Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[brokoli]

Is it possible to play engines in these boards ? How would you play the engine ?

A) Cellar, Village, Throne room, Spy, Remodel, Gardens, Council room, Library, Market, Adventurer
B) Chapel, Cellar, Woodcutter, Village, Spy, Smithy, Bureaucrat, Mine, Laboratory, Adventurer

Overall, I feel like engines in base games are surprisingly difficult to play, because there are lots of weak engines cards. I tried these games against bot without real success at building a good engine. Playing these games I noticed that the expansions made me learn things about engines that I had to unlearn with base game. The most important differences in base game are the lack of powerful $5 engine cards (the best is really Festival) and the lack of money in the form of action cards.

[liopoil]

Engines in base games are surprisingly common, the biggest problem with them is lack of villages.

Both of these board are engine boards, I suspect. Engines are almost always the right call when available.

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

B) chapel everything, village/smithy engine + 1 woodcutter, golds for money. Other cards might matter a little bit situationally.

[sudgy]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

[silverspawn]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

no, that sounds right

[sudgy]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

no, that sounds right

There's no strong trashing, either.  I think the engine is too slow on that board, and while it's firing up the BM player would have 6-8 card hands and easily get most of the provinces.

[liopoil]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

no, that sounds right

There's no strong trashing, either.  I think the engine is too slow on that board, and while it's firing up the BM player would have 6-8 card hands and easily get most of the provinces.

The BM here is not that strong. The best BM is probably BM-library, which isn't helped nearly as much by council room as normal BM strategies are. I bet the engine wins at least 2/3 of the time.

[sudgy]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

no, that sounds right

There's no strong trashing, either.  I think the engine is too slow on that board, and while it's firing up the BM player would have 6-8 card hands and easily get most of the provinces.

The BM here is not that strong. The best BM is probably BM-library, which isn't helped nearly as much by council room as normal BM strategies are. I bet the engine wins at least 2/3 of the time.

Yeah, the BM isn't strong, but the engine isn't either.  I think BM would win a majority of the time.

[liopoil]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

no, that sounds right

There's no strong trashing, either.  I think the engine is too slow on that board, and while it's firing up the BM player would have 6-8 card hands and easily get most of the provinces.

The BM here is not that strong. The best BM is probably BM-library, which isn't helped nearly as much by council room as normal BM strategies are. I bet the engine wins at least 2/3 of the time.

Yeah, the BM isn't strong, but the engine isn't either.  I think BM would win a majority of the time.

The engine has triple-province potential. Want to play it?

[sudgy]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

no, that sounds right

There's no strong trashing, either.  I think the engine is too slow on that board, and while it's firing up the BM player would have 6-8 card hands and easily get most of the provinces.

The BM here is not that strong. The best BM is probably BM-library, which isn't helped nearly as much by council room as normal BM strategies are. I bet the engine wins at least 2/3 of the time.

Yeah, the BM isn't strong, but the engine isn't either.  I think BM would win a majority of the time.

The engine has triple-province potential. Want to play it?

Alright, meet me in outpost.  I'll play BM, you play engine.

[pacovf]

Not the same board, but there was some nice analysis about the base set in this article by Geronimoo:

http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/07/30/building-the-first-game-engine/

[sudgy]

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140628/log.50a43f07e4b0addfc4f4304a.1403982657430.txt

It was really close.

[liopoil]

yeah. I misplayed it a little bit, turn 11 should have been throne/throne/village probably instead of gold/market. gold/throne would be better for sure, at least.

[sudgy]

My main thing is that I didn't expect the Remodel to be used THAT much.

Also, I shouldn't have gotten the Library, because I had big hands every time.

[liopoil]

yeah, throne room turns remodel into a real trasher. I got rid of almost all my starting cards by the end of the game. It's really good at the end for turning all your cards into points.

