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51

Dominion General Discussion / hermit/feodum

« on: February 23, 2014, 11:23:14 pm »

so, i just had this game where i tried a hermit/feodum strategy, and halfway through i realised that i had no idea how to play it correctly. i have found this thread: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=6225.msg165819#msg165819 but that's not really what I'm looking for... I neither think what the TE OP says is correct, nor does it answer all questions.

the obvious idea is that hermit can gain silvers, while also trash your estates, junk from attacks and your feodums for the silver gain. but there are several strategical questions like:

-> when do you gain hermit, when do you gain silver?
-> when and how to end the game?
-> do you get a madman if you don't get to $3 this turn? do you get one even if you don't?
-> how many feodums do you want to trash? you have pretty much total control about this, because you can trash from the discard pile.

my thoughts so far:
trashing: trashing one feodum gains you three silvers, which (ignoring their impact on money density, since you just need $3 per turn anyway) just means that all feodums have +1 VP, but you have one less feodum. so it's worth it if you have more feodums than each feodum is worth, because

n*n > (n+x)*(n-x) if x<n

in other words:

{{number of feodums}} > {{number of silvers}}/3

where both numbers are what you'll have in your deck at the end of the game, not what you have at the moment.

so, it's difficult to make general statements here, because it depends on lots of things. but it's easy to figure out: count silvers, count feodums, use formula. you can trash from your discard pile, so you can correct it pretty easily. not the hard part.


what to gain: so, the way i see it, you want to buy one $3/4 card every turn, and play one hermit every turn. both goals should be equally important, since both of you give you +1 card, but having $3 (and sometimes $4) should be a lot easier to accomplish, so you probably want to get lots of hermits, since you have a good chance to have 3$ even with 2 of them on your hand. so... maybe one hermit per 4 cards in your deck? or 1/3,5? not sure, are there any simulations for this?


madmen: my first thought was that, if you make a madman, you trade one/two (depending on whether you have $3 this turn) silvers (assuming hermit and silver are worth the same) for one madman, which means you need to buy something worth two/three silvers in your madman turn (assuming just one buy). but that's incorrect, because you can play 2 hermits in your madman turn. so, if we simplify with

card you want to gain = silver

then

... make madman (lose buy, lose hermit => lose 2 silvers)
... play madman (don't buy silver this turn => lose 1 silver, but play an additional hermit this turn => gain 1 silver)

this means the card you buy in your madman turn just needs to be worth >2 silvers. with 8 cards you need a money density of >=1 average to buy a province. that doesn't seem hard, in a deck full of silvers.

even if you have 8 feodums:
2 silvers = 2/3*8VP = 16/3VP = 5+1/3VP < 6 VP = one province

this is surprising, because it suggests that you should go for madmen all the time. if you make a madman, you don't buy a feodum. if you use a madman, you don't buy a feodum. wasn't this a feodum strategy? I'm confused. It raises the question whether you should go for feodums at all, or just buy two, trash them, and then go for provinces with madmen, and only buy feodum if it's either so late in the game that another madman wouldn't do anything, or if you don't have a hermit on your hand. is it even superior to big money then? Is hermit/feodum just bad if it's worse than madmen/province?

overall, this isn't satisfying, i still wouldn't know exactly how to play. so, does anyone know more about this combination?

52

Puzzles and Challenges / LOTS of cards

« on: February 15, 2014, 12:01:40 am »

In a 3-Player game, how is it possible to have exactly 25 cards in your deck at the beginning of your third turn? Kingdom, order of Players and shuffles as you choose.

If you find ways to have even more, that's fine too, but I think more than 25 is not possible.

edit: because i failed with my solution, I'll make a side-challenge with "end of turn 2" instead of "beginning of turn 3". Then I might have found the maximum after all. Might. Maybe. Or not.

53

Goko Dominion Online / An attempt to determine what kind of behavior is badmanner and what isn't

« on: January 17, 2014, 11:48:28 am »

Concerning several things that happened to me in online dominion, aswell as some things that I've read in various other threads, I have become curious as to what kind of behavior is considered to be bad manner and what isn't. Since I don't see much use to discuss this in a vaccuum, I will list every case to address it individually, and write what I personally think about each point. This is of course just my opinion not a universal truth; the goal here is to start a discussion.

I have not found a thread similar to this one, only some threads discussing single points, though I don't think a little bit of repetition will hurt anyone.

1. Resigning the game early
I have had long discussions about this topic in other forums about other games in the past. I still think that having a problem with early-resigning can only be the result of a lack of thought and/or consideration. You don't sign in a contract when joining or creating a game, therefore you can't be forced to stay in it any longer then you want. Even from the point of maximizing efficiency it doesn't make sense, since you wont learn as much from a game which is already decided than from a new one. If you lost due to misplay of any kind, you can already take home your lesson at that point, and if it was just bad drawing, there is unlikely to be anything useful you can take home from playing the game to its end.

