unable to do better than 6 provinces in 15 or 16 turns, which may well have still been enough to win, but would've been much less impressive.

75

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Farmland vs Silver

« on: December 19, 2011, 07:24:11 pm »

It might or might not be considered an exploit, but you could empty the entire stack of farmlands with a single buy, assuming you had a residual 4+ card in hand to remodel.