Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[dondon151]

1) It's *two* buys, which is a significant boost to any card
2)Large terminal draw is probably the cardtype given the largest boost by +buys.
Because +buy on large draw

Okay... how often are you using all 5+ buys that you get when you have a Wharf chain out? If you're looking to build an engine, you don't usually need more than 2-3 buys; if you're trying to green, you won't usually have enough money to buy more than 3 Victory cards at once.

[O]

1) It's *two* buys, which is a significant boost to any card
2)Large terminal draw is probably the cardtype given the largest boost by +buys.
Because +buy on large draw

Okay... how often are you using all 5+ buys that you get when you have a Wharf chain out? If you're looking to build an engine, you don't usually need more than 2-3 buys; if you're trying to green, you won't usually have enough money to buy more than 3 Victory cards at once.

... But its a one buy boost per turn, which gives you two turns with 2 buys, and the jump from 1-> buys is significant.

I'm not really sure what your point is with 5+ buys.

Also, who says there *is* another card with easy +buy out?

[Empathy]

1) It's *two* buys, which is a significant boost to any card
2)Large terminal draw is probably the cardtype given the largest boost by +buys.
Because +buy on large draw

Okay... how often are you using all 5+ buys that you get when you have a Wharf chain out? If you're looking to build an engine, you don't usually need more than 2-3 buys; if you're trying to green, you won't usually have enough money to buy more than 3 Victory cards at once.

Very often: bridge, highway, quarry, peddler, trader!, goons, watchtower!, 3piling on cheap piles (buy curse to finish game anyone?). Actually, if you don't *need* the extra buy from wharf, you are probably better off buying other cards (as in, not as many wharfs, but rather gold/plat/lab/rabble or simply green cards!) after you have reached your 3rd wharf.

I don't even see how you can get 5+ buys out (from wharf alone) unless you seriously outplayed your opponent (grab more than half the wharfs), or have been seriously outplayed (as in, one of the rare situations where wharf is sub-optimal). This means that the argument 'this card is good without the +buys because with you can get too many buys' self-negates because if it really were that good (which it often is), you will not get more than half the wharfs (leading to probably 3ish buys a turn). And you definitely need the 3 buys a turn in an engine.

Also, non-engine decks usually don't play a wharf every turn, but have a wharf out every turn: and 2 buys almost guaranteed per turn is big, even if you get the occasional overshoot 3 buys. Having to tweak out money to buy a market for +buy (and risk drawing it dead) is not cool.

[axlemn]

Related, but not a non sequitur: would you ever want more than 3 MS in a big money deck by turn 10?  My impression is no. 

[Jfrisch]

no, unless you consider fv m-ship to be a BM deck.

[Varsinor]

in BM-Merchant ship, you want to prioritize MS>Gold a good bit

I had a very hard time believing that this is good advice. It sounds like it is just your gut feeling - or did you do any simulations to back it up? It didn't sound like it, so I did them myself (see the second half of the posting below).

I don't think I would ever buy a Merchant Ship with $6 in a BMish deck - maybe unless I virtually don't have any terminal action yet. Regarding the latter, I am uncertain if I should buy a Gold or a Merchant Ship with my first $6 if I don't have any action yet. If I had to decide without simulations, I'd go for the Gold even then (because I may well get the $5 for my Merchant Ship soon afterwards with which I can't buy a Gold).

For the sake of completeness I'll shortly spell out the disadvantages and advantages Merchant Ship has compared to Gold, although of course Wandering Winder already mentioned the main disadvantage and the main advantage and #2 of the disadvantages is also really well-known - but #3 of the disadvantages may be a little less known:

1. Merchant Ship needs a terminal action. Having two Merchant Ships in your hand compared to Merchant Ship and Gold obviously makes a huge ($3) difference.
2. Duration cards can get caught in the reshuffle.
3. Even independently of #2, it is usually better to have $3 now compared to $2 this turn and $1 next turn. There are two reasons for this - the first is relevant until the end game and the second in the end game: First, if there is a reshuffle between the turns, then with $3 compared to $2, you would have been able to buy a better card getting shuffled into the deck. Economically speaking, this is a classic impact of interest. You'd rather have an extra dollar now and already get interest for it until next period. Second, the game might end before the bonus on the next turn so that you never get it.

