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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #50 on: December 18, 2019, 06:16:47 pm »
0

The best way I can think of to get lots, but not infinite money[...]
I don't see any reason infinite money is a no-no, here, provided there's no way to convert it into an infinite number of VP?
If you have infinite money and Travelling Fair, you can buy Conquest an arbitrary number of times for infinite points. (Note that unlike Triumph, Conquest still gives points even when you have emptied the Silver pile.)
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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #51 on: December 18, 2019, 06:32:23 pm »
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Oh geez, I just realized Capitalism + Mandarin will let you play a lot more Priests as well. There needs to be a way to gain them midturn (or Villa). If you include Lurker, you should be able to play at least 180 more Priests this way (returning 9 Priests and 9 Crowns every time).
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #52 on: January 01, 2020, 03:51:01 pm »
+2

... the real winner here is probably Conquest, as it is only limited by our money+buys.

The best way I can think of to get lots, but not infinite money, is with Priest/Fortress/Watchtower and Travelling Fair.
Kudos to Bitwise for suggesting Conquest.  It is an excellent way to acquire VP, granted that you can buy the event many, many times after acquiring all of the Silver in the same turn.  I worked on an alternative to using Priest and trashing to generate coin.  I decided to just use Copper!
In a nutshell, it went like this:
   King's Court a ton of Coppersmiths (with the help of Overlords, Band of Misfits, Inheritance, Crowns, and Scepters)
   Play 52 Copper for a ton of coin
   Buy a Mandarin; Coppers all return to deck.
   Buy a Villa
   Play a Messenger; Coppers go to the discard pile
   Play a Counting House; Coppers go back to my hand
   Repeat.

I managed to buy Conquest more than 10,500 times for ~420,000 VP.
How does this compare to Bitwise's strategy?  I decided to flesh it out more to find out.
TO BE CLEAR, this strategy has all been suggested by Bitwise.  Use of Priest, Forge, Mandarin, Villa, Crown were all spelled out by him.  I just put it all together in a (hopefully) optimal implementation.

The kingdom will have:

   Platinum/Colony

Action cards

   Priest
   Fortress
   Forge
   Mandarin
   Villa
   King's Court
   Overlord
   Band Of Misfits
   Scepter
   Crown
   Young Witch

Events

   Delve
   Inheritance
   Ferry
   Pathfinding
   Lost Arts
   Seaway
   Training
   Travelling Fair

Projects

   Capitalism
   Sinister Plot

Setup to be done before the megaturn (in no particular order):

Ferry on King's Court (allows play by Overlord)
Inheritance, Pathfinding, Lost Arts, Seaway, and Training on Priest (it ought to be Pope by now!)
buy Capitalism
buy Sinister Plot
Acquire
   All the Priests
   All the Overlords
   Other than leaving the Silver, Mandarin, and Villa piles alone, buy everthing else you can without emptying a third pile.
   Acquire sufficient tokens on Sinister Plot to draw your entire deck.

Megaturn:
Trigger Sinister Plot to draw our entire deck.
(Every time we play a Priest, we will trash a Fortress, so that will not be mentioned again.)

(action phase)
Play 9 King's Courts and 8 Overlords as King's Courts
Play 10 Priests, 2 Overlords, 10 Estates, and 9 Band of Misfits as Priests (3 times each).
   The 1st time we play a Priest, we get 3 coins
   The 2nd time we play a Priest, we get 3 coins + 2 coins for trashing
   The 3rd time we play a Priest, we get 3 coins + 4 coins for trashing
   The nth time we play a Priest, we get 3*n + 2*(n-1) coins
[Priest has been played 93 times]
(treasure phase)
Play 8 Crowns (saving one), each playing Scepters, replaying Priest each time.
Play the last Scepter, replaying Priest.
[Priest has been played 110 times]
(buy phase)
Buy Mandarin; all Priests, Crowns, Scepters, Villas that are in play are put on deck.
   Alternate Priests and Crowns on top, then remaining Priests, then Scepters.
Buy Villa
(action phase)
Play Crown on Fortress; draw a Crown and a Priest
Crown the Priest; draw another Crown and Priest
Repeat until you draw the last pair, then just play the Priest (saving the last Crown); draw another Priest.
Play that Priest to draw the last Priest.
Play the last Priest to draw a Scepter.
Play Scepter to replay Priest; draw another Scepter.
Repeat until you've played all Scepters.
[Priest has been played 137 times]
Buy Mandarin, Villa, do it all again.

