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The Alchemist

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Dominion: Industrialization
« on: May 09, 2018, 05:48:58 am »
+2

Go here to see the most recent update of this expansion!: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=20619


Hello! If you're like me and have always wondered what dominion would look like with a little technological advancement, this is the expansion for you! It's a large expansion that's a mix of prosperity and dark ages: 16 strong, expensive cards that puts prosperity to shame, and 16 cheap, simple, mostly trashing cards that shine in certain situations. I'm looking for help with balancing the cards and getting general feedback before I go off and print them out.

The themes for this set include new spins on the vanilla bonuses and filling up the 1 and 7 coin gaps, something Don X. actually supports. This set is great for making powerful engines (it is the industrial revolution after all), and for truly massive decks. It is strongly recommended to play with colonies and plats.

I have read all the suggestions on my last post and made enough changes that it warrants a new post.



Expensive Cards:


Theatre:
Hate it when you have the perfect kingdom for an engine but there are no stinking +buys! Or when its a kingdom of 10 great cards but they're all terminal? Well this is card for you. Alone it's worthless, a cantrip costing $2. But the worse the kingdom is, the better it gets. The actors play the part of whatever is you're missing to get your strategy off the ground. No handsize increasers? This cards is a basic lab costing $5. No villages? this card becomes a vanilla village at $3. It can be a worker's village at $4, and a junk dealer without the $1 at $4. Only when your kingdom is missing literally everything is this card an insanely strong $9 card.
"Other cards" refers to non-Theatre cards, so Theatre is not triggered by itself. "+2 Cards" only includes cards explicitly having +2 or more (+3 includes +2) written on the card. Smithy counts, Library does not. Conditional trashing counts as trashing.
[EDIT]: Changed trashing ability back to $2 from $1. Make up your minds people.


Cathedral:
Continuing the theme of chapel, bishop, and temple, this card trashes and rewards your tithe in the form of victory tokens. Adding cantrip to watered-down bishop warrants +$2 (see bridge -> highway). Because you must trash a card for the VP, the game must eventually end.


Infantry:
Infiltrate your opponents hands with this attack card. A +3 card attack like torturer or rabble, where you can place unwanted cards from your hand into an opponent's. Can attack repeatedly but keeps opponent's decks at 5. Attack about as hurtful as torturer, with same smithy bonus plus trash a single card justifies $6.


Hospital:
One step above doctor, but one step below donate in terms of quickly getting rid of unwanted cards. Useless if drawn in your first hand, but incredibly strong in your last. Tough shuffle luck, but who said hospitals were guaranteed to cure you?


Artillery:
This second attack card lets you load, aim, and fire a card out of your enemy's hand. The only discard attack that lets the attacker choose the card to discard is pillage, and such a powerful ability forces it to be a one-off. To make this balanced without having to trash itself, you must discard your hand. Thus only one can be played per turn. It's only as targeted an attack as pillage is, so that's not a problem.


Observatory:
Take a look at what's coming up and set up the perfect next turn, the strongest deck inspector in the game. Was too useless when drawn near the end of your deck, so made it a reserve card. Might be too strong now.


Police Station:
Need to protect you stuff from criminals? Hire a police station! This reaction card is Jack of all Trades on steroids. Originally this gave the opponent an option to trash their Attack card for benefit ("Jail" it), instead this card simply remedies any possible ill effects from the attack. Can trash the curse from Witch or Sea Hag, draws the top 3 cards and lets you discard them if they were muddled by Ghost ship or Rabble, and lets you retrieve from the trash anything Pirate ship or Rogue forced you to trash. Same reaction effect as Horse Traders.


Stock Exchange:
An action-treasure like crown. This lets you trade vanilla bonuses for any other vanilla bonus you need during your action phase or buy phase. Combination Cellar, Diadem, Storyteller, and Vault, thus the $7 cost. Does NOT let you play treasures during your action phase, or actions during your buy phase. So you need to have virtual gold to trade it in during action phase, and gaining actions during your buy phase would be useless, and gaining cards risks drawing any actions dead.


Oil Refinery:
All your action cards too complicated with all their "mechanics" and "words" and what not? Well refine them down into plain ol' vanilla! Turn your 10 native villages into regular, normal, not-a-novel-of-a-description villages! Or peddler variants, or even labs! This card is unique in giving a choice that doesn't need to be unique. Choose +3 cards, or $3, or +1 action and +2 buys if that's your thing.


Factory:
The next advancement on Laboratory, this "power card of epic proportions that probably shouldn't exist at any cost" isn't balanced at $8 on its own, so I made it gain a junk card, the more you use it the more you get (see below). The junk card could use some work to make it balanced. My goal is for it to be about as effective city quarter.


