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[silverspawn]

Thank you for the amazing Salvager extension.

I am quite lazy. What I would love to see is a tracking display that shows my current deck size and my cards even during the game, like this screenshot from the gamelog:

If you do that, I'll quit playing Dominion.

[GeoLib]

Thank you for the amazing Salvager extension.

I am quite lazy. What I would love to see is a tracking display that shows my current deck size and my cards even during the game, like this screenshot from the gamelog:

If you do that, I'll quit playing Dominion.

Ooooh. This argument again!

[ragingduckd]

I am quite lazy. What I would love to see is a tracking display that shows my current deck size and my cards even during the game, like this screenshot from the gamelog:

This been requested a few times and discussed at least a little.  I don't think any of the past Salvager devs particularly favor adding it, so it probably won't happen any time soon.

If someone comes along who wants to add it, then we'll have to argue about whether and how that should happen.  Until then I suggest tabling the discussion.

[blueblimp]

If you do that, I'll quit playing Dominion.

How do you know nobody has done this yet? Coded his own tracking extension even with additional features of displaying what cards are left in the draw pile and showing the exact percentage for each card type to be drawn by Wishing well if you play it...

This discussion has been done ad nauseam before. Let me attempt to summarize the main conclusions of the discussion.

Any sort of non-mental tracking, including both point counting and deck contents tracking, is not allowed by the rules, because anything the rules do not explicitly allow is implicitly forbidden. (This is the opinion of Donald X himself, so it's not really up for argument.) As such, playing with any tracking is playing a variant of the game. If all players in a match consent to playing the variant, then that is fine. If any of them doesn't, then the variant should not be used, and if one player goes ahead and tracks anyway, then that is cheating. (Notice how, in the current implementation of the point counter, it's implemented so that it's only used if all the players consent to its use, either by joining a game with "#vpon" in the title or by choosing not to disable the counter once in the game.)

The argument you raised is common: manual non-mental tracking is always possible when playing online, so how can tracking be forbidden? The reason is that, although it's possible to do undetectable manual non-mental tracking without the consent of the other player, it's still cheating. Undetectable cheating is just as much cheating as detectable cheating, and players want to trust that their opponents won't cheat, even if it's not detectable. (I think this is one reason that the argument tends to blow up when it happens: non-tracker users are concerned about surreptitious tracker use by their opponents.)

IIRC, polls show that players in general tend to like point counters but dislike deck trackers. (I'm in the camp that likes deck trackers.) But personal preferences actually don't matter as long as there is mutual consent about what tracking is permitted in the match being played.

Given that mutual consent is required to do anything, I think the other reason the discussions tend to blow up is deciding on what is tournament legal. This is up to the tournament organizer. For example, Stef's Dominion League defaults to #vpon (that is, point counting but not deck tracking) except by mutual consent.

[SirD]

Thank you AI for the reply.

Thanks blueblimp for the recap.

I am not suggesting anything. I simply think the only weakness of Dominion is that games can take a very long time and the main advantage I see in Salvager is to help players speed up the game.

[Holger]

Any sort of non-mental tracking, including both point counting and deck contents tracking, is not allowed by the rules, because anything the rules do not explicitly allow is implicitly forbidden. (This is the opinion of Donald X himself, so it's not really up for argument.) As such, playing with any tracking is playing a variant of the game. If all players in a match consent to playing the variant, then that is fine. If any of them doesn't, then the variant should not be used, and if one player goes ahead and tracks anyway, then that is cheating. (Notice how, in the current implementation of the point counter, it's implemented so that it's only used if all the players consent to its use, either by joining a game with "#vpon" in the title or by choosing not to disable the counter once in the game.)

The problem is that by this definition, Dominion Online is always only a variant to the game, because it provides a full log. Adding a deck tracker would only summarize some data already available from the log (as does the VP counter). Is it cheating to use the log to track your deck whenever it's relevant, without asking for the opponent's consent? I don't think so...

[DG]

No thank you. The information in a tracker will provide a clear advantage and will induce both players to use it if it is allowed. The information will probably not help decision making but replace decision making as players will have to deal with much less uncertainty.

Part of the skill of dominion is not only tracking information but knowing what to look for. An information tracker provides all information all the time and removes this aspect of skill as well.

I simply think the only weakness of Dominion is that games can take a very long time and the main advantage I see in Salvager is to help players speed up the game.

If the time is spent thinking then the time is not completely wasted. Playing without thinking is a waste, to my mind.

[silverspawn]

wait, wait, i didn't start this discussion. i just wanted to quickly state my opinion, i never intended to start a discussion. calumniation!!

[SirD]

wait, wait, i didn't start this discussion.

I am afraid, you did

[ThaddeusB]

If the time is spent thinking then the time is not completely wasted. Playing without thinking is a waste, to my mind.

+1 for this

[rrenaud]

Everyone against this should be sentenced to 100 games against Personman that include wishing well.

[blueblimp]

The information will probably not help decision making but replace decision making as players will have to deal with much less uncertainty.

Well, let me list some examples of why I think knowing deck contents allows for making interesting decisions. Of course, you can know these things without automated tracking, if you keep careful count. So then, why would anybody want automated tracking?

Think of it like a foot race vs a bike race. It's not fair for someone on foot to race vs someone on a bicycle, but within either race, it's fair because both competitors have access to the same equipment. Bike lovers are not somehow inferior or lazy because they use equipment to move faster. Similarly, although the advantage of automated tracking is smaller than a bike, it's possible to legitimately prefer playing with it or playing with it without being objectively wrong.

OK, on to the examples.

Ambassador war: I enjoy these more when I can know Copper and Estate counts to have some idea who is ahead at any moment. If you don't have a Silver yet, you may be aiming to have exactly 3 Copper in deck, so knowing how much Copper you currently have (and your opponent currently has, if they drop below 3 Copper) is useful.

Multi-Province turns: In a game without cost reduction and with a draw-your-deck engine, you'll typically want to aim for multi-Province turns. That requires a specific amount of buying power in your deck. For example, if your goal is to buy 2 Provinces per turn, you need $16. On a turn that you draw your whole deck, you can see how much buying power you have, but if you want to start planning how you'll get to $16 _before_ you first draw your whole deck, you need to know your deck's total current buying power.

Variable-value VP cards: Endgame decisions become more interesting when you know both how close you are to the next threshold and how close your opponent is. For example, take Gardens. If I see my opponent's deck size is 37, I may not be worried about them getting 4 point Gardens on their next turn, but if I see their deck size is 38, it's fairly likely. This allows for more accurate estimation of future point values. (I'll also mention Fairgrounds games with trashing, which I personally find incredibly annoying without knowing your deck contents, because you may unintentionally trash your last Copper and drop your point total.)

Balancing terminals and villages: Let's say you're running a draw-your-deck engine and want to end your turns with all action cards played and 0 actions remaining. Then you need n villages and n+1 terminals. (Terminal durations are interesting because they sort of count as half a terminal.) Planning this out becomes a lot more feasible if you know how many villages and terminals you currently have in your deck.

The unifying theme I think is that importance is shifted away from mental tracking and guesswork, and towards planning and calculation. This makes sense: when you have little information available, the most helpful thing is to gather more information and make decisions that work regardless of the unknown information; when you have a lot of information available, the most helpful thing is to make good use of it by planning farther ahead and calculating your turns more carefully.

[Kirian]

Everyone against this should be sentenced to 100 games against Personman

Who came up with that guy, anyway?

[SCSN]

If the time is spent thinking then the time is not completely wasted. Playing without thinking is a waste, to my mind.

I assume you also like to be presented with an endless string of 1s and 0s instead of the pretty pictures your computer's processors, after lots of thinking, have painted on your screen.

I like to occupy my brain as much as possible with activities a computer can't perform, which entails offloading such trivial tasks as counting and bookkeeping, the manual performance of which I consider to be not just a waste of time, but even an insult to human intelligence.

I love fast-paced action with plenty of creative choices per time unit; everything that slows down the game and decreases the frequency of creative thought in favor of straightforward procedures reduces the only thing I care about in Dominion: my personal enjoyment.

[blueblimp]

Oops, one thing I forgot to mention in my previous post, but it's a different subtopic anyway. My understanding is that it's not uncommon for paper tracking to be allowed in tournaments of other strategy games where tracking is helpful.

Examples:
Scrabble: Tracking tiles is explicitly permitted: http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/wiki/images/a/af/Rules-20110605.pdf section IV.G.1.i.
MTG: Note-taking during a game is explicitly permitted: http://media.wizards.com/ContentResources/Wizards/WPN/Main/Documents/Magic_The_Gathering_Tournament_Rules_PDF1.pdf section 2.11.

My guess is that if Dominion had an active IRL 2-player tournament scene, then eventually taking paper notes would become allowed in that setting, but it's impossible to know for sure.

[liopoil]

How does the salvager VP counter handle 3+ player masquerade games?

[AdamH]

Everyone prefers different things. People have their reasons for wanting point counter on that I don't understand. That's great.

I like disabling point counter because you can't use it IRL and I like to play IRL a lot. All of this mental processing that seems to be so taxing on the rest of you isn't that big of a deal for me because I'm used to it, and I get to play at a high level when I play IRL. If I used the point counter all of the time when I played online, I'd get out of practice very quickly at doing these things.

