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[amalloy]

One of the boards I lost was also with Colonies, it took me 35 turns to get 8 Colonies, 1 Province and 1 Duchy with pure BM. The bot built some strange Golem/Beggar/Talisman/Spice Merchant engine which was quite good at gaining Coppers and Potions and probably trashing them.

I just had to see what this looked like. I think my favorite is turn 34:

Serf Bot   plays Golem
Serf Bot   reveals Beggar, Copper, Golem, Forager
Serf Bot   discards: Copper, Golem
Serf Bot   plays Beggar
Serf Bot   gains Copper
Serf Bot   gains Copper
Serf Bot   gains Copper
Serf Bot   plays Forager
Serf Bot   trashes Beggar
Serf Bot   plays Workshop
Serf Bot   gains Potion
Serf Bot   plays Talisman
Serf Bot   plays Talisman
Serf Bot   plays 3 Copper
Serf Bot   buys Potion
Serf Bot   gains Potion
Serf Bot   gains Potion
Serf Bot   gains Potion
Serf Bot   buys Beggar
Serf Bot   gains Beggar
Serf Bot   gains Beggar
Serf Bot   gains Beggar
Serf Bot   draws Potion, Talisman, Copper, Copper, Forager

Sometimes you just need four potions in a single turn, you know? And it's tough to decide whether you want fewer beggars or lots more beggars!

[SirPeebles]

Challenge: find a board where pure big money is optimal strategy.

Ok it is easy: 10 villages kingdom

At $5, I'd take Festival over Silver.  BM Festival?

[yed]

Challenge: find a board where pure big money is optimal strategy.

Ok it is easy: 10 villages kingdom

At $5, I'd take Festival over Silver.  BM Festival?

Village, walled, Border, Fortress, Wand Minst, Hamlet, native, workers, university, fishing

Ony useful is workers and fishing but silver is better.
Ok technically hamlet is better than nothing on $2.

[Awaclus]

If I'm correct, these are the cards that you can have in a kingdom without making purchasing anything other than basic cards a move worth considering (even if you would say no in almost every situation):

Village
Fortress
Walled Village
Scheme
Throne Room
Band of Misfits
Border Village
(Wandering Minstrel)
(University)

Wandering Minstrel and University aren't technically strictly worse than Silver, because one cycles at random and the other empties piles and both are effects that can be desirable, but in practice emptying piles with University is so slow that you won't ever get to do that in a BM game and the cycling helps you so little that it's not even worth mentioning. In order to complete the kingdom, you need one card that you actually have to consider getting instead of Silver. I'm not sure if Farming Village, Scout or Transmute is the worst possible alternative for that slot.

[Watno]

Border Village + Duchy is better than just Duchy for sure, becaquse you can choose not to play Border Village to avoid a reshuffle.

[JW]

If I'm correct, these are the cards that you can have in a kingdom without making purchasing anything other than basic cards a move worth considering (even if you would say no in almost every situation):

Village
Fortress
Walled Village
Scheme
Throne Room
Band of Misfits
Border Village
(Wandering Minstrel)
(University)

Why not Rats?

[Awaclus]

If I'm correct, these are the cards that you can have in a kingdom without making purchasing anything other than basic cards a move worth considering (even if you would say no in almost every situation):

Village
Fortress
Walled Village
Scheme
Throne Room
Band of Misfits
Border Village
(Wandering Minstrel)
(University)

Why not Rats?

Because it comboes with Fortress.

Border Village + Duchy is better than just Duchy for sure, becaquse you can choose not to play Border Village to avoid a reshuffle.

True. I guess you need two cards then.

[amalloy]

Why not Rats?

Because it comboes with Fortress.

Not much of a combo...it turns Rats from "cantrip: turn a good card into a bad card" to "cantrip: gain a bad card". Rats is strictly worse than nothing at all, let alone Silver.

[Awaclus]

Why not Rats?

Because it comboes with Fortress.

Not much of a combo...it turns Rats from "cantrip: turn a good card into a bad card" to "cantrip: gain a bad card". Rats is strictly worse than nothing at all, let alone Silver.

It empties a pile very fast.

[JW]

Not much of a combo...it turns Rats from "cantrip: turn a good card into a bad card" to "cantrip: gain a bad card". Rats is strictly worse than nothing at all, let alone Silver.

