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Author Topic: When to NOT buy anything...  (Read 7121 times)

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tolenmar

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When to NOT buy anything...
« on: February 03, 2013, 04:20:05 pm »
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When I've played lately (mostly in bot mode on goko), I've noticed games where multiple times will come around where, aside for enough for provinces, I have enough coin in hand to buy any of several items, but feel that my deck is tuned well enough that buying things would ruin it (or at least not help). So occasionally, I'll play a hand as if it were a dead hand.  Sometimes this happens when I feel it it too early to start greening, in part because I fell that it will trigger the opponent into starting his greening.

Does this happen to anyone else? How often?
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qmech

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2013, 04:33:30 pm »
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There are certainly cases where I might not choose to buy anything.  If I'm building an engine that's weak on the +Cards and can only afford a Silver (but expect to be able to buy more useful things in future) I might pass, and if I have multiple Buys and have $2 left after an earlyish Province I won't be taking Estates.  However, I'd never stop buying things because I have "enough": I always want engine parts, for example, so would only pass on things that would be actively harmful.  This might include Silver in certain types of engine, but Silver is useful almost all the time in money games, even if playing with Colonies.

What sort of situations do you have in mind?
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dondon151

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2013, 04:47:56 pm »
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Aside from skipping a Silver early on with $3 or $4 in hand (if there are no other desirable $3s or $4s), then no, I will almost never not buy anything...

EDIT: oh, you mean not squeezing out every $ that you have on extra buys. Then yeah, Estates are very rare buys, and a handful of $2s are ones of which you don't want more than one.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2013, 05:01:05 pm by dondon151 »
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tolenmar

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2013, 04:55:46 pm »
+1

Well, keep in mind I'm still new at this. I only have Base+Seaside at home, and base on Goko.
And I'm not yet in the habit of saving goko logs (I didn't even know until a couple of days ago that goko kept logs).

Most of the situations where this happens, though, are when I have an engine that seems to be working well enough, aside for the occasional dead hand. Then I'll draw two or three coins.  I use Chapel, but don't think I need to stuff my deck full, if I have two (depending on the game), it rotates into play often enough for what I need. Buying estates just clogs up the works faster, and I only do that if I know I'm behind and need every point I can scrabble for, usually late-game. If my engine is regularly putting 4 silver (or 3 and some source of virtual coin), it seems wrong to just spend it on that. With things like Council room, market, or Festival in play, I get enough cards, buys and actions that I don't need woodcutter.

These are all just sample occurrences.  It just seems weird to have it happen in more than one turn in a game.  Of course, the real test is"am I winning?" and the answer to that is "usually." At least, against bots.  My win rate is still somewhat lower against real people, and that's fine.

It's mainly idle curiosity. After all, it seems to be working for me.
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qmech

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2013, 05:06:24 pm »
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Then I'll draw two or three coins.  I use Chapel, but don't think I need to stuff my deck full, if I have two (depending on the game), it rotates into play often enough for what I need. Buying estates just clogs up the works faster, and I only do that if I know I'm behind and need every point I can scrabble for, usually late-game. If my engine is regularly putting 4 silver (or 3 and some source of virtual coin), it seems wrong to just spend it on that. With things like Council room, market, or Festival in play, I get enough cards, buys and actions that I don't need woodcutter.

Not buying extra Chapels is very sensible—it would be a very odd game where you wanted more than one.  But Silver is almost always useful.  The kind of situation in which I would not want Silver is something like a Conspirator/Market deck where you can keep chaining things until you hit 5 Treasure or Victory cards.  But they're generally worth having—you might like to try picking them up with the otherwise dud hands.  If the same situation is coming up multiple times in a game then it could well be that your Treasure density is a little too low, and the extra Silver would help with that.
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tolenmar

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2013, 08:03:31 pm »
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I think generally, that's what I'm going to start doing. I guess it's better to have a hand full of silver than a hand of green, even if both end up with us not playing all of our other cards.  The difference being you get one province on a hand of silver instead of maybe a province and more engine parts or duchies.
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DG

