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576

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Fan cards: Siege and Great Warrior

« on: February 08, 2012, 08:38:39 am »

I think the problem with Siege is how it scales in multiplayer and/or played in multiples.  I think Donald (or rinkworks) mentioned problems with these kind of cards, because once you have 4 player playing them each round, things get nasty.

Maybe it could be

  While any Siege is in play, cards cost $1 more in the buy phase of a player who doesn't have a Siege in play.

instead, without any accumulation.

577

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why no +card and +$ without +actions?

« on: February 08, 2012, 05:33:55 am »

I wouldn't worry so much about one card, especially later on in the cycle since with more cards available, the chance that a single card gets randomly chosen gets even smaller. That's also one of the reasons people buy expansions. With just the base game, a single card has 40% of appearing in the kingdom. "Aaah, not Witch again!?" "Yes, Witch again."

I don't think where in the cycle it is matters that much. An expansion, regardless of when it is published, should work fine for those who have only that and a standalone, so any card in a small expansion could be in play rather often (for those who randomize their kingdoms).

That's one interesting thing with Dark Ages, that it's so big. I guess that means Donald can consider cards he wouldn't want to have in a smaller expansion.

578

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Equilibrium

« on: February 05, 2012, 04:54:13 am »

Yet another reason why you wouldn't buy Coppers in a similar standstill would be if they are embargoed, with equal scores and a single Curse left for three-piling.

579

Simulation / Re: Geronimoo's Dominion Simulator: the ultimate simulation tool

« on: February 04, 2012, 09:20:30 am »

There are many possible tricky situations like that. The other side of the Don't Make a Losing Move is even harder: Make That Winning Move.

Obviously you don't want to write buying rules for all cards in the game that they should be bought if that means victory, so ideally there should be a special step looking at all possible moves that would end the game analyzing the situations that would result in, and if any of those are winning then just do that instead of following the normal play rules and buy rules.

Tricky to do, I guess, but how else would you make a simulator be able to buy that last Caravan and the last two Curses for a sudden win when opportunity knocks?

580

Simulation / Re: Geronimoo's Dominion Simulator: the ultimate simulation tool

« on: February 04, 2012, 06:40:09 am »

If buying the last card will end the game in a loss then the simulator will not do it. SUICIDE is printed as explanation.

But in other situations the simulator can commit suicide. At least I've seen it happily deal out the last Curse, even if that is a losing three-piling move, and I just confirmed that that is still so.

The suicide detection is made by suicideIfBuys, and even though I'm not a Java person (nor a Java Man!) it seems to me it only looks at the VPs of the very card it's considering to buy before (not) three-piling. So it might avoid three-piling with Border Villages for example, even if it then would gain a Duchy for the win, right?

581

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Some hypothetical questions about cards

« on: February 03, 2012, 04:03:48 pm »

3) What if Adventurer cost $5?

I've been wondering instead what would happen if Adventurer also gave +1 Buy. I don't think that would make it too strong at $6, and it certainly would be played a lot more.

Another relatively minor, but (in my opinion) game enhancing change we've toyed with in my local play group.

King's Court
...
You may not King's Court a King's Court.

I think there is room for a Prince's Court that can only triple an action card costing at most $X, probably $4. (And it should cost more than $X itself, so could only be used on itself together with price-fixing.

Or maybe it could triple those lesser actions and only double the more expensive ones instead of being totally ineffective with them.

582

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Official(?) Dominion App Available on iTunes

« on: January 25, 2012, 08:04:15 am »

I feel somewhat like the opposite happened to me. While I loved Dominion before I found Iso, I don't have enough people to regularly play it with IRL to justify buying all the expansions. However, I felt somewhat obligated after sinking hundreds of hours into the online game to go out an spend some disposable income on so far most of the expansions. If I pay for an online version, I probably don't feel the same pressure to gobble up expansions.

Similar for me. I had Dominion and played it once in a while. After discovering it for real on Isotropic I bought all expansions in stock last year for myself, as well as an extra Cornucopia for friends I sometimes play with so as to get more variation when playing with them. None of that would have happened without Isotropic (and of course also not without Dominion being such a good game).

