Dominion Strategy Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Pages: [1]

Author Topic: When not to go Horse Traders-Duke  (Read 1946 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

jotheonah

  • Jester
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 989
  • Respect: +949
    • View Profile
When not to go Horse Traders-Duke
« on: December 28, 2012, 05:31:17 pm »
0

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/28/game-20121228-142700-33759629.html

City and Expand are both really good reasons not to. Also, I might not have been doing it right.
Logged
"I know old meta, and joth is useless day 1 but awesome town day 3 and on." --Teproc

He/him

zahlman

  • Minion
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 724
  • Respect: +216
    • View Profile
Re: When not to go Horse Traders-Duke
« Reply #1 on: December 29, 2012, 12:04:33 am »
0

I'd think the City player benefits a lot from grabbing a couple Horse Traders, too, for earlier +Buy and because a City deck often has more draw than it can use. But then, there was no real trashing here, so...
Logged

KingsSkort

  • Thief
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 91
  • Respect: +88
    • View Profile
Re: When not to go Horse Traders-Duke
« Reply #2 on: December 29, 2012, 03:52:59 am »
0

I feel like your opponent caught a lot of luck here. Until duchies pile out he's on straight-up city/conspirator, which is terrible. Plus he has to gain some duchies himself. Expand is great for him, but he had to hit almost every single potential coin in his deck on T8/T9 to pick up two that early.
Logged

DG

  • Governor
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4074
  • Respect: +2624
    • View Profile
Re: When not to go Horse Traders-Duke
« Reply #3 on: December 29, 2012, 09:28:14 am »
0

I wasn't sure about what happened in the game so I put this through the simulator. The two approaches seem pretty even but the city deck will be stronger with human decision making. Some of the optimizations might be

Horse traders - buy a few horse traders before taking duchies, always take extra coppers
Cities - take an early smithy (or two), buy out the cities instead of contesting the dukes
Logged

jotheonah

  • Jester
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 989
  • Respect: +949
    • View Profile
Re: When not to go Horse Traders-Duke
« Reply #4 on: December 29, 2012, 11:14:24 am »
0

Well, my thinking was just that going Duke-Duchy I was emptying his city piles for him, without having the opportunity to contest the cities at all.

And Expand allowed him to grab Dukes and Duchies even when they weren't helping his score and then turn them into Provinces.

I'm happy to hear that the strategies are close theoretically.
Logged
"I know old meta, and joth is useless day 1 but awesome town day 3 and on." --Teproc

He/him

cherdano

  • Moneylender
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 166
  • Respect: +54
    • View Profile
Re: When not to go Horse Traders-Duke
« Reply #5 on: December 29, 2012, 02:07:56 pm »
0

I wasn't sure about what happened in the game so I put this through the simulator. The two approaches seem pretty even but the city deck will be stronger with human decision making. Some of the optimizations might be

Horse traders - buy a few horse traders before taking duchies, always take extra coppers
Cities - take an early smithy (or two), buy out the cities instead of contesting the dukes
Did you add a horse trader or two to the city engine?
Logged

meandering mercury

  • Ambassador
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 34
  • Respect: +36
    • View Profile
Re: When not to go Horse Traders-Duke
« Reply #6 on: December 29, 2012, 02:59:08 pm »
0

I think this board could be played using Horn of Plenty as a linchpin. Here was my first try at it, but I think you could do better:

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/29/game-20121229-114329-cdb85971.html

With a human opponent it'd be different, of course. In the time it takes the Duke player to pick up e.g. 6 Duchies, the engine player could pick up 4 cities and 2 duchies plus 1-2 smithies probably. Once the duchies are emptied it'll be off to the races and you could draw most of your deck, Expand out useless components or Trader copper to improve reliability, buy Dukes and expand them to deny you, and finish off with a HoP megaturn.
Logged
Pages: [1]
 

Page created in 0.115 seconds with 20 queries.