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551

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reducing the luck factor?

« on: July 16, 2011, 12:19:12 pm »

Honestly, the answer is to play more. Those bad beats even out after a while, and you'll find that the number of boards on which that happens is surprisingly small.

The second answer is to use those bad beats as an opportunity to think strategically. You can do one of two things: 1) try to find a way to come from behind in that game--is there an alternate victory strategy? can you try for a crazy engine that is a high-risk, high-reward play? 2) ask yourself (or your opponent) if there was a different way to open that game that would be less vulnerable to that kind of ending.

Finally, be comfortable with resigning. There's nothing wrong with asking your opponent, "gg, want to try another since this one's over?" If the game is truly over and it's not going to be fun to finish it off, then move on.

552

Game Reports / Re: Don't Fear the Pirate Ship

« on: July 16, 2011, 10:34:33 am »

Ok, let me try the stats again:

This spreadsheet should give the odds for a successful Pirate Ship attack, based on the opponent's deck size and number of Treasure cards. I would appreciate if someone could double check my formula, which is:

Probability of the first card being a Treasure (#Treas/#Deck) +
Probability of the first card not being a Treasure while the second card is a Treasure [(#Deck-#Treas)/#Deck]*[#Treas/(#Deck-1)]

553

Game Reports / Re: Don't Fear the Pirate Ship

« on: July 16, 2011, 10:13:50 am »

Has anyone done simulations/calculations on what an optimal Pirate Ship strategy is? I'm guessing that the biggest mistakes made by people who use Pirate Ships are a) not keeping track of the Treasure:rest of deck ratio of their opponents and b) trying to get the Pirate Ship up to too high a value.

We should be able to calculate the odds of a Pirate Ship hitting given the makeup of the opponent's deck, and I would guess that we'll see a sharp drop-off at some point. [Edit: my post below hopefully lays out the stats for this calculation]

As far as b), my guess would be that (as long as there are +Actions), using the Pirate Ship for coin becomes more valuable as soon as it hits $3 unless you know that the Ship has a high probability of success on its attack. I'm making this guess because Gold costs $6 and Contraband (a Gold with a penalty) costs $5, while the Ship only costs $4 (and has the "penalty" of costing 1 action). This estimate seems to work from the other direction as well: Chancellor and similar cards cost $3 and give $2 at the "penalty" of an action, so it makes sense that a card that produces $3 at the "penalty" of an action would be worth no less than $4.

554

Dominion FAQ / Re: Dominion Lingo Dictionary

« on: July 16, 2011, 09:28:59 am »

In the fun category, I'd like to submit a definition for "empty court":

An empty court is a hand that contains some combination of Throne Rooms and/or King's Courts, but no other action cards to play with them. What's the point of having a ruler hold court if no one shows up?

555

Dominion FAQ / Re: Dominion Lingo Dictionary

« on: July 16, 2011, 09:14:21 am »

Ok: here's a revised definition of a soft counter: a card that can respond to an attack or opponent's strategy with less than 100% effectiveness. Soft counters exist along a spectrum of effectiveness: for instance, a Wishing Well almost completely negates the attack of a Ghost Ship, but a Counting House is far from ideal against a Mountebank attack. The closer the counter gets to 100% effectiveness, the more "hard" it becomes (i.e., Moat is a hard counter to any attack).

556

Dominion FAQ / Re: Dominion Lingo Dictionary

« on: July 14, 2011, 10:27:04 pm »

What about "soft counter"? A possible definition would be: a card whose function allows a player to recover or minimize the impact from a type of attack, although the card is not technically a reaction card. Examples include Library against handsize reduction attacks or Masquerade against a Sea Hag.

557

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Supporting Alchemists

« on: July 06, 2011, 09:42:19 am »

Some good reason for drawing most or all of your deck every turn, specifically something good enough that it will beat simpler strategies that go straight for green cards.

Can you give some examples of what those reasons might be? I've already mentioned discard for benefit cards like Secret Chamber/Vault, but I'm sure there are others.

558

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Supporting Alchemists

« on: July 05, 2011, 04:45:11 pm »

So far, here are the factors I can see listed in the posts above:

• Strong trashing aids Alchemists because it makes it more likely they will end up on top of the deck through either shuffles or playing your Potion.
• Herbalist/Apothecary aid Alchemists because they make it easier to get the Potion that keeps the Alchemists on top of the deck.
• Cards that benefit from large handsizes--e.g., Secret Chamber and other discard-for-benefit cards--strengthen Alchemists by giving them a decent payoff even if you draw lots of junk
• Hand-size attacks make Alchemists weaker, especially Minion because it forces you to discard any Alchemists you placed on top of your deck last turn

559

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Supporting Alchemists

« on: July 05, 2011, 04:32:29 pm »

The reason I speculate (and it has always been speculation--if you look at the very first post in this thread you'll see that I explicitly stated that these were guesses) that +coin actions were needed for Alchemists to be effective is that Alchemists  + BM don't succeed against BM alone. Since Alchemist + BM didn't generate enough buying power on its own to overcome BM, I guessed that the missing piece was +coin actions. That may well be wrong, but if so I'd like to know what the missing piece actually is.

