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Author Topic: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)  (Read 49996 times)

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funkdoc

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #25 on: July 26, 2015, 09:44:30 pm »
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partially through league match #2, down 3-1.  already discussed some things with the kind folks in my stream chat (thank you so much!!!), figured i'd post logs here and bring up some questions.

game 1: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150726/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437951532273.txt
game 2: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150726/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437952255607.txt
game 3: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150726/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437953332278.txt
game 4: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150726/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1437954709741.txt

video archive for anyone interested: http://www.twitch.tv/srkfunkdoc/v/8667205

game 1 - upgrade has to be the opening with 5/2, no?  i do wonder if duchess was better than pearl diver, and i suspect upgrade #2 was my biggest mistake here (thought i could get the free gold eventually).  i didn't realize fairgrounds were worth 4 for me until the end, but it felt like i'd already lost before those came into play.  actually, with all the alt-VP, maybe more upgrades to turn stuff into those was the best option?  this seems like a board where you can't win on provinces alone since the BM enablers are so weak, which i didn't think about at first.  alt-VP in general is still a mystery to me...

game 2 - this was the one we talked about the most.  i just treated it as generic BM, but it was suggested that you could run a bunch of stables & banks with a horse traders for double-province turns.  my trade route play was bad when thinking about it from that angle, and i probably shouldn't have bothered with it at all (esp. since there was a clearly better +buy).  i'm not sure how much silver you need to make this strat work - the key cards being so expensive makes me think you'd want 2-3?

game 3 - a lot less to say about this one, i think, unless there's a better strat than the poor houses.  SCSN said in the chat that i shouldn't even have gotten the 2nd silver...again, with cities being key, i figured 2 was the right number, but this is something i don't have a solid handle on in general.  i think SCSN also said i should've gotten a second woodcutter, but i was afraid that would be one stop card too many.  if i had 1 more city i would've done that.  and for those who didn't watch my stream, that turn near the end where i bought nothing was a misclick (had 2 poor houses for a province).

game 4 - ok, here is where i have to ask something regarding YMYOSL.  the engine here seems better than basic jack stuff if you get at least decent luck, but i didn't get decent luck.  after i get utterly screwed on the silver-HT opening, there has to be SOME way i can come back and win, right?  the chat mentioned that i shouldn't have bought any more silver if i was sticking with the engine plan, which is certainly fair (again, important $5+ cards made me assume i needed at least 2 silver, and i forgot how much the extra silver would hurt count's trashing).  the alternative i thought about toward the end was abandoning ship on the engine and going jack once i got that $4 on turn 4, and the chat seemed to be supporting that.  i really can't think of a better comeback plan.  oh yeah, it was also argued that i should've trashed copper + estate + silver with count instead of taking money for border village, and i hadn't considered trashing silver with it before.  that does make sense as i think about it now, but in general it just seems like that second shuffle made the engine a lost cause for me?  finally, i was also told why you should gain a copper instead of topdecking one with count, and can't believe i didn't think of that earlier.


thanks again~
« Last Edit: July 26, 2015, 10:03:45 pm by funkdoc »
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DG

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #26 on: July 26, 2015, 10:40:46 pm »
+1

Game 1 - Your opponent has the basics right here - trash a little but use a hoard to buy victory cards and fill the deck with gold. On a 5/2 you can do much the same using upgrade/duchess at the start and getting silver instead of shanty town.
Game 2 - Lots of ways to play this. You get stuck in a dwindling endgame however where you are getting swamped by green cards, copper is getting trashed, and the banks and stables are getting worse. It makes it look as if stables/bank/trade route isn't good enough to cater for the extra vp in the game from tunnels (16vp of green cards).
Game 3 - Build up to double province turns earlier.
Game 4 - Horse traders is the wrong opening here. It's not going to give much income, you want to trash your estates rather than discard them all the time, and it hogs an action. Wrong buy and bad luck means no way back in what is effectively a 13 turn game.
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funkdoc

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #27 on: July 26, 2015, 11:29:10 pm »
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Game 1 - Your opponent has the basics right here - trash a little but use a hoard to buy victory cards and fill the deck with gold. On a 5/2 you can do much the same using upgrade/duchess at the start and getting silver instead of shanty town.

yea, the shanty town was kinda experimental on my part.  i always figure one should be good in a money deck with only non-terminal actions, but probably not.  also hoard seemed too weak to rush provinces on its own, but i forgot how well island works with it.  getting an island with no other green in your deck seems weird but i guess it should be fine if that's the best you can do early.


