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Messages - Epoch

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26
A potentially interestingly degenerate situation in Dominion could be a scenario where:

Player A has a mathematical lock on winning the game, if he doesn't take any Curses, but could lose if he takes any Curses.  That is, he has slightly more than 0.5 of the VP in the game, and the VP in the game are fixed, no tokens or whatever.

Player B has an utterly reliable ability to Torture Player A into a non-hand each turn (KC/KC/Scheme/Scheme/Torturer, for example), and in general a strong deck with lots of buying power, but no non-Torturer way to get player A to take a Curse.

Presumably the "correct" behavior for the players is:

Player A refuses to take any Curses and so loses his hand each turn.
Player B refuses to end the game because to do so is to lose.

So they just sit there in stasis, with player A having trivial no-action turns and Player B just repeating his Torturer play.  Until either they agree that the game is a tie or one person gets fed up and concedes.

Obviously, unlikely enough that it'll probably never happen in real play, but it could.

27
The worst-case scenario when facing Village/Torturer is that you throw away hand after hand and your deck entirely stalls because you're too reluctant to take Curses.  It is admittedly difficult to win if you're gaining multiple curses per turn, but it is impossible to win if you basically stop taking turns.

28
There are two basically distinct situations that Torturer might be played in:

1.  You know that no more Torturers will be played against you this round (ie, your opponent has only one Torturer, or they're out of Actions after playing this Torturer (or other, rarer circumstances).

In this case, you almost always choose to discard.  Unless, you know, whatever.  You have a Trader or Watchtower, or you'll be able to end the game and win (even with the Curse) if you don't discard.  Fairly straightforward.

2.  You think that there is a possibility of more Torturers this round.

You are much more likely to want to take the Curse in this case.

Now, first, some comments:

If your opponent has activated a Village/Torturer deck, and thus you can expect to be Tortured multiply every round for the foreseeable future, in many cases, that's gg, and it doesn't much matter how you play it.  You should probably just concede unless you're playing multiplayer or you have a clear understanding of how you can come back into this game.

But if you do think that you still have a shot at winning, and you're being Tortured one of potentially several times this turn, some things to think about:

a.  Is discarding painless?

That is, do you have two green or otherwise valueless cards in your hand (conflicting terminals, whatever)?  Do you have a copper whose buying power you don't plan to use?  If so, discard.  Hey, your opponent might not Torture you again, and if they do, you can take the Curse then.

b.  Is the hand totally worthless anyway?

Is this going to be a "buy a Silver you don't need" hand?  If so, you might just go ahead and discard into it, knowing that you're going to discard the hand into nothing and that's fine.

c.  Are you super-Curse-adverse?

Does your deck really clog quickly with Curses and you have no way to get rid of them?

d.  If not, probably take the Curse.

It's better to have a couple of Curses in your deck than lose tempo, and you need to keep tempo if you're going to have any chance to regain the upper hand against an activated Village/Torturer deck.

29
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Mining Village
« on: February 16, 2012, 07:41:58 pm »
Yeah, think of MV as two different cards:

The first card is a Village that will also help you buy more stuff on your last 1-2 turns.

The second card is Feast, but not guaranteed to get $5, but possibly $6+.

Buy one or the other, and use it appropriately.

30
Help! / Re: What's the right way to play Fool's Gold on a Colony set?
« on: January 12, 2012, 11:24:41 am »
The frustrating thing about using a Mint buy to get rid of all your treasure is then the Mint is such a dead card.

Mint is certainly not a dead card after you get rid of all your treasure, especially in a game with Inn/Rabble.  Look, you want Platinum in this game.

31
Dominion General Discussion / Re: (New?) Turn 3 Province!
« on: January 11, 2012, 06:15:25 pm »
The exact same sequence replacing Envoy with Coppersmith would also work.

And wouldn't rely so much on collaborative play from one's opponent.  (While buying a Noble Brigand turn 1 is arguably dumb, it's not as clearly playing-to-lose as is making your opponent discard an Estate from 4x Copper, 1x Estate off an Envoy draw).

32
Game Reports / Re: Learning Curve - Game analysis desperately required
« on: January 11, 2012, 05:59:28 pm »
Well.  That's, um, quite the attack-heavy game.

You a little, and your opponent especially, probably over-bought terminal actions.  Noble Brigand is broadly considered not a great card.  Saboteur is broadly considered a really bad card (I would add: unless you can chain a bunch of them together on the same turn).  Given your opponent's reliance on attack cards, and Saboteurs, I think replacing some of your Trade Routes and Noble Brigands with Horse Traders would have been a decent way to go.  Horse Traders is also somewhat helpful in terms of dealing with the junk that Mountebanks give you, since you can discard it for +money, +buy.

