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251

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Greatest Isotropic Moments of 2012

« on: August 02, 2012, 04:11:00 am »

A couple recent games.

Never buy provinces when you can get points with Goons
...in which I was always terribly behind, and he bought 6 provinces, but somehow pulled a 22-point comeback in the final turn, with exactly enough money and buys (well okay, I could have gotten a copper instead of the last estate).

Why doesn't this count as Champion Prize Fighter?
...in which, using a Menagerie / Loan deck, I manage to get all five prizes on turn 12. He had some pretty terrible luck with never drawing any of his three provinces to counter my tournaments. Of course, I think the reason it doesn't count is because of the Outpost, but that doesn't stop this from being pretty cool.

252

Tournaments and Events / Re: Use of the point- / card-counter extension in an online tournament

« on: July 06, 2012, 02:59:52 pm »

You can't see which order you drew cards.

Okay, I know this is a little off-topic, but I've realized the way around this one: The info screen displays the cards in the order you drew them. I frequently use this to figure out which cards missed the reshuffle. (Of course, you have to remember how many you had left in your deck at the end of last turn.) And well, some of the posts on that thread are like "I forget that I played a duration on isotropic," where you could just look at the log of your last turn almost as easily as looking at the board in front of you. And usually while you wouldn't get the exact number of cards in each stack right, you have a feel for how close the game is to ending from the sizes of the stacks, while you have to train yourself on isotropic to have that same kind of feel. But yeah, there are more good examples of instant plays that reveal information, for instance: A big KC chain suddenly dies when they don't have any more action cards to play. They're not just choosing not to KC that lookout, or it would take a while to come down that chain.

253

Tournaments and Events / Re: Use of the point- / card-counter extension in an online tournament

« on: July 06, 2012, 03:38:48 am »

I have to disagree; other than the technicality of the missing face-up discard pile, everything else is exactly the same in terms of gameplay.

There are several other differences, actually:

• "Waiting for reactions" tells you they have a reaction card.
• "Plays two silvers" tells you they don't have any more standard currency. You can't hide the fact that you really overpaid for that province except by playing cards one by one, which already looks suspicious.
• If they have more than one green, Bureaucrat has to wait for them to decide which one to put back (really useful for bureaucrat abuse because you know they have another).
• Discarding, if there's a pause they'll know that you have tunnel(s) to reveal, even if you didn't want to reveal any.
• Lookout draws three coppers, and it goes really quick -- so others notice.
• Similarly, 5-copper hands take no time from the militia.
• Someone else has a province to block your tournament, and you get to find out who it is. Maybe that changes what prize you get.

Can anyone think of any more? Yeah they won't affect a lot of games, but sometimes there is a way you can take advantage of the extra information online.

254

Dominion World Masters / Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]

« on: July 05, 2012, 03:36:45 am »

Wow, and here I was thinking game designers were above trolling. Haha, that was pretty funny, though.

We seem to like logic trains, so here's another one.

1. Where the rules are unclear in a tournament, the tournament director is allowed to clarify.
2. The rules were not crystal clear about whether note-taking was permitted. The standard I use here is: If you have to refer someone to anything that is not in the official (offline) Dominion rules or in the tournament rules, it's not clear. Donald X's forum post saying that note-taking is cheating certainly falls outside of those two. You can't expect everyone to have read the entire forum before entering.
3. theory (with rrenaud's help) ultimately decided to ban the PCE, but to allow note-taking.
4. Personman, after clarifying that keeping such a spreadsheet was legal note-taking, played honestly and fairly and lost. Though his develop engine in game 4 was pretty awesome.

Therefore, no cheating actually occurred. I want this to be clear because while we might disagree with Personman's stance that the PCE should be enabled, I have no objections to his actual play in this tournament.

On the other hand, it does appear overwhelmingly clear that (and here are some things we can vote on!)
Proposition 1. This Dominion community, on the whole, approves of and plans to abide by unenforceable rules for online Dominion, even when there are actual prizes.
Proposition 2. This Dominion community, on the whole, desires that note-taking (on a spreadsheet or on pen and paper) be disallowed in online tournament play. (Of course, this would need to actually be stated in the rules.)
Proposition 3. This Dominion community, on the whole, desires that official tournament play allow for the official point counter and disallow the unofficial point counter, possibly (in both cases) unless all players in that particular game agree otherwise.

