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26
I was going to post on a recent thread something about the mandarin being one of the most difficult cards in Dominion. What an opportunity to create a new thread about difficult cards instead! When talking about difficult cards I suppose we're looking at cards that

- Can easily be worse than treasure in the wrong deck
- Are hard to judge whether they provides value or not
- Need the right partner cards in the deck or kingdom
- Have unusual uses that need new insight in play
- Need careful card play when in hand
- Are easy to buy at the wrong time or in the wrong quantities
- Have confusing rules issues (hopefully not many of those)

I started from the Mandarin so that will be my nomination. What do you think is a difficult card?

27
Dominion General Discussion / Trap kingdom?
« on: March 23, 2012, 10:56:39 pm »
Adventurer, Crossroads, Feast, Fishing Village, Great Hall, Moneylender, Scheme, Throne Room, Village, and Workshop

This kingdom came up in the latest tournament. Are there any strategies here or is everything a trap (unless you get lucky buying golds)?

28
Simulation / Simulation Tournament Results (Pairs)
« on: March 03, 2012, 10:52:08 am »
First of all I'd like to thanks all the entrants for putting their time into this and the quality of the scripts. All the scripts entered were competitive, winning and losing at least one match each. I put all the scripts into the final match up except one, Geronimoo's jack of all trades + silk roads script. This interesting script could beat many of the other silk road decks but lost 99% of the other games. It couldn't even beat a pure money deck. Nearly all the other entries were reassuringly winning 99% of games against a pure money deck.

There was one clear favourite combination for this tournament. All the entrants submitted an ironworks/silk road script. Three entrants took the opportunity to enter a second script and these were for baron/hunting party and wharf/fool's gold. In actual fact it was very close between the scripts and I still wouldn't like to say which is the stronger combination. When I created the rules for this tournament I accidentally created a key competitive strategy that isn't available in real play. Since each script can only reference two kingdom cards they may have uncontested control of emptying these supply piles. This means they can avoid emptying the piles if it would offer advantage to the opponent and can also choose when to buy the last card if it wins the game. To resolve the "strongest two card combo" discussion we'd need to start referencing all the cards in both scripts.

Here are the results and I'll give a brief description of the winning scripts in a second post.

WanderingWinder  Ironworks/Silk Road Won 7, Lost 1, 65.9% win rate
blueblimp        Wharf/Fool's Gold   Won 7, Lost 1, 61.1% win rate
Shark_Bait       Ironworks/Silk Road Won 6, Lost 2, 61.6% win rate
WanderingWinder  Wharf/Fool's Gold   Won 4, Lost 4, 51.9% win rate
DStu             Ironworks/Silk Road Won 4, Lost 4, 46.0% win rate
Rabid            Ironworks/Silk Road Won 3, Lost 5, 45.6% win rate
Geronimoo        Ironworks/Silk Road Won 2, Lost 6, 38.9% win rate
blueblimp        Ironworks/Silk Road Won 2, Lost 6, 31.9& win rate
Rabid            Hunting Party/Baron Won 1, Lost 7, 28.0% win rate

Congratulations to WanderingWinder for winning the tournament. Congratulations also should go to blueblimp for his wharf/fool's gold script that was able to beat all the silk road scripts (thanks to not buying out the fool's gold pile) and only lost the mirror match with Wandering Winder's wharf/fool's gold script.

29
Simulation / Simulation Tournament (Pairs)
« on: February 18, 2012, 01:31:36 pm »
A week ago some people were asking why there hasn't been a simulation tournament. It was a fair question so I'll open one up. Hopefully the winning scripts will be interesting as well.

The challenge is to find a script that wins matches against other competitors only referencing two kingdom cards and basic cards. This will be, in other words, a challenge to find the strongest two card combination.

- Competition is to be run on Geronimoo's simulator (currently v 1.2.0).
- 2 player games only.
- No colony. No platinum. Potion is a legal basic card.
- No attack cards. No possession, ill gotten gains, masquerade, bishop, vault, embargo, or black market.
- Tournament can be used. Prize cards can be referenced without counting towards the two card limit but followers are prohibited.

You can set the starting hand in the simulator by clicking the start state tab and, for example, adding a line for the start state of "Copper, Copper, Copper, Copper, Estate" and the starting draw deck as "Copper, Copper, Copper, Estate, Estate". If you are using this feature then tick shuffle draw deck and make sure you do start with the required 7 copper and 3 estates. Any script without this feature will have a random starting hand.

Please send entries to DG through the Dominion Strategy Forum mail. Closing date for entries March 2nd. Each person is allowed up to two entries but the second entry must reference different kingdom cards from the first. Please title your scripts using your forum name and kingdom cards.

I will use my own judgement to decide the finalists and run these as a mini-league against each other. In each league game two points will be awarded to the script with the higher win rate, or 1 point each if the win rates differ by less than 1%. The overall winner will be the script with the most points. The tiebreaker will be highest aggregate win rate in the mini-league. The prize is ... nothing. It's all for fun.

Rules may change as feedbacks come through. I have already removed the restriction on the PPR.

30
Simulation / A more difficult simulation?
« on: January 30, 2012, 09:23:26 am »
Bazaar, Bridge, Caravan, Cellar, Explorer, Harvest, Loan, Market, Shanty Town, Treasury.

