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Author Topic: Shelters exacerbate 5/2  (Read 25295 times)

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microman

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #25 on: September 03, 2012, 12:56:46 am »
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I'd say it's MUCH better to now open with Great Hall on a 3 with a Hovel, but estate still seems really bad imo.
Yeah, i totally agree, and furthermore there should never be an excuse to replace one dead card with another, unless it is something that is really going to help you(like province).
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UltimaPenguin

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #26 on: September 03, 2012, 01:08:59 am »
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I think the potential problem of not having hovel in hand on your later vp-buying turns is a good point.

This would be an interesting thing for some simulations...
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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #27 on: September 03, 2012, 01:23:38 am »
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Now the question is how often does it actually matter? I'd say probably not that much. If you're going to be able to trash the card anyway, it doesn't matter at all

Well, if you're going to be trashing it with something like Upgrade, for instance—or any trash-for-benefit or trash-to-gain where the result depends on the cost of the trashed card—it might make a difference.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #28 on: September 03, 2012, 01:37:14 am »
+1

I think the potential problem of not having hovel in hand on your later vp-buying turns is a good point.

This would be an interesting thing for some simulations...

I can say from playing a couple dozen or so games with Shelters that having Hovel in your hand on a VP-buying turn comes up quite a bit. Maybe, I just got lucky with my shuffles, but it does seem to be a rather common occurrence.
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Asklepios

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #29 on: September 03, 2012, 04:34:51 am »
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Also, I think the right question is: In a non-Shelters game, when you buy your first Province, would you trash an Estate from your hand if you magically could. Since we're used to Estates games, this phrases the question that way - it's not as much about taking a free Estate as freely trashing an Estate (or not).

I agree with this.

There's often a psychology amongst non-beginner non-expert players that estates are universally bad and should always be trashed when you can.

But as the end of the game approaches, a single VP might be the difference between victory and loss, for example in a 4:4 province split.

In my opinion, you generally SHOULD be trashing that Hovel for an Estate if you have $2 and nothing better to spend it on. Essentially, its 1VP gained for no slowdown of the deck now, versus a one-card deck trimming that comes in the mid to late game. In the mid to late game, the effect of trashing is far less beneficial than in the early game.
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Dulkal

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #30 on: September 03, 2012, 05:02:08 am »
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In my opinion, you generally SHOULD be trashing that Hovel for an Estate if you have $2 and nothing better to spend it on. Essentially, its 1VP gained for no slowdown of the deck now, versus a one-card deck trimming that comes in the mid to late game. In the mid to late game, the effect of trashing is far less beneficial than in the early game.
In a game that is likely to be decided on the province split, I agree with you.

In heavy cursing games or alt-VP games however, that 1 point is much less likely to make the final difference.
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O

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #31 on: September 03, 2012, 05:34:36 am »
+1

....nope, I still wouldn't buy the estate.

Keep in mind the Province question is not the only relevant one here. You can also, say buy a duchy earlier than you would have if it'll trash your hovel.

The question is "is hovel or estate a better card for me to have at the beginning of the game", not any fancy questions about when you would start greening.

There's often a tendency on F.DS to try to make slightly mitigating statements to generally true statements about dominion. I think this is because most serious dominion players tend to be geeky pedants (me included). You generally don't want estates.

In reality it's not whether or not it will be decided on the province split (ESPECIALLY if it's 4-3 vs 5-2 because you'd still be tied). It's about how small/long of a window there is from when the first VP will normally/conditionally be bought, to when the game will end (whether by provinces/colonies or 3pile).

The point really is that Hovel doesn't in the slightest exacerbate 5-2.

Finally, I'd remind people that Shelters are thematically supposed to be better than estates, and
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ehunt

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #32 on: September 03, 2012, 10:40:56 am »
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Also, I think the right question is: In a non-Shelters game, when you buy your first Province, would you trash an Estate from your hand if you magically could. Since we're used to Estates games, this phrases the question that way - it's not as much about taking a free Estate as freely trashing an Estate (or not).

Well, not really. You also have to figure in the probability that your Hovel is in your hand when you buy your first Province (when you would trash an Estate if you could) vs. later in endgame (when you would keep an Estate).