Each person likes their own thing. Everyone is their own unique beautiful flower. While I don't share the opinions of those who disagree with me, I'd prefer to just hug it out.

Group hug?

[2.71828.....]

Group hug?

yes

[blueblimp]

All of this mental processing that seems to be so taxing on the rest of you isn't that big of a deal for me because I'm used to it

Let me just pause and nitpick this passage from your (otherwise nice) post, because it seems like a common sentiment. Statements like this can't help coming across as "I'm good at mental tracking because I practice it, unlike you", which isn't so far from, although this is not what you said, "people who are bad at mental tracking are only that way because they're too lazy to practice it".

I think this is a fundamentally unfair and unrealistic attitude. People not only like different things but have different aptitudes too. To use myself as an example, I'm pretty good at math-like reasoning. Have I practiced it a lot? Yes. Do I like practicing it? Yes. Am I better at it than an "average" person who puts in a comparable amount of practice? Almost certainly. The key thing is that I acknowledge that there are people who both naturally have more trouble with math and don't like to practice it as much as I do.

I want to ask opponents of automated counters to extend that same courtesy to people who are naturally bad at mental tracking and/or don't enjoy practicing it. I absolutely believe that you have practiced mental tracking more than me. Would I be better at it with more practice? Yes. Would I be as good as you? Doubtful! All I'm asking is the acknowledgement that it is possible for different people to have different levels of ability.

[AdamH]

OK you're right. I attempted to adopt the tone of the people supporting it, but there was no need for that. My apologies.

Would I be as good as you? Doubtful!

You haven't seen very many of my videos, have you?

[silverspawn]

it is definitely true that different people are differently talented when it comes down to these things, but I can't see how it's supposed to be fair to just take them away and nullify this aspect of skill, when it's a part of the game as Donald X originally designed it. some people don't like it, well I don't like masquerade, possession and governor. I don't request a salvager feature that makes it impossible for both sides to buy these cards whenever they appear. that, in my mind, seems like an equally justified request.

[JW]

it is definitely true that different people are differently talented when it comes down to these things, but I can't see how it's supposed to be fair to just take them away and nullify this aspect of skill, when it's a part of the game as Donald X originally designed it. some people don't like it, well I don't like masquerade, possession and governor. I don't request a salvager feature that makes it impossible for both sides to buy these cards whenever they appear. that, in my mind, seems like an equally justified request.

You can get close. Turn on Salvager's Kingdom generator, create an Unrated or Casual game, All / (Masquerade + Possession + Governor). Of course you can also avoid purchasing Governor (or any other promo card) in the first place and then host your own Pro games.

[silverspawn]

great, then make this feature thingy also for casual/unrated games only, and I won't say a word.

[blueblimp]

it is definitely true that different people are differently talented when it comes down to these things, but I can't see how it's supposed to be fair to just take them away and nullify this aspect of skill, when it's a part of the game as Donald X originally designed it. some people don't like it, well I don't like masquerade, possession and governor. I don't request a salvager feature that makes it impossible for both sides to buy these cards whenever they appear. that, in my mind, seems like an equally justified request.

Well, what's considered "fair" depends on what the players like. "Designer" board games (in the sense that the official rules created by the game designer are considered inviolable in some sense) are, as far as I know, a relatively recent phenomenon. For games we still play today that originated before the 20th century, such as Chess, Go, and Poker, the rules used in tournaments today are the result of centuries of rules development, where the versions we play today are simply the variants that players liked the most. Even for those games, there may be small-to-large rules differences even among what's played in tournaments. For example, tournament Go has slightly different scoring rules and wildly different time controls depending on which country it's played in. (The amount of time you're allowed to think in a perfect information game like Go easily makes at least as big a difference as the availability of non-mental card tracking in Dominion.)

About your example of particular cards, if there's a particular card that people feel makes Dominion a worse game for tournaments, I think it'd be completely reasonable to ban it in a tournament. For example, if there were general agreement that Rebuild decreases skill too much, then it could be banned from tournaments. This kind of card banning happens de facto in tournaments with kingdom design competitions anyway. I don't think you're going to get people on board with banning Masquerade, since I don't think it's generally disliked. But Possession, maybe. I'd argue against banning Possession because I believe it's a skill-intensive card and I enjoy playing with it, but if everybody else refused to play games where it's not banned, I'd have to live with that reality.

[LastFootnote]

This talk of banning "skill-reducing cards" turns my stomach. That is all.

[Beyond Awesome]

This talk of banning "skill-reducing cards" turns my stomach. That is all.

What if we ban Followers but allow Tournament?

[Mic Qsenoch]

This talk of banning "skill-reducing cards" turns my stomach. That is all.

What if we ban Followers but allow Tournament?

What if we allow Scout but ban Victory cards?

[silverspawn]

This talk of banning "skill-reducing cards" turns my stomach. That is all.

well, given that you designed gambler, you obviously don't care about it, but it's a legitimate concern to some people.

[blueblimp]

This talk of banning "skill-reducing cards" turns my stomach. That is all.

Why? Dominion was still fun back on iso when ALL play featured either veto mode or kingdom preview (before you accepted whether to play the game!). That was so, so much worse than a ban list by mutual consent.

[rrenaud]

Why not play two games of chess before the game of dominion, and then play dominion as a tie breaker?  I assure you it will be higher skill than dominion.

[silverspawn]

Why not play two games of chess before the game of dominion, and then play dominion as a tie breaker?  I assure you it will be higher skill than dominion.

i was hoping so much that noone would post this awful argument

[Awaclus]

I like disabling point counter because you can't use it IRL and I like to play IRL a lot. All of this mental processing that seems to be so taxing on the rest of you isn't that big of a deal for me because I'm used to it, and I get to play at a high level when I play IRL. If I used the point counter all of the time when I played online, I'd get out of practice very quickly at doing these things.

I'm not sure if that's actually true, though. I am very good at tracking the score. The reason why I prefer #vpon is not that I need it to know how many points each player has, because I would know that anyway. But with #vpoff, I would have to actually pay attention to it, and I don't have endless amounts of attention so that would have to mean paying less attention to the game itself, which would result in lower levels of play online — not the "accidentally ending the game on a loss" kind of lower levels of play, but the "spending coin tokens at wrong times" and "not noticing a potential 3-pile ending with Hunting Grounds and Doctor" kinds of lower levels of play. I think this also results in actually getting more better at Dominion, since every time you make a successful pro decision and win because of it or your opponent does and you lose, the next time the decision is available, it will be a lot easier to see the opportunity again. If you learn that making slightly better than average decisions wins games, then you'll be looking for those slightly better than average decisions in your following games as well.

[mail-mi]

getting more better at Dominion,

but not, apparently, getting better at grammar.

[Awaclus]

getting more better at Dominion,

but not, apparently, getting better at grammar.

How am I supposed to say that then? Betterer?

[mail-mi]

getting more better at Dominion,

but not, apparently, getting better at grammar.

How am I supposed to say that then? Betterer?

just "better," or "even more good" maybe.

[Awaclus]

getting more better at Dominion,

but not, apparently, getting better at grammar.

How am I supposed to say that then? Betterer?

just "better," or "even more good" maybe.

But you get just "better" at Dominion with #vpoff, too. You get more better with #vpon.

[AdamH]

I like disabling point counter because you can't use it IRL and I like to play IRL a lot. All of this mental processing that seems to be so taxing on the rest of you isn't that big of a deal for me because I'm used to it, and I get to play at a high level when I play IRL. If I used the point counter all of the time when I played online, I'd get out of practice very quickly at doing these things.

I'm not sure if that's actually true, though.

We had this discussion before where people want to try and budget their limited brain power. Once again I'm going to say that everybody is different and so we like different things for different reasons. I never said that any of that applied to anybody except me (although I suspect it does) and that's how I prefer to play the game.

I'm going to hug you now.

[blueblimp]

Why not play two games of chess before the game of dominion, and then play dominion as a tie breaker?  I assure you it will be higher skill than dominion.

I legit don't know what this post means.

[silverspawn]

If the time is spent thinking then the time is not completely wasted. Playing without thinking is a waste, to my mind.

I assume you also like to be presented with an endless string of 1s and 0s instead of the pretty pictures your computer's processors, after lots of thinking, have painted on your screen.

I like to occupy my brain as much as possible with activities a computer can't perform, which entails offloading such trivial tasks as counting and bookkeeping, the manual performance of which I consider to be not just a waste of time, but even an insult to human intelligence.

I love fast-paced action with plenty of creative choices per time unit; everything that slows down the game and decreases the frequency of creative thought in favor of straightforward procedures reduces the only thing I care about in Dominion: my personal enjoyment.

