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126

Dominion Articles / Re: The Infinite Number of Fundamental Deck Types

« on: September 18, 2017, 04:14:03 pm »

If I tell you I played an Engine, do you immediately know what my specific solutions to the obstacles were?

Yes. They were a generalized version of this: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=17572.msg719842#msg719842

You said "yes", but then you linked me to an answer which is a definitive 100% "no". I can't just say "Engine" and have you understand what that deck's solution to the 7 obstacles are, as evidenced by the fact that you and Faust discussed 2 completely different yet equally enginey engines, each with different solutions to the 7 obstacles.

I mean, Faust literally said "So would you say that "engine" actually is a term that encompasses multiple similar, but not identical, strategies?"

So no, not one thing, and not one unique set of solutions to the obstacles.

Furthermore, can you really say that all of your Big Money decks are purely Big Money with not even the slightest hints of an Engine? You never pick up a Smithy or a Governor or a JoaT to supplement your money? I suspect you would argue that that's still just Big Money. So then where would the cutoff be? If I pickup a Lab to supplement my Smithy/BM, is it still BM? Exactly how many Action Cards must I be running to qualify as an Engine? As far as I'm concerned, the only proper way to resolve such questions is to consider it on a spectrum, where Engine and BM are inversely correlated. And really, that doesn't contradict your argument that the two should not be mixed. If they're inversely correlated, it's not a stretch to argue that perhaps there are very few (or no) cards which support a mixture of BM and Engine. I'm just arguing that such a deck, however terrible, can be created.

You can run 239487523194085723049857230948750923 Action cards in your big money deck. Being big money or being engine doesn't have anything to do with the number of Action cards — the number of Action cards is a superficial attribute so we don't have to pay any attention to that.

This is the same misrepresentation Faust used a bit ago. It seems like you're deliberately ignoring the definition of Engine I have used multiple times, in favor of this "You're saying Action cards = Engine" thing, just to be able to knock down the straw man easier.

It's a big money deck if its solutions to the obstacles are the ones I posted in the article, and it's an engine deck if its solutions to the obstacles are the ones faust posted in the first reply.

Your article never claims "This is the definition of Big Money". It says "This is how Big Money overcomes the obstacles". Furthermore, neither your definition of BM or Faust's 2 differing definitions of Engines are all-encompassing or rigid. So can they really be called definitions? I considered them examples of Big Money and examples of Engines when I read this. I didn't realize (and I would guess others didn't realize either) that you were aiming to say that all Engines must fall into one of those two types.

So then, for example, the article says that with BM, "All the high-quality cards you buy are good on their own". So if I buy one card that isn't good on its own, it's no longer BM? I think most people would disagree with you on that. This is the slippery slope I was trying to establish earlier. There is no black and white point at which the BM stops being BM just because I add in one more card which isn't good on its own. Having cards which are good on their own (ie "no moving pieces") makes something more BM, and having cards which are not good on their own makes it more of an Engine.

Additionally, the article says this about BM: "Also, green cards will take a while to show up because your deck is fairly big and you’re not cycling through it very fast". So if I cycle through my BM deck fast it's no longer BM? Again, I think most would disagree with your definitions here. If I throw a Warehouse or Smithy into my BM, it doesn't magically become not-a-BM. You're acting like BM and Engine can't possibly be on a spectrum because they have rigid definitions, but then your definitions upon further examination are not at all rigid and don't hold up to scrutiny or common examples.

If you don't address the 7 obstacles, you don't have a strategy

Says who? What definition are you using of "Strategy"? Because any definition I have ever seen of the word allows for the Strategy to be ineffective. I could plan to win by 3-pilling the Estates, Ruins, and Poachers. It's a terrible strategy, but it's still a strategy.

A pure big money deck handles the challenges of deck building perfectly.

This is almost too bizarre of a claim to even respond to. It should be obvious why this isn't true. If pure BM handled all challenges posed to it perfectly, nobody would even build Engines in the first place.

If you play big money and lose, the problem isn't that you didn't have enough moving parts in your big money deck

Which is not what I said

the problem is that there was something better than big money available and you should have built that instead.

Which is exactly what I said, unless you ignore the fact that I have stated that "more moving parts is what defines an Engine, and less is what defines BM", as you and Faust have done.

1) The phrasing "You need a good economy" or "You need a way to draw your good cards" gets the job done in a more generalized way

I don't think it does it in a more generalized way. The fact that you only draw 5 cards applies universally

It doesn't though, because in many games this problem goes completely ignored. What never gets ignored is the fact that you need a good economy. You said that Rush decks don't have an economy, and that just leads me to believe that we're not even using the same definition of "economy" (I'm noticing a trend here).

But it seems like you think that's one solution, and it's not. There are many ways to not have leftover money. You could get +Buy, you could use Plaza to convert them to Coin Tokens, or you could dump them into Overpays

I don't think the exact method of achieving your goal that is not having leftover money is relevant to characterizing your strategy. Either way, you're achieving that goal, and achieving that goal is the solution to the obstacle.

But it feels like you're losing sight of the reason we're even talking about +Buy. You originally made it sound like you were considering removing the "You only have 1 Buy" thing from the 7 obstacles, and the reason you gave (as I understood it) was that there's only ever really one solution to that problem. As we have just established, this is not the case. I can name at least 3 (since we're disagreeing on the Gainer thing), but you're still acting like those 3 are just 1.

127

Dominion Articles / Re: The Infinite Number of Fundamental Deck Types

« on: September 18, 2017, 02:15:47 pm »

I didn't read the whole back and forth between Awaclus and FemurLemur, but my feeling is that if you have a different idea for how to classify deck types, you can write your own article.  Saying that you have your own ideas for how to classify decks is not a good critique of someone else's framework.  Yes, we all have ideas for how to classify decks.

