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.

76

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most points by turn 3

« on: May 25, 2016, 10:39:21 pm »

I fixed it.

 <...long game log deleted...>

I don't think you are taking the minus coin token for buying ball into account at the beginning of turn three

Quite right.  I can easily fix it though by adding the Borrow event.
I think I'll work on the infinite solution now, though.

Oops again.  Borrow gives one more coin, but one less card the next time I draw, not the next turn.
I thought it could still be salvaged by reordering turn 1 & 2, but that would still leave a shelter for my next draw and then I'm short a copper.
I think I could still make it work with more thought.

77

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most points by turn 3

« on: May 25, 2016, 09:46:32 pm »

I'm sure the method described in ADK's first link easily gets 1000+ VP. Villa is unneccessary.

The link you mention just empties the supply.  It doesn't gain VP.
Where is the game you are describing?

78

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most points by turn 3

« on: May 25, 2016, 09:32:36 pm »

I fixed it.

 <...long game log deleted...>

I don't think you are taking the minus coin token for buying ball into account at the beginning of turn three

Quite right.  I can easily fix it though by adding the Borrow event.
I think I'll work on the infinite solution now, though.

79

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most points by turn 3

« on: May 25, 2016, 07:50:18 pm »

I fixed it.

Kingdom
  Options
    Shelters, Platinum/Colony
  Events
    Alms
    Ball
    Travelling Fair
    Triumph
  Actions
    Baker
    Bridge
    Councilroom
    Crossroads
    Cultist
    King's Court
    Squire
    Stonemason
    Villa
    Watchtower

(works with 2/5 or 3/4 opening because of Baker; shown here with 3/4)
Turn 1
  3 Copper
  Buy Watchtower

Turn 2
  4 Copper + coin token
  Buy Ball, gain Bridge x 2

Turn 3 draw Bridge x 2, Necropolis, Watchtower, Copper
  Play Necropolis, Bridge, Bridge (3 buys, 2 coins, and cards cost 2 less)
  Buy Travelling Fair (now 4 buys)
  Buy Squire, reveal Watchtower, topdeck Squire
  (Watchtower stays in hand.  I'll just note (trash) or (topdeck) after each gain.)
  Buy Squire, reveal Watchtower, topdeck Squire
  Buy Squire (trash), gain Cultist (trash), draw Squire x 2, Copper
  Buy Alms, gain Villa (in hand)
Turn 3.1
  Play Villa, Squire x 2 (for +2 buys), Copper (now 5 buys, 4 coins, and cards cost 2 less)
  Buy Crossroads (topdeck)
  Buy Stonemason (trash), overpay by 2, gain Bridge (topdeck), gain Bridge (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (trash), gain Cultist (trash), draw Bridge x 2, Crossroads
  Buy Stonemason (trash), overpay by 2, gain Bridge (topdeck), gain Villa (in hand)
Turn 3.2
  Play Villa, Crossroads, Bridge x 2 (now 3 buys, 3 coin, and cards cost 4 less)
  Buy King's Court (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (trash), gain Cultist (trash), draw King's Court, Bridge, Copper
  Buy Villa
Turn 3.3
  Play KC-Villa, Bridge (now 4 buys, 4 coin, and cards cost 5 less)
  Buy Stonemason (trash), overpay by 2, gain King's Court x 2 (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (trash), gain Cultist (trash), draw Squire, King's Court x 2
  Buy Villa
Turn 3.4
  Play KC-KC-Villa-Squire(+2buys) (now 9 buys, 6 coins, and cards cost 5 less)
  Buy Squire (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (topdeck)
  Buy Bridge (topdeck)
  Buy Stonemason (trash), overpay by 2, gain King's Court x 2 (topdeck)
  Buy Stonemason (trash), overpay by 2, gain King's Court x 2 (topdeck)
  Buy Councilroom (topdeck)
  Buy Cultist (trash), draw Councilroom, King's Court x 2
  Buy Villa
Turn 3.5
  Play KC-KC-Councilroom-KC-KC-Villa-Bridge-Squire-Squire-Squire, Copper x 6
  27 buys, 27 coins, and cards cost 8 less.
  Buy Colony x 8, Province x 8, Duchy x 8, Estate x 2, Triumph for 182 VP.

80

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most points by turn 3

« on: May 25, 2016, 05:41:01 pm »

3 turns, 110 VP (or more).
Post is flawed.  Disregard.
EDIT:  Back to the drawing board.  I used too many buys at the very beginning of turn 3.   Arrrgh.