The thing is though, the borders between strategic and primitive decisions are blurred. let's take a simplified example of a village-wharf engine. let's also assume that it's the correct play to build exactly enough to draw the entire deck. step one would be to have data: how many cards are in your deck, how many cards do your cards draw, or just which cards does your deck consist of. step two would be to calculate how many more wharves/villages you have to buy. step 3 is to make the decision according to these calculations. if salvager shows you all details about your deck, anyone can make all of that pretty easily.

now let's assume you play said engine against someone else, without this feature. because you are better at the game, you build about as long as you need to, and your opponent underbuilds. if both of you had had access to more data, he might have done it like you, because he could more easily follow the steps listed above. does that mean that you didn't actually win because of superior strategic skills? or more importantly, do you really think that having this kind of information does not take away from superior skill? isn't this basically the same as winning because you could memorize the score and your opponent couldn't?

in this case chess isn't even a bad example. a computer can play chess. doesn't this mean you consider playing chess an insult of your intelligence? what if there was an AI that played dominion really well?

[silverspawn]

Why not play two games of chess before the game of dominion, and then play dominion as a tie breaker?  I assure you it will be higher skill than dominion.

I legit don't know what this post means.

he wants to say that, if we want a game with more skill, instead of banning rebuild, we can just play chess. as i said, it's a stupid argument.

unless he wanted to say something else, in that case I didn't understand it either.

[Awaclus]

what if there was an AI that played dominion really well?

There is.

[AdamH]

Why not play two games of chess before the game of dominion, and then play dominion as a tie breaker?  I assure you it will be higher skill than dominion.

I legit don't know what this post means.

he wants to say that, if we want a game with more skill, instead of banning rebuild, we can just play chess. as i said, it's a stupid argument.

unless he wanted to say something else, in that case I didn't understand it either.

The point of this argument is that you don't get unlimited license to change the game to make it more like the way you want. If you can ban one card, then where do you draw the line between "Dominion minus Rebuild" and "a completely different game (chess)"? The implication is that you shouldn't try to draw the line because a game designer already did it for you and if you don't like the game the way it is, go play another game.

[2.71828.....]

getting more better at Dominion,

but not, apparently, getting better at grammar.

How am I supposed to say that then? Betterer?

just "better," or "even more good" maybe.

But you get just "better" at Dominion with #vpoff, too. You get more better with #vpon.

you could say "getting even better" in this situation, which would provide the desired comparison.

[ThaddeusB]

in this case chess isn't even a bad example. a computer can play chess. doesn't this mean you consider playing chess an insult of your intelligence? what if there was an AI that played dominion really well?

If someone put effort into programming one, an AI could play Dominion very well. I dare say it would be an easier task than making a computer play chess really well (which obviously has been done).

[liopoil]

It's been done, though I'm not sure just how good it is compared to humans - provincial.

[Donald X.]

The point of this argument is that you don't get unlimited license to change the game to make it more like the way you want. If you can ban one card, then where do you draw the line between "Dominion minus Rebuild" and "a completely different game (chess)"? The implication is that you shouldn't try to draw the line because a game designer already did it for you and if you don't like the game the way it is, go play another game.

Dominion minus Rebuild is Dominion though - the rulebooks all let you pick your 10 cards however. That includes "never Rebuild." Or "we don't even have Dark Ages." Or "if there are any attacks, we put out Moat, gotta have Moat."

I have had to pick cards out for tournaments run IRL. I avoid slow-to-resolve cards like Spy. It's still Dominion.

For online tournaments I don't imagine I'd ban anything - let's see who can handle whatever comes up. For online non-tournaments, as previously discussed it seems like, if neither player wants to play with a card, why make them? The one counterargument is "that may subtly inflate their ratings such that I too have to not play with that card to get in on that tiny advantage but I want to play with that card waaah." But like you have to be able to not buy an expansion, and you shouldn't be punished for buying an expansion by having to play with it, etc. I think the key thing is just to keep the number of cards being randomized between from getting too small. Anyway we've been down this road. I don't remember what I put in my proposal that who knows they may use someday.

[GeoLib]

getting more better at Dominion,

but not, apparently, getting better at grammar.

How am I supposed to say that then? Betterer?

just "better," or "even more good" maybe.

But you get just "better" at Dominion with #vpoff, too. You get more better with #vpon.

you could say "getting even better" in this situation, which would provide the desired comparison.

I think he was going for a relative rates thing, so I would go with "getting better faster." Whereas "getting even better" instead implies that you were already good.

[Titandrake]

It's been done, though I'm not sure just how good it is compared to humans - provincial.

I think the bot's pretty good, but I haven't played against it yet. I reread the implementation details - at a very high level, it plays against itself in many simulated games with fixed buying strategies (like, Gold > first Smithy > Silver for example), then mutates strategies and repeats across many generations until it converges on something.

The main things the bot misses is:
1. Adapting based on opponent play - it doesn't understand counters to a given strategy and won't know to, say, pick up fewer Duchies if playing BM against an engine.
2. Tactics - it does very little optimization on play order of cards, and doesn't track reshuffles at all.
3. RPS kingdoms - these are rare, but the bot occasionally will not converge because there exists a strategy that beats the leading strategy, then a strategy that beats that one, then another...

All in all it produces reasonable looking buy strategies, but because it's tied to its own program it's hard to, say, let it loose on Goko and see how it does.

[SCSN]

The thing is though, the borders between strategic and primitive decisions are blurred. let's take a simplified example of a village-wharf engine. let's also assume that it's the correct play to build exactly enough to draw the entire deck. step one would be to have data: how many cards are in your deck, how many cards do your cards draw, or just which cards does your deck consist of. step two would be to calculate how many more wharves/villages you have to buy. step 3 is to make the decision according to these calculations. if salvager shows you all details about your deck, anyone can make all of that pretty easily.

now let's assume you play said engine against someone else, without this feature. because you are better at the game, you build about as long as you need to, and your opponent underbuilds. if both of you had had access to more data, he might have done it like you, because he could more easily follow the steps listed above. does that mean that you didn't actually win because of superior strategic skills? or more importantly, do you really think that having this kind of information does not take away from superior skill? isn't this basically the same as winning because you could memorize the score and your opponent couldn't?

I would like all relevant information that is reasonably deducible from the log within the time it would cause a player to time-out to be available to him in an easily accessible summary. Yes, that would slightly decrease my edge (but my impression is you're way overestimating the value of this information), but maximizing my edge isn't something I care about. I care about exciting games, and having to go back through the log to count how many green cards I have for a Silk Roads decision, or waiting for my opponent to do so, ruins a lot of my excitement.

in this case chess isn't even a bad example. a computer can play chess. doesn't this mean you consider playing chess an insult of your intelligence? what if there was an AI that played dominion really well?

That's a good point and my statement was definitely sprayed with a flair of hyperbole, but the fact that computers play games like Chess and Backgammon better than humans certainly has caused those games to lose a lot of their charm to me. If there was an AI that played Dominion really well I'd play it all day at first, expecting to learn a ton. Whether I'd get dissatisfied in the long run is something I can't tell without actually going through the process. I don't expect that to happen any time soon, though, because while it's straightforward to write a bot that plays a not too complex given kingdom fairly well, teaching it to play a random kingdom is more like teaching it to play Chess960.

I think the bot's pretty good, but I haven't played against it yet. I reread the implementation details - at a very high level, it plays against itself in many simulated games with fixed buying strategies (like, Gold > first Smithy > Silver for example), then mutates strategies and repeats across many generations until it converges on something.

It's cute that it can converge to some decent buying strategies, but it's only there that the game actually starts.

[AdamH]

in this case chess isn't even a bad example. a computer can play chess. doesn't this mean you consider playing chess an insult of your intelligence? what if there was an AI that played dominion really well?

That's a good point and my statement was definitely sprayed with a flair of hyperbole, but the fact that computers play games like Chess and Backgammon better than humans certainly has caused those games to lose a lot of their charm to me. If there was an AI that played Dominion really well I'd play it all day at first, expecting to learn a ton. Whether I'd get dissatisfied in the long run is something I can't tell without actually going through the process. I don't expect that to happen any time soon, though, because while it's straightforward to write a bot that plays a not too complex given kingdom fairly well, teaching it to play a random kingdom is more like teaching it to play Chess960.

I feel the same way. I was really into chess in middle school but not so much anymore and I don't have a strong desire to get back into it because I know I'll never be as good as a computer program.

[theory]

in this case chess isn't even a bad example. a computer can play chess. doesn't this mean you consider playing chess an insult of your intelligence? what if there was an AI that played dominion really well?

That's a good point and my statement was definitely sprayed with a flair of hyperbole, but the fact that computers play games like Chess and Backgammon better than humans certainly has caused those games to lose a lot of their charm to me. If there was an AI that played Dominion really well I'd play it all day at first, expecting to learn a ton. Whether I'd get dissatisfied in the long run is something I can't tell without actually going through the process. I don't expect that to happen any time soon, though, because while it's straightforward to write a bot that plays a not too complex given kingdom fairly well, teaching it to play a random kingdom is more like teaching it to play Chess960.

I feel the same way. I was really into chess in middle school but not so much anymore and I don't have a strong desire to get back into it because I know I'll never be as good as a computer program.

By similar reasoning, I don't bother doing crossword puzzles, playing Sudoku, or even working out.

[AdamH]

By similar reasoning, I don't bother doing crossword puzzles, playing Sudoku, or even working out.