This set came up in the championship and it's a little tricky to play. It's also a little tricky to simulate. If anyone wants to have have a go they might find out some new simulator tricks but it might need a fair time investment to get some of the better decks working. There are a number of pitfalls. 4/3 start.

31
Simulation / Simulation challenge : Dull or not?
« on: January 05, 2012, 11:34:12 am »
This kingdom came up in the tournament and on the face of it, it looks very dull. However simulations suggest there is more to it. Anyone want to take the challenge and find the strongest script for this kingdom?

Chapel, Conspirator, Duke, Jester, Masquerade, Quarry, Smugglers, Talisman, Watchtower, and Workshop

(Of course I could be wrong and it could be very dull, but I hope not)

32
Puzzles and Challenges / Another pointless puzzle to keep people busy
« on: November 02, 2011, 10:05:59 am »
I can't think of an original puzzle so let's revisit an old one. You've been blessed with perfect draws and want to get all the provinces as fast as you can in a solo game. Perfect draws means that you can effectively order the cards as you like after any reshuffle. However you are not allowed to work with a full kingdom, you can just use basic cards and cards from just 3 chosen kingdom card piles. It doesn't matter if you buy, gain, or otherwise acquire cards, the 3 pile limit (plus basic supply piles) is in force. How many turns will it take you to end the game with all eight provinces in your deck?

Usual solo game puzzle restrictions apply - no cards received through masquerade, no possession, no tribute result, no jester result, no cards in black market supply, etc. No colonies. No platinum. Any solution that makes assumptions about the other supply piles, such as upgrading a gold and receiving nothing, is invalid. Trashing a province will prevent you from solving the puzzle. I will allow outpost and the extra turn is genuinely extra. Just use some common sense for the other exceptions.

Fun example -

Turn 1 play 3 coppers, buy chancellor
Turn 2 play 4 coppers, buy worker's village
Turn 3 play a worker's village, chancellor (discard deck), play 3 copper - buy counting house, copper
Turn 4 play a worker's village, chancellor (discard deck), counting house, play 8 coppers - buy 2 worker's
Turn 5 play 3 worker's village, chancellor (discard deck), counting house, play 8 coppers - buy 2 worker's, 2 copper
Turn 6 play 5 worker's village, chancellor (discard deck), counting house, play 10 coppers - buy province, worker, 4 copper
Turn 7 play 6 worker's village, chancellor (discard deck), counting house, play 14 coppers - buy 2 province, 5 copper
Turn 8 play 6 worker's village, chancellor (discard deck), counting house, play 19 coppers - buy 2 province, 5 copper
Turn 9 play 6 worker's village, chancellor (discard deck), counting house, play 24 coppers - buy 3 provinces

33
Puzzles and Challenges / Open border challenge
« on: October 16, 2011, 09:57:10 pm »
This is an open challenge and I don't know how many answers there may be. It might still be interesting though.

The kingdom contains chancellor, stash, and border village. Seeing as there are no other 5 cost cards in the kingdom you decide to play chancellor/stash, buying stashes, a few chancellors, silver, lots of green cards, and nothing else. What other cards in the kingdom would persuade you to buy stashes and duchies directly for 6 and not buy border villages?

34

What card is missing from this list? For this puzzle you will need to think outside of the Dominion box.

University
Wharf
Market
Warehouse
Quarry
Governor (assuming it will be released in Hinterlands)

City and Horse Traders could perhaps be added to the list but I chose to exclude them, they are not good clues, and they are not the answer. No knowledge of the governor card is needed, other than it might exist.

35
Puzzles and Challenges / yet another simulation challenge
« on: September 13, 2011, 11:38:28 am »
This is a set I played the other day and was first player with a 5/2 opening. I thought that this was a big handicap and tried a gambling strategy that proved to be quite inappropriate. I looked back at it with the simulator and it seemed quite interesting with a lot of possible tweaks so I'm throwing it open.

Steward, Navigator, Cutpurse, Remodel, Tournament. Rabble, Outpost, Harem, Noble, Expand, Platinum, Colony.

To help people with a few simulator features
- You'll need to add a clause for each unique prizes within the purchasing rules if you want them claimed
- The platinum and colonies piles are empty if they are not included in the purchasing rules (even if they are in conditional statements)

To stop people wasting too much time
- I found that the games had very high variance so you can't rely on one 10,000 simulation to guarantee results of less than 2%
- The core strategy determines most games
- There is a point at which endgame improvements are hard to see beyond the variance.
- In other words, try to find a good core strategy rather than beat other people's good bots by miniscule percentages

36
Council Room Feedback / Game link conversions
« on: September 02, 2011, 12:15:02 pm »
Would it be possible to have a feature in the council room where you can paste an isotropic game link into a text box and the webpage will convert the link into a council room link, perhaps launching the game record?

It will just save idiots like myself from muddling about trying to decipher the formats.

37
Puzzles and Challenges / Hunt for it, it's mine!
« on: July 29, 2011, 01:15:49 pm »
I don't know if this is genuinely interesting or not, and I don't know a specific solution, but it might provoke some thought. It's also far less cryptic than many of the puzzles posted.


Consider a province game where you're opening 5/2. None of the 10 kingdom cards can affect another players deck or hand, and you're only going to consider buying two types of kingdom cards, hunting parties and mines. How do you change your play to get optimal results from this deck?

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