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176

Dominion League / Re: Season 28 - Signups

« on: April 12, 2018, 03:05:02 pm »

Signups and Available Spots are listed below. Divisions are tentative. Counts for returning players may be a bit off before the season ends.

177

Dominion League / Season 28 - Signups

« on: April 12, 2018, 03:00:38 pm »

Season 28 will run from Monday, June 4th until Sunday, July 15th and you can sign up until Wednesday, May 30th at 19:00 UTC.

If you are a returning player, please sign up before Sunday, May 27th. Depending on space, you may be required to play a placement match or return at a lower level.

Signups for season 28 are now closed. Go here if you would like to signup for season 29.

Staying in the league
Please don't post here, but fill out the Returning form that you should have been sent in a PM. It’s also pinned in your division-specific channel in Discord.

Returning to the league
If you last played in the Dominion League some time in the past year (Seasons 22 through 26), please post a message here stating your dominion.games username, your timezone*, your Discord username (if you have one, formatted like @___#___), the last season you were in, the division you played and the place you finished. If you last played earlier than that, simply sign up as if you were a new member; see below.

New to the league
Welcome to the League! Please post a message with your dominion.games username, timezone* and, if you have joined the Dominion Discord, your Discord username (formatted like @___#___). Please make sure to state the exact spelling of your username (upper/lower case, special characters, and so on). You will be placed in an appropriate division according to your rating on dominion.games as seen in the client or here. If you would like to be placed in a lower division or there is a reason to suspect your rating does not represent your skill, feel free to describe it in your signup message.

Please check the welcome thread first and read the rules to make sure you're comfortable with the format and the time it takes to play a season. If you have any questions be sure to check out the FAQ. You can also ask questions about the League at the dominionleague channel on the Dominion Discord. If you join, we highly recommend, but do not require, using Discord to communicate with your opponents.

You will also receive a personal message from one of the league moderators within a week to confirm your signup. You must reply to this PM within the specified time frame (2-7 days, depending on how close to the signup deadline it is) or your signup will be removed.

The Google Sheet in the following post will contain all signups as they are processed by the moderators and then confirmed. Please check back again in a few days to make sure your signup was entered correctly.

*When specifying a timezone, please use one of these common examples or use the same format and look yours up in the complete list.

Code: [Select]

America/Chicago
America/Denver
America/Los_Angeles
America/New_York
Australia/Sydney
Europe/Berlin
Europe/London


178

Dominion Articles / Re: Duration Draw and Stop Card Capacity

« on: April 09, 2018, 04:51:10 am »

A "stop card" is any card that doesn't draw a card from your deck, and includes Throne Room variants. For simplicity, this article considers actions a non-issue, so Smithy is not a stop card.
...
With an SCC of 4, you can have up to 4 Bishops (which are stop card) in your deck and still be guaranteed to draw and play them all.
...
Hence, you can now gain a 5th Bishop and still be guaranteed to play all 5 Bishops, eventually overtaking the VP count of a player that can only support playing 4 Bishops a turn.
...
And then there's Wharf, which isn't even a stop card the turn you play it and thus having the same net effect on SCC as Haunted Woods.
...
Province/Colony, Gold/Platinum, Bridge, and Haggler are just a few examples of potentially important stop cards.

Hm... Am I suddenly an idiot? It may look like it, because everyone seems to know what this is all about, yet I feel that I'm in way over my head, here. My IQ is pretty decent, so I should be able to understand this, but I'm really having a hard time getting my head wrapped around this. Maybe it's the language (I'm Norwegian), but I've had no problem understanding or even translating English in the past, even old literature.

If you consider actions non-issues, why do you still state that several action cards are stop cards? There are even more references in your article to actions being stop cards (mainly Duration cards), and I thought they're not considered stop Cards? And how can you guarantee drawing and playing all your four Bishops, if they are the only stop cards in your deck (you've already stated that Smithy isn't a stop card, but a hand of Smithy and four Bishops may at best let you play one Bishop)? Interestingly enough, the stated stop card Throne Room will at least allow you to play two of those Bishops, but you still doesn't get to draw Your deck, nor play all the Bishops.

I probably got my message across several sentences ago, but I wanted to list all the issues I had, in case I've just misunderstood some things, but not everything. Please advice, because I really want to understand this. Seems like really useful advice (and everything becomes much clearer) if you just remove the first quoted paragraph above, but I guess it's there for a reason.