I know you're being sarcastic, but when I did the Project Euler problem that involved writing a computer program to solve sudokus, I no longer had fun doing them myself.

[Awaclus]

By similar reasoning, I don't bother doing crossword puzzles, playing Sudoku, or even working out.

I know you're being sarcastic, but when I did the Project Euler problem that involved writing a computer program to solve sudokus, I no longer had fun doing them myself.

You have exactly 1337 respect!

[mpsprs]

By similar reasoning, I don't bother doing crossword puzzles, playing Sudoku, or even working out.

I know you're being sarcastic, but when I did the Project Euler problem that involved writing a computer program to solve sudokus, I no longer had fun doing them myself.

I had a similar experience (though it's probably more accurate to say that I no longer had as much fun doing  sudokus when I realized that I could write such a program easily).  I have no such illusions about my ability to program a crossword solver or a dominion AI, so crosswords and dominion retain their 'fun' value, despite the existence of programs that perform these tasks. 

As far as the salvager feature, I think my (weak) preference would be along the lines of SCSN's thoughts.  When I play, I often play in a distracted setting, and like being able to (attempt to) make good decisions with the information I could have if I were fully focused.  I'll admit to suspecting that, if I played IRL more often (at all?) I'd be much more sympathetic with AdamH's view.

And finally, when I do want to solve a sudoku, I solve these: http://www.amazon.com/Sudoku-Masterpieces-Elegant-Challenges-Lovers/dp/1402771924.  The puzzles are excellent and have different (and unusual) topologies which hold my interest.

[soulnet]

I know you're being sarcastic, but when I did the Project Euler problem that involved writing a computer program to solve sudokus, I no longer had fun doing them myself.

Many of the online judges that pose a "solve Sudoku" problem do not have strong enough test cases and are thus simple to get accepted with the straightforward 10-line backtracking code. Solving a set of strong test cases is (surprisingly?) harder than that (me and my team did it on our university's internal selection, and got "time limit" on the first try for doing the straightforward thing that worked in lots of other places).

To get more on topic, I don't think a computer program will play better Dominion than humans just because it has access to a better tracking and probability calculation. After all, Poker is a much simpler and less variable game than Dominion and machines are still not clearly better than the best humans at it (AFAIK) despite having more than 10 years of research put on them. Of course, Dominion being less popular than poker (only god knows why) makes it even less likely that a computer will be more proficient than MicQ or Stef at Dominion any time soon, even if it were reasonably possible.

[Awaclus]

Dominion being less popular than poker (only god knows why)

Everyone already has a Poker deck, and anyone who doesn't, can buy one for a relatively small price, while Dominion costs hundreds of dollars if you buy all of the expansions. That might have something to do with it.

[silverspawn]

poker is way simpler and has a higher skill gap anyway. I don't find it surprising at all.

[liopoil]

in this case chess isn't even a bad example. a computer can play chess. doesn't this mean you consider playing chess an insult of your intelligence? what if there was an AI that played dominion really well?

That's a good point and my statement was definitely sprayed with a flair of hyperbole, but the fact that computers play games like Chess and Backgammon better than humans certainly has caused those games to lose a lot of their charm to me. If there was an AI that played Dominion really well I'd play it all day at first, expecting to learn a ton. Whether I'd get dissatisfied in the long run is something I can't tell without actually going through the process. I don't expect that to happen any time soon, though, because while it's straightforward to write a bot that plays a not too complex given kingdom fairly well, teaching it to play a random kingdom is more like teaching it to play Chess960.

I feel the same way. I was really into chess in middle school but not so much anymore and I don't have a strong desire to get back into it because I know I'll never be as good as a computer program.

I'm still really into chess... I don't see why I should care that a computer will always be better than me. I know the world's best grand masters will always be better than me too. All I have to do is not play those computers or grandmasters (although really, I would like to play GMs as a fun learning experience).

[LastFootnote]

This talk of banning "skill-reducing cards" turns my stomach. That is all.

well, given that you designed gambler, you obviously don't care about it, but it's a legitimate concern to some people.

The reason I hate it is that it's such a can of worms (as evidenced by e.g. Smogon). It means having endless goddamn arguments over what should and should not be banned and bad feelings all around. And for what? So the more-skilled player can win even more often? Not worth it.

[theblankman]

And for what? So the more-skilled player can win even more often?

"For what" is the easy part.  For games where you make more decisions that affect the outcome, because having your decisions matter is what makes the game fun.  The last several turns of a game in which you badly lost an important split are typically not fun; you just hope your opponent makes a mistake or gets some bad luck. 

if it's blatantly obvious that the best strategy is "buy lots of Cultists/Familiars/Hunting Parties/etc," and the winner is whoever gets the most plays of their good card, that's an un-fun kingdom.  That's the legitimate gripe with Pro as it is now: too many kingdoms with few or no interesting decisions.  On the other hand, the legitimate gripe with constructed kingdoms, i.e. Casual, is that any leaderboard based on such games is much too easily abused, as evidenced by what people did with Masq pins on Iso. 

So neither Pro nor Casual as currently constructed is "good enough" for the competitive crowd here on f.ds, which brings us to the hard part: What would be better?  I'm not in favor of blanket bans.  Iso's veto mode might be okay, but might also lead to de-facto bans.  Last time this topic came up, DonaldX had a proposal that I can't remember at the moment, I think it might have been veto but only if both players agree to it?  Hopefully one of these, or something else that hasn't been proposed yet, finds the happy medium. 

[Beyond Awesome]

A veto where everyone agrees might work because chances were I would not ban any cards except maybe tournament.

[theblankman]

A veto where everyone agrees might work because chances were I would not ban any cards except maybe tournament.

Whether veto mode works depends on what the goal is, and we seem to have two competing goals: exciting games, to use SCSN's words, and a leaderboard on which we can compete and feel like we earned our places, cause we seem to have a bunch of competitive sorts here.  Veto mode isn't so great for the competitive balance aspect, in either variant.  With unilateral veto, why would SCSN ever play an obvious IGG game against me?  With mutual veto, I have an incentive to make him play that game. 

There are other ways to give players limited kingdom control besides veto.  Maybe come from the opposite direction: have players pick a few of the cards, but not so many that they can totally control the game.  Say one card per player, the rest are random, and the players choose after seeing the random cards (so if I think it's an IGG game and don't like that, maybe I add Ambassador).  I'm not sure how much better that is for competitive balance, but at least it keeps cards from getting widely thrown out.

[Donald X.]

So neither Pro nor Casual as currently constructed is "good enough" for the competitive crowd here on f.ds, which brings us to the hard part: What would be better?  I'm not in favor of blanket bans.  Iso's veto mode might be okay, but might also lead to de-facto bans.  Last time this topic came up, DonaldX had a proposal that I can't remember at the moment, I think it might have been veto but only if both players agree to it?  Hopefully one of these, or something else that hasn't been proposed yet, finds the happy medium.

I looked it up. The proposal (a "how matchmaking should work" proposal I sent to MF in March) has it as, each player can have a hate-list of up to 3 cards, and in casual-rated games cards anyone in the game hate-listed are excluded. For pro-rated games, nothing is excluded (except unowned cards). You can hate-list cards despite not owning them.

There was talk back then of, if both players hate-list a card, can't that be excluded in pro-rated games, but there were people who somehow couldn't tolerate that.

[shark_bait]

And for what? So the more-skilled player can win even more often?

if it's blatantly obvious that the best strategy is "buy lots of Cultists/Familiars/Hunting Parties/etc," and the winner is whoever gets the most plays of their good card, that's an un-fun kingdom.  That's the legitimate gripe with Pro as it is now: too many kingdoms with few or no interesting decisions.

I have to politely disagree with you on that point.  But I guess I don't know what your metric of "too many" is.  Out of my past 20 games the following 3 are the only 3 that weren't too interesting to me.

http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.50ea2963e4b0429cfe091cec.1409874353363.txt

Spice Merchant Open into mass FG buy a Merchant Guild at $5 and green.

http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140903/log.50ea2963e4b0429cfe091cec.1409781587265.txt

5/2 against 4/3 with Mountebank.  No +Card or trashing defined game. 

http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.50ea2963e4b0429cfe091cec.1409867616629.txt

Trading Post into Duchy/Duke.  KC present but no +Card and only +Buy Ruined Market.

So out of 20 games I had 3 that weren't too exciting.  IMO, 15% is definitely not "too many."  Especially when those other 85% make for exciting games wherein after over 5000 games I'm still encountering new situations.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Those 3 boards all look pretty cool to me, I guess the Mountebank one is the worst. The Duke board has a guaranteed (basically) Province a turn option with KC-KC-Navigator-Scheme-Scheme, and those can usually compete with Duke. The FG board has the potential of Advisors going for double Provinces. This deck could go with Merchant Ship and Fool's Gold, or I guess Soothsayer/Counterfeit. It is probably worse than straight FG, but it looks possible at least. The Mountebank one at least has Island (adds question: when do I get Islands?), and of course it's a messy game so you have the chance for nontrivial decisions about when to take Gold over Mountebank and when to go for Duchies.

