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Messages - ben_king

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1
Congratulations to Adam Horton, who took first in this tournament, and thank you to everyone who participated.  In keeping with the tradition of this tournament, I wanted to share the kingdoms that were played this year, in case anyone wanted to try them out.  So here they are (along with our silly names for each of them):

Prelims 1 - The Latest From Q-Division
Sleigh, Lurker, Sheepdog, Siren, Cemetery, Gondola, Silk Merchant, Skulk, Quartermaster, Destrier + Enhance, Orchard

Prelims 2 - All Treasures, All The Time
Cage, Fortune Hunter, Investments, Monument, Figurine, Mining Road, Legionary, Pendant, Silver Mine, King’s Cache + Capitalism, Way of the Chameleon

Prelims 3 - Land Ho
Guard Dog, Oasis, Storeroom, Landing Party, Corsair, Crystal Ball, Crown, Pirate, Storyteller, Treasurer + Launch, Reap

Prelims 4 - Save A Horse, Ride A Leprechaun
Poor House, Stonemason, Changeling, Leprechaun, Ironworks, Procession, Remake, Haggler, Border Village, Animal Fair + Seaway, Way of the Horse

Semifinals 1 - Can You Paint With All The Colors Of Tactician?
Peasant, Church, Cavalry, Conspirator, Ironworks, Workers' Village, Guildmaster, Swap, Tactician, Bank + Toil, Fellowship of Scribes

Semifinals 2 - What Can Men Do Against Such Reckless Rats?
Beggar, Jeweled Egg, Stonemason, Sycophant, Watchtower, Innkeeper, Rats (Reckless), Trail, Sea witch Wine Merchant + Woodworkers’ Guild

Semifinals 3 - Thanks, Grandma
Apothecary, Market Square, Merchant, Scheme, Anvil, Throne Room, Charlatan, Counting House, Pooka, Royal Blacksmith (Inherited) + Bandit Fort

Finals - The Butterfly Effect
Devil’s Workshop, Trail, Duke, Guildmaster, Livery, Souk, Wheelwright, Nobles, Animal Fair, Prince + Way of the Butterfly, City State


For those of you who enjoy puzzles, see if you can find the turn 3 win on the finals board (you can assume perfect shuffles).

2
A quick update: the location for the tournament has been moved from the Clubhouse to the Private Dining Room at U-Con, which is in the same building as the main conference.  There's still space left if you're considering signing up.

3
I have heard that there was a glitch in the registration system earlier that might have kept some people from being able to register.  So if you tried to register earlier and weren't able to, try again.  There's still plenty of space left!

4
For the first time since 2019, U-Con's official Dominion tournament is back!  Come join other top-tier players for an in-person tournament using real cards.  All attendees will also receive Dominion promo cards, courtesy of Rio Grande Games.

The tournament is taking place as part of the U-Con gaming convention in Ypsilanti, MI. It will feature curated kingdoms with cards drawn from all expansions up to and including Plunder. The kingdoms have been tested to ensure that they will emphasize strategy and high-level play.  In past years, this tournament has included many top players, who are active members of forums.dominionstrategy.com, the Dominion Discord, the Dominion subreddit, and BoardGameGeek.

You can register in advance online, or in person at the convention, though there are a limited number of seats.  You will need both a convention badge (found under "Buy Badges") and a tournament ticket ("Buy Tickets") .  Only a Saturday badge is required for the tournament, but many players stay for the whole weekend and game together outside of the tournament.

(As in previous years, the tournament will be taking place in the clubhouse, where we will have more space and fewer distractions, instead of the main hotel ballroom.  You'll need to stop at the main desk in the hotel to pick up your badge and tournament ticket first)

This is my first year organizing this tournament, taking over for Elestan who has been running this tournament for nearly a decade.  I hope to see you there!

5
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Allies Preview 4: Recursion
« on: March 03, 2022, 10:05:14 am »
If you play 2 Liches in the same turn, do you skip your next two turns, or just your next one?

I believe the ruling is that skipped turns are cumulative, so playing two Liches will skip your next two turns.

