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Messages - Chris is me

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2301
Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you play double-Jack?
« on: August 22, 2015, 11:06:57 am »
I look for powerful Kingdom Treasures if Jack is on the board, namely Counterfeit, which fills in all the things Jack can't do very nicely. I haven't tried Jack/Treasure Trove yet, but that might be interesting.

The reason why Jack does so well with itself is that it's constantly adding Treasures to your deck, so a light engine really is not going to draw your deck. Look for ways to take advantage of Jack's "up to" style of drawing (like Fishing Village), or just resign yourself to hoping Jack doesn't collide with whatever else you throw in there.

Very, very few of them are any good outside of niche cases. Counterfeit is extremely good with just about any treasure gain, though I will grant that de-coppering the deck is bigger for Jack than most (as is the +buy).

Treasure trove looks to be fairly self-limiting. First it has the opportunity cost of it not being a duchy, this is pretty huge if you hit early $6 (common for Jack). Second,gaining the functional equivalent of two silvers isn't that wonderful, not only is the gold delayed a turn, but it comes with copper dilution.

You're really understating how good Treasure Trove is in BM decks. You can't say gaining the equivalent of two silvers a shuffle isn't that good, when the whole reason Jack-BM works is because.. it gains two silvers a shuffle. Plus a Gold and a Copper is more useful than two Silvers, really - you can potentially sift past Copper or sift into Gold using Jack, making it marginally better.

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Other cards like Venture or Royal Seal are not actively bad with Jack, but Venture has less green to sift (this hand) and Royal seal is less useful if the only things to top deck are treasures. Loan, flips fewer estates than normal, will quickly start discarding silvers, and of course will flip the odd Jack.

Loan is pretty decent as an opener with Jack. Don't really care what it flips honestly; people overstate how bad it is to have Loan flip something you wanted honestly, and it thins your deck of Copper which Jack can't do.

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Coin of the realm is worse with Jack as you lose the space efficiency, and have a flood of cards when you really want reliability or megaturns lining up.

What? Why would you want a megaturn with a Jack deck? A Coin of the Realm or two is just fine - you just reserve it and use it to resolve collision. It lets you run a few extra terminals. Nothing wrong with it.

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About the only ones I could see would be something like Hoard - you can afford sooner greening when you can Jack away estates; but I'm skeptical or Harem - very nice to have to play with when you have a 1 point differential (e.g. he kept an extra estate, I can buy the Harem, be up a point, and have better odds of hitting Duchy/Province next turn). Even these are pretty weak stuff.

You wouldn't Hoard Estates for Gold as often as you'd use it to keep your money density up as you buy Provinces and Duchies. Works pretty well. These aren't exactly game breaking combos but you're understating their value.

2302
Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release
« on: August 21, 2015, 07:56:53 am »
So it still uses 100% of your CPU?  :P That's the reason I'm not even bothering right now.

"Luckily", I have one of those Lenovo models that throttles your CPU hard when you're running off battery, so if I'm *not* plugged in then Dominion runs at a reasonable temperature. I was wondering why I never noticed!

2303
Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you play double-Jack?
« on: August 19, 2015, 01:14:56 pm »
Never trash the second jack. Don't always trash the estate (early on, of course, you should, but it's not that late when you don't). Probably you keep the card when it will get you to a new threshhold (gold, province). Generally skip estates, with the filter, but also keep track of your reshuffle.
Oh, and if it gets late enough and you haven't gotten the second jack, don't.

I'm confused.  How can you say never trash your second JOAT, and that if it gets too late and you don't have a 2nd JOAT don't get one?   This seems to conflict as to whether the 2nd one is helpful or harmful during the end game.  I often feel my hands get bogged down with double jack, but everyone seems to love it, and most of them are smarter than me...

There's a big difference between trashing a card you have and buying a card. Don't buy a second Jack late because then you can instead buy a Duchy / Silver / Estate; the opportunity cost of buying a Jack is not being able to buy other things. Opportunity cost of not trashing a Jack is very low.