So I'd say the percentage (for me) is even higher than 85%

My strong preference for sets of kingdoms is not "exciting" individual games, but a series with a mix of all the different kinds of games one can encounter in Dominion. Random has always done this very well in my experience. I think people are waaay to quick to reject games as being "obvious/boring" when there are actually lots of important decisions to make in the way the game plays out, even if you know for sure you want a particular strong card. It's easier to say "I lost this because it was a dumb IGG/Cultist/Rebuild game and it's a low skill card" instead of recognizing and figuring out the mistakes you made.

People mistake playing actions for decisions, sorry playing 5 Labs or your Village/Smithy chain does not constitute a significant decision.

[silverspawn]

yea there may very well be more skill in a rebuild game than in a basic village/smithy engine.

i still think there are low skill cards though.

[theblankman]

yea there may very well be more skill in a rebuild game than in a basic village/smithy engine.

i still think there are low skill cards though.

Notice rebuild wasn't one of my examples   It might be a "one-card strategy," but it's got a lot of tactics mixed in. 

People mistake playing actions for decisions, sorry playing 5 Labs or your Village/Smithy chain does not constitute a significant decision.

I'm not saying the only interesting boards are engines.  In fact I find Lab to be one of those annoying "open two silver and whoever wins the split wins the game" cards in a significant portion of the games it appears in.  I do find, though, that villages tend to make the other cards around them more useful; they let you have more different cards in your deck, which leads to decisions about which cards to buy, and how and when to play them.

I have to politely disagree with you on that point.  But I guess I don't know what your metric of "too many" is.  Out of my past 20 games the following 3 are the only 3 that weren't too interesting to me.

In a perfect world one is too many, but okay, I'll do the same exercise for my last 20 games...

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409888181462.txt
We're gonna three-pile on Curse, Duchy and Duke.  Yawn.  The only decisions that felt less than automatic were "Second Sea Hag?" (if I happen to hit exactly $4 a second time early, then yes), and how many Vaults before Duchy. 

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409870770980.txt
Masq is the only draw but it's still gotta be Goons engine, right? 

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.508ae4c20cf264ac914cc446.1409868943740.txt
Jack.  Nuff said.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409864586924.txt
Win the Amb fight, win the game.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409863785973.txt
Bishop/Fortress.  Too bad too, cause there are some neat cards otherwise.  There might even be a more complicated Bishop engine (trashing Gold gained with Explorer) if the village was anything other than Fortress.  Probably Grand Markets would be better than Bishop/Explorer, but even that's more fun than just seeing who trashes down to the golden deck faster.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409861865384.txt
Herald is still shiny and new so the jury's out on it, but I'm starting to think if there's even a decent cantrip for it to hit (here Baker), then the high chance of being +2 cards, +2 actions makes it dominant for a $4-cost.  I'm afraid it could become another "win the split, win the game" card on a lot of its boards.  Let's count this game as half. 

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409861147658.txt
Nothing to mitigate the Cultist-shaft here.  Lots of interesting cards but it doesn't matter if 7 ruins = game over, and Cultist makes it much easier to have a 7-3 junk split than any other attack.  If I had to pick one card I never want to see again, Cultist would be it. 

6.5/20 = 32.5% (counting the Herald game as half).  I agree that your 15% is not too many, but I think my one-third is.  Maybe I've had a bad run of random boards lately, maybe you've had a good one, hard to tell with the small samples we have here.

[silverspawn]

one third sounds right to me, which is why I sympathize a lot with this idea, and even more with a hatelist. thanks for making the point I was far too lazy to make myself 

[theblankman]

one third sounds right to me, which is why I sympathize a lot with this idea, and even more with a hatelist. thanks for making the point I was far too lazy to make myself 

Before I started my guess was a quarter, I was a little surprised to be near a third.  What's especially frustrating is that two of them were so close to being really good.  That Bishop-Fortress game has multiple good choices that just aren't as reliable or quick-to-build as the golden deck.  Replace Fortress with vanilla Village and I'd be saving that one for the next kingdom-design challenge.  The Cultist game isn't quite on that level, but I think that board gets a ton better if Cultist is replaced with even another draw/junk like Witch or Torturer. 

[Holger]

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409863785973.txt
Bishop/Fortress.  Too bad too, cause there are some neat cards otherwise.  There might even be a more complicated Bishop engine (trashing Gold gained with Explorer) if the village was anything other than Fortress.  Probably Grand Markets would be better than Bishop/Explorer, but even that's more fun than just seeing who trashes down to the golden deck faster.

I think your opponent "killed himself" by needlessly trashing two of his Bishops. If he had continued to build the same golden deck as you had a few turns later, it would have been difficult for you to win the game since buying any card to three-pile would have risked breaking your golden deck (you couldn't afford the $5/$6 cantrips) and losing your lead. There might have been an interesting endgame...

[Mic Qsenoch]

I prefer the metric of interesting decisions per unit time, not per game. Simple games often have much shorter turns. Complex games offer lots of nice decisions at the price of taking forever. I find playing games along the whole continuum of these extremes helps me stay interested over a series of games.

blankman, I didn't mean to imply you only find engines interesting. I was just trying to point out that there's a superficial complexity about playing engines which doesn't correspond to real complexity of decisions.

I am also trying to suggest that people take a closer look at their games, what choices did they actually make. It is too easy to write "Jack mirror nothing to see", but when I look at the game logs there are often serious mistakes by both players. The 2-3 word summaries (FV-Wharf, Jack BM, etc.) are just a communication aid, it's a terrible mistake to think that it describes a strategy. It's a shame that the competitive Dominion community (myself included) is so willing to gloss over the important strategic decisions by relying so much on brief summaries because it's easier to talk/think about.

[blueblimp]

My beef with Rebuild is not really that it's low-skill (since that's arguable) but that, because it's both pretty strong and doesn't interact much with most other cards, the games with it tend to feel pretty similar to each other. That said, I still wouldn't choose to ban it yet because I haven't been particularly active post-DA, so I still have more to learn.

[Mic Qsenoch]

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409888181462.txt
We're gonna three-pile on Curse, Duchy and Duke.  Yawn.  The only decisions that felt less than automatic were "Second Sea Hag?" (if I happen to hit exactly $4 a second time early, then yes), and how many Vaults before Duchy. 

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409870770980.txt
Masq is the only draw but it's still gotta be Goons engine, right? 

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.508ae4c20cf264ac914cc446.1409868943740.txt
Jack.  Nuff said.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409864586924.txt
Win the Amb fight, win the game.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409863785973.txt
Bishop/Fortress.  Too bad too, cause there are some neat cards otherwise.  There might even be a more complicated Bishop engine (trashing Gold gained with Explorer) if the village was anything other than Fortress.  Probably Grand Markets would be better than Bishop/Explorer, but even that's more fun than just seeing who trashes down to the golden deck faster.

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409861865384.txt
Herald is still shiny and new so the jury's out on it, but I'm starting to think if there's even a decent cantrip for it to hit (here Baker), then the high chance of being +2 cards, +2 actions makes it dominant for a $4-cost.  I'm afraid it could become another "win the split, win the game" card on a lot of its boards.  Let's count this game as half. 

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140904/log.516d33dbe4b082c74d7b39fa.1409861147658.txt
Nothing to mitigate the Cultist-shaft here.  Lots of interesting cards but it doesn't matter if 7 ruins = game over, and Cultist makes it much easier to have a 7-3 junk split than any other attack.  If I had to pick one card I never want to see again, Cultist would be it. 

I want to say Vault/Alchemist stack can beat Dukes if you compete with the Curses. But I could be kidding myself, it's something to consider. I still think there are interesting decisions around when to get Remodel, and obviously mistakes were still made (Procession for your opp?). Is any of his Walled Village and Inn stuff better than just Vaults and Silvers?

The Goons game is full of significant decisions: Remake/Masq? How many times to activate Market Square? When to add the second Masq? What to keep in hand after a Goons play? General deck balance between terminals and villages? How do you setup the 3 pile (I think you could have done it sooner)? Why take Pawn first over Hamlet? I mean it's obviously Goons, but just saying "Goons" doesn't tell you what the actual plays to make are. Nobody is going to play this game anywhere near perfectly on the first go.

The Jack game: Why no Courtyards? I am sure opening Courtyard/Jack here. Is there a place for a Rogue in your deck when your opponent is already buying Duchies on Turn 7? Besides, this game probably took 5 minutes (which may not matter to you, but it is a strong point in it's favor for me)

Ambassador game: It's not at all clear that deck thinning needs to be prioritized here. Which means single Ambassador is also an option. Amb/Moneylender is a reasonable opening. Swindler could be extremely useful in this game, but nobody touches one ever. Your opponent buys lots of Spies over something more useful like Silver/Swindler. You draw both Ambassadors on turns 12 and 15, but keep both when you should definitely get rid of one. You both keep feeding each other Coppers late into the game where it's not clear whether that helps or hurts your opponent.

I am pretty sure the Bishop/Fortress game can incorporate more of the board to produce more points per turn than you are getting here.

The Herald game just looks like you played very nicely, I don't know what the issue is. You went for Ironworks and cycling (Warehouse) earlier. You targeted the Heralds as important. Your choices made you win the game.

Cultist one sure is rough.