On the 8th iteration and beyond, we do the same, except we save one Scepter along with the one Crown.
On the 9th and 10th iterations, we do not want to play our last Fortress, so we Crown the Scepter instead to replay a Fortress twice.
After we buy the last Mandarin and Villa, the loop stops.  We play all of our Crowns, Priests, but not Scepters for the last time.
Priest has been played ~350 times for about 1,750 coins and 350 buys.  Trashing a card gains ~700 coins.
Our hand now contains:
   {10 Mandarin, 10 Villa, 9 Forge, 1 Fortress, 1 Scepter (others are on deck), 9 Young Witch,
   52 Copper, 29 Gold, 11 Platinum, 7 Duchy, 7 Province, 7 Colony, 9 Curse}
Play one Forge and trash everything left in our hand for 161 x 700 = 112,700 coins, bringing our total to around 114,450.

Buy Delve 38 times
Use Travelling Fair to buy Conquest ~14,300 times for ~572,000 VP.

And thus my strategy has been beaten.  Curses Bitwise, I have been foiled again!  (good job)

You also mentioned Lurker, but it becomes possible to repeat the iteration an unbounded number of times.
Something like:  Crown Scepter, replay Priest twice, trash Mandarin, trash Villa.
   Crown Scepter, replay Lurker twice, gain Mandarin, gain Villa.
   I suppose this could be sufficiently crippled by limiting the draw into the hand, but I'm busy working on a different scheme.


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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #53 on: January 01, 2020, 06:30:35 pm »
0

Nice work going through all that!

Some thoughts I had:
  • If we use Inheritance, then we have to set aside a Priest and can't use that 10th Priest in our looping. Given that, it might not be worth it to have it on Priest?
  • Bonfire lets us also trash all the cards we've played for money without enabling an infinite combo.
  • Does Forge really work out better than Watchtower? Getting to pay beforehand for things is definitely nice, but we don't get to trash all those silvers that we're buying.

Also, there is some non-infinite strategy with Lurker if you take out Scepter. You can buy Mandarin, returning Crowns/Priests to your deck, Bonfire everything else in play, buy Villa, then do some KC+Lurker-ing to recover your actions and play those again. This doesn't seem obviously better though.
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #54 on: January 01, 2020, 11:06:41 pm »
0

Nice work going through all that!

Some thoughts I had:
  • If we use Inheritance, then we have to set aside a Priest and can't use that 10th Priest in our looping. Given that, it might not be worth it to have it on Priest?
Darn.  You're right.  I originally had it that way for that very reason; choosing to empty the Estate pile rather than the Priest pile.  But then I forgot and changed it when I realized that Mandarin doesn't return Estates back to the deck.  It means that we'd play two less Priests every iteration.  I still think Inheritance is the way to go as it increases the number of Priests that we can play.
Quote
  • Bonfire lets us also trash all the cards we've played for money without enabling an infinite combo.
A good addition.  I missed it.
Quote
[/li][li]Does Forge really work out better than Watchtower? Getting to pay beforehand for things is definitely nice, but we don't get to trash all those silvers that we're buying.[/li][/list]
Watchtower is nice, but we'd be using coins and buys at the end.  I don't think you end up trashing any more cards, so the total VP would be less, unless I'm missing something.
Quote
[/list]

Also, there is some non-infinite strategy with Lurker if you take out Scepter. You can buy Mandarin, returning Crowns/Priests to your deck, Bonfire everything else in play, buy Villa, then do some KC+Lurker-ing to recover your actions and play those again. This doesn't seem obviously better though.
The big advantage to Lurker is not gaining Crowns/Priests, but regaining Mandarins.  Without gain-from-trash, you can only gain Mandarin 10 times.  Each time enables the entire loop.  But reclaiming trash gets really complicated.  There's probably something brilliant Lurking there though.  (see what I did there?)