2304
Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release
« on: August 18, 2015, 08:02:16 am »
I wanna play Adventures on line
I wanna play Adventures on line
I wanna play Adventures on line
x1000

Oh for the good old days when Goko would release an expansion the same week as the physical version came out  :P

That didn't happen with Dark Ages. We had to get that in pieces, and I remember the last piece took a long time to come out. Although, I can't remember how long. It's been four months now since Adventures. I would love to play it, but well, I think MF still has a ways to go.

We also have to be a bit patient; not only are they in the middle of writing a completely new client / server setup, but Adventures adds a host of new mechanics and interactions that are going to be quite complex in terms of simulator integration.

I still like the "Pre-order Adventures and you get to play it on Isotropic before it comes out for real" idea. :P

2305
Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release
« on: August 17, 2015, 07:57:10 pm »
You're literally complaining that they implemented possibly the most requested feature too soon. It's an absolutely essential feature for any kind of organized tournament play, or for people playing with their friends. I'm starting to be convinced that someone will find a way to complain about literally anything MF does at this point.

playing friends with the old version: Contact them some other way, meet in a room, play
playing friends in the new version: Contact them some other way, type their name in, play

It's just as good as the system before, and obviously it will get better as they implement friends lists etc.

2306
Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Slog
« on: August 17, 2015, 12:25:19 pm »
Even if the opponent is better, the inherent randomness of Dominion often makes the mirror the strategy with the best expected value. Deviating from the mirror requires a higher reward, even if there is a much higher risk, than the mirror can obtain for it to possibly be worth it.

Your turn by turn decisions won't be exactly the same, and the timing of particular gains or the priorities you choose can be crucial. This is where Dominion really gets interesting, not as much in "x decided engine and y decided big money let's see what's better" high level stuff.

2307
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Trade Route vs Forager
« on: August 17, 2015, 12:17:59 pm »
It's also worth keeping in mind that cost isn't directly related to power, but to how available the card should be to obtain. Trade Route at $2 or $3 at the beginning of the game isn't that important of a distinction in a lot of cases; it's usually "all your money this turn" anyway. Near the end of the game, when you may have excess Actions, excess Buys, and several tokens on the TR pile, it's probably for the best that you can't get four Trade Route with $8.

Forager is really good, and Trade Route really isn't. That's all there is to it, really. Sometimes Trade Route is still worth it, if you really need to trash, or there's alt VP, or you really need +Buy, but almost never is it better than Forager.

2308
Dominion Articles / Re: Rats!
« on: August 17, 2015, 12:12:45 pm »
I kind of like the article currently on the wiki a bit better than this, at least if I'm remembering it correctly. But both aren't really succinct and to the point enough. There's really just a few points that need to be made for people to get Rats:

- Playing Rats repeatedly will replace cards in your deck (junk) with Rats.
- Thus Rats is best used when a Rats in your deck is "better" than other junk.
- How can Rats be better than other junk?
-- Rats draw a card when trashed, minor benefit.
-- Rats are Actions - Scrying Pool won't choke on them, Library can skip them, Death Cart can score with them, Vineyard can be worth more with them.
-- Rats has a higher cost -> TfB cards prefer Rats to Copper / Estate (Salvager, Apprentice, Upgrade, etc)
- Don't always play Rats from your hand.

That's pretty much it, really.

A few specific points

Rat Infestation!
I would bet paper money that DX intended that Rats be used hand-in-hand with trash-for-benefitters. 

This is actually true, I believe he's said as much. He's called Rats his favorite card in Dominion as well.

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If there is any other major use of Rats, I'd like to hear about it.  Things like Upgrade, Salvager, etc. come to mind, as well some Dark Ages cards (but to a lesser extent) such as Death Cart and Graverobber.  Upgrading free Rats for $5 cards is fun, but the problem is, you have to buy and play the Rats in the first place.

