Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: TheExpressicist on February 03, 2014, 02:05:45 pm
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Note
A.) I wasn't sure if this should be incorporated into the previous thread or not, but I feel like both the intention and the direction of the conversation will take are quite different.
B.) The goal of this is to provide a specific heuristic for new players to follow, rather than a conceptual overview of the subject. I feel like the subject of what constitutes a good engine and the tactical concerns involved have already been gone over in great detail by people far more skilled at Dominion tactics than myself.
C.) The inevitable disclaimer: My knowledge regarding engines is primary relegated to the realm of probabilities and statistics, not practical experience. For the most part, these "rules of thumb" are *statistically* sound. In other words, if you assemble a deck according to these rules, statistically speaking you'll have an engine that reliably should be able to buy 4 Provinces before Big Money would be able to. But there is an entire world of difference between statistics and practical application, and furthermore, "rules of thumb" place far more value on simplicity rather than accuracy.
D.) As such, I am extremely open to constructive criticism, destructive criticism, tarring and feathering, suggestions, discussions, etc. By no means are these exhaustive and by no means am I an authority on engine building. I'm simply someone who knows too much about statistics with too much time on his hands.
With that said, here goes:
Simple Version:
1. Are there cards that provide +2 Actions, and cards that provide +2 (or more) Cards? If no, don't play engine.
2. Are there junk attacks? If so, take two if it has effects, take one if it's vanilla.
3. Are there trashers? If so, buy one. If it provides a good benefit in addition to trashing, buy 2.
4. Are there gainers? If so, buy one. If you don't have any trash-for-benefit, buy 2.
5. Are there discard attacks? If so, buy one.
Building the Engine
Prioritize your buys/actions as follows:
1. Buying or playing junk attacks. (If your junk attacks cost $5, you typically want to purchase at least 1 silver in your open.)
2. Buying or playing trashers.
3. Buying or playing gainers.
4. Buying non-terminal +Cards with useful effects and/or >+1 card. (e.g. Market, Laboratory, Scrying pool, Ironmonger, etc.)
5. Buying +Actions, if you have more terminal actions than +Action cards.
6. Buying Terminal Actions with +Cards.
7. Buying Terminal Actions without +Cards.
8. Buying Treasure (if necessary)
Complicated Version:
Determining whether your engine is viable, then optimizing it:
1. Start with the following three numbers: X=18, Y=10. Z=0.
X represents the number of cards you'll need to draw to cycle through your deck reliably.
Y represents the number of turns you have before a well-constructed Big Money deck can start greening.
Z represents the number of turns it will take you to construct your engine.
Evaluate the kingdom. If there is trashing but no junking, subtract 6 from X. If there is junking but no trashing, add 5 to X. If there is both, keep X at 18. Add 3 to Z if there is trashing.
2. Count enough +Actions to equal X-5. (Note: if you need more than 6 of a single card, consider diversifying.) Add this number to Z.
3. Count enough +Cards to equal X. Add this number to Z.
4. Count one treasure for every 2 cards in your engine that cost 5 or more. Then count enough treasure cards to bring the total money in your deck up to 10. (Subtract $5 from your total money if you are trashing). Add this number to Z.
5. That is the basis of your engine. Now you look to augment it. Start with Junk attacks. Count 1 if it's vanilla (e.g. Sea Hag/Maurauder), count 2 if it has effects (Mountebank, Witch, Ambassador, Masquerade). Add that number to Z. Add 5 to Y.
6. Go with Gainers next. Set aside a maximum of 2 gainers. (If you already have gainers in your deck like trash-for-benefit, set aside a maximum of 1). Subtract 2 from Z for each "Pure" Gainer you have in your deck. Subtract 1 from Z for each "limited" Gainer you have in your deck (e.g. cards like Remodel which don't do much good if you have a card full of copper).
7. Go with discard attacks next. Add 1 to Y for each discard attack you purchase. (Add 1 to Z if this is an additional purchase and doesn't replace something).
8. Is Z < Y? If not, consider a different non-engine strategy.
Building the Engine
Note the names of the cards you counted aside. These are the basic components of your engine. Forget about the quantities that you calculated previously. That was to determine if your engine is even viable in the first place.
Prioritize your buys/actions as follows:
1. Buying or playing junk attacks. (If your junk attacks cost $5, you typically want to purchase at least 1 silver in your open.)
2. Buying or playing trashers.
3. Buying or playing gainers.
4. Buying non-terminal +Cards with useful effects and/or >+1 card. (e.g. Market, Laboratory, Scrying pool, Ironmonger, etc.)
5. Buying +Actions, if you have more terminal actions than +Action cards.
6. Buying Terminal Actions with +Cards.
7. Buying Terminal Actions without +Cards.
8. Buying Treasure (if necessary)
Greening:
I feel like greening strategies have been discussed by people with far more practical experience than myself, so I'll leave that be.
Conclusion & Example:
It sounds fairly complicated, but once you've done it once or twice, it's actually fairly simple.
So, let's apply this heuristic to the "first game engine".
1. There's trashing (Mine + Remodel) but no junking (-6 to X, and +3 to Z), so X=12, Y=10, Z=3.
2. You need 7 +actions (X=12, minus 5). Count 3 Villages and 1 Market (+4 to Z). Z=7
3. You need 12 +cards (X=12). You already have +4 due to Villages + Markets, so 3 Smithies will cover the remaining 9. (+3 to Z). Z=10
4. You have have $7 from copper and $1 from Market and -$5 for trashing, leaving you with $3. Thus you need 2 Silver, 1 Gold. (+3 to Z). Z=13.
5. No junk attacks.
6. You already have Mine (pure gainer, so -2) and Remodel (limited gainer, so -1), add a Workshop (pure, so -2, for a total of -5 to Z. Z=8)
7. You can replace 1 Silver with a Militia. (+0 to Z, +1 to Y. Z=8, Y=11)
8. Z=8 is less than Y=11. So you have a viable engine.
So you've got your pre-game strategy worked out. The minimum components of your engine: 1 Remodel, 1 Workshop, 1 Militia, 1 Mine, 1 Gold, 3+ villages, 1+ market, 3+ smithies. Now you go about buying.
1. You want your gainers first, so open Remodel/Workshop. (or Mine, if you can*).
2. You don't have much non-terminal card draw except for Market, so pick that up first.
3. At this point you will have 2 terminals, so stock up on Villages.
4. Then you're left with your terminal actions (3+ Smithies and one Militia). Go back and forth between these and Village.
5. Treasure? You probably won't need any since in almost every scenario you'll need Villages more.
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I am sorry but i find that pretty unreadable as it is.
Can you give us an explanation of what X, Y and Z represents so we can follow the reasoning behind that heuristic?
Right now it feels like reading un-commented recursive code.
It seems X is the total drawing power you need to reach to draw your whole deck. but i have no idea what the other 2 values are.
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Ah, fair enough. (I added this to the OP as well)
X represents the number of cards you'll need to draw to cycle through your deck reliably.
Y represents the number of turns you have before a well-constructed Big Money deck can start greening.
Z represents the number of turns it will take you to construct your engine.
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OK that makes more sense now.
few remarks:
You are talking about the gainer but what about the +buy?
They are more tricky because their effects highly depends on the costs of the cards you needs. (hamlet can be gained easily with +buys but worker's village would be way harder).
in general you don't count into account the costs of cards for your engine (if all cards you need costs 5: you will have a lot of miss turns that will add to your Z quite a lot without adding more cards that you need).
Also it seems you are prepping for an engine that will get province + estate if i followed correctly, while possible i don't think that it is a good idea to push the beginner to learn engine on such tight engine.
I would have done the heuristic to prep for double province turns before BM guys got its fourth province.
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Also you will need +1 card to get a +buy if none of the +action or +cards you are using have a +buy.
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To explain the reasoning step-by-step
1a. On average you'll be able to trash probably 6 cards before you start greening, so that's 6 fewer cards you need to cycle through.
1b. On average you will split the curses/ruins with your opponent, adding 5 cards to your deck (requiring 5 more cards to cycle through.) If there's trashing and junking, they will more or less cancel each other out.
2a. X-5 is typically the number of +Actions you will need to sustain the amount of +Cards necessary to hit X. (This assumes three things, first that your +action source also provides +1 card. And secondly, that if you take all your terminal actions and average them together it will be approximately +2 cards per terminal action. And thirdly, that you need +1.5 actions approximately per terminal in order to cycle reliably.)
2b. Every +Action card you buy is 1 more turn it takes you to build your engine, hence adding that to Z.