Kingdom
  Options
    Shelters, Platinum/Colony
  Events
    Alms
    Ball
    Travelling Fair
  Actions
    Baker
    Bridge
    Cultist
    King's Court
    Squire
    Stonemason
    Villa
    Watchtower

(works with 2/5 or 3/4 opening because of Baker; shown here with 3/4)
Turn 1
  3 Copper
  Buy Watchtower

Turn 2
  4 Copper + coin token
  Buy Ball, gain Bridge x 2

Turn 3 draw Bridge x 2, Necropolis, Watchtower, Copper
  Play Necropolis, Bridge, Bridge
  Buy Bridge, reveal Watchtower, topdeck Bridge
  (Watchtower stays in hand.  I'll just note (trash) or (topdeck) after each gain.)
  Buy Squire (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (trash), gain Cultist (trash), draw Squire, Bridge, Copper
  Buy Alms, gain Villa (in hand)
Turn 3.1
  Play Villa, Bridge (now 2 buys, 2 coins, and cards cost 3 less)
  Buy Stonemason (trash), overpay by 1, gain Bridge (topdeck), gain Bridge (topdeck)
  Buy Stonemason (trash), overpay by 1, gain Bridge (topdeck), gain Villa (in hand)
Turn 3.2
  Play Villa, Squire (for +2 buys) (now 3 buys, 2 coin, and cards cost 3 less)
  Buy Squire (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (trash), gain Cultist (trash), draw Squire, Bridge x 2
  Buy Villa
Turn 3.3
  Play Villa, Bridge, Squire (for +2 buys), Copper x 2 (now 4 buys, 5 coin, and cards cost 4 less)
  Buy Travelling Fair (now 5 buys, 3 coin, and cards cost 4 less)
  Buy Stonemason (trash), overpay by 3, gain King's Court x 2 (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (topdeck)
  Buy Squire (trash), gain Cultist (trash), draw Squire, King's Court x 2
  Buy Squire (trash), gain Cultist (trash), draw Bridge, Copper x 2
  Buy Villa
Turn 3.4
  Play Villa, KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Squire(+2buys), Copper x 2
  13 buys, 12 coins, and cards cost 10 less.
  Buy Colony x 8, Province x 5 for 110 VP.

I could have gone another iteration or two and emptied the entire kingdom, but you get the point.
I'm working on a version that can yield infinite VP.
To do that, one must retrieve a lot of cards from the trash, draw them, play them, including one Monument or other VP gainer, then in the buy phase, use Bonfire to trash all cards in play and then buy a Villa.
Infinite loop.  You never run out of cards to play and your turn never ends.
See the posts by florrat and others here:  http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=15366.0
This will necessitate a slightly different approach since Rogue and Graverobber can only retrieve cards costing 3 to 6 coins.

81

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Post your Promo Fan Card Idea - brainstorm topic

« on: May 14, 2016, 08:17:50 pm »

Labor Force
$6
Reveal your hand.
Play all revealed actions in any order.

82

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: May 12, 2016, 03:28:46 pm »

Play BoM (with +action token) as Ranger (with +card token).

This was the intended solution.

Awaclus' idea might work, though I meant for the draw to be accomplished by the resolution of the action played and not with a setup of arbitrarily large coin tokens and buys.  But I think the problem of Cultist drawing Cultist does actually prevent you from trashing more than one Cultist this way, since the worst case shuffle luck would always make it so that the Cultist you trash draws the other 3 Cultists.  +1 anyway for thinking outside the box.

That said, if we allow the coin token trick, we can stick with the intended solution and buy/trash just one Cultist along with it to push the hand size to 13.

Oh, and you can trash the Squire first to gain a fifth Cultist, so you can guarantee trashing two Cultists for a final hand size of 16 15 (using +Buy token instead of +Card).

Play BoM (with +action token) as Squire (with +buy token).  Take the +2 buys for a total of 4.
Buy 4 StoneMasons, overpaying by $5 for each.  Gain 8 Cultists.  As you gain each Cultist, reveal a Watchtower and trash it for +3 cards each.
That gives 8*3+4 = 28 cards.

83

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: May 12, 2016, 09:44:50 am »

No durations, no events, nothing in play or set aside at the start of your turn (neither on the Tavern mat nor anywhere else).  No Empires stuff.

You start with 5 cards in hand, whatever cards you want.  Your deck contains a bunch of cards of different types unspecified for this puzzle; just assume the worst case for your answer.

