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[Polk5440]

Dominion is a strategy game. It's at its best when there are lots of interesting decisions to make before (engine? money? or alt VP?) and during play (do I need to alter/switch strategies in response to my opponents' choices?).

I don't like playing random kingdoms (on Iso or IRL) where there is effectively no interesting strategic decision to be made, and the outcome is effectively determined entirely by shuffle luck. Honestly, randomly choosing Kingdoms usually leads to strategically uninteresting Kingdoms too often, for my taste. The speed at which some people expect the game to go on Iso (or how fast the animations should go on Goko) is one indicator of how often this happens.

But, we don't have to choose Kingdoms completely randomly! I like using old tournament decks and saving Kingdoms which were randomly drawn but turn out to be interesting and then switching them up a little another time. But, there is no arguing with the speed and efficiency of setting up a random Kingdom.

I would like a better way of quickly choosing interesting Kingdoms. I think the most promising way of doing this is a stratified random choice.

Here's the question for you: How would you choose strata to trade off the following two Kingdom-choosing criteria?:

1) maximize the chance of a strategically interesting Kingdom (e.g. multiple paths to Victory, non-obvious strategic synergy among cards, or interesting choices during play)
2) Play is varied Kingdom to Kingdom. (In other words, avoid the feeling that each Kingdom drawn from the strata "play the same" even if there are many choices to be made in the Kingdom itself.)

(Strata do not have to be mutually exclusive, here, but that would be benefit because it would be easier to divide the randomizers up into piles.)

For instance:

A) 2 Villages, 2 drawers, 1 trasher, 1 plus buy, 1 each of $2, $3, $4, and $5 cards.

or maybe:

B) 1 alt Victory, 1 alt Treasure, 1 plus buy, 1 $5 card, 6 random.

[Donald X.]

Wei-Hwa Huang wrote a program to generate good sets of 10. It may end up part of Goko, I'm not sure.

His approach was to give each card categories; to have some categories be ones you want less of once you get them, some be something you want if you don't have it, some be things you want more of once you have them, you know; and then it all turns into weightings. It picks cards one at a time, and the chance of a given card being chosen next goes up as it fills more criteria based on what we already have.

There was still a question of, if a card fills a bunch of slots, do you give it a bad weighting to start so that it doesn't show up constantly.

[AHoppy]

I agree that this sounds like an interesting idea, but at the same time, even the dull random kingdoms may not be as dull as you may think.  Even when BM looks like the best strategy, there's usually something that you or the other player has missed that you can do to make it more interesting.  Even if your strategies are similar, there is still variety and you have to figure out which is slightly better.  But that's just how I see it.  Probably has to do with the fact that I and the people I play with aren't experts...

[clb]

Wei-Hwa Huang wrote a program to generate good sets of 10. It may end up part of Goko, I'm not sure.

His approach was to give each card categories; to have some categories be ones you want less of once you get them, some be something you want if you don't have it, some be things you want more of once you have them, you know; and then it all turns into weightings. It picks cards one at a time, and the chance of a given card being chosen next goes up as it fills more criteria based on what we already have.

There was still a question of, if a card fills a bunch of slots, do you give it a bad weighting to start so that it doesn't show up constantly.

Any chance we could get him to put that someplace we can access it (whether it is on Goko or not)? I would love to use that, and if Market showed up too often, we could just swap it out. Does it do Dark Ages? I suspect it might also do Guilds, which means we would have to wait until after that releases?

[Donald X.]

Any chance we could get him to put that someplace we can access it (whether it is on Goko or not)? I would love to use that, and if Market showed up too often, we could just swap it out. Does it do Dark Ages? I suspect it might also do Guilds, which means we would have to wait until after that releases?

Well you could ask him yourself. He's onigame at BGG.

[Polk5440]

Wei-Hwa Huang wrote a program to generate good sets of 10. It may end up part of Goko, I'm not sure.