3. Every +Card card you buy is 1 more turn it takes you to build your engine.
4a. You'll need ~1 treasure for every 2 cards necessary to your engine costing >$5, otherwise you won't be able to afford the necessary pieces fast enough.
4b. You need ~$10 total money in your deck if you want to be able to reliably buy 1 province each time your engine "goes off".
4c. You'll on average trash around 5 copper from your deck with your trashing cards.
5. Each attack card you buy is 1 more turn it takes to build your engine. With the speed at which you're cycling your deck, you really only need 1 vanilla attack card, but if the card has utility you want 2.
5a. The impact of curses on your opponents deck means it will take them approximately 1 more turn per curse (thus requiring 5 more turns if you split the curses)*.
*This number was arrived at statistically but can be verified with Simulators as well. Try DoubleWitch vs. BigSmithy where doublewitch hits 4 provinces in ~15 turns. In the mirror match, that bumps up to ~20 turns.
6. On average, each "gainer" will be played 3 times, but costs 1 turn to buy, for a net effect of 2 fewer turns. "Limited" gainers will on average get you something useful 2 times.
7. The average impact of a single purchased discard attack being played over the course of the game is ~1 lost turn for your opponent.
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You are talking about the gainer but what about the +buy?
They are more tricky because their effects highly depends on the costs of the cards you needs. (hamlet can be gained easily with +buys but worker's village would be way harder).
In most cases, my guess is cards with +Buy won't often "hit" more than once per game. By "hit" I mean let you purchase an extra key component of your engine in the early stages of the game. So the net impact on the number of turns needed to build the engine would be 0. That said, if you're going for a double-province turn, this changes things a bit. More on that below...
in general you don't count into account the costs of cards for your engine (if all cards you need costs 5: you will have a lot of miss turns that will add to your Z quite a lot without adding more cards that you need).
I ended up posting the following explanation after you posted your response, but the heuristic does attempt to address the cost issue: "4a. You'll need ~1 treasure for every 2 cards necessary to your engine costing >$5, otherwise you won't be able to afford the necessary pieces fast enough. "
Also it seems you are prepping for an engine that will get province + estate if i followed correctly, while possible i don't think that it is a good idea to push the beginner to learn engine on such tight engine.
I would have done the heuristic to prep for double province turns before BM guys got its fourth province.
Also it seems you are prepping for an engine that will get province + estate if i followed correctly, while possible i don't think that it is a good idea to push the beginner to learn engine on such tight engine. I would have done the heuristic to prep for double province turns before BM guys got its fourth province.
You can do that by altering Step 4 to $18 rather than $10, and then including a +Buy requirement. Example: In the "First Game Engine", you would need to add 2 gold and 1 silver during Step 4. This would increase the value of Z by 3, making the end result Z=11, Y=11. Incidentally, this theoretically indicates that going for the 2 Province turn may be an even stronger play than going for 1 Province per turn. I'd want to verify that though via simulation.
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Well, the heuristic might be a bit confusing to beginners, but a good way for them to learn about the underlying limitations imposed by the game. Having a computer calculate X, Y, and Z could be neat.
At first glance. This stuff looks like a good starting point for evaluating engines. A really nice effort.
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Well, the heuristic might be a bit confusing to beginners, but a good way for them to learn about the underlying limitations imposed by the game. Having a computer calculate X, Y, and Z could be neat.
At first glance. This stuff looks like a good starting point for evaluating engines. A really nice effort.
Once I get all the heuristics hammered out, ideally what I want to do is make either an add-on to Salvager or an offsite calculator and have it so you can input a Kingdom and it will automatically spit out a suggested engine.
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I find these posts fascinating. Where do all the numbers come from?
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I find these posts fascinating. Where do all the numbers come from?
X (the number of cards you'll need to draw to cycle through your deck reliably) = 18
A. You start off with 10 cards.
B. In a "vanilla" setting (no +buy, no trashing/junking, no gaining), 8 is the maximum number of engine pieces you can buy (including treasure) before your deck is too slow to beat Big Money.
C. Add these two together and you get 18.
D. Note: the heuristic starts off by having you grab your +Actions first in order to ensure that you can't overload yourself on non-terminal draw.
Add 3 to Z if there is trashing.
A. 1 turn to purchase your trasher.
B. Your trashers will cost you ~2 turns worth of productivity, either because you are trashing your entire hand (like with Chapel or Count) or you are limiting your buying power (a one-shot trashing takes two cards out of your hand).
Enough +Actions to equal X-5.
A. This assumes that your +action source also provides +1 card, as is the case with almost all villages.
B. This assumes that if you take all your purchased terminals + treasure and average them together, it will amount to ~+2 cards each.
C. The statistics and simulations indicate that you need approximately +1.5 actions per terminal in your deck in order to reliably cycle every turn (assuming the conditions of A and B are accurate).
D. In a "vanilla" setting, the heuristic suggests you need +13 actions and +18 cards, which would require 9 terminal/treasures. Multiply that by 1.5, and you get 13.5 which is close enough to the 13 that the heuristic suggests.
E. In a "junking" setting, the heuristic suggests you need +18 actions and +23 cards, which would require 12 terminal/treasures. Multiply that by 1.5 and you get 18 which is equal to the 18 that the heuristic suggests.
F. In a "trashing" setting, the heuristic suggests you need +7 actions and +12 cards, which would require 6 terminal/treasures. Multiply that by 1.5 and you get 9, which is slightly more than the heuristic suggests.
Y = 10 represents the number of turns you have before a well-constructed Big Money deck can start greening.
Most good BM decks can reach 4 provinces by turn 15. Which means if your deck can't start to go off consistently by turn 10, you will not consistently beat BM (10 turns plus 4 turns of province purchases).
Count one treasure for every 2 cards in your engine that cost 5 or more. Then count enough treasure cards to bring the total money in your deck up to 10.
A. 1 treasure for every 2 cards that cost $5 or more in your engine is statistically optimal to ensure enough purchasing power to buy your components before the "time limit" imposed by Big Money.
B. Having $10 total in your deck ensures that you have ~95% chance to be able to buy a province in the event that your engine "goes off".
Start with Junk attacks. Count 1 if it's vanilla (e.g. Sea Hag/Maurauder), count 2 if it has effects (Mountebank, Witch, Ambassador, Masquerade). Add 5 to Y.
A. If your Junk attack is vanilla, you typically only want 1 in your deck if you're running an engine. You'll be cycling enough to ensure that you'll at least tie them in the Junk race.
B. If your junk attack provides value like +cards or +coins, you typically want 2 to ensure that you can play one almost every turn in the early stages of the game.
B1. The risk of terminal collision if you purchase 2 junk attacks is a non-factor. Either your opponent purchases 2 terminal attacks as well, in which case he or she is subject to the same risk you are. Or, he or she only purchases 1, in which case on average you are going to be able to play your terminals ~60% more often and almost certainly win the Junk race.
C. Both the statistics and the simulators indicate that 5 curses/junk will mean your Big Money opponent will take 5 turns longer to reach 4 provinces, hence adding 5 to Y.
Set aside a maximum of 2 gainers. (If you already have gainers in your deck like trash-for-benefit, set aside a maximum of 1). Subtract 2 from Z for each "Pure" Gainer you have in your deck. Subtract 1 from Z for each "limited" Gainer you have in your deck.
A. On average, each "gainer" will be played 3 times, but costs 1 turn to buy, for a net effect of 2 fewer turns needed to build your engine.
B. "Limited" gainers will on average get you something useful 2 times, and cost 1 turn to buy, for a net effect of 1 fewer turns needed to build your engine
C. More than 2 "pure" gainers is not helpful because of diminishing returns. (By the time you can buy your 3rd gainer, your cycling speed will be slower and you'll probably only get to play it twice, and the increased odds of terminal collision means that the net effect will be nearly 0).
Add 1 to Y for each discard attack you purchase.
A. On average you'll get to play your discard attacks 2-3 times during the window when the discard will actually impact your opponent's speed. The net impact of these attacks will result in one additional turn required for Big Money to reach its goal.
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This is cool that you are doing this, but modeling play without specific cards and neglecting the game state is just so hard to do accurately.
Take trashing for example. Almost more important to how much you trash is when you trash. A chapel that lands on turn 3 or 4 is 10 times better than a chapel that lands on turn 5. The effectiveness of Count as trashing is dependent on whether you get a 5/2 opening with it, get it during turns 3 or 4 or miss and get it turn 5 or later. Early trashing allows you to play said trasher more frequently making it more effective at thinning. This is something that is inherent to the specific game, not the kingdom. As such, a single formula that only accounts for information about the kingdom can not accurately represent how well a given engine will play. I don't know how you would try to incorporate this sort of thing into your formula, but it's something that is just as important as the kingdom cards themselves.
