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2401

Dominion Articles / Re: Three-sentence overview of each card in Hinterlands

« on: November 08, 2011, 09:52:32 pm »

Quick note on oracle:

Oracle/Potion is a great opening in a familiar or alchemist game (assume there are no important terminals on the board).

2402

Dominion General Discussion / Ill-Gotten Gains + Counting House

« on: November 07, 2011, 04:38:17 pm »

Normally, this is a bad idea, because the IGG and curse piles run out simultaneously, and you don't want to be messing around with bad cards like counting house when you're supposed to be winning the race to eight duchies.

However, occasionally there is asymmetrical cursing, e.g. if your opponent opens sea hag and you decide to buy IGGs, or due to watchtower. Then the curse pile will empty, but, if there are, say, 3 IGGs left, that second pile is very unlikely to empty, and the probability of a quick three-pile is the same as in an ordinary sea hag game. In this event, counting house goes really well with the IGGs after the curse pile is gone, the point being that you can have your cake and eat it too with the extra coppers. Agree/disagree?

Related question: I don't think there's consensus yet on which cursers can be skipped for IGG (my wild guesses: skip sea hag, don't skip mountebank and familiar, otherwise ??).

Basically, I don't understand IGG at all. Say anything helpful.

2403

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Create a card inspired by another game

« on: November 07, 2011, 12:22:39 am »

Consult NATO


Victory-Reaction, $6
+2 VP
When an opponent gains a card, you may reveal this from your hand. If you do, the United States Federal Government enters into binding consultation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the subject of your opponent gaining the card, and he gains the card if and only if NATO agrees.

2404

Dominion Articles / Re: Highway cost interactions

« on: November 06, 2011, 12:14:02 pm »

A little note on highway forge:

unless you're hogging all the highways, it's a bad idea:

if you trash n cards originally costing x_1, ..., x_n, and you've played m highways, then forge gives you a card originally costing

x_1 + x_2 + ... + x_n - nm + m. Since nm > m when n > 1 and m > 0, this is never as costly a card as you would get without having played any highways, and it's strictly a worse card if you're using forge well (i.e. trashing more than one card).

A particularly bad case of the formula is when m is 2. Then if you forge 3 estates and a copper, you gain an estate instead of a gold.

HOWEVER, there's an exception to this formula stemming from the fact that highway never reduces a cost below 0. If you play more highways than the minimum value of the x_i, it becomes possible that the highways improve your forging. It's annoying to write out the formula, but it's obvious that good stuff can happen here when you consider the extreme example where you've played 8 highways and can forge anything into a province.

2405

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cache

« on: November 06, 2011, 11:29:25 am »

I think that cache is probably not worth buying a watchtower for, since if the watchtower were a copper (or better), you could just buy a gold instead. But if you have a watchtower anyway, and exactly five in hand, then I agree that it's a no-brainer to top-deck a gold-equivalent instead of blind-drawing to 6.

2406

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Very Specific Tactics Question

« on: November 06, 2011, 12:01:16 am »

I still don't have this completely sorted out in my mind; the debate in my head when I actually ran into this problem was a less articulate version of what folks have said here. I posted mainly because I wondered if one option was strictly superior (in the "what should I do when I throne room a minion?" sense). In hindsight, I think that's clearly not the case, as can be seen in two extreme scenarios: if the top card of my deck is green and the card below it is a cantrip, farming village first is obvious; if there are no purple or green cards in my deck, cartographer first is obvious.

For the record, I often veto cartographer to avoid all the thinking.

2407

Dominion General Discussion / Very Specific Tactics Question

« on: November 05, 2011, 10:24:00 pm »

My deck has plenty of junk and green cards in it, and some money and pawns and familiars.

My hand is

Farming Village Cartographer Cartographer x x

where I don't remember the x's, but they're bad (let's say copper curse). What order do I play the actions in?

2408

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is border village a trap?

« on: November 04, 2011, 01:39:10 pm »

@pops I think the consensus is (and I now think) that I was pretty wrong - BV is not a trap and there are many 5-cost cards satisfying my condition that

card < gold < card + free village

2409

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Apothecary/Native Village

« on: November 03, 2011, 03:26:15 pm »

I had a good game with this yesterday with scheme on the board; I opened scheme/potion to keep the apothecaries on top (buying the 8th copper later, as MMM suggests somewhere in this discussion). Thanks for the tip!

2410

Simulation / Re: Noble Brigand bot (PROBABLE SIMULATOR BUG)

« on: November 03, 2011, 03:20:52 pm »

If the nature of the bug is that games are being played without a gold pile, why is Noble Brigand doing better, instead of worse, than expected?

2411

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: November 02, 2011, 01:29:57 pm »

Wait - I almost always open trade route if it's the only trasher (and strategies that will rely on me making 5 dollars early aren't obviously dominant) - is this wrong?

2412

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: November 02, 2011, 01:24:48 pm »

To clarify, I agree that develop is almost always a mistake as an opener, and am just arguing that it's better than trade route as an opener.

2413

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: November 02, 2011, 01:08:34 pm »

A few remarks:

1. Duchess isn't a great card, but it's a welcome relief on some boards when you split 5/2, which is more than can be said for herbalist.

