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Messages - ben_king

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51
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Empires cards I still don't get
« on: December 04, 2017, 08:36:35 am »
I find Annex to be most useful in sloggish-good stuff type decks where reliability is the limiting factor.  Annex isn't the primary goal, but in the mid-to-late game, Annex can make you much more likely to kick off next turn.

52
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: World Famous Dominion Picture Trivia
« on: November 30, 2017, 11:01:14 am »
11. Orchard Famine ?

53
A great tournament as usual by Elestan.  There were a number of new attendees there this year, several of whom were pretty good.  As always, the kingdoms were crazy, and the tournament ran completely smoothly.  I ended up playing all the kingdoms except for one.  My thoughts on them are below:

Set 1: [Triumphal Arch, Alms], Pearl Diver, Amulet, Tunnel, Vassal, Poacher, Secret Passage, Villa, Wild Hunt, Royal Seal, King's Court
Here I basically built a huge King's Court thing that played Royal Seal and bought a Villa in order to topdeck stuff midturn.  My eventual payload was Wild Hunt.  I built a lead and drained piles.  This was a super tricky board to play cleanly -- most turns you can reasonably plan 5 or more card plays in advance.  Against an opponent who also has their deck up and going, executing cleanly would be huge.

Set 2: [Shelters], [Orchard, Advance], Beggar, Embargo, Peasant, Gear, Menagerie, Miser, Pirate Ship, Hunting Party, Prince, Overlord
I bought quite a few Overlords here, and only three Hunting Parties, as they were split between all three players.  The real trick that I was able to use was to put my +1 action token on Overlord.  Most of the time I played Overlord as Miser, but making it non-terminal meant that I could more easily activate Menageries and also control what my Hunting Parties found.  Once I got my +Buy token on Menagerie, it was pretty easy to get enough money and buys to pile out.

Set 3: [Tower, Pathfinding], Beggar, Squire, Hermit, Patrician/Emporium, Magpie, Messenger, Rats, Remake, Trader, Mountebank
What I did here and what I now think is the right thing to do here are very different.  I built an ugly deck that bought most of the Patrician pile and put the +1 card token on it.  What I should have done is to hit Trader heavily.  With opponents playing Mountebank, it seems fairly easily to empty the Silver pile for huge Tower points, and a deck full of silvers can buy Provinces pretty easily as well.  You probably want some Beggars with your Trader, not only to get three Silvers off a Beggar play (revealing Trader), but also for Beggar's reaction.  Alternatively, you could pick up some Rats early and Trader those, which could be faster, not sure.  Emptying the Copper pile also seems possible (but not at the same time), especially when opponents are helping you out by playing Mountebank.  And while the Tower points from Copper are even crazier, I think the deck full of Copper doesn't score enough points to catch up with the Silver deck.

Set 4: [Mountain Pass, Bonfire], Encampment/Plunder, Fool's Gold, Gladiator/Fortune, Transmogrify, Crown, Legionary, Treasure Trove, Capital, Hunting Grounds, City
This board was fun.  You Crown Capital and then double it with Fortune for 18 net coins on each Capital (and 24 on the turn you're piling out).  There's a few ways to support it.  I went City/Hunting Grounds. 

Set A: [Aqueduct, Dominate], Candlestick Maker, Crossroads, Ambassador, Secret Passage, Silk Road, Walled Village, Artificer, Counting House, Patrol, Storyteller
In retrospect, I don't think my strategy here was good.  I built a little-bit-of-everything engine that hit Dominate 4 times.  But I think now that a strategy with Candlestick Maker, Artificer/Secret Passage, and Counting House is extremely hard to beat.  Playing Ambassador against it only helps, in addition to giving away free Aqueduct points.  With Candlestick Maker, you can use the buys to grab extra Coppers.  Artificer/Secret Passage makes sure you get the Counting House at the right time in your deck, and even if the timing isn't perfect, the coin tokens can help make up the difference.  I wouldn't be surprised if Counting House could get up to double Dominate here.

Set B: [Museum, Save], Lighthouse, Enchantress, Bishop, Diplomat, Crown, Bridge Troll, Merchant Guild, Swamp Hag, Goons, Overlord
This board was a little crazy, as the +actions and draw are both limited, but Museum points are very important, due to a few crucial piles being contested early.  It's extremely important to get a Lighthouse out every turn, and the Diplomat reaction is key.  I was able to win the split on Diplomats, which let me build a multiple-Goons deck that drew itself most turns.  The Goons points were the difference, but it would have been hard to win without having quite a few Museum points as well.