[silverspawn]

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140628/log.50a43f07e4b0addfc4f4304a.1403982657430.txt

It was really close.

proof via example. q.e.d

[brokoli]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

I learned that too 
From my experience against banker bot (log here, but it's not at all an example of good play ) there are two cards that make Council room in the engine not that awful :
- Spy, because played before council room it makes the +1 card for the opponent at least less useful
- Gardens, because with all these multiples buys the engine player can have more control on the end of the game, as shown in the log I was far behind but almost managed to win on the last turn.

I like your game against liopoil because I didn't expect remodel to be so powerful here, I mean there are no real interesting cards to turn estates and coppers into, so I thought remodel would be "only" useful for the gold => province thing.
Still, engine doesn't win so easily.

[liopoil]

A) I'd open silver/remodel, then build the engine thing with villages, throne room, council room for draw, and golds for payload and remodeling into province. You don't want a second silver probably, but you might want a spy or two before throne room if it is too early.

Council Room is a bad idea for draw in an engine.  I learned that the hard way.

I learned that too 
From my experience against banker bot (log here, but it's not at all an example of good play ) there are two cards that make Council room in the engine not that awful :
- Spy, because played before council room it makes the +1 card for the opponent at least less useful
- Gardens, because with all these multiples buys the engine player can have more control on the end of the game, as shown in the log I was far behind but almost managed to win on the last turn.

I like your game against liopoil because I didn't expect remodel to be so powerful here, I mean there are no real interesting cards to turn estates and coppers into, so I thought remodel would be "only" useful for the gold => province thing.
Still, engine doesn't win so easily.

You are forgetting library, which if the opponent has in hand completely nulls the council room effect. Gardens is important for there to be more VP in the supply for the engine player to pick up. Engine does not win easily, but I made several errors. I think with optimal play the engine player will win by more and more often, and I stick to my at least 2/3 estimate.

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140628/log.50a43f07e4b0addfc4f4304a.1403982657430.txt

It was really close.

proof via example. q.e.d

yeah, good point, but I think the point is an example of how a game on this kingdom might go.

[silverspawn]

the best cr enabler in the base game is without a doubt milita

[liopoil]

the best cr enabler in the base game is without a doubt milita

well of course, but it isn't in the kingdom so I didn't mention it.

I wonder what the strategy would be in that kingdom if you replaced adventurer with smithy. Now the BM is much stronger, but smithy has use in the engine so I think that is still the way to go.

[GeoLib]

If you're playing against an engine that's using CR for draw wouldn't BM+CR be a better BM option? That way you can actually take advantage of the extra card

[Awaclus]

If you're playing against an engine that's using CR for draw wouldn't BM+CR be a better BM option? That way you can actually take advantage of the extra card

I think that usually when you're playing against an engine, CR is better than Library even if your opponent doesn't use CR for draw. The extra card isn't as useful for an engine as it is for big money, so it's beneficial for you to give an extra card for both of you, especially since it comes with a +buy.

[dondon151]

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140628/log.50a43f07e4b0addfc4f4304a.1403982657430.txt

It was really close.

BM player should really be using CR instead of Library.

[Titandrake]

If you're playing against an engine that's using CR for draw wouldn't BM+CR be a better BM option? That way you can actually take advantage of the extra card

I think that usually when you're playing against an engine, CR is better than Library even if your opponent doesn't use CR for draw. The extra card isn't as useful for an engine as it is for big money, so it's beneficial for you to give an extra card for both of you, especially since it comes with a +buy.

More importantly, playing CR speeds up the game for both players, and engines are about having an explosive late game after spending turns building up. CR means you get less build time, the +1 card doesn't offset the turns you don't get to have for building purposes.

[sudgy]

http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20140628/log.50a43f07e4b0addfc4f4304a.1403982657430.txt

It was really close.

BM player should really be using CR instead of Library.

I realized that Library was horrible too late.  I'm not so sure about getting CR, Market is a fairly viable option here and the CR card could help your opponent (lio got a few dud turns in that game, an extra card could have changed that).

[liopoil]

(lio got a few dud turns in that game, an extra card could have changed that).

...or me just buying things in the right order.