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WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #25 on: June 13, 2012, 08:24:25 pm »
0

I think this could use a little clarification:

"Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village is fishing."

I assume you mean that Wharf/BM beats Wharf/Village, unless the village is fishing.  Village/money isn't something I'm familiar with as a Dominion concept generally (ala BM).

You assume correctly.

WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #26 on: June 13, 2012, 08:26:10 pm »
0

Quote
One more point that might be worth mentioning, on a mistake I have seen frequently:

You typically don't want any trashing in a wharf game. Not in Wharf/BM, but typically also not in a wharf engine. The strong draw of wharf lets you skip over all your bad cards, and is so fast, that you won't make up the time needed trash down early, and to rebuilt your buying power later.
Check out the last line of the article proper. I address this.

Oh, I missed that, but I think you really undersell the case. I mean, even a moneylender usually isn't worth the terminal action in a wharf deck.
No kidding. Moneylender's pretty terrible. In fact, trade route may be the only trasher that's worse here. I'm thinking more like steward/remake/chapel.

ednever

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #27 on: June 14, 2012, 12:52:50 am »
0

You mention bank in bm, but it's worth mentioning with engines as well.

With bank/wharf, any source of +actions makes the engine super powerful. It may be worth an article all to itself on how to play it. It's a question of how long you wait before you green and mega turn. Ie. you draw $21. Do you pick up two provinces and the last festival (assuming all the wharfs are already gone), or do you pick up 3 more banks and have $57 next turn to really destroy it.

You really need to know what your opponent can pull off and be watching the piles carefully.

Ed
If this is a question, you've almost certainly played wrong, methinks. If you're to the point where you've bought ALL the wharves and ALL the festivals, the provinces ought to be more run out than this. Maybe in a colony game? MAYBE? Any other engineers want to help me out on this point?

Bad example. I didn't put much thought into the line "last festival".

I've played wharf+village+bank a few times. (been beaten by it the first few times). Never with festival, I just needed a $5 card to make the math I had already done work.

What was common in all these games was:

1- all the wharfs were gone
2- all the villages were gone
3- the banks made for some huge mega turns
4- both players were contesting the same strategy

Interesting you say that wharf+bank > wharf+bank+village

It seems possible now that I think about it, but it would never occur to me to play it in a game.

What do the simulators say on the two optimized strategies? (I imagine it would be hard to program the w+b+v as the timing on when to clean pug the green vs picking up more banks is not entirely clear - at least to me. I could do alright in a game I think, but I'd have a hard time articulating the green buy rules)

Ed
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #28 on: June 14, 2012, 08:51:41 am »
0

Made some major revisions/additions. Let me know what you think.

WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #29 on: June 14, 2012, 08:55:42 am »
0

You mention bank in bm, but it's worth mentioning with engines as well.

With bank/wharf, any source of +actions makes the engine super powerful. It may be worth an article all to itself on how to play it. It's a question of how long you wait before you green and mega turn. Ie. you draw $21. Do you pick up two provinces and the last festival (assuming all the wharfs are already gone), or do you pick up 3 more banks and have $57 next turn to really destroy it.

You really need to know what your opponent can pull off and be watching the piles carefully.

Ed
If this is a question, you've almost certainly played wrong, methinks. If you're to the point where you've bought ALL the wharves and ALL the festivals, the provinces ought to be more run out than this. Maybe in a colony game? MAYBE? Any other engineers want to help me out on this point?

Bad example. I didn't put much thought into the line "last festival".

I've played wharf+village+bank a few times. (been beaten by it the first few times). Never with festival, I just needed a $5 card to make the math I had already done work.

What was common in all these games was:

1- all the wharfs were gone
2- all the villages were gone
3- the banks made for some huge mega turns
4- both players were contesting the same strategy

Interesting you say that wharf+bank > wharf+bank+village

It seems possible now that I think about it, but it would never occur to me to play it in a game.

What do the simulators say on the two optimized strategies? (I imagine it would be hard to program the w+b+v as the timing on when to clean pug the green vs picking up more banks is not entirely clear - at least to me. I could do alright in a game I think, but I'd have a hard time articulating the green buy rules)

Ed
I guess my point is, I don't see why the villages should run out here. You're spending SO much time building up your engine, it's hard to believe you shouldn't be doing some greening in there. And wharf engines typically don't need so many villages, at least unless there's some kind of other terminals you want to play lots of, too. Like, goons could make this very true, but then why did you ever buy a bank? So I'm a bit confused.