That's good to know.... Is there a description of it anywhere on f.ds?

There was still a question of, if a card fills a bunch of slots, do you give it a bad weighting to start so that it doesn't show up constantly.

Yes, that is important. Having the same cards come up all the time kind of violates my condition 2 above.

[Polk5440]

I agree that this sounds like an interesting idea, but at the same time, even the dull random kingdoms may not be as dull as you may think.  Even when BM looks like the best strategy, there's usually something that you or the other player has missed that you can do to make it more interesting.  Even if your strategies are similar, there is still variety and you have to figure out which is slightly better.  But that's just how I see it.  Probably has to do with the fact that I and the people I play with aren't experts...

True. Dominion is a good game, so any kingdom has some minimum level of fun and strategy, but there is definitely high variance in strategic opportunities across Kingdoms.

[Polk5440]

I'd still like to hear people's thoughts. Anyone have a favorite way of choosing kingdoms at home?

Added challenge: best way to do stratified random kingdoms when strata ARE mutually exclusive (so randomizer piles can be divided up at home)?

Suggestions?

EDIT: Poll added.

[Davio]

I'd still like to hear people's thoughts. Anyone have a favorite way of choosing kingdoms at home?

Added challenge: best way to do stratified random kingdoms when strata ARE mutually exclusive (so randomizer piles can be divided up at home)?

Suggestions?

I generally avoid nasty attack cards like Torturer, Sea Hag or Ambassador.

The reason for this is twofold:

1. If I'm playing with experienced players, all will understand the importance of these cards and the game will become both a luckfest (whoever lands his double or triple Torturer first) and a drag. I mean, you're already sacrificing economy for Sea Hag and with a deck full of Curses, the game will go on forever. Even more so with Ambassador, those games just never end. To me these cards make the kingdom more boring, not more interesting.

2. If I'm playing with inexperienced family members, cards like this aren't any fun for them. These cards will turn them off to the game. Yeah, the cards aren't targeted, but still. We just don't feel the need to screw each other over as much as we can in a game, it's not part of our culture and not part of our family values.

In fact, I will go as far as claiming that I hate all cards that mess with an opponent's deck. This kind of "here's a Witch, in your face!" conflict feels just very ameri to me. I don't need it, I don't want it. Dropping 7 Curses into an opponent's deck because of a lucky Familiar split doesn't make me happy. Outsmarting him with a sophisticated engine does.

I like setups which have multiple roads to victory. Attack cards are often so dominant that both players will get them and they exaggerate the first player bias.

If Cursers and Looters wouldn't have been part of the Dominion culture, that wouldn't have made me sad. In fact, it would have made me very happy as this would leave room for other interesting cards.


On the other hand, I'll often throw in a Fishing Village.

[chwhite]

I'd still like to hear people's thoughts. Anyone have a favorite way of choosing kingdoms at home?

Added challenge: best way to do stratified random kingdoms when strata ARE mutually exclusive (so randomizer piles can be divided up at home)?

Suggestions?

I generally avoid nasty attack cards like Torturer, Sea Hag or Ambassador.

The reason for this is twofold:
...

In fact, I will go as far as claiming that I hate all cards that mess with an opponent's deck. This kind of "here's a Witch, in your face!" conflict feels just very ameri to me. I don't need it, I don't want it. Dropping 7 Curses into an opponent's deck because of a lucky Familiar split doesn't make me happy. Outsmarting him with a sophisticated engine does.

I like setups which have multiple roads to victory. Attack cards are often so dominant that both players will get them and they exaggerate the first player bias.

If Cursers and Looters wouldn't have been part of the Dominion culture, that wouldn't have made me sad. In fact, it would have made me very happy as this would leave room for other interesting cards.