Obviously, all of this only applies for 2-Player games.

2. Playing engines that take super-long/ending the game quickly by 3-piling.
I've combined these two into one, because my thoughts on both are almost identical: if you hesitate from doing either of those because you consider it bad manner, you are degrading your own game, because you are deliberately ignoring options that the game offers. Both complicated engines and 3piling are simply the right way to play in certain situations. On a personal level, I also can't understand how someone could ever get the idea that 3piling is bm, because it's one of the least luck dependent and therefore most elegant ways to play. Nevertheless, I have heard people complaining about both in the past.

3. Playing extremely slow for no game-specific reason
This is probably the least controversial point on the list. If you drag out the game on purpose just to frustrate your opponent and force him into resigning, you are deliberately stealing time, and that is as bm as it gets. There's not really much more to say about this.

3.5 Semi-Intentionally dragging out the game due to lags
What I mean by this is, if the game freezes every few seconds, but it only happens during your turns. This might be an entierly differnet story for some people, hence the new point, but I think the answer is the same. It doesn't even matter if the lags are your fault are a result of goko failing, the only mannered thing to do in such a situation has to be resigning.

4. Ignoring the chat
By this I mostly mean people who just ignore you when you ask them a simple thing. I used to get really annoyed by this, since I'm not especially talkative or sth, and it's not hard to write a short answer to a simple question. Still though, for all I know the other player might not understand English or have a broken keyboard, so it's really far fetched to assume any sort of bad manner, just because your opponent is not doing something. So while it can be annoying, I don't think it's bm.

balls. you can't chat from ipods, so it can't be bm.

5. Quitting the game without writing gg
This point has a lot of history, depending which background one is coming from. I come from playing a lot of SC2, where it is widely considered to be bm, yet at the same time over half of all games end without anyone writing gg. I've also talked to people who don't understand the possible reasons for "ragequitting", thus considering it to be a liberate display of bad manner every time. This is so because it highly depends how emotional/invested you are about/in the game, be it sc2, chess or dominion. I am very invested, and having been on the receiving end countless times, I can fully understand not being in the mood to congratulate your opponent for winning every time, so I don't have any problem with people who just leave. I also don't always gg myself, it very much depends on which mood I'm in. Either way, I think it's wrong to expect your opponent to be okay with you winning, irrespective of how you played, since you can't know how hard he takes the loss. If you really need it, you can silently think gg to yourself.

6. Writing an "offensive" gg after winning the game
Ok, so, I put this last because it's the point where I'm most likely going to be swimming against the stream, because I absolutely hate it. There is nothing worse than writing gg first after you won a game, I hate it so much that I have to stop myself from writing something rude every time. Why? Because you are congratulating yourself for winning, and even more, you are asking your opponent to agree with you, by writing gg himself. The main problem here is that, other than in RTS, a lot of players aren't even aware that someone might have a problem with it, and might just think it shows good manner either way. It's also hard to claim that they are wrong, because there are no objectively valid arguments, and no-one can be forced to respect what is a kind of weird online consensus. Because of this, I can't claim it's bm, no matter how much I dislike it. What I mostly do is avoid this situation by leaving early (I tend to resign games >90% when I'm losing), or politely ask my opponent not to do it in the future. Also, sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who has a problem with this...

7: Complaining about luck (proposal)
Yea, there's that too. People actually do this very frequently. I could take it more seriously if Dominion weren't a game in which you lose at least 30% of your games because of luck. If someone does complain about it, I usually agree with him (If I feel that it was indeed luck), but also tell him that there's no point complaining, because, well, you're playing Dominion. I definitely don't consider it bad manner, and while I for once can't directly relate here, it would still be wrong to make fun of someone in that situation, as it's wrong to rub your win into someone's face.

8: Not having "#vpoff" in the title of your game, but disallowing the vp counter anyway (proposal)
Well, I'm biased here, because I think vp counters are really dumb, but trying to objective, I must admit that you really should put it in the title, mostly because there really isn't any reason not to. Even if just a few people have a problem with it, since you can avoid it so easily, there's no reason to cause a disadvantage for said people. I haven't really thought this through previously, but from now on I'll make sure to put "#vpoff" in the title whenever I host a game.

Oh, and unless you know him, you obv. can't assume bm whenever someone else doesn't do it, because he might simply not know about the extension.

So, that's my thoughts. Whad'd you think? Even a simple bm yes/no statement for every point would be interesting. I can also add some points to the list if I missed something worth talking about.