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Author Topic: How often would you like to use Colonies?  (Read 4691 times)

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jonts26

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How often would you like to use Colonies?
« on: October 31, 2011, 05:31:05 pm »
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I like Colony games. A lot. Their presence can potentially change the strategy space quite a bit, giving slower engine strategies a chance to get going.

With Hinterlands out, however, there is only about a 15.9% chance of actually playing a game with Colonies. While I'm not advocating that every game should use Colonies, I would like to see them more often.

My poll question is this: Given a full random set of kingdom cards, what percentage of games would ideally include Colony/Platinum for you. In other words, replace the current selection criterion with just a RNG using this probability.

Note: I realize this selection method would technically qualify as a variant. So no, I'm not suggesting Isotropic actually implement this. Mostly I'm just curious.
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ackack

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2011, 05:32:41 pm »
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33% sounds about right to me.
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rinkworks

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #2 on: October 31, 2011, 05:44:48 pm »
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I agree that 33% feels good.  It does seem a shame that Colony games will only get scarcer as the expansions come out.  One way to do it is to still use the presence of Prosperity cards as the determining factor, but increase the probability.  For example, with 2 Prosperity cards, there would normally be a 20% chance you'd play it with Colonies.  So double that to 40% and call it a day?
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jonts26

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #3 on: October 31, 2011, 06:01:53 pm »
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And for 7 prosperity cards we can have a 140% chance of using Colonies.  :P
But I suppose you could cap it at 100% so 5 or more prosperity cards is a guaranteed Colony.

Anyway, we wont lose too much more probability from adding the rest of the cards. At 200 total cards the probability of a colony game is 12.5%.
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Willvon

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #4 on: October 31, 2011, 10:37:37 pm »
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I voted for 75%.  I know that I am definitely in the minority.  However, I almost exclusively play IRL, and my wife and I definitely prefer playing with Colonies.  If the layout is specifically a Province layout, then we will play a game with just Provinces, but then we always also try it with Colonies.  I understand the restriction in the rules for Prosperity as to when to include Colonies.  And if you don't have it as an expansion, then obviously you can't play Colony games.  However, I think almost all games are better with Colonies and Platinums.  I really love the added dimensions that come with them in the game.  My wife and I don't mind the longer time that the games usually take. 

I realize that many of you play mostly online.  Perhaps the quicker games are better for that type of play.  However, I really don't get a kick out of how few turns I can take to end a game.  I like to be able to explore the options each different kingdom provides, rather than just focus on one or two cards and big money.  Having Colonies allows for that to happen more often, and we find that to be a much more satifying way to play. 
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LastFootnote

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #5 on: October 31, 2011, 11:20:26 pm »
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I prefer to use the suggestion in the Prosperity rulebook and have a chance to use Platinum and Colonies with a frequency proportional to the number of Prosperity kingdom cards in the set. That suggestion is there for a reason.

For one thing, most of the Prosperity cards are more effective in a Colony game than in a normal Province game. By using a flat rate for Colony games and disassociating them from the Prosperity cards, you're making many of the Prosperity cards less useful a lot of the time.

More importantly, there are a lot of cards that perform particularly poorly in a Colony game. The cards that produce Silver are a good example. If you always (or usually) play with Colonies, that's a whole bunch of cards that you'll never have an occasion to use.

I use a randomizer that randomly picks two expansions and then selects 5 cards from each. That way I actually have a decent selection of Prosperity cards for my Colony/Platinum games.
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timchen

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #6 on: November 01, 2011, 12:01:48 am »
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Actually I want to argue otherwise: it seems somewhat a pity that a kingdom without Prosperity cannot see Platinum/Colony. Sure for every card they can when they are play with Prosperity cards; it just feel like an artificial constraint to me.

On the other hand, with newer expansions, it seems Province games get invigorated. Colony games sometimes get paled in comparison. More often than not, the platinum is a necessary part of a winning strategy; on the other hand, the Province game becomes more multi-dimensional.

