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schadd

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empires: villa
« on: August 01, 2016, 08:19:49 pm »
+2



if my house doesn't scream "control the entire world within the next few days" then i don't know what does


whaaat! the rules are melting right in front of our eyes! you're not supposed to be able to play actions anymore after it's your buy phase! ah, but as with everything that has given such an impression in empires, it's not actually that apocalyptic, really. i would say that one somewhat infrequently buys another thing in addition to villa in any given buy phase. however, the fact that you can occasionally do that, in conjunction with the strengths of villa on its own, you'll probably want to pick up a lot more terminal draw when villa is on the table (especially the draw up to somethings!). it profits you two actions when you gain it.


-how readily does this create a superturn?
-how important is its subtle combo with gainers? (workshop can now be played as a villa that gains a villa or something)
-how does its presence affect the order by which you get stuff? does it sort of play like coin of the realm in that way?
« Last Edit: August 04, 2016, 12:56:10 pm by schadd »
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ced

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2016, 04:17:48 am »
+4

Very strong with cost reduction. Four Bridges or two Quarries lets you immediately pile these out if you so desire, even gaining a net $1 with every buy. Interestingly, Merchant Guild scales even more strongly - with five Merchant Guilds in play, you can buy Villa, play it, go to your buy phase and instantly spend your five coin tokens for a net gain of $2. Five Merchant Guilds and an extra $4 is enough to buy six Provinces if all ten Villas are still there.
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dedicateddan

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2016, 10:21:29 am »
+2

Villa fundamentally changed how the game is played. going directly into hand AnD providing an extra +1 action that turn is a big deal. The +1 coin, +1 buy means that it only costs a net of 3 coins. Villa also enables potentially drawing cards you've bought the same turn.

Overall, Villa plays more like an event than an action supply pile, and a powerful, flexible one at that
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AJD

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2016, 11:07:13 am »
+3

I played a game with Villa and Alms yesterday and I regret to state that none of us noticed until like two thirds of the way through the game that we all could have just been gaining free Villas at the start of each turn.
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Seprix

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2016, 11:19:37 am »
0

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.
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Chris is me

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #5 on: August 02, 2016, 11:20:05 am »
+3

I played a game with Villa and Alms yesterday and I regret to state that none of us noticed until like two thirds of the way through the game that we all could have just been gaining free Villas at the start of each turn.

Not only that, but you would have 2 Actions even before you play the Villa!

The +Action on gain thing makes Workshop variants a little more flexible. This is nice. The lack of draw makes it not a great Village, but I mean, Squire is used as a village sometimes, and this really isn't much different than that. The on gain effect is just so fun.

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.

How many Villa games have you played? In what ways were you underwhelmed in those games?
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Seprix

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2016, 11:24:19 am »
+1

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.

How many Villa games have you played? In what ways were you underwhelmed in those games?

It doesn't draw you anything when you play it. Think of all of the annoying times Festival wasn't fantastic in your hand because it didn't draw any cards or help cycle. Villa is a bad village with an amazing on-gain ability. People are going to overbuy this quite a bit at first.
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diedre91

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2016, 11:43:34 am »
0

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.

How many Villa games have you played? In what ways were you underwhelmed in those games?

It doesn't draw you anything when you play it. Think of all of the annoying times Festival wasn't fantastic in your hand because it didn't draw any cards or help cycle. Villa is a bad village with an amazing on-gain ability. People are going to overbuy this quite a bit at first.

It is a nice village because it will be very useful when you need it, especially helping with Action collisions.
It is a bad village because it does not draw. As you mentioned Festival, I took a look at Qvist rankings and Festival dropped from 21° in 2012 to 49° in 2015 (best $5 cards). Maybe people just realized that the lack of +1 Card is a big deal.
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Seprix

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2016, 11:51:04 am »
0

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.

How many Villa games have you played? In what ways were you underwhelmed in those games?

It doesn't draw you anything when you play it. Think of all of the annoying times Festival wasn't fantastic in your hand because it didn't draw any cards or help cycle. Villa is a bad village with an amazing on-gain ability. People are going to overbuy this quite a bit at first.

It is a nice village because it will be very useful when you need it, especially helping with Action collisions.
It is a bad village because it does not draw. As you mentioned Festival, I took a look at Qvist rankings and Festival dropped from 21° in 2012 to 49° in 2015 (best $5 cards). Maybe people just realized that the lack of +1 Card is a big deal.

