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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The term "multiplayer"
« on: June 09, 2012, 02:26:00 pm »
Nope, doesn't bother me. Does it bother you that you play at a recital and recite at a play, or drive in a parkway and park in a driveway? 
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27
Dominion Articles / Re: Request: Philosopher's Stone
« on: June 04, 2012, 06:20:50 pm »Philosopher's stone isn't a card I buy a potion for - to me it's a card you end up adjusting your strategy to along the way, usually because you've already bought a potion, whether because you're reaching for Possession but didn't hit 6, or you've already bought Familiar or University (but obviously it doesn't mesh with Scrying Pool that much). In a Familiar or University game, both of those cards lead to fat decks, which means that P. Stone compliments them well.
Point being: I don't think P. Stone is a card you look at and say from game start "Should I focus around this card?", but a card you stop and ask yourself about during the mid/end game: "Should I be picking those up now?"
I think that is often the case, but not always. The problem with going for P.Stones later in the game is that if you've got a fat deck, you're not going to be able to acquire/use those P.Stones very much. If, on the other hand, you can anticipate that a game will be long with fat decks, going for it early can give you a decisive advantage. That's exactly what happened in the game of mine against WanderingWinder:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120529-153420-066c6c11.html
Despite the lack of any other potions in this set, there are several factors here in P.Stone's favor:
1) Game length - With Goons, Colony, and no great engine options, this game is going to be a long slog. The means large decks, which P.Stone likes.
2) +buy - in addition to the game lengthening effects, the +buy provided by Goons is a little extra deck-bloat for the PS.
3) Discard attacks - Although the effect is small, P.Stones are a (very) soft counter to discard attacks...as a discard attack has a 40% chance of increasing the value of each P.Stone by 1 the next turn. On turn 33, for example, this guaranteed me a double Colony turn whether or not WW had played his Goons.
Now, often it is the case that P.Stone is a late one-off pick up in a bloated deck (Familiar being one of the best examples), but on boards where such bloat and game length are predictable, grabbing them early instead of late can be well worth the slower start.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: 3 player games
« on: June 04, 2012, 05:37:29 pm »
My auto-match is always set to accept 2, 3, and 4 player invitations, so I'm game any time I'm on.
29
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Worst First Kingdom
« on: May 29, 2012, 08:31:18 pm »
I think a "hard to go wrong" engine set up might be the solution here...with cards like Fishing Village, Worker's Village, Smithy, Courtyard, and Workshop....maybe Gardens as well for interest.
I would still expect the experienced player to win, but something like that increases the chances of a new player building a deck that "works", instead of winding up in terminal draw hell (that's for game two
).
(Oh, and I realize Courtyard in a draw engine is wrong, but it's an interesting and approachable card that easily slides into the $2 slot).
I would still expect the experienced player to win, but something like that increases the chances of a new player building a deck that "works", instead of winding up in terminal draw hell (that's for game two
).(Oh, and I realize Courtyard in a draw engine is wrong, but it's an interesting and approachable card that easily slides into the $2 slot).
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Shuffling paper
« on: May 29, 2012, 08:06:48 pm »
I sleeve my cards, and use a mix of overhand and faro ("mashing" two halves of the deck together, which is easy to do when they're sleeved) shuffles when the deck is small, and a mix of faro and riffle shuffles for larger decks.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Worst First Kingdom
« on: May 29, 2012, 07:59:32 pm »
On the flip side, I wonder about the opposite question: what kingdom would result in the smallest skill gap while avoiding any complicated or frustrating cards? Such a set would ease new players into the game while minimizing the feeling that you're totally crushing them.
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Game Reports / Re: Dear My Opponent: I am Sorry
« on: May 26, 2012, 10:15:35 pm »
Dear yau,
Sorry the shuffler hated you so much on the first few turns of this game:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120526-190918-8b536806.html
I mean seriously RNG...letting me swindle his Mountebank to a Duchy on turn 5 is bad enough, but to do it again turn 7? That's just cruel.
Nothing you really could have done about that one yau...that's an incredibly frustrating turn of events, so again sorry about that.
Sorry the shuffler hated you so much on the first few turns of this game:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120526-190918-8b536806.html
I mean seriously RNG...letting me swindle his Mountebank to a Duchy on turn 5 is bad enough, but to do it again turn 7? That's just cruel.
Nothing you really could have done about that one yau...that's an incredibly frustrating turn of events, so again sorry about that.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: The game's largest structural flaw, imho
« on: May 18, 2012, 05:39:02 pm »There's no mitigation for under-spending.
When you spend less than the maximum amount on a turn, you're (usually) strictly worse off than if you had simply drawn less treasure on that turn, because you aren't going to see that treasure again this shuffle. An extreme example is how drawing $9 then $7 is enormously worse than $8 then $8. Another example is $6/$4 vs $5/$5 on T3/T4 when some $5 card is better than gold (such as IGG in some kingdoms).