My perspective on deck classifications is not a critique of Awaclus' work. I like Awaclus' article, and the critiques I did have of it are completely separate from the classification debate. My perspective on classification is only meant to contribute to the conversation which was already ongoing when I joined in. The one involving Seprix, AJD, Awaclus, and a couple others.

You probably didn't see it in the wall of text I posted, but I told Awaclus that the fact that we're mostly disagreeing on abstract classifications and pedantic stuff is a testament to the fact that it's a valuable article as-is.

You're totally right, that wouldn't be a good critique. Rest assured, it is not meant as a critique, it's meant as interesting discussion. He can publish his article right now without giving this classification thing another fraction of a thought, and that's cool with me

128

Dominion Articles / Re: The Infinite Number of Fundamental Deck Types

« on: September 18, 2017, 12:54:57 pm »

Exactly how many Action Cards must I be running to qualify as an Engine?

This question shows that what Awaclus tries to tell you did not really get across. How many action cards you play per turn has no impact on what kind of deck you are running. I can probably build a deck from nothing but Bank, Travelling Fair, Expedition, that never plays any Actions and is still pretty clearly an engine. Likewise, I could theoretically play a Big Money deck in which I never buy any Treasures (maybe due to Bandit Fort), just using stuff like Mystic.

I guess the term "Big Money" is not ideal as it conveys a false image of what makes such a deck.

I feel that taking my question out of context only shows that you're assuming my position. Notice, I didn't say Engine = Actions (or that BM = Treasures). I said, in my example, at what point after adding supporting Action Card after supporting Action Card does the BM stop being BM and starts to be an Engine?

Your example of an Actionless-Engine fits my definition of an Engine just fine: that it has multiple moving pieces. Likewise, your Bandit Fort example does not violate my definition of pure Big Money: that it has no moving pieces. If I were to trash all of my coppers and just live off of Markets, it fits my definition of a pure BM. So from my perspective, it sounds like you're not understanding my argument.


What I'm asking is, if one is going to argue that there is no BM/Engine spectrum, then what is the objective definition of the two of them, such that I cannot build a deck which blurs the line and qualifies as both? The way I see it, if the camp that says BM and Engine are discrete things is unable to come up with a well-defined description of them, and I have a better defined (probably measurable) definition that argues for them being on a continuous spectrum, then it's the preferable way of looking at things.

People want to point out the decks that don't fit into one of WW's categories, but that to me is not an argument for there being infinitely many categories, or for there even necessarily being a couple we're missing. It's an argument that we're being too literal with the examples/concepts that WW first observed. Decks have varying degrees of Preferred Pace (Slog/Rush) and Interaction Complexity (BM/Engine). That is a classification that works. Constantly adding more and more classification types seems unnecessary to me right now (although I'm happy to being proven wrong here). Like adding more axioms when you could just formalize the existing ones better to prove things.


One final thing I'd like to mention, not directed at Faust, but just anyone who might be skeptical about the fact that my idea seems different from WW's: whether or not my interpretation is what WW had in mind (it's probably not) when he wrote the article doesn't have any impact on its validity. I'm only saying this because I anticipate that somebody is thinking it as they read this, and I guess Awaclus kinda hinted at it earlier.

Newton didn't have Relativity in mind when publishing his theory of gravitation. That fact doesn't invalidate Einstein's theory. (Please don't read too much into this statement. I know I am not an "Einstein of Dominion". It was the best analogy I could think up, and yes, it has the potential to come across as pretentious as hell. I promise I'm not that self-important, and I don't think that my argument is the Dominion equivalent of Relativity. Feel free to send you mockery this way and we'll have a good laugh at my own expense)

129

Dominion Articles / Re: The Infinite Number of Fundamental Deck Types

« on: September 18, 2017, 10:54:42 am »

I'm not really taking issue with WW's types. Big money is a deck type, it has certain solutions to the obstacles

Do they though? If I tell you I played an Engine, do you immediately know what my specific solutions to the obstacles were? I don't think any of the 4 deck types actually imply one and only one answer to each of those questions.

As far as I'm concerned, as soon as you mix big money and engine, you're guaranteed to lose against someone who just plays big money or just plays engine.

Just to be clear: "Guaranteed to lose" is not the same thing as "Does not exist". If I say "A player could even trash their Provinces with Chapel!" you wouldn't then say "No they can't, because as far as I'm concerned they're guaranteed to lose." A bad strategy does not equal a nonexistent strategy. I'm not saying that one should play an even mix of BM and Engine, just that they are inversely correlated, and one theoretically could do it.

Furthermore, can you really say that all of your Big Money decks are purely Big Money with not even the slightest hints of an Engine? You never pick up a Smithy or a Governor or a JoaT to supplement your money? I suspect you would argue that that's still just Big Money. So then where would the cutoff be? If I pickup a Lab to supplement my Smithy/BM, is it still BM? Exactly how many Action Cards must I be running to qualify as an Engine? As far as I'm concerned, the only proper way to resolve such questions is to consider it on a spectrum, where Engine and BM are inversely correlated. And really, that doesn't contradict your argument that the two should not be mixed. If they're inversely correlated, it's not a stretch to argue that perhaps there are very few (or no) cards which support a mixture of BM and Engine. I'm just arguing that such a deck, however terrible, can be created.

Also, I have actually lost matches and thought "I should have had less moving pieces like my opponent did" or even thought after a match that I would have done better if I had added a couple more moving pieces to support my previously purely Big Money deck. I'm not arguing that there's some magic sweet spot on the BM/Engine scale or Rush/Slog scale that one should be shooting for (and I don't think WanderingWinder ever argued there was). What's best is entirely dependent on the Kingdom. The efficacy of one's moving pieces is determined by how well they solve the fundamental issues of building a deck such as only having 1 Action, only having 1 Buy, etc.