The problem with this is that Attacks- including and especially nasty ones like Ambassador, Torturer, and even Saboteur, give you more roads to victory and allow you to win with sophisticated engines.    In addition to the good things they do for you (deck-thinning for Amb, +Cards for Torturer, etc.), by slowing your opponent down they provide that crucial element- time- to build your clever engine and catch up.  Even Sab can be crucial here, by giving you a possible path to victory after your opponent has over half the Victory points.

Take these cards away, and you don't have a situation where you can "Outsmart [your opponent] with a sophisticated engine", you have an environment where the best plan all-too-often requires a maximum of BM+X and a minimum of creativity. 

Okay, I guess you could take away Familiar, that one is just swingy without being particularly interesting.  But I'd be sad to live in a world where PStone and Transmute were useful even less often than they already are.

[Schneau]

...

The problem with this is that Attacks- including and especially nasty ones like Ambassador, Torturer, and even Saboteur, give you more roads to victory and allow you to win with sophisticated engines.    In addition to the good things they do for you (deck-thinning for Amb, +Cards for Torturer, etc.), by slowing your opponent down they provide that crucial element- time- to build your clever engine and catch up.  Even Sab can be crucial here, by giving you a possible path to victory after your opponent has over half the Victory points.

Take these cards away, and you don't have a situation where you can "Outsmart [your opponent] with a sophisticated engine", you have an environment where the best plan all-too-often requires a maximum of BM+X and a minimum of creativity. 

Okay, I guess you could take away Familiar, that one is just swingy without being particularly interesting.  But I'd be sad to live in a world where PStone and Transmute were useful even less often than they already are.

I agree entirely. I used to think of attacks as "crap, that's going to mess up my deck"; now I try to think of them as "how do I build my deck to do the best in this interestingly different and slower environment". Attacks give Dominion a much larger space of interesting games and strategies, since they slow down the game and allow different things to happen that would never happen without them. This is one reason I often like Cursers in games, and now also Looters. They make you play a different, interesting way that expands the space of interesting Dominion games.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I like to require the presence of at least one village, one buy, and one attack. This doesn't make it so there's always an engine, but it's very easy to implement and it makes the odds of completely dull BM games much smaller. I don't care that much about dull games on iso, since they go so fast anyway. But IRL, the time spent actually playing the uninteresting game isn't really worth it.

[Davio]

...

The problem with this is that Attacks- including and especially nasty ones like Ambassador, Torturer, and even Saboteur, give you more roads to victory and allow you to win with sophisticated engines.    In addition to the good things they do for you (deck-thinning for Amb, +Cards for Torturer, etc.), by slowing your opponent down they provide that crucial element- time- to build your clever engine and catch up.  Even Sab can be crucial here, by giving you a possible path to victory after your opponent has over half the Victory points.

Take these cards away, and you don't have a situation where you can "Outsmart [your opponent] with a sophisticated engine", you have an environment where the best plan all-too-often requires a maximum of BM+X and a minimum of creativity. 

Okay, I guess you could take away Familiar, that one is just swingy without being particularly interesting.  But I'd be sad to live in a world where PStone and Transmute were useful even less often than they already are.

I agree entirely. I used to think of attacks as "crap, that's going to mess up my deck"; now I try to think of them as "how do I build my deck to do the best in this interestingly different and slower environment". Attacks give Dominion a much larger space of interesting games and strategies, since they slow down the game and allow different things to happen that would never happen without them. This is one reason I often like Cursers in games, and now also Looters. They make you play a different, interesting way that expands the space of interesting Dominion games.

I disagree.

If their only purpose is to slow the game down, that could have been done in various other ways. Treasure cards could have been made more expensive for instance. Provinces could have been made to cost $9. Now this will probably break the game in a couple of ways, I'm just saying attacks aren't the only way.

I feel the opposite way, Attacks give Dominion a much larger space of boring and luckbased games. I'm talking about the heaviest attacks here, the Cursers and Looters, I don't mind the occasional Cutpurse although it can be quite nasty and decisive at times.