Town Hall:
Lots of decisions need to be made with this duration card. Gives 9 options with a mix of useful and potentially harmful. Usually nets out to a market with a discarded card so I put this at $6. $7 May be reasonable.
[Edit]: No longer forces you to choose what you didn't pick on your next turn. Now each turn is independent and tracking should be much easier.


Steel Foundry:
A Smithy or Blacksmith on steroids, this terminal draw is a great way to use up actions. Blacksmith without the copper drawback and with +$1. Vanilla bonuses put a pricetag of $9, but gains smog as downside. 


Public School:
Let your cards edumacate themselves and lern to be gooder. Give your baker a degree and turn them into a lab assistant! Or have your lowly herbalist follow their dreams and become a market or something. The natural extension to teacher. Same effect but for all four tokens at once, but only for one turn. I felt that teacher was such a good card it was a shame no other cards besides events had the ability to place the +1 tokens.


Supermarket:
The next logical step up from grand market. The +$1 combined with +1 buy warrants an increase of $4 from grand market, but the drawback is stricter, needing at the least 3 golds to buy or some serious virtual coinage. This brings the total down to $9.


Metropolis:
And lastly the pièce de résistance: metropolis. From lowly hamlet, to village, to city, then metropolis. Its vanilla bonuses are exactly that of a fully leveled up city, so not game breaking, but with some VP to justify purchasing it late. A metropolitan area is practically a duchy anyway. The vanilla bonuses are worth $8, and VP nets to 1 with Smog, so up to $10.


Smog:
Deciding between these two. One's a cantrip curse, effectively an -1 VP token, but can be drawn dead. The other's a self-trashing junk. Pile structured identically to the Curse pile. Other suggestions welcome. Thematically the more you use the high powered cards, the more you pollute your deck.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2020, 06:18:48 pm by The Alchemist »
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dz

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2018, 08:10:43 am »
0

Most of these cards look fine. (although of course play testing will tell you if anything is broken). Also there are some wording issues (like Boom Town should say “If the number of Boom Towns in play (including this) is…” Here’s some notes I took:

Theatre:
Does it really need to have the trashing option? This can already be a monster card, I don’t think it needs it. Also I’m assuming Events don’t count (so Traveling Fair doesn’t count as a card that gives +2 Buys)?

Police Station:

Instead of trashing the top of your discard, say trash a card from your discard. Order of the discard never matters. And if it did matter for this card, could I rearrange my discard any time I want?

Town Hall:

For the good options, maybe simplify it down to just the +’s? Also maybe remove the duration part. This card is complex enough.

Smog:
For cards gaining Smog, can't you you just say “gain a Curse” instead? Also don’t use Curse as a type, it’s confusing (could I discard it to Mountebank?).

Reforge:
This can be confusing with Treasures giving unknown $ amounts. (Bank, Philosopher’s Stone, Fool’s Gold, Charm, Fortune.) I'd suggest that, if you trash a Treasure that doesn't give a consistent $ amount, you get nothing.

Worker:
Wording suggestion: “For each Worker in play (including this), reveal the top card of your deck and put it into your hand. If any of them are Workers, play them.”

Slums:
Do you really need Worker, Slums, and Banknote, when they have such similar concepts? Slums has nothing else going on with it, so maybe cut this one.

Boom Town:
I’d go with the $1 version. It’s ok if its weak; it costs $1.

General Store:

Are you required to gain 3 cards? If I use this to gain Vampire, do I also have to gain 2 Coppers with it as well?
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McGarnacle

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2018, 09:50:53 am »
+1

First impressions: The box art looks amazing!
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2018, 11:23:22 am »
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Theater I really dislike... that is a LOT of writing, for which only a small portion of it will actually mean anything in most games. And not sure about the balance... in some Kingdoms it's just straight cantrip trashing for , which is probably too strong.

Infantry: Why "put into their hand"? That's weird/confusing wording. Should be "gains to hand"; though not sure how to specifically word it with the choice of Copper or the revealed card. Why not just always a copy of the revealed card? It's rare that you would choose a Copper instead anyway.

Hospital may be too much shuffle luck dependent.

Artillery seems cool I think.

Observatory seems way too expensive. It's not that hard to have an engine where you can draw your deck anyway; in which case this does nothing but add a little constancy. It's effect is only a little better than Guide, and without the cantrip on play. It literally might be fine at .

Police Station - Trash the top card of your discard pile is a bad idea... you don't want to have to be slow and careful with your cleanup phase every turn to make sure you know how you want to order your discard. Also, it just seems too busy... the on-play effect is just doing way too much.

Stock Exchange is a fine idea, but will be very difficult to track your resources. Also, "spending" isn't a thing that exists in Dominion for Actions or Buys. Even though we intuitively know what it means. It might be too strong also.