I am not trying to convince you to enjoy these example games, enjoy whatever you like, I am trying to point out that they aren't as straightforward as your summaries indicate, and maybe there are some nice things to think about while playing these games. You say you don't like when winning a card split is important, but that's a LOT of Dominion games (if nothing else it's Province/Duchy split), the skill is in figuring out how to win the important splits and how to squeak out wins if you don't.

[SirD]

I think Salvager already found a near to perfect implementation for the point tracker. Whenever some additional tracking capabilities will be included, they most likely will be implemented the same way, so that every player can choose freely to disable them:

#troff
#tron
#tr?

I like this very much.

[silverspawn]

well I have to admit that I was simplifying the problem. If you just look at the games that have only trivial decisions, that's less than 1/3. But if you look at the games that have "uninteresting" decisions, that's more.

Another thing is the importance of luck and skill for certain cards. for rebuild, I think that while it does take a lot of skill to play it perfectly, doing so still only amounts to a very small edge over playing it decently. in other words, even though rebuild is not low skill, you will lose a lot of matches against people that are significantly worse than you. On most engine boards though, skill matters a lot more. Generally, I tend to appreciate decisions/skill more if it also has more impact, and I think a lot of people do.

[eHalcyon]

I am not trying to convince you to enjoy these example games, enjoy whatever you like, I am trying to point out that they aren't as straightforward as your summaries indicate, and maybe there are some nice things to think about while playing these games. You say you don't like when winning a card split is important, but that's a LOT of Dominion games (if nothing else it's Province/Duchy split), the skill is in figuring out how to win the important splits and how to squeak out wins if you don't.

QFT.

A great deal of skill in Dominion lies in figuring out how to take advantage of your good luck, how to mitigate the chance of bad luck, and how to bounce back from the bad luck you may suffer.  "Winning the split" is rarely just a random luck thing that wins you the game.  The split is often won by skill, and many "key" cards (JoaT, Familiar, apparently Lab) aren't as ubiquitously important as some would believe.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Another thing is the importance of luck and skill for certain cards. for rebuild, I think that while it does take a lot of skill to play it perfectly, doing so still only amounts to a very small edge over playing it decently. in other words, even though rebuild is not low skill, you will lose a lot of matches against people that are significantly worse than you.

If your opponent is playing a game decently, then there's no real sense in which they are "significantly worse than you." There's no reason or need to feel resentment/frustration about losing those games. It's a wonderful thing that "better" players can lose whenever "weaker" players play an individual game well. We pick 10 kingdom cards, you don't get to use all your amazing Dominion knowledge in every single game, that's just how it works. The skill you are valuing so highly only appears in the aggregate. In this one game that's being played right now you just have to buck up and make good decisions and pray to the gods that your shuffles work out.

On most engine boards though, skill matters a lot more. Generally, I tend to appreciate decisions/skill more if it also has more impact, and I think a lot of people do.

I don't buy the first sentence, but I can't prove it one way or the other. I don't have a clue how to quantify skill/luck impact on the outcome, every game the winner needs skill and luck. Lots of engines have a breaking point (phase transition?) where they become super consistent/powerful and the first person to get there has a big advantage. The shuffles have a big impact on who reaches that point first.

I read a post of yours in the Random thread or something where you said you kept track of whether you thought the game was decided by skill/luck and whether you outplayed your opponent. Apparently your wins were mostly from skill and your losses were mostly due to bad luck. I lol'd. It tells you basically all you need to know about how people tend to judge these things.

[silverspawn]

I don't know how that fits in here, but yea i'm still doing that (writing two letters in the file after each dominion game that is). I'm not sure what your point is, I play about 95% of my games against players with a lower rating, so it's to be expected that there are more WS than LS, and more LL than WL respectively. everything else would be very weird. there are also just way more wins than losses period, because I won more games than I lost since I started making this list. your post kind of comes across as offensive, and I don't really get why. but I understand even less why you find the results weird.

[eHalcyon]

I don't know how that fits in here, but yea i'm still doing that (writing two letters in the file after each dominion game that is). I'm not sure what your point is, I play about 95% of my games against players with a lower rating, so it's to be expected that there are more WS than LS, and more LL than WL respectively. everything else would be very weird. there are also just way more wins than losses period, because I won more games than I lost since I started making this list. your post kind of comes across as offensive, and I don't really get why. but I understand even less why you find the results weird.

I think MQ was pointing out that your results are typical of human nature.  When we succeed (in any area, not just Dominion), we tend to attribute it more to our own skill and abilities rather than good fortune.  When we fail, we are more likely to blame bad luck and circumstance than note our own mistakes.  I think there is a name for this psychological effect, but I don't remember it.  This is also a reason why the most popular games tend to have both skill and luck -- so the winners can feel proud and the losers don't have to feel too bad about themselves (I think Richard Garfield discussed this somewhere in his Luck vs. Skill talk).

But playing mostly lower rated players could account for that too.

[theblankman]

You say you don't like when winning a card split is important, but that's a LOT of Dominion games (if nothing else it's Province/Duchy split), the skill is in figuring out how to win the important splits and how to squeak out wins if you don't.

Thanks for the analysis, not gonna derail the thread responding to your comments but I will say you've convinced me to play some of those kingdoms again. 

To be more specific about splits, it's not just that I don't like when winning a split is important, it's that I don't like when the important split is one over which I have very little control.  That's why I hate Cultist so much, especially when the possible openings for hitting $5 aren't much better than Silver/Silver (which is reasonably often).  The game just becomes all about who draws $5 more often, and whose Cultists chain more. 

The Herald game is admittedly nowhere near as bad as the Cultist game because I can influence the important split with Ironworks, but it seemed obvious to me how important Herald was on that board, and I think a stronger opponent would've bought an IW to gain Heralds.  And then it would've been right back to who draws IW when, or hits IW+$4, has IW miss a shuffle, etc.  (I doubt you buy more than one IW.)

[Mic Qsenoch]

I am just going to continue to derail this thread because this is a topic I like a lot. Oh and my analysis was supposed to be mostly rhetorical anyway, I don't expect a response. There were lots of question marks because I sure don't know the answers to many of those things just trying to highlight some possibilities.

The Herald game is admittedly nowhere near as bad as the Cultist game because I can influence the important split with Ironworks, but it seemed obvious to me how important Herald was on that board, and I think a stronger opponent would've bought an IW to gain Heralds.  And then it would've been right back to who draws IW when, or hits IW+$4, has IW miss a shuffle, etc.  (I doubt you buy more than one IW.)

Your last sentence describe generic things that can happen in literally every single game of Dominion with every single card and always always always have an impact on the shape of the game. I do not see how you luck haters are not just boiling after every game you play.

[silverspawn]

I don't know how that fits in here, but yea i'm still doing that (writing two letters in the file after each dominion game that is). I'm not sure what your point is, I play about 95% of my games against players with a lower rating, so it's to be expected that there are more WS than LS, and more LL than WL respectively. everything else would be very weird. there are also just way more wins than losses period, because I won more games than I lost since I started making this list. your post kind of comes across as offensive, and I don't really get why. but I understand even less why you find the results weird.

I think MQ was pointing out that your results are typical of human nature.  When we succeed (in any area, not just Dominion), we tend to attribute it more to our own skill and abilities rather than good fortune.  When we fail, we are more likely to blame bad luck and circumstance than note our own mistakes.  I think there is a name for this psychological effect, but I don't remember it.  This is also a reason why the most popular games tend to have both skill and luck -- so the winners can feel proud and the losers don't have to feel too bad about themselves (I think Richard Garfield discussed this somewhere in his Luck vs. Skill talk).

But playing mostly lower rated players could account for that too.

i think the best approach to this is to measure the (completely objective) win/loss ratio, then conclude an approximate ratio of games where you have to play better in order to achieve this (note that even a game where you get less than the required win % but more than 50%, it's still a game where you played better) and then compare that to the actual proportion (that is, the proportion between (WS+LL) and (WL+LS), because that's the games where I think I played better and the games where I think I played worse)

The win/loss ratio in the included games form the post was 1,5 - 1. This means that, for every 2 games you lose, you win 3. you win 3 out of 5. Let's say you play worse than your opponent in 1/3 of all games. that means you play better in 2/3. but you need to play significantly better on average in order to achieve a ratio of 3 -2. if you play worse in one game out of three, you need to play a hell of a lot better in the other two. I don't think I do that. I think something like, I play better in 3 out of 4 games is more realistic. that doesn't require me to play that much better anymore. and that would be a ratio of 3:1. well, maybe that's too much, maybe it should be somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1.

the actual ratio is 2,4 - 1. do with that what you want. I can't say that I was not subjective, that's not something you can say, but the results seem completely plausible to me.

[theblankman]

Your last sentence describe generic things that can happen in literally every single game of Dominion with every single card and always always always have an impact on the shape of the game.

Yes, it does.  But it seems, anecdotally, and could probably be shown empirically, that a few cards inflate the impact of those generic random events on the game a lot, compared to every other card.  Some people happen to dislike those cards for that reason.  I mildly dislike that effect. 