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Game 3 - Build up to double province turns earlier.

a huge general weakness of mine is getting +buys too late.  i always get caught up in drawing the deck and scared of adding payload until the rest is finished.  especially here with it being fairly easy to get 2 components at once (city + poor house), i'm sure i needed the woodcutter earlier...just not sure how early, since i also need good mercenary trashing.  guess i can trash the silver once i have the woodcutter though!


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Game 4 - Horse traders is the wrong opening here. It's not going to give much income, you want to trash your estates rather than discard them all the time, and it hogs an action. Wrong buy and bad luck means no way back in what is effectively a 13 turn game.

the only trasher is a silver flooder, and i didn't know what to make of that.  my thinking was that i wouldn't want to play jack anymore once i got rid of all the estates, and that trashing doesn't even help my chances of drawing my deck.  horse traders seemed to have value for the whole game because of the +buy, so i went for that.  i know merchant guild is definitely a better +buy, and i guess border village makes it painless to add that, so that part makes sense.

it's just hard for me to see how jack fits into an engine since you're trading stop cards for less-crappy stop cards, and the jack itself becomes a worse estate after the trashing is done.  i guess that silver does become a bigger deal when you have a border village or goons in the game...ok, your argument is making sense to me for this board now.  but if you only need to hit $5 and not $6, i'm still not sure about jack...


lots of good thoughts as per usual, thanks DG!
« Last Edit: July 26, 2015, 11:33:55 pm by funkdoc »
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AdamH

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #28 on: July 27, 2015, 08:23:24 am »
+1

Jack-in-an-engine, it's pretty delicious, yeah? Hmm. A lot of the times if your only village is Border Village, engines just aren't all that powerful -- with no attacks and some premium big money enablers around I'm a little skeptical, but I think on this board you're lucky enough that you don't have to decide if you're going for an engine until a couple of shuffles in. My gut says that because of Merchant Guild, an uncontested engine player will win here but I'm not sure.

The way I see it, hitting $6 is the most important thing -- do it early and often. Your draw is terminal so the number of villages you have limits the overall potential of your deck. Border Village split in a mirror is going to be what determines who wins (and luck is a big factor in that, unfortunately). But if you're playing Big Money, you want to hit $6 anyways so the first few turns look a little bit like this:

Open Jack/Silver -- Jack/Lighthouse is probably OK too but I think the Silver gives you a slightly better chance to hit $6? Maybe I'm wrong here. If you don't hit $6 on your first shuffle, it's OK, the most important thing is Count and thinning (without Count the engine is not viable at all, BTW, this just won't work without Copper trashing). If things aren't going well (you hit double $4 or something) you can always pivot into Jack+BM with some enablers like Lighthouse and maybe Count and just hope, but you've probably already lost in that case anyways.

There are a couple of things you've said that I sort of want to comment on.

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Game 4 - Horse traders is the wrong opening here. It's not going to give much income, you want to trash your estates rather than discard them all the time, and it hogs an action. Wrong buy and bad luck means no way back in what is effectively a 13 turn game.

the only trasher is a silver flooder, and i didn't know what to make of that.  my thinking was that i wouldn't want to play jack anymore once i got rid of all the estates, and that trashing doesn't even help my chances of drawing my deck.  horse traders seemed to have value for the whole game because of the +buy, so i went for that.  i know merchant guild is definitely a better +buy, and i guess border village makes it painless to add that, so that part makes sense.

it's just hard for me to see how jack fits into an engine since you're trading stop cards for less-crappy stop cards, and the jack itself becomes a worse estate after the trashing is done.  i guess that silver does become a bigger deal when you have a border village or goons in the game...ok, your argument is making sense to me for this board now.  but if you only need to hit $5 and not $6, i'm still not sure about jack...

So Count trashes, if Count isn't here like I said before, you're going with DoubleJack, and in that case you want to open Jack. Given that you want an engine with Count, though, I still think you want to open Jack. Jack is amazing, Silver is a really good card, turning Estates into Silvers is really super-ultra awesome and I think you underestimate that. Yeah Silver doesn't draw cards but look at this deck you want to build -- what do the cool turns look like? To me they look like "draw a buttload of cards, play a couple of Merchant Guilds, play a bunch of treasures, buy two or three Provinces in a turn." Journeyman is great for keeping your deck viable -- he can skip Coppers, Silvers, or Provinces, depending on when in the game you are. Your payload here has to include treasures, so while Silver doesn't help you draw your deck, you still want it around. Continuing to play your Jack after your Estates are gone will probably happen, you just have to be very careful that you can either continue to draw your deck or you have to be OK with not drawing all of your deck every turn (which isn't the worst thing ever, BTW).

