Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

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.

51

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you play this kingdom?

« on: August 21, 2014, 04:54:10 pm »

oh my.  6 players is a lot.  I think swindler/governor is definitely the way to go then.  Swindler because you will likely screw at least one person by trashing one of their good cards.  Governor because it is so fast and you want to green fast. 

Do you play with any house rules because you have so many people?  If so, that would change the dynamic quite a bit (mainly you would have a bit more time to build your deck) For example, do you play with 12 in each victory pile or do you house rule it into say 15 for 6 players?  Also, still a 3 pile game or is that house-ruled into 4 piles or something?

I can only imagine the horror of a 6-player Swindler game.  I feel bad for players 5 and 6 who can only get 1 Swindler.

I play 6p simply because that gives the AI a higher chance to win. AIs in androidominion are not that smart. I think the biggest notable difference for a 6p game is that there are 18 provinces (and 12 estates, 12 duchies, lots of treasure).

It is intriguing people seem to think Swindler is more powerful in 6p games. They certainly wreck more havoc, but I don't think they are more powerful. If anything, it's similar to Witch or Militia that they are less powerful. The few attack cards that get more powerful with more players are thief, noble brigand and Jester, and they are more powerful due to their non-attack part. So I think, yeah, it's possible for everyone to go for swindlers just for its ramified effect, but that is probably not the best strategy on this board.

No that is because a torturer-bm is low-skill strategy while governor is high skill one. Barring swindler luck I would give around 20% chance to torturer-bm versus experienced opponent. There are plenty of things that need to be done correctly, I believe that salvager silver then counterfeit on first 5 are best oppening as it helps hit 5 and do trashing. Then in midgame often remodeling silver into governor is correct decision. Also for engine you could get nobles, and two torturers that you play each turn after drawing with governor. Opponent torturers are minor nuisance as you could trash curses with salvager

It is certainly true that governor-gold strategy is of higher skill, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is therefore better. For this kingdom, in a 2p game, yes, I think it is better. However, say in a 3 player game with two other players going for BM-torturer, it already becomes hard to say. The free silver from governor helps those two players the same as in a 2p-game, whereas their attack stacks against you.

52

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you play this kingdom?

« on: August 21, 2014, 03:16:44 am »

I believe in a 2-player game, governor-gold is pretty strong as mentioned. However, I think BM-torturer is actually not that far off. The free silvers really help that strategy; also, without trashing Governor itself is not that explosive as it also needs to be the draw. With trashing, however, early torturer really hurts your buy power and delay you.

My experience of the kingdom, however, is exclusively with 6p games, sometimes with shelters. It is really different, in the way that even if only two other players go for torturer, the game already lasts much longer, especially with a few Swindlers thrown in to turn your starting coppers into curses. The interaction between Fortune teller and Swindler is also interesting, especially when hit by torturer. Should one discard Estate or not? When one discards it, it may be brought to the front of deck right away by Fortune teller. But then it acts as a defense to Swindler.

In my experience, Counterfeit is almost always too slow, as it competes with Governor. In the shelters game, the Salvager opening can stuck below $5 for really long. Building up the deck is really hard, facing so many attacks. Usually torturer+BM wins, but in the rare case when I won, I did manage to do the highway+Swindler/Knight combo, with the help from Dame Molly.

53

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you play this kingdom?

« on: August 20, 2014, 08:07:11 pm »

Well, you can always play a game with that kingdom on Goko first, if you have the cards.

That is precisely the problem.

54

Dominion General Discussion / How do you play this kingdom?

« on: August 20, 2014, 07:44:46 pm »

Ok, so here's a kingdom I randomly encountered with androiminion. I think it's an interesting one, especially with more players involved.

Fortune Teller, Swindler, Bridge, Salvager, Counterfeit, Governer, Highway, Knights, Torturer, Nobles

(Sorry, I still haven't figured out how to automatically generate images.)

How would you play this game with 2, 4, or even 6 players? What would you imagine will happen?

55

Dominion Articles / Re: Leveraging Information

« on: June 11, 2014, 10:33:11 pm »

"Track everything" is a little deceptive because you can calculate a lot of what you need when the time arises; especially if you are drawing your deck for a large engine: just look your cards.

How much money do I have in my deck? Usually you only care about this number exactly if you are looking to end the game next turn and are drawing your deck. So just count it a turn prior to when you think you will need the information.

Curse split matters for points? Count how many curses you have during one shuffle. Pay attention to the trash. Same with any key split you've lost track of.

You don't need to track your opponent's counts separately from yours. Keep track of what you buy and trash. Use the supply to calculate what your opponent has. Sometimes I track how many buys/gains my opponent is capable of if I am worried about a three pile.

"Tracking everything" is much harder in multiplayer, but also much less necessary because there is (by the nature of there being more players) less you can control in the endgame.

I track very little. I calculate a lot.

I think this approach missed one important aspect OP mentioned, that is to track what is remaining in your deck (not what are there in your entire deck.) Without careful tracking it is often too late for one to learn this information when it is tactically needed. It is even worse when what you need to know is opponent's remaining deck.

