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Author Topic: Classical Events  (Read 2431 times)

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tristan

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Classical Events
« on: February 23, 2016, 03:54:25 pm »
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This is about events as global effects that are triggered automatically like e.g. in Star Realms. I think that they should happen at the end of each turn of the last player and that they should be one-shots or stay in play for the next round. Their main issue would be their randomness and the total lack of decision making. Their main advantage would be pragmatic, only 1 card for an event, no need for printing with Dominion backs and no balance problems.
This is not totally right though. Take "Each player draws a card." vs. "While this is in play, at the begining of his turn each player draws a card.". In the presence of handsize attacks the former version gives the first player a significant advantage over the last player whereas the latter does not.

I am not trying to argue for or against what you could label "classical events" but trying to check for these kind of issues. I think it is more important to determine whether the general idea is viable (it is definitely anything but innovative or exciting) before one goes into specifics (which should be fairly easy).
« Last Edit: February 23, 2016, 03:55:41 pm by tristan »
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461.weavile

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Re: Classical Events
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2016, 12:24:43 am »
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Are we talking about ...oh, what should we call them... how about "Occasions?" Anyway, are we talking about Occasions which are randomly selected at the beginning of the game with the Kingdom cards and the Events or are these things that would get shuffled together and one randomly flipped at the end of each round?

I feel like one random effect that lasts the game could be interesting. All it changes is how you play that game. Say everybody starts each turn by drawing a card. You know you have one more card every turn, so you will probably get to Provinces easier, but you also know that everybody else has the same opportunity. So you know how it could potentially affect you and you build your starting strategy around that, just like building your starting strategy around whatever random 10 Kingdom cards were dealt in a standard game and any Events that show up.

On the other hand, randomly revealing one effect after each round doesn't match evenly with the current game mechanics for my liking. Other than being able to look through the pile at the start of the game, you won't know what's going to happen each round, and that makes the luck factor more important. It might be more chance-based than just shuffle luck, and that's already a lot of luck. It also probably massively increases the first-player advantage; the first player knows what the Occasion will be on the other players' turns and can plan attacks accordingly (do I play Masquerade or Noble Brigand?) while the other players won't know what the Occasion will be on the first player's turn. Making Occasions like this would be very difficult, because you would have to devise Occasions that won't mess with the player-order advantage, are not political, and have a balance between harmful and helpful for most strategies - in the current space, that will be very difficult.

It's a nice idea, something like events that you don't have to use a buy on, but I'm not sure how I feel about it unless I get a more descriptive example.
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ConMan

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Re: Classical Events
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2016, 12:39:06 am »
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I agree that randomly selecting a board-wide effect for the whole game could make for some interesting results, and that something that randomly changes the rules once per turn is not so great. One way that you could make the latter a little less capricious is to borrow from the "Tales of Smallworld" miniexpansion, and have a deck of such effects where you turn over a card at the start of the game that will take effect at the start of turn 2, and at the start of each turn you reveal what the effect for the following turn will be (so on turn 2 the first effect occurs, and you reveal what the turn 3 effect will be, and so forth). It's probably still not so in-line with normal expectations for Dominion where you at least know what the rules landscape will be for the entire game, but it may be fun in some circumstances.
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tristan

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Re: Classical Events
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2016, 12:53:47 am »
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Good points. I totally agree that a global effect which lasts for the entire game is better as you can strategize around it. The only problem I see is that it has to small as e.g. a game in which everybody starts his turns with 4 or 6 cards might be too extreme whereas this isn't a big thing for just one turn.
Another option to mitigate the randomness of one-turn Occassions would be to have Kingdom cards that interact with the Occassions deck.
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Kirian

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Re: Classical Events
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2016, 02:40:42 am »
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Classical events can happen simultaneously; relativistic events cannot.
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Eran of Arcadia

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Re: Classical Events
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2016, 09:12:53 am »
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One way that you could make the latter a little less capricious is to borrow from the "Tales of Smallworld" miniexpansion, and have a deck of such effects where you turn over a card at the start of the game that will take effect at the start of turn 2, and at the start of each turn you reveal what the effect for the following turn will be (so on turn 2 the first effect occurs, and you reveal what the turn 3 effect will be, and so forth).

I literally just played that for the first time last night. I think that having a turn to react to what's coming adds some interesting choices.
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tristan

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Re: Classical Events
« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2016, 12:36:05 pm »
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Here is an implementation of the idea. 24 two-sided cards with Fortune, something good happening for everybody on the front, and Calamity, something bad happening for everybody, on the back. Then I randomize them, probably with 16 cards with the Calamity side and 8 cards with the Fortune side up. This constitutes the Fortunes and Calamities pile which interacts with this Event.

Fortunes & Calamities
Types: Event
Cost:
+1 Buy
Once per turn: Gain a Four-Leaf Clover.
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If you have gained more or less than 1 card during your turn, play the top card of the Fortunes and Calamities pile at the end of your Clean-up phase. Each player may discard a Four-Leaf Clover in order to not be impacted by a Calamity.

The advantage of this implementation of classical events is that you see what is coming and can pre-defend yourself against Calamities. The defense token thingy might be too cheap though and might thus be used too often. I am also not too happy with the trigger yet but I wanted something non-random which the active player can influence.
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