Are you sure that, in those cases, the important thing was the number of moving parts you had in your deck, not the abilities of the exact cards you had in your deck and ended up not needing very much or the abilities of the exact cards you didn't have and would have needed?

The above quote does lead me to believe that we're actually thinking in similar terms on a practical level, and we're just getting hung up on the more abstract level. Just to make sure I'm making my thoughts clear: what I'm trying to get across is that I feel the definition of an Engine is the number of moving parts, regardless of whether the engine works or not. You can construct a crappy engine. It happens. It's still an engine, it's just that the engine you set up fails to properly address the 7 questions you posed in this article. So my underlying interpretation of WW's deck classifications is not that they give you any strategic insight- that's what your 7 questions do. Like I said before, my interpretation is that WW's classifications tell you what is being attempted, not how effective the attempt is.

So I have had situations where I felt that I had too few moving parts relative to the 7 questions you're asking. Or in other words, situations where I look at the Kingdom and say "In this situation, an Engine actually handles the primary challenges of deck building better than my Big Money approach did, so more moving parts would have paid off more effectively here"

I'm not saying or implying that it's about that. I think we're just experiencing a miscommunication.

Oh. It sounded like you were saying that a lot of newbies fail to see how strong +buy is, but I guess it wasn't about that.

This is my fault. What I was trying to say at the end of my original reply was that, tangentially, it's a little bonus that by splitting the "Only have 5 cards" apart from the "Only have 1 Buy", new players psychologically are forced to consider the weight of that problem. But I explained it very poorly. I'm not trying to say that the goal of the article is/should be to help new players understand the value of +Buy (or any other mechanic), but rather that it's just a nice little bonus if that happens. I'm also not trying to say that that's my primary reason for arguing for splitting that question in two, but again, I could see how you thought that, because I explained it horribly. The fact that it will help new players is mostly irrelevant, so I honestly should have just left it out. It was just a last minute thought that popped into my head. Pretty much just an ADD moment.

Being able to control what those cards are is a separate issue covered by obstacle #6.

Totally, and that was what I meant in my original reply when I said something along the lines of "You've already covered this elsewhere". Like I said, the fact that I only draw 5 cards is a less generalized version of the real issue, which is that I need to somehow get enough buying power to buy that Province (or whatever else is gonna win me the game). My handsize only matters to me sometimes. The fact that I need some form of increase to my economy matters to me all the time. I know we're on the same page on this because:

The fact that you only draw 5 cards doesn't mean that you're supposed to draw more than 5 cards

But I guess all I'm really telling you is that some readers are going to read it that way. They will think that they somehow need to increase their hand size (maybe it's the reader's fault for assuming, but I'm just saying, they're gonna do it whether it's a fallacy or not), when in reality, as we both understand, that's only one solution. All I'm proposing to you here is that:

1) The phrasing "You need a good economy" or "You need a way to draw your good cards" gets the job done in a more generalized way
2) What I just proposed overlaps with previous #'s from your original article, and is therefore redundant
3) This is unrelated to the +Buy issue.

That's not the only solution to Buys. You can work around them by splitting your focus between Treasures and Gainers (thus eliminating the need for extra Buys but still increasing the rate at which you can acquire cards). Coin tokens and Overpay are also a solution to not having extra Buys.

Not having extra gains isn't really the issue here; most decks don't need extra gains anyway. The issue is leftover money.

No, I didn't say not having extra gains is the problem, I said it was an example of a solution to not having +Buy.

Problem: I want to 3-pile, but I worry I'll have a lot of money and no +Buy
Possible Solution: Pick up Ironworks instead of so many Silvers/Golds, then you will have a bit of a lower money density and will still be picking up a lot of cards.

That's all I'm getting at.

You deal with it by not having it

But it seems like you think that's one solution, and it's not. There are many ways to not have leftover money. You could get +Buy, you could use Plaza to convert them to Coin Tokens, or you could dump them into Overpays.



I probably didn't make this as clear in my original reply as I would've liked, but it really is a good article. The fact that we're mostly disagreeing on abstract interpretations of deck classifications and pedantic stuff is kind of a testament to that. I think it will be valuable to a lot of players. I just disagree on certain specific phrasings, and thought I'd chime in with my 2 cents.

130

Dominion Articles / Re: The Infinite Number of Fundamental Deck Types

« on: September 18, 2017, 07:59:31 am »

Mainly, the problem with this is that the number of "moving pieces" doesn't really make any difference from a strategic perspective, it's just a superficial attribute, and the same is true for whether you're using alt-VP or basic Victory cards. In other words, have you ever lost a game and concluded that you could have won that game if only your strategy had had some more moving pieces?

Similarly, have you ever lost a game and said "If only I had gone more Big Money, I would have won"? It sounds to me like you're taking issue with the 4 deck types laid out by WanderingWinder more than my interpretation of them. It's true that my interpretation doesn't answer many strategic questions for you, but that also wasn't really my goal. I feel like your 7 questions already do a fine job of that. The 4 deck types are really more useful for explaining what a player's strategy was, but not necessarily how effective their strategy was. It's a matter of classification more than objective assessment of strengths. Once you've determined what deck types you and your opponent used/are using, you look at the Kingdom and decide whether the cards really lend themselves to those deck types or if they're being countered (for example, is it really reasonable for me to expect to Rush when there are Cultists on the table and no trashers? This is where your 7 questions come in)

Also, I have actually lost matches and thought "I should have had less moving pieces like my opponent did" or even thought after a match that I would have done better if I had added a couple more moving pieces to support my previously purely Big Money deck. I'm not arguing that there's some magic sweet spot on the BM/Engine scale or Rush/Slog scale that one should be shooting for (and I don't think WanderingWinder ever argued there was). What's best is entirely dependent on the Kingdom. The efficacy of one's moving pieces is determined by how well they solve the fundamental issues of building a deck such as only having 1 Action, only having 1 Buy, etc.

