I read the doc. It wasn't clear to me. I was trying to put the bane next to Young Witch; I didn't understand the 11th card was supposed to be the bane.
I also haven't had a problem using + for specific cards. What's the difference?
Yeah, it's not clear at all. I was really just punting by sending you to those docs.
Okay, here goes. I don't blame you if you tl;dr, but it really is this complicated.
The generator takes a list of ten expressions, turns each expression into a sets of cards, randomly chooses one card from each. Valid expressions are single cards like "Ambassador" or categories like "Seaside" or "Cost 3".
But while a complete input requires ten comma-separated expressions, the interface will try to help you out if you enter fewer than ten. It'll fill in all the blanks with the last expression in your list. So if you enter
Ambassador, Attack, Seasideit'll convert that to
Ambassador, Attack, Seaside, Seaside, Seaside, Seaside, Seaside, Seaside, Seaside, SeasideIt'll then randomly draw one card from each of these ten sets. The first set only contains one card, so it always gets Ambassador for the first card. The second set consists of all the Attack cards in Dominon, so the second card is a random Attack. And the remaining seven cards are each random Seaside cards.
Where it gets tricky is that you have a
ton of syntactic power when writing an expression to describe a set. You can use "+" to mean "union", so
Seaside + Alchemy = {all cards in either expansion}
You can use "*" as "intersection", so
Seaside * Attack = {Ambassador, Cutpurse, Ghost Ship, Pirate Ship, Sea Hag}
And you can use "/" as "exclusion", so
Alchemy / Action = {Vineyard, Philosopher's Stone}
And the words that you can combine like this include all card types, all expansions, all costs, and all individual cards.
Now here's the surprising part, and the reason why the difference between "+" and "," is confusing. The most common use of the KG is entering an exact kingdom. That
should be done with commas:
Moat, Village, Conspirator, Sea Hag, Torturer, Market, Minion, Adventurer, King's Court, PeddlerBut surprisingly, you get the same result with plus-signs:
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + PeddlerHere's why: the KG looks at the entry, sees that there's no commas, and therefore it has only one expression. Since it needs ten, it replicates your entry nine times. So it's exactly as if you'd entered:
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + Peddler,
Moat + Village + Conspirator + Sea Hag + Torturer + Market + Minion + Adventurer + King's Court + PeddlerThe KG takes the first expression, generates the set (the union of those ten cards) and chooses one randomly. Then it does the same thing nine more times, rejecting duplicates. So it still ends up with the same ten-card kingdom, just as if you'd used commas.
But in all other cases, ignoring the difference between "+" and "," will generate errors or unexpected results. Say you want three particular cards and the rest random. You should enter:
Moat, Village, Conspirator, AllBut if you instead enter
Moat + Village + Conspirator, AllThen the KG sees only two expressions and eight blanks, which it fills by replicating the "All". So the first card gets drawn randomly from the set {Moat, Village, Conspirator} and the other nine are full random. So you only end up with one of the cards you asked for.
Finally, note that entering either of these expressions without the "All" generates an error. When the KG sees
Moat, Village, Conspiratorit gets Moat, Village, and then tries to draw all eight of the other cards from the single-card set {Conspirator}. Similarly, it'll take
Moat + Village + Conspiratorand end up trying to draw all ten cards from the three-cards set {Moat, Village, Conspirator}. Either way you get an error.
Oh, and then there's the multiplicative factors and the difference between
4 Seaside and
4 * Seaside, which I'm not even going to talk about.
IMO, the KG interface needs a major overhaul. This set-generating nonsense is neat if you're a mathematician and if you have really precise needs like
4 * Tournament + (Seaside * Cost 3) / Ambassador,
meaning that you want the card to be randomly "either Tournament or one of the $3 Seaside cards other than Ambassador, with Tournament being four times as likely to be selected as any other of the cards." But for most users most of the time, it's just unnecessary complication.
Oh, and the fact that the 11th card becomes the bane is undocumented. I didn't know that until Mic Q posted.
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Topic: Goko Dominion Salvager Discussion (Read 600778 times)