255

Dominion World Masters / Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]

« on: July 04, 2012, 10:45:25 pm »

Unfortunately, you can't expect everyone to have read Donald X's posts in this forum. Thus, it seems rules like "you can/can't take notes in a spreadsheet" need to be spelled out at the beginning of a tournament.

Can we get off of the topic of how Personman interpreted theory's unfortunate e-mail? However he interpreted it, it wasn't theory's final decision and thus didn't matter much at all. And once theory came down hard on deciding against the point counter but allowing the spreadsheet, Personman accepted it and played accordingly. So yes, when theory said not to use it, Personman didn't use it.

A more interesting question is what the skills needed for online Dominion are. In that quoted conversation, Donald X. backs up his ruling that note-taking is illegal in real-life Dominion by saying that memorization is part of the game. My question is, should memorization be part of online Dominion? If we say that no, it should not be a part, then the deck tracker should be allowed, and more widely accepted. If we say that yes, it should be part of the game, then the point counter probably should be disabled for important play like this. If we come up with some kind of compromise, we're going to have to be super clear about what has to be memorized and what doesn't have to. And the best argument I can see for drawing the line at the point counter is that it's simply the way that most people are used to and answers most of the questions you might have.

256

Dominion World Masters / Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]

« on: July 04, 2012, 08:00:26 pm »

One thing I'm still a little confused about is why WW decided to ultimately withdraw, after theory's final ruling.

Because he held that even after Theory's ruling the spreadsheet was illegal and so didn't want to play with it available since he didn't want to cheat himself (I think)

...which basically amounts to saying that theory is not allowed to change the rules, because theory said that the spreadsheet was legal. That's option #1, and again, quite a strenuous demand on theory ("get the rules right the first time for a last-minute tournament with all unstated rules interpreted in one particular way, and no takebacks!").

257

Dominion World Masters / Re: Finals order [plus a point/card counter debate]

« on: July 04, 2012, 06:48:45 pm »

This thread does have the potential to be insightful for anyone willing to read all the way through it. But yeah, now that I have, there are so many things to say...

I think I've had enough of the theory-bashing. Theory was under a lot of time pressure to get this tournament to happen, and also clearly hoped that the general friendly play of people on isotropic would prevail, rather than having to sit down and think through a foolproof ruleset. And as we're discovering, foolproof rulesets are hard to come up with. Enforceability is a big issue, but as Personman has discovered (re: collusion), it's rather tough to actually have in an online tournament. Still, theory tried to enforce it by encouraging people to record the finals and reserving the right to DQ afterwards from those videos. And so in the end, even if it was only half an hour before the finals, theory arrived at at least a pretty decent ruling.

One thing I'm still a little confused about is why WW decided to ultimately withdraw, after theory's final ruling. I can offer some possibilities:
1) He was unhappy that theory was changing the rules. First, it's at least a little ambiguous that spreadsheets are disallowed in the rules. If you have to dig up a post by Donald X on the forum to get the official ruling that's further than most players will go. It's certainly more ambiguous than "identical starting hands" for those who want to argue that theory arbitrarily ruling "okay, so in the finals you guys don't get identical starting hands" would be unfair. So a clarification was certainly in order. Second, the rules never said, "Any changes to the rules must be approved by all players"; that clause is pretty clear about only applying to use or not of the official point counter. But most importantly, we all know how little time theory had to plan this tournament out, and as such, should cut him some slack with clarifying or redefining rules.
2) He expected Personman to cheat and use the PCE anyways. I think this is very unfair to both what Personman's words explicitly said and to WW's own arguments themselves. Personman was not actually planning on cheating; he was just giving the usual unenforceability argument he's repeated several times in this thread. And what do you know, in the real match he didn't cheat at all. I don't see a reason to suspect he would have with WW playing.
3) He objected to playing a game with someone who used Personman's style of reasoning, whether you want to call it relativist, or consequentialist, or what have you. Well, all I can say is that that would be like not playing with atheists. It doesn't actually affect the game and seems a bit non-sequitur. He'd certainly have the right to do that, like anyone has the right to be racist in who they live near, but I'd at least be disappointed if that was his final reason.
4) He didn't think through everything as clearly as he can now (happens to all of us) and would have re-entered had he had more time to think it through.
5) He was away from the computer for the half hour between theory's ruling and the start of the match.
I don't really have evidence against 4 or 5, except for the lack of WW complaining about the timing or apologizing and saying he would have re-entered on second thought.

