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[ilpars]

Rule suggestion: 2nd player wins if draw in 2 player game

Reasoning: It is common knowledge that 2nd player is in a huge disadvantage in a 2 player game.
This will help to even the odds. (And I hate draws.)

[Thisisnotasmile]

The second player only has a "huge" disadvantage if the first player gets an extra turn, and in the case of a tie in this situation the win is awarded to the second player. If both players take the same number of turns, the first player may have had a small advantage or no advantage at all, depending on the board. It is possible (but unlikely) that the second player even had the slight edge in this situation.

Edit: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=91.0

[guided]

I'm with TINAS; the official rule is fine. I vastly prefer draws to capricious tiebreakers in any game.

[goober]

I agree with the OPs suggestion (at least for competitive play).  The first player has an advantage even in games that end in even turns, as they always have the ability to end the game (or threaten to end the game) with a slight lead for the win having taken one more turn than their opponent.  The second player can only choose to end a game after even turns, and still must have a lead to win.  The second player can choose to end the game in a tie, but this is of very little advantage.  They can also see what the first player does, which can be a big advantage in certain situations, but I think is not as valuable as a potential extra turn on most boards.   Not knowing the kingdom cards, I would choose to go first even if ties were counted as wins for the second (or last-playing player involved in the tie in multiplayer).   I would be interested to see an analysis of councilroom data regarding win rate based on table position for all players (remembering that better players tend to play in second position more often).  Plus, who likes playing for a tie?

[guided]

Not knowing the kingdom cards, I would choose to go first even if ties were counted as wins for the second (or last-playing player involved in the tie in multiplayer).

Doesn't matter. The 2nd player will sometimes (even if rarely) be at no disadvantage, and if you give them a win in that situation with a tie score, that's capricious and (IMO) wrong. Let ties be ties. Some gamers I know would be happier if they just realized ties aren't inherently evil. Dominion is a quick game; play another one to break the tie.

If a tiebreaker ever breaks a tie arbitrarily, in favor of a player who has in no way demonstrated they played the better game, then it's a bad tiebreaker.

[rod-]

Doesn't matter. The 2nd player will sometimes (even if rarely) be at no disadvantage, and if you give them a win in that situation with a tie score, that's capricious and (IMO) wrong. Let ties be ties.

The 1st player will often be at a great advantage.  I personally don't mind ties at all (and think i have more of them than most people, as I have no qualms forcing a draw) but giving the player who is at a disadvantage a "capricious" advantage in the rare situation where they can manage to score an identical number of points in an identical number of turns seems fine.  27 draws in 1300 games (2%?) seems like the least that can be done to pad the 2p win rate, considering that it's natively down more than 10%.

[WanderingWinder]

Doesn't matter. The 2nd player will sometimes (even if rarely) be at no disadvantage, and if you give them a win in that situation with a tie score, that's capricious and (IMO) wrong. Let ties be ties.

The 1st player will often be at a great advantage.  I personally don't mind ties at all (and think i have more of them than most people, as I have no qualms forcing a draw) but giving the player who is at a disadvantage a "capricious" advantage in the rare situation where they can manage to score an identical number of points in an identical number of turns seems fine.  27 draws in 1300 games (2%?) seems like the least that can be done to pad the 2p win rate, considering that it's natively down more than 10%.

Yeah, but there's just lots of boards where second player has no (or virtually no) disadvantage. I'd say 40% of the time, the advantage is less than maybe 2-3%, 20% it's maybe 4-5%. It's the other 40% where first player can have up to like a 30% advantage that really kills. Of course I just made these numbers up, and they're wildly divergent ranges. But anyway, it's very very board dependant. Also I don't think the 10% is quite the right number if the games were played better by both players - it's probably less than that...

[guided]

The 1st player will often be at a great advantage.

So what? Swap seats and play another game. Or bid points for turn order after seeing the board. Don't give 2nd player 2% victories that they didn't earn as if it somehow justly compensates for them losing other, unrelated games because of seating order.