The simulator thing... well, there's two issues here. One, you'd just have to take a long time optimizing both things. Two, and more important, there is going to be some lack as to how it plays the engine. Because when do you want to fire your engine? It is really dependent on the game state - how many points are left out there, how much will the extra build-up get you, and more important, what are the relative score, and how much juice does my opponent have left in the tank. In principle, you can make an adaptive bot to handle all this, but it's not easy, and quite time-consuming.

Varsinor

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #30 on: June 14, 2012, 09:07:19 am »
0

Made some major revisions/additions. Let me know what you think.

You forgot to fix the "village idiot typo"

Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village produces money for you.

that was already mentioned although you even changed the subordinate clause! ;)
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #31 on: June 14, 2012, 09:13:02 am »
0

Made some major revisions/additions. Let me know what you think.

You forgot to fix the "village idiot typo"

Wharf/Money beats village/money, typically unless that village produces money for you.

that was already mentioned although you even changed the subordinate clause! ;)
I feel like a right idiot. Should be fixed now.

Varsinor

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #32 on: June 14, 2012, 09:23:18 am »
0

I've played wharf+village+bank a few times. (been beaten by it the first few times). Never with festival, I just needed a $5 card to make the math I had already done work.

What was common in all these games was:

1- all the wharfs were gone
2- all the villages were gone
3- the banks made for some huge mega turns
4- both players were contesting the same strategy

I'm pretty sure under these circumstances the answer to your initial question if one should either 2 Provinces and a $5 or 3 Banks should be clear in most cases: Go green (at least if you don't have a comfortable point lead for some reason so far)! If two stacks (Wharf and a village) are already empty and your opponent is playing a mirror matchup, you can't afford to buy 3 more Banks because in that case the Bank pile should be close to empty as well and your opponent could easily win by emptying the rest of it and buying one green card.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2012, 09:27:33 am by Varsinor »
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RisingJaguar

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #33 on: June 14, 2012, 09:30:26 am »
+1

I've played wharf+village+bank a few times. (been beaten by it the first few times). Never with festival, I just needed a $5 card to make the math I had already done work.

What was common in all these games was:

1- all the wharfs were gone
2- all the villages were gone
3- the banks made for some huge mega turns
4- both players were contesting the same strategy

I'm pretty sure in this case the answer to your initial question if one should either 2 Provinces and a $5 or 3 Banks should be clear in most cases: Go green (at least if you don't have a comfortable point lead for some reason so far)! If two stacks (Wharf and a village) are already empty and your opponent is playing a mirror matchup, you can't afford to buy 3 more Banks because in that case the Bank pile should be close to empty as well and your opponent could easily win by emptying the rest of it and buying one green card.
Yeah this scenario should definitely include buying 8 estates.  I mean you should be pretty close to the number of buys.  Or buying 4 of a third pile (to end it) and buying 1 province etc. 

I think the overall article Ed is looking for is Engine Endgame.  That is, How can I end the game this turn with me winning.  But also How can I end the game my turn so that my opponent can't end the game on his/her turn with him/her winning
« Last Edit: June 14, 2012, 09:44:39 am by RisingJaguar »
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Varsinor

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #34 on: June 14, 2012, 09:48:20 am »
0

Hunting Party is pretty clearly the second-best non-attack $5 [...] And it's entirely outclassed by wharf, pretty much all around.

Hunting Party + Terminal Silver? You need something like baron or monument to make it worth it.

Doesn't work with:
Hunting Party
[...]
(It's not really that ^^these things are really actively bad, just they don't really help, at least not nearly to the extent they normally do)

I think I disagree about Hunting Party being normally outclassed by Wharf.
Sure, Wharves will usually beat Hunting Party + terminal Silver as you say. But the thing is, on a board with Hunting Party and Wharf, there is a very strong terminal addition for your Hunting Party stack: Wharf itself! Or to be more exact, two Warves to enable you to play one every turn.
I think in the absence of villages (and also absent cursers, Throne Room, Governor and Goons off the top of my head), my first $5/6 buys would be in this order:
Wharf - Gold - 3-4 Hunting Parties - Wharf - as many Hunting Parties as I can get before I need to go green.
(I would expect the one early Gold to help a lot to make good use of the 2nd Wharf buy, be it for Hunting Party+Silver initially or two $5s after that.)

I haven't simulated it though. I just wanted to do so but realized that it is quite complicated because you have to make multiple rules to tell the bot how to use multiple buys. For instance, if you get $10 with two buys in the mid-game, the usual rule to buy a Province as a first priority would do that and waste the two additional $2. With Hunting Party and Wharf on the board, though it would definitely be stronger to buy two of them.