Yet another random thought: yesterday I lost a game when my opponent went for SR and I went for FG in a game with HT. SR worths 5 for him and FG worths 6 for me. Seems that SR is not that bad either!
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guided

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #7 on: November 01, 2011, 12:21:27 am »
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I'm going to echo Tim's sentiment that Prosperity isn't remotely required for Colony to create interesting strategy implications. Ballpark, I'd like to see them in about 20% of games without a $7 action card, and maybe 30-40% of games with a $7 action card.
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Wingnut

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2011, 01:48:09 am »
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I like that 33% spot. Just enough where you play often, but no so much that it gets old playing longer games.

That said, IRL I prefer colonies in almost every game. Then again, Prosperity was the first expansion I picked up.
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Davio

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #9 on: November 01, 2011, 04:41:07 am »
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I voted for 25%.
I still like Province games due to their brevity, but I like Colony for the occasional extra challenge.

In real life, it's probably closer to 33%.
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Jimmmmm

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #10 on: November 01, 2011, 06:01:32 am »
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One good way of doing it I suppose would be to randomly pick 2 of the 10 cards instead of 1, and if at least one of them was Prosperity then have Colonies + Platinums. I'm not sure what % that would work out to be, but possibly about 25%, and I voted for that.

Yet another random thought: yesterday I lost a game when my opponent went for SR and I went for FG in a game with HT. SR worths 5 for him and FG worths 6 for me. Seems that SR is not that bad either!

Just a quick suggestion: if you're going to abbreviate card names it might be a good idea to say the whole name first and then abbreviate it from then on. I assume SR = Silk Road, FG = Fairgrounds. The only HT I can think of is Horse Traders, but I'm not sure if they are relevant enough to mention... maybe for the +buys. Anyway. Just a suggestion.
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Donald X.

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #11 on: November 01, 2011, 07:39:45 am »
+1

The idea of course is that different people own different numbers of expansions, and the frequency with which you see Prosperity cards should correspond to how often you see Colony, since it's something from the Prosperity expansion. If all you own is Dominion and Prosperity, you see Colony in half the games, but also, half of your cards are from Prosperity. If you have all of the expansions and pick cards randomly, you don't see Colony so often but also see the rest of Prosperity proportionally less often.

People are obv. free to pick out Kingdom cards however they want, and choose whether or not to use Colony/Platinum whatever way they want.
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Dauntless

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #12 on: November 01, 2011, 12:17:38 pm »
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Just a quick suggestion: if you're going to abbreviate card names it might be a good idea to say the whole name first and then abbreviate it from then on. I assume SR = Silk Road, FG = Fairgrounds. The only HT I can think of is Horse Traders, but I'm not sure if they are relevant enough to mention... maybe for the +buys. Anyway. Just a suggestion.

Thank you. I was going crazy trying to figure out how a Horse Traders could make Fool's Gold worth $6.
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ChaosRed

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #13 on: November 01, 2011, 12:28:21 pm »
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I loathe Colony games, they are longer and less-likely to reward aggressive, simple play and more-likely to reward a tedious engine-climb, where whoever gets to their mega-turn first, wins. I think I am just so fond of the 6/3/1 allocation of VP and the 3/2/1 allocation of treasure that Colony games seem strangely unsettling to that balance and thought process. Even alt-VP cards, are more compatible to me, than Colony and Platinum.

I can tell you that Prosperity is my LEAST favorite expansion by far. Then again, my favorite of them all still remains the base set, which I consider elegant and perfect in just about every way.
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blackb

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #14 on: November 02, 2011, 11:03:58 am »
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I realy like the colonies. So 50% are nice.
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popsofctown

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Re: How often would you like to use Colonies?
« Reply #15 on: November 04, 2011, 01:13:54 am »
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I like colonies but hate platinum :/
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