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Author Topic: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold  (Read 16013 times)

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timchen

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #25 on: December 12, 2011, 02:22:30 pm »
0

Or how about looking at actual games?  My game search page shows 14 instances where one person ended the game with at least 3 Fool's Golds and the other player had none: the Fool's Gold player had three wins, one tie, and ten losses.  That's not the mark of a broken card, not at all.  It's the mark of a situational trap card.  I think this game is a particularly fun example, though this one probably does a better job of refuting the idea that FG>Silver and Gold in treasure decks (yes, there was an engine, but it's the kind of engine that requires lots of actual treasure cards to work, and would have a better-than-average chance of lining up your FGs).
The two games you mentioned shared two common things: 1. the FG player did not start buying FG until mid game; 2. There are hand-size reduction attacks involved. I would say lots of games are already determined mid game, and switching to FG may not be enough to overcome the deficiency. Also, the initial accumulated treasure is a huge negative to the FGs.

That being said, I certainly tend to agree that in any sort of action deck, a kickstarting silver seems better than FG. Once you have that silver and your action chain going, it is usually not that relevant whether you switch back to FG. 

Quote
1.  Do the FG bots trash FG's for top-decked Golds when the opponent buys Provinces? 
This question actually does not matter, as once you accumulated enough FGs, you would never want to exchange them for golds.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #26 on: December 12, 2011, 02:28:28 pm »
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Or how about looking at actual games?  My game search page shows 14 instances where one person ended the game with at least 3 Fool's Golds and the other player had none: the Fool's Gold player had three wins, one tie, and ten losses.  That's not the mark of a broken card, not at all.  It's the mark of a situational trap card.  I think this game is a particularly fun example, though this one probably does a better job of refuting the idea that FG>Silver and Gold in treasure decks (yes, there was an engine, but it's the kind of engine that requires lots of actual treasure cards to work, and would have a better-than-average chance of lining up your FGs).
The two games you mentioned shared two common things: 1. the FG player did not start buying FG until mid game; 2. There are hand-size reduction attacks involved. I would say lots of games are already determined mid game, and switching to FG may not be enough to overcome the deficiency. Also, the initial accumulated treasure is a huge negative to the FGs.

That being said, I certainly tend to agree that in any sort of action deck, a kickstarting silver seems better than FG. Once you have that silver and your action chain going, it is usually not that relevant whether you switch back to FG. 

Quote
1.  Do the FG bots trash FG's for top-decked Golds when the opponent buys Provinces? 
This question actually does not matter, as once you accumulated enough FGs, you would never want to exchange them for golds.

I actually think that FG decks are extremely resilient, in general to handsize reduction. Especially to Margrave.
And your reason why it doesn't matter is the primary reason it DOES matter, though there are specific tactical situations you may indeed want to trash (though they are rare in heavy FG-density decks).

timchen

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #27 on: December 12, 2011, 02:42:13 pm »
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Quote
And your reason why it doesn't matter is the primary reason it DOES matter, though there are specific tactical situations you may indeed want to trash (though they are rare in heavy FG-density decks).

Are you talking about the opposite case (i.e., does the simulator trashes the FG when it's better left untouched)? I thought the intent of the question is clearly asking whether this effect benefits the FG player too much, and can be mitigated by buying more Duchies.
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Geronimoo

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #28 on: December 12, 2011, 02:50:07 pm »
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The courtyard card has a problem with Fool's Gold. Courtyard will put back the best treasure if it doesn't have an influence on this turn's buying power (if it has $11, it will put back a Gold, but a Silver if it has $10). Fool's Gold's value is not fixed which the Courtyard doesn't know, so he puts it back when he shouldn't.

Also, Fool's Gold will only be trashed for a real Gold if the player has a Gold in his deck already AND less than 2 FG's in hand (I found this worked best in most cases)
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Voltgloss

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #29 on: December 12, 2011, 03:29:30 pm »
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Quote
And your reason why it doesn't matter is the primary reason it DOES matter, though there are specific tactical situations you may indeed want to trash (though they are rare in heavy FG-density decks).

Are you talking about the opposite case (i.e., does the simulator trashes the FG when it's better left untouched)? I thought the intent of the question is clearly asking whether this effect benefits the FG player too much, and can be mitigated by buying more Duchies.

That was indeed my intent, as it wasn't clear to me whether the FG reaction ability was relevant to this analysis at all.  Turns out from Geronimoo's answer that it's not - if the bot never gets Gold in the first place, it's never going to use the FG reaction ability. 
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #30 on: December 12, 2011, 04:07:53 pm »
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Can somebody sim Spice Merchant/FG for me, with the Spice Merchant always going for money/buy rather than cards? (Preferrably it won't trash FGs and if you're really amazing, you'll get it to take the cards if it can't get 2 FGs with the money/buy, at least sometimes, but that second thing is probably a negligible difference and a pipe dream). I'm assuming you need dominiate for this, but I don't know how to do much in dominiate. I'm guessing that's even better than Nomad Camp/FG though.

Qvist

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #31 on: December 13, 2011, 08:58:10 am »
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This plays pretty decent:

Code: [Select]
{
  name: 'Spice Merchant + Fool\'s Gold'
  author: 'Qvist'
  requires: ["Spice Merchant", "Fool's Gold"]
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province"
    "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Spice Merchant" if my.countInDeck("Spice Merchant") <= 0
    "Fool's Gold"
  ]
  actionPriority: (state, my, skipMultipliers = false) -> [
    "Spice Merchant"
  ]
  trashPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Copper"
    "Potion"
    "Silver"
  ]
  benefitValue: (state, choice, my) ->
    cardValue = 1
    coinValue = 2
    if state.countInSupply("Fool's Gold") == 0
      cardValue = 4
     
    value = cardValue * (choice.cards ? 0)
    value += coinValue * (choice.coins ? 0)
    value
}

Around 60% against Double Jack and 65% agains Envoy.
But I don't see a big difference between this and simple Nomad Camp.