The effect I more strongly dislike is that of having a game mostly decided already, but still needing to play many more turns for the result.  On the winning side, it gets kind of boring.  On the losing side, I guess you can resign if you think it'd take a miracle to come back, but that's unpalatable if you care about rating, or it's a league match, or the result matters for any other reason.  Anyway it so happens that the some of worst offenders for this effect are also among the worst "luck inflaters," e.g. Cultist and Familiar.

[theblankman]

I am just going to continue to derail this thread because this is a topic I like a lot.

I meant that I didn't want to derail the thread with analysis of my own games.  This topic is imho quite relevant to the thread, because it talks to whether things like hatelists or vetoes are desirable.  Salvager could provide those formats in Casual/Unrated games, and even consider those games for Isotropish rating along with (or instead if) MF Pro games if people wanted that. 

[GeoLib]

I don't know how that fits in here, but yea i'm still doing that (writing two letters in the file after each dominion game that is). I'm not sure what your point is, I play about 95% of my games against players with a lower rating, so it's to be expected that there are more WS than LS, and more LL than WL respectively. everything else would be very weird. there are also just way more wins than losses period, because I won more games than I lost since I started making this list. your post kind of comes across as offensive, and I don't really get why. but I understand even less why you find the results weird.

I think MQ was pointing out that your results are typical of human nature.  When we succeed (in any area, not just Dominion), we tend to attribute it more to our own skill and abilities rather than good fortune.  When we fail, we are more likely to blame bad luck and circumstance than note our own mistakes.  I think there is a name for this psychological effect, but I don't remember it.  This is also a reason why the most popular games tend to have both skill and luck -- so the winners can feel proud and the losers don't have to feel too bad about themselves (I think Richard Garfield discussed this somewhere in his Luck vs. Skill talk).

But playing mostly lower rated players could account for that too.

It's a variation of the fundamental attribution error.

[Polk5440]

And for what? So the more-skilled player can win even more often?

"For what" is the easy part.  For games where you make more decisions that affect the outcome, because having your decisions matter is what makes the game fun.  The last several turns of a game in which you badly lost an important split are typically not fun; you just hope your opponent makes a mistake or gets some bad luck. 

I think Dominion can provide a great life lesson. Sometimes we do the right thing and get the bad outcome. That doesn't mean doing the right thing didn't make a difference.

The fact that there is this variance and luck to the outcome of any game forces you to learn to think more long term. Those strategic decisions do matter. Even though they didn't flip the bit this time -- in the long run, they do. It's almost like those who need to strip the luck out of Dominion need instant gratification in the form of a win NOW -- they can't see that their decisions DID matter, even if the outcome THIS TIME was bad.

Suppose you've lost a split. Because you've lost the split, your chances of winning go from 50-50 to 20-80. Bad luck. However, there could be opportunities for smart, strategic play throughout the midgame that move that probability to 30-70 and bad decisions move it to 1-99.  That's still interesting, because you are significantly affecting your win probability. Even though you probably will still lose THIS game, you may win, and making good decisions even when you are behind pays off in the long run.

I do agree that if losing a split 4-6 causes you to immediately drop to 0-100, then that's no fun. But that is not the case.

[blueblimp]

those who need to strip the luck out of Dominion

This is a strawman. I don't see anyone arguing that Dominion should play like Chess.

[theblankman]

I think Dominion can provide a great life lesson. Sometimes we do the right thing and get the bad outcome. That doesn't mean doing the right thing didn't make a difference.

At the risk of waxing philosophical, if your life outside Dominion doesn't provide enough of that lesson on its own, then I'd consider you pretty fortunate.  For my own part, playing Dominion is one of the things I do to generally get away from that kind of lesson and just have some fun.

[Polk5440]

I think Dominion can provide a great life lesson. Sometimes we do the right thing and get the bad outcome. That doesn't mean doing the right thing didn't make a difference.

At the risk of waxing philosophical, if your life outside Dominion doesn't provide enough of that lesson on its own, then I'd consider you pretty fortunate.  For my own part, playing Dominion is one of the things I do to generally get away from that kind of lesson and just have some fun.

I think it's a shame to need more wins to reflect your better decision making in order to have that fun.

It's not like Dominion is heavy on the luck, either. Well, compared to abstract strategy games, sure, because there is luck. But, on the forum we play tournament games in sets of 6 which can take just an hour or two of play (less time than many serious strategy games take to play just once) and if a player plays better, they usually win the match even in that short of time frame. And 6 games of variety? Lots of meaningful decisions, usually, too.

To make another point, being handicapped through bad luck (or going last) is a version of variety which can add fun to the game. Haven't you ever removed a piece from a chess board at the start for the challenge, not just to even things up? Ever gotten an extra thrill from hitting a great golf shot from an unlucky bad lie? You have to play differently from behind, not necessarily less strategically, and that different type of play can be fun, even if you don't win as many games from behind. Your decisions still matter -- they still affect your chances of winning even if you don't eventually win.

And as I mentioned above, it doesn't take that much time to balance out that bad luck or second player disadvantage over multiple games because Dominion plays so quickly. 

You say you don't like when winning a card split is important, but that's a LOT of Dominion games (if nothing else it's Province/Duchy split), the skill is in figuring out how to win the important splits and how to squeak out wins if you don't.

This is a great quote, Mic.

[theblankman]

I think it's a shame to need more wins to reflect your better decision making in order to have that fun.

Now we're talking past each other.  I said a few posts ago that I'm less a "luck hater" and hold more hate for games decided many turns before they actually end, i.e. games that take 20-30 minutes but after the first 5, my chance of losing (or winning) has already fallen below 20%.  That's why I dislike Cultist so much; in my experience it leads to a disproportionate number of games in which someone badly loses the ruin split in the first 7-9 turns, and because they're so hamstrung after that, their opponent has to do something like drive the entire Province pile himself, extending a mostly decided game. 

To make another point, being handicapped through bad luck (or going last) is a version of variety which can add fun to the game.

Comebacks can be exciting, but I find most of mine happen because after getting unlucky early, I get very lucky late.  Note: I don't think comebacks are all that common in Dominion.  Score doesn't indicate much during the game.  In a lot of games that might look like comebacks because I'm behind on the scoreboard, I really felt even or ahead much of the game. 

[jonts26]

I don't know how that fits in here, but yea i'm still doing that (writing two letters in the file after each dominion game that is). I'm not sure what your point is, I play about 95% of my games against players with a lower rating, so it's to be expected that there are more WS than LS, and more LL than WL respectively. everything else would be very weird. there are also just way more wins than losses period, because I won more games than I lost since I started making this list. your post kind of comes across as offensive, and I don't really get why. but I understand even less why you find the results weird.

I think MQ was pointing out that your results are typical of human nature.  When we succeed (in any area, not just Dominion), we tend to attribute it more to our own skill and abilities rather than good fortune.  When we fail, we are more likely to blame bad luck and circumstance than note our own mistakes.  I think there is a name for this psychological effect, but I don't remember it.  This is also a reason why the most popular games tend to have both skill and luck -- so the winners can feel proud and the losers don't have to feel too bad about themselves (I think Richard Garfield discussed this somewhere in his Luck vs. Skill talk).

But playing mostly lower rated players could account for that too.

It's a variation of the fundamental attribution error.

Specifically, it probably falls under self-serving bias.

[GeoLib]

I don't know how that fits in here, but yea i'm still doing that (writing two letters in the file after each dominion game that is). I'm not sure what your point is, I play about 95% of my games against players with a lower rating, so it's to be expected that there are more WS than LS, and more LL than WL respectively. everything else would be very weird. there are also just way more wins than losses period, because I won more games than I lost since I started making this list. your post kind of comes across as offensive, and I don't really get why. but I understand even less why you find the results weird.

I think MQ was pointing out that your results are typical of human nature.  When we succeed (in any area, not just Dominion), we tend to attribute it more to our own skill and abilities rather than good fortune.  When we fail, we are more likely to blame bad luck and circumstance than note our own mistakes.  I think there is a name for this psychological effect, but I don't remember it.  This is also a reason why the most popular games tend to have both skill and luck -- so the winners can feel proud and the losers don't have to feel too bad about themselves (I think Richard Garfield discussed this somewhere in his Luck vs. Skill talk).

But playing mostly lower rated players could account for that too.

It's a variation of the fundamental attribution error.

Specifically, it probably falls under self-serving bias.

I think that's actually the proper description, though they kind of seem like basically the same thing to me: external influences cause the bad things in your life while you cause the good things and vice versa for other people.

[theright555J]

So if one wins a game because of a gaffe by the opponent (as in the opponent had a theoretical better deck but didn't handle endgame tactics properly, for example), would that count as a "WS" or a "WL"? Could be either in my opinion...perhaps skill allowed one to eke out the win despite the inferior position, or perhaps one got lucky that the opponent flubbed his position?

