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[theory]

There are things that you can do when designing a computer game that you simply cannot in a real-life game.  How could you imagine changes to Dominion, if you didn't have to worry about messy real-life decks of cards?

For instance: you can have cards like Philosopher's Stone, but much more in-depth.  A Treasure whose value depends on Victory cards: like Silk Roads or Gardens, but dynamically changing on each turn. 

Alternatively: many, many more kingdoms, with a greatly prolonged game time.  Make it a war, not a battle.

[werothegreat]

I've thought about this before - have a persistent kingdom that you add to every turn - there's a little map of your kingdom that grows as you buy Woodcutters, Border Villages, Highways, Bazaars...  and then you would be able to use your entire kingdom each turn, provided you had the Actions for it.  Of course, you'd have to buy Estates, Duchies and Provinces to put all your stuff on...

[Kirian]

I think it would be called "Starcraft."

[plasticbrain]

i guess you could do it like a simplified RTS like Plants vs. Zombies. instead of Sunflowers, you'd buy Villages/Kingdoms  to put on a map that would then churn out Gold, Actions and Card abilities at random intervals. but to buy Estates/Duchy/Province you have to convert your Kingdoms, thus losing some of your ability spawning. and maybe these converted-into-VP-Towers could be attacked, like in a Tower defense.

[theory]

Maybe I didn't explain clearly.  I meant, what if Dominion was designed to be played on Isotropic from the get-go?  The game is still essentially the same, but we are no longer restricted by the disadvantages of physical cards.  Philosopher's Stone variants would be feasible since they would no longer unbelievably delay games.

[AJD]

There would, in fact, be unlimited Copper, Silver, and Gold. (This would substantially change four-player Mountebank games.)

[guided]

And Trader games. And Governor games.

[Deadlock39]

And Golem/Tunnel.

[plasticbrain]

Maybe I didn't explain clearly.  I meant, what if Dominion was designed to be played on Isotropic from the get-go?  The game is still essentially the same, but we are no longer restricted by the disadvantages of physical cards.  Philosopher's Stone variants would be feasible since they would no longer unbelievably delay games.

if it's just going to be a card game, except digital, then i wouldn't change anything.
that's why i suggested more radical changes for a videogame conversion.

[popsofctown]

most cards could have built in logic that autoplays the card

[ftl]

Here's some thoughts. Don't know whether they're necessarily correct, of course.

I suspect there would be more options for trading between coins, buys, and actions. As it is, keeping in your head how many actions, coins, buys you have isn't that hard, but I can understand why there aren't any plans for cards that mess with that - Diadem gives you coins for your spare actions, but that's it. If it were designed from the start as a computer game, it would be a lot easier to deal with tradeoffs - if there's big public counters for [coins, actions, buys] then it's no big deal to have cards that have minuses as well as pluses. It's a design space which is easier to deal with when there's an automated counter.

Card complexity would have an additional factor - number of clicks. I suspect cards would be made to minimize tedious clicks. As it is, Hamlet-Library is SO ANNOYING to play with or play against online, in a way that IRL games don't have. I  bet that Hamlet would work differently. Going along with that, I would GUESS that for attacks with choices, you'd make the choice before seeing a reaction, at the same time as you play a card. (Again, to minimize clicks for obvious choices. Your Pirate Ship card would have a nice graphical interface - you play it by clicking 'Attack!' or 'Coins!', single click to play the card, without reactions. In a long Minion chain, it would take one click per Minion instead of two. But if there ARE reactions, you obviously can't change the interface for just those. In person, there's no need - without reactions, you just say 'Pirate Ship, Coins' immediately, but online that involves an extra click.) Obviously, there may be rebalancing that goes along with that. It's not necessarily better, just more suited to online play IMO. 

Durations that last longer than one turn, or variable numbers of turns. IRL - you're not going to expect people to remember exactly what they played two turns ago.

More actions that give plusses based on what the opponent did on the previous turn. '+1 action for every 5 action cards your opponent played last turn, rounded up. +1 card for every attack card your opponent played last turn.' Or stuff like that. Obviously you can do things with treasures, vp, actions, etc. Not so feasible IRL because cards get discarded and you don't remember exactly what happened - Smugglers is about as much as you can do with that IRL, you can't get too complex.

You would probably only be able to reveal each reaction once per attack. As it is, the reason you can reveal more is I think(if I remember Donald's comments correctly) partially due to accountability - you can't know whether the other person has one Secret Chamber in hand or two, or if they drew another one from the top of their deck, or so on. Same with the others, you don't know whether it's one reaction multiple times or different ones. Electronic accountability makes that easy.

