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[Personman]

An all-purpose thread for puzzles about corner cases and weird behavior on Isotropic.

Here's a few to start out:

Easy mode (several of these are answered in the other thread I just made):

• How can you get Isotropic to generate a Kingdom with a card in it that you've excluded with !<Cardname>?
• How can you get it to generate one without a card that you've required, and which is also not excluded by any additional constraints?
• How can you get it to generate one with a card from a set you've constrained to from 0 to 0 cards?

Harder:

• What set of constraints will usually fail to generate a Kingdom, giving the message
  

  Failed to select kingdom cards.  (Constraint satisfaction timed out.)

  but not always?
• How many ways are there to stall a game indefinitely without your opponent being able to end the game or force you to resign? Is it possible to force this to happen without any complicity from your opponent?

[play2draw]

On the first two:

Use the constraint "!platinum, colony". Vice versa platinum will not show even though you required it.

[nemryn]

#3: Anything where the excluded set matches one of the 'common' Kingdom cards; you still play with Duchies even if you ask for no $5 cards, or no Victory cards, and so forth.

[chwhite]

• How many ways are there to stall a game indefinitely without your opponent being able to end the game or force you to resign? Is it possible to force this to happen without any complicity from your opponent?

I think the KC-Goons-Masquerade pin (and anything else with the same basic idea) will do this.  There are probably others; I'm not sure.

[guided]

• How many ways are there to stall a game indefinitely without your opponent being able to end the game or force you to resign? Is it possible to force this to happen without any complicity from your opponent?

I think the KC-Goons-Masquerade pin (and anything else with the same basic idea) will do this.  There are probably others; I'm not sure.

Repeatedly revealing a reaction card should work too. Though I suppose you could consider your opponent "complicit" in this plan since they have to play at least one attack ;P

[Personman]

On the first two:

Use the constraint "!platinum, colony". Vice versa platinum will not show even though you required it.

Nice! Hadn't thought of this, but I did say 'generate a Kingdom', not 'generate a supply', so technically my solution is still unique ^^

#3: Anything where the excluded set matches one of the 'common' Kingdom cards; you still play with Duchies even if you ask for no $5 cards, or no Victory cards, and so forth.

Ha, yes, but that's not quite what I meant. As the Isotropic constraint interface does, I used 'set' to mean 'set of Kingdom cards' (e.g. Seaside, Base). Maybe I should have just said 'How can you get it to generate one with a card from Seaside when you've constrained it to 'from 0 to 0 cards with set=Seaside'?

• How many ways are there to stall a game indefinitely without your opponent being able to end the game or force you to resign? Is it possible to force this to happen without any complicity from your opponent?

I think the KC-Goons-Masquerade pin (and anything else with the same basic idea) will do this.  There are probably others; I'm not sure.

Repeatedly revealing a reaction card should work too. Though I suppose you could consider your opponent "complicit" in this plan since they have to play at least one attack ;P

These are the two I know about, yeah, along with the similar Bureaucrat and Cutpurse strategies discussed in Young Nick's recent thread. The Masquerade version is the one I meant to single out with 'without any complicity', since it doesn't depend on the contents of your opponent's deck at all. This isn't a very precise definition since they could always stop you from doing it with Saboteur or Swindler, or by winning the game. But it feels different from the others, which specifically require them to buy/play/draw/trash certain cards.

[guided]

The really funny (or awful?) thing about the KC/Masqerade pin is that your opponent can't even resign in isotropic since it won't let you if you have no cards (which is a bug IMO).

[play2draw]

On the first two:

Use the constraint "!platinum, colony". Vice versa platinum will not show even though you required it.

Nice! Hadn't thought of this, but I did say 'generate a Kingdom', not 'generate a supply', so technically my solution is still unique ^^

Oh those silly semantics!

Well then... I haven't tried this solution for #1 because I'm too lazy to fully implement it, but I am aware that if you set cost=2 and cost=3 to 0, and then require Young Witch, a random $2 or $3 is selected for the bane card. Possibly, if you manually prohibit every $2 and $3 card and require Young Witch the same will happen. I'm not sure this would actually work though.

[Personman]

your opponent can't even resign in isotropic since it won't let you if you have no cards (which is a bug IMO).

Yes, that's what makes it an answer to the question, which reads in part "..without your opponent being able to end the game.."

Well then... I haven't tried this solution for #1 because I'm too lazy to fully implement it, but I am aware that if you set cost=2 and cost=3 to 0, and then require Young Witch, a random $2 or $3 is selected for the bane card. Possibly, if you manually prohibit every $2 and $3 card and require Young Witch the same will happen. I'm not sure this would actually work though.

Yep, that's basically it! You can do it a bit more straightforwardly by simply typing "!steward, *steward, young witch", which will give you Steward as the Bane card.

[guided]

Yes, that's what makes it an answer to the question, which reads in part "..without your opponent being able to end the game.."

Ah, I had read "end the game" as actually end the game rather than resigning.