Many people would have you believe that Silver and Engine are like oil and water, but sometimes Silver is the whole point of your engine. Jack really pushes you toward building decks like this, because Jack is really really good at building them, even though they don't resemble other engines you might be building in your life.
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assemble_me

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #29 on: July 27, 2015, 08:34:41 am »
+2

a huge general weakness of mine is getting +buys too late.  i always get caught up in drawing the deck and scared of adding payload until the rest is finished.  especially here with it being fairly easy to get 2 components at once (city + poor house), i'm sure i needed the woodcutter earlier...just not sure how early, since i also need good mercenary trashing.  guess i can trash the silver once i have the woodcutter though!
I don't think you were that late on buys, when watching your game I even thought that Woodcutter might be a bit early but it was probably just fine when you got it. So you actually had those 2 buys in the endgame. I remember turn after turn where you hit 14$ and went for more Urchins. You could have easily picked up another Poor House or Woodcutter to be at 16$ or beyond it.


Quote
Game 4 - Horse traders is the wrong opening here. It's not going to give much income, you want to trash your estates rather than discard them all the time, and it hogs an action. Wrong buy and bad luck means no way back in what is effectively a 13 turn game.

the only trasher is a silver flooder, and i didn't know what to make of that.  my thinking was that i wouldn't want to play jack anymore once i got rid of all the estates, and that trashing doesn't even help my chances of drawing my deck.  horse traders seemed to have value for the whole game because of the +buy, so i went for that.  i know merchant guild is definitely a better +buy, and i guess border village makes it painless to add that, so that part makes sense.

it's just hard for me to see how jack fits into an engine since you're trading stop cards for less-crappy stop cards, and the jack itself becomes a worse estate after the trashing is done.  i guess that silver does become a bigger deal when you have a border village or goons in the game...ok, your argument is making sense to me for this board now.  but if you only need to hit $5 and not $6, i'm still not sure about jack...

IDK if DG wants to say you should have opened Jack here. I guess what he meant was Silver/Silver as you're going to be tight on actions with BV being almost free on one side but reaching 6$ is somewhat hard on the other side. I also wasn't 100% sure yesterday if you want to go HT/Silver or just Silver/Silver here because of that.
And the "only trasher floods Silvers" is not true, Count is actually pretty good trashing. As said, you got unlucky to have your opening buys both miss the shuffle so you could get your Count only after the second shuffle because of that, and then having it in one hand with all your good cards.
Despite what Adam says (hey Adam, does that mean I get a +1 now ;)) I would skip Jack here because it's hard to have spare actions and what you want to do if you have them is just to play as many Merchant Guilds as possible and draw cards.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2015, 08:40:53 am by assemble_me »
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AdamH

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #30 on: July 27, 2015, 08:42:09 am »
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Despite what Adam says (hey Adam, does that mean I get a +1 now ;)) I would skip Jack here for sure just because it's hard to have spare actions and what you want to do if you have them is just to play as many Merchant Guilds as possible and draw cards.

I'll +1 you, but I think you're just wrong :P. Any strategy on this board is made better by Jack. Opening Jack, in particular.
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SCSN

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #31 on: July 27, 2015, 09:40:01 am »
+1

i'm not sure how much silver you need to make this strat work - the key cards being so expensive makes me think you'd want 2-3?

When you're playing a BM-ish game where you're not drawing the deck each turn, depend on basic (i.e. non HoP) Treasures as payload and intend to by Provinces (i.e. there are no Colonies), Silver is usually a good card and you want as many of them as you can get (though obv. not at the expense of even better cards, like 1 HT, Stables and Banks). Brb taking a shower.

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game 3 - a lot less to say about this one, i think, unless there's a better strat than the poor houses.  SCSN said in the chat that i shouldn't even have gotten the 2nd silver...again, with cities being key, i figured 2 was the right number, but this is something i don't have a solid handle on in general.
 
With Mercenary giving +$2 and drawing 2 cards, and your opponent not about to mass-Merc you anytime soon (which you know b.c. of his terrible open), 1 Silver is more than enough to hit 5 consistently. You should take a second early Silver if there's only weak trashing and there are important 5s you want to get as early and often as possible, neither of which was the case here.