Set C: [Bandit Fort, Conquest], Caravan Guard, Catapult/Rocks, Caravan, Feodum, Jack, Messenger, Taxman, Trader, Embassy, King's Court
Still kind of sad about this one.  So obviously non-Silver/Gold payload is extremely limited here.  All three of us hit the Catapults and Caravans early.  I thought that I would have time to grab enough Feoda to offset the Bandit Fort penalty, but I forgot how quickly Messenger could empty piles.  My lovely wife (nana-king on f.ds) used Messenger to pile out while I still had a negative score. :(

Set T: [Dominate, Donate], Encampment/Plunder, Castles, Market Square, Crown, Lost City, Gladiator/Fortune, Artisan, Border Village, Hireling, Hunting Grounds
That put me in a 4-player tiebreaker game for the finals.  Donate/Market Square is definitely the thing to do here.  But there are a few different ways to support it.  I donated twice and got a Hunting Grounds.  When four Gladiators were gone, I bought Gladiator/Fortune, which I still think is the right call, but I'm not sure (as it gives other players easier access to Fortune).  I actually missed a pileout on my first Fortune turn, but my lead kept anyone else from ending the game before my next turn, and I was able to end the game then.  The player who built using Encampment, Plunder, and Artisan was actually able to get a huge turn as well once he got his Fortune, but he started out a little bit behind from trashing down too much at the start.  I'd be curious to replay this and see what support is actually best.

Set F: [Defiled Shrine, Summon], Native Village, Chariot Race, Farmers' Market, Wishing Well, Jack, Secret Passage, Villa, Haunted Woods, Wild Hunt, Forge
The finals board had a couple of tricks, the biggest being Jack/Villa (which gets totally shut down by Haunted Woods) and also a number of Secret Passage combos.  If you're feeling ambitious I guess you could try to do Jack/Villa multiple times per turn, I only did it once per turn when my opponents didn't have Haunted Woods out.  I also had a few Haunted Woods myself, which was extremely helpful for reliability. 

I'm still not sure what the best combo with Secret Passage is. I'm tempted to say Native Village (which I skipped), since getting green cards out of the deck is really important for the Jack/Villa trick.  Wishing Well is also nice since it's tough to get through the whole deck without it.  But the points from Chariot Race are also really nice in a tight game.  Anyway, I ended up Forging Province into Province a few times to solidify my lead and help get cards out of my hand for the Jack/Villa trick.  And eventually I was able to get to a Province pileout.

54
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Male and female cards (again)
« on: November 08, 2017, 10:59:32 am »
A Warlock would give out 1.266 curses when you played it.

I figure he would do equal work, but would cost 6.33 coins.

55
Other Games / Re: Donald X.'s new game Kingdom Builder
« on: October 28, 2017, 11:49:37 am »
The amount of variety in the (2nd ed.) big box is just about perfect for Kingdom Builder.  There's enough that you don't see the same things too often, but not so much that you forget what the different tokens do.  I highly recommend it.

56
Dominion Articles / Re: Dominion 101: What is an engine?
« on: October 17, 2017, 10:26:36 am »
To me, this example shows that a very thin deck is easier to draw all of than a multiplied version of that deck, because you need to draw fewer additional cards above your 5 starting cards to draw the whole deck.

The percentage of basic treasure in your deck that you can have while still having a high chance to draw your deck depends on the size of the deck and the strength of the draw available. 50% or higher basic treasure is consistent with having a high chance to draw the deck if the draw is good enough. For example, decks like 2 Margrave (with +Action token), 4 Gold, or 4 Margrave (with + Action token), 8 Gold draw themselves reliably.

Even this deck falls victim to the same principle.  The 2 Margrave (with +action) and 4 gold deck is 100% reliable.  Double it and it drops to 89%.  Triple it and you're at 76%.

In terms of combinatorics, as you increase the size of the deck (keeping the proportions the same), a smaller and smaller proportion of the possible starting hands has the cards that you need to kick off.  I've not yet quite wrapped my mind around why this should be the case in general.  I'm not sure if it's only due to having a fixed-size starting hand or if there are other combinatorics principles in play also.

57
Dominion Articles / Re: Dominion 101: What is an engine?
« on: October 16, 2017, 01:01:20 pm »
I haven't done the math, but I would assume that Smithy/BM draws the same 5-sometimes-8 cards if you double/triple/etc. the deck, and most conventional (village+smithy) engines continue drawing 100% of the deck when you double it, since drawing deck is a function of total +cards, having enough +actions to support that, and drawing those in the right order, all of which stay the same when you add more of everything while preserving proportions (I gut-sense).