Merchant Ship has the following advantage over Gold:

1. It nets you $4 instead of $3 when you have the action to play it.

I had a very hard time believing that this can usually make up the three disadvantages of Merchant Ship compared to Gold in BM decks.

So to see who is right I did some simulations with Geronimoo's simulator myself and they confirmed my gut feeling over your's...

I started with taking Geronimoo's Single Card-Merchant Ship bot.
I improved it by first moving up the buy rule for one Merchant Ship above "buy Duchy if Provinces <=6" and second adding another buy rule under it to prefer Merchant Ships over Silver (as long as there are 7 or 8 Provinces left).

I totally agree with you that in the early and middle game, you should prefer Merchant Ship over Silver. The benefit over Silver (netting $4 instead of $2) should be big enough to justify the three disadvantages mentioned above.
The simulations confirm this - my improved bot beats Geronimoo's standard bot (which never buys more than one Merchant Ship) with 53% against 37%. (It doesn't really matter if you set the lower "Buy Merchant Ship rule" to <3, <4, <5 or delete the limit alltogether - the result is always 53% against 37% from <3 on. The second one is the one that makes by far the biggest difference, "<2" still yields 52% against 38%.)

When we compare this improved Merchant Ship bot with a version where we let it buy the first Merchant Ship over Gold, it is equally strong - both of the two have a 45% chance of winning against each other - this sort of confirms my gut feeling that I didn't know which of these to prefer...

But when you start letting it buy more than one Merchant Ship over Gold, things get worse rapidly:
44% against 46% when letting it buy two Merchants Ships over Gold
39% against 51% when letting it buy three Merchants Ships over Gold
33% against 58% when letting it buy four Merchants Ships over Gold

The conclusion seems to be that it is not good advice to buy Merchant Ships over Gold in BMish games if you already have any terminal actions.

[Varsinor]

Swindler on the board? Slide over to opening that, and ease up on the merchant ships a little bit later.

With the presence of Swindlers it is even worse to ever buy Merchant Ship over Gold because other than Gold, Merchant Ships can be swindled into Duchies or bad $5 kingdom cards. (The only exception might be when there are Adventurers on the board in which case you might actually prefer the opponent swindling you a Duchy instead of an Adventurer from the middle game on.)

[WanderingWinder]

in BM-Merchant ship, you want to prioritize MS>Gold a good bit

I had a very hard time believing that this is good advice. It sounds like it is just your gut feeling - or did you do any simulations to back it up? It didn't sound like it, so I did them myself (see below).
....

In fact, I did!

Code: [Select]

<player name="Merchant Ship WW"
 author="WanderingWinder"
 description="The optimized Merchant Ship bot which buys no other actions">
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countVP"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countMAXOpponentVP"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countVP"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="countMAXOpponentVP"/>
         <extra_operation type="minus" attribute="3.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="getTotalMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="13.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Merchant_Ship"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <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="Merchant_Ship">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Merchant_Ship"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Merchant_Ship">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Merchant_Ship"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Merchant_Ship">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Merchant_Ship"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>
My optimization of the BM-Merchant ship bot. I tried to reproduce yours from your descriptions:

Code: [Select]

<player name="Merchant Ship Varsinor"
 author="Computer"
 description="This bot has been generated by the computer without any optimization. XXXXIt just buys a single Action card and money">
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="Generated"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="getTotalMoney"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="18.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <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="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Merchant_Ship">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Merchant_Ship"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Merchant_Ship"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>
And mine wins by a few percentage points. I'm furthermore convinced that at some point, you should add a merchant ship over a gold, once your deck is large enough, but typically the game is going to be fairly well decided by then. The difference is, as you say though, small. So basically, I should probably make more explicit, that with other terminals (a la swindler, monument, whatever), gold>MS. Also, though, with almost ANY kind of village, you can really pump the MS a lot more. For instance BV+MS is more or less always right over gold. But if you have that, or any way of avoiding your terminal collisions somehow, then the MS is more superior. As is, it's BARELY a drop-off to get MS #2 before gold, only about as much as it is to get gold before MS #1. Anyway, some good points, and they'll be in my revisions.