You also took nothing over a free Urchin at least once which is just really strange. Even if you don't plan to get more Mercs the free cantrip is nice b.c. with weak gaining you're bound to run out of Merc fodder (so you can use the Urchin as Merc fodder later without it hurting you before that point), and on turns where you don't get in a full Merc attack it's still great to have your opponent discard down to 4.

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a huge general weakness of mine is getting +buys too late.  i always get caught up in drawing the deck and scared of adding payload until the rest is finished.  especially here with it being fairly easy to get 2 components at once (city + poor house), i'm sure i needed the woodcutter earlier...

What makes Woodcutter more scary than Poor House? The one is exactly as terminal and non-cantrippy as the other, so saying that you're afraid of adding the former while spamming the latter doesnt make much sense. Just get City + Woodcutter the first time you could have gotten it over City + Poor House and you should be perfectly fine.

the only trasher is a silver flooder, and i didn't know what to make of that.  my thinking was that i wouldn't want to play jack anymore once i got rid of all the estates, and that trashing doesn't even help my chances of drawing my deck.  horse traders seemed to have value for the whole game because of the +buy, so i went for that.  i know merchant guild is definitely a better +buy, and i guess border village makes it painless to add that, so that part makes sense.

it's just hard for me to see how jack fits into an engine since you're trading stop cards for less-crappy stop cards, and the jack itself becomes a worse estate after the trashing is done.  i guess that silver does become a bigger deal when you have a border village or goons in the game...ok, your argument is making sense to me for this board now.  but if you only need to hit $5 and not $6, i'm still not sure about jack...

Jack can be good in an engine but I agree that it's pretty bad here, especially because HT/Silver is the much better open: unless they miss shuffle you're pretty much guaranteed to hit 5 for Count and if they collide you stand a terrific chance of hitting BV-Count. After that just get as many BVs as the Goko Gods are willing to grant you. If you get behind early you just have to keep playing well and hope your opponent gets equally unlucky next shuffle or messes up in some way, because otherwise you're just going to lose, which is totally okay: if your opponent plays as well as you do, you stand to win only half your games, and even a bit less because of ties!
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assemble_me

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #32 on: July 27, 2015, 09:44:27 am »
+1

I've played a couple of games against bots (game 4) - still I can't tell if Jack is better or not. Also things might look different if your opponent isn't just playing Journeyman-BM :D, but probably the difference isn't that huge. The nice thing is that Journeyman can skip extra Silvers and it comboes somewhat with Pearl Divers (put junk on top, then skip it with Journeyman). On the other hand if you don't go Jack you can get thinner and add more Merchant Guilds.
To me, it looks like a lot just depends on shuffles. I also think that opening Count is huge here if you can (yes, better than Jack for sure :))
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AdamH

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #33 on: July 27, 2015, 10:28:26 am »
+1

In my mind, it's not even close, Jack is the best opener here. Only on a 5/2 would I open not-Jack (and be very happy with my Count).

But this game is going to be really swingy, simply because Border Village is the only village. A worse strategy that hits $6 a lot will be likely to beat a better strategy that doesn't hit $6 very much, and this difference probably means more than Jack vs. whatever other opener you choose.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #34 on: July 27, 2015, 10:36:00 am »
+3

It's a shame all this Jack discussion is diverting our focus from the real power card: !!**ROYAL SEAL**!!.
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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #35 on: July 27, 2015, 11:01:10 am »
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With Mercenary giving +$2 and drawing 2 cards, and your opponent not about to mass-Merc you anytime soon (which you know b.c. of his terrible open), 1 Silver is more than enough to hit 5 consistently. You should take a second early Silver if there's only weak trashing and there are important 5s you want to get as early and often as possible, neither of which was the case here.


i thought city was that important $5 since my opponent was also going for them (so they would level up quickly) and the poor house thing doesn't work without it.  good points though, the rest definitely makes sense!

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You also took nothing over a free Urchin at least once which is just really strange. Even if you don't plan to get more Mercs the free cantrip is nice b.c. with weak gaining you're bound to run out of Merc fodder (so you can use the Urchin as Merc fodder later without it hurting you before that point), and on turns where you don't get in a full Merc attack it's still great to have your opponent discard down to 4.

i get scared of buying cantrips with terminal draw and no villages in my deck.  basically i have a major phobia of terminal collision (which the chat discussed with me a bit) and drawing actions dead, and probably make lots of mistakes thanks to that.  and yea, urchins for merc fodder was my plan with them in the endgame (as you saw on that last double province turn).  also i was thinking about leveling up cities again, but wasn't sure about that idea with that split being even.  probably favored me though!