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8 is the maximum number of engine pieces you can buy (including treasure) before your deck is too slow to beat Big Money
I'm not a big fan of those metrics. However I'll just discuss this statement. You may have only 8 turns before a big money deck starts buying provinces but an engine does not work under the same restrictions as a big money deck. It could buy multiple provinces or all the provinces in the same turn. It could end the game on piles with only a one point lead. It could gain multiple cards and even play them on the same turn. It could be able to win with alternate vp or victory points in a game where big money can't empty the province pile. It could find extra turns with outposts or possessions. In fact if anything is possible in dominion it is usually possible with engines and that makes engine decks the least suitable for metrics.
Anyway, most good engines (without a strong attack) will use extra buys or card gains to speed up development. This is probably a better rule of thumb for engine building than the metrics and it somewhat invalidates the metrics too.
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Well, the heuristic might be a bit confusing to beginners, but a good way for them to learn about the underlying limitations imposed by the game. Having a computer calculate X, Y, and Z could be neat.
At first glance. This stuff looks like a good starting point for evaluating engines. A really nice effort.
Once I get all the heuristics hammered out, ideally what I want to do is make either an add-on to Salvager or an offsite calculator and have it so you can input a Kingdom and it will automatically spit out a suggested engine.
You could in theory use this to determine a bot's strategy too, right? How do bots currently decide what strategy they take?
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I'm not sure you answered qmech's question (maybe you did, I'm not qmech). I'm wondering where your "averages" come from (like the average impacts of trashers/gainers)?
More importantly, why the heck should we care about averages anyway? Chapel and Trade Route are the same card in your heuristic, but this is completely ridiculous. You also give Mine/Remodel as examples of trashers, but they don't reduce the number of cards in your deck at all.
Your method isn't very instructive on how to evaluate boards either, as there's no consideration of card interaction. This is fundamental to reading a board. Things like Jack/Watchtower vs. discarders/junkers. Hoard plus Apprentice/Remodel/etc., all the little things that make Dominion interesting. And, more importantly for strategic considerations, these little interactions give engines a huge leg up over money strategies because engines can consistently take advantage of them.
Hunting Party = Lab with your method, Hunting Party does not equal Lab. This is a striking example of why it is weak strategy to think of cards only in terms of their "class" (trashers/gainers/junkers/draw), instead of thinking about cards in terms of both "class" and their overall strength within their class. And not only average strength, but strength on a particular board, which is influenced by the interactions I mentioned before.
Trash for benefit cards aren't adequately accounted for, and are hugely important to good engine play. They aren't always good deck thinners. These cards usually fall somewhere between trashers/gainers, with some other important effects depending on the card. And at the end of the game they can sometimes function as additional money/buys.
Engines are also capable of building and greening at the same time. Your method assumes a cut off where you stop acquiring engine pieces and start buying green cards. This is typical Big Money behavior, but is not as common with engines.
Your final deck goal is not typical of engines. Your end goal of ~$10 certainly isn't the "average" final production of engine decks in my experience. It's very common to be working towards at least Duchy+Province, but maybe multiple Provinces (or something like triple Gardens).
The other really important missing piece here is alt-VP, which is going to give you a longer game to build and use your engine. You no longer need to buy 4 provinces, you may not need to buy any Provinces at all. Alt-VP is one of the most important signs indicating an engine approach is viable, and you need to incorporate it in some way if you want your heuristics to be generally useful. This can include VP tokens as well, though mentioning these may be too specific for your guide.
Overall, I don't really like your approach because your heuristics are too sophisticated. I like my rules of thumb simple/stupid so that I can remember them easily and ignore them at will. I much prefer rules of thumb that focus on powerful cards and synergies. Anyway, those are my thoughts.
edit: I see there were some additional replies, I probably repeat some things others have said. That's what I get for writing a novel.
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I'll address the criticisms in two separate posts. Let me start with the general theme of most of the criticisms, then I'll make a separate post addressing the individual criticisms.
In general:
Most of the criticisms seem to be focused on the seemingly arbitrariness of the various quantities of cards/trashing/money/etc.
I was definitely not clear enough in the OP regarding this point: The important aspect of this is the play heuristics themselves, NOT the pre-game planning. The primary role of the pre-game planning is to identify which pieces you need to buy, NOT how many.
The reason it calculates "how many" of each card you need is to determine whether or not your engine is too slow to beat BM. In other words, if you were able to magically arrange your deck as you see fit and your deck is STILL too slow to beat BM, you shouldn't play engine.
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Now for the specifics:
It doesn't account for the subtle card interactions e.g. Jack/Watchtower.
Agreed. This is what separates an expert Dominion player from a new person who simply follows a formula. You can only bring someone so far with simple algorithms. This will bring someone up to maybe the 80% mark. The other 20% you can't really shortcut, you just have to play until you can recognize these things.
It's too complicated for a "rule of thumb"
Partially agreed. You could replace the entire pre-game planning with "Are there +Cards, +Actions, and trashing/attacks/gainers? Good. Buy those according to the following rules..." I wanted something between a notch above "stupidly simple". Big Money more than fulfills the "stupidly simple" role.
Differences between cards of the same "class" are whitewashed over.
Yes, but in most cases those differences aren't going to matter. If Hunting Party is the only source of +Cards on the board, that's going to be your engine component. The fact that it filters may tweak the numbers slightly but it most likely isn't going to be enough to push an engine from "not viable" to "viable" territory if the board is not engine-friendly. Now, if there are two comparable cards, say both Lab AND Hunting Party, you have some decisions to make and it becomes board-dependent.
Trash-for-benefit isn't accounted for properly.
Remember that the "pre-game" planning is just for determining the viability of an engine, optimizing it, and identifying the component cards. There usually aren't a ton of options when it comes to trashers in general, or trash-for-benefits. If there's only 1 trasher on the board, you're most likely going to be buying it.
$10 is way too little for an engine/Often an engine can buy >1 province
Yes. The $10 is simply a minimum for your engine to be viable. If you follow the play heuristics, you will almost always have enough to buy more than 1 province (as long as the board supports it.)
Most good engines (without a strong attack) will use extra buys or card gains to speed up development.
Yes, this is accounted for in the pre-game planning.
It doesn't account for alt-VP
True. Hadn't thought about that.
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While reading, I came up with a handful of possible critiques, much (if not all) of which are not really suitable. I think my own, and possibly quite a few of the other criticism found in this thread, can be really summarized as: you do not have a good tradeoff between simplicity and usefulness.
When doing theoretical analysis like this, you simplify. That's ok. However, you are simplifying A LOT. And after that, you still have a heuristic/plan that is going to be pretty bad most of the time. I think is better to either simplify even more and evalute things like the optimal number of Jacks/Smitties/Wharves you need for BM+X, or the best ratio for Smitty/Village, FV/Wharf, etc, or things like that. You are trying to be general enough to encompass ANY kingdom, but at the same time simplify everything into 4 or 5 equivalence classes of cards and 3 integer indicators. I think that is doom to fail both the goal of actually giving you an all-in-one evaluation function AND providing some theoretical/empirical input on specific cards or interactions.
BTW, I do not think this is a possible task in Dominion, so I do not think you are doing this wrong, I just think you are trying to do a impossible thing. Notice that Dominion bots are horrible in base game and even more horrible with any extension. Androminion AI was also horrible. I suspect any serious attempt at an AI player of Dominion involves a lot of machine learning and specifical development, more than lots of general theorems.
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While reading, I came up with a handful of possible critiques, much (if not all) of which are not really suitable. I think my own, and possibly quite a few of the other criticism found in this thread, can be really summarized as: you do not have a good tradeoff between simplicity and usefulness.
When doing theoretical analysis like this, you simplify. That's ok. However, you are simplifying A LOT. And after that, you still have a heuristic/plan that is going to be pretty bad most of the time. I think is better to either simplify even more and evalute things like the optimal number of Jacks/Smitties/Wharves you need for BM+X, or the best ratio for Smitty/Village, FV/Wharf, etc, or things like that. You are trying to be general enough to encompass ANY kingdom, but at the same time simplify everything into 4 or 5 equivalence classes of cards and 3 integer indicators. I think that is doom to fail both the goal of actually giving you an all-in-one evaluation function AND providing some theoretical/empirical input on specific cards or interactions.