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #6 on: February 03, 2013, 08:14:51 pm »
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I have a mostly written article called 'better than nothing?' that covers the potential problems of buying cheap action cards for the sake of it. Maybe I ought to finish it.
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soulnet

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #7 on: February 03, 2013, 08:22:40 pm »
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One thing to consider is that at some point you are going to green, so you better have a deck that is capable of absorving it and still buy Provinces (or at least, keep buying the Golds or the engine pieces you need at a similar rate). If you have a deck that is just 5 Silvers, that may sound great because your money average is 2, but as you may get away with 2 or even 3 provinces, you will definitely stumble after that and you will not survive a Duchy fight. Compare to having a deck with 20 Silvers. Even after greening a bit, you can pretty much depend on those silvers for the rest of the game.
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SirPeebles

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #8 on: February 03, 2013, 08:35:12 pm »
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It's usually better to buy more engines parts if you'd otherwise pass -- particularly getting more villages than you'd usually want.

One important exception is when you're a bit behind and the game is getting close to ending on three piles.  It may be better to pass than to deplete already short piles.  You need to use your judgment here.
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popsofctown

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #9 on: February 03, 2013, 08:47:40 pm »
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I pass up Silver lots of times.  Sure, Walled Village-Smithy-Militia might not be a sleek enough engine to make Silver a bad purchase, but there's lots of cards that cause an engine to reject Silver.  Throne Room, for instance, Silver can feel a whole lot like a curse if you've built a deck that uses Throne Rooms.
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Davio

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #10 on: February 04, 2013, 04:04:29 am »
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I've often passed when building a Hunting Party deck, but I feel I'm a bit too conservative. Couple of extra Silvers don't hurt that much.
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Morgrim7

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #11 on: February 04, 2013, 04:28:18 am »
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I've often passed when building a Hunting Party deck, but I feel I'm a bit too conservative. Couple of extra Silvers don't hurt that much.
Yeah, once your greening heavily, Silver is great.
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Davio

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #12 on: February 04, 2013, 08:23:57 am »
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I've often passed when building a Hunting Party deck, but I feel I'm a bit too conservative. Couple of extra Silvers don't hurt that much.
Yeah, once your greening heavily, Silver is great.
That too, but also I feel that not getting them nets me a tad too many unwanted $4's instead of crucial $5's.
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popsofctown

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2013, 10:19:27 am »
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I'm lost.  How does Silver -ever- hurt a Hunting Party deck?  The additional silvers are invisible, they should hurt even less?
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brokoli

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #14 on: February 04, 2013, 10:22:04 am »
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Nobody mentioned the bishop golden deck ?
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Davio

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #15 on: February 04, 2013, 10:25:24 am »
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I'm lost.  How does Silver -ever- hurt a Hunting Party deck?  The additional silvers are invisible, they should hurt even less?
Well obviously the more Silvers you have the less chance you have to start with one or multiple HPs in hand. But this becomes less of a problem as you get more HPs.

Basically you start with a clean shuffle every hand after a while so optimizing the chance of being able to start the chain is good.

I don't know if there is any mathematical optimum, but as I said I'm pretty sure I'm doing it wrong. Not sure if you should stop buying Silvers at any time though...
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SirPeebles

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #16 on: February 04, 2013, 10:26:49 am »
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Nobody mentioned the bishop golden deck ?

Doesn't come up often for someone playing Base+Seaside.  Perhaps there's double tac equivalent which Islands a Province each turn, and buys an additional one of each.
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popsofctown

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #17 on: February 04, 2013, 10:46:54 am »
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I'm lost.  How does Silver -ever- hurt a Hunting Party deck?  The additional silvers are invisible, they should hurt even less?
Well obviously the more Silvers you have the less chance you have to start with one or multiple HPs in hand. But this becomes less of a problem as you get more HPs.

Basically you start with a clean shuffle every hand after a while so optimizing the chance of being able to start the chain is good.