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What makes Woodcutter more scary than Poor House? The one is exactly as terminal and non-cantrippy as the other, so saying that you're afraid of adding the former while spamming the latter doesnt make much sense. Just get City + Woodcutter the first time you could have gotten it over City + Poor House and you should be perfectly fine.

i was only getting $6 at least my first couple times with the woodcutter, and figured that was the time to add poor houses since my trashing was close to done.  my point was that my deck seemed pretty tight with 3 poor houses + 1 woodcutter...maybe having more urchins like you said could make the 2nd woodcutter safer? but then the mercenary play nets double province anyway so i don't see the upside to woodcutter #2.  unless you mean using it to get more mercenary fuel, or increase the chances of province+duchy turns...i could see that.

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Jack can be good in an engine but I agree that it's pretty bad here, especially because HT/Silver is the much better open: unless they miss shuffle you're pretty much guaranteed to hit 5 for Count and if they collide you stand a terrific chance of hitting BV-Count. After that just get as many BVs as the Goko Gods are willing to grant you. If you get behind early you just have to keep playing well and hope your opponent gets equally unlucky next shuffle or messes up in some way, because otherwise you're just going to lose, which is totally okay: if your opponent plays as well as you do, you stand to win only half your games, and even a bit less because of ties!

i remember reading a post here that ran some math and found double silver to be better than silver/HT for reaching $5, so maybe that's what DG meant.  this engine also seems like it would be tight on actions, and you need at least one merchant guild in there, no?  horse traders would really get in the way of that from what i can see.  what's your counter to that?

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #36 on: July 27, 2015, 12:26:48 pm »
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i thought city was that important $5 since my opponent was also going for them (so they would level up quickly) and the poor house thing doesn't work without it.  good points though, the rest definitely makes sense!

They are important later but it's not important at all to get a lot of Cities early (= T3-T6) and later on you have Mercs and eventually Poor Houses to make a single Silver more than enough. You want two Silvers if you're playing, say, a board with only Wharf and Village, there you'd like to get a Wharf every turn from T3 onwards (later Wharf+Village) so you need the 2nd Silver to hit a lot of early 5s.

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i get scared of buying cantrips with terminal draw and no villages in my deck.  basically i have a major phobia of terminal collision (which the chat discussed with me a bit) and drawing actions dead, and probably make lots of mistakes thanks to that.  and yea, urchins for merc fodder was my plan with them in the endgame (as you saw on that last double province turn).  also i was thinking about leveling up cities again, but wasn't sure about that idea with that split being even.  probably favored me though!

That's a really harmful phobia to have! The advice "avoid drawing stuff dead" is really targeted towards newbies who would otherwise build a deck with 5 Hunting Grounds, 5 Mountebanks, a whole bunch of other nonsense and no Villages. Once you get past that point drawing stuff dead really isn't a big deal at all and you certainly shouldn't fear it. Sure, you'd prefer drawing stuff live and given that you drew stuff dead you'd sometimes have been better off had those dead cards been Coppers or Silvers, but that's no reason to stuff your deck full off treasures, it's no reason not to draw (b.c. as long as your deck is improving cycling itself is a big boon), and it's certainly no reason to not put the good cards in your deck in the first place.

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i was only getting $6 at least my first couple times with the woodcutter, and figured that was the time to add poor houses since my trashing was close to done.  my point was that my deck seemed pretty tight with 3 poor houses + 1 woodcutter...maybe having more urchins like you said could make the 2nd woodcutter safer? but then the mercenary play nets double province anyway so i don't see the upside to woodcutter #2.  unless you mean using it to get more mercenary fuel, or increase the chances of province+duchy turns...i could see that.

The point of the second Woodcutter is both potential Merc fodder and to build quicker. E.g. getting double City + Poor House turns or maybe even a triple City turn. In addition to just general end-game and pile-control (great with Cities), for which more buys are always better.

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i remember reading a post here that ran some math and found double silver to be better than silver/HT for reaching $5

It takes between 0.1 and 3 seconds to see why that math is horribly wrong, so I really recommend doing the math yourself instead of relying on some utter nonsense sprouted by a 3rd party.

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this engine also seems like it would be tight on actions, and you need at least one merchant guild in there, no?  horse traders would really get in the way of that from what i can see.  what's your counter to that?

It's not tight on actions early on and HT is just a big boost to early economy. Once you have a few MGs I think you'd usually be playing one of either Count and HT, but then you just discard the one with the other, no big deal.

