Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: olneyce on November 18, 2011, 07:33:11 pm
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Apothecary is good in combination with Wishing Well (which turn into Labs) and with Coppersmith (which doubles the value of all those copper you uncover). Put them all on the same board and it's even better.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/18/game-20111118-161424-59e895ce.html (http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/18/game-20111118-161424-59e895ce.html)
Really, the combo also needs to include a village that gives +buy so you can spend all your money. In this case it was a Festival, though Worker's Village would also be good since it's a cantrip which will help you cycle. Sadly this means this combo is vanishingly unlikely to ever be seen again. But it sure was a lot of fun to play.
And frankly, since you need to buy potions, and since you need to get a +buy before you can turn your monster hands into anything more, it's not really that fast. In this game I got my 4th Province on turn 12 which is good, but nothing mindblowing. Mostly it was just fun to build a powerful engine with usually-mediocre cards like Wishing Well and Coppersmith.
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this can also be done with caravans instead of wishing wells and without the village altogether, as long as you have cantrip +buy, as this game shows http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110828-212422-8a5246fc.html . Although it isn't very common
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I was the loser in this game, and deservedly so. I've just become so accustomed to ignoring Coppersmith!
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probably Big Money can beat this fairly easily?
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probably Big Money can beat this fairly easily?
I'm not so sure about that. The above game ended in 16 turns with olneyce hitting his 4th Province on turn 12. Admittedly this is just one game, so it's a small sample, but it seems like a combo that's quick enough to beat big money the majority of the time. If I have time I'll try simulating it later.
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It's quite hard to get the parameters right to simulate this, but once you do, it actually beats a good big money bot consistently (like Envoy):
<player name="Apothecary/Coppersmith/WW/WV" author="Geronimoo" description="Apothecary and Coppersmith are a nice combo. Use Wishing Wells to get them together and a Worker's Village for extra buys.">
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="Fun"/>
<type name="Combo"/>
<type name="Competitive"/>
<type name="Engine"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<buy name="Province">
<condition>
<left type="countAvailableMoney"/>
<operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="16.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countBuysLeft"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Province">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Province"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Worker$s_Village">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Worker$s_Village"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Apothecary"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Coppersmith">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Coppersmith"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Apothecary"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Apothecary"/>
<buy name="Potion">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Worker$s_Village">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Worker$s_Village"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Coppersmith">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Coppersmith"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Wishing_Well"/>
<buy name="Copper"/>
</player>
Notice it's best to work towards a big turn (where you buy 2 Provinces). When you buy the Province too early, you stall. And you also want to buy extra Coppers. 2 Coppersmiths seem ideal. If anybody feels like it, this bot can probably be improved further.
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Geronimoo, if you want to improve the apothecaries and other top of deck cards, such as cartographers, then you could keep count of the number of cards returned by the apothecary to top of the deck. If other card drawers can be played first (whilst retaining an action) then they should be played out until there is only one of those returned cards left on top of the deck. This might be on the long term improvement list since it will improve a small number of decks substantially but will be irrelevant otherwise.
The theory is that the spying card will leave a number of cards on top of the deck that it will never do anything about, so if you draw those off then the next spying card will be able to act on a fresh set of 4 cards. A simpler implementation might be to play the apothecary alternately with other drawing cards, but if work is done it might as well be done correctly to start with.
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Any analysis of a combo that uses Coppersmith is helpful (aside from Counting House + Coppersmith). Nice work :)
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Geronimoo, if you want to improve the apothecaries and other top of deck cards, such as cartographers, then you could keep count of the number of cards returned by the apothecary to top of the deck. If other card drawers can be played first (whilst retaining an action) then they should be played out until there is only one of those returned cards left on top of the deck. This might be on the long term improvement list since it will improve a small number of decks substantially but will be irrelevant otherwise.
The theory is that the spying card will leave a number of cards on top of the deck that it will never do anything about, so if you draw those off then the next spying card will be able to act on a fresh set of 4 cards. A simpler implementation might be to play the apothecary alternately with other drawing cards, but if work is done it might as well be done correctly to start with.
The Apothecary card already does this (I forgot to update the play rules page). I'll also add this behaviour to the Cartographer.
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It's quite hard to get the parameters right to simulate this, but once you do, it actually beats a good big money bot consistently (like Envoy):
It's also worth noting that the simulator will underestimate the power of this combo because Wishing Well won't be guaranteed a 100% hit even if it knows the second card of the deck (as you would IRL), and with Apothecary, it SHOULD do quite often.
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I think this combo is too rare. Why? Because it's not just three cards (though three cards is already pretty damn rare). It's three cards, and a +buy. This thing will probably never appear again in a game unless it's pre-selected. Without a +buy, you'll hit a lot of wasted buys at the $5-7 range, because buying Gold anti-synergises with that coppersmith.
And with that, 5 provinces in 16 turns isn't that impressive. Apothecary/WW is a good combo (I seem to consistently hit 4 provinces in about 14 turns with this, buying some gold to help out), but adding coppersmith isn't powerful enough to justify its rarity.
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I was reading through old threads today and came across this.
Earlier this afternoon I played a game with the combo. I saw the apothecary/coppersmiths right away (my first time using cs), and picked up ww too. Didn't realize the potential until half way through the game.
Maybe someone will see it again in another 5 months?
Ed
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I also played with this combo in a non-online game recently. This combo actually turns up in one of the "recommended sets of ten" for Alchemy with Intrigue (in the Alchemy rules). In that one, the only "village" is Nobles and the only source of plus buy is Baron.
Edit: The recommended set is the one entitled "Pools, Tools and Fools." The cards in it are: Apothecary, Apprentice, Golem, Scrying Pool, Baron, Coppersmith, Ironworks, Nobles, Trading Post and Wishing Well.