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[Jfrisch]

I've never fully understood the claim that venture lets you green earlier. Most (but not all) of the time venture is worse than gold in terms of average yield, granted, adding green cards doesn't affect that value but neither does it affect the value of, for example, gold/merchant ship/silver/hoard. Now granted greening does adversely affect cards that draw, and many (nearly all) attacks are significantly less damaging to an opponent in a greened deck. But the statement that (non-ridiculously chained ventures) significantly help with greening is no different than the statement that high value treasure helps with greening.

[HiveMindEmulator]

But the statement that (non-ridiculously chained ventures) significantly help with greening is no different than the statement that high value treasure helps with greening.

Of course with not many Ventures, the effect is small. I don't think that people claim that adding a single Venture helps you green noticeably earlier. The point is with Venture chains.

It's kind of like Rabble, for example. If you play one Rabble every once in a while, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. But with a Rabble chain, you start seeing those green cards much more often.

[WanderingWinder]

But the statement that (non-ridiculously chained ventures) significantly help with greening is no different than the statement that high value treasure helps with greening.

Of course with not many Ventures, the effect is small. I don't think that people claim that adding a single Venture helps you green noticeably earlier. The point is with Venture chains.

It's kind of like Rabble, for example. If you play one Rabble every once in a while, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. But with a Rabble chain, you start seeing those green cards much more often.

But it's much easier to do a rabble chain. These kinds of venture chains are rarely possible, and they're almost never viable.

[Morgrim7]

Tip for next time Qvist: Once you post part one, reserve three more post spots so we don't have to go fishing through.

[HiveMindEmulator]

But the statement that (non-ridiculously chained ventures) significantly help with greening is no different than the statement that high value treasure helps with greening.

Of course with not many Ventures, the effect is small. I don't think that people claim that adding a single Venture helps you green noticeably earlier. The point is with Venture chains.

It's kind of like Rabble, for example. If you play one Rabble every once in a while, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. But with a Rabble chain, you start seeing those green cards much more often.

But it's much easier to do a rabble chain. These kinds of venture chains are rarely possible, and they're almost never viable.

Oh I'm not saying Venture is as good as Rabble. I'm saying that the effect it has on your deck is analogous to the effect Rabble has on your opponent. This is the general effect of cards that skip particular types of cards. They alter the "effective density" of that type of card. In small amounts this is hardly noticeable, but in large amounts it becomes quite pronounced. Whether or not its worth pursuing is another question entirely.

[WanderingWinder]

Sigh... venture does not alter the effective density of anything, except by accelerating the reshuffle, absolutely different from rabble, as was conclusively shown in the thread I linked.
Or: ok, go on thinking that.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Sigh... venture does not alter the effective density of anything, except by accelerating the reshuffle, absolutely different from rabble, as was conclusively shown in the thread I linked.
Or: ok, go on thinking that.

The proof you cited proves something different than I'm saying. Venture does not alter the density of Treasures in your draw pile. It alters the density of Treasures among cards that you play or see in your hand. These things are different. I don't care if there's a Victory card in my deck if I don't draw it.

[WanderingWinder]

Okay, I'm not really understanding your claim. Are you saying venture is better for you NOW than some other treasure, like, the turn you play it, or later on, in later turns, or both, or neither?

[ftl]

I might understand what HiveMindEmulator is saying? I think its the other way around; it's a statement about how resilient decks are to greening, specifically?

A deck with some number of ventures in it will play as though it has less green in it than it really does, because some green will get skipped over and will miss chances to be your hand.
Whereas a deck that's playing AGAINST rabble will play as though it has more green than it really does, because some non-green will get skipped over and will miss chances to be in your hand.

To take it to an extreme - if you have a deck of 8 ventures and no other treasures, a hand will play exactly the same up until the point where you have so much green that you don't draw a single venture in hand. So, really resilient to greening.

The opposite happens against rabble - if you Rabble your opponent enough, then they'll play every hand as though they have so much green that 3/5 of their hand is green, even if in reality their deck only has a few green cards.

It's not statements about what Venture/Rabble do for your deck, it's statements about what Green cards do TO a deck that has ventures or is being rabbled.

Does that make sense, or am I missing the point too?

