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PeasantKing

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Complexity of Dominion
« on: October 01, 2018, 11:50:46 pm »
+1

Everybody always goes on, on how complicated Magic the Gathering is. And I know when Dominion first came out it was quite simple compared to Magic. With all the newest expansions does anyone think that Dominion is catching/ caught up with complexity?
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LastFootnote

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #1 on: October 02, 2018, 12:34:16 am »
0

What do you think?
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GendoIkari

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #2 on: October 02, 2018, 01:38:40 am »
+3

If complexity is defined by either the number of rules or the number of words that have special in-game definitions, then no, not even close yet.
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crj

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #3 on: October 02, 2018, 08:26:00 am »
+10

Magic is clearly way more complicated that Dominion. That's why I like Dominion, but not Magic.

Dominion hits a sweet spot for me as a quick game that's simple to teach and has easy rules with strategic depth as an emergent property. The expansions then add great replayability.

I do think some of the more recent expansions have strayed too far from core mechanics, and become too complex. Adventures got away with it through sheer awesomeness, but I was less happy with Empires and Nocturne. Renaissance looks like a return to form, with cards you could safely let relative novices play with!

And this leads me to another important distinction. In Dominion, the complexity is there on the table in front of you. There are no complexity surprises lurking later in someone else's deck, and the kingdom can be fine-tuned to the tastes and skill levels of the other players if you like.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #4 on: October 02, 2018, 09:00:02 am »
+4

http://media.wizards.com/2018/downloads/MagicCompRules%2020180810.pdf

Pretty big difference.

Also, Magic releases like 1000+ new cards per year.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #5 on: October 02, 2018, 09:34:52 am »
+10

From a strategy perspective, Dominion has been arguably more complex than Standard Magic for a long time. From a rules perspective, Dominion is almost certainly never going to get even close to Magic's level.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #6 on: October 03, 2018, 08:34:50 am »
+7

In Dominion, the complexity is there on the table in front of you. There are no complexity surprises lurking later in someone else's deck, and the kingdom can be fine-tuned to the tastes and skill levels of the other players if you like.

That's the key. This is what I can't handle with Magic. I don't even theoretically know what's possible at the start of the game. It's also one of the reasons I love Dominion so much. You can look at the board, read the cards, and you're theoretically on the same level of understanding as anyone else. Yes, you won't notice some of the interactions straight away, but you theoretically could. There's nothing your opponent knows that you couldn't find out by thinking it through.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #7 on: October 03, 2018, 10:15:23 am »
+3

Interestingly, I tend to find the complexity of Magic to primarily be in the deck building, specifically in thinking of all the ways your cards could interact with each other and trying to anticipate threats from your potential opponents.

Dominion's complexity is in that same place, but presents differently. You don't have to anticipate the threats of your opponents, you know what threats they have available to them. So it's more about analyzing when to add the cards you have available, rather than which cards to include.

Yes, the comprehensive rules of magic is a ridiculously long document, mostly due to the designers adding new defined words in almost every expansion, which has been happening for the past 25 years. Kinda hard to not need a lot of written rules at that point.
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dbclick

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #8 on: October 03, 2018, 06:02:07 pm »
+3

The base rules document for Dominion is about 8 pages of relatively user-friendly text with pictures (excluding parts that aren't rules). If you tack on the unique rules for all the expansions, it might take another 6 pages if you condense examples. The currently complete rules document would be about 10-15 pages long, depending on formatting and verbosity of the examples given. Most of the expansions rules documents are taken up by the notes (which aren't rules relevant in nearly all cases) and recommended sets (thank you Donald, these are wonderful).

It wouldn't be as detailed in timing as other documents meticulously made by others here, but would be essentially complete.

Seems to me that it is much simpler.

The complexity is in the interaction of the card mechanics, not in the rules, which for me makes it more strategically interesting than Magic, but also more approachable.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #9 on: October 04, 2018, 04:24:17 am »
+1

Interestingly, I tend to find the complexity of Magic to primarily be in the deck building, specifically in thinking of all the ways your cards could interact with each other and trying to anticipate threats from your potential opponents.

It's hard to eliminate deck building from consideration, since that is an essential part of gameplay in Dominion. If you consider deck building, the complexity depends on the range of your collection. The statement

Quote
Dominion's complexity is in that same place

would to me only hold for people with one starter and three boosters, or maybe some draft formats, but not for Mr Suitcase.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #10 on: October 04, 2018, 10:07:45 am »
0

http://media.wizards.com/2018/downloads/MagicCompRules%2020180810.pdf

Pretty big difference.

