Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

General Discussion / 2018 FIFA World Cup

« on: April 25, 2018, 12:18:19 pm »

Other than the equivalent Euro tournament, this is the only sporting event I care about. As always I am super excited for it. Anyone else?

Through some kind of cosmic intervention I have been between jobs for each of the last three tournaments (before which I was a kid anyway) and so I have been able to watch basically the entire month-long thing each time. This year I am a new father with a job I don't plan on leaving in the next two months, so it will be trickier!

I'm also interested in outrageously ill-informed and premature forecasts, for example: Argentina to beat France in the final. You heard it proclaimed on the basis of no evidence whatsoever here first! I called the winner in 2010 (Spain) and both the winner and runner-up in 2014 (Germany over Argentina) but this time I don't have the same magnitude of gut-feel, so probably I'll do some research and make a better prediction soon.

2

Dominion Online at Shuffle iT / Connection issues?

« on: March 19, 2018, 12:56:57 pm »

I've only been playing on Shuffle iT since January but I've already seen many instances where the connection seems poor. These range from fairly common minor annoyances (e.g. I click to play an action, or buy a card, and the screen freezes for a few seconds) to less common but more major ones (e.g. yesterday I was waiting for someone to choose what to gain, and then eventually the game said "you resigned"). Because of this new fear of auto-resignation, I am starting to refresh the browser often while playing as a precaution, but I'm not sure if it helps. I don't want to rule out my own connection but I doubt if that's the issue, since in general my speed seems good (I work from home, with lots of file transfers and video conferencing etc.) and I usually connect using ethernet, and I've seen it on Windows and on Mac now. I am using Firefox only.

Is anyone else seeing this? Any workarounds? Thanks!

3

Dominion General Discussion / Extending the game

« on: March 13, 2018, 02:30:02 pm »

After playing a few IRL games recently that played out a bit too quickly, I started to wonder what ways there would be to extend the game. Playing with platinum and colony is one option: by making your end-game target cards more expensive, it usually means you need more turns to build up. So are there other ways, and are they any good?

One idea I had (I make no claims about whether it is a good one or not) is to start the game with more cards; for example, start with 3 estates and 12 coppers. Of all the 15-card (three starting hand), copper/estate combinations, this one at least makes sure that your minimum starting hand value is $2. Starting with more of these cards that you usually want to get rid of ASAP would usually mean that you see your newly purchased cards less frequently or at least less quickly, slowing your deck development. Of course there are cases where it might play differently than this, e.g. in a donate game (open 5/5/2, with two good cards and then donate).

If you're dealing more starting cards, it doesn't have to be a multiple of 5 even; why not start with 12 cards. Anyway, would this fly? Are there better ideas for extending the game?