In terms of trash-for-benefit, I like Apprentice a lot more than Trade Route.  I'm not sure you want trash-for-benefit at all, though, in face of an opponent with lots of Noble Brigands and Saboteurs.

You don't need to buy something every turn.  If your choice is nothing versus a bad $3 or $4 terminal, you can go with nothing.  (Ordinarily, you'd go for Silver, but possibly not a ton of that in this Colony game).

33
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Is TMap dominant with perfect shuffling?
« on: January 11, 2012, 02:09:11 pm »
Thought experiment: suppose you could cheat and be able to shuffle any way you like.  Is Treasure Map the dominant strategy?

Can you only cheat to put Treasure Maps wherever you like, or is it all cards?

If it's all cards, then I think it'd be moderately difficult to beat "I will arrange to have at least $4 in both turns 3 and 4 and buy TMs and activate them on turn 5."  You don't even waste your opening buys!

34
Help! / Re: What's the right way to play Fool's Gold on a Colony set?
« on: January 11, 2012, 11:59:27 am »
I note that you split the FG's 6/4 in your favor, not 5/5.  (You end with 5 FGs -- that's because you trashed one).

I like using a Mint to clear out your Coppers in this game.

35
Dominion Isotropic / Re: Discuss: etiquette for leaving games early
« on: January 10, 2012, 05:59:17 pm »
I have every right to belch at the table, go through a door without holding it open for my wife, or refuse to say please and thank you. The fact that I have the right to do it does not prevent it from being discourteous. Nor is it rude of my mother/spouse/stranger to have expected me to act with consideration for their feelings.

Parsing this a bit finely, you have the legal right to do these things, but perhaps not "every right."  You don't really have "every right" to be discourteous.

Note the important fact that one is expected to have different standards of respect for the feelings of your mother or spouse versus a stranger.  Perhaps to the extent that, if you're trying to understand the hows and wherefors of courtesy, that it does not do much good to lump both under the label "courtesy."

I would bet most conversations would go like this:
A: "mind if I resign?"
B: "no problem"
A: "good win"
B: "thanks for the game"

Or maybe this:

A: "mind if I resign?"
B: "is it okay if I take one more turn?"
A: "sure" or "I'd rather be done"

No matter what B says at this point, I think A can resign courteously.

Was that so hard?

While it is true that there are polite questions which one asks purely as a formality and does not expect the interlocuter to honestly reply ("How are you?" being the most obvious one), these are rather fraught aspects of courteous language, and I don't think it does much good to propagate them.  I'd prefer to leave the question of, "I think this game is over, but you've got an awesome engine going, would you like me to stay in it for your mega-turn?" to be an honest one, which my opponent understands to be one which does not limit their replies.  I would ask that question rarely, probably only in the case of a truly unique engine, certainly not for a routine KC-Bridge megaturn.

Particularly given the inherent friction of chat-based interaction, when asking the question and receiving the answer are a longer process than in face-to-face communication.

36
Dominion Isotropic / Re: Discuss: etiquette for leaving games early
« on: January 10, 2012, 05:04:23 pm »
I appreciate your thoughtful response, but I feel it is flawed for two reasons. First, your examples deal with bounds of privacy between strangers, whereas by entering into a game you accept some minimal set of mutual expectations. What those expectations are we are trying to decide, but it's nothing like my telling you your girlfriend is ugly.

While my salary level is a question of privacy, the attractiveness of my girlfriend is clearly not a private matter (I mean, she doesn't wear a veil), and neither is my eating meat.  They're just areas of my life that other people don't get to impinge upon without me inviting them to, and where there's no expectation for me to invite them to answer.  There are a LOT of such areas, those were just a couple of random examples.

The point is, the feelings of other people do not have primacy in terms of courtesy.

In terms of resigning, we're balancing two things:

1.  The feelings of the losing player who, apparently, does not want to wait for the game to play out.
2.  The feelings of the winning player who sometimes wants to see his engine play out.

The reason why #1 takes primacy in this circumstances are a few-fold:

The losing player is already dealing with the disappointment of losing, while the winning player is experiencing the satisfaction of having won.  Asking the player already more disappointed to deal with another minor irritant for the benefit of a player who is already winning seems ungracious at best.

The joy of seeing one's engine come together just seems like it has less value than the irritation of having to sit attentively and push the buttons for a game that is a foregone conclusion.