BTW, I do not think this is a possible task in Dominion, so I do not think you are doing this wrong, I just think you are trying to do a impossible thing. Notice that Dominion bots are horrible in base game and even more horrible with any extension. Androminion AI was also horrible. I suspect any serious attempt at an AI player of Dominion involves a lot of machine learning and specifical development, more than lots of general theorems.
Agreed re: simplicity vs. usefulness. I retooled the OP to include a "simplified" version that should be a lot easier to use for new players.
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Now for the specifics:
It doesn't account for the subtle card interactions e.g. Jack/Watchtower.
Agreed. This is what separates an expert Dominion player from a new person who simply follows a formula. You can only bring someone so far with simple algorithms. This will bring someone up to maybe the 80% mark. The other 20% you can't really shortcut, you just have to play until you can recognize these things.
You don't have to be an expert to see that Watchtower counters junkers/discarders. And you should be thinking about this stuff as a beginner player, as soon as you learn the rules. The interactions between cards in Dominion are simple and usually obvious, anybody can see this stuff immediately (the more esoteric/hidden interactions usually suck anyway). Tunnel combos with discarders, Wishing Well combos with Cartographer, Conspirator likes cantrips, Feodum goes with Trader. There's nothing advanced or mysterious about card synergies. The expert play comes from knowing the relative strengths of different stuff, i.e. which of these various cards and card interactions are the best for this board. Your heuristics don't bring someone to the 80% mark, it doesn't teach them to look for these things at all.
Differences between cards of the same "class" are whitewashed over.
Yes, but in most cases those differences aren't going to matter. If Hunting Party is the only source of +Cards on the board, that's going to be your engine component. The fact that it filters may tweak the numbers slightly but it most likely isn't going to be enough to push an engine from "not viable" to "viable" territory if the board is not engine-friendly. Now, if there are two comparable cards, say both Lab AND Hunting Party, you have some decisions to make and it becomes board-dependent.
You are wrong about this, and your suggestion that engine pieces are usually interchangeable is bad advice. HP is a million times better than Lab (hyperbole, but it's a lot better). Wharf is a million times better than Smithy. The viability of an engine depends on the strength of the pieces. You can't generally substitute Trade Route for Chapel and get the same results, you will be a turn or two (or three) slower and that is an eternity when playing an engine. Card prices play a big role here as well, big difference between acquiring a handful of Villages vs. a handful of Cities/Bazaars (I know you mention this, but I think you are underestimating it's effect).
Most good engines (without a strong attack) will use extra buys or card gains to speed up development.
Yes, this is accounted for in the pre-game planning.
The issue here is that you are underselling how much these cards can accelerate an engine, with the result that your heuristics will underestimate how often engines are viable.
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I will add a counterpoint to my own arguments: Something good that can be extracted is a simplified presentation on how each class influences an engine. I think the analysis would work much better if presented as a checklist instead of an algorithm trying to accomplish some definite result. Checklists, by their definition, are not expected to be all-encompassing nor to be exhaustive. Being an algorithm or rule of thumb expected to give a yes/no answer to engine viability is working heavily against you. Also, checklists ARE useful. Is pretty easy, especially online, to forget to check for +Buy, or to consider how fast you can build-up, etc. There are many engines that seem great because they run smoothly, but they can just not be built fast enough in a Province game.
Example:
1. Gainers add speed to engines. Check if there is a gainer that will work on cards you want many of.
2. Discard attacks will slow down the game, usually more a BM player than an engine player, both because the engine plays the attack more often, but also, because often an engine will only need a couple of key cards to get off the ground each turn. The stronger the Attack, the biggest edge it will give to an engine.
3. Junking attacks slow down the game, but they may affect the engine more than BM, so check carefully. Check if the engine can trash or pass through the junk, or is fast enough to play the attack more often and thus get an advantage or at least level the playfield.
...
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You don't have to be an expert to see that ... *insert card interactions*
Maybe you don't have to be an expert, but look at the Goko leaderboards. Scroll down to the 4000-5000 point range. There are tons of players who have played hundreds, if not thousands of games and are still barely .500 and have never broken 5000. If it were that simple, you wouldn't see such a glut of mediocrity.
You are wrong about this, and your suggestion that engine pieces are usually interchangeable is bad advice.... The viability of an engine depends on the strength of the pieces.
Yes, the I agree with that. However the whole point of the criteria is to deliberately undervalue the viability of an engine, for example, by dumbing Hunting Party down to the level of Lab. If you are at a skill level where you need to follow a heuristic like this, it's better to play it safe than sorry. It's easy to screw up building an engine. It's harder to screw up Big Money.
The issue here is that you are underselling how much these cards can accelerate an engine, with the result that your heuristics will underestimate how often engines are viable.
See above. The underestimation is deliberate. That said, I think you'll find if you look over your games, you'll find that in most cases, each +gain card tend to get played (and have meaningful impact) about 3 time per game.
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Maybe you don't have to be an expert, but look at the Goko leaderboards. Scroll down to the 4000-5000 point range. There are tons of players who have played hundreds, if not thousands of games and are still barely .500 and have never broken 5000. If it were that simple, you wouldn't see such a glut of mediocrity.
Rankings say nothing as they are relative. Even if every player in Goko were experts in building engines, roughly half would be below median.
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Maybe you don't have to be an expert, but look at the Goko leaderboards. Scroll down to the 4000-5000 point range. There are tons of players who have played hundreds, if not thousands of games and are still barely .500 and have never broken 5000. If it were that simple, you wouldn't see such a glut of mediocrity.
Rankings say nothing as they are relative. Even if every player in Goko were experts in building engines, roughly half would be below median.
So the better way for me to phrase it would be: "This will bring someone up to the point where they are better than roughly 80% of the current active Goko Dominion population."
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You don't have to be an expert to see that ... *insert card interactions*
Maybe you don't have to be an expert, but look at the Goko leaderboards. Scroll down to the 4000-5000 point range. There are tons of players who have played hundreds, if not thousands of games and are still barely .500 and have never broken 5000. If it were that simple, you wouldn't see such a glut of mediocrity.
Somebody has to lose the game, there will always be a glut of mediocrity even if the player base as a whole is getting better at the game (would consistently beat their past selves). The other reason there are terrible players with thousands of games is that lots of people don't try to improve their play. They would prefer to play "interesting" strategies, or they avoid attacks because they are "unsporting" or they just choose strategies they think will be the most fun. This is a perfectly cool and legitimate way to play the game, I bet a lot of these people are having way more fun than me. But these people don't learn much Dominion strategy, because their decisions aren't motivated by trying to win.
Getting better really is as simple as: "stop doing the things you do when you lose, do more of the things you do when you win." Lots of people refuse to do one or both of these things, so they never get better. The top players don't have magic Dominion brains, or even a lot of specific knowledge, they just have winning habits and good instincts (this is a kind of knowledge I suppose, but I couldn't write most of it down, a lot of the "explanations" in the forums for why strategy X is better than Y is just bs.)
You are wrong about this, and your suggestion that engine pieces are usually interchangeable is bad advice.... The viability of an engine depends on the strength of the pieces.
Yes, the I agree with that. However the whole point of the criteria is to deliberately undervalue the viability of an engine, for example, by dumbing Hunting Party down to the level of Lab. If you are at a skill level where you need to follow a heuristic like this, it's better to play it safe than sorry. It's easy to screw up building an engine. It's harder to screw up Big Money.
Ok, I can appreciate this approach, I learned the game by playing fairly conservatively (don't let SCSN know). Just to clarify, I'm not sure whether your method will under- or overvalue engines overall. No consideration of alt-VP and +buy will undervalue engines. The interchangeability will sometimes overvalue and sometimes undervalue, depends on the board. Mainly, I think your method will just be wrong a large enough portion of the time to make it not useful as a strategy tool, even for beginners. I guess the fair thing to do would be to try the method on a few sample kingdoms and see what happens, I may do it if I have the time.
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I like the idea of trying it with a sample kingdom. Just created one in Goko.
Bishop, Vault, Haggler, Cache, Border Village
Village, Wishing Well, Masquerade, Familiar, Ironmonger
Simple Version:
1. Are there +2 actions? Village. Are there +2 cards? Vault, Masquerade.
2. Are there junk attacks? Masquerade and Familiar. Take 2.
3. Are there trashers? Masquerade. Take 2.
4. Are there gainers? Haggler. Take 2.
5. Are there discard attacks? No.
So your engine components are: Village/Border Village, Vault, Masquerade, Haggler.