Did you (or someone else) already do that work and program sensible rules to simulate it?

I don't feel like doing it myself now. But unless you can prove me wrong with hard numbers, I think I am going to stand by my intuition that Hunting Parties plus 2 Wharves should get a higher winning probability than going all Wharf (and no Hunting Party) out of most boards. 8)
« Last Edit: June 14, 2012, 09:51:25 am by Varsinor »
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DStu

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #35 on: June 14, 2012, 10:42:21 am »
+1

This one
Code: [Select]
<player name="Wharf/HP"
 author="WanderingWinder"
 description="The optimized Wharf strategy that buys no other actions.">
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
   <buy name="Gold">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Wharf"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countAvailableMoney"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="9.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </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="Wharf">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>
wins by a \mu (3% or so) against the default Wharf bot. (It's just the default Wharfbot that buys just 2 Wharfs and HPs afterwards)

Edit: The Problem with HP/wharf is that it will trigger the reshuffle (with all Wharfs and HPs in play) if the HPs have drawn the whole deck. Especially for the simulator, as it will always play the HPs.
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Varsinor

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #36 on: June 14, 2012, 10:53:29 am »
0

The Problem with HP/wharf is that it will trigger the reshuffle (with all Wharfs and HPs in play) if the HPs have drawn the whole deck.

Very good point, I hadn't thought of that before making my assessment! That changes it, Hunting Parties plus 2 Wharves are probably inferior two a more Wharf-based deck then.
But I still think adding one or two Hunting Parties (or even Labs!) may well be superior to going exclusively for Wharves on $5 buys (without villages). At least if you hit $5 or exact multiples often enough.

Especially for the simulator, as it will always play the HPs.

Unfortunately not playing an excess Hunting Party doesn't help much - one would have to not play the Wharf which really makes the whole concept moot.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #37 on: June 14, 2012, 10:54:17 am »
0

Hunting Party is pretty clearly the second-best non-attack $5 [...] And it's entirely outclassed by wharf, pretty much all around.

Hunting Party + Terminal Silver? You need something like baron or monument to make it worth it.

Doesn't work with:
Hunting Party
[...]
(It's not really that ^^these things are really actively bad, just they don't really help, at least not nearly to the extent they normally do)

I think I disagree about Hunting Party being normally outclassed by Wharf.
Sure, Wharves will usually beat Hunting Party + terminal Silver as you say. But the thing is, on a board with Hunting Party and Wharf, there is a very strong terminal addition for your Hunting Party stack: Wharf itself! Or to be more exact, two Warves to enable you to play one every turn.
I think in the absence of villages (and also absent cursers, Throne Room, Governor and Goons off the top of my head), my first $5/6 buys would be in this order:
Wharf - Gold - 3-4 Hunting Parties - Wharf - as many Hunting Parties as I can get before I need to go green.
(I would expect the one early Gold to help a lot to make good use of the 2nd Wharf buy, be it for Hunting Party+Silver initially or two $5s after that.)

I haven't simulated it though. I just wanted to do so but realized that it is quite complicated because you have to make multiple rules to tell the bot how to use multiple buys. For instance, if you get $10 with two buys in the mid-game, the usual rule to buy a Province as a first priority would do that and waste the two additional $2. With Hunting Party and Wharf on the board, though it would definitely be stronger to buy two of them.

Did you (or someone else) already do that work and program sensible rules to simulate it?

I don't feel like doing it myself now. But unless you can prove me wrong with hard numbers, I think I am going to stand by my intuition that Hunting Parties plus 2 Wharves should get a higher winning probability than going all Wharf (and no Hunting Party) out of most boards. 8)
No, I haven't simulated it. I don't see why I'd need to simulate it - it seems eminently clear to me that hunting party is sub-optimal here, and it doesn't appeal to me to spend a long time to try optimizing something that I'm pretty sure will not be as good as a simpler strategy anyway. I mean, I write these articles to try to be helpful to people and share my knowledge. It doesn't appeal to me to do a lot of extra work just to appease you - sorry ;) You can go on thinking that, if you want to.

But I mean, my point is, when do you get the wharves, and when do you get the hunting parties? You get 2 wharves, then HPs? Okay... But I mean, when do you get money? How many HPs do you think you have time to buy? Why do the HPs even help you that much? I guess this last thing is my big point. They just don't. You're drawing so much money anyway, it doesn't give you much beneficial draw, comparing to what you get from another gold or wharf. And so maybe they help you get a wharf played every turn - except, this isn't that big a deal anyway. Can there be a situation where HP helps you for Wharf/BM? Sure, probably, SOMEWHERE. But much less than something like, say, venture. And the benefit is EXTREMELY marginal. Also, you'll trigger reshuffles off that wharf play. A LOT.



