Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

Show Posts

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.

Messages - Captain_Frisk

Filter to certain boards:

Pages: 1 ... 216 217 [218]
5426
I hate to pile on... but i'm not sure steward belongs on the top 10 list at all, let alone at position #1.

The big things I look for in an intrigue only set are:

#1 Minions and how to get the most of them
#1 Masquerade
#1 The ability to create a torturer chain
#2 Trading post
#3 Baron to early gold.

Cards that I generally ignore are:
Saboteur
Scout (unless you're REALLY REALLY REALLY sure you know what you're doing)
Duke - this may be a card that I just don't understand, but i've had a really hard time pulling of a Duke strategy effectively.  I've generally had better luck going for provinces, and then if my opponent starts going for duchies, just matching him / her because my deck is so much better.  Unlike gardens, its alot harder to really make a run at these.

5427
I mean who really cares about the exact position in the leaderboard? Basically players around 20 are good, but not great. Above 30 players really know what they do and are hard to beat... well, and >40 are just top-notch and the best around.

Anything beyond this differentiation is just childish and doesn't get you anywhere.

Agreed... we should all calm down.  But even you point out that people with level >40 are top notch and the best around.  Right now there are 15 people who meet that criteria, and another ~50 within striking distance.  The question is... does the current ranking system really accurately rank those people, or are there ways to game the system?  If there are ways to game the system, should it be improved to prevent that "abuse"?

Selfishly, I'd like a way to reliably compete against other top players.  Some folks, like theory & Celicath are pretty good about accepting any challenges (the fact that theory finally ended up with a winning record against me upsets me to no end).  Other folks, I've never been able to play.

For the remaining 5,400 people on the leaderboard, the system works pretty well.  Any change made for the 100 people who really really care about their rank shouldn't come at a burden for the remaining 98%.

5428
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Hunt for it, it's mine!
« on: July 29, 2011, 02:55:21 pm »
Shouldn't you upgrade Copper to Silver in preference to Silver to Gold?  This increases the likelihood that you'll have a Mineable treasure with your Mine.  But maybe in a Hunting Party deck, the chances of a problem of this sort are small.  If you have few Golds, you'll probably have at least one Copper or Silver in your hand.  If you have many Golds and only a few Coppers and Silvers, the Hunting Parties will find them.  Still.

This topic has been covered a few times, and I'm not sure if anyone has ever proved it, but in general, I'm in favor "highest treasure first", because i believe that 3 Golds and 4 Coppers is better than 6 Silvers and 1 copper.  (For one of these, its possible to purchase a province with only 3 treasures, the other requires at least 4.  There are side benefits as well - like if someone is forcing you to discard, or if you want to trash cards.  For sure in a platinum game you want to go highest treasure up.

It's very rare that you get yourself into a situation in which you are:
a. playing with mine
b. stuck into a situation where you have a hand full of gold and a mine
c. are legitimately angry about having a HAND FULL OF GOLD

when it does happen, you might curse your bad luck, but


5429
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Hunt for it, it's mine!
« on: July 29, 2011, 01:41:59 pm »
I'm assuming the puzzle is something along the lines of "what is the optimal buying / upgrading strategy" for a 5/2 opening - only using hunting parties and mines.

Ie. - what do you open with, what is the optimal mix of hunting parties and mines, when should you buy treasure, and when you play a mine - in what order do you upgrade your cards?  The disclaimer on the other 10 kingdom cards is to rule out junk like Militia / Goons / Masq / Ambassador / Mountebank that would otherwise mess with an optimal solitaire strategy .

I would probably start with this:

Play:
#1 - Play all hunting parties
#2 - Play Mine
- 2a. upgrade silver to gold (if possible)
- 2b. upgrade copper to silver



8: Buy province if #gold > 1 [PPR logic removed for sake of brevity]
5: Buy duchy if [#provinces remaining < N] (where N is some number near 5 or 6, and might vary if you are P1 or P2)
2: Buy estate (if # provinces remaining < M) - most likely M=2
5+ Buy Hunting Party if # mines > 0
5+ Buy Mine if #mines = 0
3+ buy silver

I'm looking forward to whoever decides to simulate this... it may be possible that the presence of Hunting Party chains should cause you to buy fewer duchies (so as to not clog your hunting party chains), or change your upgrade logic such that you always have at least 1 silver in your deck. 

However, i'm just going with my gut feel that despite the theme of cornucopia, a hunting party deck is most effective when your deck consists of as little variety as possible.  Ideally - VPs, hunting parties, and 1 killer action. 