It empties a pile very fast.

The only reason I see to empty the Rats pile in this kingdom is that it will end the game with you ahead, and the only (non-Province) piles I see running out besides Rats are Duchy and Estate.  Additionally, Rats-Fortress only empties the Rats pile fast if you can draw your deck and I can't see how you draw your deck if Duchy/Estates are gone and you have a lead. So I don't see how Rats could be used as part of a strategy improving on Big Money even slightly.

[Holger]

Why not Rats?

Because it comboes with Fortress.

Not much of a combo...it turns Rats from "cantrip: turn a good card into a bad card" to "cantrip: gain a bad card". Rats is strictly worse than nothing at all, let alone Silver.

It empties a pile very fast.

Not really - it takes >4 shuffles to empty the Rats pile after you bought one (if you don't buy more than one), even if you play it every time you draw it.

[Stealth Tomato]

Wand Minst

This confused me substantially, I was wondering what the hell sort of wand a wand minst was.

[Drab Emordnilap]

Don't forget King's Court.

[Awaclus]

Don't forget King's Court.

King's Courting a village gives you one extra card.

[Holger]

Has someone investigated whether SerfBot even beats pure BM? Otherwise adding a pure BM bot would make sense to let every newbie get over the "silver test"   

Tried 4 games. Won 3. The one I lost: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140320/log.50893139a2e67cff211cd7e5.1395358223710.txt - Colonies and Thief, Serf Bot buys Thieves turn 2, 4 and 10 stealing lots of money from me during the game. I lost by one point.

One of the boards I lost was also with Colonies, it took me 35 turns to get 8 Colonies, 1 Province and 1 Duchy with pure BM. The bot built some strange Golem/Beggar/Talisman/Spice Merchant engine which was quite good at gaining Coppers and Potions and probably trashing them.

Has someone investigated whether SerfBot even beats pure BM? Otherwise adding a pure BM bot would make sense to let every newbie get over the "silver test"   

I have tried that 3 times. Pure big money beats serf bot. So here you go pure big money bot.

Thanks for testing this. It's ... surprising that they intentionally (?) made SerfBot worse than the simplest possible strategy. How much rating difference does a 75%+ win rate correspond to, I wonder? Serf Bot is level -37 (!) on Isotropish, after all...

[Holger]

Lord Bottington is the default, programmed as best as they can.

FWIW, Lord Bottington is now the second-worst of the non-serf bots on Isotropish (at level 6; Warlord is level 1; the best is Conqueror at 15), though the order changes quite often...

[SirD]

Did they already change the quality of the bots? Boy is Conqueror playing badly. I always thought he'd play quite decently:

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140421/log.516d6636e4b082c74d7bdf6f.1398121207859.txt

[amalloy]

Did they already change the quality of the bots? Boy is Conqueror playing badly. I always thought he'd play quite decently:

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140421/log.516d6636e4b082c74d7bdf6f.1398121207859.txt

Looks pretty normal. I was expecting worse when I saw Warehouse in the kingdom, really: some of the bots love that card, and will pile Warehouses then transition into a "play five Warehouses per turn" strategy. But it looks like the Remake/Poor House interaction stymied him: he kept gaining cards he didn't expect with it!

[SirD]

@amalloy Right. I see you have got some experience with the stupid side of the bots.

I mean much good stuff is already said in this thread about how to decrease the bots' skills. I would suggest to take the best bot you build so far (and maybe even improve it!). Then you can additionally implement the following rules:

- Buy too many action cards
- Buy no, or not enough, or too late cards with plus buy
- Underestimate the value of drawing cards (buy not enough or too late)
- Green to late(!)
- Only go for provinces (dont buy duchies, continue building)
- Nearly never buy estates or alt VP

You should be able to adjust the skill level of the bots by the percentage they follow the bad rules instead of the good ones.

But hey, I would really love to see some improved bots also

[florrat]

This bot tried out a new strategy, Golem Big Money:

Banker Bot cards: 13 Silver , 1 Golem , 7 Copper , 3 Gold , 2 Masterpiece , 1 Potion , 3 Estate , 3 Province , 2 Duchy
Banker Bot total victory points: 27
Banker Bot turns: 17

[SCSN]