Even if at some point during my journey I intend to take a plane and leave my slower car at the airport, that doesn't mean I would have been better off going to the airport by foot.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2015, 12:28:37 pm by SheCantSayNo »
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markusin

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #37 on: July 27, 2015, 01:19:59 pm »
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i get scared of buying cantrips with terminal draw and no villages in my deck.  basically i have a major phobia of terminal collision (which the chat discussed with me a bit) and drawing actions dead, and probably make lots of mistakes thanks to that.  and yea, urchins for merc fodder was my plan with them in the endgame (as you saw on that last double province turn).  also i was thinking about leveling up cities again, but wasn't sure about that idea with that split being even.  probably favored me though!

That's a really harmful phobia to have! The advice "avoid drawing stuff dead" is really targeted towards newbies who would otherwise build a deck with 5 Hunting Grounds, 5 Mountebanks, a whole bunch of other nonsense and no Villages. Once you get past that point drawing stuff dead really isn't a big deal at all and you certainly shouldn't fear it. Sure, you'd prefer drawing stuff live and given that you drew stuff dead you'd sometimes have been better off had those dead cards been Coppers or Silvers, but that's no reason to stuff your deck full off treasures, it's no reason not to draw (b.c. as long as your deck is improving cycling itself is a big boon), and it's certainly no reason to not put the good cards in your deck in the first place.

This is a nice point. See, when players are first starting to learn Dominion with the Base set, they might build a deck with over 20 cards and a bunch of Smithies, some treasures, and other terminals but only a few Villages. In those cases dead draw can be quite bad because the terminals won't be seen again for awhile and your Smithy provides less value from drawing treasures.

When trashing anf engines are involved however, the cards you draw dead might turn up again next turn when your engine goes off anyway, and it can be worth taking the risk if the draw card is doing respectable damage to your opponent and/or providing some other value besides draw. Margrave and certainly Mercenary can fall into this category during a game.

Related to this is the topic of terminal collision in general, not necessarily of the dead draw kind. Playing a key terminal every turn is usually more important that avoiding the inevitable terminal collision. We don't live in an ideal world of shuffle luck where having the ideal maximum number of terminals for your deck can support always prevents terminal collision. Because of this you'll want to oversaturate your deck a little bit with a couple extra copies of the key terminals of the board so you can play them every turn, even if it guarantees a terminal collision at some point in your shuffle. Playing a Mountebank or discard attack (like Militia or Mercenary) is often the true ideal you want.
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funkdoc

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #38 on: July 27, 2015, 03:03:29 pm »
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at work now, gotta be short

SCSN, thank you again!  just wanted to mention that:

A. i completely hate math and in no way could do stuff with this game on my own atm. don't ask me why i got so into power grid...

B. it was wanderingwinder who posted that thread, and i figured he'd be more likely to be right than some rando

that bit of mythbusting is def appreciated though~

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #39 on: July 27, 2015, 04:28:17 pm »
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I believe the correct figures are here http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/06/21/opening-probabilities-part-ii/. Check for yourself whether the horse traders gives you the benefits you wanted from a terminal action.
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funkdoc

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #40 on: July 28, 2015, 11:14:29 pm »
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over the last couple weeks, i've run into 3 pirate ship pin boards and fallen for it every time.  this last one in my league match was because there wasn't an engine for it and it was a colony game, so i figured i could always have more money than they could trash.  however, i proceed to buy not one but TWO junk dealers without realizing how much easier that makes it for them...not good times.  that game also had prince, and i forgot how practical that becomes when it's a colony game and you have 3 pirate ships in your deck.

how the hell do i have such a hard time dealing with a bottom 5 card?  i autopilot stuff a lot atm and i guess that strat runs counter to so many of the rules of good play, as seen in the junk dealer example.  that board also had merchant ship, but that's not so hot for getting colonies?  i still got a couple of them obviously but idk

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #41 on: July 29, 2015, 12:20:38 am »
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how the hell do i have such a hard time dealing with a bottom 5 card?  i autopilot stuff a lot

Ultimately you've answered your own question here. If you're dictating to yourself based on the 95% cases, you're going to lose those 5% exception games.
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assemble_me

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #42 on: July 29, 2015, 06:29:14 am »
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over the last couple weeks, i've run into 3 pirate ship pin boards and fallen for it every time.  this last one in my league match was because there wasn't an engine for it and it was a colony game, so i figured i could always have more money than they could trash.  however, i proceed to buy not one but TWO junk dealers without realizing how much easier that makes it for them...not good times.  that game also had prince, and i forgot how practical that becomes when it's a colony game and you have 3 pirate ships in your deck.

how the hell do i have such a hard time dealing with a bottom 5 card?  i autopilot stuff a lot atm and i guess that strat runs counter to so many of the rules of good play, as seen in the junk dealer example.  that board also had merchant ship, but that's not so hot for getting colonies?  i still got a couple of them obviously but idk

  • Play more
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Still that won't help you to sometimes misread boards, but that's actually a part why this game is still so cool after thousands of games :).

