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Messages - FemurLemur

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1
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 10, 2020, 01:27:35 pm »
I'm definitely into having more expensive Events! I remember when it just seemed like a given that there'd never be Kingdom cards over $8, because they'd be so swingy and situational and terrible. Events are such an elegant way to implement expensive card ideas.

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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 10, 2020, 01:01:54 pm »
The option that you implicitly advocate is the lazy one (which is thankfully not the case here): a designer not caring about unclear stuff and updating the rules.

I don't think I'd go that far. I think a more charitable interpretation is that Jeebus advocates for an approach with greater pre-planning and consideration for how word/rule choices will impact future design space, which would actually take much more work up-front. Though you and I do agree that it's not realistic to expect to anticipate everything. Especially in a world with limited time where you actually need to start selling those expansions at some point.

3
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 10, 2020, 02:03:38 am »
None of the 2E cards combo differently with other cards because of the changes they received

That's definitely not true. There are a handful of cards which combo differently between editions as a result of intentional functional changes they received. I already listed some of them for you, such as Possession, which will interact with cards which cost/give debt in a completely different way, and Trade Route, which combos with cards like Hunting Grounds in 2E but not in 1E.


Or if they do, it's extremely marginal. That is not the case with 1E and 2E Cellar on a board with Way of the Chameleon.

"Marginal" in this case seems like a matter of opinion. I don't personally see how it's any less marginal than Trade Route working with on-trash VP gainers differently.

Posession handles an entire mechanic differently depending on which version you use. To me, that's far less marginal than this Way of the Chameleon discrepancy.

4
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Bonus Previews
« on: March 08, 2020, 03:08:46 am »
I'd like to play with the errata and 2E versions, but I'm never going to be keeping a mental list of cards which changed +cards to draw cards, because it has no functional change except with Way of the Chameleon. Throne Room I remember because even though the functional change doesn't usually matter, it's always there. I also don't feel like looking up a list of those cards every time I play.

The key difference here is that knowing the errata isn't what causes you to choose it. It's remembering the errata.

In my view the problem is that people could play a game with Chameleon and Storyteller where it was a great combo, then play another game with another physical set or play online, and it's completely different. If you're not attentive to that, it has consequences for you, and why would you ever be attentive to that? It could be that the players in the game have different prior experiences; some expect it to work one way, some another way.

Sounds like Chameleon may be a definite pick for your online banlist :P

It seems like more generally you take issue with the existence of the 2E, as the problem you're describing already theoretically happens with various card combos between editions. Different players will have different expectations for how Possession, Masquerade, Trade Route- among others- combo with various cards based on the version they're used to.

Ultimately, I don't think this Chameleon issue is gonna be a very big deal. Those of us who are here are likely to care more than most, and we'll consequently probably learn the list of Chameleon exceptions pretty quickly.

Either way, I'd rather have it than not, because it's a pretty dang neat landscape

5
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 5: More Cards
« on: March 06, 2020, 06:28:24 pm »
As always long arguments about these things may gain some tiny amount from actually having the rulebook.

But that's like, days away from being released. We've gotta pass the time somehow :P

Also, FIVE reactions! That's a big win as far as I'm concerned! Move over, Hinterlands

And I really like the idea of the minor themes of weird timings and weird costs. I imagine they are likely to be cards that hold people's interests longer
EDIT: as far as future previews go, if this set has an alt-VP, I'd definitely be interested in seeing it.

6
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 5: More Cards
« on: March 06, 2020, 05:13:22 pm »
It looks at the cost of the last-gained card as it stands at the time you're buying Wayfarer, not what it cost at the time that card was gained.  So, it's actually quite simple.  When you decide to buy Wayfarer, you say "What was the last card gained this turn, if any?" you identify that card (or answer "no card has been gained", in which case you stop there and treat it like a normal $6 Action card), then you ask "How much would it cost to buy that card right now?" (one slight weirdness here - it might not even be possible to buy that card if the pile is empty, but of course the price you'd pay if it were available is still defined), and then that's the cost of Wayfarer

Yeah I totally agree, although I don't think that's in conflict with what I said, is it? Bridge lowers the Estate, but not also the Wayfarer. So Wayfarer then costs $1, not $0.

