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1

Innovation Rules Questions / Road Building exchange

« on: August 07, 2013, 08:19:04 pm »

When you play road building, meld two cards and do the exchange: does the card transfer happen at the same time, or different times?

In this game:
http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201308/07/game-20130807-171049-bddea75b.html
I have Alfred Nobel as my top green card, and archi has road building.  Archi melds to cards with road building, and chooses to transfer.

If first he transfers road building, then I win: his road building gives me enough castles to have twice as many castles as him, which gives me an extra achievement from Nobel and puts me at 8 achievements.

If the transfer happens at the same time, he wins from Alfred Nobel giving him enough achievements.

Iso does the first one.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: July 29, 2013, 09:34:50 pm »

EDIT: the funny thing is, it's actually Bad Luck Brian because the hand just missed being like a palindrome of Ruins.

I don't get it.

3

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Puzzle: Infinite loop

« on: July 25, 2013, 12:54:09 pm »

So first I tried to do something simpler, but this was the simplest I could come up with.  I encourage you to try, I was surprised how tricky it was.  I'd also like to see other solutions.

Player A Board: Splayed right: [Machine tools, optics, pirate code], Stem Cells
Player B Board: Rocketry, Self Service
Piles: 2 9's, 1 10.
Player A's score pile is 16 points behind Player B's, and has no 10's (so Player A draws 9's with Machine tools).  Player B has achievements 1-4, Player A has 5-9.  (So a self service by B is a loss!)

Player A must score 2 9's with machine tools.  Otherwise, player B can draw 2 cards next turn and win on score.

Player B must, at least, return a 9: otherwise player A will win on score.  After that, player B has three options: Rocketry, self service, or draw.  I claim it must be rocketry.  Player A shares self service, so that's definitely a loss.  If player B draws, next turn player A palys machine tools, then draws an 11.  So both other options lead to losses.

And then we're back where we were.

4

Innovation General Discussion / Puzzle: Infinite loop

« on: July 25, 2013, 12:01:43 pm »

Try to come up with situations in innovation where each player must do the same things over and over.  If they do something different, their opponent wins.

It seems like there should be something with the score stealing cards, but this is what I came up with using physics/alchemy:

Player A Board:
Alchemy
City States
Bicycle

Player A Hand: Empty

Player B Board:
Physics
Lighting
Road Building

Player B Hand: Publication, Antibiotics

[Note: Both have 3 castles and 3 lightbulbs]

Piles:
4: Gunpowder  (Important part: red)
6: Encyclopedia, Atomic Theory, Canning (Important part: two blues)
9: Some cards

Both players have 5 achievements, and 40+ points.  Achievement 8 is still available.  The point is they both want achievement 8.  To achieve 8 they need to meld an 8.  But they start with no 8's in their hand, and their opponent has an 8 which they are threatening to meld next turn.

So it goes like this:
Player A starts. Player B has an 8 in hand, so player A must either achieve 8 this turn, or somehow remove the 8 from player B's hand.  A's only option to do that is Alchemy.  A can do alchemy has its first or second action.  I claim A has to do it on its first actoin.  For now, let's see what happens if A does alchemy on its first action:
B Draws gunpowder, returns gunpowder, a 7, and an 8.
A Draws gunpowder, returns gunpowder.
A Draws a 7 as a sharing bonus.
Now the 7 pile is empty, and A can draw an 8.

The reason A can't do alchemy on its second action is this: the sharing bonus will draw the 7, then B can draw and meld an 8.

The same thing happens on B's turn, but with physics instead.

Now I also claim that each player must draw an 8 at the end of their turn.  After their first action, the 7 pile is empty.  If they don't draw an 8, the opposite player is free to draw and meld an 8.  With no board attacks, score attacks, or insta-melding available, the opposite player will win on the next turn.

5

Innovation Rules Questions / Re: Machine Tools Sharing - Possible Bug

« on: July 25, 2013, 01:00:40 am »

That would make Education draw 1's instead of 2's wouldn't it?   -(inf)+2= -(inf).

.....the -15 pile is empty
.....the -14 pile is empty
.....
.....the -1 piles is empty
.....the 0 pile is empty
.....there is an age 1 card.  Draw it.