I guess this is the game you're referring to: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150728/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438135285142.txt

Hum, I don't really think this is a Pirate Ship board. I think you went to hard for trashing, especially after your opponent went for two early Ships. I don't like your second Junk dealer, maybe the first one isn't great already.
I'm not sure about the Merchant Ships. Maybe just Vault is better despite that's a Colony game. I think you should have added a couple of Hoards because of the Gold gaining for defense.
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pubby

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #43 on: July 29, 2015, 12:03:04 pm »
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Hum, I don't really think this is a Pirate Ship board.
I'm having a real hard time seeing how that couldn't be a Pirate Ship board. There's just not enough virtual money to get around it.
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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #44 on: July 29, 2015, 12:46:19 pm »
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Hum, I don't really think this is a Pirate Ship board.
I'm having a real hard time seeing how that couldn't be a Pirate Ship board. There's just not enough virtual money to get around it.

But you don't need virtual money to get around one Pirate Ship a turn, just get some Hoards and Vault/Peddler.
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funkdoc

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #45 on: July 29, 2015, 03:11:27 pm »
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yea, in general i'm not used to playing big-deck strats unless it's for a real obvious reason (gardens/possession), and this seems like a board where that was a must.  thanks all!

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #46 on: July 29, 2015, 03:40:29 pm »
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yea, in general i'm not used to playing big-deck strats unless it's for a real obvious reason (gardens/possession), and this seems like a board where that was a must.  thanks all!

I am not suggesting you should skip trashing. Trashing is really great on this board, but if the opponent does go for Pirate Ship, Hoard is a possible defense.
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assemble_me

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #47 on: July 29, 2015, 05:44:06 pm »
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yea, in general i'm not used to playing big-deck strats unless it's for a real obvious reason (gardens/possession), and this seems like a board where that was a must.  thanks all!

I am not suggesting you should skip trashing. Trashing is really great on this board, but if the opponent does go for Pirate Ship, Hoard is a possible defense.

Also, I do like some trashing here as well. But Moneylender + 2 Junkdealer + Opponent's Ships is a lot.
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funkdoc

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #48 on: July 31, 2015, 12:14:58 am »
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tonight was hilarious

more awful play from me yet i somehow won my first league match!  on balance i *think* i'm glad mic & SCSN were there for the last game? not so sure they were, lol

apothecary is definitely one of my biggest demons atm, never quite sure what kind of deck it wants.  i also threw away a likely win with cultist by going BM over cities & grand markets (w/ throne room) on a colony board - was worried about 3-pile and figured i needed to get points ASAP, which i realized was silly by the end of the game.  the other issue in that one was that i never got doctor (only trasher) since i was so focused on cultists, while my opponent got a $7 doctor buy quite early in the game.  i won the ruins split like 7-3 or 8-2 so i should have still been the favorite, no?  i just don't have enough faith in engines without a thin deck, which has gotten me killed many times now...

logs for laffs:

Game 1 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438306427492.txt
Game 2 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438307705142.txt
Game 3 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438308362489.txt
Game 4 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438308970331.txt
Game 5 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438309691392.txt
Game 6 - http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150730/log.55328665e4b0b01f29a2cbaf.1438311967794.txt


movin on up in one sense, yet still so, so far to go~


oh yeah, one last thing: looking back through my stream chat after the match, i noticed SCSN seemingly complaining about how slow i was with cartographer/apothecary/lookout.  just warning you now, that part is never going away with me.  i am probably the worst person on this forum when it comes to messing up the simplest things, when there's a lot of steps/information involved in them.  i don't handle large quantities of things at once unless i majorly slow down to process them all, period.  my normal routine is to just decide what's important and completely block the rest of the environment from my mind, but in this game that leads to things like buying remake on a BM board with poor house present sooooooooooo

the stream doesn't really help with all of this, though.  my chat being so unfamiliar with the game kinda forces me to go over rudimentary stuff over and over, and obviously that slows it down a lot too.  also, to be frank, it makes me a lot more dull than i otherwise would be - i'm a very intense person at heart who loves to bring up conversations on all sorts of topics while i play, but having to play professor all the time kills those aspects of me.  this is why i stopped streaming power grid, and i'd like to figure out a solution for this game...