In general, the broad social rule is that players do not need to play games that they are not enjoying, unless there is a compelling reason why they should.  In the same way that it would not be polite for me to insist that my friends play Dominion with me even if they don't like it (just because I do like it), it is not polite to insist that someone else continue playing a game that they have lost just for your satisfaction.  The exceptions to this are when a player leaving the game has material consequences on the game, rather than just another player enjoying it.

I have admitted elsewhere that demanding the other player keep playing would itself be rude, but requesting that they wait briefly would probably not be in most circumstances. Regardless, you cannot unilaterally resign without regard for the expectations of your opponent and still be considered courteous.

Sure you can.  The expectations of that opponent are unreasonable.  There are plenty of things that my opponent might expect, but where I do not have any obligation to respect their expectations.  As someone's signature on this board notes, "Mountebanks are for jerks."  Some players really dislike cursing attacks.  Others may not appreciate my looking at a board with an interesting but slow engine, and opting instead to Doublejack the game into a quick, largely brainless finish.  Others may expect me to greet them with full sentences and come up with something original to say upon the finish of the game.

Those are all expectations that people have, and they relate to their feelings, but the truth is that courtesy deals with a small number of formal obligations.  "Being a super-great person" may involve a lot more consideration towards your opponent, but courtesy does not.

37
Dominion Isotropic / Re: Discuss: etiquette for leaving games early
« on: January 10, 2012, 03:54:28 pm »
Fine. But if you know that a non-trivial number of people feel differently, how can it possibly be courteous to resign without even finding out how your opponent feels? Courtesy is, after all, not about what you are allowed to do but how other people will feel about it.

My opponent doesn't get to impinge their opinion on whether I choose one of these two possibilities:

1.  Congratulate them on a game well-played and resign.
2.  Continue to play until the end of the game (unless I've mathematically lost)*, and, assuming I do lose, congratulate them on a game well-played.

To the extent that they do have a feeling about it, courtesy demands that they hide such a feeling from me.  To the extent that they do express such an opinion, they're being rude, and I feel entirely entitled to ignore their rude imposition.  I certainly don't want to solicit rudeness from them.

The notion that your opponent can demand that you spend the next five minutes playing out a game that is already over is madness, and is certainly not courteous on the part of your opponent.

This kind of reservation of areas that one is allowed to express an opinion on is a fundamental aspect of courtesy in tons of areas of life.  You also don't get to demand that I forgo eating meat at my house or in a non-vegetarian restaurant, even if you have a moral horror of eating meat.  You don't get to tell me my girlfriend is ugly, even if you honestly think she is.  You don't get to ask me what my salary is, even if you think that it would generally lead to a better world if people were open about their compensation levels.  Similarly, how and when I choose to acknowledge my losses in a game is my business, not yours, and it is irrelevant what your feelings are.  Courtesy, in those cases, are about prioritizing my feelings over yours.

* I'm conflicted about scenarios in which the game is mathematically over, but not technically finished (ie, games without vp chips or variable-point victory cards in which one player has accumulated a majority of all available vp in the game).  I think in my ideal world, isotropic would just end those games right there, but I'm not comfortable with asking people to resign in that circumstance when I'm the winning player.  If I'm the losing player, and I recognize the circumstance, I invariably resign.

38
Dominion Isotropic / Re: Discuss: etiquette for leaving games early
« on: January 10, 2012, 03:01:01 pm »
I think few players disagree with the minimal gesture of asking to resign.

I do!

There is no natural right to see your mega-turn play out or whatever else you're hoping for.  All your opponent owes you is the win and, you know, not wasting your time by letting the clock time out or anything.

(Also, separately, I think it's kind of strange to get super-invested in wanting to play turns in a game that's a foregone conclusion.  If I have a complaint about people's resigning behavior, it's that I wish they'd resign faster a lot of the time.  I don't particularly enjoy playing turns while an inevitable loss plays out in slow motion.)

39
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: My Fan Expansion
« on: January 10, 2012, 01:26:16 pm »
Yeah, I think that Alcove is probably "too strong" for a $2.  Of course, "too strong" for a $2 isn't necessarily THAT strong, but:

1.  It's a very good defense against cursing attacks, Ambassadors, Swindlers, or other cards that might give you cards of no value in your deck.

2.  It would synergize very well with Grand Market.

3.  Most importantly, it gets you an almost-completely-reliable $5 (only way it doesn't is if you have more than three "junk cards" worth less than a Copper in your hand -- and at that point, it's hard to complain that you're having a "bad" turn if you get a $3 or $4 buy out of it.

It probably shouldn't be a Cantrip.  +1 Card but not +1 Action?  Or you're forced to discard 3 cards even if you don't want to?  (But even in that case, it's only bad if you do not have 3 junk cards or Coppers in your hand).