You play one card and one card only.  You don't put any other cards into play while resolving that one card.

What is the largest hand size you can guarantee while still having at least one action remaining?  What card did you play?

I can get to 10 cards.

I can get 17, even with the restriction that the other 4 cards in your hand are Coppers.

Previously, you have used Teacher to put the +1 buy token on Market Square and Baker to gain an arbitrarily large number of coin tokens.


You play one Market Square. Then you enter your buy phase, spend an arbitrarily large number of coin tokens, buy Stonemason, overpay for $5, gain 2 Cultists, buy Stonemason, overpay for $5, gain 2 Cultists, buy Doctor, overpay for an arbitrarily large number of dollars, trash all the cards in your deck. As a result, you have 17 cards in your hand.

What if you draw Cultist when you trashed Cultist? Control-able?

Previously, you have used Teacher to put the +1 buy token on Squire, and used Embargoes to put three embargo tokens on Cultist.
There must be at least 18 Curses left in the kingdom (3 or 4 player game).
Your hand contains a Squire and a Watchtower and some treasure.  Play Squire for +2 buys for a total of 4 buys.  Buy Stonemason, overpay for $5, gain 2 Cultists and 6 Curses.  Use Watchtower to topdeck the cards.  You should be able to manage the order Curse, Curse, Curse, Cultist, Curse, Curse, Curse, Cultist.  Repeat the same buy two more times and topdeck the cards in the same manner.  Buy a Doctor, overpay by $6.  Trash the Cultists, drawing all of the curses.  That gives 6*3+4 = 22.  It only requires $30 in treasures and tokens.

Oops, no action remaining.    :-(

84

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Property of this list - can you improve this ?

« on: April 21, 2015, 07:19:02 pm »

The Adventures expansion has allowed a new "least characters" solution with 43 characters.  The "least cards" solution is still unbeatable (till the next expansion at least).

plaza
expand
journeyman
quest
bank
witch
fugitive

85

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: October 31, 2014, 12:06:42 pm »

Normally, you gain two cards in your opening leaving you with a twelve card deck after two turns.
In a solo game, choose your kingdom and shuffle luck to obtain a sixteen card deck after two turns.

86

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: May 14, 2014, 08:28:43 pm »

Okay another one I thought of, with a simple puzzle.

All cards are in the supply. Pick 5 cards out of them and put them in your hand (nothing else is in your deck). Now end the game with a three (or more)-pile.

I have an alternate ending that is more complicated.  I'll put that in another post.

King's Court, King's Court, Bridge, Ironworks, Ironworks.
Play KC-KC-Bridge-IR.  Gain Nobles, Nobles, KC.  (the Nobles come into your hand).
Final KC is the other IR.  Gain KC, IR, IR.
Play Nobles for +3 cards and then the other Nobles for +3 cards.
Hand is now KC, KC, IR, IR.
Play KC-KC-IR-IR gaining Nobles, Nobles, KC, KC, IR, IR.
Final KC is Nobles.  Draw all gained cards.
Hand is now KC, KC, IR, IR, Nobles.
Play KC-KC-IR-IR-Nobles, gaining KC, KC, Embargo, Bridge, Squire, and draw them into your hand.
Finally play KC-KC-Embargo-Bridge-Squire.
Embargo Duchys.  When playing Squire, always select +2 buys.
You now enter the buy phase with cards costing 6 less (Duchys are free) and 13 buys.
Buy eight Duchys, taking eight Duchesses and also emptying the Curse pile.
Then buy the last two Duchesses.  3-pile on Duchy, Duchess, and Curse.

87

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: May 14, 2014, 08:13:24 pm »

Okay another one I thought of, with a simple puzzle.

All cards are in the supply. Pick 5 cards out of them and put them in your hand (nothing else is in your deck). Now end the game with a three (or more)-pile.

King's Court, King's Court, Bridge, Ironworks, Smithy

I tweaked Heron's solution for one that's twice as fast and gives some VP.

King's Court, King's Court, Bridge, Ironworks, Ironworks

That leaves eight King's Courts, eight Ironworks, and eight Nobles in the kingdom.  That will be the 3-pile cards.

The KC-KC-Bridge-IR-IR combo allows you to gain 6 cards.  The first two are Nobles.  When gained, they go to your discard pile and then the on-gain action draws them into your hand.  The next four are KC, KC, IR, IR.  Play the two Nobles to draw the other four cards and repeat.