The Complex Version:
1. X=18, Y=10, Z=3. (Trashing, Junking).
2. +13 Actions = 7 Villages. Z=10
3. +18 Cards = 7 Villages + 6 Vault/Masquerades. Z=16
4. 4 Treasure (7 $5 cards). Z=20
5. Already purchased Masquerades. +5 to Y for cursing. Y=15
6. Haggler is a "pure" gainer, and you are taking 2, so -4 to Z. Z=15
7. Z=15 is = than Y=15, so the "complex version" suggests that this engine might be a bit too slow to beat Big Money.
So your "Rules" would be:
1. Open Masquerade/Masquerade.
2. If $6, Border Village.
3. If $5+, Haggler (max 2).
3. If Terminals>Villages: Village.
4. If $5+, Vault.
5. Silver
This is interesting because it presents the choice of Masquerade vs. Familiar. I'm inclined to think Masquerade is the stronger open, especially if you open with two of them because you'll be able to dish out and trash the curses faster than a Familiar-player can deal them to you. And the "Complex Version" suggests that the engine may be too slow to beat BM. But the Haggler serves as a +$2 and the Vault can give you coins, so 4 treasure may be unnecessary. When you run the above heuristic through the simulator vs. a Big Money deck that plays 1 Masquerade, 1 Vault, they're a dead heat at 50% each.
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Both strategies are completely dead against Bishop...
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Both strategies are completely dead against Bishop...
That is definitely the one glaring weakness in this algorithm (ignoring alt-VP). How would you do Bishop?
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Both strategies are completely dead against Bishop...
That is definitely the one glaring weakness in this algorithm (ignoring alt-VP). How would you do Bishop?
Do you mean "How would you incorporate Bishop into the heuristics?" or "How would you use Bishop on this board?" Bishop is hard, you can't evaluate it without knowing the other cards on the board. Here it has great support from both Haggler and Border Village. It has potential to score a lot of points. On a lot of boards Bishop can only produce a handful of VP, while seriously accelerating your opponent. Since there's no +buy on this board, the extra VP per turn can be very important.
Your original analysis also doesn't account for Border Village (you don't need as many purchases as your heuristic suggests since you can get Border Village/other piece in one turn. You definitely don't need a lot of treasure here either. You'll never need to produce more than $8, and a lot of your engine pieces can be gained off BV or Haggler. Haggler is also a good example of a gainer which will regularly gain more than 3 pieces for your deck. I'm confident the deck can work with fewer than 6 Vaults/Masqs, which also lowers the number of turns you need to build.
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That is definitely the one glaring weakness in this algorithm (ignoring alt-VP). How would you do Bishop?
Do you mean "How would you incorporate Bishop into the heuristics?" or "How would you use Bishop on this board?"
Just on this board. I'm sure Bishop could be worked into the heuristic somehow but that's a task for a different day.
Your original analysis also doesn't account for Border Village
Yeah, Border Village now that I'm thinking about it would count as a "Gainer". I think it still needs a little bit of treasure to get past that first hump, and to replace what gets trashed with Masquerade. In general though I think the heuristic did a pretty good job of coming up with an engine strategy for a beginner to follow.
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I see the possibility of a pseudo-golden deck here, that does not touch Provinces. May be difficult with Masq on the board, though, you need some kind of fodder just in case. But BV/Haggler gains into Bishop trashing seems like you can get to a place in which you easily get more than 6 VP per turn without buying any green or thicken your deck at all.
BTW, in the heuristic, you should really consider Ironmonger a +Actions. In this board, I think I would open Ironmonger/Masq. Ironmonger is a great cycler and can get you to $5 for Haggler. Afterwards, it will become an almost Village, which is fine. It also costs $4, so it can be a much better gain than Village to eventually trash to Bishop.
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BTW, in the heuristic, you should really consider Ironmonger a +Actions. In this board, I think I would open Ironmonger/Masq. Ironmonger is a great cycler and can get you to $5 for Haggler. Afterwards, it will become an almost Village, which is fine. It also costs $4, so it can be a much better gain than Village to eventually trash to Bishop.
Good call. Opening Ironmonger/Masq gives you a much better chance of hitting $5 without having to buy treasure. Early game, it's pretty much always going to be +1c/+1a/+$1. And late game it's almost always going to be a Village+filtering.
Yeah, I thought about the possibility of a Golden deck, but the two-pronged risk of getting passed garbage, and being forced to pass good stuff can get really tough. If your opponent tries to go Golden, you can just pick up a Bishop and a couple copper. Your engine can still reliably go off, and you pass them the copper, and you use BV/Haggler to pick up high-$ cards for Bishop to churn through.
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Now, I haven't been looking at the exact numbers here to determine whether they are at all accurate or not. When I think about how a new player would go about improving their game, I imagine that wouldn't immediately be able to tell whether the potential for an engine even exists at all. By re-evaluating the board after the game, by playing against an opponent who demonstrates the engine, or by reading up on a specific suggestion as to how one can build an engine on that board, a new player can learn gradually learn how to improve their board analysis skills as they find common threads within all the examples they've seen.
What I liked about the OP was that it mentions how certain classes will likely affect the flow of the game. Gainers will generally reduce the amount of time needed to acquire engine components (assuming the gainers can gain the engine components, so don't count Ironworks if your main engine component costs $5). How many cards will the gainer effectively get compared to if you didn't have it? I don't know, nor do I know how they might affect your deck building if they prevent you from getting the more costly engine components you need. I expect most people here to answer "depends on the board". Trashers may reduce the number of cards you need to draw, but by how much depends too much on the board and the trasher.
The point is, it's still useful for new players to understand how these kinds of cards affect their decks and the requirements they need to build a good engine. Even the most obvious effects might not get discovered by new players for a long time.
I am however very skeptical that any heuristic like this will help players actually win games if followed to the letter. Players may have to make many in-game adjustments in order to respond properly to their opponent, or even their own shuffle luck.
In addition, there are a lot of strange cards and strategies that are hard to capture in a general heuristic like this. Bishop was mentioned, but Goons also messes up many assumptions. One specific strategy I have in mind right now is a Poor House/Village/Cartographer strategy. Is it even an engine? This deck really doesn't need to draw itself, but the Cartographer's deck discarding acts like pseudo draw.
The only real issue I have is that I worry it will be too hard for new players to even understand what this heuristic is doing or trying to do. By the time they fully grasp the concepts, they may very well not be new players anymore, and will instead be at the stage where they will want to challenge certain aspects of the heuristic.
You already gave some rules of thumb for Big Money. This kind of analysis lends itself much more to Big-Money that it does to engines. At least with Big-Money, the assumptions can be verified to some extent by statistics. Engines? pfft, who can really program the optimal engine for a specific board. No one has a clue whether the numbers are right or wrong. There is just a big lack of precision in these kinds of numbers.
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I don't know what kind of beginners you are talking about, but those I do meet, they usually want to have hints like "Junk Attacks are strong" or "Don't buy too many terminals".
Try telling them about X,Y and Z ...
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I don't know what kind of beginners you are talking about, but those I do meet, they usually want to have hints like "Junk Attacks are strong" or "Don't buy too many terminals".
Try telling them about X,Y and Z ...
This. And the folks I play Dominion with tend to have PhDs in math.
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maybe you should present these ideas to goko so that they can make their bots more competative, without using different starting hands.
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I don't know what kind of beginners you are talking about, but those I do meet, they usually want to have hints like "Junk Attacks are strong" or "Don't buy too many terminals". Try telling them about X,Y and Z ...
True. To me the three basic skills of Dominion are understanding the basic strategies, identifying which is the dominant strategy, then tactically executing that strategy. Experts who are skilled at all three obviously don't need these heuristics, and total beginners don't have the context to understand them. If I were trying to teach someone who is completely new to Dominion, I would just point them at this website and tell them to read it for a few days.
This is for the people in the middle, who know already know the basic strategies, but struggle with identifying and executing the dominant strategies. The biggest mistakes I see mediocre players make is that they get too "creative" when choosing their strategy, and they "panic" too easily in the face of opposition. Having a specific evaluation criteria helps clarify which strategies are most dominant (even if it's a boring BM-variant). And having a specific set of rules to follow makes it much easier, (at least for me), to stick to that strategy and not abandon it halfway through. (Obviously you have to adapt based on what your opponent does, but most mediocre players tend to over-react far more often than they under-react.)
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Zappie makes a good point.