[HiveMindEmulator]

Okay, I'm not really understanding your claim. Are you saying venture is better for you NOW than some other treasure, like, the turn you play it, or later on, in later turns, or both, or neither?

I'm saying that given that you have a lot of Ventures, Victory cards are less harmful to your deck (as compared to if the Ventures were some other Treasure), because you don't have to draw the Victory cards every shuffle (you can skip them instead). Note that if you skip them they go back into your draw deck eventually, but still missed an opportunity to go into your hand, making them effectively less menacing.

ftl has it right.

[blueblimp]

A deck with some number of ventures in it will play as though it has less green in it than it really does, because some green will get skipped over and will miss chances to be your hand.

But--the treasure you hit also misses a chance to be in your hand. Imagine you play Venture and it skips one Estate then hits a Silver. You get $3 total from the Venture (same as a Gold). You won't draw that Estate into hand this shuffle, but you won't draw that Silver into hand this shuffle, either.

That's just one perspective, where the value of the treasure Venture hits is included in its value. The point is that Venture is about as resilient to greening as basic treasures are: Copper/Silver/Gold don't care how much green you have, and neither does Venture. It doesn't get better if you green, but it doesn't get worse either.

If you take a different perspective, you can think of Venture as giving $1 and fishing out a treasure from your deck, i.e. a Peddler variant. Since Venture skips over green and Peddler doesn't, this shows that Venture is more resilient to greening than Peddler is. But usually Venture gets compared to other treasures, not to Peddler.

[cherdano]

I've never fully understood the claim that venture lets you green earlier. Most (but not all) of the time venture is worse than gold in terms of average yield, granted, adding green cards doesn't affect that value but neither does it affect the value of, for example, gold/merchant ship/silver/hoard. Now granted greening does adversely affect cards that draw, and many (nearly all) attacks are significantly less damaging to an opponent in a greened deck. But the statement that (non-ridiculously chained ventures) significantly help with greening is no different than the statement that high value treasure helps with greening.

In fact, it's the other way round. If your average treasure value is $2, then venture behaves exactly like gold. Except that it speeds up reshuffling, which means you will draw the victory cards you buy earlier, and so BM decks with venture are less resilient to greening, not more.

[HiveMindEmulator]

But--the treasure you hit also misses a chance to be in your hand. Imagine you play Venture and it skips one Estate then hits a Silver. You get $3 total from the Venture (same as a Gold). You won't draw that Estate into hand this shuffle, but you won't draw that Silver into hand this shuffle, either.

The reason this alters effective density is that it always hits exactly one non-venture treasure but can hit an arbitrary number of non-treasures. So given that you have a lot of ventures, adding green cards a couple shuffles earlier won't matter as much as if you were going for lots of Silver and Gold. So instead of skipping Estate and play a Silver, you can skip an Estate and a Duchy and playing a Silver.

[HiveMindEmulator]

In fact, it's the other way round. If your average treasure value is $2, then venture behaves exactly like gold. Except that it speeds up reshuffling, which means you will draw the victory cards you buy earlier, and so BM decks with venture are less resilient to greening, not more.

This is the same fallacy as the theorem. When you reshuffle, you put cards into your draw pile, not into your hand. Without cards that skip other cards, every card in your draw pile eventually ends up in your hand, so these are often the same. But with Venture, this is not the case. Cards in your draw pile have a chance (proportional to the amount of Ventures you have) to never end up in your hand.

[blueblimp]

But--the treasure you hit also misses a chance to be in your hand. Imagine you play Venture and it skips one Estate then hits a Silver. You get $3 total from the Venture (same as a Gold). You won't draw that Estate into hand this shuffle, but you won't draw that Silver into hand this shuffle, either.

The reason this alters effective density is that it always hits exactly one non-venture treasure but can hit an arbitrary number of non-treasures. So given that you have a lot of ventures, adding green cards a couple shuffles earlier won't matter as much as if you were going for lots of Silver and Gold. So instead of skipping Estate and play a Silver, you can skip an Estate and a Duchy and playing a Silver.