Unfortunately, this doesn't work out in practice.  Here's a simple example to show it.

Suppose you have a simple draw-your-deck engine:
1x Village
1x Smithy
1x Woodcutter
3x Treasure

We'll define drawing the deck as having an empty deck and discard during your turn (which is being a little generous, since that doesn't guarantee that you get to play your woodcutter).  But with this simple deck, it's impossible not to draw it.  But now let's double it:

2x Village
2x Smithy
2x Woodcutter
6x Treasure

This deck only draws itself about 38% of the time.  If we triple it:

3x Village
3x Smithy
3x Woodcutter
9x Treasure

It's now literally impossible for this deck to draw itself.

58
Dominion Articles / Re: Common Skill "Plateaus" in Mastering Dominion
« on: October 03, 2017, 03:28:08 pm »
People on Board Game Geek are talking about engines being better than Big Money. (Aware of 5000ft plateau.)

Does this actually happen?

59
Other Games / Re: Donald X.'s new game Kingdom Builder
« on: August 07, 2017, 04:24:05 pm »
Queen has a history of bad communication and being slow. There are too few people doing too much work. That's at least the impression I got from the Escape Big Box kickstarter.

I finally got the shipment from the Kingdom Builder: Harvest Kickstarter.  It was 10 months late, but they did upgrade everyone to the Big Box for free, so I got base game + all four expansions + promos for only ~$40.  I was starting to get worried that it would never come.

It's been really fun and seems well-designed so far.  Well done Donald!  The downsides, as usual, are Queen Games-related -- rulebook, weird translations, and the poor design of the box insert.

60
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.
« on: May 30, 2017, 10:09:29 am »
My wife and I came across a Temporum rules question while playing the new expansion (which we absolutely love, by the way).

What happens if you set aside Anubis Statuette with Cache?  Presumably the start of your turn happens before changing history or moving.  So does "resolve this zone" tell you to visit the zone where you happen to be at the start of your turn, or does Anubis Statuette just set up an effect that happens later in the turn when you visit a zone normally?

61
Quote
Roughly speaking, out of 100 million possible boards, less than 1 has been played on average. You'd need to put some serious work in to make a neural network work under these circumstances.

But a neural network doesn't need to see every possible combination. That's the whole point. How many images of faces does an NN need to be fed before it develops the patterns necessary for facial recognition, where it can pick a face or multiple faces out of an image? Likewise, How many games of Dominion do you think it would need to be fed in order to look at a kingdom and be able to simply say "engine" or "BM" or "slog" reliably? I'm betting it would be pretty accurate given the database that exists right now.

Using similar technology to tune playstyles could also be done with targeted data analysis, but it would be a fascinating experiment just to start with the above and see what you get.

The real issue is how cards and the game state are represented.  Does the representation somehow encode that Village is +1 card +2 actions, or is it just a card called Village?  If it's seen Village and Smithy played together, can it know that Worker's Village + Avanto also work together?  And even if you can represent the vanilla bonuses in features, how do you represent Enchantress's attack or Possession's interaction?  Representation is the key issue here and in my experience non-trivial.

62
Other Games / Re: Temporum: Alternate Realities speculation
« on: May 18, 2017, 09:45:28 am »
Also, Amazon says it'll be in stock on June 30th.

I said it over at BGG and I'll say it here. Any release date that lands on the last day of March, June, September, or December is almost certainly a placeholder date. Amazon receives a release forecast of "Quarter 2, 2017", but their system doesn't allow them to enter that. So instead, they just plug in the last day of Q2, which is June 30th. In reality they likely have no idea when they'll have it in stock.

I could be wrong; maybe it's a coincidence and the date really will be June 30th. I doubt it, though.

Good call. Amazon has now updated their date to May 22nd.

63
Before I start the implementation, I lilke to hear your opinions on this. How can i optimize the representation of a strategy? How can I generate a better and/or quicker fitness function?

Ultimately any fitness function is going to be an approximation.  The best approximation is going to be simulating playouts, probably at least a few thousand games.  Using a simulator like Geronimoo's that has fixed rules for how each card is played, this can actually be pretty fast to do.