The sets I bought for myself last year are still wrapped in plastic, but I like having them.

583

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom 2 Invitational Sign-Up

« on: October 27, 2011, 05:53:12 pm »

I would also like to join.

584

Dominion Articles / Re: Goons engine: Consistent 20 VP Chip each turn!

« on: October 21, 2011, 01:34:32 pm »

Nice combo!

See it yourself! http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/21/game-20111021-005235-f8bd0eaa.html
This engine is immune to those attacks:
[...]
- Any shit-giving attacks (Ambassador, Masquerade, etc). Accept it. Even if your deck get fat to 100+ cards, it doesn't matter!

Well, if they give you action cards it can break your engine.

585

Rules Questions / Re: Embassy in Hinterlands is an exception?

« on: October 18, 2011, 06:42:08 pm »

Ah, I had actually seen that BGG discussion, but didn't think twice about it, since "obviously" it would work as Donald wrote then, but now I see that that case indeed also is a problem since the rules contain the erroneous ruling.

It surprises me a bit if Donald doesn't want to stick to the rules as printed now, since I read him earlier saying something like that he didn't want errata so that there are different rules for people "in the know" and people who just buy the game and play with the rules as printed, never looking it up on the net.

586

Rules Questions / Re: Embassy in Hinterlands is an exception?

« on: October 18, 2011, 06:27:19 pm »

I've compared with the German rulesl. This example is not given of that rule there, but it's mentioned in the FAQ text about Embassy there as well.

587

Rules Questions / Embassy in Hinterlands is an exception?

« on: October 18, 2011, 06:21:05 pm »

When the Hinterlands card Embassy is gained "each other player gains a Silver".

Suppose there are not enough Silvers left for all the other players. There is a general rule about doing it in turn order. In the Hinterland rules it's formulated like

When two things happen to different players at the same time, they happen in turn order, starting with the player whose turn it is.

Suppose a game with four players, A, B, C, and D. It's A's turn, and B is gaining an Embassy. (It could for instance be because of A playing an Ambassador.) Now A, C and D should gain Silver, and according to that general rule as I read it the order should be ACD.

But, the text in the rules continues with an example that goes against this:

For example, when a player gains Embassy, first the player to that player's left gains Silver, then the next player, etc.

that is the order should be CDA, and the FAQ text about Embassy repeats this.

Why? Is this really intentional? It's an exception that wouldn't come up very often at all.

588

GokoDom / Re: IsoDom Tourney SignUp

« on: September 20, 2011, 07:02:39 pm »

This filled up right quick.

Yep, why so small tourney?

(Didn't read about it until just now.)

589

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Can you beat the Lucky Chancellor ?

« on: September 09, 2011, 05:10:19 pm »

Best first post ever!

Does my OP qualifies for the second best first post ever ?   

Oops, didn't realize that was also a first post, as it was already here when I started reading here. (Yes, And I'm very new here, so obviously I shouldn't make any "ever" statements.) I should have added [no actual comparison intended] in small print.  Just kudos to everyone with a solution to this very nice problem.

590

Council Room Feedback / Re: New images for new goals?

« on: September 05, 2011, 08:27:34 am »

# NegativeSum: Won with a negative score.
#("I thought it was Golf") Winning with a negative score

Duplicate?

591

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 3 Player Dominion

« on: August 31, 2011, 07:47:24 am »

It is mentioned that the current system will cause longer games, since players will drag the game along to grab more points. The opposite could also be true, since winning 12-1-1 will give you a better scoring percentage than winning 24-13-13. I think it won't matter much in practice and if I can end the game ahead, I'll probably do so, because those 3 points are more valuable than concerning myself with tie breaks.

True. And I think you said this was basic set only? With no victory tokens I think there won't be large problems with this.

592

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Can you beat the Lucky Chancellor ?

« on: August 31, 2011, 06:30:44 am »

Best first post ever!

593

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 3 Player Dominion

« on: August 31, 2011, 05:51:21 am »

I'm sure they'll just treat any negative score as 0. Tiebreakers are never going to work, but tournaments need them so there's no point complaining every time someone tries to implement something.