Of course, WW doesn't have to respond to this if he wants to keep his reasons private. But he's entered the conversation so far, so if he's willing, I'm curious what he has to say to this.

258

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: June 29, 2012, 02:43:37 pm »

I love this thread! Here's a bunch more...
http://t.qkme.me/3pwwcf.jpg

259

Dominion World Masters / Re: DominionStrategy Qualifying Day Results

« on: June 28, 2012, 11:42:39 pm »

GAME 1
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/28/game-20120628-192336-1bd74231.html

#1 shocksteel: 59 points (6 Provinces, 9 ▼, 4 Tunnels, a Duchy, and 3 Estates); 15 turns
#2 samath: 30 points (2 Provinces, 4 Tunnels, 2 Duchies, and 4 Estates); 15 turns
#3 Black Jack Davie: 26 points (3 Provinces, a Duchy, 3 Estates, and a Tunnel); 15 turns
#4 savethepikachus: 15 points (a Province, 3 Tunnels, and 3 Estates); 15 turns
                 

GAME 2
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/28/game-20120628-194853-693113e8.html
#1 Black Jack Davie: 27 points (5 Duchies and 12 Estates); 16 turns
#2 savethepikachus: 24 points (2 Provinces, 2 Duchies, and 6 Estates); 15 turns
#2 samath: 24 points (4 Duchies, a Province, and 6 Estates); 15 turns
#4 shocksteel: 24 points (4 Provinces); 16 turns


GAME 3
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/28/game-20120628-200257-b42018a4.html
#1 Black Jack Davie: 27 points (3 Provinces, 2 Duchies, 3 Harems, 3 Estates, a Great Hall, and 7 Curses); 19 turns
#2 shocksteel: 24 points (2 Provinces, 4 Duchies, 3 Estates, a Harem, a Great Hall, and 6 Curses); 19 turns
#3 savethepikachus: 19 points (5 Harems, a Province, 2 Duchies, 3 Estates, 3 Great Halls, and 9 Curses); 19 turns
#4 samath: 17 points (3 Duchies, a Province, 3 Harems, 3 Estates, a Great Hall, and 8 Curses); 19 turns
     

GAME 4
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/28/game-20120628-201857-d14c04f8.html

#1 Black Jack Davie: 37 points (3 Provinces, 5 Silk Roads [12 victory cards], and 4 Estates); 17 turns
#1 shocksteel: 37 points (3 Provinces, 7 Estates, 2 Duchies, and 2 Silk Roads [14 victory cards]); 17 turns
#3 samath: 34 points (2 Provinces, 3 Duchies, 7 Estates, and 2 Silk Roads [14 victory cards]); 17 turns
#4 savethepikachus: 33 points (4 Provinces, 3 Silk Roads [10 victory cards], and 3 Estates); 17 turns


Here are our results.

Ah, Black Jack beat me to it. Final tallies:

Black Jack Davie: 1-1-1.5-3, 19 points
shocksteel: 1-1.5-2-4, 15 points
samath: 2-2.5-3-4, 9 points
savethepikachus: 2.5-3-4-4, 5 points

260

Dominion World Masters / Re: DominionStrategy Qualifying Day Results

« on: June 26, 2012, 09:52:43 pm »

Results from the pod with hpjj, samath, pingpongsam, and The Shocker:

Game 1: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/26/game-20120626-174941-c260b225.html

#1 pingpongsam: 47 points
#2 The Shocker: 45 points
#3 hpjj: 41 points
#4 samath: 40 points

Game 2: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/26/game-20120626-181051-f750a29d.html

#1 The Shocker: 26 points
#2 samath: 24 points
#3 pingpongsam: 19 points
#4 hpjj: 12 points

Game 3: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/26/game-20120626-182138-8d8b1538.html

#1 hpjj: 30 points
#2 The Shocker: 29 points
#3 pingpongsam: 24 points
#4 samath: 12 points

Game 4: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201206/26/game-20120626-183914-b19d9886.html

#1 hpjj: 17 points
#2 samath: 13 points
#3 pingpongsam: 8 points
#4 The Shocker: 4 points

Totals:
hpjj (1-1-3-4), The Shocker (1-2-2-4): 14 points
pingpongsam (1-3-3-3): 12 points
samath (2-2-4-4): 8 points

By the way, we messed up the turn order for the first game, so we just renumbered ourselves accordingly.

I doubt any of us are moving on anyways...