56

Dominion Articles / Re: Leveraging Information

« on: June 05, 2014, 09:01:26 pm »

I think the bottom line is that deck tracking is quite important at making tactical decisions. I would say, however, that it's too tedious to try to track all the VPs, curses, actions, treasures, and whatnot just for that. There probably should be a game aid or something just to tell you what is left in your deck.

57

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Just learned

« on: June 04, 2014, 05:19:40 am »

Yeah, knowing what your opponent has on board is very important. It is also important to know what potentially is there in the deck in order to make an informed decision when you want to draw or draw-and-x. And more broadly and strategically speaking, you need to know roughly where the strong cards are and what are their effects in order for you to do the right things at the right time.

It's actually the worst aspect of the game I would say. Once you get familiar with the game it's hard to play with new players (especially IRL) not feeling you are cheating

58

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Wanna know if any veterans from Taiwan

« on: May 14, 2014, 11:17:11 pm »

Cool! I am from Taiwan, but will not be there any time soon :3

59

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Making the jump to figures/cities?

« on: April 30, 2014, 09:18:42 am »

Does anyone know if No Place is still an ongoing project, or is it just dead?

60

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion "all stars" set.

« on: April 14, 2014, 04:29:12 am »

Dominion: timchen edition

Is it just me seeing my name there?

61

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Making the jump to figures/cities?

« on: April 11, 2014, 02:03:15 pm »

Yeah, maybe it depends on your taste. I just feel that memorizing 100+ cards from base is already enough for me. It's a very good selling point for me that it does not help as tremendously as in base or echoes to know precisely what the cards are. In a few echoes games with more experienced players, seeing them hunting for cards I don't even know and abuse those cards just throws me off. Also I am less toward "building a mega board" style.

62

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Making the jump to figures/cities?

« on: April 08, 2014, 08:47:15 pm »

I don't play cities so I cannot speak for that, but for figures:
(1) much less effort to learn comparing to echoes to play at a reasonable/mediocre level (depends on how you define the level)
(2) more fun than echoes
(3) the strategy does change a lot

Unlike echoes, I don't think you have to be very familiar with figures cards to play or enjoy. This is because there is no way to draw them consistently so it is almost impossible (at least I haven't figured out a way) to hunt for the card you want efficiently. It is more like seeing what you get and try to make best use of it. Also unlike echoes which was created with a different rule set in mind, there are less broken cards or broken strategies (ie, stack and splay FTW!)

One fun aspect is that some mediocre cards becomes pretty good at later stage in game because sharing them draw you a figures card. Icon dominance is less important as well for the same reason as well as lots of "attacking" effects are not written as demands and sometimes are not even sharable by being inspires.

That being said, it still helps to have a rough idea how each stack of figure cards is behaving. For me, it is really important to know that early figure cards are really hit & miss so it doesn't really matter that much if you are drawing them or not. There are helpful cards in age 3 and 4 but no big game changers I think. Age 5 is monster though, so try to set up your board so that you can start to draw them when you reaches the age, or to make sure your opponent cannot draw them easily when he is there.

Anyway, back to the original topic, I think figures is plainly more fun to play than echoes, especially for new players. Stop worrying and wreck some fun!

63

Dominion Articles / Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card

« on: February 19, 2014, 04:36:26 pm »

I think we can agree that designing cards is just very, very hard.

There are also many different tastes.

Some players might like bland helper cards which are useful on 90% on boards, while others might feel cheated that those cards provide nothing special.
And some players might like cards which are useless often, but shine on 10% of the boards.

I think I'm somewhere in between. It's fun to find uses for "useless" cards and it's fun to have some go-to cards.

Speaking of designing cards, actually there seems to be a good way to improve scout by enlarging its variance:

Super Scout
$4 Action

Reveal the top card on your deck. If it is a VP card, put it into your hand, then +3 cards.


Looks like a fine card to me!

Except it's strictly worse than Smithy.

Hint: You didn't give it a +1 Action

Fixed.

I did mean to have +1 action there in the first place as the original scout. I don't think the card is overpowered. It's just awesome when you have ways to make sure you have a VP card on the top your deck.

64

Dominion Articles / Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card

« on: February 19, 2014, 03:33:36 pm »

I think we can agree that designing cards is just very, very hard.

There are also many different tastes.

Some players might like bland helper cards which are useful on 90% on boards, while others might feel cheated that those cards provide nothing special.
And some players might like cards which are useless often, but shine on 10% of the boards.

I think I'm somewhere in between. It's fun to find uses for "useless" cards and it's fun to have some go-to cards.

Speaking of designing cards, actually there seems to be a good way to improve scout by enlarging its variance:

EDIT: +1 action added...

Super Scout
$4 Action

+1 Action
Reveal the top card on your deck. If it is a VP card, put it into your hand, then +3 cards.


Looks like a fine card to me!