It's capricious, unjust, whatever you want to call it, to say "OK since 2nd player is usually at a disadvantage in scoring points, we'll let them win this game where they succeeded in scoring the same number of points in the same number of turns without regard to whether they overcame any sort of actual disadvantage."

[rod-]

I've never drawn a game from the 2nd position where i didn't feel like i'd fully earned my shared victory.  Fine, you can keep calling it a draw.  I'll keep feeling like it was a win.

[Buggz]

According to the rules.. it IS a win! 










But I'll still call it a draw.

[guided]

According to the rules.. it IS a win! 

Ahahaha yes, true enough

[tlloyd]

... in the rare situation where they can manage to score an identical number of points in an identical number of turns...

Repeat this to yourself out loud a few times.

Now notice that in this circumstance there probably has not been a huge P1 advantage - at least not yet. P1's advantage is that he might end the game on his turn with a slight lead, and thus win, even if P2's next turn would have given P2 the lead. If P2 ends the game having scored just as many points in just as many turns, then P1 and P2 performed equally and should get the tie. Of course if P1 requires an extra turn to get the same points, P2 deserves the win.

The exception to this is when the kingdom contains attack cards, in which case P1 has an advantage even after equal turns, because his third turn was free from the threat of P2's attack, but not vice versa. But this luck is partly compensated by P2's having more information on turn 1 than P1 did, and is dwarfed by the cumulative shuffle luck over the whole of the game.

If you feel as P2 that you lost due to seating, keep playing (taking turns as P1) until someone wins as P2 - i.e., twice in a row. But even then you can't escape the fact that luck is part of the game.

[guided]

Yes! I agree with all of that.

[rod-]

I still feel like, when i play in the 1st position, I win unfairly often, even when my strategy and draws are nothing special.  In a game this morning, I tried to put together an AWFUL wishing well/pearldiver/horn of plenty "deck" on a board where the upside to all of those cards was a "bonus" gold about 6 shuffles in.  My opponent played more or less big money+harvest, as was right on the board (because there were no attacks, no +cards, etc) and was on track to get his 5th province with a duchy backup on turn ~18, except i snuck in a 4th province and cashed in the horn of plenty for a duchy on the last turn with an above-average draw.  Some circumstance had me up 1 estate, so i "won".  It felt wrong.  Sure, I "got lucky" at the end and /could/ have lost, but I played really sub-optimally and /should/ have lost.

You can't really even blame the opponent for buying the penultimate province, as he was ahead by 8 on the purchase and there was only 1 HoP in my deck.

I would really prefer an 18th turn for my opponent, even if the province pile is empty, as it would've been very easy to just grab a duchy.  It's not the rules, so it's obviously not going to change, but as long as there are points left available to be gained, and he hasnt' had the same number of turns as me...it seems more fair.  I'd argue that there should also be a phantom province too, but that's obviously a completely different game.

[Epoch]

I still feel like, when i play in the 1st position, I win unfairly often, even when my strategy and draws are nothing special.  In a game this morning, I tried to put together an AWFUL wishing well/pearldiver/horn of plenty "deck" on a board where the upside to all of those cards was a "bonus" gold about 6 shuffles in.  My opponent played more or less big money+harvest, as was right on the board (because there were no attacks, no +cards, etc) and was on track to get his 5th province with a duchy backup on turn ~18, except i snuck in a 4th province and cashed in the horn of plenty for a duchy on the last turn with an above-average draw.  Some circumstance had me up 1 estate, so i "won".  It felt wrong.  Sure, I "got lucky" at the end and /could/ have lost, but I played really sub-optimally and /should/ have lost.

Hey, that was me!

Meh, I don't know that it was that big a deal, and I'm pretty sure that I bought a Gold in the late game when I should've bought a Duchy, so, honestly, just my bad play.