This isn't about the strength of cards or the strength of effects.

I'm not saying or implying that it's about that. I think we're just experiencing a miscommunication.

so the part about 5 cards is necessary because different strategies have different solutions to it.

What I'm saying is that "You only have 5 cards" is a less generalized version of the real issue, which is that you might draw bad cards. Increasing the number of cards you draw is just a way to increase the probability of getting to the good cards in your deck (which is mathematically represented using the Hypergeometric Function). When I said "I don't necessarily care how many cards I have so much as I care about my ability to pay for things", my point was that, if I draw 3 Golds, I literally couldn't care less about the supposed problem of "You only draw 5 cards". It's like, yeah, I only drew 5, but so what? I drew what I needed, and now I can get a Province. The real issue, to me, is best generalized as the fact that you can't control what your 5 cards will be. But the actual number of cards is an arbitrary issue. It's not like there's any Victory card in Dominion that says "You may only buy this if you have at least 8 cards in hand" (though maybe that would be a cool card).

To give an example: Warehouse doesn't actually increase the number of cards in my hand. So would you look at Warehouse and say it doesn't solve the supposed issue? I would say it does: If I use Warehouse to sift through my deck and get to the cards I want, then I really don't care about the fact that I now only have 4 cards in hand. The number of cards in hand doesn't strictly matter. It's the probability that you will get your good cards that you care about, and increasing handsize is just one of many ways to resolve that issue. Phrasing it as "How will you resolve the problem that you only draw 5 cards?" is assuming the solution in the question.

but so far I haven't been able to think of a strategy where the solution to buys can't just be generalized as "you match your buying power with the number of buys you have available to be able to buy the things you need".

That's not the only solution to Buys. You can work around them by splitting your focus between Treasures and Gainers (thus eliminating the need for extra Buys but still increasing the rate at which you can acquire cards). Coin tokens and Overpay are also a solution to not having extra Buys.

131

Dominion Articles / Re: The Infinite Number of Fundamental Deck Types

« on: September 17, 2017, 04:32:57 pm »

Maybe I'm oversimplifying/thinking of this incorrectly, but I tend to think of the traditional deck types as being on a 2d spectrum, similar to these now common charts people use to discuss political views.

One can have different combinations of the 4 (ignoring the ever-vague "combo") deck types, but you wouldn't really say that your deck is both a Rush and a Slog, nor would you say you have a Big Money and Engine deck. You might say that your deck is inbetween a Rush and a Slog, but it seems reasonable that those two ideas are inversely related, the same way BM and Engine are. Increasing how much your deck is a Rush decreases how much it's a Slog.

So, my Cache/Gardens strategy is a Big Money Slog, whereas maybe a more traditional Gardens game is pretty evenly BM/Engine, but is still a Slog. Going for just straight Chapel and Golds would be a BM Rush, whereas something like a Bridge Megaturn deck might be a Rush Engine. A "Golden Deck", to me, is a deck which is typically on the extreme end of the Engine and Rush quadrant. It aims to leverage actions for total control over luck/guarentee VPs (signs of an Engine), while aiming to be faster than many Megaturn decks which may take a fair amount of set-up (signs that it's a Rush).

I think the difference between a Rush/Slog is more obvious. Alt VP tends to move things in the Slog direction, "traditional", deck-thinning trashing moves it in the Rush direction, etc. But debate seems more likely to stem from the exact meanings of BM and Engine. For me, it's generally a matter of how many moving pieces we're talking about. If I just pick up some Governors and fists full of cash- Big Money. Or, as mentioned before, if I'm just loading up on Caches and Gardens- Big Money. If I get more sophisticated and throw in some gainers or sifters, now my Gardens strategy has become a bit more Enginey. So I think of Big Money as less moving parts and Engines as more. If you're a fan of Super Smash Bros slang, the more "wombo combo" your strategy becomes, the more we're talking Engine and less we're talking Big Money. At least in my mind.

To me, "Combo" is kinda just a nebulous term to describe the 4 quadrants, when really it may be more valuable to specify things like "an Engine which is about 50/50 on the Rush/Slog scale" or "a heavy Slog that starts out Big Money to afford the parts, and then becomes a late-game Engine". But again, this could just be a fundamental misunderstanding on my part. I'm interested to know what others think.



I agree with the sentiment others have shared that there's a lot of value in the 7 questions the article offers up that should probably be addressed when crafting a plan. To avoid confusion, I might simplify the "You only have 5 cards and 1 Buy" thing into "You only have 1 Buy". I don't necessarily care how many cards I have so much as I care about my ability to pay for things (which may get supplemented by card draw, actions which give coins, high value treasures, gainers, coin tokens, etc.), and I feel like you have that covered elsewhere in your 7 questions.

I think a lot of players understand early on that drawing more cards is nice. Who doesn't love a Hunting Grounds or Smithy? But I've taught a lot of new players who undervalue +Buy. So I think it pays to call it out as its own question and force players to consider whether they're going to need extra buys to make their plan work well.

132

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cost Distributions over the Years

« on: September 13, 2017, 02:29:19 pm »

the background card art doesn't help convey any information

It does actually. It conveys costs. The alternative is to have each region be a different shade of grey, which necessitates the reader consulting a legend and trying to figure out which shade of gray is the $4, which is the $5, etc. Conventional wisdom these days is that you shouldn't have a legend in your graph unless there's no alternative. Legends are an inconvenience to the reader. This hypothetical legend (which isn't really hypothetical, because I tried it originally when designing the graph) especially would be horrible because we're asking readers to distinguish between 8 different shades of the same color.