I'm willing to concede to Militia as a way to slow the game down for a BMU player. I don't mind that if that's its main purpose. It doesn't screw with an opponent's deck, just his hand and the victim can choose what to discard.

But obligatory attacks you can't ignore on 90% of the boards like the Cursers just aren't any fun when playing on a similar level. You get a Sea Hag, I get a Sea Hag, you Sea Hag my Sea Hag, gg, snore..zzzz....

[HiveMindEmulator]

^I'm with chwhite and Schneau on this one. If you take away attacks, there's almost no point in playing the game. You're just both playing a solitaire game where maybe you have to watch out for piles or something.

I do agree with you that some of the stronger attacks can snowball, and if there's no appropriate defense, you can get a bad game, which feels worse than the bad BM game due to the length, but I think you get better games more often with attack cards than without. Without attacks, stuff like Courtyard BM is just way too strong.

[Davio]

^I'm with chwhite and Schneau on this one. If you take away attacks, there's almost no point in playing the game. You're just both playing a solitaire game where maybe you have to watch out for piles or something.

I do agree with you that some of the stronger attacks can snowball, and if there's no appropriate defense, you can get a bad game, which feels worse than the bad BM game due to the length, but I think you get better games more often with attack cards than without. Without attacks, stuff like Courtyard BM is just way too strong.

Well, I'm not talking about simply taking out all attacks and leaving the rest of the game as it is.
Obviously, when you make any change to the game you have to consider the impact. The game isn't designed to work without attacks, the game is designed with attacks in mind.

What I would have liked to see is that the game would have been designed without Cursers, or at least the strongest attacks which have a tendency to turn a lot of games into boring luckfest mirrors. I'm not against attacks in general, there are a lot of minor attacks which can be just as annoying and I'm okay with some interaction.

It's just the killer attacks that have such a big influence on the kingdoms they're in. Not all Dominion cards are created equal. There's a reason Counting House is among the bottom $5's and Mountebank is among the top.

Then again, we might keep forgetting that Dominion was designed for more than 2players. In those games, buying reaction cards make more sense and this leads to more interesting games I believe.

There's also more indirect interaction. I once played a game where 2 players chose Ambassador on auto pilot and the other player laughed all the way to the bank with his Gardens.

[vintermann]

The thing about attacks, and cursers especially, is that they often have a runaway character with an early (possibly random) advantage translating into a huge one later. But they're not the only cards which have this. It's just a feature of Dominion, as Davio says it would take a full redesign to change it, at which point you'd have another game anyway.

One of the reasons I was so interested in Gauntlet of Fools is that while it appears a simpler game than Dominion, it has fewer runaway effect since there's no building up of strength (barring the occasional character of weapon, like the sack of loot). In general, a tactical error late in the Gauntlet phase should have almost as big effect as an early one.

I played Kingdom Builder for the first time yesterday (OK, this does start to sound like alt.fan.dxv), and that game has very little runaway effect as well, compared to Dominion.

[brokoli]

Well, I somehow agree with Davio, strong attacks are definitely not my favourite cards of the game : witch, mountebank, sea hag, torturer, and even ghost ship, militia, IGG.
But :

- The games with good defenses to the attacks are interesting and fun. This is why I like masquerade, lighthouse, embargo, trader, gardens, library/menagerie (against militia/ghost ship), etc...
- I love looters, I love cultist. This card is very interesting strategically and not as brutal as witch. Cultist is very strong of course, but more pacifist.
- Young witch is another exception because you always have a bane.

So, I would like to see more defenses (and I hope that the trashers like Rats or Junk dealer in Dark Ages can make cursers a little worse),

[Davio]

So, I would like to see more defenses (and I hope that the trashers like Rats or Junk dealer in Dark Ages can make cursers a little worse),

This is something I can agree with!