Where is that ruling from?

Donald X. has stated it on the discord (https://discord.com/channels/212660788786102272/890927866538238012/948860629932978226)

6
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Allies Preview 4: Recursion
« on: March 03, 2022, 08:42:15 am »
If you play 2 Liches in the same turn, do you skip your next two turns, or just your next one?

I believe the ruling is that skipped turns are cumulative, so playing two Liches will skip your next two turns.

7
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Misinterpretation of Lighthouse/Moat
« on: December 30, 2020, 11:02:23 am »
The "unaffected" only goes so far.  Attack cards have a part that clearly affects other players and other parts that don't.  The clearest way to do this would have been to have a part of the card's text labeled as the attack, e.g. "Attack: each other player gains a Curse."

With the existing cards, it's easy to see which parts of the text are intended to be the attack.  Going any further, you get silly scenarios and rules contradictions.  If the Silver gained from a Bureaucrat that you Moated would empty a 3rd pile and cause you to lose the game, does the Silver get gained? etc.

There was actually an early version of Old Witch in Renaissance playtesting that died because of this ambiguity though.  This version had an Artifact and one of the options on Old Witch was to take the Artifact.  But another one of the options was to hand out Curses.  So it was unclear to people whether a Moat could Old Witch from taking the Artifact from a player who had Moated it.  Since there were other non-attack cards that also took other people's Artifacts, it didn't feel like part of the attack to some people, but other people felt that losing your Artifact definitely counted as being affected by an attack card.  It ended up changing to its current version for that reason.

8
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Minor note about new printings
« on: November 03, 2020, 09:43:11 am »
One of the issues with the old wording on Noble Brigand is that the when-buy trigger is part of the on-play text, and the on-play text should be activated each time you play the card, while text under the line is always active.  "When you do X" phrases in the on-play text usually set up events that will be triggered in the future, such as the "when you gain a card" event in Cargo Ship.  The "When you play this" gets resolved immediately, as it does with treasures that use that wording, but there's a remaining "When you buy this" in the on-play text.  So there's a potential interpretation that says that every time you play a Noble Brigand, you're setting up a future "when you buy this" event that will be triggered if you ever bought the card.

Now ordinarily you can't buy a card you are already playing, but suppose that you've used Band of Misfits to play the top Noble Brigand in the pile multiple times this turn.  If you then buy that top Noble Brigand later in the turn, then under one possible interpretation, you might get to do the attack multiple times.  Now, are there people who are interpreting it that way?  I dont know.  Probably not, but the text was ambiguous and didn't follow the convention used in the rest of the game.

In the new version, the ambiguity comes from "What parts count as the attack?", and that's a lot easier to state in the FAQ than a clarification for what I wrote above.

9
Dominion General Discussion / Re: RNN generated cards
« on: September 18, 2020, 01:03:13 pm »
I might have asked this before, I don't remember.... so in my limited understanding of neural networks and machine learning, the basic idea is that each generation, the "best" survive and move on. So in the next generation, more of the population will be more similar to that previous best, giving a better chance to reach a new best.

I've seen videos on training AI to play Mario, for example, and there, the "best" is defined as "got farthest to the right in the stage". On an AI learning to play Tetris, it knows it did well if it survived for a longer time, or more total piece drops, or total lines cleared, etc.

But with generating Dominion or MTG cards, how is "best" defined? What criteria is used to determine which members of the population survive to the next generation? If it is "similarity to existing cards", then wouldn't the AI eventually just generate exact existing cards repeatedly forever? I wouldn't think it would even take very many generations for it to arrive at "hey, if I just copy this existing card word-for-word, I end up with a result that gives me a perfect score".

Or, does training an AI to generate cards or other text in this way follow a different fundamental principle from training an AI to do better in a video game?

What you're thinking of is called "genetic programming", which has been used in the past to train neural networks, though it's not common to use that lately.  The neural networks here are trained using supervised learning, which uses backpropagation to optimize a specific function, usually some sort of distance from its prediction to the correct answer.  In this case, the objective function is trying to predict the next word at each position, given all the words up to that point.

