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[-Stef-]

Question: under what circumstances would you lower piles?

Definitions: lowering piles means you buy cards for the mere sake of getting closer to a 3-pile. The cards you buy are not bad for you but not great either. Think Pearl Divers in a deck without Heralds. And lowering instead of emtying means you do not have a forced win right here.

Why do I ask? My plan is to write a strategy article about this very subject. But I don't really know how to go about it. My ideas about it are very short and simple and I'd be finished in like 3 sentences. But I think it deserves a whole lot more text because apparently this is a difficult subject with quite some misconceptions flying around. I hope you are willing to give your opinion on the matter in this thread. Regardless of whether I think that it's great advice or one of the misconceptions, it would help me a lot in writing the article. And who knows maybe in the end discussion itself will replace the article.

[Beyond Awesome]

I think the main thing about lowering piles is to think before you buy. One player once mentioned that this is a game about emptying piles whether provinces or three-piles. So, always remember that buying cards leads the game one-step closer to coming to an end.

[Burning Skull]

First thing that comes to mind is that situation:

You might want to do that when you are behind and your only hope is that your opponent duds on the next turn so you could potentially steal a win.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I like to do this thing when I'm in the lead, and I'm sure this is one of the errors you have in mind, which is lowering piles just to make the game end sooner even if it causes some slight decrease in win %.

And I was going to write more about how I agree with you on general principle, but I have seen cases where you've made comments along these lines and I didn't think it applied in that case. Which is to say, deciding what "being in the lead" means exactly and making estimations for likelihood of dud hands over a number of future turns isn't always obvious. But I don't have time now!

[werothegreat]

I think this is really only something you're going to do if a) piles are lowering anyway, or at least one pile has already emptied and b) it looks like Provinces are going to be difficult to empty.  This is most often the case in curser/looter games, but can also happen in engine games with a contested part.  In these cases, you really have to be mindful of how much is left in each pile, and what your current score is.  If you're losing, you want to keep the piles up to make it harder for your opponent to end the game in their favor.

Of course this is mainly about pile emptying.  For pile lowering, I think the main card to look out for is Goons.  With Goons, I'm perfectly happy grabbing a bunch of Pearl Divers, because they're basically cheaper Great Halls (or better, depending on how many Goons I have in play). 

I dunno.  Really, the strategy for pile lowering is the same as for pile emptying - you're looking for the same conditions, you're just starting earlier.  In order for it work without a contested pile, you need some sort of +Buy or gainer.

[DG]

Buy cards so that you will be able to win with empty piles on the following turn but your opponent will not. This threat does have to be backed up with enough vp to force a win though.

A similar situation might be to squeeze down the supply piles so that if the opponent buys their ideal cards they will offer you a 3 pile ending next turn. If you can lock an opponent out of buying a card like city they might be short of +buys or +actions for the rest of the game. This sort of squeeze can sometimes lock out the mid cost vp cards as well.

[Beyond Awesome]

I don't think Stef is talking about buying piles to win on your next turn though. He mentions lowering piles for the sake or lowering piles.

[werothegreat]

I don't think Stef is talking about buying piles to win on your next turn though. He mentions lowering piles for the sake or lowering piles.

Right.  Goons in particular likes doing that.

[SCSN]

Obviously Stef is talking about lowering piles strategically, specifically about under what circumstances it benefits you and when it hurts. Lowering piles for the sake of lowering piles makes no sense unless you just like clicking some buttons.

[DG]

In that case, let's talk about building vs closing. The first thing to look at will be how many times you will use your new cards if you decide to keep building. If there's only a 50-50 chance of playing them at all then building doesn't look so good. On the other hand, building may help you keep control over the important piles, typically the province pile, so that it doesn't actually matter whether the game closes sooner or later.

[Eran of Arcadia]

So here's an anecdote about a RL game between 2 not-very-good players.

I don't remember everything on the board, but the most important cards for the purpose of this story were Familiar and Port. I decided to skip Familiar because it was the only Potion cost card out and there were a couple of trashers. Well, very quickly I found myself with 10 curses in my deck. And the Ports ran out because we're both a couple of Village Idiots.

At this point, I was just about screwed. All it would have taken to leave me with a negative score would have been to aggressively clear out one pile. But my opponent didn't do this - she focused on buying Provinces as usual. That gave me a chance to clean out my deck, build up an economy, and out-Province her. This is the most obvious case I can think of where my victory owed more to her decisions than to mine.

[Burning Skull]

So here's an anecdote about a RL game between 2 not-very-good players.

I don't remember everything on the board, but the most important cards for the purpose of this story were Familiar and Port. I decided to skip Familiar because it was the only Potion cost card out and there were a couple of trashers. Well, very quickly I found myself with 10 curses in my deck. And the Ports ran out because we're both a couple of Village Idiots.

At this point, I was just about screwed. All it would have taken to leave me with a negative score would have been to aggressively clear out one pile. But my opponent didn't do this - she focused on buying Provinces as usual. That gave me a chance to clean out my deck, build up an economy, and out-Province her. This is the most obvious case I can think of where my victory owed more to her decisions than to mine.

But in that case it probably would have been much safer for her to build more than to deplete the third pile. Given that you were able to overtake from the state of "10 curses in a deck", I suppose the board actually had enough components to continue building.