Probably the cleanest way to consider actions not an issue is to have Champion in play. Then you can play any number of Actions! Of course, this can also be approximated with sufficiently high standard Village density, since Villages don't increase or decrease handsize.

179

Dominion League / Season 27 - Newsletter: Same League, Grander Scale

« on: April 09, 2018, 12:00:46 am »

Hello new and old Dominion League players!

I'm pleased to announce the beginning of the largest Dominion League season ever. This season, we have 258 players signed up, and we've split you all into 44 divisions. That's more than double the size of any previous League season!

We've also recruited a couple more moderators to help us out with this gigantic season: IrrationalE is returning after a hiatus, and Gazbag is moderating for the first time. Welcome!

With this new scale comes a greater responsibility for all of you to manage your league season yourselves. Here are some tips that everyone should keep in mind:

• Join the Dominion Discord! We can't emphasize this enough: It's super helpful to be able to communicate realtime with you when it comes to scheduling. We've also added some new features to the League in Discord this season: Channels for just you and your division-mates to find times to play, pinned messages with important information, and automatic postings of results. Last season, around 90% of the League players were on Discord, so in all likelihood your opponents are already waiting for you there.
• Be proactive in communicating with your opponents and group moderator. If you'll be busy or gone for an extended period of time during the season, let everyone know!
• When in doubt, stick to the schedule. There's a post in the Scheduling subforum for each division -- go there to find your recommended schedule. Apart from busy periods that you let your moderator know about, we expect you to play at least one game per week, and the schedule offers you one convenient way to do that. Feel free to play your games earlier than recommended, just don't fall behind, especially without sharing your plans to your group and moderator.
• Announce your matches! There's a Google Calendar for everyone who wants to spectate Online Dominion matches. Once you agree on a time with your opponent, add your matches to the calendar, especially if you're in one of the higher tiers. Conversely, if you like watching Dominion, check out the calendar and watch some of those games!
• Communicate with your opponent about who will report the score. You should have received a private message from me with the form to report your scores (there are separate forms for each division). It's also pinned in your division-specific channel in Discord for convenience. Exactly one of you should fill it out; make sure to discuss who will do this after the match. If you double-report, message me and I can remove the extraneous report, but try not to do that.
• Let us know if you'll be back for season 28 by filling out the Google form sent to you in the same PM and pinned in your division's channel in Discord. You aren't expected to let us know until you've played all of your games, but if you want to do so earlier, feel free.

Finally, I'd like to offer some personal reflection from my perspective. First, I'd like to thank Stef, the developer of dominion.games (and founder of the League!), who generously gave us the opportunity to advertise directly on the client and recruit so many new League players. We knew from the big ShuffleIT tournament last fall that hundreds of people are interested in competitive online Dominion, but many of them (and others) simply hadn't heard about the League.

I think we're ready for this kind of scale. When I first converted the League to this Google Sheets-based system a season ago, scalability was one of my main goals. The League should now run itself: Players schedule matches with each other on Discord, add them to the calendar for everyone else to watch, and then report their scores using the Google forms, which will automatically update the standings. The returning form fits the final piece of this puzzle in; now we don't have to track you down one-by-one to find out if you'll be back (as well as letting you give us feedback).

Of course, adding this many new players to the league will obviously come with growing pains. We've tried to mitigate this risk by enforcing a rule that we didn't always in the past: All new signups had to reply promptly to a private message to confirm their spot. In fact, some of you reading this might have thought that you signed up but don't find yourself on the lists and didn't receive the PMs I'm talking about. This is probably because you didn't reply in time to messages from my fellow moderator gloures! Fortunately, you can still sign up late, and if there's space for you, we'll add you to an appropriate division.

If you have any issues, don't hesitate to reach out to your group moderator!

Your administrative moderator,

SamE (aka samath here on the forums)

180

Dominion League / Season 27 - Announcing Matches/Streams

« on: April 08, 2018, 06:04:34 pm »

Announce your upcoming Season 27 league matches in this thread. If you don't want to miss any, use the notify button on the top right (this is also a good plan for your own scheduling thread).

When announcing, please convert the starting time to UTC. Keep in mind that people from around the world frequent the forums and they might not know what you're referring to otherwise.

In addition to posting here, you are encouraged to add your match to the Upcoming Matches Google Calendar by filling out this form. If you have any issues, please contact me.

181

Dominion League / Season 27 - Game Reports and Discussion

« on: April 08, 2018, 06:03:29 pm »

If you want to write about a game you or someone else played during the league, or post links to video coverage, please do so in this thread.