I think we're in total agreement

7
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 5: More Cards
« on: March 06, 2020, 04:24:51 pm »
Assuming I'm not misinterpreting the card, I think I can help illustrate how people are overthinking Wayfarer's Cost clause:

Imagine a card with bottom text which reads "this costs $2". You play a Bridge, and for an infinitesimal moment, the card would cost $1, but then you look at the card, and it says "No, I cost $2, remember?" Cost reductions may try to affect the card, but since its effect is persistent (doesn't matter if it's in play or not), it will always instantly reset itself to $2.

The difference between that card and WF? Well, sometimes WF says it costs $2, sometimes it says it costs $3, sometimes it says it costs $8, but whatever the case is, it always* explicitly says that it costs something. If it's telling you "I cost as much as that Estate you gained earlier", the Estate could be impacted by Bridges, but WF itself cannot, because every time you try to change its cost, it politely declines, "No, good sir, I keep telling you, I cost what that Estate you gained earlier cost".

In essence, one of the effects is going to have to fail since they're in conflict. Either Bridge tries to lower WF's cost, but can't, or WF tries to cost what the last gained card cost, but can't. The reason the former is more intuitive to me is because while both cards are trying to mess with WF's cost, bridge is doing so less precisely (it doesn't care what the card will actually cost, so long as it's non-negative), whereas WF has a precise number it's telling you it should cost, even if that number will change as your most recently gained card changes. At any point in time, WF has one specific number in mind.

*There is still the scenario where no cards have been gained this turn (or only Wayfarers have been), in which case I see no reason why Bridge couldn't reduce WF's cost. If no cards have been gained, WF's cost-locking effect isn't activated yet.

8
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 3: Exile
« on: March 04, 2020, 02:12:49 pm »
Nonetheless, I suspect ignoring it will be the correct play quite often. Coven is a silver for most of the game; if other 5$s are sufficiently strong you should win with them even on a clock and with -10VP.
Combines well with other Cursers though. A Coven+Witch is probably a lot better than Witch+Witch.

Wouldn't you rather either double up on Covens or double up on Witches than go Coven+Witch and risk Witch drawing Coven dead?

My thinking is:
If the Kingdom isn't short on +Actions, we forgo the Covens altogether in favor of Witches.
If the Kingdom is short on +Actions, we forgo the Witches altogether in favor of Covens.

9
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 3: Exile
« on: March 04, 2020, 01:57:02 pm »
Coven is fun to me in that it seems to kinda mitigates its own drawbacks. At $5 for a non-terminal Silver, its downside over other $5 cursers (that the curses may miss reshuffles) is mitigated by it being a non-terminal Silver and therefore quicker to empty the pile and trigger the release. And then once that's done, it seems like it'll have one of the least nasty burnouts of all of the $5 cursers. Although even with its speed-up, those first few Curses will still miss some early reshuffles, which will help your opponent's tempo quite a bit.

Also, if the Curse pile runs out, and you choose to never play your Covens again, your opponent is unable to ever trash those Curses. In a Kingdom with good trashing (which is the only scenario in which this would matter anyway), you can get rid of your dead Covens, but your opponent is stuck with the negative VP. With that in mind, it'll be interesting to see if a game of chicken ever arises over how many Curses a player is willing to take before wasting a buy/gain on a Curse.