Expressicist, you keep calling these heuristics, but they just aren't. Whether or not your point are good advice, they are not heuristics. I try to imagine a context or skill level in which this advice would be worthwhile to a player, and I couldn't find one. That is, until Zappie's post. Your advice wouldn't be helpful to a human player, but rather you seem to be outlining some pseudocode for a mediocre AI. Which isn't a bad thing, but you are going to get negative reactions when you present this as heuristics for human players.
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Maybe you should present these ideas to goko so that they can make their bots more competative, without using different starting hands.
The bots seem to make immediate purchasing decisions based on the current game state, i.e. zero turns advance planning. They know to put villages with terminals, I think they select their preferred terminal cards in advance, but that's about it.
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Maybe you should present these ideas to goko so that they can make their bots more competative, without using different starting hands.
The bots seem to make immediate purchasing decisions based on the current game state, i.e. zero turns advance planning. They know to put villages with terminals, I think they select their preferred terminal cards in advance, but that's about it.
There seems to be a ranking of cards by importance, independent of boards. Like bots will almost always buy Jack if it's available, and almost always a Potion of there are Potion cost cards. (In particular, bots love Golem; I've almost never seen them pass it up.) Attack cards seem to have preference, too, like Witch and Swindler (which they love). They seem to avoid a card like Masquerade, though. However, it's not consistent.. sometimes they ignore Familiar and other Cursers (even when they're the best choice).
Also, sometimes on Adventures (where the board is exactly the same), they'll choose different strategies with the same opening hand.
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Zappie makes a good point.
Expressicist, you keep calling these heuristics, but they just aren't. Whether or not your point are good advice, they are not heuristics. I try to imagine a context or skill level in which this advice would be worthwhile to a player, and I couldn't find one. That is, until Zappie's post. Your advice wouldn't be helpful to a human player, but rather you seem to be outlining some pseudocode for a mediocre AI. Which isn't a bad thing, but you are going to get negative reactions when you present this as heuristics for human players.
Maybe these rules are just entirely self-centered because I have been using myself as the test case. So there's an example of a context/skill level where this is applicable. I had never played Dominion before Christmas. Put whatever stock you will in Goko's rankings but after ~500 games my ranking fluctuates between 5200 and 5700 give or take. The point of that isn't shameless self congratulation, it's a case study of the fact that following there's at least one context where these are applicable.
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There seems to be a ranking of cards by importance, independent of boards. Like bots will almost always buy Jack if it's available, and almost always a Potion of there are Potion cost cards. (In particular, bots love Golem; I've almost never seen them pass it up.) Attack cards seem to have preference, too, like Witch and Swindler (which they love). They seem to avoid a card like Masquerade, though. However, it's not consistent.. sometimes they ignore Familiar and other Cursers (even when they're the best choice).
The sometimes ignore stuff because they nearly always spend the coins they have. They will buy a gold for 6 coins instead of a witch. They will buy a cache for 5 coins instead of a potion in a familiar kingdom. This is another example of their turn by turn decision making.
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The "simple version" is pretty good. I think you'd have a very hard time convincing anyone to count up X Y and Z (have you tried this?). Beginners need strategy advice like what's in WW's article, which can be condensed into the one paragraph about "what you need to build an engine" for ppl who don't want to read the whole thing.
I think the best thing you could do to prove to us that this is useful advice is to actually give it to some new players and tell us how they respond. Edit: the only way you'll prove it to us is with empirical evidence bc it looks really dubious.
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I think the best thing you could do to prove to us that this is useful advice is to actually give it to some new players and tell us how they respond. Edit: the only way you'll prove it to us is with empirical evidence bc it looks really dubious.
See above - I started playing Dominion a little bit more than a month ago, and following these heuristics has brought my ranking to the mid 5000s on Goko. Yes, I know that one case study isn't rigorous proof, and yes, Goko's rankings are definitely suspect and aren't a good indicator of skill. I fully recognize that there are a lot of flaws in my game.
The more important part about about having that ranking is that it's high enough to where I regularly get the opportunity to play against people much better than myself, and learn from them. That's the whole point of the heuristics; to elevate your game to the point where you can start learning first-hand from the big dogs. If you're stuck in the 4000-5000 range, (like most people who play Dominion, most of whom have played for much longer than I have), you're mostly going to get the opportunity to play against other mediocre players.
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I think the best thing you could do to prove to us that this is useful advice is to actually give it to some new players and tell us how they respond. Edit: the only way you'll prove it to us is with empirical evidence bc it looks really dubious.
The question isn't whether the advice helps someone improve. The question is whether it is good advice. Is it better than the more qualitative advice we tend to give our friends about engines? So you'd have to give on new player these heuristics, and then give another player the more typical advice (say, WanderingWinder's article (http://dominionstrategy.com/2013/01/23/the-five-fundamental-deck-types-the-engine/) on engines, or even Geronimoo's article (http://dominionstrategy.com/2012/07/30/building-the-first-game-engine/)). Then compare who improves more.
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You have certainly improved your understanding of dominion by creating these heuristics, but not necessarily your play by using them.
This is why it doesn't prove anything if you leveled up.
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@terminalcopper and SirPeebles: I agree with both of you. Following these rules hasn't made me a better player, it's made me a player who can follow a set of heuristics.
As for SirPeebles' question of which improves people faster: qualitative advice or these heuristics, well it all depends on your definition of "improved". If your only goal is to increase your Goko ranking, then my guess is that yes, these heuristics are better.
If your goal is to develop a greater understanding of the game, then that's a very different story. I think it mostly has to do with your learning style. If you're an experimenter, then rigid heuristics are going to stifle your development. If you're an observer/mimicker, then these heuristics will raise your ranking enough to where you will get many more opportunities to play games against experts who are worth observing/mimicking.
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I think you misunderstood terminalCopper's point. That, or I'm misunderstanding it.
You were saying that your improved ranking proves that the heuristics are helpful in improving your play, even if it doesn't help a lot in making you a better player (sans heuristics).
But tC is saying that, in the course of developing your algorithms and formulae, you have actually increased your understanding of the game. Your rising rank is likely a reflection of your increased skill due to your greater understanding, not the usefulness heuristics.
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But tC is saying that, in the course of developing your algorithms and formulae, you have actually increased your understanding of the game. Your rising rank is likely a reflection of your increased skill due to your greater understanding, not the usefulness heuristics.
Ah, I hadn't looked at it that way. That definitely could be the case.
If it is though, it underscores the point that the usefulness of these heuristics is highly dependent on your learning style. SirPeebles hit the nail on the head when he referred to this as "pseudocode for a mediocre AI." One of the implications of that is, following these will only elevate you to the level of that mediocre AI, and never surpass it. Once you've reached that point, have these heuristics helped you or hurt you?
Like I mentioned earlier: if you are the type who learns by observing others and duplicating their successes, these will probably help you because now you'll have a lot more opportunities to do just that. If you are the type who learns by putting the pieces together on your own and don't like just mindlessly following someone else's path, then these probably will have hurt you because you'll basically have spent your formative period learning nearly nothing.
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One thing that may be overlooked here, is that by following a heuristic like this, you're forced to do one of the most important things in Dominion: evaluate the board. I personally am terrible at this, and sometimes just start buying stuff without figuring out what is best first. I imagine that a lot of beginning players have this problem as well.
So I think there is something valuable in that.
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I am giving you a +1 because I like the enthusiasm.
"Is the engine viable?" is a really important question. However, I don't really believe the "Is the engine viable?" section would work better than most other, simpler approaches. You lay out a simple approach: always go engine if there is a village (+2 actions) and a card that draws at least 2. Does the complicated method do a better job than this at determining whether the engine is viable? I am going to go with no.
What I do like is the stand you take on a heuristic for building the engine, essentially listing pieces in order of importance.
junking attacks > cards that trash > cards that gain > useful cantrips or non-terminal draw > villages (+2 actions)* > terminal draw > other useful terminals > Treasure
* IF you have more terminals than villages in your deck.
You could do much worse than telling new players this. It's easy to remember, conveys some useful information, and gets people to be on the lookout for different pieces.
Although, what happened to the discard attack??
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I am going to repeat myself, because I believe many people keep repeating it in disguise: I think the usefulness of the heuristic is actually using it as a checklist. That makes you focus on the different pieces, spend some time looking at the board, consider different kind of things, etc. All good things to make new players do.