40
Help! / Re: Fool's Gold/Remake or Remodel
« on: January 10, 2012, 12:29:19 pm »
Not sure whether Bridge or Remodel is more favourable here.

Well, Remodel has at least the possibility of an only-one-FG turn (Remodel, Copper (or FG), Estate x3), while Bridge is inevitably a two-FG turn.  But, on the other hand, Remodel offers the opportunity to slim down your deck to have more FG collisions.  But Bridge gives you the opportunity to use the overkill money that some FG hands may give you.

Remodel probably looks better if you're player 1, when even if you get a 1 FG turn you will probably still get 5 FGs (so, you buy your enabler and 1 FG during turns 1/2, as does your opponent, you buy two FGs during turns 3/4, your opponent buys 3, your turn 5 you probably buy 1, so does your opponent, your turn 6 there's one left in the supply so you can buy it).  Bridge might be better for player 2 with their inherent disadvantage.  Certainly, if I were player 2 and my opponent opened FG/Bridge, I'd want to get Bridge as well, to minimize the chances of a 6/4 split.

It's an interesting analysis since the opportunity for action is so restricted.  Though, could Nomad Camp be the game-breaker for a FG rush?  It offers a greater possibility of two plays before the FG pile is depleted.

41
Help! / Re: Fool's Gold/Remake or Remodel
« on: January 10, 2012, 12:17:49 pm »
So, it occurs to me that in a pure two-person FG rush, the FG pile runs out VERY quickly, right?  It's impossible to draw less than $2 if all you buy is FGs, so you can put a hard limit of turn 5 to finishing the FG pile if that's high enough priority -- each player could just buy FG every turn from turn 1 to turn 5, and that kills the pile.

Thus, if you're talking about something to "win the FG rush," you need to be talking about buying something that gets you two FGs before turn 5 (one to replace the lost FG buying opportunity where you bought your "enabling" card, and one more to actually get back up above parity).

I don't think that there exists a card in the game which, with one play, gets you two FGs.  So you need to be talking about a card that you play twice before turn 5.  Obviously, this needs to be bought on turn 1/2, then played once in turn 3/4, and then again on turn 5.

If you're the second player, this is hopeless -- there's only one FG in the pile come your turn 5.  Only the first player can hope to do this.  And he needs a substantial amount of luck.

Probably more realistically, you could hope to get a card that lets you retain 5 FG parity (particularly if you're player 1), and will be useful to you later in the game.  So, Workshop strikes me as a bad FG "enabler" -- you're unlikely to get more than 1 FG with it, and it probably won't be particularly useful in the late game.  Remodel, on the other hand, probably lets you retain parity and you can then turn FGs->Gold and Gold->Province, so that's cool.  Bridge or Salvager also seem promising.  Remake seems impossibly bad -- won't even let you retain parity.

All of this changes if your opponent is not monomanically focused on buying FGs.  So that implies that if you see your opponent open Remake or Workshop, you can punish him by buying FG every turn.

This is also a case where first person advantage is quite strong.

42
Game Reports / Re: Dear My Opponent: I am Sorry
« on: January 08, 2012, 02:02:08 pm »
I've used this thread semi-snarkily a few times, but this time is completely legit:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/08/game-20120108-105848-9ae24b01.html

Dear NDOG332,

I am completely sorry that the first four times you played a Young Witch, I had one of my two Pawns (bane cards) in hand, while you never had one of your numerous Pawns in hand any of the eight times I played Young Witch.  That is the sign of an unjust God if ever there was one.

Sincerely,
Epoch

43
Game Reports / Re: I'm proud of this one
« on: January 08, 2012, 10:29:20 am »
I think the core idea is good. I think your deck would be improved by picking up a Woodcutter fairly early - while some Mountebanking is good, the diminishing returns of future Mountebanks are such that the huge improvement in engine building Woodcutter offers at some point becomes more important. Turns where you can buy Conspirator/Pool, Conspirator/Conspirator, Province/Pool, Province/Conspirator, etc. are very useful.

Yeah, I thought hard about Woodcutter and never found the right place to put him in.  I think you're right that there's probably room for improvement there.

44
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Attack Idea
« on: January 06, 2012, 08:02:49 pm »
Problem is, it becomes worse than a dead card in a few situations... early in the game it will often help your opponent if you choose to play it.

Well...  sort of.  If you play it early and your opponent shows a hand of Coppers & Estates, you can always choose a Copper.  Sure, they get to trash it, but you've also Cutpursed them, lowering the value of a crucial early hand, and it's not like too many games are won and lost based on whether the opponent gets one free Copper trash.