The on-gain stuff is fantastic, believe me. Having a free village to buy basically whenever you want is great. However, people forget that Festival isn't all that great. In fact, the only real reason Fishing Village is incredibly fantastic is because it provides money and Actions on the next turn without taking up hand space. Even then, I see people overbuy Fishing Village. And I can see people overbuying Villa.

You also have to remember that new cards are introduced into the list as time goes on, and that while Festival may have dropped a few slots, it also lost ground to more powerful $5 cards that were introduced.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2016, 11:53:07 am by Seprix »
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trivialknot

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #9 on: August 02, 2016, 11:51:57 am »
+6

I played a couple games with Villa and Library, where that turned out to be a dominant combo.  Not only does Library make up for the lack of draw, you can also dump all your treasure, buy a Villa, then play Villa and Library.

Villa probably also enables a double tactician deck.  Each turn, play all your money, buy Villa, play Tactician, buy a Province.
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J Reggie

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #10 on: August 02, 2016, 12:58:11 pm »
+5

I think the most important thing about Villa is probably that it enables you to overbuy terminals early on. It means you don't have to think "what's my village-to-terminal ratio going into this shuffle?". Provided that you have $4 in hand, you can wait to buy your villages until you actually need to use them.

I played a game with Villa where I Donated down to a Soothsayer, two Silvers, a Copper, and a Masquerade. I was able to buy the terminals I needed for my engine (notably Wild Hunt) and only needed to buy Villas when I ran out of actions. This meant I could get my engine going basically a turn faster.

Chris is me

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #11 on: August 02, 2016, 04:41:34 pm »
+2

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.

How many Villa games have you played? In what ways were you underwhelmed in those games?

It doesn't draw you anything when you play it. Think of all of the annoying times Festival wasn't fantastic in your hand because it didn't draw any cards or help cycle. Villa is a bad village with an amazing on-gain ability. People are going to overbuy this quite a bit at first.

You never answered my question about actual play experience with the card. I doubt you have.

In short, the presence of Villa lets you overbuy terminal actions such as draw cards and then clean up later by splashing in Villages mid turn. So even though the village doesn't draw, you are pretty likely to have no trouble getting a draw engine going in the first place, and it really is hard to overbuy them since you only buy them when you needed a Village already.

This is one of the conclusions that's hard to get from the face value of the card.
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Seprix

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #12 on: August 02, 2016, 04:44:16 pm »
0

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.

How many Villa games have you played? In what ways were you underwhelmed in those games?

It doesn't draw you anything when you play it. Think of all of the annoying times Festival wasn't fantastic in your hand because it didn't draw any cards or help cycle. Villa is a bad village with an amazing on-gain ability. People are going to overbuy this quite a bit at first.

You never answered my question about actual play experience with the card. I doubt you have.

Do I have to play with Villa to understand it? It's a shitty Festival. Who cares if I've played with a card or not?

And I already got everything you said before when I analyzed the card. However, did you think about how awful it is to have 5 non-drawing Villages in your deck? If it's the only village, fine, but if there's a drawing village, you won't want too many Villas. People who buy Villa are going to be mainly buying it for the extended turn, assuming there are other villages.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2016, 04:46:53 pm by Seprix »
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Witherweaver

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #13 on: August 02, 2016, 04:55:03 pm »
+10

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.

How many Villa games have you played? In what ways were you underwhelmed in those games?

It doesn't draw you anything when you play it. Think of all of the annoying times Festival wasn't fantastic in your hand because it didn't draw any cards or help cycle. Villa is a bad village with an amazing on-gain ability. People are going to overbuy this quite a bit at first.

You never answered my question about actual play experience with the card. I doubt you have.

Do I have to play with Villa to understand it? It's a shitty Festival. Who cares if I've played with a card or not?

And I already got everything you said before when I analyzed the card. However, did you think about how awful it is to have 5 non-drawing Villages in your deck? If it's the only village, fine, but if there's a drawing village, you won't want too many Villas. People who buy Villa are going to be mainly buying it for the extended turn, assuming there are other villages.

