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[Voltgloss]

In the Alchemy expansion rules insert, Donald X. suggests that - when randomly selecting a kingdom of 10 cards - if Alchemy cards are going to be included, there should be between 3 to 5 of them.  Currently, Isotropic does not implement this.  We've all seen games with only one or two Alchemy cards on the board, often making those stacks (and Potions) nigh-useless (with exceptions of course, like Familar or Apprentice).

I'm curious to know peoples' thoughts on whether Iso should force the "either 3-5, or none at all" suggestion for Alchemy cards when crafting random sets.  There are of course multiple ways to implement this, but as an example for discussion purposes, say Iso counted the number of Alchemy expansion cards in any given random set of 10 (12 in veto mode) and:

• if there is only 1 Alchemy card, replace it with a randomly chosen card from another set;
• if there are 2 Alchemy cards, replace a randomly chosen non-Alchemy card with another Alchemy card; and
• if there are 6+ Alchemy cards, replace randomly chosen Alchemy cards with cards from other sets until you get down to 5.

Veto mode would still allow players to veto Alchemy cards without restriction.  If the veto results in only 1 Alchemy card still in the set, so be it - the players chose that.

Thoughts?

[philosophyguy]

I say no. One of the more interesting strategic decisions, in my mind, is whether a single potion-cost card is worth seeking in a given setup. There's lots of kingdoms with dead cards, so the fact that you might not go for, e.g., a University in a given setup is no different than having a setup that's not conducive to an Explorer.

[Thisisnotasmile]

I'm sure Donald said something somewhere around the time of Cornucopia's release along the lines of "There are too many cards, screw the recommendation, it was just a rcommendation anyway". Not an exact quote. The point was basically that if you start removing Alchemy cards from sets because there aren't enough of them, then you're going to use the Alchemy cards very rarely compared to other cards (how often do you get 3+ cards from the same MINI expansion turn up in a random selection of ten cards?) and if you start replacing cards with Alchemy cads whenever 1 or 2 turn up, you're going to use them too often.

I agree with this view and think there's nothing wrong with having only one or two Alchemy cards in a game. They're powerful cards, but are they powerful enough to buy that Potion for? Makes for some tough decisions.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Currently, Isotropic does not implement this. 

It used to, prior to the release of cornucopia. I'm not sure exactly why it was removed, but I like it better the way it is now. It was nice to have a lot of potion cards together when learning alchemy, but forcing them to always be together makes alchemy games all tend to play more similarly to each other, and gives less variety of interactions with non-alchemy cards.

We've all seen games with only one or two Alchemy cards on the board, often making those stacks (and Potions) nigh-useless (with exceptions of course, like Familar or Apprentice).

I don't agree with this assessment. Transmute and Golem tend to suffer because of their inconvenient costs, but there are a ton of games where univerity, apothecary, alchemist, or scrying pool play a major role without any other alchemy cards. It seems to me that they are useful no less frequently than any other cards. The cards were designed to be good enough to justify buying the potion even when there are no other potion-cost cards, which is part of why most of them give at least +1 action.

[Donald X.]

In the Alchemy expansion rules insert, Donald X. suggests that - when randomly selecting a kingdom of 10 cards - if Alchemy cards are going to be included, there should be between 3 to 5 of them.  Currently, Isotropic does not implement this.  We've all seen games with only one or two Alchemy cards on the board, often making those stacks (and Potions) nigh-useless (with exceptions of course, like Familar or Apprentice).

I'm curious to know peoples' thoughts on whether Iso should force the "either 3-5, or none at all" suggestion for Alchemy cards when crafting random sets.

I designed Alchemy with the idea that the cards would be mixed in randomly, so that you might get just one of them. This is in fact why the set is heavy on non-terminals - so that you can keep buying them when you draw your Potion.

Valerie and Dale said they liked the set much better with five Alchemy cards out at once. So it was a question as to what to say in the rulebook and how exactly to put it. In the end it recommends playing with 3-5 Alchemy cards at once.

People are welcome to play however they want. The set was designed for the situation where just one Alchemy card shows up, and works fine that way. I personally would not use an isotropic option that forced 0 or 3-5, but I wouldn't mind it existing. For the commercial program probably it makes sense to include it just because it's there in the rulebook.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Speakng of which, can you tell us anything new about the commercial program, Donald? Haven't heard anything for a while...

[DStu]

+1 to everybody.