If you have more green cards, then yes it'll skip more green cards on average, but "how many green cards Venture skips" is not the right number to look at here when comparing to basic treasures. (Edit: The reason is that what's important is the proportion of green-to-treasure that Venture draws compared to the proportion of green-to-treasure in your deck. Skipping more green doesn't help you if you had to junk up your deck to get that effect.)

For the following discussion, assume there are no top-decking cards in play (like Rabble).

There are two kinds of green resilience relevant to us: this-turn value and next-turn sifting. By "this turn value", I mean how much the card gives on the turn you play it. By "next-turn sifting", I mean how much it improves the value of your next turn (and subsequent turns after that).

The this-turn value of Venture and basic treasures is unaffected by greening. For basic treasures, that's obvious, and for Venture it's because it skips over green. The this-turn value of Peddler is affected by greening, because the "+1 Card" effect will (on average) draw worse cards.

The next-turn sifting effect of basic treasures is obviously none, and for Venture it's essentially none except for when playing Venture triggers a reshuffle (which is complicated, but rare enough in BM decks that I think it's safe to ignore when discussing BM). There are two reasons for this: one is that playing Venture does not, on average, change the coin density of your deck (that's what the theorem says), and the other is that playing Venture does not change the probability of drawing any particular next hand (to see this, imagine Venture draws from the bottom of your deck instead of the top). The next-turn sifting effect of Peddler is obviously none, too.

In conclusion, for both types of green resilience, Venture exhibits the same behaviour as basic treasures do.

[ehunt]

I mean, clearly 10 ventures and 90 green cards is a better deck than 10 golds and 90 green cards.

Perhaps the only cases where "venture is more flexible in a very green deck" hold true are unrealistic ones like this, but people are acting like that claim is based on a logical fallacy, which it's not.

[blueblimp]

In fact, it's the other way round. If your average treasure value is $2, then venture behaves exactly like gold. Except that it speeds up reshuffling, which means you will draw the victory cards you buy earlier, and so BM decks with venture are less resilient to greening, not more.

This is the same fallacy as the theorem. When you reshuffle, you put cards into your draw pile, not into your hand. Without cards that skip other cards, every card in your draw pile eventually ends up in your hand, so these are often the same. But with Venture, this is not the case. Cards in your draw pile have a chance (proportional to the amount of Ventures you have) to never end up in your hand.

I think you're ignoring the effect of Venture effectively skipping treasures.

The first thing to be clear on here is how we count the value of the treasure Venture draws. One way is to add it to the value of Venture: if Venture draws a Silver, we think of the Venture as having value $3, and the Silver as being skipped. Call this the "variable-value" viewpoint. Another way is to think of Venture as a Peddler variant: if Venture draws a Silver, we think of the Venture as having value $1, and the Silver as being drawn into hand and then played. Call this the "peddler" viewpoint.

Both the variable-value and peddler viewpoints are valid ways to analyze Venture, but in my opinion it's easier to use the variable-value viewpoint when comparing to basic treasures. If we were comparing Venture to Peddler, then it would make sense to use the peddler viewpoint. When I don't specify, I use the variable-value viewpoint.

With the variable-value viewpoint, Venture skips both green and treasures. Sometimes more green, sometimes more treasures. On average, it's a neutral effect on your draw deck quality, except when playing Venture triggers a reshuffle.

With the peddler viewpoint, Venture skips only green and draws treasures. This shows it's more green-resilient than Peddler. But if you're comparing to basic treasures, you're comparing apples to oranges.

[blueblimp]

I mean, clearly 10 ventures and 90 green cards is a better deck than 10 golds and 90 green cards.

Perhaps the only cases where "venture is more flexible in a very green deck" hold true are unrealistic ones like this, but people are acting like that claim is based on a logical fallacy, which it's not.

In this case, every play of Venture is triggering a reshuffle, which requires a different analysis. I don't think this is the hang-up, since I mention this assumption (that Venture triggers a reshuffle effectively never) in nearly every post.

[cherdano]

In fact, it's the other way round. If your average treasure value is $2, then venture behaves exactly like gold. Except that it speeds up reshuffling, which means you will draw the victory cards you buy earlier, and so BM decks with venture are less resilient to greening, not more.