If you've lost a game and want to ask for advice, you can also post it here.

182

Dominion League / Season 27 - Standings

« on: April 08, 2018, 05:59:42 pm »

183

Dominion League / Re: Season 27 - Late Signups

« on: April 05, 2018, 03:01:28 pm »

Signups listed below (see Available Spots for how many openings there are, and Confirmed for tentative color-coded divisions). Space will be filled in order of signup time. This will be updated at least daily.

184

Dominion League / Season 27 - Late Signups

« on: April 05, 2018, 03:00:11 pm »

Season 27 will run from Monday, April 9th until Sunday, May 20th. Signups have officially closed, but if you are new to the league, you can still sign up late in this thread until Thursday, April 12th at 19:00 UTC.

Late Signups are now closed. Please go here if you'd like to sign up for Season 28.

To do so, please post a message with your ShuffleIT username and timezone*. Please make sure to state the exact spelling of your username (upper/lower case, special characters, and so on). You will be placed in an appropriate division according to your timezone and rating on dominion.games as seen in the client or here.

Please check the welcome thread first and also read the rules to make sure you're comfortable with the format and the time it takes to play a season.

If there is space for you this season, you will receive a personal message from a league moderator to confirm your signup. You must reply to this message within 24 hours or your signup will be removed.

If there is no space appropriate for you (given your level and timezone), we will instead invite you to sign up for next season! You should hear back either way by Sunday, April 15th.

*When specifying a timezone, please use one of these common examples or use the same format and look yours up in the complete list.

Code: [Select]

America/Chicago
America/Denver
America/Los_Angeles
America/New_York
Australia/Sydney
Europe/Berlin
Europe/London


185

Dominion General Discussion / Re: What should Dominion do next?

« on: April 05, 2018, 11:21:54 am »

So... Zombie Apprentice?

186

Dominion Articles / Re: Cultist article on main blog (and comments)

« on: April 03, 2018, 11:03:56 am »

For a great example of a board where a Rebuild strategy was attempted by a top player and was completely outclassed, see the World Cup Tiebreaker Match Game 5 here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/243923741 (Game 5 starts at 2:11:30).

187

Dominion League / Re: Rules & Regulations Changelog

« on: April 02, 2018, 01:54:47 pm »

Changes for Season 27:
- Updating group language to reflect the new size of the league and time zone-based divisions at the lower levels.
- Explicitly spelling out penalties and deadlines for late finishes and mid-season drops.

I. League Structure

Each League season lasts for 6 weeks, and is followed by a 2 week break. Players are divided into groups of at most 6 players. Groups are arranged in tiered divisions. Groups are created by seeding them based on their level on the Shuffle IT client. There is a single A group and two B groups. C, D and E divisions have a maximum of 4, 8, and 16 groups, respectively, but may have fewer groups depending on the number of players available. There is also an F division available for beginner players.

At the end of the season the players with 1st place ranks promote to the next level, while players ranked 5th or 6th place demote.

I. League Structure

Each League season lasts for 6 weeks, and is followed by a 2 week break. Players are divided into groups of at most 6 players. Groups are arranged in tiered divisions. There is a single A division, 2 B divisions, 4 C divisions, 8 D divisions, up to 16 E divisions, and up to 32 F divisions. Divisions are determined by a seeding algorithm depending on level on the Shuffle IT client (dominion.games), with time zone taken into account in the lower divisions (D, E, and F).

At the end of the season the players with 1st place ranks promote to the next level, while players ranked 5th or 6th place demote. E division demotions (to F) will possibly be more lenient depending on the number of players.

VIII. Penalties

Players who finish late in two consecutive seasons they play will get their overall score reduced by 1. This penalty will only count for the own total and own average score and not for the calculation of tie breakers of oneself or other players. The official deadline to meet is Monday (the day after the official deadline), 15:00 UTC, so that people from the US west coast and Alaska can finish matches easily which they started playing on Sunday night.

VIII. Late Finish Penalties

The official deadline to report your match results is the day after the official deadline (a Monday) at 15:00 UTC, so that people from the western-most time zones can easily finish and report matches which they started playing on Sunday night.

Players who are responsible for finishing their games late in two consecutive seasons they play will get their overall score reduced by 1. This penalty will only count for the own total and own average score and not for the calculation of any tiebreakers. Responsibility is determined by the group moderator, and any players who believe their opponents are responsible for the delay should send their moderator all relevant communications for evaluation.

