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3951

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most money in your deck on your first turn

« on: December 22, 2011, 05:30:44 pm »

Never-mind I missed the comment about the extra copper...of course.

No, you can hit $35, I'm pretty sure:
X=curse
EE CC E-reshuffle-E -> 2 coppers (3xNB)
in deck: XXXXXXXXXX, CC, E (and this is the wrong point...should be CCC, which is one too many coppers. bah! )
so, we get: XX x5 -> 5 coppers (5x NB)
now NB#9 hits CC->nothing
and NB#10 hits E-reshuffle-E ->copper
that's 8 NB hits...so 8  coppers + 7 coppers, + 10 silvers = $35.

(assuming unlimited Silver, or scaling Silver to # players.)

3952

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: December 16, 2011, 09:31:44 am »

Yeah, I think the original description overstated the impact of Warehouse.  But then some of the criticisms, I think, completely tried to dismiss it.  I think it has an impact, perhaps a small one, but one that's easy to understand.  In much the same way combos are easy to understand, even if the actual exact combo of those two cards is less useful in general.  They're an easy-to-understand way to talk about strategy.

3953

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: December 16, 2011, 09:05:04 am »

But there is a difference between those examples. HT is such an effective counter to Minion that Minion becomes counter-productive. That is not the case with Cellar. Sure, in the few games where Warehouse, Cellar and Moat are available you may buy a moat but not a cellar. But that's not nearly the same as conceding Moat to now all of a sudden be the better card.  I stand by my (usefulness of function)x(effectiveness at function) metric.

All I'm saying, and I will now be done saying it, is that you ought to decide whether to rank by price or by function and be consistent. I find the rank by function more meaningful, but enjoy the rank by price as well.

I'm sorry you thought I misunderstood your post.  What I was trying to point out was that the two situations are actually very similar.  As you noted: Minion goes from effective to counter-productive in the presence of Horse Traders.  Does this effect the "absolute effectiveness" of Minion? No, it effects it's value only when Horse Traders is in the supply.  Additionally, as you noted Minion becomes a bad buy, so in other words Minion's strength is lessened because you are less likely to purchase it.  The important thing is that Minion's effect hasn't changed so if it has some "strength" property which is independent of likeliness to purchase, then it actually hasn't moved.  If Horse Traders doesn't improve the effectiveness of Laboratory when you purchase it, then it's strength hasn't changed either.  So, Minion and Laboratory must compare the same way...but you argued (In my opinion correctly) that Horse Traders actually makes Minion a weaker card.  It does this because there is a situation where you would otherwise buy Minion, that you would change your mind because of the presence of another card.  (It doesn't matter that the effectiveness of Minion changed on this board...that would only matter if you purchased Minion anyways).  This is exactly the situation of Cellar and Warehouse, you are less likely to purchase Cellar if Warehouse is available...why?  Because you would rather purchase Warehouse.  So, basically it all comes down to how you rank the cards.  The argument here is that there are 2 factors that contribute to the ranking:
1. Likelihood that you will want to gain the card.  (aggregated over all possible sets of cards)
2. Effectiveness of the card when you would gain it. (aggregated over all possible sets of cards)
The two factors are related, both are effected by other cards which are available.  No single card will have great impact because they are aggregated.  Arguably there are many factors which contribute to Cellar being weaker, and Warehouse may be more useful for pointing that out.  But it is a fact that some proportion of sets of cards will see both Warehouse and Cellar, and in those sets the likelihood that you gain Cellar goes down.  So Cellar's value has gone down, relative to Moat (which isn't weakened by the presence of Warehouse).

You mentioned another interesting thing, which I'm going to run with a bit:
suppose there is a set with Cellar, and Moat.  You have $2, and Cellar and Moat are both determined to be equally useful in this set, and you want both (and actually useful...though no such set may exist currently, such a set could conceptually exist).  Additionally, suppose that one of the cards is unimportant to this situation existing.  You'll get the one which is more useful now, and get the other one later.  Now suppose you have the same set, replacing the unimportant card with Warehouse.  You have $2, I would say you get Moat, almost no question.  Sometime later you'll probably have $3 to pick up Warehouse, so you totally ignore Cellar.  Warehouse has actually in fact made Moat better than Cellar in this situation.  The relative value of the 2 cards has changed due to the presence of Warehouse.

It's marginal, yes...maybe not worth mentioning.  But if Bridge makes Native Village better, then Warehouse makes Cellar worse.  There are lots of other factors that come to play, but this is a simple easy-to-understand factor.  Card combos are frequently discussed, even though those 2 cards may never show up together.  Card counters are discussed with the same caveat.  IF these discussions have any merit, then one card superseding another has the same merit, and serves a lot of the same purpose in these ranking discussions.

Man I'm wordy, sorry about that.

3954

Dominion Articles / Re: Updating the Top 5 lists

« on: December 15, 2011, 02:01:36 pm »

Maybe a counter-example will help illustrate: assume Minion is better than Lab. Now Horse Traders comes out. Horse Traders actually changes the value of Minion in absolute terms. Even though we won't often have Minion and Horse Trader in the same kingdom, it at least makes sense that the existence of cards like Horse Traders would change our valuation of Minion, not relative only to Horse Traders but relative to everything. It is thus a plausible argument that the creation of Horse Traders (a $4 card) could change the ranking of Minion and Lab ($5 cards) relative to each other.

I randomly thought this post was very instructive.
Here tlloyd notes that "Horse Traders actually changes the value of Minion in absolute terms."  It does so because, when Horse Traders is on the board, Minion becomes weaker, where weaker means that it's a worse buy.

If this is in fact true, then the existence of Warehouse does decrease the value of cellar in absolute terms.  This is because in just as frequent a situation (i.e. where Warehouse and Cellar are both available) Cellar is a weaker card.  It's weaker because in those situations Warehouse is also available.  Thus the very existence of Warehouse actually does decrease the absolute value of Cellar, the same way the existence of Hunting Party actually does decrease the absolute value of Lab.  I'll also note that the hypothetical diamond card would decrease the value of Gold...it wouldn't make Gold a bad card, because Gold is a very good card.  It would just make it slightly worse, which would still be very good.

This happens because we play with cards in sets of 10, therefore every time new cards are created, it changes the value of other cards.  How many times have people noted that Hinterlands has "made several previously underpowered cards stronger"?  This happens because the situations in which those cards are useful have become more (or less) frequent.

So, Warehouse did make Cellar a worse card, because we are considering all possible boards and some of those boards do have Cellar and Warehouse.  If Seaside did not have Warehouse, then there would be more situations where Cellar would be useful.

Anyways, I'm just trying to say, that Theory's old wording was fine.  His new wording I think is better, because it's broader, but to argue that Warehouse had no impact on the absolute value of Cellar is just silly, maybe a small impact, but it did have an impact.

All of this happens because the only meaningful way to rank cards in Dominion is to rank them across all possible layouts. 

While there's no formula or anything going on, it's just based on experience and feelings.  based on the paragraphs, and various explanations given by others there seem to be a couple factors which go into ranking the cards.
1. How often do I want to purchase the card (this is equal to how often is the card worth the opportunity cost to purchase which is very similar to how often will this card help my deck)
2. How much help does it give me when I get it

The second piece above is easy to understand, and I think most people agree.

The first piece above seems to generate lots of misunderstanding...people saying for instance "you can't judge a card based on how bad it would be in your deck...you shouldn't be purchasing it in that case".  Well, how do I determine if I should purchase a card?  If it would actively harm my deck, then I shouldn't buy it.  That means that it isn't a good card (of course when I say "me" I mean someone who's very good at the game, who could make these judgments)