The Potion-cost card are powerfull, I think when they appear in triplets they are too powerfull already. When that happens by chance, so be it, there are many three-card-combos which are "too powerfull", but if that's the default, it's not fun. I buy a Potion for the 2-3p-cards regularly, for Vineyard not often enough. Golem suffers a bit I think, Transmute is just Transmute. And for Possession I think it's quite good that it's an active decision to go for it and buy a Potion, and not a "I wanted the Pools and the Vineyards anyway, now I happen to have 6p, so I'll just take the Possession..."

[rrenaud]

The inconvenient cost of Golem is somewhat mitigated if you can fallback on a Scrying Pool when you don't hit 4p.

I'd certainly rather have the alchemy cards be more clumped.  Here are potion popular buys stats

% +      Win Rate with   Win Rate without
50.8      0.94 ± 0.00   1.06 ± 0.00

It's bought by about half the players, who lose more than half of their games.

I don't know how many games happened since the iso change, but the stats have for potion have probably gone down since then.

[Donald X.]

Speakng of which, can you tell us anything new about the commercial program, Donald? Haven't heard anything for a while...

They don't want to announce anything until the program is basically done, so that there's no sadness at missed release dates. I am not aware of an announcement yet so there you go.

[mrdirt73]

Speakng of which, can you tell us anything new about the commercial program, Donald? Haven't heard anything for a while...

They don't want to announce anything until the program is basically done, so that there's no sadness at missed release dates. I am not aware of an announcement yet so there you go.

I think it would be more of panicking at the prospect of a soon end to isotropic.

[chogg]

Wait, whaaat?  Somebody is making an "official" computer version of Dominion?  Where can I find info about this?  And will Isotropic go away?

[rrenaud]

Iso will die.  There is not a lot of info about the official version, other than it was released no more than 10 days ago (joke but it was supposed to be done by 2011).

Donald has given vague assurances that it won't suck, and I think people should generally wait until it is released and they try it out before they complain.

[chogg]

Sad, but exciting too.  I assume it will be pay-to-play.  I'm most interested in details about the payment model (really hoping there won't be a monthly fee, as that would be the end of my online Dominion!).

If it was supposed to be done in 2011, it sounds like the death of isotropic is imminent -- could be any day now!  I wonder why this isn't more widely known.

In the meantime, let's savor whatever time we have left.  Free online multiplayer Dominion, with the blessing of its creator, is a very sweet deal. 

[chogg]

Also: if you want to make the "Greatest Isotropic Moments 2012" thread?  You'd better get a move on!

[Davio]

Speakng of which, can you tell us anything new about the commercial program, Donald? Haven't heard anything for a while...

They don't want to announce anything until the program is basically done, so that there's no sadness at missed release dates. I am not aware of an announcement yet so there you go.

Is it being developed by Blizzard?

I don't mind waiting, Isotropic has been a great substitute these last months.

[DStu]

Is it being developed by Blizzard?

Obviously not. If it would be done by Blizzard, there would be millions of announcements and screenshots of the game, and there would be a official release date called "when it's done".
My guess is 3DRealms...

[theory]

Valve Time

[DStu]

Obviously not. If it would be done by Blizzard, there would be millions of announcements and screenshots of the game, and there would be a official release date called "when it's done".
My guess is 3DRealms...

Which, as I realize now, was really stupid of me cause "when it's done" originally was 3DRealms and not Blizzard...

[^_^_^_^]

Obviously not. If it would be done by Blizzard, there would be millions of announcements and screenshots of the game, and there would be a official release date called "when it's done".
My guess is 3DRealms...

Which, as I realize now, was really stupid of me cause "when it's done" originally was 3DRealms and not Blizzard...

Plus, Blizzard is now ActiBlizzard I believe. Activision merged with them.

[DStu]

Plus, Blizzard is now ActiBlizzard I believe. Activision merged with them.

The last time I cared "Blizzard Entertainment" still existed, and belonged to "Blizzard Activision" which via a network I don't remember belonged mostly to Vivendi.

[popsofctown]

Suggesting potion clumping actually is just a special case of many ways you could mix deliberate construction and random generation in kingdom creation.  You could also guarantee that there's a 2 cost, put a cap on how many 4's are available, limit the number of cursers to 2, etc, all sorts of things you could come up with and debate the merits and so on.  There's no right or wrong answers, it's just, what's going to be enjoyable, and what will make games have higher quality without being repeats of eachother.

I think if you wanted to come up with rules like that, potion clumping isn't where you'd start.