I'm also wondering if there is some action I can drop to add Black Market.  We only need one Forge or Watchtower.  If we had an alternate drawing scheme, we'd only need one Fortress.
Also, if we drop one of the Projects, we could add Sewers and double the number of trashes.
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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #55 on: January 02, 2020, 12:48:07 am »
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Quote
Does Forge really work out better than Watchtower? Getting to pay beforehand for things is definitely nice, but we don't get to trash all those silvers that we're buying.
Watchtower is nice, but we'd be using coins and buys at the end.  I don't think you end up trashing any more cards, so the total VP would be less, unless I'm missing something.
The net advantage is that you would be able to trash all the silvers you buy, and the disadvantage is having to pay money and buys for every other non-playable card we're going to trash. (For the cards that are playable, we can have them ready in the deck, play them in our turn, then eventually trash them to Bonfire.) This should be an advantage to Watchtower since each card trashed is worth quite a lot of coin.

Quote
Quote
Also, there is some non-infinite strategy with Lurker if you take out Scepter. You can buy Mandarin, returning Crowns/Priests to your deck, Bonfire everything else in play, buy Villa, then do some KC+Lurker-ing to recover your actions and play those again. This doesn't seem obviously better though.
The big advantage to Lurker is not gaining Crowns/Priests, but regaining Mandarins.  Without gain-from-trash, you can only gain Mandarin 10 times.  Each time enables the entire loop.  But reclaiming trash gets really complicated.  There's probably something brilliant Lurking there though.  (see what I did there?)
Good point. This seems quite promising and almost certainly worth dropping Scepter for.

Quote
I'm also wondering if there is some action I can drop to add Black Market.  We only need one Forge or Watchtower.  If we had an alternate drawing scheme, we'd only need one Fortress.
Also, if we drop one of the Projects, we could add Sewers and double the number of trashes.
We can probably drop Sinister Plot for Expedition--it should work but might be a little annoying to think about. If we're allowing Black Market, then the redraw for the loop can just be "drawing Treasures", e.g. Peddler, Junk Dealer (lol that extra value), City, Bazaar. We only need 4 to be able to use all but 2 and keep at least 2 for the next loop.

Also as a random thought, adding a Changeling pile would multiply our final point total by about 5/4, if it works the way I think it does. I would guess that doing everything possible to make as many looping possibilities will end up being than that though.
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #56 on: January 02, 2020, 11:50:43 pm »
0


Some thoughts I had:
  • If we use Inheritance, then we have to set aside a Priest and can't use that 10th Priest in our looping. Given that, it might not be worth it to have it on Priest?
  • Bonfire lets us also trash all the cards we've played for money without enabling an infinite combo.
  • Does Forge really work out better than Watchtower? Getting to pay beforehand for things is definitely nice, but we don't get to trash all those silvers that we're buying.

Also, there is some non-infinite strategy with Lurker if you take out Scepter. You can buy Mandarin, returning Crowns/Priests to your deck, Bonfire everything else in play, buy Villa, then do some KC+Lurker-ing to recover your actions and play those again. This doesn't seem obviously better though.

Redo of my previous post. Improved strategy with suggestions from Bitwise.

The kingdom will have:

   Platinum/Colony

Action cards

   Priest
   Fortress
   Watchtower
   Mandarin
   Crown
   City
   Lurker
   Overlord
   Band Of Misfits
   Death Cart
   Young Witch

Events

   Inheritance
   Pathfinding
   Seaway
   Training
   Lost Arts
   Travelling Fair
   Bonfire

Projects

   Capitalism
   Sinister Plot

Setup to be done before the megaturn (in no particular order):

Inheritance on Lurker
Pathfinding, Seaway, Lost Arts, and Training on Priest
buy Capitalism
buy Sinister Plot
Acquire only these cards (should be easy using Lurker)
   10 Overlords
   10 Band of Misfits
   9 Lurkers
   9 Priests
   9 Crowns
   9 Cities
   8 Death Carts (comes with 10 Ruins)
   7 Estates (for a total of 10)
   1 Fortress
   1 Watchtower
   1 Mandarin
   Acquire sufficient tokens on Sinister Plot to draw your entire deck.

Megaturn:
Trigger Sinister Plot to draw our entire deck.