With regard to the learning style, I think TheExpressicist is a bit too set on this two styles, as if they represented a complete partition of the set of people, which I doubt. I am more inclined to believe most people learn in both ways, as well as many others (like reading theoretical things like this forum). That being said, if some people need to observe masters to learn, the best they can do is probably watch videos and read game reports and the discussions on them (there are plenty). That would get them the necessary observation time much faster than trying to play like a mediocre AI in order to face them. It is also better with the world.
If I ever become a Dominion master worth watching to learn, I do NOT want people developing mediocre AI to try to face me. For that, I would much rather play bots who won't mind if I take 10 minutes in a turn because I want to go to the toiletter. I would never do that to a person.
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Q: Is an engine viable on board X?
A: Yes.
Although not perfect, this heuristic is simple, elegant and most of the time correct. And you can learn a lot from it.
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@Soulnet: Yeah, there are definitely a lot more than two modes of learning. I just focused on those two for sake of example because I think they are two that are most positively/negatively impacted by following rigid heuristics.
@Polk - I thought about discard attacks in the "Simple version" but I realized that most viable discard attacks fall under one of the other, higher ranked categories. Ghost Ship, Minion, Torturer, Margrave, etc. The only two exceptions I could think of are Goons and Militia. Goons is a seperate beast because I have not adequately accounted for the impact of alt-VP. And I didnt' want to make a separate rule just for Militia.
@Stef - (This is a legitimate question, not a snarky riposte) In general, how do you approach an engine when there is not a viable source of +Action on the board?
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@Stef - (This is a legitimate question, not a snarky riposte) In general, how do you approach an engine when there is not a viable source of +Action on the board?
Throne Room.
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@Stef - (This is a legitimate question, not a snarky riposte) In general, how do you approach an engine when there is not a viable source of +Action on the board?
Throne Room.
I count that as + 2 Action "equivalent" (along with KC, Procession, and Golem)....
More seriously, if there are good cantrips, you can still often go engine. For an extreme example:
Vineyard, Forager, Urchin, Menagerie, Warehouse, Spy, Bridge, Highway, Butcher, Peddler
Even if Menagerie was replaced with Pearl Diver or something, so there is no +2 or more draw, either, it's still engine/Vineyard.
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I am going to repeat myself, because I believe many people keep repeating it in disguise: I think the usefulness of the heuristic is actually using it as a checklist. That makes you focus on the different pieces, spend some time looking at the board, consider different kind of things, etc. All good things to make new players do.
With regard to the learning style, I think TheExpressicist is a bit too set on this two styles, as if they represented a complete partition of the set of people, which I doubt. I am more inclined to believe most people learn in both ways, as well as many others (like reading theoretical things like this forum). That being said, if some people need to observe masters to learn, the best they can do is probably watch videos and read game reports and the discussions on them (there are plenty). That would get them the necessary observation time much faster than trying to play like a mediocre AI in order to face them. It is also better with the world.
If I ever become a Dominion master worth watching to learn, I do NOT want people developing mediocre AI to try to face me. For that, I would much rather play bots who won't mind if I take 10 minutes in a turn because I want to go to the toiletter. I would never do that to a person.
Watching a few videos by WW, AdamH, Qvist, jsh, etc. can probably help a new player a lot. Especially paying attention to the pre-game analysis. Later tactics are important, but I do feel like the pre-game/opening stuff is the easiest place for a beginner to improve. As far a checklist for engines go, it is good to ask a few questions like
1) are there villages and cards for drawing? If not, is there some other way to play lots of cards?
2) anyway to thin my deck? if not, is there some other way to improve reliability?
3) what am I going to do with my engine? Is there a key card I'm hoping to play each turn?
4) it would be nice if I could get more than one green card per turn later. Is there a source of +buy so that I can double Province or pick up Duchies on the side? Maybe a remodeler that I can use to turn cards into green?
5) any attacks to think about?
6) how viable does this plan seem? what else might I try?
None of these steps lead to the conclusion that the engine is viable or not viable. But at least you've thought about it, then after the game you can compare what happened to your original thoughts and begin to get a feel for relative strengths of strategies and tactics (e.g.: hmm, apparently Witch's +2 Cards wasn't enough draw after all, especially with all of those Curses). The idea is to use the heuristics as a flexible framework. Flexibility is key, since it allows room for growth and development over time.
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@Stef - (This is a legitimate question, not a snarky riposte) In general, how do you approach an engine when there is not a viable source of +Action on the board?
Yes your question is legitimate. But I can't think of an easy answer.
No +actions is a strong hint engine is going to be hard, but with some fitting cantrips you can still pull it off.
Scrying pool is a very likely candidate, as is Upgrade. Both still need some help, but very very little.
Yesterday I played Scrying Pool + knights (http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140206/log.51102f16e4b0fb53a9f92227.1391703564291.txt), this video is about Scrying Pool + Goons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHW7jPuv1lU), and an example with Upgrade+Alchemist (http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20131030/log.50b20dc3e4b0c9ce0cf27eb3.1383153872907.txt)
A kingdom of Wishing Well, Remodel, Conspirator, Market is also a (very strong) engine.
Horn of Plenty can totally work without any +actions, as can Highway.
The problem is this discussion might be that we all accepted 'engine' as a deck type. I like WanderingWinders survey of the decktypes (http://dominionstrategy.com/2013/01/21/the-five-fundamental-deck-types-introduction/) up to the point that I agree with 4 out of 5. But "engine" doesn't really fit in there as a single category. There are just too many completely different decks we're all calling 'engine'. If you really want to get an answer to the question 'should I go engine' maybe you should first look into the different kind of engines that exist. Then for each type of engine try to formulate some rules that predict if it's going to work.
But I think it's a lot of work and very hard to pull of. All my attempts to write an article about it failed, up to the point that I just deleted my own nonsense instead of posting it.
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Q: Is an engine viable on board X?
A: Yes.
Although not perfect, this heuristic is simple, elegant and most of the time correct. And you can learn a lot from it.
According to the thread title, I would like to expand Stefs idealistic version by a few lines:
A beginner should try to build an engine, if
1) neither rebuild nor cultist is on board
AND
2a) all engine ingredients are available
(+2actions, +2draw, +buy, trashing, gaining, payload)
OR
2b) most of them are available, and no junk attacks
OR
2c) neither Junk Attacks nor excellent BM cards are on board
(say ...: Wharf, Jack, Vault, Masq)
This is pretty easy to adapt and even helpful for many mediocre players. Concerning the results, I think, it will be stronger than the complicated XYZ-stuff ...
and for once in my life, it might even outperform Stefs attempt.
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Q: Is an engine viable on board X?
A: Yes.
Although not perfect, this heuristic is simple, elegant and most of the time correct. And you can learn a lot from it.
According to the thread title, I would like to expand Stefs idealistic version by a few lines:
A beginner should try to build an engine, if
1) neither rebuild nor cultist is on board
AND
2a) all engine ingredients are available
(+2actions, +2draw, +buy, trashing, gaining, payload)
OR
2b) most of them are available, and no junk attacks
OR
2c) neither Junk Attacks nor excellent BM cards are on board
(say ...: Wharf, Jack, Vault, Masq)
This is pretty easy to adapt and even helpful for many mediocre players. Concerning the results, I think, it will be stronger than the complicated XYZ-stuff ...
and for once in my life, it might even outperform Stefs attempt.
Is all else fails:
(http://s.quickmeme.com/img/20/202e5421b5f7af8467722d314029ab4e83ac38f0e9847caee2e1567061bd54a4.jpg)
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Something else to consider: sometimes, it's not that the engine is particularly viabl so much as big mony really isn't viable. There are cards like Noble Brigand, Knights, Rabble, and even Pirate ship that can really put the hurt on BM decks if the key terminal is played often. There will be times where you're kinda forced to play engine.
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For an engine to be possible, basically all you need is some way of chaining together cards that draw. Usually this means either having a card which is capable of drawing more than one card at a time (and if all such cards are terminal, a card capable of giving more than one action or the effective equivalent), sometimes it means having some good cantrips (usually with some reasonable way to thin the deck; 'reasonable trashing' is more or less anything better than terminally trashing one card at a time (though occasionally even that is good enough) - trade route & stonemason don't usually cut it, steward or upgrade usually do).
Whether an engine is good on the board is more complicated than that of course, but in a pretty significant majority of these cases, it is, so it generally makes more sense to be looking at engine as the status quo, and not the other way around - i.e. I need a good reason to do something not an engine, and NOT I need a good reason to go engine.
Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that.