Last point is that there's no one who is going to prove you wrong with hard numbers. It's theoretically possible, but only mathematically with extremely complex calculations that are just way way way too time-consuming and boring for anyone to actually make. Simulator data, while useful, does not provide 'hard numbers' or 'prove' almost anything really useful (though it points you in the right direction!), because you're limited by what you feed it in. Garbage in, garbage out. And you can't exhaust all the alternatives to make *sure* that you're not missing the brilliant combination of buy rules to make everything click.

WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #38 on: June 14, 2012, 10:56:13 am »
0

This one
Code: [Select]
<player name="Wharf/HP"
 author="WanderingWinder"
 description="The optimized Wharf strategy that buys no other actions.">
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
   <buy name="Gold">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Wharf"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countAvailableMoney"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="9.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </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="Wharf">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>
wins by a \mu (3% or so) against the default Wharf bot. (It's just the default Wharfbot that buys just 2 Wharfs and HPs afterwards)

Edit: The Problem with HP/wharf is that it will trigger the reshuffle (with all Wharfs and HPs in play) if the HPs have drawn the whole deck. Especially for the simulator, as it will always play the HPs.
This loses pretty badly against the most recent Wharf bot I've posted:
Code: [Select]
<player name="WharfWW"
 author="WanderingWinder"
 description="The optimized Wharf strategy that buys no other actions.">
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
   <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="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <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="16.0"/>
      </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="Wharf">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="8.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Wharf">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="4.0" />
      </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="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>
Something like 54-40.

DStu

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #39 on: June 14, 2012, 11:01:19 am »
0

This loses pretty badly against the most recent Wharf bot I've posted:

Same modification to it
Code: [Select]
-   <buy name="Wharf">
-      <condition>
-         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
-         <operator type="smallerThan" />
-         <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
-         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="4.0" />
-      </condition>
-   </buy>
+   <buy name="Wharf">
+     <condition>
+       <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
+         <operator type="smallerThan" />
+        <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
+      </condition>
+   </buy>
+   <buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
and it wins again (44-50)

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WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #40 on: June 14, 2012, 11:11:30 am »
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This loses pretty badly against the most recent Wharf bot I've posted:

Same modification to it
Code: [Select]
-   <buy name="Wharf">
-      <condition>
-         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
-         <operator type="smallerThan" />
-         <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
-         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="4.0" />
-      </condition>
-   </buy>
+   <buy name="Wharf">
+     <condition>
+       <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
+         <operator type="smallerThan" />
+        <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
+      </condition>
+   </buy>
+   <buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
and it wins again (44-50)


First, it took me a second to see you're talking about my bot and not yours.
Second, it's actually only 48-45 if you sim it over long enough periods?
Third, You can get bigger gains out of just optimizing wharf better.
Fourth, the make-sure-you-have-two-wharves-before-grabbing-HP rule is essentially irrelevant.
Fifth, like I said, really small improvement in fringe area, something like venture is bigger.

Edit: Most important of all, this is just a wharf deck that occasionally, quite rarely, buys HP. Certainly not a HP stack or a HP deck.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2012, 11:15:55 am by WanderingWinder »
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DStu

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #41 on: June 14, 2012, 11:39:02 am »
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First, it took me a second to see you're talking about my bot and not yours.
Second, it's actually only 48-45 if you sim it over long enough periods?
Third, You can get bigger gains out of just optimizing wharf better.
Fourth, the make-sure-you-have-two-wharves-before-grabbing-HP rule is essentially irrelevant.
Fifth, like I said, really small improvement in fringe area, something like venture is bigger.

Edit: Most important of all, this is just a wharf deck that occasionally, quite rarely, buys HP. Certainly not a HP stack or a HP deck.
It was 10.000 sim. Don't really want to argue here, I also didn't  really believe in HP/Wharf. I just wanted to see if the same modification I mentioned for the first bot also worked here, and they kind of did. I honestly didn't really see the first buy rule for Wharf, just scrolled to the "if #Wharf < #treasure/4"-clause as before and replaced it with the "if #Wharf < 2" clause, adding HP and run the sim. Didn't looked at what happens above.
So there probably also is some space for improvement in this variante of the bot.