Play 8 Cities, leave 1 in hand
Play Crown on Priest, trash Mandarin, trash Fortress
Play 5 Crowns on 5 Priests, trash the 10 Ruins
Play all remaining Crowns on Priests, trashing Fortress
Play the 8 Death Carts, trashing Fortress
Play Lurker, gain Mandarin from trash, trash with Watchtower
   All Cities, Crowns, Priests, and Death Carts are returned to deck.
   Put Cities on top, followed by an alternating sequence of Crowns and Priests, and then the Death Carts.
------- 2nd iteration, same play sequence -------
Play 8 Cities, leave 1 in hand
Play 9 Crowns on 9 Priests, trashing Fortress
Play 8 Death Carts, trashing Fortress
Play Lurker, gain Mandarin, trash with Watchtower, stack deck as before
--------------------------------------------------
We continue to play this loop until we are out of Lurkers.
Then we continue with Estates, then Band of Misfits, then Overlords as Lurkers.
The sequence is thus repeated 39 times for a total of 40 executions.
We play Priest 18 times and we trash 27 cards per iteration. (Only 26 for the last iteration)
Death Carts and Cities add coins and buys.
Everytime we play Priest, the reward we get for trashing a card goes up, hence the earnings go up with every iteration of the loop.
[edit: Due to a late night spreadsheet error, my original earnings were way too big.  They have been corrected.]
The 1st iteration earns 698 coins.
The 2nd iteration earns 1,634 coins.
The 3rd iteration earns 2,570 coins.
...
The last iteration earns 37,202 coins for a grand total of 758,000 coins and also 1,040 buys.
Additional trashing earns 1,440 coins per card.
Finally, play the Fortress.
(treasure phase)
Play your 7 Copper
(buy phase)
There are 206 cards left in the kingdom.
   {1 Priest, 9 Fortress, 9 Watchtower, 9 Mandarin, 1 Crown, 1 City, 1 Lurker,
   2 Death Carts, 10 Young Witch, 10 Curses, 46 Copper, 40 Silver,
   30 Gold, 12 Platinum, 1 Estate, 8 Duchies, 8 Provinces, 8 Colonies}
Buy everything and use Watchtower to trash them.
There are 55 cards in play, buy Bonfire to trash them all.
   { 10 Overlords, 10 Band of Misfits, 10 Estates, 9 Lurkers, 8 Death Carts, 1 Fortress, 7 Copper }
Total money spent so far = 860 coins.
All the trashing earns another 261 x 1440 = 375,840 coins for a total of 1,132,987 coins remaining.

Use Travelling Fair to buy Conquest 141,623 times for 5,664,920 VP.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2020, 02:09:11 pm by pitythefool »
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #57 on: January 03, 2020, 02:56:22 pm »
0

Use Travelling Fair to buy Conquest 141,623 times for 5,664,920 VP.
I have a minor tweak to the method in my last post.
Remove Death Cart from the kingdom and add Upgrade.
Setup is the same as before, except 9 Upgrades in hand instead of 8 Death Carts.
The City, Crown, Priest, Lurker loop sequence is the same (except no Death Carts).
We get fewer coins per iteration, but after all the Lurkers and Lurker variants have run out, we can play an Upgrade, trash Fortress, and gain a Mandarin from the kingdom, and trash it with Watchtower.
This lets us iterate the sequence 9 more times.
Total earnings is now 808,592 coins and trashing additional cards now gains 1,764 coins each.
Trash the remainder of the kingdom and Bonfire the cards in play, and we end up with 1,268,193 coins.
We can buy Conquest 158,524 times for 6,340,960 VP.
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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #58 on: January 03, 2020, 03:02:27 pm »
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EDIT: This post was in response to the one two before it and doesn't account for Upgrade.

I see that you recently edited the calculation--I was wondering how it got so high, although I believed it before checking.

As an estimation, if P is the number of priests we play per loop, X is the number of extra trashes we get per loop (e.g. the Death Carts), and L is the number of loops, then the average trash is worth about P*L (at first worth around 0, then at the end worth around 2*P*L, growing linearly), and in each loop, we trash X+P cards. Putting that all together gives around P*L*(X+P) for the average loop, or P*L*(X+P)*L = P(X+P)L^2 for all loops.

Your solution has P=18, L=40, X=9 for 18 * 27 * 40^2 = 777,600 which looks consistent with your 758,000 figure.

We can replace City with Sacrifice since our kingdom doesn't have any Victory cards that can be recovered from the trash. Sacrifice gives us the card draw we need but also lets us trash. This should change X=9 to X=17, which will make the total around 18 * 35 * 40^2 = 1,008,000, which is around a 230,400 money improvement.

Also, we could replace Death Cart with Junk Dealer. Even though it gives 4 less money, it draws, so we would be able to put 9 of them in instead of 8, increasing X by 1. This would mean we don't get the ruins though.

