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926

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?

« on: June 20, 2011, 03:32:51 pm »

Never ever tell your opponent to resign. I play a good amount of chess, a game where resignation is expected and considered polite, and it's a huge no-no there to try to get your opponent to resign with anything other than your moves. Here it's much less a normal part of the game, and so you certainly shouldn't. On the other hand, if your opponent is complaining about how they can't resign or how the game is taking forever, please just end it, then you can point it out. But without this, no.

In chess, resigning is a lot more common place.  Further, i's different to tell your opponent to resign than it is to tell them that you are okay with them to resigning.  The first might be, "hey, you've lost noob!", and the second is more like, "hey, you've almost certainly lost and  I don't think this is fun for you anymore, you should feel free to go and do something more fun."

927

Council Room Feedback / Re: New Method to Rate Cards?

« on: June 20, 2011, 03:29:31 pm »

I think you're underestimating the complexity of Dominion.

Fine, fine.  It doesn't have to solve dominion in the "is this provably the optimal play" sense, it just has to play as well as theory, and actually play in games with Alchemy or King's Court .

928

Feedback / Re: The Bible of Donald X.

« on: June 20, 2011, 03:16:17 pm »

IMO, at least if they are all BGG links, I think he can further comment on BGG. 

929

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?

« on: June 20, 2011, 10:49:07 am »

I do that too, so I understand.  I'm just thinking about the games where someone is playing 4 goons, a bunch of wharves, worker's village, etc. in a hand with 1 province left that you just can't seem to get enough coin to buy & end the miserable game, and he's sitting there just netting who knows how many points each turn instead of grabbing it himself.  There's no question that you're going to lose, and he's just trying to rub it in.

I am with guided on this one.  Where is the border?  If I am set up for a long game (I have more goons, a better infrastructure, etc), and you aren't (maybe you bought coppers too early, and now you can only play one goons per turn and average $6/turn), it's your burden to end the game.  I am just going to keep getting bigger until you push the game close to end, and then I am going to unleash the 3 goons/5 buys turns that ends it.  I am happy for you to resign if see the writing on the wall and I'll even tell you that when I think it's clear that the game is basically hopeless for you, but don't get pissed at me for making the game go long, it's where I have the highest chance of winning.  Even if it's the difference between a 100% chance of winning (long) and a 98% chance of winning (short), I'll go long.

930

Rules Questions / Re: Who goes first?

« on: June 19, 2011, 09:22:39 pm »

Of course, the rating system can just start taking into account player order when giving skill updates, and if it does a good job, you can't get a ratings bump by strategic management of turn order.

931

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: University/City

« on: June 19, 2011, 07:25:02 pm »

Despite the lack of commentary, I think this is solid.  The combo is decent, and there is interesting, possibly non-obvious tactical advice (use university on your turn to empty the pile so you get the first big city turn).

On the other hand, the tactical advice is basically already in the City article.

Likewise, if you’re in a City race with your opponent, and the Cities are split somewhat evenly, it is absolutely critical not to be the one to empty the first pile (unless it is the City pile itself), as it gives your opponent first crack at a mega-turn.  The difference between drawing 1 and 2 cards is huge. Ideally, you’d like to use Ironworks, Remodel, or Upgrade to empty a pile during your turn so you can be the first to make use of the UCS.

Unfortunately, theory has his characteristic Alchemy blindness, and doesn't mention University in that whole article.

I guess this might be a bit short even for a combo article.

My advice:

Maybe add a paragraph, then we accept it as a top level combo article, or at very least, we update the City article to include mention of University.

932

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Do you have non-competitive friends?

« on: June 18, 2011, 04:33:49 pm »

I'd rather just have a beer and chat rather than play a game against weak players who aren't really into the game.

And beer kind of sucks ;P.

933

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?

« on: June 18, 2011, 04:32:39 pm »

This.

I dislike players taking too long to end an obviously-won game. Losing stinks, especially if you've had bad luck in a game, so I can understand some soreness from losers. But if you've already won, just end the game. If you only need to ironworks a $2 card to get a third pile, don't keep running your engine and buying VP. I can understand being worried that your thin deck is about to stall out, so you need to get enough points to prevent a comeback.  There's no points for margin of victory.  RUTSing is truly lame.


Just had a colony game where other player is up by 30+.  "You've got this one," I say, pop the score from the point counter. I try to be subtle: I buy three estates, so there's only two left. He buys a colony <i>and a silver</i>.  I buy another estate - and point out that he could've ended the game and won.  He buys a Province <i>and a duchy</i>.

I'll walk from that kind of game.  Just leave the window open and make him wait for the time-out.

That is assholery IMO.  If you've lost, just leave.  Don't take 5 minutes from this guys life.  The winner can't leave and get his win, but you can leave and get your loss.

934

Council Room Feedback / Re: Bugs

« on: June 18, 2011, 02:12:18 pm »

Outpost bug dead, I think.  The bug was probably gone when I said it was, just that it required a lot of work to purge the old data from the database.


http://councilroom.com/search_result?p1_name=theory&p2_name=painted_cow&kingdom=laboratory%2Cgrand+market

935

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion

« on: June 18, 2011, 01:52:46 pm »

You go amb/YW.  I'll go amb/amb.  My deck is going to shrink faster than yours.