Donald should just consult you and skip all that playtesting nonsense.
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Chris is me

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #14 on: August 02, 2016, 05:01:34 pm »
+6

It does matter if you've played with the card, because it is really the most effective way to come to conclusions about the card's effectiveness. In theory a perfectly logical actor could learn everything about the card just by reading it a single time, but humans are far from that, and experience teaches us things about the cards that can't be put into words well.

"It's a shitty Festival" is an obvious conclusion that anyone who sees the card at first glance will come to. I sure did when I first saw it! After playing with the card, I re-evaluated my opinions for reasons I elaborated on in my earlier posts. Another reason it is a lot different than Festival is because of the drastically different opportunity cost - Festival buys basically require passing up a draw card buy, Villa presents a literal immediate benefit and even the rest of the extended turn could result in the purchase of additional draw cards. It's just a lot easier to get a lot of supplementary draw on a board with Villa.

Obviously if you don't need the on buy effect that turn you get Mining Village or whatever. Draw is better than not draw and you want to keep your Villa pile stocked anyway. Multiple Village games aren't really the norm though.
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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #15 on: August 02, 2016, 05:09:54 pm »
+2

Do I have to play with Villa to understand it? It's a shitty Festival. Who cares if I've played with a card or not?

And I already got everything you said before when I analyzed the card. However, did you think about how awful it is to have 5 non-drawing Villages in your deck? If it's the only village, fine, but if there's a drawing village, you won't want too many Villas. People who buy Villa are going to be mainly buying it for the extended turn, assuming there are other villages.

oh yes, wondrous guru of dominion, extending a turn totally isn't worth it!!!

actually, in a weird way, this seems comparable to procession in a governor game - short-term benefits outweighing the more obvious long-term problems that would scare away most players.  this is assuming you're turning the governors into nothing instead of adventurers, obv

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #16 on: August 02, 2016, 05:31:38 pm »
+2

Obviously if you don't need the on buy effect that turn you get Mining Village or whatever. Draw is better than not draw and you want to keep your Villa pile stocked anyway. Multiple Village games aren't really the norm though.

While most games have fewer than two sources of +Actions, conditional on having Villa in the kingdom having at least two sources of +Actions (counting Villa) is more common. For example, if there are 260 Kingdom cards and 36 cards that give +Actions (including Villa), about 41% of Kingdoms have 2+ sources of +Actions. But if you know that Villa is in the Kingdom, then among the 9 other cards there's about a 74% chance that you'll have at least one source of +Actions.
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Seprix

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #17 on: August 02, 2016, 05:42:30 pm »
0

It does matter if you've played with the card, because it is really the most effective way to come to conclusions about the card's effectiveness. In theory a perfectly logical actor could learn everything about the card just by reading it a single time, but humans are far from that, and experience teaches us things about the cards that can't be put into words well.

"It's a shitty Festival" is an obvious conclusion that anyone who sees the card at first glance will come to. I sure did when I first saw it! After playing with the card, I re-evaluated my opinions for reasons I elaborated on in my earlier posts. Another reason it is a lot different than Festival is because of the drastically different opportunity cost - Festival buys basically require passing up a draw card buy, Villa presents a literal immediate benefit and even the rest of the extended turn could result in the purchase of additional draw cards. It's just a lot easier to get a lot of supplementary draw on a board with Villa.

Obviously if you don't need the on buy effect that turn you get Mining Village or whatever. Draw is better than not draw and you want to keep your Villa pile stocked anyway. Multiple Village games aren't really the norm though.

Yes, multiple village games aren't the norm. It was a poor example. Let me try another analogy.

Take all of the villages, and throw them into an engine. Keep removing the top village bought most of the time. Obviously, Border Village and Fishing Village are going to be thrown out pretty quickly. How far down this list is Villa? I don't think it is very high. I am looking at the village aspect of Villa.

However, as with all objections of this sort, a Village is a Village, and +Actions are very important. As with Farming Village, someone is going to be buying that no matter what, even though it is possibly one of the worst Villages in Dominion in terms of cost/effect. My point is that I just don't see Villa being high on a list of excellent Villages on a typical board.

oh yes, wondrous guru of dominion, extending a turn totally isn't worth it!!!

I didn't say that.
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eHalcyon

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #18 on: August 02, 2016, 06:27:22 pm »
+2

Yes, multiple village games aren't the norm. It was a poor example. Let me try another analogy.