For some micro-optimizations (things that give at least 100 more VP):
  • We should buy as many Treasures as possible beforehand and just play them in our Buy phase, since we can Bonfire them (and they give money!). Not the Silvers, of course.
  • The same would apply to all the other actions that we could play at the very end of the turn, except...
  • If we include Plan, then buying actions gives double the value from before.
  • Delve
  • Triumph on the last Estate
« Last Edit: January 03, 2020, 03:03:52 pm by bitwise »
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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #59 on: January 03, 2020, 03:38:22 pm »
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For your solution with Upgrade instead of Death Cart:
If we use Sacrifice instead of City, this would be P=18, X=9, L=49 approximately (not accounting for the Upgrade iterations having an extra trash), for 18*27*49^2 = 1,166,886. I believe that spending two Upgrades at the beginning to gain Crown/Priest (Upgrade a Fortress and an extra Watchtower) would be slightly better, as it gives P=20, X=9, L=47 for 20*29*47^2 = 1,281,220, and this gives 20*47 = 940 total priests played instead of 18*49 = 882, making the buy phase also give more money.

It's also possible to use Procession instead of Upgrade for a similar role. At the beginning of the turn we can Procession a Lurker (with Ferry on Crown) to trash/gain the Priest and gain the Crown. Subsequent Processions can be used on Fortress just like Upgrade, with a bonus of drawing an extra card. In subsequent Processions, we could also Procession a Lurker to gain a Lurker from the trash, and gain the Mandarin. This replaces the Lurker in the trash with a new one. It has the disadvantage of forcing us to gain a 3 cost action, which is currently bad (the Watchtowers), but has the positive effect of enabling Necromancer to be another source of playing Lurkers, if we had more piles. If we're allowing Black Market, this would be an improvement.

I've also tried doing a Villa/Bonfire/KC/Lurker loop stacked on top this loop and it works, but it seems to be worse because the setup is using up too many piles.
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #60 on: January 03, 2020, 06:36:16 pm »
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As an estimation, if P is the number of priests we play per loop, X is the number of extra trashes we get per loop (e.g. the Death Carts), and L is the number of loops, then the average trash is worth about P*L (at first worth around 0, then at the end worth around 2*P*L, growing linearly), and in each loop, we trash X+P cards. Putting that all together gives around P*L*(X+P) for the average loop, or P*L*(X+P)*L = P(X+P)L^2 for all loops.

Your solution has P=18, L=40, X=9 for 18 * 27 * 40^2 = 777,600 which looks consistent with your 758,000 figure.
Nice equation.  I should have done something similar to sanity check my spreadsheet.
Quote
We can replace City with Sacrifice since our kingdom doesn't have any Victory cards that can be recovered from the trash. Sacrifice gives us the card draw we need but also lets us trash. This should change X=9 to X=17, which will make the total around 18 * 35 * 40^2 = 1,008,000, which is around a 230,400 money improvement.
Yes.  A good improvement.
Quote
  • We should buy as many Treasures as possible beforehand and just play them in our Buy phase, since we can Bonfire them (and they give money!). Not the Silvers, of course.
Yes.
Quote
  • The same would apply to all the other actions that we could play at the very end of the turn, except...
  • If we include Plan, then buying actions gives double the value from before.
Yes.  Plan would be the way to go.
Quote
  • Delve
Yes.  I only took it out to simplify things.
Quote
  • Triumph on the last Estate
I actually did the math on this one to see if VP from Triumph beat VP from trashing the Estate and gaining more Conquests.  D'oh.  I forgot you could do both.
Quote
I believe that spending two Upgrades at the beginning to gain Crown/Priest (Upgrade a Fortress and an extra Watchtower) would be slightly better
I really like the idea of picking up the 10th Crown and Priest at the beginning.  Big win.
Quote
It's also possible to use Procession instead of Upgrade for a similar role. At the beginning of the turn we can Procession a Lurker (with Ferry on Crown) to trash/gain the Priest and gain the Crown. Subsequent Processions can be used on Fortress just like Upgrade, with a bonus of drawing an extra card. In subsequent Processions, we could also Procession a Lurker to gain a Lurker from the trash, and gain the Mandarin. This replaces the Lurker in the trash with a new one. It has the disadvantage of forcing us to gain a 3 cost action, which is currently bad (the Watchtowers), but has the positive effect of enabling Necromancer to be another source of playing Lurkers, if we had more piles. If we're allowing Black Market, this would be an improvement.
Not sure about Procession.  You'd have to give up a Lurker (one iteration) for more trashes.  Also, playing Procession on a Lurker to gain a Lurker and Mandarin is not a benefit unless you can use the 3 cost action.
Necromancer is a great idea and one I hadn't thought of.  But we're out of piles.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2020, 06:45:55 pm by pitythefool »
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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #61 on: January 03, 2020, 07:06:04 pm »
0