Testing it against a number of benchmark strategies might be an okay approximation, but it will fail miserably in some cases.  Suppose that your kingdom has (among other cards), Enchantress and Hunting Grounds.  Maybe one of your candidates likes to play something that resembles Hunting Grounds-BM.  That might play really well against all the benchmarks, but it will fail big-time against anyone who knows to pick up Enchantress.  Sure you can over-terminal to try to fight that, but the benchmarks aren't likely to select a candidate that over-terminals.  The point, I guess, is that there are way too many possible scenarios (especially in post-Empires Dominion) for the benchmarks to select good strategies.  More than ever, it depends on the board.

Unfortunately, I think even with the best genetic algorithm and fitness function, this type of approach will not come close to being able to beat good humans.  Maybe on some weak big money boards, it could get good shuffle luck and sometimes win.  But deciding what cards to buy is at best only half the skill in Dominion.  I don't know if a human-level AI is what you're aiming for, but the proposed AI will probably fall short.

If you are looking to build something human-level, you might want to look into Monte-Carlo tree search.  This is more or less what AlphaGo, plus a number of other top AIs for other games use.

64
I think ben_king's simulations are wrong.

Jimmmmm's Pr(1) is missing a factor (as you noticed) of (265/320) (266/320) because you still need to draw the 10th kingdom card without hitting a landscape. This will give an answer that agrees with Polk's.

Maybe you already know this, but Polk's t is just the number of kingdom cards, not the total, so if you're interested in the 275 kingdom, 55 landscape case, t needs to be 275. This will give an average number of landscapes of ~1.416. I did sim this as well and got ~1.416.

Ah, I had assumed that the 330 cards did not include landscapes.  Once I adjust that, this is the number that the simulation gives as well.  Though, the result I get for the second question is no longer as close to the first answer.  I now get ~1.408 as the answer for the second question.

65
Fortunately simulation is easy.  Over 10,000,000 trials, the answer to your first question is ~1.266.  And 10,000,000 trials for your second question yields ~1.266. 

So the two answers are very close, though I suspect they should not ever be equal.  If you consider the case where the number of events is smaller than the number of kingdoms, it's clear that the number of e/l per kingdom will depend on the number of kingdoms.  That should carry over to the case we're looking at here, though the effect would be much smaller.

66
In Javascript it's possible to listen for window.onbeforeunload.  Usually developers do this to prompt the user whether they really want to leave.  But maybe it could be used to send a "resign" signal to the server, so that the client can differentiate between the user losing their connection or the browser crashing (in which case we should wait for them to reconnect) vs. the user actively closing the window (which should be a resignation).

67
Other Games / Re: Temporum Zone and Card Scans
« on: January 05, 2017, 08:47:26 am »
They look quite nice.  I never get a chance to look at the art for the zones (especially age I) up close since they're all the way over sitting on the board.  But wow, I never realized what great art the zones have!

68
This was a great tournament.  Elestan and AdamH had a great set of kingdoms and the whole tournament ran really smoothly.

This was the second year that my wife (nana-king) and I attended.  For whatever reason, it seems like this particular weekend just didn't really work for a lot of people.  So this year's tournament was quite a bit smaller than last year's.  As always Elestan had some very memorable kingdoms.

My quarterfinal game was





I really liked how well balanced this kingdom is.  I ended up just doing Beggar Gardens with some Talisman and Masterpiece support, since my opponents let me get 9 of the Gardens (I ended with 9-point gardens and a sizeable margin of victory).  But there are some really nice counters to this strategy.  If I played this again, I'd probably build an engine, but the what the endgame will look like isn't clear to me.

Because of the small size of the tournament, one quarterfinal game was enough to seed the semi-finals.  I had to expect that the Empires landmarks were going to feature prominently in these games, and Elestan did not disappoint:





The Black Market deck here consisted completely of villages, which of course will be singletons for Wolf Den when scoring.  I opened Remake/Black Market here, which ended up biting me  as they collided a few times.  I built a Patrol/Groundskeeper/whatever village I got out of the black market deck.  I was fortunate to get Worker's Village and Hamlet (which both give +buy) so that I didn't have to bother with Courtier; my third village was Fishing Village.  Because of piles, I only got 5 Groundskeepers before I had to start greening.  In retrospect, Tournament with Groundskeeper is just way too strong to skip here.  I was fortunate to edge out the Tournament player by a few points on my last turn.

