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[Schneau]

I personally feel Chapel should cost $4, simply because Chapel/- vs. Chapel/$3 seems more fair than Chapel/$5 vs. Chapel/$4. I haven't playtested this at all, but too much of the time it feels like Chapel/$5 vs. Chapel/$4 is as close to an auto-win as you can get in turns 1 and 2, and those games just aren't very fun to play.

I think ragingduckd's suggestion of better starting hands is a bit drastic, but not as far off the mark as others are making it out to be. But, there are other, less drastic measures you could use to ensure more equality without changing the cost of Chapel. One is to ensure same starting hands, which has already been used quite a bit on Isotropic, especially in tournaments.

A slightly more radical change would be to allow players to choose their starting hand, in secret, before the game started. This would add (some) skill to the starting split, though I'm guessing that many times it would be obvious. If you wanted to slightly reduce first player advantage, you could even let the first player decide first and take their opening buy, and then let the second player decide their split (followed by third player, etc.). This probably wouldn't make a huge difference in first player advantage, but would make things like Witch/Moat opening decisions on a 4 player board much more interesting.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Online, this tactic is not nearly so effective. Anyone can spout off 1349 words (yup) of quibbles, irrelevancies, and ad hominim attacks without interruption. When this happens, it leaves me with the uncomfortable choice of either challenging the argument point by point (and thereby creating as ponderous and unreadable a tome as what I'm responding to) or letting those points pass unchallenged.

Didn't you know WW stands for WanderingWallOfText?

[SirPeebles]

One early lesson that many of us learned opening Chapel is that you need to think carefully about which card you pair it with, and the reason is because you are going to be quickly trashing your Coppers and need some foundation to rebuild from.  Chapel/- would hurt a lot more than X/- openings usually do.  It would be nearly as dangerous as opening Mint.  I think that this disadvantage would actually be worse than the current advantage.

[Just a Rube]

If you wanted to slightly reduce first player advantage, you could even let the first player decide first and take their opening buy, and then let the second player decide their split (followed by third player, etc.). This probably wouldn't make a huge difference in first player advantage, but would make things like Witch/Moat opening decisions on a 4 player board much more interesting.

Edge case: Noble Brigand

[ragingduckd]

Thanks, WW. That's clearer and a whole lot easier to reply to. I'm happy to put the rest behind us if you are.

Edit: oh, and same to you. Succinctly, why should it cost $3?

Remake, Steward, and Ambassador seem more consistent with Chapel at $3 than at $4, but your argument about opening splits is compelling. I'd also like for Chapel to be less obligatory on T1/T2, so that's another argument for $4. Really though, it's the 2/5 splits with Chapel that I find most objectionable, so any number bigger than 2 is good by me.

Chapel at more than $2 would make the game feel fairer because "a more powerful card has to cost more" (*), but it would make the game worse because (*) is wrong.

It's no tautology, but it is a sensible principle. Anticipating just how cards will be used can let you ignore it, but that's not easy. Did Donald anticipate that BM would dominate the actions in Base? I'm skeptical, but I don't know what he's said about it.

[SirPeebles]

If you want to make Chapel less obligatory an opener, which is a reasonable desire, then I think you need to change what Chapel does and not just its cost.  Mass trashing is best at the start where you are likely to have big clumps of junk cards to clear.  If you want Chapel to come later, you'd likely want it to cost $5 or more and provide something more than just heavy trashing in case you can't gather your junk together.  Count and Forge are examples of such cards.

[SirPeebles]

As for base, Donald has stated that the four pillars are Chapel, Gardens, Witch, and Thief.  Aside from perhaps Witch, each one helps combat big money.  Thief most explicitly (and effectively, in four player games.)

[WanderingWinder]

Thanks, WW. That's clearer and a whole lot easier to reply to. I'm happy to put the rest behind us if you are.

Edit: oh, and same to you. Succinctly, why should it cost $3?

Remake, Steward, and Ambassador seem more consistent with Chapel at $3 than at $4, but your argument about opening splits is compelling. I'd also like for Chapel to be less obligatory on T1/T2, so that's another argument for $4. Really though, it's the 2/5 splits with Chapel that I find most objectionable, so any number bigger than 2 is good by me.

Chapel at more than $2 would make the game feel fairer because "a more powerful card has to cost more" (*), but it would make the game worse because (*) is wrong.

It's no tautology, but it is a sensible principle. Anticipating just how cards will be used can let you ignore it, but that's not easy. Did Donald anticipate that BM would dominate the actions in Base? I'm skeptical, but I don't know what he's said about it.