I don't know if there is any mathematical optimum, but as I said I'm pretty sure I'm doing it wrong. Not sure if you should stop buying Silvers at any time though...
That makes sense in a Colony game, but in a Province game if you are drawing 2 Hunting Parties, 2 silvers and a copper instead of 3 Hunting parties and 1 Copper, and 1 Estate, first world problems man, you're getting a Province either way.

Hunting Party decks don't usually need to wait around to double buy Provinces because they deal with Provinces cluttering the deck really well, so there's no reason to fear drawing a 5 Silver hand instead of a 5 Hunting Party hand.
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qmech

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #18 on: February 04, 2013, 01:35:08 pm »
+1

Hunting Party decks don't usually need to wait around to double buy Provinces because they deal with Provinces cluttering the deck really well, so there's no reason to fear drawing a 5 Silver hand instead of a 5 Hunting Party hand.

It's not about drawing HP/HP/HP/C/E instead of HP/HP/S/S/C—it's about drawing HP/C/C/E/P instead of S/C/C/E/P.
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popsofctown

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #19 on: February 04, 2013, 04:16:51 pm »
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Still a First World Problem, IMO.  Neither hand is likely to afford a Province.  Neither one will want to buy a Duchy, Duchies are pretty rough stuff in HP games.  The S/C/C/E/P player has an additional Hunting Party in his deck, so his prospects are much better next turn.  The HP/C/C/E/P player has wasted his Hunting Party because it's in a hand that shan't buy a Province.  And he only wants Provinces at this point, unless that Province in his hand is the only one in his deck, in which case he would be pretty interested in the difference between a Hunting Party purchase and the other hand's Silver purchase.  But if that is the only Province in his deck, man you are really cherry picking on me putting uniquely named victory cards in the sample hand.

« Last Edit: February 04, 2013, 04:20:18 pm by popsofctown »
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soulnet

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #20 on: February 04, 2013, 09:31:00 pm »
+1

If you have a good number of HPs, even a lousy hand like HP/C/C/E/P has a far-from-zero chance of buying a Province. That is the whole point of HPs, if you have more than one, that is great, but even just one can get you to the Province, because they chain so good in decks with low variability.
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jomini

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #21 on: February 06, 2013, 11:58:19 pm »
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Buying stuff that costs 2 or 3 just to use your cash is bad. Yeah sometimes you want to spam cheap 2 coin cards (e.g. Haven is normally pretty good), but you need to have a really good reason to turn down silver (or a correspondingly priced engine component). There are several such reasons though:
1. Treasures don't fit so well in your strategy. Double Tactician, Festival/Library, Bridge/Village/Smithy, etc. all have far more powerful cards than 1 or 2 silvers and space can be at a premium. A silver is a dead card in most double-Tac setups, can reduce your draw by 2 or 3 cards in Fst/Lib, and makes it that much harder to chain all your Village/Smithy combos up to mass play Bridges.
2. You need to keep your silver count down (e.g. none or only one silver). Menage is a classic example where you want exactly one silver, Hunting Party is also a possibility and some Horn of Plenty decks just don't have the space or need for an additional silver. Alchemy has Apothecary which doesn't want to trade 1 card of draw for 1 coin. Other copper centered decks, though not often dominant, often want to keep the silver count low - Countinghouse, Coppersmith, and anti-Noble Brigand decks all often want low silver count (and maybe even a copper buy instead of buying nothing).
3. You don't want the game to get closer to ending. It is rare to run out the silver pile, but a few cards like Trader can do it.  This is especially true for cheap engine components (like village) where you need time to recapture a lead and don't want to lose with curses, villages, and something else empty.
4. Cycling speed / hand space is fiendishly important. If you really, really can't afford your deck slowing down by one card because you play something key potentially one less time, don't grab the silver. This rarely is important, but a few cards, like Tournament, are important enough that at a certain point I will turn down silver in order to more quickly hit the important stuff (e.g. pairing Tournament with Province to get Followers).
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soulnet

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #22 on: February 07, 2013, 06:58:57 am »
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(e.g. pairing Tournament with Province to get Followers).