[Varsinor]

In fact, I did!

OK - I'd love to have a closer look at it!
Can you (or anyone else) tell me if there is an easy way for me to import the source code of your bot into Geronimoo's simulator to have a better view of the differences to mine and also try out changes to it?
Do I have to make an .xml file of it and then use File -> Load Players? If yes, how do I create an .xml file off the text?
(As you can probably tell from this question, I am not very experienced at fiddling around with the simulator... )

Also, though, with almost ANY kind of village, you can really pump the MS a lot more. For instance BV+MS is more or less always right over gold. But if you have that, or any way of avoiding your terminal collisions somehow, then the MS is more superior.

I agree. Especially with Border Villages or also Fishing Villages Merchant Ships certainly become a whole lot more attractive compared to Gold because the risk of terminal collision is much lower. As I said before, I was only talking about the "BMish decks" you seemed to talk about in your initial posting.

As is, it's BARELY a drop-off to get MS #2 before gold, only about as much as it is to get gold before MS #1.

Could you rephrase this sentence? I am not sure what you are saying here (especially with the term drop-off in this context), maybe due to the fact that English is not my native language.

[WanderingWinder]

Could you rephrase this sentence? I am not sure what you are saying here (especially with the term drop-off in this context), maybe due to the fact that English is not my native language.

What I mean is, getting 2 MS before gold is a little bit worse than getting only 1. But the difference is very small - it is about the same size of a difference as the difference between getting 1 merchant ship before gold and getting the gold first. (Optimum is getting 1).
To put a bot like the one I've posted into the simulator, copy all the text of the bot onto your clipboard. Then, with the simulator open, get a player slot that doesn't have a strategy in it (either because there hasn't been one yet, or by clicking on the strategy name, like you would to switch strategies, and then clicking the 'clear selected strategy' button), then click the Copy/Paste button. I hope that's clear.
The last thing is, just because a deck has some villages, or even lots of villages in it, doesn't mean that it's not a BM deck to me. Typically, I'm going to look at that BV-MS and the FV-MS decks as being big money decks. The distinguishing characteristic of an engine, to me, is drawing lots of cards together, more than you would with say a single big-draw card.

[Varsinor]

After playing some games I wanted to have another look at the Merchant Ship simulators, but alas...

To put a bot like the one I've posted into the simulator, copy all the text of the bot onto your clipboard. Then, with the simulator open, get a player slot that doesn't have a strategy in it (either because there hasn't been one yet, or by clicking on the strategy name, like you would to switch strategies, and then clicking the 'clear selected strategy' button), then click the Copy/Paste button. I hope that's clear.

Unfortunately not, can't manage to find what you mean.

Here's what I have done:

1. I start Geronimoo's simulator.
2. I click on "Click to select a strategy for this player" for Player 1.
3. There is no 'clear selected strategy' button. There is one called "Clear selection", but that doesn't open anything where I can paste text.

What do I do wrong?

[WanderingWinder]

After playing some games I wanted to have another look at the Merchant Ship simulators, but alas...

To put a bot like the one I've posted into the simulator, copy all the text of the bot onto your clipboard. Then, with the simulator open, get a player slot that doesn't have a strategy in it (either because there hasn't been one yet, or by clicking on the strategy name, like you would to switch strategies, and then clicking the 'clear selected strategy' button), then click the Copy/Paste button. I hope that's clear.

Unfortunately not, can't manage to find what you mean.

Here's what I have done:

1. I start Geronimoo's simulator.
2. I click on "Click to select a strategy for this player" for Player 1.
3. There is no 'clear selected strategy' button. There is one called "Clear selection", but that doesn't open anything where I can paste text.

What do I do wrong?

Sorry, I was going off memory there. Clear selection is what you'd want, but as the thing says 'Click to select a strategy for this player', you don't actually need to do that. Once you get it to that point, you DON'T want to select a strategy. Just look to the right of where you clicked on the 'Click to select a strategy for this player button'. There should be some radio buttons next to "random start" "4/3 Start" and "5/2 Start". Beneath those, there's buttons marked "Edit/Create", "Copy/Paste" and "Colonize". Here's the important stuff. While the button on the left still says "Click to select a strategy for this player", AND the bot you want to put in has already been copied onto your clipboard, click the "Copy/Paste" button. This will paste the copied text automatically.
I hope THAT helps.