Code: [Select]
{
  name: 'Nomad Camp + Fool\'s Gold'
  author: 'Qvist'
  requires: ["Nomad Camp", "Fool's Gold"]
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province"
    "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Nomad Camp" if my.countInDeck("Nomad Camp") <= 0
    "Fool's Gold"
  ]
 
}
« Last Edit: December 13, 2011, 09:04:30 am by Qvist »
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Titandrake

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #32 on: December 13, 2011, 10:55:03 pm »
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Somewhat off topic, but this topic got me to try pure FG strategies more, and it definitely feels a bit strong. Just played Mine/Fool's Gold opening, got 4 Provinces in 11 turns. Mine is faster than Spice Merchant, but I would suspect the two perform similarly.
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DG

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #33 on: December 14, 2011, 08:56:49 am »
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Mine/fool's gold is probably strictly worse than remodel/fool's gold. Remodel/fool's gold is again at a par with some jack of all trades decks.
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Qvist

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #34 on: December 15, 2011, 04:06:20 am »
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I don't want to open a new thread for this combo, but while trying some simulations with Fool's Gold
the second best 5/2 opening after Mint/Fool's Gold which we already know may be Margrave / Fool's Gold.
It gives Cards and Buy, both very important for Fool's Gold and attacks the opponent => Very strong.
I don't think anyone has mentioned this before. Otherwise, I apologize.

Code: [Select]
{
  name: 'Margrave + Fool\'s Gold'
  author: 'Qvist'
  requires: ["Margrave", "Fool's Gold"]
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province"
    "Duchy" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Margrave" if my.countInDeck("Margrave") <= 0
    "Fool's Gold"
  ]
}

68% against DoubleJack
78% agains BigMoney Envoy
even with 4/3 openings included

I just looked up on councilroom and it's the best Margrave opening with Level 3.

HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #35 on: December 15, 2011, 08:48:52 am »
0

Some of the results of these combos are a bit overstated, because it's not fair to compare, for example, margrave+fool's gold BM to envoy BM without fool's gold. It still beats it, but not by the advertised margin.

In general, I think any card draw + money strat should prefer fool's gold to silver.
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Kirian

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #36 on: December 15, 2011, 01:01:59 pm »
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In general, I think any card draw + money strat should prefer fool's gold to silver.

Indeed, by about 60-40, BM-Envoy-FG (no Silver) beats BM-Envoy.

Interestingly, BM-Envoy only beats BM-Envoy-FG (no Silver OR GOLD) by 55-45.

Double Jack vs. Envoy-FG is 52-48 (within MOE; Dominiate takes 4700 games to declare Double Jack a winner)

BM-Envoy only beats BM-FG-no actions by 55-45.  For comparison, BM-Envoy beats straight BM by 71-29.

A $2 card is better than Silver without using its bonus option.

Anyone else willing to declare this truly broken with me?  Any reasonable game with FG should be an FG race.
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Geronimoo

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #37 on: December 15, 2011, 03:02:50 pm »
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In general, I think any card draw + money strat should prefer fool's gold to silver.
I'd go even one further: any card draw + money strat should prefer fool's gold to silver AND to Gold

Envoy is an exception because having to discard a FG with 1 FG in hand is a lot worse than having to a discard a Gold with 1 Gold in hand. But Rabble and Smithy will prefer FG over Silvers and Golds even if the other player is also gunning for FG's!
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #38 on: December 15, 2011, 03:42:44 pm »
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Quote
A $2 card is better than Silver without using its bonus option.

Anyone else willing to declare this truly broken with me?  Any reasonable game with FG should be an FG race.
So what? There is nothing wrong with a $2 card being better than silver a lot of the time. A similar argument has been made about lighthouse before. The thing is, it's not broken unless it makes the game less fun. Playing envoy-FG is no less fun than playing envoy+traditional money, because the latter is already pretty soul-sucking. Just buy FGs instead of silver. Doesn't really change anything...

In general, I think any card draw + money strat should prefer fool's gold to silver.
I'd go even one further: any card draw + money strat should prefer fool's gold to silver AND to Gold
I disagree. It performs better than gold in sims in which your opponent doesn't compete with you for fool's golds and you're able to get so many that you can reliably draw 3 together. If you pit smithy+FG against smithy+gold+FG, it should lose.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2011, 03:48:54 pm by HiveMindEmulator »
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Kirian

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Re: Nomad Camp/Fool's Gold
« Reply #39 on: December 15, 2011, 04:02:37 pm »
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I disagree. It performs better than gold in sims in which your opponent doesn't compete with you for fool's golds and you're able to get so many that you can reliably draw 3 together. If you pit smithy+FG against smithy+gold+FG, it should lose.

On Dominiate, Smithy-Gold-FG is almost indistinguishable from Smithy-FG.  It picks a clear statistical winner after 19k games, a bare 51-49 in favor of Smithy-Gold-FG... worse than the first-player advantage.

Edit:  Oh, here's a fun one.  Pairing Smithy-FG against itself, the player who opens FG/FG has an advantage over opening FG/Smithy.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2011, 04:10:32 pm by Kirian »
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