Well by that logic, wouldn't it just never resolve?  Using -(inf) + 1 = -(inf):

Education says to draw a card of max{{}) = -(inf)
...the -(inf) pile is empty
...the -(inf) pile is empty
...the -(inf) pile is empty
...

6

Innovation General Discussion / Isotropic: showing returns with currency

« on: July 09, 2013, 12:18:11 pm »

Isotropic shows your opponent which cards you return with currency.  I don't think this is correct.

Is this the proper method for error reports?

7

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Most annoying situations in Dominion

« on: June 25, 2013, 11:03:48 pm »

On Goko it is annoying to face an opponent going Bishop/Fortress.  You are prompted four or five times to trash a card.

I respond by trashing my Fortress. It's already where I was going to click anyway.

But if you trash your Fortress and regain it, they should get the share bonus from the dogma.

(Dominion has invaded the innovation forum too...)

8

Innovation Game Reports / Intense Game

« on: June 25, 2013, 04:09:03 pm »

One of the things I like about innovation is that all the players have little goals.  For example, pulling ahead in factories so you can blast industrialism.  We make sacrifices to meet these goals, like taking a turn to score 1 with pottery just so you can claim achievement 2 first.  Sometimes two players will have a skirmish over some goal for a while.

With that introduction:  I just played a very intense game against WarMage:
http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201306/25/game-20130625-124705-3947f559.html

Between turns 6 and 11 WarMage has the potential to set up a fermenting engine.  I want to try to get gunpowder to kill fermenting, and failing that at least grab reformation to stop the big tucking.  He wants to protect his fermenting somehow, and hopefully grab reformation.  We have a back-and-forth where he draws up the 2's and 3's, and I share alchemy in clever and/or lucky ways.  Turn 11 I think I'm set because I have colonialism and gunpowder in hand, but then he steals them with engineering.  I had kept reformation, luckily.

Warmage gets the 1,2, 3 achievements, sometimes just barely.  But turn 15 I get ready to start vaccinating.  There's more back and forth between his chemistry/canning and my vaccination, he's able to achieve 4 but after that I clear out his score pile and can achieve 5-7 (combustion!).

The ending was close: on turn 21 he was something like 1 action away from empire (which he did), 3 from monument (publications to use industrialism, he had nearly 12 factories), and 3 away from splay-achievement.  I got monument from genetics, though, and achieved 8-9.

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Chapel Cost?

« on: June 15, 2013, 08:51:37 pm »

If you think that chapel should be priced at $3 or more, you must be thinking about it the wrong way.  The price is not a direct reflection of the goodness of the cards, it's a restriction on when you can buy it, and how many you're able to buy.  Chapel is priced at $2 because
a) Everyone can buy it
b) It's not broken if you can buy a lot.
Maybe I'd rather be able to buy chapel than storeroom, and chapel is a more useful card than storeroom.  That does not mean chapel should cost more than storeroom.

Basically: how would pricing chapel at $3 improve the gameplay?

10

Innovation Articles / Re: Currency Monument

« on: June 07, 2013, 01:17:53 pm »

I believe I see the following mistake often, though.  Let's say I have five points, and you have currency + 112233, and no achievements have been claimed yet.  It's better to score with currency and claim 1 than to score with currency twice and get monument, because you are denying me 1.

11

Game Reports / Re: Some interesting games...

« on: May 03, 2013, 09:48:15 am »

I think I usually want the hunting party. 

On turn 3, if you didn't have a $2 buy, hunting party is just a cantrip which flips your deck*, and stables is a net +2 cards.  Remember that the copper you're discarding to stables is not a relatively bad card at this point.

After turn 3, hunting party great if you want to hit your early buys.  Stables is just increasing your hand size and helping you get through your deck, but seems not so great compared to hp.

*In the most likely case, where your hand has copper, estate, hp.  Of course this is possible:
Hand: C,C,C,C,HP
Deck: CCCEEE

12

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko Sound Effects

« on: April 20, 2013, 11:27:14 pm »

Maybe dougz has a patent,
"Audio alert system for dominion client which notifies a user that it has become his or her turn."

13

Goko Dominion Online / Re: System Update 4/17/13

« on: April 18, 2013, 01:14:56 pm »

I think that Secret Chamber fix is nice.  It also stops a tiny bit of info leakage I imagine (since it is now indistinguishable whether you have no Secret Chamber in hand or whether you are not allowed to use it).