936

Dominion Articles / Re: Combo: Native Village & Bridge

« on: June 18, 2011, 01:06:00 pm »

In general scouts are terrible, but if you strategically re-ordered your deck, you could suck the coppers out and keep the NV/bridges in, letting you use the NV early as a kind of targeted trasher.  Did you program in useful deck re-ordering with the scout?

937

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion

« on: June 18, 2011, 12:35:07 pm »

Ambassador cancels/reflects cursing attacks.  I get my deck small.  You give me a curse.  You know where that cuse is going to end up?  In your deck.

938

Council Room Feedback / Re: Bugs

« on: June 18, 2011, 12:03:37 am »

http://councilroom.com/search_result?p1_name=rrenaud&p2_name=&kingdom=horn+of+plenty

I still don't know what is going on with the outpost bug

939

Rules Questions / Re: Who goes first?

« on: June 17, 2011, 07:14:32 pm »

So the table you posted is this?

Run trueskill for each game g between p1 and p2
  let d = abs(diff(mean(p1), mean(p2))
  associate win or loss with d

Then print win/total for each d?

I agree that makes sense, it basically the average win probability given level difference over all games on isotropic.

940

Feedback / Re: Previous/Next

« on: June 17, 2011, 07:00:55 pm »

OMG, yes.

This is killing me!

Those prev/next things are evil.  I would also be happy to see more than 15 posts/page.

941

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Popular Buys Analysis

« on: June 17, 2011, 02:58:04 pm »

Yeah, you have parsed the data correctly.

942

Rules Questions / Re: Who goes first?

« on: June 17, 2011, 01:22:14 pm »

I'd like to see it switched to just a random player goes first.  It discourages re-matches since the winner knows they're definitely going second vs a... dunno 1/4 to 1/3 chance of going first if they play somebody else.  And other weird matching effects.

I think this is a nice point.  In order to maximize your "trueskill", If you've just won, don't rematch.  If you've just lost, go for it!

943

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: What would you like to see in Dominion?

« on: June 17, 2011, 01:16:43 pm »

I tend to not like arguments from authority.  But if you really want to make an argument against Donald on Dominion game design for something that he dismisses as an obviously bad idea in retrospect, you've got a very tall mountain to climb.  How about you play test it and come back with some data?

944

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: What would you like to see in Dominion?

« on: June 17, 2011, 12:38:13 pm »

Out of curiosity, what's the reasoning?  It seems no worse than swindler or saboteur, but moves what is an annoying and frustrating ability from offense to defense.  Such a card could even be fairly weak and designed to appeal to new players. 

I can't find the quote (Google fails me ).  But the basic idea is it completely makes attack cards worthless.  You'd be insane to play a strong attack with such a reaction in place.  To be fair, I am pretty sure Richard Garfield (designer of Magic) suggested it to him as well.

945

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Decline of civility on isotropic?

« on: June 17, 2011, 11:43:33 am »

tl:dr; manners are bullshit, but don't actively be a dick.

in my mind the gl/always gg stuff is basically vacuous.  If you hit me 5x in a row with a mountebank, honestly, I am not going to be happy.  And if you say gg 100% of the time, it's actually meaningless.  That gg contains almost no information.  But if you reserve it for only say, the 40% to 80% of the games that were actually good, then it now means something.

On the other hand, being a dick/crybaby/etc because things didn't go your way, even if it was just bad luck is annoying.

946

Rules Questions / Re: Who goes first?

« on: June 17, 2011, 10:21:08 am »

From TrueSkill's point of view, it's more meaningful to compare the players' mean skills, not their levels. And these probabilities are interesting enough that I'll make a table of them.

diff  win prob.
0     50.0%
1     54.2%
2     57.6%
3     60.0%
4     63.5%
5     68.6%
6     71.5%
7     75.5%
8     78.7%
9     82.2%
10    82.6%
11    87.7%
12    90.8%
13    93.9%
14    97.6%
15    97.3%
16    98.6%
>=17  100%-ish

What did you do here?  The player variance matters a lot in terms of pushing probabilities toward 50% regardless of mean difference.  I don't see how you can reasonably ignore variance and still get output from trueskill.

947

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Popular Buys Analysis

« on: June 17, 2011, 09:51:00 am »

Here is the big tarball.

http://councilroom.com/margin.txt.gz

948

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Thought Exercise: Would Masquerade be better or worse if it drew 3 cards?

« on: June 16, 2011, 07:18:15 pm »

So yeah, 3 cards would make it worse because nobody would ever buy actions along with it.

Logic fail .

949

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Popular Buys Analysis

« on: June 16, 2011, 07:17:02 pm »

You are mis-intepretting the stat.

All it says is that david_with_witch - david_overall > other_player_with_witch - other_player_overall.

950

Council Room Feedback / Re: New Method to Rate Cards?

« on: June 16, 2011, 06:26:42 pm »

It's a hard problem.  I don't think any singular number is really enough to capture it.  And then if you are going to make a complicated model, why not just solve Dominion?  Then you can poke at the model directly and coax it into answering these kind of questions.

https://github.com/rspeer/golem