Your opponent opens Mint/Fool's Gold (the 3rd-strongest opening in the game, according to
CouncilRoom.com). Sadly, you got a 4/3 split. But wait! Thief is available (voted 2nd-worst card in the game in the poll
What is the worst card in Dominion?).
My initial simulations show that the match Mint/FG vs Thief/FG is basically even, with a difference of less than 1% that could be coming from variance alone--see the bottom of this post for detailed results. The challenge is to improve either bot enough to obtain a significant lead. I've included bots in this post, which are simple modifications to BMU and should leave a lot of room for optimization.
(Note: I haven't found a discussion of this elsewhere, although there was a related puzzle thread that assumed perfect shuffle luck:
Win the Fool's Gold rush - as second player!.)
For this post, I want to check how all bots I post fare against straight money. I'll use WanderingWinder's Big Money Ultimate bot, which is included with Geronimoo's simulator and is also posted in the thread
Project: Optimizing Big Money X. I won't bother comparing against the included Thief bot, because it's computer-generated and only narrowly better than BMU.
The bots:
- Mint/Fool's Gold: This bot is always given a 5/2 opening, and must open Mint/Fool's Gold.
- Thief/Fool's Gold: This bot is always given a 4/3 opening. You're allowed to choose any opening you want, although you probably want to do Thief/Fool's Gold.
- Fool's Gold Rush: The only kingdom card this bot may buy is Fool's Gold. The point of this bot is just to have a baseline for Thief/FG and Mint/FG, so don't worry about it too much. This is NOT the bot included with the simulator because that bot is computer-generated and awful. This bot gets a random opening always (not that it should matter).
If you want and it helps significantly, it's fine if the Mint/FG bot buys a Thief at some point or the Thief/FG bot buys a Mint at some point. That's not really the point of the challenge and I'd be surprised if it helps much, but it'd be unfair to forbid it. I tried adding an opportunistic-Mint rule to Thief/FG, and it didn't make any noticeable difference.
Here are the results with the bots I've posted. Code follows after.
Results vs each other (using Ultimate Simulation for accuracy!):
- Mint/FG vs Thief/FG: 47 : 48
EDIT: WanderingWinder found the opposite of what I initially had here, which was a tiny lead for Mint/FG. I re-ran and found there is some variance even on ultimate, but it seems to hover around this 47:48 split.
Results vs FG:
- Mint/FG vs FG: 72 : 23
- Thief/FG vs FG: 59 : 36
Results vs BMU:
- Mint/FG vs BMU: 97 : 2
- Thief/FG vs BMU: 63 : 31
- FG vs BMU: 66 : 28
Mint/Fool's Gold:
<player name="Mint/Fool's Gold"
author="blueblimp"
description="The 3rd-strongest opening in the game on CouncilRoom.com. Requires a 5/2 split.XXXXNote: Provinces can't use a money-in-deck condition because that doesn't work well with Fool's Gold.">
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Combo"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<buy name="Province"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Mint">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Mint"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Fool$s_Gold"/>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silver"/>
</player>
Thief/Fool's Gold:
<player name="Thief/Fool's Gold"
author="blueblimp"
description="Adding a Thief to a Fool's Gold strategy does well and is roughly even against a Mint/Fool's Gold opening.">
<type name="Attacking"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Combo"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<buy name="Province"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Thief">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Thief"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Fool$s_Gold"/>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silver"/>
</player>
Fool's Gold Rush:
<player name="Fool's Gold Rush"
author="blueblimp"
description="Preferring Fool's Gold over Gold does quite well against BMU.">
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="SingleCard"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="Generated"/>
<buy name="Province"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Fool$s_Gold"/>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silver"/>
</player>