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For an engine to be possible, basically all you need is some way of chaining together cards that draw. Usually this means either having a card which is capable of drawing more than one card at a time (and if all such cards are terminal, a card capable of giving more than one action or the effective equivalent), sometimes it means having some good cantrips (usually with some reasonable way to thin the deck; 'reasonable trashing' is more or less anything better than terminally trashing one card at a time (though occasionally even that is good enough) - trade route & stonemason don't usually cut it, steward or upgrade usually do).
Whether an engine is good on the board is more complicated than that of course, but in a pretty significant majority of these cases, it is, so it generally makes more sense to be looking at engine as the status quo, and not the other way around - i.e. I need a good reason to do something not an engine, and NOT I need a good reason to go engine.
Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that.
This is the kind of advice i think most beginners could actually use. +1.
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I think you also need to look for the payoff you're going to get from an engine. If you're going to buy once province per turn when your engine works, no attacks, clogging up once you have a few green cards, no extra end game control, then there's not enough pay off.
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The idea of evaluating a board before playing is, of course, awesome. Yet, in real life, this shouldn't take forever and a day, so some kind of heuristic will help to cut the time used on this.
Let's simply take a look at one example, a pre-constructed kingdom from dark ages combined with Hinterlands:
Poor House, Crossroads, Tunnel, Storeroom, Spice Merchant, Ironmonger, Catacombs, Highway, Altar, Farmland
I played as player1 in a 2-player-game and started 3/4. As it turned out my opponent also startet 3/4, but let's forget about that.
I have checked Crossroads as a way to draw cards and get +3 Actions once a turn. Storeroom combos nicely with tunnel and Highway seems to combo with nearly everything (altar, farmland, but also the +buy from spice merchant or storeroom).
I came up with storeroom/tunnel as a beginning. In turn 3, I could discard the tunnel along with 7 other cards and get 2 crossroads. After that, I bought a Highway, which I consider now a mistake. Anyways, by some more tunnels, storerooms, crossroads, catacombs and highways, together with an ironmonger and a spice merchant later on, I managed to win the game in a megaturn with 3 buys and >30 coins, but it was really tough until that last turn.
So I would like you to correct my play on this specific board. Maybe the engine was even a bad idea and it should have been some highway/altar combo. What would you have done?
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I am going to first re-iterate this:
What I do like is the stand you take on a heuristic for building the engine, essentially listing pieces in order of importance.
junking attacks > cards that trash > cards that gain > useful cantrips or non-terminal draw > villages (+2 actions)* > terminal draw > other useful terminals > Treasure
* IF you have more terminals than villages in your deck.
Regarding:
Poor House, Crossroads, Tunnel, Storeroom, Spice Merchant, Ironmonger, Catacombs, Highway, Altar, Farmland
It's a recommended kingdom, so there are lots of things to notice, as you point out.
If you are going to build a super-engine that gains multiple Provinces per turn, then you missed a vital component of that engine that was present on the board: early TRASHING. One way to go is to open with Spice Merchant. Altar usually comes too late and should be an addition to help you gain lots of pieces (esp. Highways, Catacombs). You could try to spike it turn 3 or 4, but Spice Merchant will be more consistent. You will still have plenty of targets by the time you do hit Altar.
Opening with Storeroom-Tunnel then switching to engine gets the priorities backwards. You want to trash down, get lots of pieces, then see if you need treasure as a payload for the engine (you would pick up some tunnels and a storeroom later).
You were also weak on the +actions. Crossroads isn't going to be enough actions for this type of approach. A couple of Crossroads only, probably only one until late, I would rather pound the Ironmongers and increase action density so they work as villages when you need them.
Alternatively, try going JUST Storeroom-Tunnel-(Catacombs, maybe? Depends on how things are going). You will rack up a bunch of Golds and be able to buy Provinces fairly quickly. Late you also have Farmland opportunities for even more points. It's simpler, easier to execute, and in multiplayer (esp. 4+ players) I would definitely go this route. In the 2-player game, a better constructed engine is probably the way to go.
The idea of evaluating a board before playing is, of course, awesome. Yet, in real life, this shouldn't take forever and a day, so some kind of heuristic will help to cut the time used on this.
I take between 15 seconds and 4 minutes to read and analyze a kingdom. Inspired by this thread, I have been typing up what I do before the opening buy in a way that would help other people (it's mostly a checklist). I am at 4 pages and counting, so.... probably not that helpful to other people. If you are still learning the expansions and the combinations that are possible, yes, kingdom evaluation will take longer. Complicated kingdoms always longer. If you are playing with friends of similar skill levels, then it doesn't matter so much; you spend a couple minutes thinking, probably don't figure everything out, play the game, have some revelations, have fun, and play again.
Kingdoms like the one you posted are definitely on the upper end of thinking time -- they are designed so all the cards are potentially useful or traps, and picking the overall best strategy (if there is one) is difficult. And navigating how to play them as the game progresses is usually difficult, too. That's what makes them fun.
Speaking of designed kingdoms, be sure to enter your best kingdoms for the 2014 Kingdom Design Challenge (http://dominionstrategy.com/2014/02/04/2014-kingdom-design-challenge/).
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The idea of evaluating a board before playing is, of course, awesome. Yet, in real life, this shouldn't take forever and a day, so some kind of heuristic will help to cut the time used on this.
Let's simply take a look at one example, a pre-constructed kingdom from dark ages combined with Hinterlands:
Poor House, Crossroads, Tunnel, Storeroom, Spice Merchant, Ironmonger, Catacombs, Highway, Altar, Farmland
I played as player1 in a 2-player-game and started 3/4. As it turned out my opponent also startet 3/4, but let's forget about that.
I have checked Crossroads as a way to draw cards and get +3 Actions once a turn. Storeroom combos nicely with tunnel and Highway seems to combo with nearly everything (altar, farmland, but also the +buy from spice merchant or storeroom).
I came up with storeroom/tunnel as a beginning. In turn 3, I could discard the tunnel along with 7 other cards and get 2 crossroads. After that, I bought a Highway, which I consider now a mistake. Anyways, by some more tunnels, storerooms, crossroads, catacombs and highways, together with an ironmonger and a spice merchant later on, I managed to win the game in a megaturn with 3 buys and >30 coins, but it was really tough until that last turn.
So I would like you to correct my play on this specific board. Maybe the engine was even a bad idea and it should have been some highway/altar combo. What would you have done?
Storeroom, Spice Merchant, Ironmonger, Poor House, 1 or 2 Crossroads. Trash all your treasure. Use Ironmonger for your Villages. Use Storeroom to discard your Estates and Spice Merchants. With no treasure your Poor Houses are worth $4 a pop.
To use the "Simple Version" of the heuristics (I eliminated the not applicable stuff):
2. Buying or playing trashers. Spice Merchant
3. Buying or playing gainers. Storeroom
4. Buying non-terminal +Cards. (Ironmonger, Crossroads)
5. Buying +Actions, if you have more terminal actions than +Action cards. (Ironmonger, Crossroads)
8. Buying Treasure: Poor House
So, according to this you'd open Spice Merchant, Storeroom. Then you'd grab a 2nd Spice Merchant. Then you'd start grabbing Ironmongers. With your extra buys you'd pick up Poor Houses and a Crossroads or two.
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Even though it's a little bit late: Thank you, the Expressicist.
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I'm hitchhiking this thread again to pose a question, which has troubled my mind for quite some time:
Is there a general ranking of the different engine types?
There are different engines, which usually depend on 2 cards that can be replaced by others, right?
1. hand size reducing villages + draw to X (Festival+Library, Hamlet+Watchtower, Inn + Lib/WT)
2. village smithy-like enginges (Any Village with +1card + any +3 cards like margrave or smithy)
3. pseudo-engines depending on sifting (Cartographer, Lab/Wishing well + sifters like Cellar or Warehouse)
So is there some kind of superiority of one type to another? Or maybe a specific combination, that is better than others? Or maybe is any of these better for certain payload, for example better for playing attacks? Which of these mos desperately needs acceleration by trashing?
I feel like Hamlet+Watchtower is a very strong engine base, but I would like to see what all the experts can say about this.
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i don't think it's possible to rank these things without knowing the rest of the board. Draw-to-X engines rely on disapperaing villages (or plentiful +action and good terminals or something) which, as a class, come with benefits to offset the lack of draw, which mean they already include things that an engine needs besides draw. But if those things are available from other cards, then the smithy engine may be engine - depending on the village/smithy variants, etc.
It depends on the board.
I mean, cartographer is a pretty situational card, so maybe that one is generally weak, but if there's only very weak trashing and/or junking attacks, then cartographer will beat the pants off of village/smithy.