Oil Refinery needs some sort of reveal. Otherwise how does anyone know what you chose? Why not simply "name a card" instead? You'll usually want to pick one in your hand anyway.

Not sure about Factory; but it's probably not very strong for an . With things like Lost Arts, it's not that hard to get that effect for cheaper.

Town Hall seems too busy. It's basically a Count that adds complexity both from being a Duration, and from being choose 2 bad things to get 3 good things, rather than 1 bad for 1 good. Perhaps just one of those two changes and it would be fine. You say it gives you 9 choices, but there are in fact 3,600 different choices to choose from with 1 play of this card. Yes, 3,600.

Public School is probably too strong, even at . If have any way to make sure you have 1 in your hand each turn, then it easily reads +5 cards, +6 actions, +, +5 buys.

Supermarket might be fine; but with any card costing more than , you risk it just never being worth it no matter what the effect is.

Same with Metropolis.

Smog should not have the "Curse" type. The only thing it adds is confusion. The second Smog is way harsher than the first; you might never be able to trash them even with the self-trashing ability.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2018, 11:39:54 am »
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Dang, didn't see that there were 2 separate posts. On to the second one:

Reforge - Not sure I agree with DZ... normally I'm the one pointing out this issue, but you avoided saying "worth". You should always be able to readily see how much you would have gotten if you had played a treasure. The possible issue is still treasures that do other things when played, like Horn of Plenty. Although it's clear that you should get 0 tokens for trashing it, it still seems weird. Probably too cheap, trashing your Coppers and getting a coin token for it is pretty great.

I like Prison fine; but does it gain anything from the cost? Other than theme (which is basically why Poor House costs ). It is rare that the cost will actually matter; and you don't want a bunch of them anyway, so why not just make it ?

Landfill sounds too good. Also, my comment will apply to basically all of these.

I would only buy a Market Stall if there were no other +buy in the Kingdom.

Worker has tracking issues. When do you play the new worker? As you draw it? Or after you've drawn all your cards? Either way, how does anyone know you just drew a worker? Why not simply the Cultist wording of "You may play a Worker"?

Slums is pretty terrible; it's not often going to be better than Necropolis; a card people often trash unless it's the only village.

With Banknote and Slums; I don't know if you need "up to five". If it's worth getting more than five in play for the effect; then your opponent should get some themselves. Also, Banknote costs less than Silver or Gold.. unless you're using a Silver-gainer, you basically wouldn't ever use that part of the card.

No idea how to evaluate Boom Town.

Street Market needs a reveal your hand clause. It's probably fine.

Sewer might need a reaction type to be like Tunnel. Discarded cards aren't normally revealed.

Power Plant is basically just a slightly weaker Masquerade... maybe still too strong in the opening.

Coal - why bother making the choice of trash vs return? Most of the time it's a meaningless decision. I like the idea of cantrips that are optionally more, though.

General Store is interesting. Super strong if you have Watchtower in hand.

Statue is cool too.

Salesman might be too strong; should probably cost more than Market Square. Should have "This stays in play" reminder like Hireling.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #5 on: May 09, 2018, 11:46:46 am »
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General Store:

Are you required to gain 3 cards? If I use this to gain Vampire, do I also have to gain 2 Coppers with it as well?

Of course! It doesn't say "up to 3 cards". I do think it could add some clarity by saying "exactly 3 cards", but that was definitely the intent... the card would be insanely powerful otherwise.
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Chappy7

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #6 on: May 09, 2018, 11:52:03 am »
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Theater and Stock Exchange will make people get some serious analysis paralysis.  I think you need to use the non-cantrip smog.  They need to actively clog your deck. 

The self-trashing version should be hard enough to trash since you'd have to get one in play first. 

Not sure if Supermarket would be good, but I do know that the 3 treasure limit really isn't that bad. With any kind of engine going, it shouldn't be too hard to only use 3 treasures. 

Edit: I really like General Store.  Cool idea!
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Holunder9

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #7 on: May 09, 2018, 12:45:08 pm »
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There are some cool cards in this set (I particularly like Stock Exchange and Banknote), nothing that seems outright broken except for Cathedral (due to the extra Buy it is not too complicated with some draw power to set up a Cathedral engine that doesn't want to end the game) but I worry about the extreme prices. The cheap stuff is viable whereas something like Metropolis is just bonkers. At such a price a strong card is very "instable", i.e. it can easily become too weak and too strong. Metropolis can easily dominate the game with good trashing or it could be an overpriced self-junker.