But now it does leak if I draw a moat with secret chamber, and decide to put secret chamber back and keep moat, but I don't want to use moat.  (before it could be I just kept secret chamber in hand)

14

Innovation Articles / Re: Talk about specific base cards - Age 2

« on: April 04, 2013, 10:44:55 pm »

I will try to keep writing until age 10...maybe.

Wouldn't you rather cover it up with a more powerful blue, like chemistry or something?

15

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Countering early scoring?

« on: April 03, 2013, 11:46:27 am »

You made a big mistake on turn 11 in the first game.  You should have melded optics to stop huh from gunpowdering your reds.  Gunpowder is a very important card, especially when lower piles are run out and it scores 4's from the second part.

16

Innovation Articles / Re: simple strategy guide for echoes?

« on: April 01, 2013, 09:26:23 pm »

I'm going to read over what you wrote.  But I don't see any reason for spoilering it, unless you just want to discourage people from reading a rough draft.

17

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Time allocated to players

« on: March 31, 2013, 12:21:01 pm »

I think that the timer goes down as well.  Once someone was taking a long time but I knew why so I didn't make them quit.  Once they started playing again I got the option much quicker.

18

Innovation Articles / Re: Strategy Guide: Fermentation and Reformation

« on: March 26, 2013, 12:45:36 pm »

Here's an example game for you
http://innovation.isotropic.org/gamelog/201303/26/game-20130326-094237-ea7f5ade.html
My opponent did fermentation/reformation.  I used currency to get up to 25 score, and achieved 1-5 + empire from construction.

It was close, he played vaccination his last turn and would've stopped me if I had taken one more turn I think.  It seemed like he went a little overboard on the fermentation, but I'm not sure.  I've never played fermentation/reformation myself.

19

Innovation General Discussion / Re: tools sadness

« on: March 18, 2013, 09:19:27 pm »

I kind of see your point.  The action that the card asks you to do is return 3 cards, not return a card 3 times.  The rule we're supposed to apply in these situations is to do as much as you can.  And so the question really comes down to: is returning 1 card part of returning 3 cards?

20

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Innovation Memes

« on: March 18, 2013, 07:40:56 pm »

The point of the comic is that there are no edge cases.  Turn 0 (article) is 105 discrete possibilities, and 105 recommendations.  There is no edge case remaining. 

Every rule of thumb has an edge case, including this.

21

Innovation General Discussion / Re: Innovation Memes

« on: March 18, 2013, 05:45:22 pm »

22

Game Reports / Re: Scrying Pool/Steward Conundrum

« on: March 06, 2013, 11:07:07 am »

I agree with the draw.  Then I get a fresh shuffle after turn four with potion/steward/sp/?.  The SP will help me get to my steward faster in the fresh shuffle.

Notice the chance of getting $5 turn 4 is the same whether I draw 2 or don't draw:  in one case it happens only with EECCCCC, in the other case it happens only with CCCCCEE.

23

Game Reports / Re: In which Thief is awesome...

« on: March 05, 2013, 09:50:46 pm »

Awesome!  I'll decorate my newborn's room with it.

24

Game Reports / Re: What's the best strategy on this board?

« on: March 05, 2013, 12:40:24 pm »

Draw feels like the bottleneck here.  Eventually you'll start each hand with 3 cards, and the draw options are stables and ghost ship.  I would start fishing village/silver and aim to get, in the mid game
-A ghost ship, a goons for buy, then stables/ghost ship with 5 or 6 (gaining with Border Village).  Get ghost ships if I have plenty of actions.
-FV at $3/$4
Once I feel pretty comfortable with my draw I would add goons and go for big hands.  But I think the key is to prefer draw to goons at first.

Horse Traders with Dukes is also a threat, but I think the goons engine beats it (especially because now the engine player gets full hands).

25

Dominion General Discussion / Re: "Missing the reshuffle"

« on: March 04, 2013, 01:26:23 pm »

It's been pointed out that a similar thing happens in real life, when doing laundry.  Suppose you only wear clothes for one day, and then you have to clean them before wearing them again.  Say you also do laundry every Sunday.  Most clothes you can wear once a week, but the clothes you wear on Sunday can only get worn once in the two week period before and after that Sunday.