10
If Menagerie is not in a Menagerie recommended set then I'll eat a Menagerie.

Glass Menagerie:
Fortune Teller is Laura, playing with her glass unicorn, pretending she's psychic and whatnot
Managerie is what Laura imagines her glass menagerie to be in her head
Horse Traders features Tom heading to the """movies"""
Young Witch is what Amanda pretends to be, and the bane of her existence is Harbinger, which incessantly reminds her that she is already a Sea Hag or an Old Witch
Warehouse is where Tom and Jim work
Cobbler is Tom's boss
Fool is Tom and Laura's absent father- lost in the woods, and apparently loving it. Getting away from Amanda was quite the boon I guess.
Capital is the money Tom takes with him when he leaves. It was supposed to pay the electricity candlestick bill, hence Laura and Amanda go into debt.
Poor House is where the play takes place. Use Shelters in this game.
Cursed Village is St. Louis (shots fired- much like in St. Louis)

It also hardly needs to be remarked that buying a Cursed Village brings all kinds of Hexes about. Our protagonists were born into circumstances such as Delusion, Envy, Fear, Misery, and Poverty

Jester is the Gentlemen Caller. But don't actually include him in the Kingdom; Gentlemen Callers never actually show up for Laura

11
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Menagerie Previews 2: Horses
« on: March 03, 2020, 03:16:57 pm »
Was really hoping that Horses would be like Castles and Knights (which would also have a lovely thematic benefit), but I guess in Dominion, a Horse is a Horse, of course, of course.

Livery is proof that we will never see a card that increases the cost of things, as otherwise it could gain the entire Horse pile.

If a cost increaser (let's name it "Highwayman") were a Night - Duration - Attack, it could read something like "Until your next turn, cards cost $1 more. For the rest of your turn, the only card you can play is Highwayman". You could instead make that second sentence "Your turn immediately ends", but then this attack is only marginally different from Bridge Troll's attack. With this wording, Highwayman's attack is to Highway as Bridge Troll's attack is to Bridge.

Anyway, that text should prevent you from getting all of the Horses, even with Outpost or Mission.

That way, the only person who can gain the entire Horse pile is an opponent you attacked, and you would have nobody to blame but yourself for playing a cost increaser Attack in a game where Livery is in the Kingdom. The only counter example I can think of is that you could get all of the Horses by playing Possession + this hypothetical cost increaser, assuming the possessed player has Liveries in deck. Even then, either player would have a chance of getting all of the Horses. You may go through their entire turn, find no Liveries, then draw a Livery for them in clean-up and secure them the 30 Horses.

Nevertheless, like you, I'd also bet on cost increasers never existing. The -1 Coin token accomplishes a similar enough idea.

12
Dominion Articles / Re: What's stopping AI from mastering Dominion?
« on: March 13, 2018, 09:50:24 am »
I wonder if AlphaZero can learn Dominion.
It learned chess and go by just self play, the only imput was rules.
The question is whether randomness and hidden informatin is limit for AlphaZero?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero
I have not read the paper, it would take me a lot of time to understand that...;)

The common element uniting the three different games that AlphaZero learned (Chess, Go, and Shogi) is that they are all played on square boards where only one piece can inhabit a space at a time. Chess is played on a 8X8 board, Go on a 19X19, and Shogi on a 9X9. From the relevant part of the paper:

Quote
The input to the neural network is an N X N (MT + L) image stack that represents state
using a concatenation of T sets of M planes of size N X N

It seems like the optimal way to represent a Dominion board is fundamentally not an N X N plane. There are issues to contend with like how the order of cards matters in your deck and your In-Play area, but not in your hand, discard, the trash, or your tavern mat. Additionally, the order of Kingdom card piles does not matter, but the order of the cards in those piles can matter (Knights and Split Piles. And the order of Split Pile cards can't even be assumed thanks to Encampment, as well as Ambassador shenanigans).