Quote
It's also possible to use Procession instead of Upgrade for a similar role. At the beginning of the turn we can Procession a Lurker (with Ferry on Crown) to trash/gain the Priest and gain the Crown. Subsequent Processions can be used on Fortress just like Upgrade, with a bonus of drawing an extra card. In subsequent Processions, we could also Procession a Lurker to gain a Lurker from the trash, and gain the Mandarin. This replaces the Lurker in the trash with a new one. It has the disadvantage of forcing us to gain a 3 cost action, which is currently bad (the Watchtowers), but has the positive effect of enabling Necromancer to be another source of playing Lurkers, if we had more piles. If we're allowing Black Market, this would be an improvement.
Not sure about Procession.  You'd have to give up a Lurker (one iteration) for more trashes.  Also, playing Procession on a Lurker to gain a Lurker and Mandarin is not a benefit unless you can use the 3 cost action.
Necromancer is a great idea and one I hadn't thought of.  But we're out of piles.
We can start the turn with Procession+Lurker to trash/gain the last Priest and gain a 3 cost (Crown with Ferry on it). This would do the same thing as starting the turn with two Upgrades to get the Priest and Crown, but is slightly better as we don't need to have the extra Watchtower in our deck to start. Subsequent Processions can just go on Fortress to do the same thing that Upgrade would (except draw an extra card).

Agreed on Procession on Lurkers not helping unless Necromancer is in the kingdom or we want to gain 3 costs.

---

Here's an argument that we can use Expedition instead of Sinister Plot:

We would like to be able to build our deck without trashing any of the cards in it, and wind up being able to buy enough Expeditions before our mega-turn to draw our deck.
Near the start of the game, we can Expedition on some turn, then hit 6 or 7 on the following turn to buy Lost Arts on Priest.
After that, it is possible to get a hand with Fortress and 4 Priests, hitting 2+4+6+8=20, which lets us buy Pathfinding (and Training and Seaway) on Priest.
Then, it is possible to buy 9 Crowns, 9 Priests, 9 Band of Misfits, and 9 Overlords, and use them all as Priest on Fortress in the same turn. This will play 36 priests for 36 + 36*37=1368 money and 1+36=37 buys. It is possible to buy 288 Expeditions with that, which is more than enough. (Also, we could buy slightly fewer Expeditions, and buy some of the other cards we need to build up our deck.)

As pitythefool suggested, this allows us to include Sewers instead of Sinister Plot, which doubles all the trashing we can do. I'm fairly sure that over 99% of our generated money comes from trashing, so this approximately doubles our money and VP.
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #62 on: January 04, 2020, 02:04:51 pm »
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It's also possible to use Procession instead of Upgrade for a similar role. At the beginning of the turn we can Procession a Lurker (with Ferry on Crown) to trash/gain the Priest and gain the Crown. Subsequent Processions can be used on Fortress just like Upgrade, with a bonus of drawing an extra card. In subsequent Processions, we could also Procession a Lurker to gain a Lurker from the trash, and gain the Mandarin. This replaces the Lurker in the trash with a new one. It has the disadvantage of forcing us to gain a 3 cost action, which is currently bad (the Watchtowers), but has the positive effect of enabling Necromancer to be another source of playing Lurkers, if we had more piles. If we're allowing Black Market, this would be an improvement.
Not sure about Procession.  You'd have to give up a Lurker (one iteration) for more trashes.  Also, playing Procession on a Lurker to gain a Lurker and Mandarin is not a benefit unless you can use the 3 cost action.
Necromancer is a great idea and one I hadn't thought of.  But we're out of piles.
We can start the turn with Procession+Lurker to trash/gain the last Priest and gain a 3 cost (Crown with Ferry on it). This would do the same thing as starting the turn with two Upgrades to get the Priest and Crown, but is slightly better as we don't need to have the extra Watchtower in our deck to start. Subsequent Processions can just go on Fortress to do the same thing that Upgrade would (except draw an extra card).