AI for video games usually uses reinforcement learning, which tries to optimize future rewards, where the reward might be proportional to how long the agent lasts before dying or how many points it gets, or something similar.

10
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 11, 2020, 02:48:43 pm »
Given that it gets discarded otherwise though; I have to wonder why Donald didn't use the Vassal wording?

Actually, this makes me pretty sure that you get to keep an unplayed Action or Treasure on top of your deck. If it did get discarded or played no matter what, I'm pretty sure he would have used Vassal's wording. The difference between Gamble and Vassal is specifically that with Greed you can choose to not play an action and just keep it on top. Which you're going to want to do plenty often.

On Discord, Donald X. has said

Quote from: Donald X.
If you don't play the card you discard it, whether or not it's an Action/Treasure.

The wording is the way it is because of various cards that can move when they're discarded.  There's less potential confusion if you can't both move it with its reaction and play it.

11
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 10, 2020, 02:42:17 pm »
I suppose a man can dream...it could be a way to go back to small expansions though, to pad them with extra horizontals.

Why would you want a small expansion, though, when you could have a large expansion?

12
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 5: More Cards
« on: March 06, 2020, 12:30:39 pm »
Wait, how does trashing a Wayfarer with Stonemason work?

1. Play Stonemason, trash a $6 Wayfarer
2. ... gain a $3 Silver

Now Wayfarer costs $3. Do I gain a card costing less than $6, the cost of the card when I trashed it (hey look I could gain a Wayfarer), or do I gain a card costing less than $3, the current cost of the card I trashed?

Good question. It's definitely not the cost right before you trashed it. We know from old Inheritance that the cost could change after it was trashed, and then we would look at that cost. But this is different, since the cost of the card actually changes between the two gain effects.

I would think it's like this: You're triggering two effects at once, both being "gain a card costing less than the trashed card." We resolve those sequentially. Each time we look at the cost of the trashed card. So that would mean the second card costs less than $3.

This is correct.  This question also just came up on the discord at about the same time.

13
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 3: Exile
« on: March 04, 2020, 04:56:46 pm »
Is Exile the 4th mat that was going to be included in Renaissance other than Coffers, Villagers, and Buy tokens?

Yes, Donald X. has confirmed this on the discord.

14
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 2: Horses
« on: March 03, 2020, 02:19:46 pm »
So I suppose "from the X pile" is now officially phased out as wording for non-supply cards?

Livery is proof that we will never see a card that increases the cost of things, as otherwise it could gain the entire Horse pile.

Nice touch that all the cards using Horses also have Horses in their artwork.

"Gain a card" means from a Supply pile, does ""when you gain a card" also mean from a Supply pile, or in this case, does it include non Supply piles as well? e.g with Livery in play, when you gain a Ghost, do you gain a Horse?

Pretty sure "When you gain a card" doesn't need it to be from a supply pile.

Possible explanation:
"Gain a card" expects the card to be in the supply; according to the stop moving rule, it can't be gained because you can't move it. "When you gain a card" is a trigger, rather than an instruction -- it doesn't do anything by itself. There's no secret exceptions to triggers.
Even things like Watchtower, which tell you to move a card when you gain it, expect the card to be in its default gain location, so whether or not it originally came from the supply shouldn't matter.

With the new errata, the text doesn't need to name the non-supply pile if it specifically names the card to be gained.  But if it doesn't specifically name the card, it is assumed to be from the supply.  So, we don't have to say "gain a Horse from the Horse pile", but you wouldn't be able to Duplicate a Horse, since Duplicate just says "a copy of that card". 

I don't think the Stop Moving rule comes into play here.  It's just the new convention for wording.

15
Rules Questions / Re: Trashing an Estate for Pirate Ship
« on: April 08, 2019, 12:06:23 pm »
Based on the ruling that playing Band of Misfits as a Treasure Map does get you 4 Golds, it would seem that the "if you/anyone trashed..." wording checks what was trashed at the time it was trashed, rather than what the card currently is.  So I agree that you are correct.