If late game results are not reported within a week of the deadline, the responsible players are considered to have dropped out mid-season, with more severe penalties as described in the following section.

IX. Dropping Players Mid-Season

Players dropping out during the season have a significant negative impact on their group. Unfortunately, some must drop out, or become inactive and are have to be removed by the moderators. It is difficult to deal with matches that have been played by a player who has dropped because the matches they have played and have failed to play can have significant impacts on the group standings. The following rules are used for dropped players:

• If the removed player has not played any matches, they are simply removed and the remaining players in the group will play one fewer game.
• If the removed player has played exactly 1 match, the match result is voided, and the remaining players will play one fewer game.
• If they've played more than 1 match the results will be retained in the standings unless there are other reasons to void those results (e.g. If there is evidence suggesting that the dropped player purposefully threw games prior to dropping. This very rarely happens and is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The group moderator will have the final decision such a situation.)

Players who become inactive and are removed by the moderating team will be banned from participation in the next 2 League Seasons. If a player needs to drop from the league for personal reasons, they should inform their moderator as promptly as possible. If a player is in good standing with the League (i.e. has played in prior seasons without drops or scheduling issues) the ban period may be reduced or eliminated per the moderating team's discretion.

IX. Dropping Players Mid-Season

Players dropping out during the season have a significant negative impact on their group. Unfortunately, some must drop out, or become inactive and have to be removed by the moderators. It is difficult to deal with matches that have been played by a player who has dropped because the matches they played and failed to play can have a significant impact on the group standings. The following rules are used for dropped players:

• If the removed player has not played any matches, they are simply removed and the remaining players in the group will play one fewer game.
• If the removed player has played exactly 1 match, the match result is voided, and the remaining players will play one fewer game.
• If the removed player has played more than 1 match, the results will be retained in the standings unless there are other reasons to void those results (e.g. if there is evidence suggesting that the dropped player purposefully threw games prior to dropping). However, the players who are dropped are then ineligible and finish below all other players, which often means they would demote in any subsequent season in which they might return.

Players who drop mid-season will be banned from participation in the next 2 League Seasons. If a player drops out within the first week of the season or is in good standing with the League (i.e. has played in prior seasons without drops or late finishes) the ban period may be reduced or eliminated per the moderating team's discretion.

188

Dominion League / Rules & Regulations Changelog

« on: April 02, 2018, 01:38:38 pm »

This thread is used by League Moderators to record changes to the rules and regulations, starting in Season 27.

For fuller explanations of the changes, please see the corresponding newsletter posts.

189

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Challenge: Make a Kingdom where you want Harvest

« on: March 31, 2018, 09:17:02 am »

You can see markusin's perspective on that game in his video here.

190

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing the new Guilds & Cornucopia!

« on: March 29, 2018, 09:04:59 pm »

Sure, it doesn't work like in the Harry Potter books, where you say a single Latin word and a beam of light shoots out of your wand - it's more subtle than that. But it does exist.

It also doesn't work like setting a card on the table, picking up two more cards from a stack sitting nearby, and handing a purple card from a stack of them to each of your friends.

The only people I've seen who are actually afraid of playing card games or reading books that mention terms associated with the occult tend not to be very familiar with the occult.

191

Dominion League / Re: Season 27 - Signups

« on: March 28, 2018, 12:19:18 am »

Hi everyone! A couple announcements:

1) As indicated in a previous post, we are requiring all players who signed up to reply promptly to a private message. We're serious about this requirement: Responsiveness is an important prerequisite to playing in the league. Therefore, we've started to remove some of the initial signups who did not reply to a private message from my fellow moderator, gloures.

If you've been removed, the good news is that you can still re-sign up before the deadline -- just make sure to respond to the private message quickly next time!

2) If you are a new player and believe that you should be placed in a higher tier, play more rated games! We'd actually recommend anyone interested in being accurately placed to do this; the more certainty we have in your rating, the better. We will be using all ratings as of Sunday, April 8th to determine seeding.

192

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Holy Week Kingdom

« on: March 26, 2018, 12:52:09 pm »

Secret Cave and Tomb seem a bit repetitive, is there something else important in the story to include?  Maybe temple?  Or Courtyard for where the Jewish Leaders had the trial?

I mostly liked Secret Cave because the art depicts the stone being rolled away. And then I saw "Triumph over the Tomb" as a nice synopsis of Easter.