I wouldn't say Graverobber or Death Cart benefit from Rats to a lesser extent at all. They are both potentially very happy with Rats. Graverobber can gain Gold, King's Court, whatever you want except Province for every Rats, for example. The problem you mention with Upgrade is not unique to Upgrade at all - it applies to literally every TfB card or literally any use of Rats.

If you're going to go into detail, Apprentice / Rats should probably have its own paragraph - it is extremely powerful in certain situations. Definitely deserves more attention than Black Market.

I wouldn't say at all that an engine is a hard requirement for playing Rats. Consider situations such as a slog when lots of Curses are around. You grab a few Salvager and Rats, you use Rats to trash Curses, Salvage Rats into Duchy or whatever. Rats / Remodel is another basic idea - load up on Rats and several Remodel, Remodel Rats into Gold and Gold into Province. Obviously not the greatest strategies on every board but there are several situations where rats works even if you.'re not trying to draw your whole deck every turn and play some payload.

2309
Dominion Articles / Combo: Artificer and Tactician
« on: August 10, 2015, 08:25:22 pm »
Maybe this is really obvious, or not a very compelling combo, or anything like that, but I think there's a really interesting synergy to be had here that's worth discussing. This also really isn't much of an article (yet; I can write one if this turns out to not be that stupid), but I only see Combo posts in this forum instead of the General forum so I put this here.

The basic idea is pretty simple: Get 2 Tactician and at least 1 (really, at least 2 to be safe) Artificer. Play a Tactician. With your 10 card hand, use Artificer, discard 8 cards, topdeck a Province, play your other Tactician, discard your remaining card, and repeat to gain a Province every turn. One Province a turn once you own 4 or more $5-cost cards doesn't sound that great, but it has a few things going for it, and the combo can be helped with a variety of supporting cards.

  • Artificer, in the absence of handsize reduction attacks, can always gain you a $5 cost card. So you only need to hit $5 once to pick up the first Artificer, then Artificer can grab the rest of the combo pieces for you, right to the top of your deck!
  • If after executing the combo, your last card in hand (other than Tacticican) is any other cantrip, you can draw the Province quick before you play your second Tactician.
  • The presence of Gear greatly enhances the combo as you can set a second Artificer aside to guarantee you'll hit the combo on your next turn. Haven would work but it reduces your handsize which means Tactician doesn't have a card to discard.
  • Card draw with multiple Artificers can really help this out as you can gain a Province + an Artificer to keep the combo going.

On the right board, it's not impossible to get this combo firing on Turn 8-10, giving you to Turn 12-14 to get 4 Provinces. Not the worst thing ever, and certainly an option on some boards. It's a bit easier than double Tactician in many cases (e.g. in the absence of a Village). Any thoughts?

2310
Dominion League / Re: Season 9 - Results
« on: August 09, 2015, 03:04:57 pm »
Six very close matches versus jerni to close out D3:

Jerni: 1
Chris is me: 2
Tie: 3 (!!!)

2311
Dominion League / Re: Season 9 - Announcing Livestreams
« on: August 09, 2015, 01:50:34 pm »
Why would you even watch a match other than the champion match? That's a good question. You probably shouldn't. But I still want Twitch to record my last league match, and I dunno, maybe you really hate watching good players play Dominion for some reason. So I'll be streaming my last match against jerni in ten minutes (2 PM EDT)

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2312
Dominion Articles / Re: Things that make Menagerie amazing
« on: August 05, 2015, 07:34:04 am »
Beyond long lists, I prefer short helpful rule of thumbs I can easily recall in-game, example given:

Avoiding multiples by discarding/trashing every other play turns menagerie into a lab in average.

That's only true if you don't get some benefit from discarding. Depending on your enabler card(s), you almost always do, so it's a bit better than just Laboratory on average. I know this is pedantic hair-splitting, but I think it's a big part of how Menagerie can be so good.