2. I still haven't really figured out how to use the "duchy" aspect of Duchess strategically. There might be something really clever lurking that we haven't discovered yet. (I felt this way about transmute for a very long time before giving up on it.)

3. As for develop, is it worse than trade route? (A card that I love, but that isn't very good in most games.) Certainly absent island or great hall it's a stronger opener, and like trade route, it can be board-dependently outstanding in the late game. Trade route probably has a higher must-buy feel to it on boards where it's ridiculously good than develop, and occasionally you hold your nose and buy a trade route just for the +buy, but I think develop's better early trashing ability would make me call it a slightly better card.

2414

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom 2 Match-ups Round 1

« on: October 31, 2011, 04:18:35 pm »

I advance over pops. We played without veto mode for some awesome boards, ending in a truly incomprehensible possession game. Here are the logs.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/31/game-20111031-121750-4ddd2e26.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/31/game-20111031-123212-e493ca65.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/31/game-20111031-124400-71068801.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/31/game-20111031-130101-c74a263d.html
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/31/game-20111031-131538-38c9170d.html

2415

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing isotropic on iPhone/android

« on: October 29, 2011, 08:21:36 pm »

I've done it on my android; I eventually stopped because I'd freeze out once in a while and I think this would be annoying for my competitors.

2416

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Apothecary/Native Village

« on: October 29, 2011, 01:03:35 pm »

I think the intended opening is potion/copper, right?

2417

Game Reports / Re: Hinterlands/Governor game logs from councilroom

« on: October 29, 2011, 12:17:26 am »

I empathize. I had an awesome peddler board today where I opened Oasis/Oasis.

Except what I actually opened was oracle/oracle...

2418

Council Room Feedback / Re: No game data for the last few days?

« on: October 26, 2011, 01:21:08 pm »

Thanks a ton! The best-and-worst openings page has some weirdness now, probably due to nomad camp and mandarin. In particular, there's an Ill-Gotten Gains/Masquerade opening, which performs really badly! Is this someone who nomad camps, then IGGs, then masquerades? Or is something else going on?

2419

Dominion General Discussion / Re: [spoiler] Full Hinterlands card list

« on: October 26, 2011, 01:09:51 pm »

I forgot tournament. Although JoaT does seem to smoke followers...

edit: but that's a good point and makes sense that simulation data is biased toward big money.  Still, it's not just that JoaT naturally lends itself to big money, as does envoy, but it's also that JoaT makes big money very viable against even the meanest attacks, which envoy doesn't. Incidentally, envoy and remake are two of my least favorites. JoaT I'm still in puppy love with but may grow to dislike it if it's as powerful as I think.

2420

Dominion General Discussion / Re: [spoiler] Full Hinterlands card list

« on: October 26, 2011, 12:59:06 pm »

Also, Mint/Fool's Gold is now THE BEST opening if you take the median instead of the low within its range.

2421

Dominion General Discussion / Re: [spoiler] Full Hinterlands card list

« on: October 26, 2011, 12:56:00 pm »

I can't believe Jack of All Trades is even. I think it's probably the best 4 in dominion.

2422

Dominion General Discussion / Re: [spoiler] Full Hinterlands card list

« on: October 26, 2011, 12:16:43 pm »

edit: this isn't a response to chwhite but was posted simultaneously. now i will read his post.

Margrave is like council room + militia that you don't have to set up but that doesn't give you two dollars. Council room + militia has always been a pretty weak combo; militia mitigates the damage from council room, but "the best 3 out of the top 6 cards in my deck" is often not much worse than, and occasionally better than, "the top 5 cards of my deck," as you quickly learn when someone plays this combo against you. Since the combo requires setting up, it's rarely worth going for (except with fishing village - I've also had some luck with golem + exactly one CR + exactly one militia + no other actions).

Margrave solves the latter problem, but not the former. I'd think of it less as an attack and more of a smithy + buy + (weirdness that's typically a little good for you but may help your opponent).

2423

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Salvager CCCS Decision?

« on: October 25, 2011, 11:32:10 pm »

Interesting - I think I'd "cutpurse myself" (stealing this language from the salvager article from the main blog) and take the caravan in this situation. It's just that caravan is pretty good, and trashing copper is pretty good, and those two pretty goods add up to better than a lab, at least early. Simulation data?

edit: I definitely prefer lab + hang on to a silver to gold here; I think the debate is between lab and trash copper + caravan.

2424

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How would you play this kingdom?

« on: October 24, 2011, 10:14:25 pm »

OK, but suppose you ignore provinces all together and force the Smithy BMU player to buy 8. How long does that take? How much are silk roads+ islands + some duchies + estates worth by then? I don't think it's obvious. At least the province player needs to be rushing the game with a salvager or something.

2425

Dominion General Discussion / Re: New Promo Governor

« on: October 24, 2011, 10:12:07 pm »

Two simple observations:

1. If you know it's the last turn of the game, go nuts with your governating.

2. Governor works really well with King's Court, especially in the context of the above. OK, that's true of lots of things, but...