The biggest reason I don't care for the strong attacks is not because people may cry when they get KC-Mountebanked, boohooooo, it's because there's often not a sufficient defense or alternate strategy. I'm sure my Councilroom stats for Mountebank's Gain% was close to a 100%.

Okay, I've gone on about attacks too long now, time for something different and more interesting.

What about (theoretically since the site is down) using Councilroom data to select potentially interesting kingdoms?
It would go something like this:

- Use the data from all players and weigh them according to a player's rating, so the percentages from a very good player are more meaningful than those from a guy who has no clue what he's doing
- Non typical kingdom cards that have a high Gain% should be selected less often: Obviously these cards are too dominant and have gravitational effects: The kingdom tends to revolve around them most of the time. I'm not talking about basic cards like Province or Gold here.

This will almost certainly cause the strong Cursers to appear less often and Scout and Adventurer to appear more often (no Scout jokes needed), but is that a bad thing? I don't think so, I think it's a good thing. I'd rather have a dead card that makes me evaluate the other 9 cards equally than a dominant card that makes me focus on that single card.

It's not as clear cut as this, since games with Mountebank may offer some other useful cards to help you play it more often and certainly, there's strategy to be found in those details, it's just not the kind of small strategy I enjoy.

Thoughts on this thought experiment?

[Polk5440]

What about (theoretically since the site is down) using Councilroom data to select potentially interesting kingdoms?
It would go something like this:

- Use the data from all players and weigh them according to a player's rating, so the percentages from a very good player are more meaningful than those from a guy who has no clue what he's doing
- Non typical kingdom cards that have a high Gain% should be selected less often: Obviously these cards are too dominant and have gravitational effects: The kingdom tends to revolve around them most of the time. I'm not talking about basic cards like Province or Gold here.

This will almost certainly cause the strong Cursers to appear less often and Scout and Adventurer to appear more often (no Scout jokes needed), but is that a bad thing? I don't think so, I think it's a good thing. I'd rather have a dead card that makes me evaluate the other 9 cards equally than a dominant card that makes me focus on that single card.

I like the idea of using the Council Room data to get a better handle on what is interesting. What's Gain%? How often you win when you gained one in a game?

I do appreciate the above points that attacks might be more balanced (leave open the possibility of an alternate strategy) in 3 or more player games than 2 player games.

Bishop creates interaction; attacks create interaction. But Bishop seems to more often allow alternate strategies because the best response to someone buying a Bishop isn't always "I need to buy a Bishop, too!"

[Davio]

Gain% is simply: Given the total number of games that this card was available for this player, how often did he gain/buy it?
So if it was available in 200 games and a player gained it in 150 of those games, the Gain% would be 75%.

I don't know how Black Market is handled or if it's even considered for this; I hope not.

[HiveMindEmulator]

So I think the problem is less with attacks and more with snowballing. I think Wharf causes way more runaway games than Witch, for example. It has nothing at all to do with attack vs non-attack. It's just about the card being strong and being able to snowball. Hitting KC+Wharf is more lights-out than KC-Witch. The reason is that Witch drags the game out giving you time to recover, whereas Wharf makes the game faster, giving the losing player less time to come back.

Now being behind in a longer game can feel more frustrating because it lasts longer, but you're actually in a better position in terms of chance of winning than being behind in a short game. I would personally much rather play a Witch game than a Wharf game most of the time, particularly if I'm not first player.

Regarding Gain%, A lot of the time I use veto mode to just knock out the most popular card so I can try to play more obscure strategies.

[popsofctown]

Here's how I would use Councilroom:

Take a sample of games where both players are highly skilled.
If the game was a complete mirror, where we define a complete mirror as a game where no player gained a kingdom card that no other player gained, penalize the cards that actually were gained, and define that set as a "distasteful set".  So if IGG is the only kingdom card gained, we just call IGG, itself, bad. 
If IGG/Cutpurse was the mirror, then we call the IGG/Cutpurse set bad. IGG/Cutpurse will probably force even more mirrors, so it probably has an even uglier score.
Using this process, go through all the logs and identify all the "bad cards" and "bad sets". 
Then try to find the remedies, the cards that make the bad cards and bad sets fail to mirror.  So we look for all the game where IGG/Cutpurse appeared, but the game wasn't a mirror.  We find, hey, Young Witch was in that game.
Then you decrease the probability that IGG/Cutpurse appears in general, but increase the probability it appears when Young Witch is around to compensate.
Does that make sense?