193

Dominion General Discussion / Holy Week Kingdom

« on: March 26, 2018, 11:48:08 am »

To celebrate what Christians call Holy Week (Palm Sunday through Easter), here's a kingdom you can play, in order of appearance in the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 21 and 26-28.

194

Dominion League / Re: Season 27 - Signups

« on: March 21, 2018, 01:17:03 am »

Announcement: Due to the large number of signups, we are asking all new signups this season to confirm their registration for the league. The process is as follows: Within a day of signing up (apart from the earliest signups), you will receive a private message from one of the league moderators. Please reply to that message (no need to post in this thread twice) within 48 hours.

The spreadsheet in the initial post will be updated with confirmations as they come in. Be patient as your moderator might not immediately update the confirmation.

195

Dominion League / Re: Proposed Change for Season 27: B Champion Matches

« on: March 20, 2018, 10:10:27 pm »

Hi everyone,

Due to a variety of factors (lack of interest among my fellow moderators, a much greater number of publicized matches this season, and a huge influx of new players in the coming season), we will not be pursuing Champion Matches in the B Division at this time. Sorry to all who were interested -- I'm sure there will be plenty more opportunities for high-stakes matches in the future!

SamE

196

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: March 19, 2018, 10:24:51 am »

I’m sure this has been discussed before, but the problem with positive interaction cards isn’t that helping opponents is unpopular, but that they’re tricky to balance, and cards that are nearly always strong or nearly always weak are unpopular with top players.

After all, if you help your opponent(s), you need to have a corresponding extra benefit to yourself. This means that if the positive interaction is on a card that’s only situationally useful (like Bishop or Sacred Grove), it’ll be rather weak, and if it’s a card that’s generally useful (like Governor), it’ll be so strong it’s unavoidable.

197

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Confessions

« on: March 17, 2018, 11:32:58 pm »

I have a confession to make:
I've recently lost a game against someone who bought a potion with Transmute being the only potion-cost on the board.

Was it a Keep board?

198

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Easy Puzzles

« on: March 15, 2018, 07:03:25 pm »

I have x Banks and y Fortunes at my disposal, and no other coins/Treasures/tokens/shenanigans/anything. x and y can each be anything >= 0 (e.g. more than 10 Banks, more than 5 Fortunes). Which order should I play them to maximize my coin?

Awaclus is right. Here's an explanation/proof.

First, if you've already played on Fortune, there is no reason to play any Banks before you play the rest of them since they don't double your money. So the optimal order must involve playing all of the Fortunes consecutively. This drastically cuts down on the possible solution space.

Let's say that you first play z Banks, then all y Fortunes, then the remaining x-z Banks. Your total money after playing the Banks is 1+2+...+z = z(z+1)/2. This is then doubled to z(z+1) by the first Fortune. Then the remaining Banks add (y+z+1)+(y+z+2)+...(y+x) = (y+x)(y+x+1)/2 - (y+z)(y+z+1)/2 = (x-z)(2y+x+z+1)/2 to the total coins.

We want to pick the z that maximizes this formula. Fortunately, it's a quadratic formula in z, which means that the scores lie on a parabola. Moreover, a quick inspection of the z^2 coefficient shows that this parabola is concave up, which means that the maximum must occur at one of the endpoints -- either z=0 or z=x. To figure out which is bigger, we just need to see how much money these yield and pick the bigger one. Let's see: z = 0 means we play all of the Fortunes first (they're essentially functioning as worse than Coppers here), and the total is x(2y+x+1)/2. Alternatively, if we play all of the Banks first, our total is simply x(x+1). So to determine which is bigger, we compare these two expressions. Dividing by x, we conclude that you should play the Banks first if x+1 > 2y, and you should play the Fortunes first if 2y > x+1. If they're equal, you can do either.

What does this mean intuitively? Essentially if you have a lot more Banks than Fortunes, it'll be more worthwhile to accumulate all of the Bank money first and then double it. If you don't have that many Banks, though, it'll be more important to make each of them give you lots of money by playing the Fortunes first.

199

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Semi-Interesting Dominion Moments Thread

« on: March 15, 2018, 10:43:31 am »

Warrior discards and potentially trashes one card at a time. The treasures were on top, and were discarded without trashing them. The log compressed the first three discards into one line.

200

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: How to Base Dominion

« on: March 15, 2018, 04:32:10 am »

I could see some similarly Nocturne-focused kingdoms making for a good series like this, that also would be fun to play for the streamer.