Yeah, this is why I said "turn ten" in my examples. That was a (poorly thought-out) estimate of "the expected value of the turn on which you first are able to buy a province and have a hovel in hand." It's actually probably too early; eleven or twelve is maybe better.

I was treating "you can buy a province" with "you have a hovel in hand" as independent events when "computing" this expected value; they're not: if your hand starts life with a hovel in it, it's a hand that's less likely to be able to buy a province (and actually, in an engine deck the dependence may be the other way; if you're drawing your deck half the time, the turns on which you have a hovel in hand during the buy-phase are more likely to coincide with the turns in which you can buy a province).
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ehunt

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #33 on: September 03, 2012, 10:44:34 am »
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tl;dr

VERDICT: buying an estate with hovel in hand early in the game when you have nothing better to buy is a weak move that is occasionally correct, is usually incorrect, but very rarely matters either way, much like buying an estate with an extra buy late, but not very late, in the game.
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Dulkal

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #34 on: September 03, 2012, 01:47:46 pm »
+1

tl;dr

VERDICT: buying an estate with hovel in hand early in the game when you have nothing better to buy is a weak move that is occasionally correct, is usually incorrect, but very rarely matters either way, much like buying an estate with an extra buy late, but not very late, in the game.

</thread>
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #35 on: September 03, 2012, 05:31:07 pm »
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tl;dr

VERDICT: buying an estate with hovel in hand early in the game when you have nothing better to buy is a weak move that is occasionally correct, is usually incorrect, but very rarely matters either way, much like buying an estate with an extra buy late, but not very late, in the game.

I doubt is "usually incorrect". Just because it's not often beneficial doesn't mean it's usually incorrect.
I would say it usually doesn't matter. It's occasionally correct. And it's rarely incorrect.
 
Cases when Estate > Hovel:
 - trash for benefit (fairly common in Dark Ages games)
 - things that benefit from having more VP cards in your deck (pretty rare)
 - close BM games where 1 point matters (fairly rare, but not exceedingly rare in games without trashing)

Cases when Hovel > Estate:
 - games where you can't trash the Estate at all and are able to trash the Hovel soon enough that having one less card in your deck makes a difference (pretty rare)

In order for buying the Estate to acutally hurt you, you should be unable to trash the Estate. Right there you probably have 60% of games where it can't be harmful to buy the Estate (maybe not beneficial, but at least not harmful). Then, in these non-trashing games, how early do you really get to trash Hovel? Since you couldn't trash into an engine, it's not that likely that you're able to get Hovel in your first VP-buying hand. It's more likely you trash it with like 2 shuffles left at the most. So you have 1 less card in a deck of size ~25 (since you couldn't trash) for 2 shuffles. Odds that that benefits you? Pretty slim. Maybe slightly less slim than the odds of the 1 point making the difference.

So bullet 3 of Estate>Hovel is a little less common than Hovel>Estate. But when you throw in bullet 1, I'm pretty sure buying the Estate is good more often than it is bad (not that it's likely to matter either way).
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O

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #36 on: September 03, 2012, 11:52:09 pm »
0

tl;dr

VERDICT: buying an estate with hovel in hand early in the game when you have nothing better to buy is a weak move that is occasionally correct, is usually incorrect, but very rarely matters either way, much like buying an estate with an extra buy late, but not very late, in the game.

I doubt is "usually incorrect". Just because it's not often beneficial doesn't mean it's usually incorrect.
I would say it usually doesn't matter. It's occasionally correct. And it's rarely incorrect.
 
Cases when Estate > Hovel:
 - trash for benefit (fairly common in Dark Ages games)
 - things that benefit from having more VP cards in your deck (pretty rare)
 - close BM games where 1 point matters (fairly rare, but not exceedingly rare in games without trashing)

Cases when Hovel > Estate:
 - games where you can't trash the Estate at all and are able to trash the Hovel soon enough that having one less card in your deck makes a difference (pretty rare)

In order for buying the Estate to acutally hurt you, you should be unable to trash the Estate. Right there you probably have 60% of games where it can't be harmful to buy the Estate (maybe not beneficial, but at least not harmful). Then, in these non-trashing games, how early do you really get to trash Hovel? Since you couldn't trash into an engine, it's not that likely that you're able to get Hovel in your first VP-buying hand. It's more likely you trash it with like 2 shuffles left at the most. So you have 1 less card in a deck of size ~25 (since you couldn't trash) for 2 shuffles. Odds that that benefits you? Pretty slim. Maybe slightly less slim than the odds of the 1 point making the difference.