The nasty bit is that it's hard to get a solid definition of what a mirror really is.  If one guy gets 2/5 and so he buys a Lighthouse to start the IGG rush mirror it looks like he was doing something different but he wasn't really.  If one guy buys a Remodel for his IGG rush and the other doesn't then that is a more substantial change in strategy.

I know there is definitely some sort of awesome algorithm that could turn Councilroom data into a godlike kingdom designer, and I doubt it even needs to be perfect.

[petrie911]

It's not as though games without attacks are any less luck based.  Your carefully built engine can come up entirely in the wrong order near the end of the game where it's most important to close it out.  You can constantly draw $7 with your money deck, or even draw a hand of all victory cards late game, losing a full turn.  King's Court/Bridge leads to incredibly swingy games where whoever gets KC/KC/Bridges off first just flat out wins.

Also, there's a problem with selecting against high gain% cards.  You can't just keep them out of the pool, so there will probably be at least 1 on the table.  Since the other cards will generally be of lower power level, the high gain% card is even more likely to take over the game.

This kind of "here's a Witch, in your face!" conflict feels just very ameri to me.

ameri?

[Polk5440]

Here's how I would use Councilroom:

Take a sample of games where both players are highly skilled.
If the game was a complete mirror, where we define a complete mirror as a game where no player gained a kingdom card that no other player gained, penalize the cards that actually were gained, and define that set as a "distasteful set".  So if IGG is the only kingdom card gained, we just call IGG, itself, bad. 
If IGG/Cutpurse was the mirror, then we call the IGG/Cutpurse set bad. IGG/Cutpurse will probably force even more mirrors, so it probably has an even uglier score.
Using this process, go through all the logs and identify all the "bad cards" and "bad sets". 
Then try to find the remedies, the cards that make the bad cards and bad sets fail to mirror.  So we look for all the game where IGG/Cutpurse appeared, but the game wasn't a mirror.  We find, hey, Young Witch was in that game.
Then you decrease the probability that IGG/Cutpurse appears in general, but increase the probability it appears when Young Witch is around to compensate.
Does that make sense?

The nasty bit is that it's hard to get a solid definition of what a mirror really is.  If one guy gets 2/5 and so he buys a Lighthouse to start the IGG rush mirror it looks like he was doing something different but he wasn't really.  If one guy buys a Remodel for his IGG rush and the other doesn't then that is a more substantial change in strategy.

I know there is definitely some sort of awesome algorithm that could turn Councilroom data into a godlike kingdom designer, and I doubt it even needs to be perfect.

I really like that approach. Sounds like it would take some serious coding, though. Ignoring the opening buy or games with different starting hands might be a way to identify the imposter non-mirrors.

[Voltgloss]

Here's what I've been doing IRL recently.

1)  Pick three expansions to run through as a "set."

2)  Each game, deal 3 cards from the randomizer deck from each expansion, plus 1 extra that rotates (first game from Set #1, second game from Set #2, third game from Set #3, etc.).  If one of the expansions is half-size, deal 4-4-2 each game instead. 

3)  After each game, set aside from the randomizer decks the cards used during that game, and draw the next game's cards exclusively from those that haven't yet been used.  EXCEPTION:  if a card was on the table but NO ONE ever gained it, put that card BACK in the randomizer deck.

4)  Repeat until all cards in the expansions have been used.  (Pick a few favorites to round out the last game of the "set" if you don't have 10 cards.)