Also, Magic releases like 1000+ new cards per year.
lmao 229 pages
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GendoIkari

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #11 on: October 04, 2018, 10:40:03 am »
0

http://media.wizards.com/2018/downloads/MagicCompRules%2020180810.pdf

Pretty big difference.

Also, Magic releases like 1000+ new cards per year.
lmao 229 pages

To be fair; there are intentionally a huge number of repeated rules in there; it's not 229 pages of things you actually need to learn to play the game. The rule that says that a creature who takes too much damage goes to the graveyard is written under the section for damage, and the section for combat, and the section listing things that happen automatically as the game evaluates the state of things.
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crj

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #12 on: October 04, 2018, 12:14:13 pm »
0

lmao 229 pages
To be fair, even the Laws of Duplicate Bridge are 166 pages long. They're small pages, and they go into enormous detail about how to handle more irregularities than you ever thought possible, but even so, you'd have thought Bridge was a simple game compared with something like Dominion.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #13 on: October 04, 2018, 01:32:24 pm »
+13

To be fair, even the Laws of Duplicate Bridge are 166 pages long.

It's because, if you have cost reduction, you can gain a free copy of a card whose baseline cost is more than $6.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #14 on: October 04, 2018, 04:57:27 pm »
+3

FWIW v4.1 of Jeebus's Complete Rules for Dominion and All Its Expansions is 85 pages long. I'm pretty sure it details just about every class of card interaction that has potential for confusion.
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secretCaveDweller

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #15 on: October 04, 2018, 05:41:43 pm »
0

It's true that there are normally only 10 kingdom cards, but you get a lot of added complexity by additional piles that are not in the supply. This is happening a lot more in later expansions: in the way that Dark Ages added madman, mercenary, spoils, and ruins, Adventures added the page/peasant upgrade ladder, and Nocturne added a ton of other cards with spirits, boons, and hexes.
Playing with a newer player means they have to read all of these. It goes from reading Vampire to reading Bat to reading Hexes to reading Envy.

Nothing near Magic but certainly not simple
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chipperMDW

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #16 on: October 04, 2018, 05:47:16 pm »
0

One section in Magic's big rules document is on "interaction of continuous effects," which explains what order to evaluate abilities that do things like change an object's color or power/toughness. It can matter what order you apply these in, so the game's rules explain how you can determine that order.

Dominion also deals with such effects, albeit in much smaller quantities. The order in which they're applied can matter in Dominion, too. For example, you have to apply Inheritance's type-changing effect before you apply Quarry's cost-changing effect, because the latter depends on the former. But there's no rule that explains why you evaluate them in that order, or that you're not allowed to evaluate them in the other order. There's not even an official name for that type of effect. It's just a thing people seem to know intuitively.

I guess my point is that there are things that are not explicitly covered in Dominion's rules documents, but are nonetheless necessary concepts for precisely describing Dominion's rules (and thus contributing to its complexity).
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Donald X.

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #17 on: October 04, 2018, 06:15:47 pm »
+3

One section in Magic's big rules document is on "interaction of continuous effects," which explains what order to evaluate abilities that do things like change an object's color or power/toughness. It can matter what order you apply these in, so the game's rules explain how you can determine that order.

Dominion also deals with such effects, albeit in much smaller quantities. The order in which they're applied can matter in Dominion, too. For example, you have to apply Inheritance's type-changing effect before you apply Quarry's cost-changing effect, because the latter depends on the former. But there's no rule that explains why you evaluate them in that order, or that you're not allowed to evaluate them in the other order. There's not even an official name for that type of effect. It's just a thing people seem to know intuitively.
They don't have timing; they just always apply. They look like they do that, and they do, so that's why people figure it out intuitively.

This is only possible due to the particular set of effects. If I had both "cards cost $1 less" and "cards cost $1 more" then you'd need timing. Magic of course has contradictory effects and even loops, where there's no possibility for an answer except an arbitrary one, and you have to look up the arbitrary answer.

The rules for static abilities in Magic are the first thing I'd cite as an example of how no-one knows the rules for Magic. They have printed commons, e.g. Snakeform, that routinely created rules questions that normal players simply couldn't answer.

I have certainly blown it in Dominion on some cards; Inheritance, Band of Misfits, and Overlord should work differently as discussed elsewhere, and I shouldn't have done replacements - Possession, Trader. Sans those things I have a pretty tidy rules set. They just don't compare.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #18 on: October 04, 2018, 09:22:29 pm »
0

To be fair, even the Laws of Duplicate Bridge are 166 pages long.