The problem with negative scores is a minor point that isn't common and easily can be averted. The main issue is that this tiebreaking scheme encourages accumulating extra "unnecessary" points. That will matter in many games and in way that makes the game less fun and more frustrating, which certainly isn't intended.

Yes, tiebreaking is a "necessary evil", and yes, no tiebreak is perfect, but most wouldn't have such a negative impact on the game. Often a tiebreak can be almost invisible in that players normally don't have to think about it, maybe except for in the last round.

I would probably use number-of-wins-on-their-own as first tiebreak, and number-of-shared-wins secondly. Maybe some Buchholz then (how well your opponents did). If you want to avoid that calculation you could go for the result between two tied players if they've played each other. (If there are many players / few rounds that might not be enough.)

594

Dominion General Discussion / Re: 3 Player Dominion

« on: August 31, 2011, 03:51:06 am »

In the tournament format I mentioned in which you get points for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (a percentage of the points gained in each game is also noted for tiebreakers, e.g. 40 of the total 98 points shared between 3 players gets you 40,81%),

That's not a good tiebreaker, I think. Firstly it encourages a clear winner to keep increasing the distance instead of just winning at the first opportunity: That would be boring. Secondly it works really bad with negative scores. So if you win +3/0/0 you get 100%, if you win +3/-1/-1 it's even better of course, 300%. But if you get +3/-3/-3 you only get -100% and in the worst case you win with something like +3/-1/-2 and the tournament has to be cancelled or something.

595

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What's your dominion pet peeve?

« on: August 29, 2011, 12:11:49 pm »

I guess most of us did this wrong the first time. The implementation is ok like it is, but anyway not intuitive. So you can simply explain to your opponent how it works.

I like that isotropic supports multi-revealing like it should, but it would lead to less confusion if the texts changed after you've already revealed a card, so the option was called something like "reveal a moat again" the next time. Then people wouldn't believe that they somehow didn't succeed in revealing it the first time.

"Reveal a secret chamber. Reveal a moat. Reveal a secret chamber again. Done."

596

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: What's missing now?

« on: August 23, 2011, 09:35:57 am »

OK, so the cards mentioned are not it? Otherwise Philosopher's Stone could be a unique solution I think. Reason: Can be worth $1, but can also be worth something higher. (Then Salvager needs a little help to fit in.)

Harvest fits that criteria too.

Oops, true, so to make it unique I'll change "something higher" to something specific like $5. Not that it's right anyway...

597

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: What's missing now?

« on: August 23, 2011, 08:45:01 am »

OK, so the cards mentioned are not it? Otherwise Philosopher's Stone could be a unique solution I think. Reason: Can be worth $1, but can also be worth something higher. (Then Salvager needs a little help to fit in.)

598

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: What's missing now?

« on: August 23, 2011, 08:16:53 am »

Bank destroys it for me. Otherwise I would answer Horn of Plenty, Harvest, Philosopher's Stone.

599

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The quest for a Nash Equilibrium

« on: August 19, 2011, 05:37:25 pm »

@pst: The point of this exercise isn't really to fine tune a certain bot, but to find a strategy that if played by 3 people has a higher win rate than any other strategy played by the fourth player. For instance one of this bot beats 3 of yours:

I've never thought anything else. My point was to point out that your robot wasn't a nash eq, because I hastily misread your post to believe you said so. Sorry about that. I guess you did the same thing with my post.

600

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The quest for a Nash Equilibrium

« on: August 19, 2011, 06:54:13 am »

It seems like three of your "3/4P - BM - Moat/Moat/Witch/Witch" are beaten by a variant that waits a little longer with buying Duchy if it can buy Gold instead.

(The values maybe aren't optimal, but seem to be enough for this task. It's close though, so you need several "Accurate Simulations" to see it. I would love to be able to name an arbitrary number of games.)

(Edit: In the included file I've unnecessarily copied the Estate buying rule. I thought of fiddling with those numbers too, but didn't.)