I haven't ignored your comments about the stats. I addressed them. I don't trust your assessment over theirs because you've only thrown out terms from introductory statistics classes like "t-test" and "significance" without any actually math at all, and one of your suggestions (that small = insignificant) is fundamentally wrong.
You did not adress anything. All you relied upon was an argument from authorty: "these guys are uber smart so their works is automatically right". This is unscientific and reactionary. In the real work everybody, even Nobeal prize laurates, frequently make mistakes.
An argument from authority is not fallacious if the authority actually knows what they are talking about. I believe they do. IIRC, this kind of stuff is actually rrenaud's job. I'm not saying that it's automatically right, but that it sure has more weight than your anecdotes.
On the flip side, until you actually do some math, you yourself are making an argument from authority with
yourself as authority, and your other statements have led me to believe that you
don't know what you're talking about when it comes to stats.
People certainly do make mistakes. That's not relevant here though, unless you show that there is a mistake in those stats.
About the stats, as I already said, if the secondary values which are given correspond to the confidence intervals then the probabilities might very well be statistically significantly different from a hypothetical average value (of around 70%).
But even if they are, the range of probabilities is just 2.5 percentage points. Not really enough spread to make arguments about card randomness. Second the stats do not only measure card randomness but also card complexity.
Is this a paper? No but this is a boardgame forum and not a scientific journal. The second point, that the stats measure two things and not just one, suffices to discount them for the sake of using them as an empirical support for the nonsensical claim that Tournament is not a swingy card.
So you're saying that even though it's statistically significant, it's still not actually significant. OK, way to dismiss hard data.
I already addressed why the card complexity is directly related, but you've studiously ignored all that.
I never claimed that Tournament is not swingy. No matter how many times you say that I did, that won't make it true, and I think it is the worst form of debate to misrepresent what others have said,
especially if they've already corrected you on it before.
Back to the actual topic, if you still don't get, despite countless repetitions, that the last step of the traveller line is Tournament on steroids (you need to have 2 Provinces or a Province and a Duchy or a Duchy and 3 Estates in your hand) I cannot help you.
Your countless repetitions have already been addressed multiple times, and you've chosen to ignore those responses over and over again.
The conditions is harder than that of Tournament so even with mirror play and greening that happens at roughly the same time at the end card draw decides whether you will have the VP cards with a cumulated cost of 10 or not. And the reward, 10 VPs plus end game trigger, is extremely good.
Just to say yet again, the 10VP isn't an important part of the card design. The OP already mentioned that it could be reduced or removed entirely. So if that's a big reason you think it is swingy, it has already been addressed. This has been mentioned multiple times already.
You say that card draw will decide whether you have the VP cards in hand, but I disagree. All the exchange requirements for the early cards in the line require that you actually build your deck. By the time you get On The Silk Road, you'll have an actual engine. If you've played well, you'll be able to
reliably draw the VP you need. That's not random luck, that's skilled play. That's not early game pairing of two cards like Tournament, that's a late game engine doing what it was built to do.
In the real world an event which occurs with low probability and implies a large outcome is called risky. Now this is totally fine if the card designer wants to go for that. Swindler, Tournament, Treasure Map and so on are all risky Dominion cards. As it includes a game end trigger and a huge shitload of VPs it is clearly more risky than any other Dominion card. But per se there is nothing wrong with that. Gee, my favourite deckbuilder is Nightfall which is probably less skill-dependent than Dominion. And at the end of the game we still talk about a card game and not Caylus or Chess.
But if your goal is to keep the amount of Tournaments and Swindlers low, if your fan card design goal is limit the influence of luck, then this traveller line is the wrong choice. If Dominion is too deterministic and skill-dependent for your taste than this card is clearly a good choice.
I contest that it is low probability in the context of how and when you would actually have On the Silk Road in your deck, as explained above.
But let's say that you are a bad player who is just bumbling through this line. In that case, I agree -- the probability is low. Then suppose you
do somehow randomly meet the conditions to exchange instead of doing it deliberately. Is it swingy now? I say no, because in this case the card wouldn't be powerful. If you use Visit the Khan to end the game, you're probably doing it for a loss.
Overall, far too much focus is being paid to the last two stages in this discussion. Every step in the traveller chain is a gate on the way to those last cards, but you're ignoring them all. It's not just a matter of drawing into $10 worth of VP. It's also giving up tempo by playing a dead action (Marco Polo). It's investing in and playing multiple terminals in a turn (Board A Ship). It's getting villages and then not using them to full advantage (Visiting Bagdad). If you get through all that by
luck, then we're talking Lucky Chancellor here, and I don't see anybody calling Chancellor too swingy (other than
this guy). So even if the last exchange needs a little more luck (and again, I don't think it does at that stage in the game) then I'd say that it's well earned and well gated.
Reading the thread title, i thought the last card would be a Reserve saying: "At the start of your turn, you may call this, to end the game." Which i think sounds at least interesting.
I agree. It would definitely imply more control for the player who gained a Khan and make it overall less swingy. In a big deck you could draw Khan at the wrong moment when you (think you are) behind.
Anything related to game ending stuff is definitely something you wanna tightly control.
I think that would be a cool change to make, in addition to dropping the VP.
Back to the actual topic, if you still don't get, despite countless repetitions, that the last step of the traveller line is Tournament on steroids (you need to have 2 Provinces or a Province and a Duchy or a Duchy and 3 Estates in your hand) I cannot help you.
The conditions is harder than that of Tournament so even with mirror play and greening that happens at roughly the same time at the end card draw decides whether you will have the VP cards with a cumulated cost of 10 or not. And the reward, 10 VPs plus end game trigger, is extremely good.
Agreed, the condition is harder than Tournament's. But I think this means it is less luck dependent. You will need multiple VP cards in your deck if you want to trigger it, you can't just draw it luckily with a Province.
Also: If you fail with Tournament, you get nothing. If you fail On the Silk Road, you get a super boost.
Hmm.. I don't think that logic holds up. The condition is harder, so it happens less often, but the payoff is better. Low probability, high value, which is exactly what Tristan is talking about.
On the Silk Road's abilities are good, but if getting Marco Polo outshines the other benefits such that the player that lines up 10 cost with it is very likely going to win over the player that doesn't (hypothetical; I'm not saying that's the case), then it's a little bit moot.
Again, the Lucky Chancellor is a relevant example here. It has especially low probability and also very high value, but most people don't consider it too swingy or luck-dependent. As it is, I'd say that Marco Polo has much more space for skilled play to mitigate luck as you progress through each step, and also much lower value if you don't have a plan to back it up.