Cards like Courtyard and Haven help to mitigate this, because they can save extra money for a future turn. In most kingdoms, though, you're put at a significant disadvantage.
I think the game would be considerably less interesting if there was some sort of compensation of underspending. Knowing when underspending is worth it is one of the things that I feel really separates skill levels in Dominion.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Reviving an old idea: Your best/worst kingdom
« on: May 10, 2012, 02:32:16 pm »
I mentioned this in the last thread, but as a feature request, I think it'd be great to have the card/expansion win rate statistics available on a 30 or 90 day window in addition to the lifetime stats we have now. As is, I find that in my own rankings, the Hinterlands cards primarily serve as a proxy for my win rate since November, which has on the whole been lower than in my plays previous to that because I've been played more competitively and seeking out tougher games in recent months.
It'd be useful to have this sort of fixed time cut-off to eliminate the confounding factor of skill/play preference change over time.
It'd be useful to have this sort of fixed time cut-off to eliminate the confounding factor of skill/play preference change over time.
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Goko Dominion Online / Re: Where's the official app?
« on: May 07, 2012, 06:38:23 pm »This is why I don't understand the anti-Apple trolls. iOS devices are actually pretty good.
I don't have any problem with that...but a number of the complaints seem to be of the form "why aren't they releasing for iOS exclusively/first?" and some even take the form "the non-iOS market is tiny and should just be ignored".
I've got no problem with people who run iOS devices, I just don't want Apple's walled garden to drive the development process for the Dominion app.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: THE Dominion Card List(s): Potion cost cards
« on: May 07, 2012, 06:04:56 pm »The point is that such kingdoms exist (kingdoms where you can skip Sea Hag, but wouldn't be able to skip Young Witch if it were there instead). Sea Hag does cost you something, and if it doesn't do enough damage, it's not worth it. I think Sea Hag is probably skippable over 25% of the time. According to councilroom, I skip it nearly 25% of the time and have an increase in win rate (from 1.36 to 1.43) when I do, and I feel like I still don't skip it enough, because a lot of times I go into auto see-strong-card-and-buy it mode.
I certainly can agree that there are Kingdoms where Sea Hag is skippable and Young Witch isn't (tops on my list would be set with strong Sea Hag counters like Lookout/Maquerade/Native Village, which take advantage of SH's topdecking behavior). I'd also agree that 25% probably a decent ballpark for how often Sea Hag is skippable...I play it in 75.5% of my games and do slightly better when I play it than when I don't. That's still far more effective than Young Witch, which I find is only a good buy in a little over half the games where it's present. The ability to top deck a curse really is that powerful, and I think Sea Hag's general reputation as standing head and shoulders above Young Witch is well deserved. There are exceptions where YW is stronger, but that's true of almost any card and those sets are just that: exceptions to the general rule.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: A rule of thumb on three-piling
« on: May 01, 2012, 09:05:24 pm »I think there's going to be exceptions to this. Example, buying the last curse so you can three pile with your IGG rush before your opponent's Province strategy gets going.
Wait, how does buying a curse help an IGG-rush 3-pile?
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Goko Dominion Online / Re: Where's the official app?
« on: April 26, 2012, 02:42:51 pm »Vaporware? Seriously? When was the last time a piece of software was released on schedule?
The vaporware comment is, I'm sure, not simply because the release date has slipped, but because there has been zero communication from the developers about the project. Is could be ready for release next week, but for all the evidence we have it's possible they don't even have a working alpha yet. The fact that we don't have the faintest idea about what's happening is a major PR screw-up.
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Goko Dominion Online / Re: Where's the official app?
« on: April 26, 2012, 03:41:23 am »
By far the biggest concern to me is that most developers are ever-anxious to get information out about their products...designer interviews, developer blogs, screenshots, play demos, that sort of thing. The reasoning is pretty simple:
1) They're proud of their work
2) The developers wants others to be excited about the product as they are
When a game developer is silent, that's very often a bad sign for a game...usually meaning that the project isn't going well and/or the timeline is slipping. Quite often the reason a game developer doesn't share information about their game is that they don't have good news or a good product to report.
I really hope that the Dominion app is one of those rare exceptions, but I fear that it may not be...personally, I'm anxious to hear news of the game not so much because I really want advance details or an exact release date, but because the silence leads me to believe that things may not be going so well for the project.
1) They're proud of their work
2) The developers wants others to be excited about the product as they are
When a game developer is silent, that's very often a bad sign for a game...usually meaning that the project isn't going well and/or the timeline is slipping. Quite often the reason a game developer doesn't share information about their game is that they don't have good news or a good product to report.
I really hope that the Dominion app is one of those rare exceptions, but I fear that it may not be...personally, I'm anxious to hear news of the game not so much because I really want advance details or an exact release date, but because the silence leads me to believe that things may not be going so well for the project.