This is the same fallacy as the theorem. When you reshuffle, you put cards into your draw pile, not into your hand. Without cards that skip other cards, every card in your draw pile eventually ends up in your hand, so these are often the same. But with Venture, this is not the case. Cards in your draw pile have a chance (proportional to the amount of Ventures you have) to never end up in your hand.

Doesn't matter. If my average treasure value is $2, then I can compute the expected value of my hand just by
expected number of golds in my hand x 3 +
expected number of treasures in my hand x 3 +
expected number of silvers in my hand x 2 +
expected number of coppers in my hand.

I don't even have to think about skipping cards etc.

[Qvist]

Tip for next time Qvist: Once you post part one, reserve three more post spots so we don't have to go fishing through.

You don't have to go fishing. There's a link in the end of each post to the next part. Nevertheless, that's a good suggestion. I consider that for the next time.

[blueblimp]

This discussion got me thinking again about whether Venture helps or hurts when it triggers a reshuffle. I think it should be helpful. When it triggers a reshuffle, it causes the green in your draw deck to miss the shuffle, which is good. The cards in your hand also miss the shuffle, but they are average cards, so that shouldn't matter on average. As in the non-reshuffle case, the Venture on average doesn't help or hurt the new draw deck obtained from shuffling your discard pile, and that draw deck is a little better than it would otherwise be, because of green missing the shuffle.

[WanderingWinder]

I mean, clearly 10 ventures and 90 green cards is a better deck than 10 golds and 90 green cards.

Perhaps the only cases where "venture is more flexible in a very green deck" hold true are unrealistic ones like this, but people are acting like that claim is based on a logical fallacy, which it's not.

This has nothing to do with greening resiliency, but rather it is true because in such a deck, venture is effectively $10, (or 5 if you get 2, etc.), whereas gold is still worth 3. So duh it's better, it's worth way more. This is true with less green as well.

[blueblimp]

I mean, clearly 10 ventures and 90 green cards is a better deck than 10 golds and 90 green cards.

Perhaps the only cases where "venture is more flexible in a very green deck" hold true are unrealistic ones like this, but people are acting like that claim is based on a logical fallacy, which it's not.

This has nothing to do with greening resiliency, but rather it is true because in such a deck, venture is effectively $10, (or 5 if you get 2, etc.), whereas gold is still worth 3. So duh it's better, it's worth way more. This is true with less green as well.

Yes, but if multiple Ventures are drawn in hand, then you still only get $10 total, so Gold would be better if the deck is really slim. This is a weird case because, in a small deck, you will have a lot of Venture whiffs (where they flip through your whole deck and find nothing). Venture whiffs are bad, obviously. The card needs a different analysis when it's whiffing often (and whiffing is a special case of triggering a reshuffle, so no surprise there).

[ehunt]

I mean, clearly 10 ventures and 90 green cards is a better deck than 10 golds and 90 green cards.

Perhaps the only cases where "venture is more flexible in a very green deck" hold true are unrealistic ones like this, but people are acting like that claim is based on a logical fallacy, which it's not.

This has nothing to do with greening resiliency, but rather it is true because in such a deck, venture is effectively $10, (or 5 if you get 2, etc.), whereas gold is still worth 3. So duh it's better, it's worth way more. This is true with less green as well.

No, it's not, since a deck with ten ventures and no green is worth less than a deck with ten gold and no green.

[eHalcyon]

I mean, clearly 10 ventures and 90 green cards is a better deck than 10 golds and 90 green cards.

Perhaps the only cases where "venture is more flexible in a very green deck" hold true are unrealistic ones like this, but people are acting like that claim is based on a logical fallacy, which it's not.

This has nothing to do with greening resiliency, but rather it is true because in such a deck, venture is effectively $10, (or 5 if you get 2, etc.), whereas gold is still worth 3. So duh it's better, it's worth way more. This is true with less green as well.

No, it's not, since a deck with ten ventures and no green is worth less than a deck with ten gold and no green.

By what metric?

A deck with only 10 ventures and nothing else guarantees a province every turn up to 5 provinces, at which point there is a small chance of drawing an all-green hand, but you're still probably going to get your Province anyway.

A deck with only 10 golds and nothing else is about the same, but actually less reliable.  It stops guaranteeing a Province every turn after the third Province.