It's because, if you have cost reduction, you can gain a free copy of a card whose baseline cost is more than $6.

This right here is what makes Autolink in the F.DS extension so great.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #19 on: October 04, 2018, 09:24:02 pm »
+1

One section in Magic's big rules document is on "interaction of continuous effects," which explains what order to evaluate abilities that do things like change an object's color or power/toughness. It can matter what order you apply these in, so the game's rules explain how you can determine that order.

This particular part of the MTG rules, "The Layer System", is I think the only part that I cannot pretty confidently say I know. I can generally answer any MTG rules question off the top of my head unless it involves that.
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chipperMDW

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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #20 on: October 05, 2018, 12:59:45 am »
0

This is only possible due to the particular set of effects. If I had both "cards cost $1 less" and "cards cost $1 more" then you'd need timing.

I'm pretty certain that having both Quarry and Inheritance means you need "timing" as well. Inheritance's effect modifies types. Quarry's effect cares about types. I'm not aware of a way to evaluate them other than one at a time, and the order you choose matters. One way (the correct way, I believe) makes your Estates $0 because the modifications made by Inheritance's effect are visible to Quarry at this point; the other way makes them stay $2 because Inheritance's modifications are not visible to it.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #21 on: October 05, 2018, 02:05:25 am »
0

From a strategy perspective, Dominion has been arguably more complex than Standard Magic for a long time. From a rules perspective, Dominion is almost certainly never going to get even close to Magic's level.

I would agree on Standard Magic but think Magic still has an edge in older formats like Legacy.

There's also the slightly infamous 350 page guide to playing Gush most effectively. People go pretty hard on the MTG theorycrafting.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #22 on: October 05, 2018, 02:27:47 am »
0

I would agree on Standard Magic but think Magic still has an edge in older formats like Legacy.

Yeah, there's a much wider range of competitive strategies in something like Legacy.
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #23 on: October 05, 2018, 11:55:11 am »
+2

I'm pretty certain that having both Quarry and Inheritance means you need "timing" as well. Inheritance's effect modifies types. Quarry's effect cares about types. I'm not aware of a way to evaluate them other than one at a time, and the order you choose matters. One way (the correct way, I believe) makes your Estates $0 because the modifications made by Inheritance's effect are visible to Quarry at this point; the other way makes them stay $2 because Inheritance's modifications are not visible to it.
Both of those are ongoing effects, which will compound in the obvious way: once you've Inherited an Action, all of your Estates cost $0 while a Quarry is in play. The relative ordering of buying Inheritance, taking ownership of the Estate and playing a Quarry is unimportant.

The only fiddly question is question is exactly when an Estate becomes yours, which has wider implications than just Quarry, and is presumably part of why Donald X. says he "blew it" on Inheritance.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2018, 02:00:41 pm by crj »
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Re: Complexity of Dominion
« Reply #24 on: October 05, 2018, 12:56:54 pm »
+1

I'm pretty certain that having both Quarry and Inheritance means you need "timing" as well. Inheritance's effect modifies types. Quarry's effect cares about types. I'm not aware of a way to evaluate them other than one at a time, and the order you choose matters. One way (the correct way, I believe) makes your Estates $0 because the modifications made by Inheritance's effect are visible to Quarry at this point; the other way makes them stay $2 because Inheritance's modifications are not visible to it.
Both of those are ongoing effects, which will compound in the obvious way: once you've Inherited an Action, all of your Estates cost $2 while a Quarry is in play. The relative ordering of buying Inheritance, taking ownership of the Estate and playing a Quarry is unimportant.

The only fiddly question is question is exactly when an Estate becomes yours, which has wider implications than just Quarry, and is presumably part of why Donald X. says he "blew it" on Inheritance.

Chipper was thinking like a Magic player. In Magic, the question of which one is applied first is important; and it’s why the confusing layer system exists. In Dominion, presumably; all effects are just always applied at all times until there are no more effects to apply. Which is why you can never have 2 contradicting effects* without a big rules update.

* Like a card that says “while this is in play, all Provinces cost $7”; and another that says “while this is in play, all Provinces cost $6”.

*Edit*: The closest we have is the wording on Outpost, which says you draw 3 cards for your next turn. This needs to be “applied” before Expedition; otherwise you can logically conclude that if you play Outpost and buy Expedition; you should only draw 3. I think the way it works is that the Outpost rule is actually that it makes you draw 2 fewer cards; rather than makes you draw 3.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2018, 01:07:48 pm by GendoIkari »
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