So bullet 3 of Estate>Hovel is a little less common than Hovel>Estate. But when you throw in bullet 1, I'm pretty sure buying the Estate is good more often than it is bad (not that it's likely to matter either way).

Inferior with Nobles, Great Hall, Island, Tunnel, Farmland on board than. AKA a rather high percentage.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #37 on: September 04, 2012, 12:52:51 am »
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^Nobles with no trashing is probably a bad idea. With trashing, Estate vs Hovel doesn't really matter. Great Hall you pretty rarely ever want to buy early in no-trash games as well. Island with no Estates in you deck, what's the point? With Farmland, Hovel is better if you want to trash it into a 3, otherwise you're not likely to be able to buy Farmland, and have something you want to trash besides the Hovel along with the Hovel in hand.

Tunnel. Yes. You don't want to buy Estate in a Tunnel game.
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O

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #38 on: September 04, 2012, 12:55:56 am »
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Nobles with no trashing is not probably a bad idea...
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brokoli

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #39 on: September 04, 2012, 02:55:48 am »
+1

Island with no Estates in you deck, what's the point?

With no trashing, this is probably a good idea (buy Island, trash hovel and set aside the island later with an overgrown estate, necropolis or even copper, it's not bad).
Even with trashing, Island is so good...
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Davio

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #40 on: September 04, 2012, 03:27:10 am »
+4

What I found with Shelters is that often they're a nice little upgrade over your Estates, but they're not spectacular.

In the end the Shelters don't really make that much of a difference.
If you have devised a good strategy for a certain board, chances are it would've worked without Shelters anyway. It's not like: Wow, I have Shelters, I'm going to do something completely different!

There are some decisions, but they're so marginal that you're really talking about adding maybe 1 percent of winning chances. And in a single game, random shuffle luck is going to be more of a factor than when you're going to trash your Hovel.

I would have liked to see some other cards in their place in the box.

They're cute, just not game warping, and why would they be? Of all the "If you play with X cards from this expansion, there's an 1 in X% chance of playing with this" Colonies are obviously the most important.

Necropolis may make you think "hey, I can open double terminal now!", but you could already do that without Shelters and the risk of collision with non-drawers was still acceptable. Now, if you open double Swindler for instance, you need to have Necropolis in hand AND the two Swindlers to reap any benefits. And Swindler is worse with Shelters, since hitting an opponent's Shelter is way too good for them.

In conclusion I'm underwhelmed by Shelters. You can't expect $1 cards to work wonders, but to me it's unnecessary "cuteness" which Dark Ages has a tendency to bring into the game.

Another Alt VP card is something I would have liked more.
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Asklepios

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #41 on: September 04, 2012, 04:06:48 am »
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....nope, I still wouldn't buy the estate.

Keep in mind the Province question is not the only relevant one here. You can also, say buy a duchy earlier than you would have if it'll trash your hovel.

Hadn't considered that... Yeah, I think that tips it the other way for me.

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anlin_wang

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #42 on: September 04, 2012, 04:23:38 am »
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What I found with Shelters is that often they're a nice little upgrade over your Estates, but they're not spectacular.

In the end the Shelters don't really make that much of a difference.
If you have devised a good strategy for a certain board, chances are it would've worked without Shelters anyway. It's not like: Wow, I have Shelters, I'm going to do something completely different!

There are some decisions, but they're so marginal that you're really talking about adding maybe 1 percent of winning chances. And in a single game, random shuffle luck is going to be more of a factor than when you're going to trash your Hovel.

I would have liked to see some other cards in their place in the box.

They're cute, just not game warping, and why would they be? Of all the "If you play with X cards from this expansion, there's an 1 in X% chance of playing with this" Colonies are obviously the most important.

Necropolis may make you think "hey, I can open double terminal now!", but you could already do that without Shelters and the risk of collision with non-drawers was still acceptable. Now, if you open double Swindler for instance, you need to have Necropolis in hand AND the two Swindlers to reap any benefits. And Swindler is worse with Shelters, since hitting an opponent's Shelter is way too good for them.