This last one seems dangerous, unless you have a borderline-reliable engine that don't want to break. If it is the usual rush-for-province BM+X with Tournaments, or some engine hybrid that does not draw a lot of your deck, then the Silver usually helps you overall, although it may hurt your Tournament being activated. However, a better economy is important, especially if your opponent gets Followers. More economy means more provinces means more activated Tournaments (and, btw, activating more due to Provinces is way better because of the points, but more importantly, because is denying opponent's Tournaments to draw and give coin).
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tolenmar

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #23 on: February 07, 2013, 09:23:25 am »
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Well, I still don't know how most of those cards work. But I am filing the info away for when I do. I try to let instinct guide me, and every once in a while, it just doesn't seem the right move to buy anything at all. But it is happening less and less these days.

Each month, I aim to pick up another box.  The plan is to grab Prosperity this time. After that, I figure it will be time to get Intrigue and replace some of those worn out coppers and estates. So little by little, I'll catch up with you all (I'm not a big online player). Until then, I have to take your word for it when you bring out specific cards I don't yet get to use.

Having said all that, I thank you for showing me that once in a while, even if controversial, there are times when you don't want to grab anything at all.  I think those are the times that will show who has skill, and who has luck, and are the kinds of games you remember.
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jomini

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #24 on: February 07, 2013, 10:55:56 am »
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(e.g. pairing Tournament with Province to get Followers).

This last one seems dangerous, unless you have a borderline-reliable engine that don't want to break. If it is the usual rush-for-province BM+X with Tournaments, or some engine hybrid that does not draw a lot of your deck, then the Silver usually helps you overall, although it may hurt your Tournament being activated. However, a better economy is important, especially if your opponent gets Followers. More economy means more provinces means more activated Tournaments (and, btw, activating more due to Provinces is way better because of the points, but more importantly, because is denying opponent's Tournaments to draw and give coin).

It is dangerous, but losing Followers can be more dangerous. On a board without discarding or curses getting Followers can easily be a 16 point swing (2 point swing each play of Followers and any of the following swinging duchies or provinces: discarding 2 coppers, having to discard a "dead" province and letting your opponent cantrip through their Tournaments, or having to discard provinces/gold on hands like Gold/Province/Province/Tournament/Tournament). It is awfully unlikely for a silver or two to swing more than 12 points, on some boards Followers can swing over 20. Particularly with something like Haven or Scheme out, Followers can become a race for who can draw their province first and the half turn that 2 or 3 Silver buys sets you back can be crippling.

Now even with the two strongest cards for needing high cycle rates - Tournament and Black Market, it is rare that you want to skip silver (at some point) to more quickly hit your big payout, but some power cards in the Black Market (e.g. Kc/Bridge/Tactician/Tournament) or a board where Followers is killer can tip the game towards going for increased cycling. Another common high variance card for this is Platinum. Once you have some Plat and a smattering of Gold, Silver actually decreases your treasure density and can be the Colony equivalent of buying a copper. For instance Gold/Moneylender/Estate x3 may mean ignore the Silver, it would just slow down how often you link up Plats/Golds.
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soulnet

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Re: When to NOT buy anything...
« Reply #25 on: February 07, 2013, 11:05:35 am »
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It is dangerous, but losing Followers can be more dangerous. On a board without discarding or curses getting Followers can easily be a 16 point swing (2 point swing each play of Followers and any of the following swinging duchies or provinces: discarding 2 coppers, having to discard a "dead" province and letting your opponent cantrip through their Tournaments, or having to discard provinces/gold on hands like Gold/Province/Province/Tournament/Tournament). It is awfully unlikely for a silver or two to swing more than 12 points, on some boards Followers can swing over 20. Particularly with something like Haven or Scheme out, Followers can become a race for who can draw their province first and the half turn that 2 or 3 Silver buys sets you back can be crippling.

I agree, my point is that a couple of silvers will not decrease the likelihood of you missing Tournament by a huge margin, and it will probably affect that in a single reshuffle, while the boost in economy may last several shuffles.
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