[Geronimoo]

Yeah, the interface is not that intuitive. But once you get used to it, it allows fast simming.

[Varsinor]

Sorry, I was going off memory there. Clear selection is what you'd want, but as the thing says 'Click to select a strategy for this player', you don't actually need to do that. Once you get it to that point, you DON'T want to select a strategy. Just look to the right of where you clicked on the 'Click to select a strategy for this player button'. There should be some radio buttons next to "random start" "4/3 Start" and "5/2 Start". Beneath those, there's buttons marked "Edit/Create", "Copy/Paste" and "Colonize". Here's the important stuff. While the button on the left still says "Click to select a strategy for this player", AND the bot you want to put in has already been copied onto your clipboard, click the "Copy/Paste" button. This will paste the copied text automatically.
I hope THAT helps.

I'm afraid not...

So I start the simulator. After that, which of the buttons you mentioned do I have to click before I can paste your bot from my clipboard? I have tried quite a few (including just hitting paste (i.e. ctrl+v) right after starting the simulator) and it never seems to import your bot anywhere sensible.

[WanderingWinder]

Sorry, I was going off memory there. Clear selection is what you'd want, but as the thing says 'Click to select a strategy for this player', you don't actually need to do that. Once you get it to that point, you DON'T want to select a strategy. Just look to the right of where you clicked on the 'Click to select a strategy for this player button'. There should be some radio buttons next to "random start" "4/3 Start" and "5/2 Start". Beneath those, there's buttons marked "Edit/Create", "Copy/Paste" and "Colonize". Here's the important stuff. While the button on the left still says "Click to select a strategy for this player", AND the bot you want to put in has already been copied onto your clipboard, click the "Copy/Paste" button. This will paste the copied text automatically.
I hope THAT helps.

I'm afraid not...

So I start the simulator. After that, which of the buttons you mentioned do I have to click before I can paste your bot from my clipboard? I have tried quite a few (including just hitting paste (i.e. ctrl+v) right after starting the simulator) and it never seems to import your bot anywhere sensible.

Ok, the first thing, the very very important first thing, is that you have the bot already copied. Then, as soon as you start the simulator, just click the copy/paste button. Easy peasy.

[Varsinor]

Ok, the first thing, the very very important first thing, is that you have the bot already copied. Then, as soon as you start the simulator, just click the copy/paste button. Easy peasy.

I have done it like that. Just tried it again, no change. Nothing happens on ctrl+v. So you click absolutely nowhere between starting the simulator and hitting ctrl+v? (Or is there some "copy&paste button" other than ctrl+v I need to click?)

[HiveMindEmulator]

(Or is there some "copy&paste button" other than ctrl+v I need to click?)

There is a button on the interface that says "Copy/Paste", right next to "Edit/Create".

[Fabian]

I might have an old version of the simulator where it works in another way, but I copied one of the bots WW pasted here, opened the simulator and pressed one of the copy/paste buttons. Seemed pretty impossible to get it wrong.

[Schneau]

Ok, the first thing, the very very important first thing, is that you have the bot already copied. Then, as soon as you start the simulator, just click the copy/paste button. Easy peasy.

I have done it like that. Just tried it again, no change. Nothing happens on ctrl+v. So you click absolutely nowhere between starting the simulator and hitting ctrl+v? (Or is there some "copy&paste button" other than ctrl+v I need to click?)

Not CTRL+v. On the actual window there is a button that says "Copy/Paste". Click that.

[Varsinor]

Gosh, thx guys - got it now.
Unbelievable I overlooked that... For some reason these buttons complete eluded me... Guess I was so fixated on pasting working with ctrl+v that I didn't take what WW wrote literally enough...

[Varsinor]

Now that I have gotten the technical problem out of the way, on to answering the rest of WW's posting...