As for the mechanic by which +coin actions would be superior to plain-old treasure, it might be that there are auxiliary benefits from playing the action so that it would be superior to just the coin (e.g., Market replaces itself in the hand, Woodcutter gives an extra buy over Silver). I don't know--and part of my hope with this question was that people would explain why they pair Alchemist with specific cards, so I could get some insight into the interaction they wanted to set up. But, since coin alone wasn't doing the job, it seemed a reasonable hypothesis to wonder whether +coin actions were a better way to get buying power. If that's not true, I have no problem with that. I'm just trying to figure out what the Alchemists need in addition to money in order to compete against BM.

So, let's try this discussion again: Alchemists are on the board, and you are trying to decide if they are a viable strategy. What do you want to see in order for the Alchemists to be viable?

560

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Beat Big Money

« on: July 05, 2011, 03:06:23 pm »

Usually when players are losing to Big Money, they are either buying too many action cards, or buying action cards that don't really contribute to an overall strategy.

Next time you play, pay attention to two things. First: do you often have hands in which you have at least one action card that you couldn't play that turn because you didn't have extra actions? Second: after you finished playing your actions, were you able to buy something better than you would have if you had just skipped your action phase?

The first question will tell you if you are going for too many actions. There are many exceptions to this rule, but if you often find that you don't have enough actions to play your action cards, then you generally need either additional +action cards in your deck or fewer actions overall.

The second question is asking if those actions are working for you. This is much tougher to assess: there are some actions, like Militia, that don't improve your hand more than a silver would in their place, but they do hurt your opponent. There are lots of other situations where an action card will improve your hand, but having a different card for that same cost would have been even more useful. But by looking at how much better your hand becomes when you play certain actions, you can hopefully start to see which actions are contributing towards your strategy and which aren't giving you the most value.

561

Simulation / Re: Dominion Simulator available for download!

« on: July 01, 2011, 02:09:34 pm »

Does the simulator implement discard rules for cards like Alchemist and Herbalist? If not, can I make a feature request to add the ability to program discard rules in a similar manner to buy rules? (e.g., if Potion in play >= 1 and Alchemist in play > 0, discard Alchemist to top of deck).

562

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Supporting Alchemists

« on: July 01, 2011, 01:58:31 pm »

Why would you ever think alchemists work well with pure money?

I wouldn't. If you read the original post, I was asking what is necessary in order to support a successful Alchemist strategy. The discussion went as follows: guided said that the deck should be getting its buying power from Golds/Platinums, rather than +coin actions; I asked how the deck could ramp up that buying power; guided responded that you should just buy Silver to get up to Gold; I ran some simulations comparing that strategy to BM and saw that it was markedly inferior.

So, DG, I'll go back to my original question: what is necessary in order to make Alchemists a viable strategy, since Alchemist-BM is not going to cut it?

563

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Supporting Alchemists

« on: July 01, 2011, 09:09:40 am »

There's nothing wrong with Silver, per se, but according to the simulator, BM without Alchemists handily beats Alchemists + BM (I've tried with 2 potions and anywhere from 3-6 Alchemists). So I'm trying to figure out what is needed in order to get the Alchemists over the hump. Just adding +Buy doesn't seem to work (I've tried buying 1-2 Herbalists, and the win rate drops vs BM).

I don't know if the simulator implements the Alchemist/Herbalist discard rules correctly, so there's some margin for error there. Even so, the best I can get the Alchemist deck to function is losing 69%-24% (BMU VP rules, buy Alchemist if <6 in deck, buy Potion if <2, buy Herbalist if <1 and at least one Silver in deck, buy Silver).

So what else is missing?

564

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Supporting Alchemists

« on: June 30, 2011, 11:19:00 pm »

Not sure why you bring up +coin actions. Gold (or Platinum) is the key source of buying power in most good Alchemist decks.

But how does the Alchemist deck get to that level of buying power? If you need to draw 6 coin, you probably will need 3 Alchemists if there's no trashing. Even with almost perfect shuffle luck, you'll need 5 or 6 turns to get there, and in the meantime your deck is not improving its buying power substantially, unless I'm missing something.

565

Dominion General Discussion / Supporting Alchemists

« on: June 30, 2011, 04:38:06 pm »

Alchemists on their own lose fairly reliably to BM. My question is: what cards (or kinds of cards) are needed for Alchemists to be a viable part of a strategy, and under what circumstances are you happy to see your opponent race for Alchemists on his own?

I would make the following guesses, but they are only guesses:

• Actions that produce coin are essential
• Attacks are more valuable with Alchemist chains because you can cycle your deck more frequently and play them more often (assuming you don't trigger reshuffles during the turn and cause the attack to sit out a shuffle)
• Other cards providing draw power without additional benefits (e.g., Smithy) are less valuable than they would be on their own because of the potion cost to Alchemists (which delays those purchases relative to a Smithy).
• +Buys are not very valuable without the ability to generate coin (e.g., Wharf would not be a huge advantage, while Festival would be extremely useful)

Do these claims seem correct? Other considerations?

566

Dominion Articles / Request: Avoiding end-game deck stalls

« on: June 26, 2011, 11:20:33 am »

I have a request for a strategy article rather than the article itself; my apologies if this is the wrong forum to post this request.

I would love to see an article on how to avoid having your deck stall in the late-game. Examples of the kinds of tricks I have in mind include getting a VP edge and then Apprenticing Provinces/Colonies in order to draw enough money to buy replacement victory cards (cf. Annotated Game 2) or using Vaults to turn green cards into cash to continue buying VPs.