I have an alternate ending that is more complicated.  I'll put that in another post.

88

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Property of this list - can you improve this ?

« on: March 04, 2014, 04:50:42 pm »

I've updated my program with Grujah's 240 card list and the solutions can not be bettered.
There were two more 44 character solutions though.  One of them included both Province and Gold.
That sure made for a fun programming exercise.

89

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Property of this list - can you improve this ?

« on: March 04, 2014, 04:19:29 pm »

Great lists Grujah !!

90

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Property of this list - can you improve this ?

« on: March 04, 2014, 04:14:54 pm »

Knights and Ruins add a lot.  Then there's some additional ones not in the supply, like Madman and Mercenary.

I just realized that I was counting alternate victory cards and treasure, but not the base set.
So let's revise the total.

Base = 25 action + 3 victory + 3 treasure + curse = 32
Intrigue = 25
Seaside = 26
Alchemy = 12 + potion = 13
Prosperity = 25 + colony + platinum = 27
Cornucopia = 13 + 5 prizes = 18
Hinterlands = 26
Dark Ages = 34 + 10 knights + 5 ruins + 3 shelters + spoils + madman + mercenary = 55
Guilds = 13
Promos = 5

Total = 240

91

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Property of this list - can you improve this ?

« on: March 04, 2014, 03:55:11 pm »

This is a correction to my last post.  My last post was counting duplicate character's in a card's name.
I thought those numbers were large.  Which brings me to a question.  Is there a plaintext list of Dominion card names somewhere?
I cobbled my list of 232 uniquely named cards from my Dominion .NET custom image directory.

(Table below updated again with the 240 card list)

a: 150
b: 35
c: 60
d: 69
e: 159
f: 21
g: 56
h: 57
i: 99
j: 5
k: 19
l: 82
m: 73
n: 99
o: 104
p: 44
q: 4
r: 149
s: 101
t: 109
u: 61
v: 36
w: 19
x: 3
y: 34
z: 2

92

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Property of this list - can you improve this ?

« on: March 04, 2014, 02:45:49 pm »

Yes, I wrote a program.

Here's some interesting stats that fall out as a byproduct.
The number of dominion cards that contain a given letter.

a: 197
b: 38
c: 63
d: 70
e: 203
f: 22
g: 65
h: 62
i: 118
j: 5
k: 22
l: 101
m: 76
n: 122
o: 135
p: 44
q: 4
r: 194
s: 125
t: 127
u: 62
v: 36
w: 21
x: 3
y: 32
z: 2


See corrections in next post.

93

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Property of this list - can you improve this ?

« on: March 04, 2014, 02:25:31 pm »

D'oh sorry.
Attributed a solution to Kirian, but it was ChocophileBenj.
Good job ChocophileBenj !!
and sorry for my mistake.

94

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Property of this list - can you improve this ?

« on: March 04, 2014, 02:18:02 pm »

An interesting puzzle indeed.
Kirian, I count your solution as 46 (15+8+5+6+6+6).
A five card solution is not possible.
Kirian has the minimum six card solution.
All I can add is an eight cards solution using the minimum number of characters, 44.
Plaza
Taxman
Quarry
Jester
Witch
Forge
Bank
and either Advisor or Develop

95

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why trashing attacks reveal two cards?

« on: January 17, 2014, 07:02:18 pm »

You should also consider the defense cards.  Secret Chamber is a decent defense against Noble Brigand and Thief as long as they reveal only two cards.  Not so good against attacks revealing three cards.  There should be some balance.  I suppose Secret Chamber could also be changed to shuffle the top three.

96

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What would a leveled-up City cost?

« on: November 18, 2013, 11:00:53 pm »

Yes, there were some problems with my earlier post.

As Florrat points out, the methodology is multiple linear regression (not nonlinear).
Worse, as eHalcyon points out, I screwed up the evaluation of the City levels after calculating my coefficients.
The coefficients are correct.  The values for the City levels should be:

City 1   5   3.15
City 2   ?   5.27
City 3   ?   8.02

Now for some rebuttal.

Florrat states:

> Second, you're assuming that cost is a second degree polynomial of the basic attributes (coin,card,buy,action). Why do > you assume the card cost depends in a quadratic fashion of these attributes? That really does not make sense. As
> scott_pilgrim already pointed out: this gives terrible results when extrapolating (which is exactly what you do when you
> assign cost to leveled up cities). By the way, you're forgetting the mixed terms (like x*coin*action), but let's put that
> aside. I think you would get reasonable results when doing exactly this linearly (and even then things are strange: adding
> +1 action to a terminal is worth so much more than adding +1 action to a nonterminal).