5430
Dominion General Discussion / Re: You may...
« on: July 29, 2011, 01:13:21 pm »
Possession is a topic in and of itself, so not including all of the scenarios in which you think you're likely to be possessed next turn, or you're possessing someone and you don't want to play it so that their next turn sucks.

There are "theoretical" reasons to do any of the below that many of the others have already mentioned.  In my many (over 3000) now, games of dominion, i'll try to recall scenarios in which I've actually done these, to put some sense on practical. 

(1) Return Treasury to the top of your deck when you have not bought a victory card?
(2) Return Walled Village to the top of your deck when you do not have more than two actions in play?
(3) Return Alchemist to the top of your deck when you have a Potion in play?
The most common reason for these would be when masquerade is in play, and you don't want a hand full of good stuff to be stolen.  Walled village is new, and I don't think I've ever not done it.  There have been times when I've agreed with those who said  they wanted their +actions to be in the deck so that the golem can find them - but I think that those instances are probably not optimal play.

(4) Not reveal a Province after playing Explorer?
Never done it in real life.  My best thought would be a hand consisting of Gold, Gold, Horn of Plenty, Province, Explorer - and really wanting a 4 cost card instead of a 3.  Playing explorer is already an edge case.  For those who mentioned menagerie... just play the menagerie first!  (Unless you have 2 explorers, but now we're just being silly)


(5) Not discard a Curse to circumvent a Mountebank attack?  (I guess there's one reason for this:  you're ahead, and taking one more Curse or Copper will end the game.  Any other reason not to do this?)
Another reason would be if having the card in your hand has value.  For example, you have a cellar or a warehouse, and you want to use the curse in your hand.  If I've ever done it, it was to end the game though.

(6) Reveal a Province after playing Tournament?  (There's a thread in the Puzzles forum about why you might not want to reveal a Province to someone else's Tournament.)
Never done it in real life.  The answer of "all prizes gone" and I need the next card to buy the last province and end the game instead of a duchy sounds valid enough.


(7) Choose a location for Stash on the reshuffle?

This is reasonably common.  I actually did this yesterday in a retarded game with a crazy King's Court / Torturer / Bazaar / Horn of Plenty action.  I wanted the stash to drive up the ability of the horn of plenty, but I didn't want it in my hand, so I put it at the bottom of my deck.  Any time you're reshuffling mid hand based on what you've already drawn and how many cards you have in your hand, you might not want your stash.  (Example, you've already drawn Gold, Gold, Silver and there are no sources of +buy)


5431
Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Golem
« on: July 28, 2011, 05:10:32 pm »
Be careful with golem.  It's 4P cost means that its a truly situational card.  Its very hard to make a plan to purchase an early golem. 

Most of the time that golem is the only alchemy card on the board, I will tend to ignore it, because by the time that I'm pretty confident that I could buy it, I don't want to down buy to a potion, and then wait a deck shuffle to (hopefully) buy my golem, and then a 3rd shuffle to use it.

Times where I think about golem more heavily
1. Ways to rapidly accelerate shuffling (i'm looking at you hunting party, tactician)
2. Other lower cost alchemy cards.  (Don't look now, but apothecary is sneaky good.  University is sneaky bad)
3. You know the game is going to be long (mountebank, witch, etc.)
4. Engine games with +buy where you can buy a potion + something else mid game, and then buy golems every turn for the remaining of the game.


Don't buy into the hype of double tacticians, or chancellor / counting house.

In the case of the former, even if you could pull it off, you're probably in a game where you could have had 15 cards in your hand anyway.

In the case of the latter, by the time you've bought
a. a potion
b. a golem
c. a counting house
d. a chancellor

yes, you could buy a province every turn... if you draw the golem, and neither of the other cards.  You'll end up cursing yourself for the rest of the game trying to get it all lined up perfectly, while the other guy happily plays big money on normal time scales.

Simulation challenge: mean time to 4 provinces with a Golem / Counting House / Chancellor strategy.


5432
Game Reports / Re: Dear My Opponent: I am Sorry
« on: July 28, 2011, 02:54:36 pm »
I have a fondness for decks with 3-4 Torturers in them...  I always feel a little bad for my opponents when I get them going (particularly if they're newer/lower-ranked and it may be the first time it's happening to them).  Sucks to be consistently hit with multiple Torturers every turn.

Yes, I feel immediately sorry for the Torturer scenario.  As soon as you see Torturer + a source of 2 actions... you know with 97% certainty that the game is going to be ugly, and one player isn't going to want to play dominion again for a while after it.