65

Dominion Articles / Re: Scout Strategy Article, or, It's Not a Bad Card

« on: February 19, 2014, 03:39:30 am »

Scout/Crossroads is a famous nombo. Scout is just as likely to pull green cars out of a future Crossroads hands than it is to pair green cards with Crossroads, and basically any point at which you could have bought Scout, you would actually just be better off buying another Crossroads.

Actually this point is not quite right. When you have two or more Crossroads/Scouts in hand, you would probably want to have exactly one of them being scout, as the first scout can draw you the number of green cards in the next 4 cards instead of the 3 or less non-Scout/Crossroads cards in hand which in average contains fewer green cards.

On the other hand, hands with no crossroads and scouts only would be pretty disgusting so I am not sure mixing the scouts is good in average. For the strategy to work in the first place you would probably need some other draw support anyway; in this case Crossroads is plainly better.

66

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Simple statistical rules of thumb for average Dominion scenarios

« on: January 30, 2014, 04:16:18 pm »

The 5 silver rule is not that useful even if it is statistically correct, as the reasoning behind it relies on the other $3$4/$5 terminals, which is what you should be counting. It's not like, okay, I have 5 silvers so I have to stop getting silvers.

67

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Please Do Not Say "GG" Before the Game Is Actually, Literally Over

« on: October 04, 2013, 05:12:10 am »

The only place I found gg offensive, is during my turn, when my opponent thinks he is winning in the next turn. Especially when he is absolutely right.

68

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Cities! :O

« on: September 07, 2013, 10:00:04 pm »

I think one interesting thing that might work is to let the original attack work in reverse: that is, you have to have icon weakness to use it. That way it may become an effective way for the behind player to catch up.

69

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Cities! :O

« on: September 06, 2013, 02:43:34 am »

I don't like rewarding icon dominance even more. All my city games thus far are already who-build their-boards-more competition.

70

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Cities! :O

« on: September 04, 2013, 01:16:52 am »

I think I agree on most changes in the update. The draw condition is improved, and the attacks are simply removed. I think the decision here is good. I haven't had specific things to say about the new draw rule as I haven't played much.

However, one potential problem I see is that I don't see me buying this expansion. Ok, if I can play it online for free I guess its' pretty reasonable and fun, but if I have to pay for it I don't want to pay a full expansion, just for a bunch of extra icons and the ability to dogma a card twice. In this regard the original attack cards sort of helps, but needs some substantial redesign.

But maybe that is just me fundamentally likes too much the "each card is unique" aspect of innovation. It just does not do me enough with only different icons on each city...

71

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Cities! :O

« on: August 29, 2013, 02:36:58 pm »

So what happens when you play cities with figures?

72

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Cities! :O

« on: August 28, 2013, 06:33:24 pm »

That sounds slow. And one thing I like innovation is precisely that sometimes u will stuck at certain age. It's  all about doing the right things at the right time, not about endless techups.

Oh and one thing i also dislike is that those splay and tech effects only kick in when you meld them. Isn‘t this a bit excessive when the card already has no dogma? Draw and meld becomes quite undesirable as your dogma option becomes less.

Maybe the idea is to have an icon arm race? Not sure how it really pkays like...

73

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Cities! :O

« on: August 28, 2013, 03:09:26 am »

The drawing rule is surely confusing!

And frankly speaking after a game I haven't found much appeal. There is no yee-ha moments for newbie players since the cities have no dogma and they are too similar to one another. Why do we need 10 city cards for every age? And I have to constantly track how many what age cards I have on the board just to draw correctly. The attacking conditions are fairly hard to keep track of too.

I think a worthwhile question to ask is that "suppose you have not yet played enough innovation, will you find the expansion more fun than base itself?" For the two previous expansions I would say yes. The added mechanics are fun. (Well, except echoes is somewhat broken with the current drawing rule...) This new expansion does not give me the justification of the more complicated rules.

 

74

Dominion General Discussion / Re: defn of "card x is better than card y"

« on: August 26, 2013, 10:03:07 pm »

Yeah, basically what GeoLib said.

I don't particular mean that a pairwise comparison is very useful if we can remember it, it is just that the way ehunt starts this thread is talking about a pairwise comparison, and strictly in the sense of thinking about a pairwise comparison method (a) actually is not useful.

I just realized that the reason (a) is actually more useful than (b) is because that we are NOT looking at pairwise comparison any more but instead use it to form an ordered list. This list will supposedly give us a baseline how important a card is in average which is helpful for us to judge a board. And it is just like an anecdote saying in this sense card A is better than card B.

As to the question whether a pairwise comparison data (if it exists) is useful, I think it is. At least for now we do use this data on functionally similar cards. Do I get a witch or mountebank, etc, etc.

75

Dominion General Discussion / Re: defn of "card x is better than card y"

« on: August 26, 2013, 03:25:01 pm »

One thing I find intriguing is that strictly speaking the ranking (a) is useless. You never want to compare two cards directly when they are not both in a game. But just because of its closeness to (c) that is what HMM suggested, which is an ordered list, it becomes more useful than (b).

I guess after all it's too hard for human mind to put something of O(N^2) instead of O(N) into perspective...