In general, any design decisions that were made for the accountability reasons would no longer need that.

Oh, and there would be awesome animations for everything.

most cards could have built in logic that autoplays the card

Disagree. The game is complex enough so that card plays are very rarely automatic - controlling reshuffles and all that, I don't *always* want to play that Smithy or Village if I know what's left in my deck.

[popsofctown]

Sure, sometimes you don't play village because you might trigger a reshuffle.  But that depth is only tapped about 2% of all the times you ever play a village.  In a software implementation, you're better off making village a forced-play card.  The time saved by forcing the village to be played will be used making other decisions in a best out of 9 instead of a best out of seven.

[Kirian]

Sure, sometimes you don't play village because you might trigger a reshuffle.  But that depth is only tapped about 2% of all the times you ever play a village.  In a software implementation, you're better off making village a forced-play card.  The time saved by forcing the village to be played will be used making other decisions in a best out of 9 instead of a best out of seven.

Except sometimes it's nice to play Village later rather than earlier.  If your hand is 3xVillage, Envoy, Gold, you want to play Village, then Envoy, so your opponent doesn't know how many actions you have left.

Or you might want to play Hunting Party before Village if (for whatever reason) you didn't want to draw another Village.

If you have a Menagerie and 4 different cards, one of which is Village, you want to play Menagerie first or Village might draw a duplicate.

If you just drew Village rearranged your top two cards with Apothecary, and you have Wishing Well in hand, you want to play WW first.

[Bulb]

Wondering how nobody has mentioned this... I know I'm not the only programmer to read these boards...

Cards with random results/powers.  Imagine...

...a $3 Remodel that chose your target randomly.  You could even pro-rate the odds for cards that cost more - e.g. if you Random-Remodel a Gold, you will get a Province most of the time... but sometimes you'll just get a Gold back.

...or a $2 random Steward.  (Don't play it when you're only holding Provinces...)

...or a $5 Gold that, 25% of the time, prohibits you from buying Victory cards.

Shuffling is the only random aspect of card-based Dominion - but if we're designing the game to be a video game, why not add some more random elements?

[rod-]

Back ON topic, you could get rid of the "shuffle" altogether, getting rid of some of the most luck-driven frustrating aspects of the game.  As long as the gameplay logic dictates that the next card drawn is randomly selected from all cards which:
A) Have been drawn (N-1) times thus far, where N = the maximum number of times any card has been drawn (the N for newly-gained cards would have to be set to whatever N currently is)
B) Are not currently in play.

And while instinctively, this does not seem qualitatively different from the way dominion currently works, it is.  If a card "misses a shuffle" in the above system, it does not get played 1/2 as often as other cards during that 2-shuffle window.

[mischiefmaker]

Alternatively: many, many more kingdoms, with a greatly prolonged game time. Make it a war, not a battle.

Perhaps something like this?

http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/72853/error/expired/dominion-campaign-rules-v01

Haven't tried it out yet -- one of the things I like about Dominion is how quickly each game plays -- but it sounds neat, and a computer implementation does away with the need for that complicated tracking sheet.

[Tydude]

You could bypass many of the problems with not being able to trust players. You could, for example, have a card that says "Each other player reveals their highest costing card from their hand" without having to make them reveal their whole hand. This also works for cards like Menagerie, which could no longer have you reveal your hand to the other players. You could also pull cards out of the deck without searching the deck. For example, "Put the highest costing card from your deck into your hand". Or, perhaps, "Put all your action cards from your deck on top of your deck".

And, perhaps most importantly, it could give you all the possible trashing combinations for when you play Forge! No longer will you have to add up every possible combination of cards from your hand, and then check the board to see what you get. Think of how much time will be saved! 