Losing due to torturer lock is one of the few times that I'll break my rule of "never waste a loss by ragequitting"

5433
I don't want to get into this discussion too much, but if anyone thinks that playing bad players is a good way to boost your level, I would encourage you to try it.  It is much, much more difficult than it seems to consistently beat randomly-selected bad players.

I will second this.  I'm guilty of caring about my rating too much, but the advent of automatch has killed me.  I've been as high as 42... and now i'm stuck down at 36.  Previously I always challenged the highest ranked player. 

I think the "problem" is that the win probability between levels can vary quite a bit, and varies significantly based on the cards on the table. 

Some tables have very obvious or limited strategies.  Those games are likely to be "flatter" in terms of the relationship between win% and player skill.  Other games might have cards with significant variance. 

Using treasure map as an example.  Without help, treasure map is usually a bad play.  If I played 100 games with theory, and he went un-assisted treasure map every time, I would expect to beat him about 60-70% of the time.  However, when it hits on turn 5 - its going to be very tough to beat.  I don't remember the exact % of the time, but it is very far from zero. 

Lets assume that it's 30%.  There's the "good" strategy... that theory and tat know... and there's the "buy only treasure map strategy", that anyone can see.  If the true skill model looks at theories level, and then a lvl 5 guy (we'll call him "chump", and assumes that the Chump only has a 12% chance to win against the great and all powerful theory, then all Chump has to do is play treasure map every time, and he'll gain levels while theory loses them. 

So - by putting some control over the table, you can influence your ranking.  Ideally - if you're a good player, you want to bias the table to cards that reward skillful play with minimal variance.  If you're a bad player, you want to increase the variance as much as possible, to make the game result much closer to a coin flip.

You can look at the logs of folks out there to see what constraints they put on their games... and come to your own conclusions. 

One final leaderboard gaming tip:

Because isotropic assigns starting player advantage based on most recent result, any time you lose, you should make sure you use that advantage on as high ranked opponent as you can.  The first player advantage is anywhere from 2-15% (its 8% for tat, and 12% for theory), and you want to cash that in for as much as you can.

I agree with most of the comments that the leaderboard should be fully random (seat order chosen randomly, you don't know who your opponent is, what cards are chosen, no constraints).  Maybe this should be a separate leaderboard, but as long as you can control your the shape of your game and your opponents, there will be people who will game it.  I'm half tempted to intentionally throw 50 games in a row to someone just to skyrocket them to the top.

Then, you gotta remember that its just a number, and of the N thousand people playing dominion on isotropic, there are probably only 50 really care about the topic.



5434
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Thought exercise: nerfs and buffs
« on: July 27, 2011, 03:45:36 pm »
I think Donald has commented on this, and I agree with him there. Raising it to 3 will not solve the imbalance, it will just shift it. You will most likely open Chapel/nothing against Chapel/Silver or even Chapel/Militia when you start 5/2 vs 4/3 and Chapel would cost $3.
It is also clear that Chapel is "to cheap" with $2 compared to its power. It would be to cheap with $3 also. But the thing is, you just want it at the beginning, and you want just one. It could cost $0 and the game would not really change. So the important point is not to balance the cost to its power, but to balance it for the games to be as fair as possible. The cost of Chapel does not change the game (unless it costs at least $5), as anyway you want and will buy exactly one in the beginning (in most scenarios).

Just a counter point (note that I am not advocating a 3 cost chapel).  The same argument for "well, if chapels cost 3, then Silver / Chapel is better than "Chapel / Nothing, and you're behind a silver".  That same logic applies to other "important" turn 1/2 buys.

I'm sure that other folks here can relate to the excitement a 5/2 opening... and then seeing any one of the following cards on the baord

- Sea Hag
- Ambassador
- Familiar (early potion becomes an important buy)
- Masquerade (maybe)

So you end up opening powercard / nothing, and you're behind a silver for the entire game.  The same argument for chapel costing 2 would argue in favor of some of those cards costing 2. (Yikes!)

Ultimately, I think the only thing to do is
1. Take a deep breath.
2. Recognize that dominion can frequently have an early luck component that will drastically shift your win probability in a way that is hardly fair
3. Do one of the following things
-- a. Accept it and play another hand of dominion (optional: gripe about the loss of your rank)
-- b. Play an unofficial variant (identical starting hands, choose your split, ban the cards you think are unfair)
-- c. Go play chess.  I'm told that there's no randomness there.

That being said, I curse like a sailor every time I draw 2P / 4Copper on a familiar board, and my opponent gets Lab / Familiar on turns 3/4. 

Keep calm and respawn?


Pages: 1 ... 216 217 [218]

Page created in 0.232 seconds with 18 queries.