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[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.