A Gold is worth 50% more than a Silver, yet costs twice as much, because it is worth more than 50% of a Silver.
As the attribute values go up, the worth goes up more than linearly.  That's why I add the quadratic terms.
The mixed terms are an interesting idea.  I may try those.

> But the biggest problem is the following. You're trying to fit 13 datapoints using 9 parameters? If you only add 4 more
> parameters, then you can fit all the data exactly! In other words, you're using WAY too many parameters for a WAY too
> small data-set. According to this calculator, you need >100 data points to determine 9 parameters well, and at the very
> least ~50 to get even near something which is statistical significant. So it's not surprising at all that your costs for the
> 13 cards you give are reasonably well given by choosing 9 parameters. I'm surprised that some of the costs are even so
> much off, when you can let your parameters almost determine the actual costs.

The more data points the better!  The method uses a best fit methodology.  That's the whole point.
A formula that exactly matches the cost is meaningless.
A Copper is worth more than nothing which is what it costs.
Some kingdom cards are slightly more expensive than their exact worth and some are a bargain.
This method will comparatively weigh the actual worth.
I've been criticized for including Grand Market, but check out the predicted worth (6.85).
That implies that it really is worth more than 6 coins.

97

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What would a leveled-up City cost?

« on: November 18, 2013, 08:47:17 pm »

What would a leveled-up City cost?

We can get a fairly good indication using multiple non-linear regression.
This technique looks at the attributes and costs of other Dominion cards and develops a formula for their worth.
I won't go into a lot of detail on the technique since it's rather involved and you can read about it online.
Let cards = extra cards drawn by playing a card.
Let actions = actions gained by playing a card.
Let buys = plus buys gained by playing a card.
Let coins = treasure gained by playing a card.
The formula I modeled is cost = a * cards + b * actions + c * coins + d * buys + e * cards^2 + f * actions^2 + g * coins^2 +

h * buys^2 + i, where the coefficients a, b, c, d, e, f, h, and i are determined by least-squared error fit of the input data

against known card costs.
The difficult part is determining the base set of cards to generate the model.
We can only use "plain vanilla" cards that only grant +cards, +actions, +buys, or +coins and do not have any other side

effects that would skew the cost.
I used Smithy, Festival, Worker's Village, Bazaar, Village, Laboratory, Market, and Woodcutter.
I also included Grand Market, ignoring the cost restriction against copper.
And to better guage the worth of +coins, I added the treasure cards Copper, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
To put these cards on an equal footing with the action cards, I had to indicate that they gave plus one action.
That seemed reasonable since they do not use up an action to play them.
Crunching the numbers then yielded the above formula:

cost = 3.69 * cards + 0.88 * actions + 2.04 * coins + 0 * buys - 0.52 * cards^2 + 0.076 * actions^2 + 0.0074 * coins^2 + 0.7

* buys^2 -2.08

Here's the kingdom cards with their actual costs and modeled costs.

Copper            0  0.92
Silver            3  2.98
Gold              6  5.06
Platinum          9  9.25
Smithy            4  4.28
Festival          5  4.79
Worker's Village  4  3.85
Bazaar            5  5.20
Village           3  3.15
Laboratory        5  4.16
Market            5  4.79
Woodcutter        3  2.72
Grand Market      6  6.85

As you can see, the predicated worth is close to the actual costs.
Using the formula on the three levels of the City card yield:

City 1            5  3.37
City 2            ?  7.06
City 3            ?  9.09

So the analysis would suggest that prices of 7 coins and 9 coins are appropriate.

98

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Combos that seem good but dont work out. (Nombos)

« on: June 06, 2013, 09:52:43 pm »

One of my biggest blunders was in a kingdom with Band of Misfits, Farming Village, and Bridge.  I realized that by just buying Band of Misfits, I could play them from my hand as Farming Villages or Bridges as necessary to play as many Bridges as possible.  It worked great and it allowed me to load up on almost the entire stack of Band of Misfits.  But then I made the mistake of playing five Misfits as Bridges and the remaining Misfits in my hand were useless, since that reduced the cost of Band of Misfits to zero and there are no cards costing less that the Misfits could be.  D'oh.
It was still a powerful deck and I did manage the win, though.