Again, I would say that it's generally correct *because* for most cards it limits how many of them you can get and how quickly. With chapel, getting multiples is really not much of an issue, which basically makes the biggest factor what you can get it with early on, and that is what goes to looking for balance. I think the case for $4 is very strong... *but* I defer to Donald, not so much because I think he's inherently better than you or me or whoever else at us, but because I know he spent a lot of time playtesting lots of different versions.

I stand by my previous statement that, until hitting 5, it there isn't going to be one as much better than the others. Also, as for your very first point in the thread, nothing here has really upset me at all. We disagreed, I think you're wrong on this, but it's not a matter of insult or anger. So we disagree - we can discuss it. It's a good thing. (Does this make me Martha Stewart?)

Edit: Oh, as for those other cads, you much more frequently want all of them. And at 3, I would like Amb>Steward>Chapel>Remake, at 4 I would go Amb>Chapel>Remake>Steward (hmmm, maaaaybe chapel>amb here), at 2 it's the same as at 3. At differing costs, it's amb>steward>chapel>remake, though obviously I would take chapel with the 5/2 split on *some* boards.

[blueblimp]

I would say allowing both 5/2 and 3/4 starts is the more questionable design decision.  There's just little necessity for it.  When you set up your starting deck it takes more work to randomize between 5/2 and 3/4 than it does to stack it for 3/4.  And while the existence of 5/2 mirrors and 5/2 versus 3/4 increases the total number of possibilities out there for Dominion, there's a lot of total possibilities out there for Dominion already, so you don't really need that variance to help you get there. 

Really, it's a less defensible design decision than Saboteur, even less defensible a design decision than Treasure Map, imo.

This makes a lot of sense. 5/2 openings are often less interesting to play because the $2 doesn't give you many options, and $5 skips the pre-$5 phase of the game. So even ignoring balance, there's a case for getting rid of them.

As far as balance goes, there's still a lot of luck on T3/T4 about how many $5's you can buy. Though this becomes less important over time as new expansions make openings more complex.

[Kirian]

I would say allowing both 5/2 and 3/4 starts is the more questionable design decision.  There's just little necessity for it.

Indeed, all of this discussion about Chapel's cost, Ambassador's cost, and the like, boils down to one question.  The First Question--the oldest question in Dominion, hidden in plain sight.  Why is the opening split allowed to be different for different players?

This is so obviously a poor design decision from the standpoint of a competitive player, but Dominion was not designed with the competitive player in mind.  The reasons for this oversight do not arise from competitive play, but from more basic design rules:

(1) Without Estates in the starting deck, there are no real choices in the early game.  OK, you have $5 and... $5.  Trashing becomes less important.  Card costs have to be revised upward significantly, and even so you're probably buying two copies of the most powerful card available at $5.  Oh, and you're pretty much guaranteed $5 or better for every later turn, so really, cards costing less than $5 become silly.

(2) With only one Estate in the starting deck, you always open $5/$4.  This isn't quite the same problem as above, but it comes close; costs of cards still have to be a bit higher, $4 is the lowest price point, and trashing is still weak.

(3) With two or more Estates, you have the possibility of uneven splits.

ISTR Donald saying that the general consensus in early playtesting was that 4 Estates was too little cash to start with, while 2 Estates led to some of the same problems in (1) and (2).  Now, the rules could still force an even split (3/4 for everyone or whatever) but this is a mechanical problem.  Dominion is a very, very simple game, and adding a starting rule that forces a particular split makes you play two turns of Kinda-Dominion-But-I-Don't-Have-to-Really-Play-the-Cards before you get into the real turns.  While this is technically simpler for the players to carry out, it requires a special rule, which makes it mechanically much more difficult, especially for those just learning the game.  And since players who just want a fun game don't really care about these tiny balance issues, and those are the target market, unbalanced splits were left in rather than adding in special start-of-game rules.

----

Ideally, competitive Dominion uses equal splits for all players.  In this game, the costs of Chapel, Ambassador, Masquerade, and other extremely powerful openers does not matter in terms of balance.  If there were always equal splits, you'd take Chapel at $2, $3, $4, or $5 if you felt it was viable, because your opponent has the same opportunities.

Which is why competitive, ranked Dominion should have equal splits: a 1/6 chance each of 2/5 or 5/2, and a 1/3 chance each of 3/4 or 4/3.

[elahrairah13]

Chapel at $2 runs into the "Chapel problem", which is ridiculousness when someone opens 5/2 with some power $5 on the board.

