I recently received a message from "Jake". He says he is a fellow dominion tuber and would like to skype/play me for one of my videos. However, I got it as a do not reply email. How would I go about responding?
It seems like the same logic can be used to say that in any game with an auction mechanic, the mechanic doesn't work because the optimal thing is simply for the first player who bids to bid the exact correct amount that the thing is actually worth. If both players know exactly that paying $51 for the up-for-bid power plant reduces your chances of winning, while paying $50 for it increases your chances of winning, then the right move is simply to immediately bid $50. Bidding any less than that allows your opponent the chance to be the one to bid $50 himself.
Why bother starting with a small bid and then gradually increasing it, until one player is no longer willing to pay that much? Surely both players should just be bidding the correct amount to start with.
Except, these mechanics DO work, because of 3 main factors:
1) Neither player knows exactly the correct amount. While there is some statistical calculation possible to determine the exact dollar amount where your chances go from increasing to decreasing if you win the auction, neither player is capable of actually making that calculation.
2) There is a risk/reward prospect at play. Purchasing the plant for more money may be riskier; but each player may have a different threshold for how much risk they are willing to take.
3) Humans are not robots; there is psychology at play here. The idea that you may want to bid a little bit higher, in hopes that your opponent bids even higher, just to cost him more money, comes into play. The slowly increasing cost of the power plant makes it harder to judge the exact point where it is way too expensive. Bidding on a plant is also egging your opponent on to bid higher.
All 3 of these reasons should apply just as well to Bottle Imp.
I guess where I still see value in the card is that Dominion is not a perfect information game. Even if it's true that every decision can only increase the chances of winning for a single player; there are many times when it is not really possible to calculate which decision increases the chances for you. In that way, it's quite possible for both me and my opponent to want my opponent to take Bottle Imp from me. Throughout much of the middle of the game, it will not be clear whether it is better to have Bottle Imp or not. I may easily think that the best way to use Bottle Imp is to have it for a few turns and then lose it; while my opponent, having seen that I've taken it; may think that taking it away from me is still the better play.
In other words, it's not counting on your opponent to act irrationally. It's counting on them to simply have a different risk threshold than you do, or to have a different analysis than you do.
The point that many people seem to be ignoring is that if it is good for me to have my opponent take the bottle imp away from me, then it is bad for my opponent to take it away.
It's not necessarily that simple. Consider Governor: It's usually better for you if your opponent chooses +3 cards instead of Gold, because +1 card for you is usually better than a Silver. Does this mean your opponent should always choose Gold over +3 cards? No, because the +3 cards usually helps them more as well. It's the same with Bottle Imp: taking it away from you can be good for you and them at the same time.
This is flawed reasoning. Only one player can win, every decision decreases one player's win% and increases the others. In this sense no decision can help both players.
So you're saying there's only one Governor option that should always be picked? Which is it?
The point that many people seem to be ignoring is that if it is good for me to have my opponent take the bottle imp away from me, then it is bad for my opponent to take it away.
It's not necessarily that simple. Consider Governor: It's usually better for you if your opponent chooses +3 cards instead of Gold, because +1 card for you is usually better than a Silver. Does this mean your opponent should always choose Gold over +3 cards? No, because the +3 cards usually helps them more as well. It's the same with Bottle Imp: taking it away from you can be good for you and them at the same time.
My mistake. The general point still stands though, you ignore time and the very real possibility of high initial prices for Bottle Imp because nobody wants to end up with those -13VPs. The strength of Bottle Imp changes over time, from being very valuable early in the game towards being progressively worse and then sharply becoming a very bad card at the end of the game. This means that strength evaluation changes over the course of the game and thus will its ownership.
You are simply wrong about this being good/bad in a particular Kingdom. It is like pretending that Hireling is always good/bad in Kingdom ABC while ignoring time, while ignoring that it is much stronger early on.
The paradox is based on humans behaving irrationally. If humans behaved rationally, then there is no paradox. It is just obviously correct to never take the bottle in the story. I expect good dominion players to also behave rationally if they are trying to win the game.You ignore time and player interaction:
Paying a lot for Bottle Imp can prevent the opponent from going for Cursed Bottle at all respectively make it temporarily unable (depending on how good his economy is) for him to get Bottle Imp while you could later pay for it again, but then e.g. $0.
I think you guys are mostly missing my point.
Suppose my opponent has bottle imp, and I have the opportunity to take it. Doing so will affect my win probability by delta. If delta is positive, then I will happily take the bottle imp. My opponent will say, "Darn! I should have paid the minimum amount for bottle imp to prevent this from happening!".
Suppose delta is negative. Then I will not take the bottle imp. My opponent will say, "Hm. I guess it didn't matter how much I paid for bottle imp."
Since there is some tiny amount of hidden information in dominion, it is possible for two optimal opposing players to disagree on the sign of delta, but that seems exceedingly rare. The true win probability is zero-sum.
This is why the original Bottle Imp story is a paradox. You can show through induction that it is never good to take it (or in the Dominion case, that if it is good to take it, it's best to take it for. And yet at the same time, taking it for
can seem perfectly reasonable.
I don't really see many situations where you would pay more than 0 for this. Either it's good to have so why would I want to pay more for it / let my opponent take it or it's bad so why would I take it at all.
Because it's better to have it for a while and then lose it than it is to have it forever.
Have you put any thought in what the name of your last Dominion expansion will be?I thought it would be cool to go out with Dark Ages. Given that the odds were I would make more expansions, it at least seemed neat that it would be the last expansion for a bit.
Then it switched places with Guilds due to the Base Cards product, and then I made more expansions.
Except for deck management matters, e.g. Wind's Gift triggering a reshuffle when you would prefer not to, it is always useful.
The Mountain's Gift is a far worse mandatory Boon.
I feel like 4 provinces for $17 is too good.Without Duration draw the additional cost is that your next turn will be dead (or in the Estates pile emptying that Asper pointed out, your next two turns) but I agree that that 17 and a dead turn for 4 Provinces might be too good.
To me, and I know I'm not alone, two-player games can be kind of bland, too short and mostly uninteresting. Besides, attacks (which I really love) become too weak in most cases. Multi-player games fix these problems for me and my usual opponents. I know this is subjective, but even though I liked it and you made me smile, your reply wasn't particularly helpful.Most attacks are about the same strength level at any player count. The exceptions tend to be cards like Jester and Pirate Ship where you can gain something from the attack.
I respectfully disagree. In games were your opponents have one attack card each, facing one of those every round is generally much better than facing five of them, which I’ve seen plenty of times with Torturer, Witch, and the like. Some attacks don’t hurt when you’re attacked several times (e.a. Militia), and some actually help you (e.a. Margrave), but most are bad when you’re attacked several times a turn, and I think that’s how it should be. Of course, this is just my humble opinion, and you may disagree with me. :-)
Agreed. Even with something like Militia, a 4 player games greatly increases the chances that you will have a 3 card hand every turn compared to a 2 player game. At least near the beginning of the game, before your opponent has built up an engine that can play Militia every turn. And other than discard attacks, pretty much all the other attacks are worse when you have multiple per turn compared to 1 per turn.
Harvest could be a treasure. Terminal draw decks are usually short on variety so it should be safe.