2313
Dominion League / Re: Season 9 - Results
« on: August 04, 2015, 07:24:38 pm »
D3:
Chris is me 5 - doesitgoboom 1

2314
Dominion League / Re: Season 9 - Announcing Livestreams
« on: August 04, 2015, 04:55:59 pm »
I'll be playing doesitgoboom tonight starting about 5:30 EDT (30 minutes from now).

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2315
Dominion Articles / Re: Crosspost: "Dominion Academy" on /r/Dominion
« on: August 04, 2015, 07:41:40 am »
https://www.reddit.com/r/dominion/comments/3e93o0/dominion_academy_episode_1/

This series just begun on the Dominion. The author posts the kingdom, and a series of questions to promote discussion. He ranks his discussion questions and hypotheticals ranked level 1, 2, or 3, with 1 having clear correct answers to help new players, and 3 where he admits his answer might be improved. I found it fun and stimulating.

The idea of "Dominion Academy" likely stems from this absolutely excellent article written by Stef back in the day: http://dominionstrategy.com/2013/01/14/stef-s-dominion-academy/

Thanks for the link!

2316
Dominion Articles / Re: Things that make Menagerie amazing
« on: August 04, 2015, 06:55:49 am »
Surprised at the lack of mention of Hamlet. It's super cheap, discards up to 2 redundant cards, gives you extra actions to play redundant terminals, and generally is awesome. Almost any discard-for-benefit works well with Menagerie, obviously. You talked about this a bit, but basically any Tunnel enabler is going to also be good for Menagerie - see Inn, Storeroom, Vault, even Secret Chamber in a pinch.

Disappearing Villages are nice too, generally moreso than other Villages since you don't always want the free draw. Fishing Village, Festival, the like. Similar to Library enablers. Outpost is very good here. Opponent's discard attacks aren't even attacks anymore. You basically can use Menagerie any time you have a Kingdom with a lot to do, and you have some way of dealing with the extras.

2317
Dominion General Discussion / Re: cantrips
« on: July 29, 2015, 05:44:04 pm »
1)when you are hit by a discard attack  you don't know should you discard your silver or cantrip or your cantrip or copper you don't know what your next card is to be able to make that decision

Yes, but you have more information than you might think. You should know what cards are left in your deck, the expected value of the next card, the marginal utility of the cantrip's other effects relative to the cost of not having a Copper, etc. I've found that rarely am I in a position where having a cantrip during a discard attack was a really big negative. You almost always buy cantrips for the *other* things the cards do "for free", so I'm rarely going to avoid cantrips in the presence of a discard attack. I guess I wouldn't pick up Pearl Diver on $2.

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2)this is pawn specific you can make the wrong choice 

Pawn is only a cantrip with one of the 6 possible choices - I don't think you can say "cantrips are bad because when you play a non-cantrip you might regret it"

"Cantrip" isn't short for "can't lose" or anything like that - it's derived from the use of the term in MTG, a card that replaces itself.

2318
Dominion League / Re: Season 9 - Announcing Livestreams
« on: July 28, 2015, 08:16:20 pm »
I'll be playing singletee tonight starting about now.

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2319
Dominion League / Re: Season 9 - Announcing Livestreams
« on: July 21, 2015, 08:08:16 pm »
At 8:15 I'll be playing a match against Jeb.

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2320
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cards you hate!
« on: July 20, 2015, 09:10:23 am »
I haven't won more than 1 game in a row in almost a month, and I'm losing tons of games in between. This was not the case until now. It can't be luck, but I can't find many reasons why I lost anymore. It feels like my improving has stopped now. It's to the point where I kind of want a tutor for like a week because I'm so on tilt it seems. Maybe when I stream today, someone can tell me what I'm doing?

Just thought I would add this - skill development isn't linear. It peaks and plateaus at times. It doesn't mean you'll never get better, but that you may be in one of those plateaus for awhile. Are you more tired or busy than normal? That can make it hard to improve. The more you play when well rested, thoughtful, and focused, the sooner you'll leave your plateau and begin improving again.