Also, the Deck and In-Play area theoretically have an infinite size. There is no official rule stating that you can't have more than X cards in your deck or in play (and such a rule will probably never exist, because it kinda goes against the spirit of Dominion). AlphaZero needs to be trained on a single board size at a time. The only way to get around that would be to calculate the theoretical biggest deck you could ever construct. Such a setup would probably include Black Market, Rats, Young Witch (because she adds Bane cards), a Looter (for Ruins), Urchin (for Mercenary), Hermit (for Madman), a card that gains Spoils, a Potion cost, etc. The end result will be some number one or two orders of magnitude bigger than the board sizes that AlphaZero has played on that would make it inconvenient to represent to the AI. Consider for a moment that it will almost never build a deck anywhere near as big as the biggest possible deck, yet we need it to be able to do so just to keep it from breaking should it ever encounter such a thing. The "image stack" of Dominion is not so basic, so movement from one "space" on the Dominion "board" to another can't generally be represented as a grid as AlphaZero does.

Now, I don't know how important the grid structure actually is to AlphaZero's success. For all I know, it could be the case that the AlphaZero methodology can handle Dominion if only it's reworked to be able to represent the inputs properly (though personally, I doubt it). But the point is that AlphaZero is not currently equipped to handle such a game, and it would take a deliberate effort on DeepMind's part to retool it significantly.

13
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Confessions
« on: March 10, 2018, 12:11:30 pm »
When talking about an avatar, there are 2 things that matter to me more than how viable a card is:

1) How much fun I've had with the card
2) How much I like the artwork

The artwork is my favorite in the game, and an On-Buy Remodel is a fun concept to me. Although I rarely buy Farmland, the games where I built decks around them when it was new were fun. I probably got my ass kicked, but I had fun, which is a primary goal of a game after all ;)

15
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities
« on: March 09, 2018, 10:59:34 am »
So I looked on Chase's profile and noticed that he's a little bit younger than the typical forum member. Given some of the stuff he has said, I don't think he is looking for the kind of feedback that most of us are interested in giving. It sounds like he and his family play a lot of Dominion together as a fun family activity and not necessarily as a cutthroat competitive experience, and that's great! Dominion appeals to different people for different reasons! The more the merrier! But I get the feeling that Chase was trying to flex his creative muscle, and is feeling overwhelmed because he didn't anticipate so much constructive feedback, and he's interpreting it as negativity.

Chase, I have a younger brother your age. You sorta remind me of him. He also plays the game a lot and really enjoys making fan cards. Although he hasn't even been playing for a full year yet, so you're probably a lot better than him. You seem to really enjoy Dominion, and that's great :) I hope you continue to for many years, because it's a wonderful game! I've noticed in other threads that people have gotten into small debates with you about which cards are good vs which ones suck. I also noticed in this thread that you said everyone was giving you crap. I worry that this forum might end up upsetting you if you're mostly used to talking about Dominion with family and friends. Please remember that people on this forum are highly opinionated, and they don't shy away from disagreement or honest critique. It's not because they are all jerks, it's because they are interested in honest analysis, playing the game at the highest level they can, and thinking about fan cards as a game designer would. Even Donald X, the guy who made the game, spends hours and hours designing, testing, and tweaking cards until they are perfect. It takes a lot of work and a desire to get honest feedback about your cards, and even then, sometimes an idea just doesn't work for him in the end and has to be thrown out.

If you had fun making these cards, and you have fun playing with them, then maybe that's all that matters. But if you're hoping to get a lot of positive feedback about them and just enjoy them for what they are, you might want to just share them with family and friends. Because I don't think you'll be happy with the feedback you'll get online. Some people here have been playing the game for 5-10 years, and have spent a ton of time designing cards. So when they see an idea that they think doesn't work, they get straight to the point, because they want to help you improve them. I hope you don't take that personally. Criticism is part of the creative process. You'll need to decide if you're interested in that kind of experience or not.

16
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities
« on: March 08, 2018, 06:59:28 pm »
My favorite thing about villain is that if you have five of them each other player discards their whole hand
I'm not trying to be mean, but, do you think that could ever realistically happen? At that point you would've spent like a hundred coins and could have easily ended the game already

17
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities
« on: March 08, 2018, 12:12:27 pm »
Might Rainbow be workable if it said "when an opponent plays an Attack card, you may play this as a copy of that attack card"? It would still probably have issues, but it might at least be coherent in terms of rules.
That's a good thought. It might have to have a lot of Caravan Guard-esque exceptions listed in parentheses. It would probably also need the Band of Misfits/Overlord clause: "this is that card until it leaves play"

18
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Confessions
« on: March 08, 2018, 08:48:34 am »
I should probably switch my pic but... I love the Farmland so much... So I'm kinda torn
Farmland is weak. There‘s absolutely no reason to pick such a weak card as avatar.
I won't lie, I was proofreading my serious reply when I finally caught the joke.

