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[hughes]

So I've been in several situations where I had to decide to force a tie or proceed and go for the win.  I was wondering what others on the board thought of this.

You're behind on provinces, duchies are just about done.  You finally struggle to get back up to $8 and if you buy the last province you know you will tie, but you don't think you can last or you're pretty sure your opponent's next turn is going to be a doozy.

Philosophical question: Should you always be striving for a win, is a tie better than a loss or something else?

[ackack]

You should do what gives the best result. If I can grab a tie, the decision is usually whether I have a substantially better chance of winning outright in the next couple turns than my opponent. Most of the time I'll take the tie, perhaps suboptimally.

[ftl]

Philosophically - a win is better than a tie, a tie is better than a loss.

Less philosophically - it's your game, play it however you feel like. The rulebook doesn't call it a tie, it says that "both players rejoice in their shared victory", so you can interpret it that way if you like.

More practically - make an estimate based on how well you think you're doing. In MOST cases I would guess that it's better to take the tie - after all, afterwards, your opponent has the first chance to take the lead and you're playing catchup. They've got a one-turn advantage and are likely to win. (If you had the chance to end the game with a tie, with an equal hand they have the option to end the game with a win).

There may be exceptions (say, your engine just got going and they have a BM deck and can't end the game on piles like you can, or you just had a KC->attack turn and saboteured/swindled/otherwise crippled their engine cards, or you've been counting cards and know they have a bad hand, or something) but in general I *think* the tie is the most beneficial option. (Better players, please correct me if I'm wrong!)

[AJD]

I'd go for the tie. As ftl notes, according to the rules in the case of a tie you both win, and winning's good enough for me.

[Jimmmmm]

To whoever knows such things: how do Isotropic rankings deals with ties/shared victories?

[DStu]

To whoever knows such things: how do Isotropic rankings deals with ties/shared victories?

Probably like this

Draw
If both player had similar mean skills upfront (thus |μwinner-μloser| < ε) then both player are already close enough together and no mean skill point update needs to be made; hence the uncertainty is not reduced. However, if one player was thought to be much stronger by the TrueSkill ranking system before the game (let's say,μwinner-μloser > ε) then his mean skill will be decreased and the other player's mean skill will be increased which, in effect, brings their two mean skill closer together.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/details.aspx

[rrenaud]

The tie == win thing is lame.

Consider that we could just both agree to buy out 3 piles without scoring any points.  Yay, mutual victory!

[ftl]

We could. But where would be the fun in that?

[DStu]

We could. But where would be the fun in that?

As far as I understood rrenaud, exactly that was his point...

[Thisisnotasmile]

The tie == win thing is lame.

Consider that we could just both agree to buy out 3 piles without scoring any points.  Yay, mutual victory!

The point of Dominion is not to win, it is to make your opponents lose.

[Fangz]

Really, if you want to win, there's one strategy that will guarantee victory 99% of the time. It's this:

Buy as many non-terminal actions as possible, preferably ones that require choices.
Play them one by one.
In between every action, wait precisely 1 minute and 59 seconds.

Do this and you can be pretty sure your opponent will resign first, resulting in victory!

[Thisisnotasmile]

Really, if you want to win, there's one strategy that will guarantee victory 99% of the time. It's this:

Buy as many non-terminal actions as possible, preferably ones that require choices.
Play them one by one.
In between every action, wait precisely 1 minute and 59 seconds.

Do this and you can be pretty sure your opponent will resign first, resulting in victory!

Do that to me and I'll report you to Dougz and I'm pretty sure he'd take action (he has done in the past and it was my suggestion that resulted in the implementation of a time-out to start with).

Also, that doesn't work in Dominion. Only on Isotropic. People often forget that Isotropic is merely an online implementation of the actual game of Dominion.

[Fangz]

(I was being sarcastic...

Anyway, personally I prefer to consider tied wins to be just as good as wins. I'm not very competitive eh...)

Also that'd totally work in real life...

[Mean Mr Mustard]

Sometimes a tie is a victory, like in a recent game where my opponent used his opening Jester to knock out my opening Vault on turn three.  I was really happy to get the tie.

It may be lame, but I always grab a tie, because I am already one turn behind and in those situations I have never felt like I had the upper hand.

[DStu]

Also, that doesn't work in Dominion. Only on Isotropic. People often forget that Isotropic is merely an online implementation of the actual game of Dominion.

This should even work better in "reality". As far as I remember the rules, there is no time limit there in playing cards. So theoretically, you could just wait as long as you want. Your opponents could of course just ban you for this, but strictly by the rules of the game they don't have the authority to do this, so you could moraly consider yourself a winner, beause they broke the rules, if you dare to do it.

Unless of course you assume a universal "you don't do something like that"-rule, like a "you don't keep track of the game state on a sheet of paper"-rule

Don't really want to open Pandora's bix again, so just for amusement...

[Fangz]

Heck, if you are in luck, they might forget they were playing a game altogether, making you the undisputed master of dominion and indeed every other board game ever!

[krawhitham]

You're behind on provinces, duchies are just about done.  You finally struggle to get back up to $8 and if you buy the last province you know you will tie, but you don't think you can last or you're pretty sure your opponent's next turn is going to be a doozy.

This answers itself for me: If you are fairly certain your opponent will win next turn there is no 'shame' in accepting a draw.

Perhaps if you are playing face to face or don't care about ranking you could say "I could buy the last province for a draw this turn, but I'm going to risk not buying it to make it more interesting".

It's only a game after all *runs for cover*

[guided]

I'll take the draw most of the time. It's usually more likely that playing on will result in a loss.

Sure, I'll let the game continue and play for the win if I think I'm more likely to win than lose by doing so. Those situations are pretty rare though, and I for one am vastly more averse to losing than I am averse to tying instead of winning.

[hughes]

Sometimes a tie is a victory, like in a recent game where my opponent used his opening Jester to knock out my opening Vault on turn three.  I was really happy to get the tie.

It may be lame, but I always grab a tie, because I am already one turn behind and in those situations I have never felt like I had the upper hand.

I was thinking about something similar to this.  If I've been ahead the whole game, I'd probably push for the win.  If I've struggled hard to catch up and he's play 3 wharves on his previous turn, I'd rather take the tie than risk a loss.

Also, Thisisnotasmile is mean.

[Kirian]

I will almost always grab the tie.  My opponent is already ahead, is in seat 1, and has a very high chance of taking a victory card next turn, making it harder for me to get the win.  The single exception might be where both our decks are horribly wrecked but I know most of my good stuff is still available in my deck.