Now, it can be argued that it would be best if each region only had one card image instead of four, but that would have required stretching the card art to obnoxious proportions (or asking RGG/Donald X for a super high res image for 8 different cards that could be zoomed really far into, which (1) might not even exist, (2) I am probably not privy to even if I ask politely, because they don't know me from Adam, (3) they may not be legally allowed to disclose anyway depending on the terms of the contract between the publisher, designer, and artists, and (4) "You're asking us for this huge favor just so you can make a graph??"). The only other alternative is to make each region an unrelated color, such as having $5 = Orange, $4 = Green, etc. This is a bad move because it fails to convey how the region above it is exactly $1 more than the region below it. Also it's ugly and requires a legend. Don't underestimate the value of a visually appealing graph. People will stop looking if it's ugly, as it reminds them of math homework. A pretty visual keeps them looking long enough to digest the info.

The point is taken though. I might play with contrast to make the differences between each region pop more. You probably can't tell, but I already made it so that each region is slightly more transparent than the one below it, in attempt to make them more distinguished. All I can tell you is, if you saw the original side by side with this one, you'd know it worked. But your feedback that it's still hard to read is helpful. I'll see what I can do. But I'm not convinced that ditching background images is the right way to go.

In your post you say you want to compare the distributions of sets, but it looks like you are plotting the cumulative distribution of card costs over time

No, I didn't say that. The title of the post is "Cost Distributions over the Years", and in my post I said "it's a time axis, but with set icons instead of dates as labels", as well as, "with the x-axis being time and the y-axis being %". I think you may have just misread it. The reason the labels are set icons instead of dates is because, if the axis labels tells somebody that in October 2010 the $5 cards went from being 3.75% of the card pool to 5.71%, their next logical question is "what's the significance of October 2010?". The answer being "That's when Prosperity came out". So why not just cut out the middleman and put the set icons- the relevant information- in as the labels? It's less cluttered, more pleasing to the eye, and it answers the questions that people will naturally have anyway. This doesn't mean I'm trying to compare the distributions of each set though. One wouldn't even use an area graph for that, one would use a bar graph.

While this is also interesting, it will make it harder to notice significant differences of composition in later sets

Which is not the purpose of this graph at all. To use an analogy, that's like complaining that this graph, while also being interesting, will make it harder to notice significant differences in how each individual city or county voted. Making a graph illustrating the cost distributions of each individual set would be interesting, and I would be willing to do it if you and/or others are interested. But that's not this graph's intent.

I'd be tempted to group the sets into four or five time periods

I am not a fan of this idea. What value do we gain by washing out detail?

I'd also consider grouping the costs into three categories

Again, what value do we gain when you can just do this manually with your own eyes? The $3 and $4 regions are right next to each other on the graph. Each region is ordered by cost. So you can just add them together visually. By bucketing data, I force all readers to bucket them, whereas if I leave all data unbucketed, those who want bucketing can bucket with their eyes (at least with the y-axis. You can't do it as well with the x-axis due to the bars being spaced out, which is why I'm making another version with promos bucketed for people like Donald X who don't care to see them separated out).

something like: low (2 and below), mid (3-4) and high (everything else)

Look at the graph though, the 3-4 region would be massive. Besides, there's a non-trivial difference between $3 and $4 cards in Dominion. What do we gain by washing out detail?

I would also try to slot Potion and Debt costs into these bins in sensible ways

The only sensible way to consider Potions is by using Complex or "Imaginary" numbers (ie two-dimensional numbers). Doing that means making this graph three-dimensional, which is a no-go, especially if you're already concerned that the graph is hard to read as-is. Plus, the number of potion costing cards in the game is low enough that they would appear very small on a graph. If there were a sequel to Alchemy which added more potion cost cards, we could gain something from analyzing potion cost cards. But for now, there just aren't many of them, and that step into the 3rd dimension would cause more confusion than it's worth.

133

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cost Distributions over the Years

« on: September 11, 2017, 04:41:43 pm »

You're not alone.  Among f.ds and online players, you're certainly right. But I expect the vast majority of real-life Dominion copies will still contain the removed  cards for now and probably many years to come - it seems very unlikely that the base game + update packs sold more copies in the past 1 year than the old base game did in 8 years...

This is true. Although the target audience here is f.ds and online players primarily. I wouldn't be surprised if the f.ds community is pretty split over whether they actually still use those removed cards or not.

When editing the post with the updated graph I may just put one version in as an image (probably the No-promo/1stE cards excluded version), then the others (No-promo/1stE included, as well as the original one graph for posterity) as hyperlinks to keep the post from getting unwieldy. I think it's reasonable that which version a person prefers will depend on their own circumstances, and I don't think it'll be too time consuming to tweak/maintain. I tried to make the first one as automated as possible since I knew I'd be updating it in a month

134

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cost Distributions over the Years

« on: September 11, 2017, 12:10:00 pm »

If I were putting together this data, I would probably take the dropped first edition cards out at the same time I added the second edition ones. They're not being printed anymore, they're not online. They're effectively ex-canon. It would give a better view of what the cost distribution actually is right now.

Yeah that's an excellent point. I still play with the removed cards IRL, so for me the above graph is an accurate view of the actual distribution right now. But for the majority of players, those cards stopped being relevant once 2nd Edition was released. Since I'm going back to adjust how promos are bucketed in the data, it makes sense to change this too.

135

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cost Distributions over the Years

« on: September 11, 2017, 11:05:50 am »

For a while now, I have felt like we see a lot more $5 kingdom cards released than in the early days of Dominion.

Early on I thought it was important to have $4's, because by default nothing costs $4, but there's always Estate / Silver / Duchy / Gold covering those costs. This was obviously foolish, and these days I think it's important to have $5's, because uh. They loom larger? You build towards them and they do a lot for you.

Ah that's some cool insight! I guess one relevant reason for the $4 to exist these days is for the Remodel Variants. Not like every Upgrade/Remake game even needs to have a long chain to work with, but it's pleasing when it occasionally works out that way.