It would obviously not be a "power attack," like Witch.  But it's got some really interesting interactions, especially on boards with cards that you want, but not in quantity.  Conflicting terminals, for example.

45
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Nice Interaction: Potion/Farmland
« on: January 06, 2012, 04:14:28 pm »
No, sure, I think that people basically agree.  If you've got Gold, Gold, Potion, and Farmland is on the board, and you've outgrown the use for your Potion, sure.  Farmland the Potion into a Gold.  It's a tiebreaker and it does give you one more chance for a Farmland -> Province.  Why not?  I mean, if you literally are sure you'll never spend the Potion again, it's a dead card.

But it doesn't increase your buying power, the tiebreaker is less than a Duchy's worth, and it's only one card more that could be Farmlanded into a Province.  It's probably worth doing, but it's not going to change the course of THAT many games.  It's usually a good idea, sure.  Worthwhile to point out.  We're just saying, don't oversell it.

46
Game Reports / Re: I'm proud of this one
« on: January 06, 2012, 04:04:51 pm »
Though as a Bane it was irrelevant, since I never bought Young Witch.

Yeah, my opponent wasn't terribly skilled.  He bought a ton of Mountebanks and Young Witches, and broadly didn't have a notable plan.  He may well have intended to buy Chapel with his opening and got Cellar by accident?  That's a mistake I've made.

On the other hand, I bought all 8 Provinces, four of them by turn 17 in a heavy cursing game.  I played Mountebank something like 7 times.  Given that the one thing that omgwhodat did as well as could be hoped was slow me down, I think it's fair to say I could've done pretty well in the face of a much more serious opponent.

47
Variants and Fan Cards / Attack Idea
« on: January 06, 2012, 01:16:57 pm »
This isn't a fully-fledged card, but an attack mechanic.  It's somewhat similar to Jester:

"Each opponent reveals his hand.  You choose a card from the revealed hands.  The opponent in question chooses whether to gain another copy of that card plus a Curse, or trash that card."

What do you think?  Interesting?

48
A VP card that depends on Treasures is probably a bad idea.  Big Money's attractiveness is a problem for Dominion, not something that needs encouragement.  (A VP card that depends on Coppers might be interesting, though).

You could have a VP card that depends on itself.  With, say, an "island" of bad costing:

Sample VP Card
$4 Victory
If you have 1 of these cards, it is worth 3 VP
If you have 2 of these cards, it is worth -1 VP
If you have 3 of these cards, it is worth 0 VP
If you have 4 of these cards, it is worth 2 VP
If you have 5 of these cards, it is worth 3 VP
If you have 6+ of these cards, it is worth 5 VP

Or whatever, to make it work.  Maybe put another card in the set that can force people to take them or trash them, and let people sit in the agony of analysis paralysis.

49
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Nice Interaction: Potion/Farmland
« on: January 06, 2012, 01:05:43 pm »
I think that is kinda the point of Farmland; you change a useless card, like say Estate, into a useful card, like say Caravan, adding one good card and replacing one crap card with another, but a crap card that can be backdoored into a late Province.  Really, you are spinning wheels most of the time, as that buy basically cost you a Gold that could have bought that last Province anyway.

I'm a little skeptical that Farmland is ever a great buy when used for trashing estates - you're paying 6 for a caravan and one victory point instead of 6 for a gold.

I think that Mean Mr. Mustard's real point -- which I missed on first read -- is the part I bolded above.  That a play of Farmland on, say, Estate->Caravan is more setting up the possibility of Farmlanding the Farmland into a Province anyway.

But, yeah, whenever you talk about Farmlanding something that costs less than $4, you always have to come back to, "But, I could've had a Gold."

50
Game Reports / I'm proud of this one
« on: January 06, 2012, 12:54:40 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201201/06/game-20120106-094852-c2c0184c.html

So the board is:
Black Market, Cellar, Chapel, Conspirator, Menagerie, Mountebank, Pearl Diver, Potion, Scrying Pool, Woodcutter, and Young Witch ( Warehouse♦ )

I look at this board, and say, in what I think was kind of a brave move, "I'm going to open Potion/Chapel."  My plan is, "trash down to a slim deck, go Scrying Pool at first, suck up his curses with the knowledge that my Scrying Pools sift my Curses and draw my Chapel, then once I get three or four Scrying Pools, I'll be able to go Scrying Pool/Conspirator and tack on a Mountebank to catch up on cursing, and I'll draw my Mountebank every round so it'll be okay."

And, yes, that's exactly what happened.  I think that's the first time that, outside of some very obvious big money games, I've just completely thought out the entire game in advance and had it go exactly to plan.

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