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Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)
« Reply #49 on: July 31, 2015, 09:17:56 am »
+2

apothecary is definitely one of my biggest demons atm, never quite sure what kind of deck it wants.

Apothecary is a tough card to play right. Something that really helped me was to play several games in a row and force it into every kingdom. Some games I made myself go for it no matter what and other games I made myself not go for it no matter what (much less of those).

Something to keep in mind when you do this is that Apothecary can result in very swingy openings -- the difference between the best possible outcome that you can control and the worst possible outcome is so large (consider cycling as well) that you really need to take luck into account. Some kingdoms are worth playing more than once if you don't feel like you are getting a good handle on what Apothecary is doing/not doing for you.


oh yeah, one last thing: looking back through my stream chat after the match, i noticed SCSN seemingly complaining about how slow i was with cartographer/apothecary/lookout.  just warning you now, that part is never going away with me.  i am probably the worst person on this forum when it comes to messing up the simplest things, when there's a lot of steps/information involved in them.  i don't handle large quantities of things at once unless i majorly slow down to process them all, period.

Don't let him get to you. If he thinks you're too slow, then he shouldn't watch, but he (like me) likes to complain about things. Especially in a league match, just focus on playing the best you can, and if he doesn't find your stream to his liking, well then I guess he just won't watch. Oh well.


the stream doesn't really help with all of this, though.  my chat being so unfamiliar with the game kinda forces me to go over rudimentary stuff over and over, and obviously that slows it down a lot too.  also, to be frank, it makes me a lot more dull than i otherwise would be - i'm a very intense person at heart who loves to bring up conversations on all sorts of topics while i play, but having to play professor all the time kills those aspects of me.  this is why i stopped streaming power grid, and i'd like to figure out a solution for this game...

Well I don't have the solution to this, but I do have some thoughts. In the very early days when I was experimenting with streaming Dominion, Dethwing was giving me some help. One thing we noticed is that his audience (1500 Followers at the time, if he streamed for an hour or so he'd have 30-50 viewers pretty consistently) was not really interested in anything but speedrunning video games. He could have 50 viewers, then change over to Dominion and within 5 minutes be down to 10. Those 10 would ask questions and they would have a good interaction, but 10 minutes later those people would be lost and stop watching.

Dominion is a game that's harder to watch than Hearthstone or Mario, in either of those games it's pretty easy to see what's going on and follow things with no knowledge of the game: Mario is jumping across platforms and dodging/stomping on monsters, Hearthstone has life totals on everything and monsters run into each other (and there are bubbles that make everything clear that's happening). People describe Dominion as "just a bunch of cards flying around on the screen." This is a really difficult problem to fix and it's a huge barrier between us and getting more people to watch Dominion and get into it.

For a while I tried to "play professor" and I got nothing but negative feedback from it. Anyone who appreciates that isn't very likely to say anything in chat about it, and it's much easier to cater your streams to what people are telling you and what you want, rather than speculate about what hypothetical people may be wanting. I also think that streams where you're providing insightful commentary and explaining deeper points and trying to play well are just better than streams where you're trying to teach the game. If someone wants to learn the game, a live stream is just not the right medium for it and other games (Mario and Hearthstone) can get away with it because they're either very easy to learn or their game clients make the game very easy to understand. It's ironic that there's so much backlash against flashy animations when that's probably the thing that can help the most with this, but that's another discussion. A tutorial video/highlight that you point people to for learning Dominion is probably the way to go here.

So what I did was try to create a new audience -- I've found it very difficult to transfer an audience that wants to see other video games over to Dominion (as I'm sure you have as well, along with people like Chesswhiz), so most of the people who stick around the stream are the ones who came to watch Dominion. And the way I keep them is to just make the best stream I can for those people. I never simplify my commentary for the sake of being accessible, because I believe that high-level strategic concepts and accessibility are not mutually exclusive -- I just try to think out loud as part of my thinking process (which has taken me years to get to the point I am now, to be fair) and people will follow it. These forums have been extremely helpful for creating a community of regulars who will keep the chat active, and for directing lurkers towards live streams where they enjoy what they watch.

I guess that's a lot of rambling, maybe you can find something good in there you can use, I think it's really cool how someone as popular as you is now focused on streaming Dominion -- it could be really good for Dominion streaming in general and also for your audience to get into a really fun game :)
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