Agreed on Procession on Lurkers not helping unless Necromancer is in the kingdom or we want to gain 3 costs.

The original plan called for the Overlord and Band of Misfits to be emptied before the megaturn.  Your plan to grab the last Crown and Priest right away is great, but we don't have to do it in that order.  It would be slightly better to have the extra Crown and Priest first, so we can use them right away.  Then with Ferry on Band of Misfits, we'd use your Procession on Lurker tick to get the last Overlord and Band of Misfits, which aren't needed until later.
That would mean that we could later do that Procession on Lurker trick to gain the Lurker, Mandarin, and Watchtower.  We're forced to gain the Watchtower but we can save them, play them at the end and trash them with Bonfire for maximum trash benefit.
I had a similar argument for not trashing the Mandarins that we gain from the kingdom.  But on further reflection, they should be trashed.  It's a shame, since they generate coin and are considered treasure so they can be gained back from play, but the necessity to topdeck is a big nuisance.
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Here's an argument that we can use Expedition instead of Sinister Plot:

We would like to be able to build our deck without trashing any of the cards in it, and wind up being able to buy enough Expeditions before our mega-turn to draw our deck.
Near the start of the game, we can Expedition on some turn, then hit 6 or 7 on the following turn to buy Lost Arts on Priest.
After that, it is possible to get a hand with Fortress and 4 Priests, hitting 2+4+6+8=20, which lets us buy Pathfinding (and Training and Seaway) on Priest.
Then, it is possible to buy 9 Crowns, 9 Priests, 9 Band of Misfits, and 9 Overlords, and use them all as Priest on Fortress in the same turn. This will play 36 priests for 36 + 36*37=1368 money and 1+36=37 buys. It is possible to buy 288 Expeditions with that, which is more than enough. (Also, we could buy slightly fewer Expeditions, and buy some of the other cards we need to build up our deck.)

As pitythefool suggested, this allows us to include Sewers instead of Sinister Plot, which doubles all the trashing we can do. I'm fairly sure that over 99% of our generated money comes from trashing, so this approximately doubles our money and VP.
On using Expedition/Sewers instead of Sinister Plot.  Just some ideas.
Start with Ferry on Lurker.  We will later move it to Band of Misfits.  Priority should be Capitalism, not Lost Arts, as it is cheaper.  Capitalism allows all Priests to be played in the treasure phase. I'd next go for Seaway on Priest.  Buy Sewers early and put Plan on Lurker.  Then Fortress and just 3 Priests, or 1 Priest with some combination of 2 (Priest/Overlord/Crown), yields 2 + 6 + 10 = 18 and 4 buys.  Buying 3 Lurkers (zero cost) adds 18 coins (from additional trashing), leaving one buy.  More buys are available from Travelling Fair.  Just an example.  So I think it is very doable.
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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #63 on: January 04, 2020, 02:34:08 pm »
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I thought of a couple improvements:
  • The Procession/Lurker trick gains Lurker, Mandarin, Watchtower, but we don't want to gain the Watchtower. We can Procession/Overlord instead to gain Overlord, Mandarin to do a bit better.
  • We can start the turn with Estate and Overlord piled out, and have 4 Watchtowers instead of 1. Near the start of turn, we can Procession Procession Procession Watchtower Watchtower Watchtower to gain the last BoM, Crown, Priest, Sacrifice, and Procession. (Note: we still leave a Lurker so that it can be emulated by Overlord/BoM.)
  • As late as possible into the turn, we Procession an Overlord to regain the two Processions from the trash. This allows us to the Procession/Overlord trick.

I also replaced Sinister Plot with Expedition and Sewers; I'm satisfied with the argument we gave.

With these improvements, we are able to play 8 Lurkers, 11 Estates, 10 Band of Misfits, and 8 Overlords as Lurker (37 total). Then we can do 8 Processions on Overlord. Then we do one Overlord, for a total of 46 additional loops besides the first one, giving 47*20 = 940 total Priests played. To use the earlier terminology, this is P=20, X=9, L=47 for approximately 20*29*47^2 = 1281220. (well, double that because of Sewers).

I ran some calculations myself and was able to generate 3896751 converted money (money + 2 * # buys) for 19483720 Conquest points. With some penny pinching from landmarks and some events, this goes up to 19,483,900 total points.