You one-upped us though. You've got the username to boot

19
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities
« on: March 08, 2018, 07:09:57 am »
Part of the reason I made cards with the curse type is to make powerful cards cheap. Cursed coin is one that you can open with if you get 5/2. Also when you remodel it at the end of the game you can get a kings court.

I get what you're saying, but your card can still have -1VP and not have the Curse type. Like, it could be the exact same card, but classified as an Action-Victory instead.

20
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Confessions
« on: March 07, 2018, 09:00:51 pm »
Forest - you find the old Woodcutter in the forest, but he's old and depressed so he's not as good
what a downer. he's been discontinued. he was taught to tie his identity to his profession.
He used to make money. He used to be able to buy so many nice things
I thought ehunt was replying to himself at first.
I should probably switch my pic but... I love the Farmland so much... So I'm kinda torn

21
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities
« on: March 07, 2018, 07:24:36 pm »
The cleanest way to do a -vp card is to have it give each other player vp tokens when it's gained. This also gets rid of the fact the drawback doesn't do anything if it's easy to trash the card.
It also makes it so that you definitely aren't going to be trashing that card you just paid such a high price for. Depending on OP's goal, that may be more or less preferable.
Even if we agree to avoid the Curse type, is it really so confusing to print "-1VP" on a card? We already have Poor House with its "-$1"
Who said you're paying a high price?
Lol, me. I'm the one who said it :P Though, I was exaggerating a little.

I don't really understand your point, I'll still remodel the crap out the thing if I want but I still suffer the -vp with the token version
That giving my opponents each a VP chip is worse than giving myself a Curse (or some pseudo-curse card) which I may be able to trash later, so it just depends on what OP is going for. I'm saying it's a totally legit solution to the problem, OP would just have to decide what kind of experience they're going for. Either they want it to be possible (but difficult) to get rid of the penalty, or they don't.

I never said the -1vp was confusing. We already have Curse with -1vp
Haha right, so we agree then. My bad, I thought that when you said the simplest solution was to give everyone else a VP, that you were saying that printing "-1VP" would be too confusing

22
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Confessions
« on: March 07, 2018, 06:49:53 pm »
Forest - you find the old Woodcutter in the forest, but he's old and depressed so he's not as good

what a downer. he's been discontinued. he was taught to tie his identity to his profession.
He used to make money. He used to be able to buy so many nice things

23
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities
« on: March 07, 2018, 06:18:13 pm »
Hero says "Gain a Treasure".
Fair enough. You've changed my mind.

24
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities
« on: March 07, 2018, 06:15:58 pm »
There's no real reason to have the curse type on cards other than to confuse people.
OR to trigger off of cards that refer to the Curse type. Maybe it's not a good reason, but it is a real reason.

The cleanest way to do a -vp card is to have it give each other player vp tokens when it's gained. This also gets rid of the fact the drawback doesn't do anything if it's easy to trash the card.

It also makes it so that you definitely aren't going to be trashing that card you just paid such a high price for. Depending on OP's goal, that may be more or less preferable.

Even if we agree to avoid the Curse type, is it really so confusing to print "-1VP" on a card? We already have Poor House with its "-$1"

25
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Cities
« on: March 07, 2018, 05:32:18 pm »
I think it's obvious by typical Dominion wording that "Gain a ___" refers to a specific card name
Yeah, I love gaining cards named "Victory" with Rebuild.
Rebuild says "gain a Victory Card", not "gain a Victory"

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