One could also argue that they matter for the common 4/3 opening, because it can feel weird "wasting" that coin and just getting two $3s instead. But I mean, that's a psychological issue more than anything, so it's not like the $4s have to be well represented.

Plus, it's not like they're not being represented anymore. Just less than they used to. If we're asking the question "How many $X cards out of 10 do we expect to see in the average Kingdom?", it's actually pretty cool to see that- after rounding to the nearest whole card-  the results are almost exactly the same as when Base Set came out. The only difference is that we now expect three $4 cards instead of four (and that one empty slot is basically equally likely to either be a fourth $5 or a first $6). I don't know how much you worry about having too few $X cards or too many $Y cards when making/testing an expansion (I mean, obviously that's much lower on the priority list than making fun, well-worded, balanced cards that fit the expansion's theme), but job well done whether deliberately or by following intuition.

I would like the chart more with the promos not given their own bars. They're just random individual cards.

Totally doable. I thought of them separately because they were sometimes months apart from sets (and because I overvalue precision with data even when it doesn't matter at all). I kept the source spreadsheet on my home computer in anticipation of measuring the changes Nocturne might make, so either this evening or next I'll upload a version with all promos grouped with their nearest set for optimal graph-enjoyment

Every single promo already has its own bar for its own random, arbitrary existence.

Except Governor/Walled Village 

136

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Cost Distributions over the Years

« on: September 10, 2017, 12:19:02 pm »

Maybe someday poor house will have a friend in the $1 club...

That poor house 

137

Dominion General Discussion / Cost Distributions over the Years

« on: September 10, 2017, 02:38:28 am »

I wouldn't be surprised if this has been done before, but I couldn't find anything elsewhere. For a while now, I have felt like we see a lot more $5 kingdom cards released than in the early days of Dominion. This got me thinking about the distribution of card costs and how it may have changed over time. I found a thread discussing the average cost per set, but no threads discussing the distributions of each cost. So I set out to do exactly that.

Some background info: this ignores potions and debt. Events are not included because they are not Kingdom cards. For Split Piles, I gave them the value that the randomizer assigns them. The graph below doesn't explicitly show Walled Village or Governor in the x-axis, but that's just because I couldn't find precise release dates for them (it's a time axis, but with set icons instead of dates as labels- because graphs should be fun dangit!!) They're still in the data though; Walled Village is clumped in with Cornucopia and Governor is with Hinterlands. I also still counted the 12 cards that were removed from Base Set and Intrigue, because I will never be able to let go, even if they are mostly redundant now.

The graph shows the percentage of Kingdom cards ranging from $1-$8, with the x-axis being time and the y-axis being %. I left in some data markers for local maxima and minima (but not all of them, because it would be too cluttered), as well as the starting values and ending values, which give us some interesting insight- primarily that between main set and now, $5 cards have gone from being 28% of the cardpool to ~35% (not as high as I expected), and $4 have gone from being 40% to ~28% (much lower than I expected).

To maximize the amount of "fun" we're all having, I gave each section a background with cards corresponding to their cost. For example, the segment with Mountebank, that oh-so-handsome Jester staring longingly at you, Mine, and Emperor Palpatine is the $5 segment; whereas the segment below it with Remake, Throne Room, Island, and that oh-so-handsome Jack's Crotch staring longingly at you is the $4 segment. Good luck being able to see Poor House in the bottom sliver, or Prince/Peddler in the top 

Below the graph is the source data, for those interested in that sort of thing.

138

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Confessions

« on: September 10, 2017, 12:40:02 am »

I'll be the one to end the joke!

Serious confession: I buy Treasure Map far more often than I would like to admit, despite fully understanding that without Alms or a good sifter there are typically better things I could be spending my $4 on...

139

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Strategy: Then, Now, and the Future

« on: September 05, 2017, 02:00:06 pm »

1)

More expansions came out. Cards got more complicated.

This is a big deal. If you view every card as a new rule, then this makes is harder to learn the rules of Dominion before even beginning to play a game in the "big leagues", i.e. full random. Every expansion added makes full random less and less friendly regardless of the strategy advice out there. There are reasons why collectible card games like Magic have cards that come in and out of rotation, and it's not just to force you to buy new cards. It's also to keep the complexity down and make the experience better for new players. When Magic is simpler than Dominion (and we're almost there, if not there already), then we've lost one of the main selling points of Dominion and what certainly attracted me to the game as a new player originally.

This is a good point. The best way to learn is to go one set at a time. The problem is that for most of us who here have gone all-in on Dominion, the most fun way to play is completely random. But completely random would be so intimidating if you just learned the rules to the game.

Imagine being thrown in to Dominion and trying to figure out a kingdom with potions, shelters, debt, a journey token, a tavern mat, split piles, knights, non-Moat reactions, and an overpay card. It's a bit overwhelming when you don't have the benefit of knowing anything about the expansions themselves and are just viewing cards in isolation (which is what an advanced player would do, but is not good for beginners). I for one would be happy to participate in Base Set-only matches if it means improving the experience for new players and helping the game continue to grow.

I don't think that all of this means that Dominion has hit some sort of ceiling or anything though. I get concerned when I hear people talk about the game getting too complex or becoming too much like a CCG. Everything that made us all love this game still exists. Nothing has changed except perception. Before, there was a small handful of boxes. Now there are a lot of them. That just means we need a reliable way to help new players understand that they have direct control over how far they want this game to go for them. They can get one or two sets, or go crazy and get them all. But the only way they can do the latter is if they take it one step at a time.

This is the kind of game that you can crank out a bunch of matches of in short bursts, so it's not like there's some unbridgeable gap where we'll never be able to get new players caught up. Newbies can get games under their belt, the problem is, how do they know that they should be starting out small? A solid mobile app and would be a huge way to keep a continuous stream of interest in the game. For better or worse, Dominion has always had a bit of a bumpy ride on the online front. But this could be resolved at any time, and new players would stumble upon this game and it would see new popularity. It's not like it's too late for Dominion or anything. A fun app is a fun app. New players aren't going to discriminate because it took a few years for it to exist.