16
Weekly Design Contest / Re: Weekly Design Contest Thread
« on: March 25, 2019, 10:02:25 am »
Emissary, $4
Action - Attack
For each other player, choose one: +2 cards; or gain a Curse to your hand.
Pass each other player a card from your hand.

17
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ridiculous high scores vs. the bot
« on: March 10, 2019, 01:33:08 pm »
Challenge: get enough points vs. Lord Rattington to overflow a 32-bit integer and see what happens with the ShuffleIt client.

18
I just realized that I forgot to ever write up my experience with this tournament.  Great tournament as usual.  I was fortunate enough to make it to the final table this year, so I think I actually got to play all the kingdoms.  Here are my recollections on the boards in the order I played them:

Set 3: This kingdom felt relatively vanilla compared to most of Elestan's kingdoms. (he told me how he created it, but I won't spoil it.  I'll just say that if you've played any famous designed kingdoms, this might feel somewhat familiar) The build ended up just being a standard engine.  I was able to win Ghost Towns (with 5 I think), so I just plugged away at Provinces after that (mainly through Replacing the Golds from Market Square).  It was nice to start off with a straightforward win.

Set 4: This kingdom was a little bit miserable.  Fortunately the Cultists got Embargoed after everyone picked up one Cultist.  But the main way to score points here was Orchard, and your Orchard points could be wildly different depending on which Ruins you got.  I went with a Diplomat thing, activated by at least one Secret Cave every turn (which is pretty easy with so many Ruins in your deck).  I should have picked up Wine Merchants, but I was one turn away from the pileout when Professor Yes piled out (he was 2nd player and I was 3rd).

Set 1: This was my least favorite set of the day, and I think it was mainly because it felt like you couldn't plan a good strategy without knowing what everyone else was going to do.  I foolishly committed before I knew what other people were doing.  I opened with Rogue, figuring that everyone would be playing with Necromancer and that Rogue would let me take away their good options.  Turns out no one else bought a Necromancer.  Everyone else pretty much just went with Shepherd, and I had to catch up.  I was able to do that with Knights, and toward the end of the game, I trashed most of my uniques away with Rats.  I think I was able to pull out the win, if I'm remembering correctly.

Set 2: This was probably my favorite board of the day.  There was a great Conquest strategy you could pull off here, KC-ing Jacks to gain Silvers, and KC-ing Pookas to trash the Silvers and draw.  Then you could buy 1-2 Conquests per turn.  The Pookas kept the deck size manageable and you got to keep the Conquest points, without worrying about Bandit Fort.

Set A: Despite a 1-hour time limit, the time limit bit me here.  I decided to play Counting House/Storeroom, which is ridiculously tedious here, involving most of the Settlers/Bustling Village pile, Secret Passages, and Artificer.  I chose this strategy here, because I was worried about not getting enough Bustling Villages and/or getting Pillaged if I went with Goons.  For the other players who did play Goons, this ended up being an issue, and my Counting House strategy was steadily picking up a Colony per turn, while the Goons players were getting 2-6 points per turn.  Of course the Counting House strategy took a lot longer to get up and going.  It was on pace to win easily when time ran out, and I only had the second most points in my deck.

Set B: For whatever reason, the other players here ignored Militia and Raider, so I decided to go for the Mandarin golden deck.  I wasn't able to quite live the dream here (wasn't able to turn Tragic Hero into Fortune), and I had to use Conclave to hit the amount I needed to get Mandarin and the green cards, so I didn't have the perfect golden deck (I think I only had 3 turns of making it work), but it was enough to get the win.

Set C: This was my first game of the day with AdamH, and I was ahead of him in the turn order, which is what made the difference here.  My Enchantresses absolutely wrecked Adam.  I don't think he was able to play an un-enchanted Enchantress until his after his 3rd reshuffle.  I actually played pretty poorly otherwise.  The thing to do here would have been Ritual on Peddlers, but I was playing a crazy one-of-everything strategy.  I think I still pulled out 2nd thanks to Adam's bad luck.