[silverspawn]

So if one wins a game because of a gaffe by the opponent (as in the opponent had a theoretical better deck but didn't handle endgame tactics properly, for example), would that count as a "WS" or a "WL"? Could be either in my opinion...perhaps skill allowed one to eke out the win despite the inferior position, or perhaps one got lucky that the opponent flubbed his position?

uh... i guess it depends on why he got the better deck. if i played the worse strategy, and he fucked up so i won anyway, i'll definitely write a WL. if we did the exact same thing, he got a big advantage, screws up in the end and throws it, i'll write a WS

unless he throws via missclick, though that has never happened before. then it's probably WL

[GendoIkari]

Any sort of non-mental tracking, including both point counting and deck contents tracking, is not allowed by the rules, because anything the rules do not explicitly allow is implicitly forbidden. (This is the opinion of Donald X himself, so it's not really up for argument.) As such, playing with any tracking is playing a variant of the game. If all players in a match consent to playing the variant, then that is fine. If any of them doesn't, then the variant should not be used, and if one player goes ahead and tracks anyway, then that is cheating. (Notice how, in the current implementation of the point counter, it's implemented so that it's only used if all the players consent to its use, either by joining a game with "#vpon" in the title or by choosing not to disable the counter once in the game.)

The problem is that by this definition, Dominion Online is always only a variant to the game, because it provides a full log.

Which, as I have mentioned before, is one of the reasons that I have not, and will not, play on Goko.

[soulnet]

Which, as I have mentioned before, is one of the reasons that I have not, and will not, play on Goko.

I think this kind of argument is moot. Any online Dominion is a variant: Iso was also a variant because it provided facilities for you not to forget to play some Treasure card and also not to automatically play Treasures that may hurt you (like Copper when GM is out, or Venture that can skip good cards and/or cause unwanted reshuffles). IRL you need to think about those kinds of things yourself. Moreover, providing counters of the number of actions, buys and money you have is also against the rules. It is just way more comfortable than having to count it yourself. Same thing about the size of piles, you may miscount if you do it by hand, just as you can miscount the VP or the number of Golds left in your draw deck.

[GendoIkari]

Which, as I have mentioned before, is one of the reasons that I have not, and will not, play on Goko.

I think this kind of argument is moot. Any online Dominion is a variant: Iso was also a variant because it provided facilities for you not to forget to play some Treasure card and also not to automatically play Treasures that may hurt you (like Copper when GM is out, or Venture that can skip good cards and/or cause unwanted reshuffles). IRL you need to think about those kinds of things yourself. Moreover, providing counters of the number of actions, buys and money you have is also against the rules. It is just way more comfortable than having to count it yourself. Same thing about the size of piles, you may miscount if you do it by hand, just as you can miscount the VP or the number of Golds left in your draw deck.

Most of the things that Iso provided that you mention was to solve problems that Iso itself created... the problems of misclicking, for example. Misclicking doesn't exist IRL. You do have a valid point about online Dominion necessarily having some differences and changes from IRL Dominion. But providing a full log of the game at all times is not one of those necessities.

Providing your current money total and action total only shows you information that is open knowledge in IRL Dominion as well. The only difference is that in IRL Dominion, you need to add up information that's on the cards in front of you manually. But a log of the entire game is information that is NOT available in IRL Dominion, and has been discussed at great length about how playing with such a log is a variant. It completely takes away all memory component of the game. There is no longer any need to mentally track how many of what each player has bought, because Goko provides that information to you at all times (albeit in a format that requires you to spend a minute going through and gleaning the information).

[soulnet]

Which, as I have mentioned before, is one of the reasons that I have not, and will not, play on Goko.

I think this kind of argument is moot. Any online Dominion is a variant: Iso was also a variant because it provided facilities for you not to forget to play some Treasure card and also not to automatically play Treasures that may hurt you (like Copper when GM is out, or Venture that can skip good cards and/or cause unwanted reshuffles). IRL you need to think about those kinds of things yourself. Moreover, providing counters of the number of actions, buys and money you have is also against the rules. It is just way more comfortable than having to count it yourself. Same thing about the size of piles, you may miscount if you do it by hand, just as you can miscount the VP or the number of Golds left in your draw deck.

Most of the things that Iso provided that you mention was to solve problems that Iso itself created... the problems of misclicking, for example. Misclicking doesn't exist IRL. You do have a valid point about online Dominion necessarily having some differences and changes from IRL Dominion. But providing a full log of the game at all times is not one of those necessities.

Providing your current money total and action total only shows you information that is open knowledge in IRL Dominion as well. The only difference is that in IRL Dominion, you need to add up information that's on the cards in front of you manually. But a log of the entire game is information that is NOT available in IRL Dominion, and has been discussed at great length about how playing with such a log is a variant. It completely takes away all memory component of the game. There is no longer any need to mentally track how many of what each player has bought, because Goko provides that information to you at all times (albeit in a format that requires you to spend a minute going through and gleaning the information).

I am fine with people disliking the whole log. I am not fine with people citing the rulebook or Donald's words to argue their disliking, because providing a money counter is the same type of illegal thing. IRL, you need to remember actions trashed with Procession, the number of Spoils played, Treasures played with Counterfeit, choices made with Steward, Count and Minion, whether Durations were played for the first time this turn, etc. Since AFAIK nobody ever had a problem with the money counter, I find the complains about the legality of a complete log silly. Of course, I understand both are not the same and I think liking the money counter but not the whole log or the VP counter is a reasonable position, but I think all of those are the same from a rulebook point of view.

FWIW, I don't have a problem with the whole log being available, but I rarely look at it other than the last couple of turns. Having it available makes play more relaxed, though, and I think that's a good thing. Same for the VP counter.

[GendoIkari]

Which, as I have mentioned before, is one of the reasons that I have not, and will not, play on Goko.

I think this kind of argument is moot. Any online Dominion is a variant: Iso was also a variant because it provided facilities for you not to forget to play some Treasure card and also not to automatically play Treasures that may hurt you (like Copper when GM is out, or Venture that can skip good cards and/or cause unwanted reshuffles). IRL you need to think about those kinds of things yourself. Moreover, providing counters of the number of actions, buys and money you have is also against the rules. It is just way more comfortable than having to count it yourself. Same thing about the size of piles, you may miscount if you do it by hand, just as you can miscount the VP or the number of Golds left in your draw deck.

Most of the things that Iso provided that you mention was to solve problems that Iso itself created... the problems of misclicking, for example. Misclicking doesn't exist IRL. You do have a valid point about online Dominion necessarily having some differences and changes from IRL Dominion. But providing a full log of the game at all times is not one of those necessities.

Providing your current money total and action total only shows you information that is open knowledge in IRL Dominion as well. The only difference is that in IRL Dominion, you need to add up information that's on the cards in front of you manually. But a log of the entire game is information that is NOT available in IRL Dominion, and has been discussed at great length about how playing with such a log is a variant. It completely takes away all memory component of the game. There is no longer any need to mentally track how many of what each player has bought, because Goko provides that information to you at all times (albeit in a format that requires you to spend a minute going through and gleaning the information).

I am fine with people disliking the whole log. I am not fine with people citing the rulebook or Donald's words to argue their disliking, because providing a money counter is the same type of illegal thing. IRL, you need to remember actions trashed with Procession, the number of Spoils played, Treasures played with Counterfeit, choices made with Steward, Count and Minion, whether Durations were played for the first time this turn, etc. Since AFAIK nobody ever had a problem with the money counter, I find the complains about the legality of a complete log silly. Of course, I understand both are not the same and I think liking the money counter but not the whole log or the VP counter is a reasonable position, but I think all of those are the same from a rulebook point of view.

FWIW, I don't have a problem with the whole log being available, but I rarely look at it other than the last couple of turns. Having it available makes play more relaxed, though, and I think that's a good thing. Same for the VP counter.

I dunno, the thing is that the rules require you to remember all the things you just listed. It's not a skill of Dominion to be able to remember what choices you made with Steward... it's something that has to be done in order to play the game by the rules. For that reason, in a real-life situation, open discussion would generally be allowed among players to determine that information. If I try to buy a card for more money than I have, because I misremembered and thought my Steward was for money, then my opponent will speak up and correct me. (Or he won't notice, and I will have accidentally cheated).

But information about the contents of each deck is a different category of information... it's something that the game of Dominion rewards you for learning the skill of tracking such things. You can improve at Dominion by improving at tracking how many of what cards each player bought. Getting better at remembering if your Pawn gave you another buy or not isn't getting better at Dominion, it just allows you to play Dominion by the rules.

[blueblimp]

Any sort of non-mental tracking, including both point counting and deck contents tracking, is not allowed by the rules, because anything the rules do not explicitly allow is implicitly forbidden. (This is the opinion of Donald X himself, so it's not really up for argument.) As such, playing with any tracking is playing a variant of the game. If all players in a match consent to playing the variant, then that is fine. If any of them doesn't, then the variant should not be used, and if one player goes ahead and tracks anyway, then that is cheating. (Notice how, in the current implementation of the point counter, it's implemented so that it's only used if all the players consent to its use, either by joining a game with "#vpon" in the title or by choosing not to disable the counter once in the game.)

The problem is that by this definition, Dominion Online is always only a variant to the game, because it provides a full log.

Which, as I have mentioned before, is one of the reasons that I have not, and will not, play on Goko.

You're of course free to do whatever you want, but in practice, I have almost never experienced a problem with games being delayed by slow opponents, which among other things suggests that my opponent is probably not re-counting their entire deck each turn.