Take all of the villages, and throw them into an engine. Keep removing the top village bought most of the time. Obviously, Border Village and Fishing Village are going to be thrown out pretty quickly. How far down this list is Villa? I don't think it is very high. I am looking at the village aspect of Villa.

However, as with all objections of this sort, a Village is a Village, and +Actions are very important. As with Farming Village, someone is going to be buying that no matter what, even though it is possibly one of the worst Villages in Dominion in terms of cost/effect. My point is that I just don't see Villa being high on a list of excellent Villages on a typical board.

oh yes, wondrous guru of dominion, extending a turn totally isn't worth it!!!

I didn't say that.

Here's what you said:

Villa is not a good card. It's on-gain ability is very strong, but it is a lame version of a Festival afterwards.

This comment and your other  responses heavily imply that the on-gain isn't worth having the card in your deck afterwards.  That's where others are disagreeing with you, and why Chris is asking if you've actually played with it.  Nobody(?) thinks that the card is especially strong after it's in your deck, but they're saying that it's alright especially considering how much power there is in the on-gain.  Taken together, it's a good card.
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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #19 on: August 02, 2016, 11:25:02 pm »
+1

The on-gain is strong, yes, but how many times do you need to use it for it to be worth it? I don't know the answer to this question. You can only use it up to 10 times (barring Graverobber/Rogue), so in some sense it's a nerfed Event. If it's something like 6+ times, then it's not a good card, especially in 3+ player games when you might get to gain it two or three times. If it's just one or two times, (kind of like a one-shot or Madman?), then it's a great card. So how good is the ability? Is it a key to the board that you plan your strategy around or a nice side benefit like Mining Village's on-trash or Engineer?

The card seems a little like Coin of the Realm in that you get to extend a turn after using up your actions, but CotR can be used an infinite number of times.
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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #20 on: August 03, 2016, 12:17:40 am »
0

There will of course be boards where this will be a dud, and might even be times where you just wish you had vanilla Village, but when it is good, it is really good.  The tricks you can pull with this speed up the game enough that, in my experience, things are basically over when/if they run out. Sure, the fun is over when that happens, but you also have ~5 Villages in your deck at that point, so if you were doing something good, it is probably still pretty good.

If the only draw is +2 Cards, and the trashing is weak, or not there, then Villa probably doesn't get much done for you. The upside on this card when it shines is way way more significant than the times when plain ole' Village can do more.

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #21 on: August 03, 2016, 12:14:05 pm »
+4

After playing with Villa a few times now, I think it's key that you're making the most of the turns you buy it on.  If you buy Villa for $4, and then play it, play another action, and then buy something else, that action you've played and extra card you bought need to have been worth it. 

Example:  I buy a Villa, play it, and then play the Smithy I couldn't play before.  If I only have enough money now to buy a $3, maybe I should've just bought some other better $4 instead of Villa.  Of course, I've also cycled 3 cards, so that's a + too.  Or maybe the extra action I was able to play was an attack, that's worth something.  Or maybe I played a smithy and drew my trasher.  Well, I don't want to miss trashing this cycle, so I'm going to buy a Villa so I can use it (hopefully I still have enough cards in hand to trash). 

To say Villa is a bad card because it's basically Crap Festival is like saying Border Village is a bad card because it's Twice as Expensive Village.  In both cases, there's a lot more going on.  I like what Mameluke says about Villa being almost an Event, you're buying it more for the opportunity to get more out of this turn.
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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #22 on: August 03, 2016, 12:31:27 pm »
+1

Villa also basically reads +3 actions on the turn you gain it.

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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #23 on: August 03, 2016, 12:47:56 pm »
0

Villa also basically reads +3 actions on the turn you gain it.

You have to use the +1 action you get on gain to play it, so it only gives you 2 Actions on play. But I guess like Coin of the Realm, it's equivalent to having played a +3 Actions Village in advance of the last terminal you played.
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Re: empires: villa
« Reply #24 on: August 03, 2016, 02:30:23 pm »
0

Villa also basically reads +3 actions on the turn you gain it.

You have to use the +1 action you get on gain to play it, so it only gives you 2 Actions on play. But I guess like Coin of the Realm, it's equivalent to having played a +3 Actions Village in advance of the last terminal you played.

Yeah, that's what I meant. It basically doesn't cost an action to play it after you gain it, because it gives you an action.
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