I included every landmark that gives us VP (besides Tomb), under the constraint that our ending deck is 10 Fortress and 1 Watchtower. Some other penny-saving things are moving Ferry around, using Pilgrimage to get the last Copper/Gold/Plat, using Delve, and using Salt the Earth.

Here's a spreadsheet with my calculations.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DWxCZJj6KovasSzS8nmJj9L2Wv3ynD4kqQltLj087J8/edit?usp=sharing
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #64 on: January 04, 2020, 02:51:30 pm »
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I had a similar argument for not trashing the Mandarins that we gain from the kingdom.  But on further reflection, they should be trashed.  It's a shame, since they generate coin and are considered treasure so they can be gained back from play, but the necessity to topdeck is a big nuisance.
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Ah, I have a method of keeping all of the Mandarins and Watchtowers until the end.  The key was getting rid of the 7 Copper.  On the last 4 plays of Priest (with Sewers), trash all the Copper.  We get near maximum benefit for trashing them and only lose the 7 coins they would have provided.
 
Then our final hand is 1 Fortress, 10 Watchtowers, 10 Mandarins.

Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 3 Watchtowers, 2 Mandarins
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 2 Mandarins, 1 Watchtowers, Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw Watchtower, Fortress (the two cards we need to keep in hand)
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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #65 on: January 04, 2020, 03:30:56 pm »
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I had a similar argument for not trashing the Mandarins that we gain from the kingdom.  But on further reflection, they should be trashed.  It's a shame, since they generate coin and are considered treasure so they can be gained back from play, but the necessity to topdeck is a big nuisance.
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Ah, I have a method of keeping all of the Mandarins and Watchtowers until the end.  The key was getting rid of the 7 Copper.  On the last 4 plays of Priest (with Sewers), trash all the Copper.  We get near maximum benefit for trashing them and only lose the 7 coins they would have provided.
 
Then our final hand is 1 Fortress, 10 Watchtowers, 10 Mandarins.

Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 3 Watchtowers, 2 Mandarins
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 2 Mandarins, 1 Watchtowers, Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw Watchtower, Fortress (the two cards we need to keep in hand)
I'm not sure I see the value in doing this, since we can keep the Mandarins in the supply. They are worth a lot more in the supply since Plan lets us get an additional trash from them.
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #66 on: January 04, 2020, 04:49:34 pm »
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I had a similar argument for not trashing the Mandarins that we gain from the kingdom.  But on further reflection, they should be trashed.  It's a shame, since they generate coin and are considered treasure so they can be gained back from play, but the necessity to topdeck is a big nuisance.
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Ah, I have a method of keeping all of the Mandarins and Watchtowers until the end.  The key was getting rid of the 7 Copper.  On the last 4 plays of Priest (with Sewers), trash all the Copper.  We get near maximum benefit for trashing them and only lose the 7 coins they would have provided.
 
Then our final hand is 1 Fortress, 10 Watchtowers, 10 Mandarins.

Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 3 Watchtowers, 2 Mandarins
Play Mandarin, topdeck Mandarin
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw 2 Mandarins, 1 Watchtowers, Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Fortress
Play Mandarin, topdeck Watchtower
Play Watchtower, draw Watchtower, Fortress (the two cards we need to keep in hand)
I'm not sure I see the value in doing this, since we can keep the Mandarins in the supply. They are worth a lot more in the supply since Plan lets us get an additional trash from them.
Ooh.  Quite right.
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pitythefool

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #67 on: January 04, 2020, 05:07:43 pm »
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Here's a spreadsheet with my calculations.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DWxCZJj6KovasSzS8nmJj9L2Wv3ynD4kqQltLj087J8/edit?usp=sharing
I checked the spreadsheet and it only is counting two trashes per action card in the buy phase.  The majority of purchases are non-actions and that's correct, but for actions, it should be:
Buy Plan for <action>
Buy <action>, trash with Watchtower, trash Fortress (Sewers), trash Fortress (Plan), trash Fortress (Sewers).
You get nearly double for remaining actions.
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bitwise

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Re: Maximum points
« Reply #68 on: January 04, 2020, 06:06:15 pm »
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I have it accounted as 1 for every card left in the supply, then an additional 1 for each of those that could be bought with Plan. It should be the same that way, but was easier to add up the way I had it in the sheet.
Sewers is accounted for by making all trashing worth 4 times the number of priests played instead of 2.
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