[DG]

If it was originally a computer game then
- you need not have a draw or discard deck at all. You could just have 'items' in your 'empire' and when you draw you get a random 'item' from your 'empire'. Any 'item' gained is immediately in your empire. Instead of re-arranging a draw deck you could perhaps plan a series of draws, draw an item of choice, or restrict a draw to a type of 'item'.
- if you keep draw decks you have actions that shuffle, reorder, and search through them constantly.
- each card in your empire could vary uniquely even if it is gained from a uniform supply. For example, each witch might dispense only three curses throughout the game and that could be tallied for each individual witch when it was played.
- victory cards could uniquely named and located on a map so that you could only gain that victory card if you owned a neighbouring area. The locations could be uniquely costed with unique vp scores and other potential benefits as well (such as when you gain Champagne you gain a vineyard).
- you could associate cards together so that they are always drawn at the same time, or perhaps one new card could represent both effects so once combined you could draw a bureaucrat+saboteur for one card and play it for one action.
- the game could run in real time so if your opponent gives you a curse you could draw it a second later, or perhaps you could wait until your opponent had 10 cards in hand to play your militia.
- you could make secret purchases and you would never need to reveal your hand
- you could remove a lot of 'may' clauses and put complex interactions onto the cards that will resolve automatically but instantly.

[popsofctown]

Kirian I'm thinking of if dominion were designed to be a computer game from the very start.  The solution to your problem would possibly be "Don't print Menagerie".  Envoy also is less interesting design space when you could be building single click engines and fighting eachother through automatic Moats.  Things get fast.

[Tydude]

Kirian I'm thinking of if dominion were designed to be a computer game from the very start.  The solution to your problem would possibly be "Don't print Menagerie".  Envoy also is less interesting design space when you could be building single click engines and fighting eachother through automatic Moats.  Things get fast.

I would never want to play this game. All you do on your turn is a single click? That sounds insanely boring and dull. No thanks.

[popsofctown]

That was hyperbole.  There would still be lots of choosing.  Just not on things like village.  More Steward decisions, less village decisions.

[guided]

Auto-playing Village is an absolute non-starter. There are meaningful decisions about when to play Village all the time.

[DStu]

And, perhaps most importantly, it could give you all the possible trashing combinations for when you play Forge! No longer will you have to add up every possible combination of cards from your hand, and then check the board to see what you get. Think of how much time will be saved! 

You don't want a list with the 2^(#cards in hand) possibility what to trash, each entry dublicated for (#how many cards you can gain for that price) times. What you perhaps could do is hover over a "target" and get a list of cards that could be forged to this target, excluding dublicates, likely excluding 0-cost cards. Which you must add by hand.

Also +1 for no autoplay on Village. There are so many situations where you don't want it, to add some to the list:
KC,TR
Trash for benefit
reshuffle
good cards left in your deck, but already enough value in the hand
Menangerie/HP
Bad cards on your deck (Spy et al) and Native Village/Lookout
Pearl Diver/Apothecary/Scout usually wants to be played before the first Village the first time, for the second one it depends on what you see
empty deck + Vault/SC

[yuma]

In response to ideas about what you could do for a Philosopher's Stone card... I think a card that gives money based of the number of actions that have been bought by the group as a whole would be interesting. "Maybe for every 2 actions bought or worth one coin." It would be a pain in real life to have to keep track of that or count every pile each time the card is played but computerized it is a snap.

Or a victory card that is dependent on bought actions--I know there is already one like that... But--oh and another idea just came to me--a victory card that has variable worth like Gardens and such, but is worth the amount of cards that you have at the time that you bought it.  Let's call it, "Greenhouse." "Worth 1 victory point for every 5 cards in your hand, deck, play and draw pile at the time you bought this card." Again in real life you can't expect to keep track of how many cards you have each time you bought one of these cards, but computerized again it is super easy.

Maybe I am thinking on a small scale compared to others, but dominion is already such a great game I have a hard time thinking bigger changes will improve it much.

[Fangz]

There are things that you can do when designing a computer game that you simply cannot in a real-life game.  How could you imagine changes to Dominion, if you didn't have to worry about messy real-life decks of cards?

For instance: you can have cards like Philosopher's Stone, but much more in-depth.  A Treasure whose value depends on Victory cards: like Silk Roads or Gardens, but dynamically changing on each turn. 

Alternatively: many, many more kingdoms, with a greatly prolonged game time.  Make it a war, not a battle.

I don't think the possibility of complexity is equivalent to it being desirable. For example, even with Isotropic, I loathe the philosopher's stone and silk roads cards. The issue is that though the software might be able to calculate their values, the player generally cannot. Which means that if the player has to make strategic decisions on whether to buy or play a card, it's too hard for the player to know in advance how much a silk roads is worth, or how much cash a philosopher's stone is going to generate. With sufficient complication, the results of cards becomes effectively random, or worse the game becomes a race of who is best at card counting or crunching sums in their head, decreasing the fun of the game. It's pretty lame if one player beats another because one bought silk roads and the other duchies, when, unbeknownst to both players, the silk roads were worth more.