Second semifinal game:





I really didn't like the way I played on this board.  I should have put my trashing token on Processions and gotten them much earlier than I did.  I opened Soothsayer/Lurker with the idea that Lurker can be a cantrip (with Rats) any time there's nothing good in the trash, and that if I give my opponents curses, there's not an easy way to thin the curse vs. turn it into something else (which is important for Wall).  Obviously the endgame here is all about Butchers/Expands.  Even though I ended up with -9 Wall points, I was able to get a big last Butcher/Procession turn to empty piles and grab a few Provinces for a 2-point win.

Third semifinal game:





This was probably my favorite kingdom of the day, though there's one card I can't remember [edit: it was Messenger -- thanks AdamH].  Lurker/Rats/Tomb becomes a cantrip VP chip gainer.  But of course the real thing is doing Donate shenanigans.  The first time I grabbed a Border Village, Council Room, and a few market squares to get golds when I donated (though Feodum may have been faster and easier).  Before I donated again, I used Masterpiece to empty the Silver pile and donate it, since the other players had been grabbing Feoda.  After that, I just grabbed a couple Provinces and emptied the remaining piles with the help of Border Village and Haggler.  I think I ended with 60+ Tomb points.  Such a fun board.

Following the semi-final round, I was in first and my wife, nana-king, was in second.  We both moved onto the finals along with another competitor, Suzette.





Peasant was the bane here and we used shelters.  This kingdom was all about the tokens, mainly moving the Ferry token around so that you can get cards for cheap, but still put Teacher tokens on them.  There's a lot of different ways to go here, but you still pretty much end up at the same place, trying to empty piles and grab a VP card.  The difference for me was having pair of Transmogrifies and a Disciple.  Transmogrify was nice here because you can turn your shelters into a 4-cost if you have the Ferry token on that.  I put +card on Advisor, +coin on Herald (now that I think about it, it might have been better to put the +buy token on Herald, since extra buys cost $2 each here). 

On my last turn, I was able to Transmogrify into Herald, gain a Herald with Disciple.  At that point, the Herald pile was empty, there was one Advisor and 6 Villas.  I was able to get 4 buys from Travelling Fair, buy the Advisor, move the Ferry token to Villa, empty the Villa pile and pick up an Estate for a 2 to 0 to -1 win. 

My wife finished in 2nd place.  She dominated the whole day and could definitely have ended it in the final game if I whiffed on my turn.  This was the highest either of us had ever finished in a tournament.  And we had a blast!

69
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Ben's cards
« on: September 16, 2016, 02:10:38 pm »
I'm flattered by your fixing up of my cards.  :D

And I like a lot of the changes (many of my ideas were never actually tested in a real game) you made.

70
Other Games / Re: Temporum
« on: September 01, 2016, 09:55:49 am »
I'm pretty excited for the expansion:

http://riograndegames.com/Game/1309-Temporum-Alternate-Realities

Everyone keeps saying it's even better than the base set.  It will probably find its way onto my Christmas list.  :)

71
Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition
« on: August 24, 2016, 01:06:32 pm »
I think a ranking for landmarks could make sense if you think of it from the perspective of "How much do I change my strategy because of this landmark?"

For example, I've found that Palace rarely factors into either my strategy or the outcome of the game, whereas Wall forces me to rethink whatever I was doing and is almost always a factor in final scoring.

72
Let's Discuss ... / Re: empires: capital
« on: July 30, 2016, 08:40:39 pm »
So how good is Capital-Big Money?  Or something like Smithy+Capital+Big Money?

I've never played straight Capital-Big Money, but I've played a few money-ish games where you use Capital to spike a Province.  It seemed pretty good.  Most of the time you didn't mind paying off the debt next turn because your next turn wasn't reliably good anyway.

73
Let's Discuss ... / Re: empires: tax
« on: July 25, 2016, 03:28:11 pm »
Tax is an event that pushes you toward building an engine (as long as there are buys on the board).  The engine player can relentlessly punish the non-engine player by buying multiple taxes every turn.

74
Goko Dominion Online / Re: Name swap bug
« on: July 19, 2016, 03:43:48 pm »
My wife has had this bug before several times, except that in her case, the results were switched too.

75
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best Dominion moments 2016
« on: July 06, 2016, 04:04:34 pm »
In an IRL game last night, I got 5 Colonies in 11 turns.

Turn 1 -- buy Feodum
Turn 2 -- buy Donate
Turn 3 -- pay off Debt
Turn 4 -- buy Gold
Turn 5 -- buy Platinum
Turn 6 -- buy Colony
Turn 7 -- buy Colony
Turn 8 -- buy Vault
Turn 9 -- buy Colony
Turn 10 -- buy Colony
Turn 11 -- buy Colony

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