Chapel at $3 runs into the "Ambassador problem", which is ridiculousness when someone opens 5/2 with Ambassador on the board.

Either way, you have problems, and I don't know which is preferrable. When both players open the same, well, it doesn't really matter much. You're buying it anyway, probably.

I really liked this summary.

[SirPeebles]

ISTR Donald saying that the general consensus in early playtesting was that 4 Estates was too little cash to start with, while 2 Estates led to some of the same problems in (1) and (2).  Now, the rules could still force an even split (3/4 for everyone or whatever) but this is a mechanical problem.  Dominion is a very, very simple game, and adding a starting rule that forces a particular split makes you play two turns of Kinda-Dominion-But-I-Don't-Have-to-Really-Play-the-Cards before you get into the real turns.  While this is technically simpler for the players to carry out, it requires a special rule, which makes it mechanically much more difficult, especially for those just learning the game. And since players who just want a fun game don't really care about these tiny balance issues, and those are the target market, unbalanced splits were left in rather than adding in special start-of-game rules.

I'd say it's more than that.  I really like that extra variety it gives.  And the balance doesn't bother me either.  Sometimes I start at an advantage:  neat.  Sometimes I start at a disadvantage:  all the better if I can pull it off!  The number of beers my friend or I have had often has a greater impact anyhow.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Since chapel wants to be a t1-t2 card, and you only want to get one, $2-$4 make a difference almost exclusively for what you are allowed to pair it with. So the question becomes whether it's more imbalanced to force a 5/2 player to buy it alone, or for the same player to be able to pair it with a 5-cost. Again, without testing, I’m not sure of the answer.

It's probably close, but $2 has the added benefit of giving a more interesting choice when everyone is on a 4/3, since you have the option to take a $4 card with it. And I think that makes $2 a better price than $4.

[PSGarak]

I feel like the best potential costs for Chapel are either $2 (everyone can start with it), or $6 (no one can start with it), but everything in between is problematic. $2 works well enough, despite its power, because at that cost it's basically a fact of life rather than something you have to maneuver around.

Still, everything less than $6 has some sort of screwy issue with assymetric starting hands. Costing $3 or $4 means a 3/4 opening can grab a Silver while a 5/2 cannot, and that Silver is really critical to a Chapel deck because it's like half your buying power (I generally think $4 would be better, to lessen the disadvantage). Costing $5 means a 5/2 opening gets it a reshuffle earlier which is huge, costing $2 means a 5/2 opening doesn't need to sacrifice anything to open with a power-$5.

But putting it at $6 would just be so strange. Certainly it's powerful enough to be worth it, but understanding that is hard for new players and having it compete with gold seems like bad design. Plus it starts stepping on Forge's toes.

[Warfreak2]

Chapel at $6 would be a totally different card, much less powerful, because you can't play it early when your deck has almost nothing you don't want to trash. It would also just shift the luck problems onto whether you hit $6 on turns 3/4, which is much higher variance AFAIK.

If you want to be really serious about removing luck, you could (online) give each player their own random number generator with the same seed. Then if they mirror, player 1 will always win.

[Schneau]

If you want to be really serious about removing luck, you could (online) give each player their own random number generator with the same seed. Then if they mirror, player 1 will always win.

This wouldn't work in practice. Any non-mirror game (which most would be) would diverge the minute they stop mirroring. Plus, the mirror games would be the most boring thing in the world.

[WanderingWinder]

If you want to be really serious about removing luck, you could (online) give each player their own random number generator with the same seed. Then if they mirror, player 1 will always win.

This wouldn't work in practice. Any non-mirror game (which most would be) would diverge the minute they stop mirroring. Plus, the mirror games would be the most boring thing in the world.

Not to mention, there's weird strategic implications based on 'oh, the other guy drew this. I now know what I will draw'.

The randomness is an integral part of the design of the game. If you want to remove it entirely, you want to play a different game. It's similar to Backgammon in this way.

[Warfreak2]

My point was that it wouldn't work. At some point you have to accept that you will get different outcomes due to chance - if you want to make the opening splits the same, why not say both players get $5/$5 on turns 3 and 4 if they open silver/silver, or both players draw chapel/copper/copper/estate/estate on turn 4, or whatever. Reductio ad absurdum.

[GeronimoRex]

I know this slightly reduces the pure simplicity of the base set, but I could see some sort of caveat (like GM) making Chapel more balanced: $2*, *=card can only be purchased if an action is in play.