And it does not buy HP so rarely. I only have a N=50 statistics here, but in these games it buys HP in 70% of the games. Half of the time just one, other half mostly 2. So yeah, it's not the typical HP-stack, would also be surprising in these fast games. But it seems like you can play HP in the Wharf-deck, and get something with about equal strength. It also beats the weaker HP-terminal Silvers.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #42 on: June 14, 2012, 11:48:25 am »
0

First, it took me a second to see you're talking about my bot and not yours.
Second, it's actually only 48-45 if you sim it over long enough periods?
Third, You can get bigger gains out of just optimizing wharf better.
Fourth, the make-sure-you-have-two-wharves-before-grabbing-HP rule is essentially irrelevant.
Fifth, like I said, really small improvement in fringe area, something like venture is bigger.

Edit: Most important of all, this is just a wharf deck that occasionally, quite rarely, buys HP. Certainly not a HP stack or a HP deck.
It was 10.000 sim. Don't really want to argue here, I also didn't  really believe in HP/Wharf. I just wanted to see if the same modification I mentioned for the first bot also worked here, and they kind of did. I honestly didn't really see the first buy rule for Wharf, just scrolled to the "if #Wharf < #treasure/4"-clause as before and replaced it with the "if #Wharf < 2" clause, adding HP and run the sim. Didn't looked at what happens above.
So there probably also is some space for improvement in this variante of the bot.

And it does not buy HP so rarely. I only have a N=50 statistics here, but in these games it buys HP in 70% of the games. Half of the time just one, other half mostly 2. So yeah, it's not the typical HP-stack, would also be surprising in these fast games. But it seems like you can play HP in the Wharf-deck, and get something with about equal strength. It also beats the weaker HP-terminal Silvers.
Ok, We must have different bots here, because I just spot-checked 20 games. 4 of them had HP bought.
About equal strength, maybe. But I guess the thing here is, HP doesn't appreciably help here, as it does with most every other deck.

DStu

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #43 on: June 14, 2012, 11:51:08 am »
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Ok, We must have different bots here, because I just spot-checked 20 games. 4 of them had HP bought.
Code: [Select]
<player name="WharfWW/HP"
 author="WanderingWinder"
 description="The optimized Wharf strategy that buys no other actions.">
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="Optimized"/>
   <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="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <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="16.0"/>
      </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="Wharf">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="8.0" />
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Wharf">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Wharf"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Hunting_Party"/>
   <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="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>
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Varsinor

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #44 on: June 14, 2012, 11:55:51 am »
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About equal strength, maybe. But I guess the thing here is, HP doesn't appreciably help here, as it does with most every other deck.

One could also phrase it like this:

In the cases we are talking about HP is just as good as the very strong Wharf.

;)

Buying, say, Silver instead of HP or Wharf would quite certainly be clearly worse.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #45 on: June 14, 2012, 11:56:43 am »
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But I guess the thing here is, HP doesn't appreciably help here, as it does with most every other deck.

One could also phrase it like this:

In the cases we are talking about HP is just as good as the very strong Wharf (because it doesn't matter much if you buy HP or Wharf).

;)

Buying, say, Silver instead of HP or Wharf would quite certainly be clearly worse.
No, I mega-disagree, because that's only true AFTER you've bought a couple wharves.

Varsinor

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #46 on: June 14, 2012, 12:00:35 pm »
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No, I mega-disagree, because that's only true AFTER you've bought a couple wharves.

Yes, but that was the case we were talking about now as far as I am concerned. (What do you mega-disagree with?)

I already admitted that my earlier idea of emphasizing HP over Wharf was probably not good (primarily because I didn't think of Wharf triggering the reshuffle).

But I still maintain that one or two HPs can be a good idea if you already have many Wharves.
But maybe we don't have a disagreement at all here and are just arguing semantics.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #47 on: June 14, 2012, 12:03:44 pm »
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No, I mega-disagree, because that's only true AFTER you've bought a couple wharves.

Yes, but that was the case we were talking about now as far as I am concerned. (What do you mega-disagree with?)
I mega-disagree with "In the cases we are talking about HP is just as good as the very strong Wharf (because it doesn't matter much if you buy HP or Wharf)." I guess that's fine. But such cases are only possible via big wharf.
I also wanna contend that with other cards, HP tends to be less important. But whatever, not a big difference here.

cherdano

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Re: Wharf
« Reply #48 on: June 16, 2012, 10:37:59 am »
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I just re-read the article. It's really excellent now - not sure I have seen another article with so much useful advice.

Maybe Cellar deserves a mention in "works with" - it's really nice with the large handsizes, and allows you to go fishing for the next Wharf.

(A cellar goes fishing to find a wharf?? I just wrote this?)
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