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Dominion Isotropic / Re: PileDriver
« on: April 25, 2012, 09:07:54 pm »
I was looking over the achievements page today and I found I had done a triple pile-driver not too long ago, hamlet/estate/village:
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120418-204144-c0a0746d.html
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120418-204144-c0a0746d.html
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Dominion Isotropic / Re: Discussion on non-random game selection and TrueSkill ranking
« on: April 24, 2012, 03:08:32 pm »Was that directed at me? Seems a bit harsh? As far as I know, everyone plays with veto mode, and consequently everyone makes choices on which cards to veto. Not everyone plays 58% Colony games though, I'm pretty sure.
I deliberately avoid veto mode. I only ever play with it when I forget to select "prohibit veto mode" and hit accept before I notice the error.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math request: Nomad Camp
« on: April 18, 2012, 11:47:30 am »One comment about the Lightning Town problem - while the most likely day for the next lightning storm is indeed tomorrow, we can still say that there will probably not be a lightning storm until next week. By this I mean that the cumulative probability of there being a storm won't reach 50% until a week has passed. Each day has a decreasing probability of being the first day that it rains, but we need to add these all up to get the intuitive answer that storms happen, on average, once a week. Hope I didn't open another can of worms here.
Actually, that's not correct. If storms happen once per week, the median time between storms is actually about 4.5 days. For some very inexact intuition, think about that fact that at a minimum, the time to the next storm is a day, but there is no maximum time to the next storm...and thus for a mean interval of a week, there are more intervals less than a week than greater than a week. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math request: Nomad Camp
« on: April 17, 2012, 05:12:08 pm »Exactly. The Lightning Town and the Pop Quiz are very different. The Lightning Town, I think, is supposed to illustrate why random events appear to occur non-randomly. The lightning storms tend to look planned, rather than random, because they happen in clusters. But they look like clusters to us for good reason, because the day of the next lightning storm is more likely to be tomorrow than 1,000 years from now.
It's similar to the coin flip. People expect roughly the same number of heads as tails, but a random series of coin flips could very well come out TTTTTTHHTT, and so on.
Actually, the Lightning Town example doesn't illustrate the events tend to happen in clusters...if you take the same problem but state that there *wasn't* a lightning storm today, the most likely date of the next storm remains the same: tomorrow.
On the other hand, your point about what humans think of as random and how they perceive clusters where there aren't any is right on the money.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math request: Nomad Camp
« on: April 17, 2012, 04:45:12 pm »
Except that the "solution" of the pop quiz/unexpected hanging problem *isn't* "have it tomorrow", nor is it trying to make a point anything like the lightning problem. The entire point of the unexpected hanging problem is the loose definition of surprise and how that leads to a superficially "airtight" logical inference that turns out to be wrong. The paradox isn't a problem with the unexpected hanging, it's the entire point of the scenario.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math request: Nomad Camp
« on: April 17, 2012, 04:23:19 pm »
The pop quiz is actually a different problem...it's about game theory or logic more than probability, and the reasoning behind it is quite different. The most common set up for it is as the Paradox of the Unexpected Hanging.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Possession, a poll!
« on: April 16, 2012, 05:44:29 pm »
The poll likes an option for a neutral or slightly positive opinion.
I used to hate possession until I figured out how to play against it...then it became an interesting puzzle when Possession was in play and a feasible option.
Multi-Possession turns are really annoying, but other than that I'm fairly "meh" on the card. I've never thought to myself "you know what, I haven't had a possession game in a while, I could go for one about now", but I don't hate the card either.
I used to hate possession until I figured out how to play against it...then it became an interesting puzzle when Possession was in play and a feasible option.
Multi-Possession turns are really annoying, but other than that I'm fairly "meh" on the card. I've never thought to myself "you know what, I haven't had a possession game in a while, I could go for one about now", but I don't hate the card either.
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Dominion Isotropic / Re: People to avoid on isotropic
« on: March 29, 2012, 04:26:09 pm »
gg-ing in general seems more polite when the loser says it first.
yup!
Agreed. That's one reason I much prefer "thanks for the game".
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Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Dominion Bracket: Play-in Games
« on: March 22, 2012, 08:03:58 pm »
Generally people here think of "best" as "most powerful given cost"...you definitely wouldn't just get all 6's and 7's out of such a vote.
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Help! / Re: Nobles beats Wharf?
« on: March 09, 2012, 12:53:00 pm »
As others pointed out, you killed your Wharf strategy by Embargoing the Wharves. You want to be playing a few wharves per turn...using only two just gives you a mediocre BM deck.
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Dominion General Discussion / Re: Sea Hag or Young Witch with weak Bane?
« on: March 09, 2012, 12:49:02 am »
Indeed, Pearl Diver isn't the strongest bane in the world but it's pretty solid in this set, especially since the only card that could dead draw it is Young Witch. I'd favor Sea Hag in this set up.