This kind of caveat would eliminate the hyper-power of a 5/2 curser/chapel split, and would still allow all players to get the Chapel early in the game, anytime after the first shuffle.

Do you think that would be a workable compromise in terms of balancing it's power?

[Warfreak2]

Any proposal to make Chapel harder to get doesn't "balance" its power, but weakens it. As anyone who has ever drawn their Chapel with two Silvers on turn 5 knows, the real benefit is being able to play it early when you want to trash everything in your hand. If you're only going to be trashing 2-3 cards at a time, it's just a worse Steward.

[Witherweaver]

Why are people operating under the premise that Chapel is unbalanced or needs to be better balanced?  The 5/2 split with a strong $5?  I feel like that's a pretty rare occurrence if you're playing with all sets, and you're just as likely to get it as your opponent.  There are a lot of these luck swings in the game, some probably more prevalent than this one.  Doesn't seem to be an issue for me.

[liopoil]

I know this slightly reduces the pure simplicity of the base set, but I could see some sort of caveat (like GM) making Chapel more balanced: $2*, *=card can only be purchased if an action is in play.

This kind of caveat would eliminate the hyper-power of a 5/2 curser/chapel split, and would still allow all players to get the Chapel early in the game, anytime after the first shuffle.

Do you think that would be a workable compromise in terms of balancing it's power?

perhaps something like that, but that specifically doesn't work because of necropolis, and sometimes nomad camp. you could also maybe get it via stonemason.

[Watno]

Ideally, competitive Dominion uses equal splits for all players.  In this game, the costs of Chapel, Ambassador, Masquerade, and other extremely powerful openers does not matter in terms of balance.  If there were always equal splits, you'd take Chapel at $2, $3, $4, or $5 if you felt it was viable, because your opponent has the same opportunities.

Which is why competitive, ranked Dominion should have equal splits: a 1/6 chance each of 2/5 or 5/2, and a 1/3 chance each of 3/4 or 4/3.

I disagree. Dominion is a game that has random elements. Making the best out of a situation you got in due to bad luck is part of Dominion skill. Ideally, competitive Dominion would consist of series sufficiently long so good and bad luck even out (a leaderboard system such as Iso's or Goko's fullfills this imo).
In a tournament setting, playing such a long series is not practical. Therefore I do see the point of using equal starting hands there, but don't necessarily agree with. It means arbitrarily removing one random element from the game. If you do that, you could as well rule that both player's deck ordering after the first shuffle (i.e after turn 2) should be the same, since missing your opening buy can be just as bad as a different opening split.

[DStu]

In a tournament setting, playing such a long series is not practical.

Snooker might disagree...

[Kirian]

Edit: I'm not going to go back and edit this completely, but Watno's suggestion of distinguishing competitive Dominion from tournament competitive Dominion is an excellent one.  This post pertains to tournament Dominion.

My point was that it wouldn't work. At some point you have to accept that you will get different outcomes due to chance - if you want to make the opening splits the same, why not say both players get $5/$5 on turns 3 and 4 if they open silver/silver, or both players draw chapel/copper/copper/estate/estate on turn 4, or whatever. Reductio ad absurdum.

This is not reductio ad absurdum; this is a slippery slope argument.  The first is a logical argument, and the second is a logical fallacy.  You're making the fallacious argument that making X different means we might as well let Y be different, and so on until useless result Z.  The same (fallacious) argument could be made in discussing the cost of a card; if we change the cost of Chapel, well, some other card is too powerful in the wrong split, so we need to change that card, and so on.

The problem is that Y doesn't logically follow from X.

Dominion involves luck, but it is not a game of luck; rather, it is a game of luck management.  But there is no management of turns 1 and 2; there is only the opening split.  Having the split be random is equivalent to the first hand of a game of cribbage having no crib and no play (removing the actual skill of choosing a discard), or the first hand of a round of poker having a mandatory bet with no raises (removing the skill of bluffing), or a game of Puerto Rico requiring specific role choices for the first round (removing most of the skill of playing).

Stated another way, a game of (competitive) Dominion really only starts on what we normally call Turn 3; at that time, after two purchases, you have had the chance to manage your luck on turns 3, 4, 5, etc.  Dominion itself starts with Turn 1, however, because otherwise special rules would need to be introduced, and this would be just plain weird to non-competitive players.

Ascension completely failed to mitigate this problem.  Thunderstone partly mitigates it with a more varied deck, but fails in other ways in the early game.  Eminent Domain obviates the problem with a combination of the follow/dissent mechanic and a high-variety starting deck.