[ehunt]

This definitely needs an article. More generally, I'd love to read a general article about end-game control, which is a (relatively) poorly understood aspect of advanced Dominion strategy. (I wrote an article for new players along these lines maybe a year ago, but I'd like to see an article for intermediate/advanced players.)

Some trivial observations:
-you shouldn't do it if you're behind
-you shouldn't do it if it your opponent can possibly buy enough points to overcome your lead and complete your 3-pile attempt

Some less trivial observations:
-most of the time when you do it, it doesn't matter, because you only do it when neither of the "trivial observations" apply, and "games where you're ahead and your opponent's deck can't buy a bunch of cards" is a pretty similar set to "games you're going to win anyway."
-the most important time to do it when it really does matter, is if your opponent threatens to gain an insurmountable lead, but doesn't quite have the engine to do it yet. This happens sometimes when you play a money-type variant against an engine-type variant. In this situation, you're "ahead" on points but "behind" on deck-tempo, another concept I'd like to see an advanced strategy article about.

[Mic Qsenoch]

In this situation, you're "ahead" on points but "behind" on deck-tempo, another concept I'd like to see an advanced strategy article about.

In my mind at least, the deck quality (or chances of winning) is what I'm referring to by default when I talk about leads/behind/ahead. I usually will specify points if I'm talking about VP. I don't know if this is an important point of view to have, but it seems to me that lots of players still overvalue having their point counter be higher than their opponents at any stage of the game that isn't the end.

[SCSN]

Some trivial observations:
-you shouldn't do it if you're behind

Why not?

[Eran of Arcadia]

But in that case it probably would have been much safer for her to build more than to deplete the third pile. Given that you were able to overtake from the state of "10 curses in a deck", I suppose the board actually had enough components to continue building.

Why's that? I was able to recover not through my sheer brilliance but because she gave me the time to do it. A quick ending would have left her with 1 or 2 points (from estates she had not yet trashed) and me firmly in the negatives.

I mean there are other factors (she's my wife and playing Dominion is one of our favorite things, so making the game longer is worth it) but from a purely win or lose standpoint, she should have gone for the last pile.

[Mr Anderson]

Some trivial observations:
-you shouldn't do it if you're behind

Why not?

I agree to ehunt. In many cases you would just help your opponent in the lead to end the game more quickly with a win. In that situation you should get cards that help you to get the victory, don't just get them to lower the piles.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Some trivial observations:
-you shouldn't do it if you're behind

Why not?

I agree to ehunt. In many cases you would just help your opponent in the lead to end the game more quickly with a win. In that situation you should get cards that help you to get the victory, don't just get them to lower the piles.

It depends on what is meant by "behind" here, but in many cases the player who is behind only has a shot if their opponent duds out a turn in which case it can be the right move to lower piles hoping to sneak out a win after the dud turn.

[ehunt]

Some trivial observations:
-you shouldn't do it if you're behind

Why not?

I agree to ehunt. In many cases you would just help your opponent in the lead to end the game more quickly with a win. In that situation you should get cards that help you to get the victory, don't just get them to lower the piles.

It depends on what is meant by "behind" here, but in many cases the player who is behind only has a shot if their opponent duds out a turn in which case it can be the right move to lower piles hoping to sneak out a win after the dud turn.

yeah, I mean "behind" in the strict sense that your deck is worse and you have fewer points. And I guess even then it's not a no-brainer because of longshots along these lines.

[Chris is me]

I think it's easy for not-expert players to lower piles too early, so I try and be really conservative about it - I lower piles when I'm winning by more than one "big turn" worth of points. Lots of times when I miss three pile opportunities this way though.

[markusin]

Here you're specifically ask about lowering piles in situations that don't lead to a forced win this turn or the next. I imagine you'd have to calculate the odds that this will lead to a 3-pile ending before your opponent overtakes you or you overtaking your opponent and ending the game on the same turn during some future turn.

I don't know how much you can say about this topic besides "depends on the game state". What I can recommend is to carefully consider the maximum number of gains your opponents can have on their turn before deciding to try lowering piles. If their gaining power matches yours, lowering piles can totally backfire if you get a dud hand relative to your opponent. I think it's better to lower piles when you have higher gaining power than your opponent so that you can lower piles only to the extent that it benefits you exclusively.

Edit: I'll add that it's better to lower piles that your opponents need for their strategy, because then you can count on your opponents to help you empty the piles as they build their engine. Simple example is lowering the Village pile when your opponent's strategy needs them, even if your strategy can make do with only a few of them.

[Dingan]

I actually recommend you don't call it "lowering piles" because I think this term is misleading, because it's not clear if you're specifically referring to the end-game tactic of (eventually) emptying piles, or if you're just talking about lowering piles in general.  Here are some examples of why I will want to lower/empty a pile, but I don't think they're what you're referring to by "lowering piles", right?

• you want as many of a pile as possible (Minion, Herald, etc.)
• upgrading Cities
• denying your opponent a pile
• getting access to a different Knight/Ruin

[Donald X.]

I want to know what jsh357 has to say, because I have never seen him fail to aggressively lower piles.

[markusin]

I want to know what jsh357 has to say, because I have never seen him fail to aggressively lower piles.

Even when Messenger wasn't on the board?

[jsh357]

I come from a long line of demolition experts. There is only one real objective in Dominion. I won't rest until every pile is gone.

I suppose a more serious response is: I am terrible at multiplayer games and often assume I can win games on a lead if I rush them. Sometimes it works; usually it doesn't.