Watch some videos, experiment with strategies you might not otherwise do, fuck around a bit. Maybe some of the old patterns you fall into are holding you back.

2321
Goko Dominion Online / Re: v2.0.33
« on: July 14, 2015, 07:15:15 am »
I'd really love to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they're apparently not storing your deck status in an easily-countable array.  Add the password thing and the animations problems, and we're dealing with this guy:



The thing that gets me is that it's not even a matter of them needing to have made some "number of cards in deck" variable that they aren't updating or whatever. It's that for the game to work correctly, they need to keep track of the cards in your deck (duh), and the cards in your deck that haven't been drawn yet. That you can't get the count of cards from that is what's confusing to me.

I've heard the speculation that they are trying to keep track of deck card count client side so that the server doesn't need to send the size of the deck every turn. I'm sure there is some technical reason that they haven't abandoned this idea, but I don't think that's ever going to work perfectly. Even if they get it mostly right, there will be some edge cases that mess it up. And I don't understand why the number of cards remaining in your deck isn't considered essential enough to warrant sending data from the server to the client. but again, that's speculation.

I don't think Making Fun is a bunch of stupid people and that its fair to characterize them as idiots, but I do think the team isn't really aware of how important the size of the deck is to gameplay.

I haven't had time to play the beta with a pad and paper but I'll record deck counts through the game when I do.

2322
Goko Dominion Online / Re: v2.0.33
« on: July 12, 2015, 10:13:48 pm »
You think it's easy? You try coding. I can tell you that from the very little experience I have with coding on small scale, that one wrong word somewhere can screw up something somewhere else, and take forever to figure out where the problem is. Coding ain't easy, pal. The bigger the project, the harder it is to keep a lid on it.

Counting elements in an array isn't hard. I've written code before.

2323
Goko Dominion Online / Re: v2.0.33
« on: July 12, 2015, 10:07:55 pm »
Re: deck count issues, reproducing the issue has been a stumbling block. Why that's so, I can't say, especially as it's been reported quite a bit. I think the issue is probably responsible for cards not being drawn on plays like Market and the shuffling sound continuing when the deck is apparently empty. Credit to, I think, Jonah42 for connecting the dots about the card draw issue.

If you want to lend a hand, what would help the developers out are reports that included the end of game logs, any observations about when it happens (only in campaign, only vs AI, only vs human, all of the above), observations like what turn it might have started.

Feel free to post here, but using the contact support button in game sends an email to our CRM software that I can then forward to the developers and easily track replies with.

Sorry for the ongoing issue. I've let them know that it's one of the more vexing problems in regards to player sentiment.

The card deck count issue happens literally every game of Dominion that I play, before the end of the first shuffle it says I have 10 cards left in my deck when I have none, and then there's basically no correlation from then on between the state of my deck and the cards in the pile (i.e. it's not consistently X more cards than it should be). I'll get some game logs, and try and record the displayed deck count during every turn of a few CPU games, and get back to you guys.

Really, though, I don't see how this is a difficult issue to deal with - does the game not keep track of what cards are in the deck and what cards are not? Shouldn't that be able to tell you how many?

2324
Goko Dominion Online / Re: v2.0.33
« on: July 10, 2015, 10:21:13 pm »
I quite frankly don't understand why you guys consider fixing almost anything else a bigger priority than getting the number of cards in the deck right. Other than stability and security, I guess. It's just absurd that it's been months (if you count beta) and no progress has been made on this, which should be the easiest thing in the world to do?

2325
Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release
« on: June 30, 2015, 08:58:16 pm »
Level with me: what's the chance that the client will eventually run without making my computer's fans work overtime?

They say they fixed the memory leak. Only you can tell us if that's true.

They fixed the memory leak on the server side - no mention of anything on the client side.

Happy things are getting better, confused as to why it's taken three weeks to make the number of cards in your deck display the correct number... The beta is stable enough that I play it sometimes over the regular version, but it's still worse for now. Fix the deck card count and that will count for a lot.

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