In conclusion I'm underwhelmed by Shelters. You can't expect $1 cards to work wonders, but to me it's unnecessary "cuteness" which Dark Ages has a tendency to bring into the game.

Another Alt VP card is something I would have liked more.

This. I like this.
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ftl

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #43 on: September 04, 2012, 04:27:04 am »
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Well, they're certainly cute though! I like them.
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dondon151

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #44 on: September 04, 2012, 04:36:30 am »
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If you have devised a good strategy for a certain board, chances are it would've worked without Shelters anyway.

I think it's more common for Shelters to discourage a certain strategy than to encourage one. Cards like Remodel, Salvager, Upgrade, Apprentice, etc. are much weaker in the earlygame with Shelters instead of Estates in the deck. Swindler, as pointed out, is weaker too. On the other hand, Menagerie and Fairgrounds like the starting variety...
« Last Edit: September 04, 2012, 04:38:01 am by dondon151 »
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Qvist

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #45 on: September 04, 2012, 06:15:10 am »
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If you have devised a good strategy for a certain board, chances are it would've worked without Shelters anyway.

I think it's more common for Shelters to discourage a certain strategy than to encourage one. Cards like Remodel, Salvager, Upgrade, Apprentice, etc. are much weaker in the earlygame with Shelters instead of Estates in the deck. Swindler, as pointed out, is weaker too. On the other hand, Menagerie and Fairgrounds like the starting variety...

Yeah, I think that's the point. Shelters don't make a real change in strategy, but discourage certain "standard strategies" like Ambassador (especially in 3+ player) or especially Hunting Party and Baron/Silk Road.

Davio

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #46 on: September 04, 2012, 07:18:32 am »
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If you have devised a good strategy for a certain board, chances are it would've worked without Shelters anyway.

I think it's more common for Shelters to discourage a certain strategy than to encourage one. Cards like Remodel, Salvager, Upgrade, Apprentice, etc. are much weaker in the earlygame with Shelters instead of Estates in the deck. Swindler, as pointed out, is weaker too. On the other hand, Menagerie and Fairgrounds like the starting variety...

Yeah, I think that's the point. Shelters don't make a real change in strategy, but discourage certain "standard strategies" like Ambassador (especially in 3+ player) or especially Hunting Party and Baron/Silk Road.
Well, that's not necessarily a bad thing I guess, because Ambassador games are so tedious and Hunting Party games are so standard.
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Qvist

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #47 on: September 04, 2012, 07:21:37 am »
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If you have devised a good strategy for a certain board, chances are it would've worked without Shelters anyway.

I think it's more common for Shelters to discourage a certain strategy than to encourage one. Cards like Remodel, Salvager, Upgrade, Apprentice, etc. are much weaker in the earlygame with Shelters instead of Estates in the deck. Swindler, as pointed out, is weaker too. On the other hand, Menagerie and Fairgrounds like the starting variety...

Yeah, I think that's the point. Shelters don't make a real change in strategy, but discourage certain "standard strategies" like Ambassador (especially in 3+ player) or especially Hunting Party and Baron/Silk Road.
Well, that's not necessarily a bad thing I guess, because Ambassador games are so tedious and Hunting Party games are so standard.

Yeah, not a bad thing. You can't just go in auto mode, you have to take Shelters into account before choosing a strategy, similar like checking if Platinum/Colony is on the board.

HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #48 on: September 07, 2012, 02:36:13 am »
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Ok, one last conclusion for me here. There are times when buying an Estate is obviously good (TfB), and times when it's obviously bad (if you're going to want to buy other early VPs anyway). If it's hard to tell, odds are it won't make a difference at all.
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jomini

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Re: Shelters exacerbate 5/2
« Reply #49 on: September 07, 2012, 01:46:44 pm »
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Another consideration is if you plan on using any scaling TfBs over the course of the game. For instance, if you are planning on using expand or forge, then getting 1 more coin of value into the deck at no space cost is not a bad deal. Even things like salvager or apprentice like having the hovel get replaced earlier by the estate.

There are also a few setups where you'd rather have something with a card type of victory over hovel: xroads, silk road, ironmonger, and rebuild can all work better with the estate than the shelter.
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