Of course, I don't think it'll ever surge to the #1 spot on BGG again. But, the thing is, most board gamers that I know who frequently use BGG can't be content with their already massive collection. They're always hunting for the next new and exciting thing. Plus they aren't really "new" players, because they have already been there and done that back when Dominion first came out. Dominion has serious potential with a mass market though (as was already demonstrated when the game first came out, and has been demonstrated by its inclusion in retail chains like Target). I'm obviously biased, but I don't see the number of expansions as some sort of problem Dominion faces. Really I just think there needs to be a completely solid app and website, and they need to have a very deliberate approach to helping suck new players in one expansion at a time. In the meantime though, suggestions you and others have made would go a long way. Having a good beginner-friendly community and bringing back the blog would make a big difference.

140

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Strategy: Then, Now, and the Future

« on: September 05, 2017, 12:15:04 pm »

Been around since Cornucopia came out (though always lurking. Was always too shy to participate). I remember playing a ton of Dominion on Isotropic. Back in those days, I saw the Blog as the Dominion site. I would go there to see the card images and get excited for buying my new expansion. I would read the articles and the comments. I always understood that they couldn't possibly apply to all situations, but they still helped me as a new player to see the possibilities of various interactions. Hearing other's ideas about the cards being spoiled really got the mental juices flowing. To me, Hinterlands and Dark Ages were the “golden age”, partially because there was just so much to look forward to as it felt like the sky was the limit, but also because of heavy nostalgia blindness (right after my wife and I started dating, I got her into Dominion. It was the first thing we ever really bonded over, and Hinterlands has always been our favorite expansion. We were broke, living off of minimum wage, but you’d better believe we always found a way to budget for the new expansion. Dominion got us through so many stressful times. I’ll always treasure those memories).

Anyway, much later, when Adventures came out, I ran to the blog, and saw that it hadn't been updated in years except to announce tournaments. This, to me, is a great travesty. I guarantee you this has convinced new players that the community is dead, because I was an active player all of those years and even I thought it was dead. To this day, the homepage still has Guilds listed as the newest expansion. It wasn't until a month or two later that I realized that the forum and wiki were still thriving in the background!

As far as questions about whether things have been over categorized: I really don't think they have. You mention that advanced players learn to see the whole kingdom and find interactions. But that doesn't happen by magic. The way we think about card interactions are similar to how one would think about interpreting law, writing code, or studying mathematics. It takes a lot of knowledge about semantics, set relationships, and technicalities. Unless you're a very high IQ individual, this doesn't come naturally. You get there by taking the time to read about the difference between buy and gain or trash/discard/return to the pile. You get there by learning to think about "sifters", "throne room variants", "villages", "cantrips", “remodelers”, “cursers”, etc. As far as I'm concerned, the wiki still holds immense value for intermediate players, and should be update often. Those categories help get the wheels turning. And combo articles help players to practice finding interactions through the words on the cards.

As far as the debate going on about expansions, I don't agree that Dark Ages was a negative turning point for Dominion. Yes it was complex, but it was the biggest expansion the game has ever had (soon to be tied), and originally meant to be the last one (kinda). The overpay and coin token mechanics that Guilds introduced create so many possibilities without being too confusing to new players. I mean, prior to its release, we all could relate to the experience of wishing we could carry over some coins into future turns, or wanting to get some kind of reward for having just a little bit extra money left over.

Adventures and Empires bring exactly what I wanted to Dominion: more of the existing ideas with some fresh twists. In fact, ever since Guilds was announced to be “the end”-ish, while others were begging for more Durations, I’ve just been sitting here praying for more Potion interactions, Overpay cards, or (more importantly) more Cornucopia-like cards that care about variety or card names. I really don’t believe that the game itself has suffered post-Dark Ages. So far, the post-Guilds releases have been expansions that up the ante on existing ideas.

Though I will concede: it sounds like Nocturne may be complex. But hey, it’s been 5 years since Dark Ages (dear god, that doesn’t feel right to say), the time for a complex one seems right.

141

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Banning 5 Cards

« on: September 02, 2017, 04:31:54 pm »

Final point: I worry that this kind of thing will lead to increased community group think. Surely Donald X. is familiar with our occasional tendency to just decide that a certain card is broken, too strong, too weak, too worthless, etc. only to later realize that maybe we made a bigger deal about it than it really was. I think that that moment of realization only happens when we play with those cards more. So if the community just decides "this new card from Nocturne is stupidly broken, it's just an auto-buy every game", and everyone starts banning it, then it's going to take far longer for people to start using it enough to fairly assess it.

It's 5 cards. You can't ban each card you think is strong; you pick 5 and you're done. I don't think people will immediately ban new cards. And if they do that's actually fine; I don't need people to fairly assess cards, I just need them to have fun. I'd rather they missed out on the fun they'd have with Jack than that they skip playing because they hate Possession.

I can't argue with that! So do you think it's worth the trade-off/risk that the player who loves Possession feels they never get to use it? (Not a loaded question, genuinely want to know your take on this)

Another way of thinking of this is, if I plan on playing Dominion online all day tomorrow, it's already unlikely that I'll see my least favorite card even after playing 16 games in a row (19 games in a row after Nocturne). At 17 (20) games, it becomes more probable that you will see it rather than that you won't.

Now imagine we have ban lists of up to 5 cards, 80% of players have banned Possession, and Possession is my favorite card. It's unlikely that I'll see my favorite card even after playing 86 (97) games in a row. At 87 (98) games, it is now more likely that I will than I won't.

And if 80% sounds unrealistic, how about we say 50% of players have banned Possession. That still means I'm going to need to play twice as many games- 35 (39)- before I'm expecting to see Possession on the table once.

