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[dondon151]

A double-jack can drain the provinces as fast as 18 turns a reasonable percentage of the time, iirc. If I ever work out how to get the simulator back up, I can give you a better answer on that.

I got maybe about 19 turns solitaire with decent luck and ignoring smaller VP. But obviously you aren't going to get to 8 Provinces in 18-19 turns in this matchup once the engine starts forcing you to discard or take Curses as early as turn 12. And if you do get to 8 Provinces, it's not 48 VP that Vineyards has to beat, but more like 42 VP.

The other thing is emptying piles occasionally. Yes, jonts scores a zillion more points than that, but he also takes it to the brink of three piling like every time, and if you are sharp, you can potentially do something with gardens. Or at least have the threat of this to slow the opponent down a touch. Anyway, less than 1% is ridiculous - engine can definitely draw quite a bit worse than he did, money can draw better.

How are you going to empty piles? You don't have extra buys. The engine doesn't need 10 Cities, 10 GMs, and 10 Torturers to fire consistently. It'll take, say, 5 turns to pick up 5 remaining cards in the supply. 5 turns by that point in the game is enough for an engine to roll all over you.

Similarly, you can't do much of anything with Gardens. Picking up Gardens means that you're volunteering to prolong the game even further. Plus you only pick up 1 Gardens every turn, anyway. Like I said in my previous post, if engine sees opponent start to pick up Gardens, then he should let it happen. Vineyards can outscore Provinces + Gardens anyway, and the engine will be done with the Vineyard stack before the money strategy will be done with the Gardens stack.

[jonts26]

A double-jack can drain the provinces as fast as 18 turns a reasonable percentage of the time, iirc. If I ever work out how to get the simulator back up, I can give you a better answer on that.

I got maybe about 19 turns solitaire with decent luck and ignoring smaller VP. But obviously you aren't going to get to 8 Provinces in 18-19 turns in this matchup once the engine starts forcing you to discard or take Curses as early as turn 12. And if you do get to 8 Provinces, it's not 48 VP that Vineyards has to beat, but more like 42 VP.

The other thing is emptying piles occasionally. Yes, jonts scores a zillion more points than that, but he also takes it to the brink of three piling like every time, and if you are sharp, you can potentially do something with gardens. Or at least have the threat of this to slow the opponent down a touch. Anyway, less than 1% is ridiculous - engine can definitely draw quite a bit worse than he did, money can draw better.

How are you going to empty piles? You don't have extra buys. The engine doesn't need 10 Cities, 10 GMs, and 10 Torturers to fire consistently. It'll take, say, 5 turns to pick up 5 remaining cards in the supply. 5 turns by that point in the game is enough for an engine to roll all over you.

Similarly, you can't do much of anything with Gardens. Picking up Gardens means that you're volunteering to prolong the game even further. Plus you only pick up 1 Gardens every turn, anyway. Like I said in my previous post, if engine sees opponent start to pick up Gardens, then he should let it happen. Vineyards can outscore Provinces + Gardens anyway, and the engine will be done with the Vineyard stack before the money strategy will be done with the Gardens stack.

The thing with the engine is, you get almost all of your points in the last 2 turns maybe. And it's not really worth it to green early. On my luckier tries, I would be able to get more than 48 points by turn 18. But an average try was maybe turn 19. So an average or worse luck on the engine coupled with best luck on the BM will likely work out for a win for BM.

Though I do agree with the piles. As long as the engine player doesn't do anything stupid, the BM pile won't be able to win on piles. There was at least one game where I intentionally stopped playing torturers to prevent that.

[WanderingWinder]

A double-jack can drain the provinces as fast as 18 turns a reasonable percentage of the time, iirc. If I ever work out how to get the simulator back up, I can give you a better answer on that.

I got maybe about 19 turns solitaire with decent luck and ignoring smaller VP. But obviously you aren't going to get to 8 Provinces in 18-19 turns in this matchup once the engine starts forcing you to discard or take Curses as early as turn 12. And if you do get to 8 Provinces, it's not 48 VP that Vineyards has to beat, but more like 42 VP.

The other thing is emptying piles occasionally. Yes, jonts scores a zillion more points than that, but he also takes it to the brink of three piling like every time, and if you are sharp, you can potentially do something with gardens. Or at least have the threat of this to slow the opponent down a touch. Anyway, less than 1% is ridiculous - engine can definitely draw quite a bit worse than he did, money can draw better.

How are you going to empty piles? You don't have extra buys. The engine doesn't need 10 Cities, 10 GMs, and 10 Torturers to fire consistently. It'll take, say, 5 turns to pick up 5 remaining cards in the supply. 5 turns by that point in the game is enough for an engine to roll all over you.

Similarly, you can't do much of anything with Gardens. Picking up Gardens means that you're volunteering to prolong the game even further. Plus you only pick up 1 Gardens every turn, anyway. Like I said in my previous post, if engine sees opponent start to pick up Gardens, then he should let it happen. Vineyards can outscore Provinces + Gardens anyway, and the engine will be done with the Vineyard stack before the money strategy will be done with the Gardens stack.

Jacks can grab grand markets. I very nearly did this to jonts one time.

Well, yeah, 15% might be a bit high. But it's got to be better than 0.

[WanderingWinder]

I should note that even though money falls a couple turns slow if engine player goes well, it's still a rich, interesting set. Swap out something like banks for something like salvagers, money has a pretty good shot. Even getting rid of gardens might do it.

[dondon151]

Jacks can grab grand markets. I very nearly did this to jonts one time.

You got 3 GMs, and one of them could have been a Province. But in any case, even with a couple of GMs, you are trying to pile out at a meager rate of 2 cards per turn. That still takes quite a while.

Well, yeah, 15% might be a bit high. But it's got to be better than 0.

I did say less than 1%, which is better than 0%

[WanderingWinder]

Jacks can grab grand markets. I very nearly did this to jonts one time.

You got 3 GMs, and one of them could have been a Province. But in any case, even with a couple of GMs, you are trying to pile out at a meager rate of 2 cards per turn. That still takes quite a while.

Well, yeah, 15% might be a bit high. But it's got to be better than 0.

I did say less than 1%, which is better than 0%

You start earlier. And the 2 gardens are worth more than a province anyway.
It really can't be less than 5%.

Edit: Not that that matters. Point is, it's clearly worse, but engine player needs to play well to execute the win.

[RisingJaguar]

Wait, Stef still won?

[Davio]

The thing is: How easy is it for the engine player to switch it up if the money player has good shuffling?

Does the engine player's option B still beat the money player's only available strategy?

[DStu]

I remember having played a game engine vs. BigMoney where I lost against BM which three piled me.  I think it was also HoP megaturn for me.  Left 4 Envoys on the table, thought 3 turns would me more than enough.  Now one of this turns happens to be "junk" (HoPs), as it happens with so many HoPs and a Village/Smithy-like engine and maybe not perfect trashing.  One turn got lost to a double Envoy buy from my opponent due to a Market.  And the one remaining turn was not enough.
Now probably taking the 6th Envoy was already a mistake as it was not necessary, and not taking it would have given me the turn I needed.  But at this point it seemed quite save to me.