You should be careful about making some of the price arguments you made. Take Salesman. You cannot just count the price different of two Events (!!!) that provide Adventure tokens and use it to arrive at a proper cost for a permanent Duration. It is well known that the hugest jump in costs is from $4 to $5 so just taking price differences leads you nowhere.
As GendoIkari said, it makes much more sense to compare Hireling to Lab and Salesman to Market Square to realize that Salesman should probably cost $4.
Hireling's extra card is of course stronger but as having an extra Buy is something you often want consistently Salesman is very good in this respect.
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Asper

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #8 on: May 09, 2018, 12:58:50 pm »
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I kind of feel that Banknote, Slums and Boom Town do the same basic thing, making each individually less interesting. In fact the second version of Smog also does it. I like Slums the best out of these and feel it would shine more without the others.

Sewers has tracking issues if you discard two Sewers (or discard a Sewers and put another card on top): First because of nested Sewering, secondly because of lose-track (you can play a temporarily covered up Sewers, but not move it into play), third because of accountability. Suggestion: Only allow playing the second discarded card. Eg: "+3 cards, discard a card. Discard another card and if it is a Sewers, play it.". Sewers also seems too strong, being superior to Lab when chained.

Police Station will force players to always discard their bad cards last, which seems annoying given that most of the time it won't do anything.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #9 on: May 09, 2018, 04:56:57 pm »
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I'm skeptical of the idea of having zero $4 or $5 cards and only one $3. What are you going to do if you're only playing with cards from this set? You'll have to buy a ton of Silvers and muck about for a long time with the cheap cards until you can afford the expensive ones. About the cards themselves:

Theater: The thing is, if you're playing full random, this card doesn't do a better job of "solving" problems like missing +Buy than any other card with +Buy, because the odds of the card itself appearing are just as high as those other cards. If you're purposefully designing the kingdom... well, then you'll always include +Buy if you hate kingdoms without it, so this card isn't helpful there either. I have to admit that I'm drawn to this idea, but the card is so text-filled and full of rules questions (like what does it mean for a card to "give" +2 Cards? Ironmonger can "give" +2 Cards if turns over a Victory card) that I feel like it's not worth it. Case in point: it took me forever to figure out that the "trash your own cards" clause was paralleling the other vanilla bonus cards; I had no idea what it meant at first because it was written so confusingly.

Infantry: Very cool idea! My one reservation with this is that an easily chained attack that virtually never runs out of junk might be too brutal, but maybe the high cost offsets that.

Hospital: Ridiculously swingy. Trashing is incredibly crucial in Dominion, so the time you happen to draw it will be pretty game-deciding. This could work if it were instead on-gain, overpay, or an event.

Artillery: I know this is really expensive, but choosing a card from the other guy's hand to discard will often shut them down completely if you can play it every turn. I think Pillage's one-shot thing might be the only way to do this.

Observatory: If you're drawing anything at all, the 5 cards on top will be this turn, not next turn. If you want this to set up a turn, you could have it set up this turn by discarding your hand, then looking through your deck for 5 card for your new hand. Though that might be too good, too finicky, or both.

Oil Refinery: So can you put +Card on Treasures, or did you mean to limit this to action cards? We know it's possible to put +Card on Treasures because of Encampment, but it's still weird and I don't know if it's what you meant to allow. Also, this is swingy in a way similar to Hospital. Sucks for you if you happen to draw it at the very end.

Smog:

The cantrip one is too weak of a penalty, I think. Many people have pointed out that the main reason Curses are bad is not the -VP but what they do to your deck. This is why Ruins are so devastating even though they don't give -VP and actually give you something when played (though the net effect of Ruined Library and Village is to actually take away something.) Also note that Misery is a pretty weak attack that usually doesn't make a difference in the end. I'd be more than happy to get a quintuple Miserable in exchange for a ridiculously powerful card that will let me empty the Provinces in a single turn.

The other one looks interesting. One thing to note is that the Smog cards are ones that generally let you draw your whole deck easily, so that makes it easier to play all your Smogs and trash them all except one. You'll need a lot of +actions to do that, though, so maybe it's still a fair penalty.

The cheap cards: It's cool that you're trying to come up with some balanced $1 cards; I've also been thinking about what a balanced $1 card would be able to do. Do you really need so many of them, though? I guess this comes back to what I said in the beginning, about how I think you need fewer ultra-cheap and ultra-expensive cards and more ones in the middle.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Dominion: Industrialization
« Reply #10 on: May 10, 2018, 10:43:49 am »
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Infantry: Very cool idea! My one reservation with this is that an easily chained attack that virtually never runs out of junk might be too brutal, but maybe the high cost offsets that.


I don't think this is easily chained. You have to return a card to the supply each time you want to use it. That means chaining it would require a really complex setup that gains junk yourself. It's basically a much less chainable version of Ambassador.
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