Granted, if 80% of players are banning Possession, it means that only 20% of players are going to be negatively affected by this, so I wouldn't blame you for considering this a non-issue. But to me, it just seems like players should be content with the 16 games in a row that they are likely to never see Possession in rather than needing an avenue for outright removing it. Especially since the card pool is always growing. Whereas if I have to go anywhere from 35 to 98 games before having a >50% chance of seeing a card I like even once... Well, that's quite a long wait


Also, sorry I forgot the "X."

142

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Banning 5 Cards

« on: September 02, 2017, 03:27:07 pm »

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned any of the 3 attacks from Prosperity on their ban list.

I don't think that having an intersection of both players ban lists would be too hard to program or explain to users. You could phrase it as "pick up to 5 cards to never play with. Now you can pick as many cards as you want that you won't play with if your opponent agrees not to". At the same time, it being game-able is a valid concern.

I will say this though, the Union list is, in my opinion, at a greater risk of being gamed in a more unscrupulous way. For instance, when crafting my list, why would I bother to put Possession on there if I believe the chances of my opponents doing so on their list are high? Why don't I just create a bot that goes through every player's ban list (assuming they're public), find the most common cards, then be sure that I don't put them on my list. Now I have confidence that I'm X% likely to not encounter all of those cards I would actually want to ban, and I can still ban 5 additional cards that I'm bad with.

And if we overcome the above problem by making the ban lists private, I can still keep a log of all of the banned cards from every game I play. The only solution to that problem that comes to mind is to not tell players what cards are being banned at all, which I'm not a fan of.

I question whether solving these issues would even be worth it. The very nature of Dominion means that I won't actually see my least favorite card often because the card pool is always growing. If we ignore the possibility of a Bane card, the current odds that one specific Kingdom card will be in the game is 4% (which will decrease to 3.53% when Nocturne comes out). Granted, the odds that one of my 5 least favorite cards comes out is 17.25% (15.51% once Nocturne comes out). But if that sounds like a lot to you, remember that not all cards are hated equally. I may have 3 cards I despise and 2 that I feel "meh" about, and that 17.25% just refers to the odds that 1 of those 5 comes out to play.

There's also the issue that it could cause resentment from players who like certain unpopular cards. If I buy Alchemy because I really love Possession (and am apparently a statistical anomaly), and then it never comes out on the table, I'm gonna be frustrated that I spent money on something I don't get to use. There's already only a 4% chance that I get to play with Possession in a game. Now consider if 80% of the community bans it. That means I only have a 20% chance of playing a game where Possession is even an option (ignoring any matchmaking probabilities), just to get a ~4%* chance that it shows up. So in total I would have less than a 1% chance of ever seeing Possession.

I don't agree with the notion that we only have to worry about the hated cards that do get played, and not the beloved cards that don't get played. There are certain cards that I get really happy to see, and if I paid for them, I don't think it's fair that I have lower odds of seeing them just because the people I play against online can't deal with them on the rare occasions they come out.

Final point: I worry that this kind of thing will lead to increased community group think. Surely Donald is familiar with our occasional tendency to just decide that a certain card is broken, too strong, too weak, too worthless, etc. only to later realize that maybe we made a bigger deal about it than it really was. I think that that moment of realization only happens when we play with those cards more. So if the community just decides "this new card from Nocturne is stupidly broken, it's just an auto-buy every game", and everyone starts banning it, then it's going to take far longer for people to start using it enough to fairly assess it.



*The reason this is phrased as approx 4% is because now in this scenario we're using bans, which decreases the card pool by up to 10 cards, depending on if my opponent and I have duplicates or not. So the odds that Possession shows up if neither of us have banned it becomes anywhere from 4%-4.17% before Nocturne, and 3.53%-3.66% after Nocturne

143

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reaction Attack

« on: May 13, 2016, 03:41:20 pm »

Glad to hear most of you like it!

For those of you who think the reaction is too strong, here is an alternative:

(Image)

When you gain a card, you may discard this card from your hand. If you do, each other player gains a copy of the card you gained.

I use photoshop to make these cards. I'll try to come up with more and maybe make another thread about a kingdom or something.

I really like this card for multiple reasons. First of all, it's a Reaction, which is my favorite type of card. I'm also a sucker for cards in the 2-3 coin range, because they are far outnumbered by 4 and 5 coin cards, so it's nice (although not a necessity) when fan cards can avoid making that imbalance in the overall card pool even worse. I also like that you chose to not make it a pseudo-attack. I'm not the kind of player who feels there should always be Moat or Lighthouse in the supply (that's actually the worst part of playing with new players- they tend to refuse to deal with attacks any other way), but when a Moat or Lighthouse does appear in the Kingdom I expect it to actually block attacks. So having a lot of pseudo-attacks is not desirable to me.

144

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Reaction Attack

« on: May 13, 2016, 03:14:22 pm »

It is incredibly egocentric of you to congratulate yourself for guessing "correctly" the OP's intent when the effect may very well have evolved from the discussion.

Aha, so you are saying that Multitalented had no idea about what he acutally wanted his card to do before the rulelawyers stepped in. Nice way to insult him and a worthwhile contribution to the topic of overblown egos.

No, that's not what I'm saying.

Yes it is but whatever. Pointing out the obvious, that you first gotta consider how a mechanic should work before you think about how you should formalize it (on a fan card which is unlikely to be used by anybody but Multitalented ^^) is as pointless as talking with climate change deniers.

Quote Mining (twice) is a jerk move. It's also rude to create an "us and them" mentality in these forums by name-calling people who are helping the OP in a way which you do not like. Worst of all, you then pat yourself on the back which comes across as unappealing given how confrontational you've been. If you don't see value in having well-defined, rigid rules, that's fine. But there's no need to attack people, especially not eHalcyon, who's been an active, helpful member of the forums for a long time.