What I mean is, getting 2 MS before gold is a little bit worse than getting only 1. But the difference is very small - it is about the same size of a difference as the difference between getting 1 merchant ship before gold and getting the gold first. (Optimum is getting 1).

Well, that is very close to the numbers I gave (which were equal to get one MS over Gold, slightly worse to get two over Gold, considerably worse to get more over Gold).

But I really don't think it matches the assessment in your article "in BM-Merchant ship, you want to prioritize MS>Gold a good bit" at all. According to your own statement, you don't want to get a second MS over Gold in standard BM-MS and even the first doesn't do that much good for you!

The last thing is, just because a deck has some villages, or even lots of villages in it, doesn't mean that it's not a BM deck to me. Typically, I'm going to look at that BV-MS and the FV-MS decks as being big money decks. The distinguishing characteristic of an engine, to me, is drawing lots of cards together, more than you would with say a single big-draw card.

I really wouldn't call a deck with lots of villages a Big Money deck - and it looks like the Glossary on dominionstragey.com agrees with me on that:

Strictly speaking, a strategy where no Actions are bought at all, only Treasure and Victory.  In practice, often used to refer to a strategy emphasizing Treasure and Victory cards that is merely supplemented with one or two Actions.  Compare Engine.

Maybe lots of villages don't make an Engine yet in lack of big card draw, but if so there are lots of decks which are neither Big Money nor an Engine.
I'm pretty sure most people would disagree that a deck with lots of villages and actions (though without much draw) is a Big Money deck - at least the Glossary does and that seems to be the closest thing to a widely accepted definition we have.

Therefore, if what you wanted to say was "if you can get some Border Villages or Fishing Villages, you want to prioritize MS>Gold a good bit" I think you should definitely write it like that. I mean, Border Village and Fishing Village are just 2 out of 157 possible cards, so even putting aside the BM-definition-issue they don't come with Merchant Ship often enough to assume their existence without saying...

[Empathy]

On the engine vs BM debate.

Another way of classifying strategies is by their objective in terms of turn-structure: what we generally consider an engine tries to replicate a nearly identical playmat every turn (usually obtained either by drawing through most of the deck via tact/smithy/village chain/scrying pool/menagerie/library/alchemist/HP...) while what usually drives BM is a high average hand output (hence all the talks of 'moneness' in BM). Under that classification system, an action heavy deck with no drawing capacity would be 'BM'-ish. You would reason mostly in average money output of your village/merchant ships rather than in terms of deck drawing reliability. Of course the line gets blurred when you draw say, a quarter of your deck.

[WanderingWinder]

On the engine vs BM debate.

Another way of classifying strategies is by their objective in terms of turn-structure: what we generally consider an engine tries to replicate a nearly identical playmat every turn (usually obtained either by drawing through most of the deck via tact/smithy/village chain/scrying pool/menagerie/library/alchemist/HP...) while what usually drives BM is a high average hand output (hence all the talks of 'moneness' in BM). Under that classification system, an action heavy deck with no drawing capacity would be 'BM'-ish. You would reason mostly in average money output of your village/merchant ships rather than in terms of deck drawing reliability. Of course the line gets blurred when you draw say, a quarter of your deck.

It's not uncommon for your 5-card hand to be a quarter of your deck well into a big money game...

I don't know that I think the 'identical playmat' thing is a very good indication of things either - chancellor/stash isn't an engine, and there are quite a few engines that have great big mega-turns... only about half the time.
I think an engine is an engine if I am chewing through lots of cards in my deck on a fairly consistent basis, roughly.

[chwhite]

and there are quite a few engines that have great big mega-turns... only about half the time.

An extreme example of this is Scrying Pool/Mountebank/Inn, which flounders in Curse and Copper at least half the time, but can explode on Inn turns.

[WanderingWinder]

and there are quite a few engines that have great big mega-turns... only about half the time.

An extreme example of this is Scrying Pool/Mountebank/Inn, which flounders in Curse and Copper at least half the time, but can explode on Inn turns.

Sure. Even conventional engines will miss turns now and then (maybe not half the time). Perhaps the most obvious 'half the time' thing is a single tac deck, which generally plays more on the engine side, though not as distinctly there as double-tac.