Finals: I don't feel too bad for Adam, because he got his revenge here.  I was 3rd in the player order (Adam was 1st), and both previous players opened by Summoning Young Witch, so I had two curses in my deck before I ever shuffled, and both other players also got to avoid their $2 hand.  I never really had a chance.  But I was just happy to make the final table.

I was able to pick up Innovation from the game store with my 3rd place winnings.  Unfortunately it looks like I missed the Innovation heyday on Isotropic.  But all in all, an excellent tournament.  I had a blast, and I'm looking forward to next year.

19
Other Games / Re: Temporum Rules Questions
« on: December 11, 2018, 10:16:44 am »
I had an interesting rules question come up in a game last night.  We had Exodus active when P1 advanced all 10 crowns to time 4 (without advancing the extra crown), then P2 advanced all 10 crowns to time 4 (without advancing the extra crown either).  On P1's next turn, she changed history to make Exodus no longer active, but wasn't able to advance a crown.  Does the game end in a tie?

What if P1 had changed history (so Exodus wasn't active) and then forced P2 to retreat one crown?

20
That's really weird.  That's the URL of the product I ordered.  In my cart, it still shows a picture of Renaissance, but when I click on it, it goes to the base game.  It definitely was Renaissance a few days ago, no reviews, etc.  It would be real annoying to end up with the wrong thing here.

I can confirm that even though Amazon's page changed for a while, my copy of Renaissance did arrive today.

21
How? I literally can't find it on Amazon. This url, which contains "Dominion-Renaissance" in it, goes to a page that sells the base set.
https://www.amazon.com/Rio-Grande-Games-Dominion-Renaissance/dp/B07GRF6L3N

That's really weird.  That's the URL of the product I ordered.  In my cart, it still shows a picture of Renaissance, but when I click on it, it goes to the base game.  It definitely was Renaissance a few days ago, no reviews, etc.  It would be real annoying to end up with the wrong thing here.

22
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reaction cards
« on: November 07, 2018, 10:11:25 am »
I remember when I asked Donald X. about it, he had at least 10 dimensions of complexity/simplicity that he considers (some of which would fall under your three), but I expect it's the additional things that Donald X. is trying to optimize that makes it near impossible to satisfy all the types of simplicity.

But seriously, you should ask him about it.  The statement that you quoted from me is something I've seen him say many times.

23
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reaction cards
« on: November 07, 2018, 09:43:34 am »
In the design of this set, a decision was made to try to use clear, concise wordings for cards, even if those deviated from the historical, somewhat procedural wordings that were used in the past.  All of this in the pursuit of simplicity, which of course has many dimensions (you should ask Donald X. about the different types of complexity sometime).

At this point in Dominion design, it's extremely difficult to create cards that will satisfy all the different criteria for having a card be "simple," while still having it be fun to play.  So you're always going to have to cut corners somewhere.  You can have a card simple in some dimensions, e.g. the wording of Capital is simple and unambiguous, but complex in other dimensions, such as making you pay attention to a keyword that you've never had to before, or causing rules questions.  Some other types of complexity, such as difficulty to implement online or difficulty to translate, are not even considered in the design process.

Everyone of course has their own opinions on which types of complexity are more odious, but complexity is unavoidable at this point.

24
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reaction cards
« on: November 06, 2018, 01:53:34 pm »
The card doesn't actually even need "using the word 'reveal.'"  Early versions didn't have it -- it was just added for clarity.

25
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reaction cards
« on: November 06, 2018, 10:50:15 am »
Patron is clearly worded but it is in my opinion a bad idea as it does not allow intuitive application.
As GendoIkari has pointed out, cards get revealed lots of ways without the word "reveal" being printed on a Kingdom card.

Personally I don't feel like this is really a problem.  People seem to understand "gain" well enough.  There are lots of times where you "get something desired, especially as a result of one's effort," but it doesn't count as gaining for Dominion purposes.  "Using the word 'reveal'" just clarifies that it's talking about revealing as a Dominion concept, not the general English concept of revealing.

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