Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Fabian on December 09, 2011, 03:13:19 pm

Title: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Fabian on December 09, 2011, 03:13:19 pm
I've been thinking about what it is, specifically, that gives a level ~45 player an edge over a level ~40 player. Clearly a player at a skill level around level 40 is extremely strong, almost definitely among the 100-150 best players in the world, yet as far as I can tell, the difference in skill between a level 40 and a level 45 player is statistically quite significant.

You can of course extend this question to level 40 vs 35 or 35 vs 30 or whatever, but the reason I'm most interested in the very upper tiers of players is, that if you're a consistent level 40 player, I feel like you probably know almost everything that's "common knowledge" in Dominion. Yet, clearly there's the jonts26 and Obi Wan's, and there's the still extremely strong, but supposedly still somewhat weaker, tier of players. What is it that makes jonts and chwhite so particularly high rated, you think?

At its very core, I think Dominion only tests two skillsets; to identify the strongest strategy, and to execute that strategy optimally. Is there a difference between very strong players and exceptionally strong players in these areas, you think?
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Geronimoo on December 09, 2011, 03:29:35 pm
Why don't you tell us the difference yourself, oh mighty Fabian?  ;)

There's one more skillset btw: guess at what your opponent will/might do (based on past experience or on his level) and figuring out what impact this will have on your chosen strategy.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Fabian on December 09, 2011, 03:32:29 pm
I wish :p I'm almost certain I'm a lot worse than jonts and Obi Wan, and probably a few more. Obviously this pisses me off, and obviously I want to change that :)

Also, your reply surprises me. My understanding is that only very rarely do rock/paper/scissors type scenarios come up in Dominion. What I mean is, usually if you identify the (truly) strongest strategy, that's going to be the strongest strategy no matter what sub-optimal strategy your opponent conjures up.

I guess Pirate Ship and Embargo is the type of card that might force you to strongly reevaluate your strategy, but I was under the impression that if you can identify a dominating strategy on a board, it's dominating "no matter what", most of the time. No?
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Davio on December 09, 2011, 03:38:26 pm
I think the very best of players have a better natural feel for the game.

Us not so creative geniuses have to use simulators and a lot of trial and error to determine a card's true strength. The best players can probably judge card strengths more precise and are able to gauge a card's relative strength to the kindom it's in. They get a chance to demonstrate this ability whenever a new expansion comes out. I won't be surprised if those guys already knew about Jack's unexpected goodness before the rest of us found out. I remember when I thought Chapel was a bad card.

Beyond this ability, strong players have much better deck tracking and concentration than regular players. I have played so many games on Iso that I often find myself going on auto-pilot against weaker players. Buy either 2 Jacks or 2 Embassies and plow through the Province pile. Sometimes these modern baselines get beat by such an opponent and instead of figuring out why the strategies got beat I just think that the other guy got lucky and play my next game. But this is because I play Dominion to relax as well as to be competitive. Those best players may have a strong background in card games such as Bridge or Magic for which tracking up to 52 cards (and more) is essential.

Kingdom control also gets crucial in the higher echelons, I believe. Knowing how much Money or Buys your opponent will have and not opening yourself up to sneaky last-Curse buy shenanigans. Seeing that they can drill down an entire Curse pile and win that way or leaving just one extra Estate. They will likely almost always have the game end on their terms, instead of their opponent's.

I know I try to incorporate all these things into my game and when I'm focussed, I can sometimes manage. On the other hand, I don't want to put too much effort into it and let it become compulsory, it will always still be a game. That's why I'm still hovering about that lvl 35 mark and I'm satisfied where I am for the moment. I feel that I can beat any opponent on a good day (while losing to any on a bad day :) ).

It would be nice to see some lvl 40+'s input on this.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE on December 09, 2011, 03:40:21 pm
The guys that I'm scared to play against are the ones that can identify and build engines better than me. It's really easy to buy a Smithy and money and get to 4 provinces in like 15 turns, but when the board has Smithy, Village, Market, etc. it's hard for me to know which pieces to buy and when and how many to shave a turn or two off my share of the provinces.

One of the best engine builders I've ever played against is Ben Warden. Obi Wan Bonogi is also a sick engine builder.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: painted_cow on December 09, 2011, 03:40:58 pm
Fabian, werent you about level 40 before the leaderboard change? And now you are level 46, so you could knew this by yourself :-) Please dont take this too earnest, wasnt meant fierce  ;)

I would say that not all players can reach level 45+, regardless of how much they playing (5000+ games wont make a big difference anymore). So I would say that this are just top-players, maybe with some high level experience and the according mindset from other Games like Chess, Magic the Gathering, Poker...I could not say what else should make the difference in form of finding or executing some strategies.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Fabian on December 09, 2011, 03:48:42 pm
painted_cow, actually I had had a very nice period and had reached level 44 (with 43 being my peak before that), and expecting to reach 45 the next day, when the "30 days" leaderboard was put into effect. During the 30 days leaderboard, I kept doing very very well, and felt like I might have been even higher than the level ~46.95 I ended up at when the "real" leaderboard was put into effect again. Of course, it doesn't matter much, since day-to-day swings are pretty severe. Your opinion is interesting to me though, as the far-and-away highest rated player on isotropic. Why do you think that is, compared to other players? Also, why do you think your margin of error is so comparatively high (just for my own curiosity)?

Wharf, I agree with you about the engine builder thing. I feel severely outclassed by Obi Wan on "engine boards", whereas on non-engine boards, I feel like I can take anyone in the world at even odds. This may or may not be true, but it's how it is. That's also why those engine builders impress me so, since I feel like they have a skillset I don't.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: theory on December 09, 2011, 03:54:43 pm
Interestingly, I was going to make a post similar to this, asking what player you are most afraid of.

Probably the ideal Dominion player is equally comfortable playing modified money and modified engine.  Geronimoo, for instance, is very good at the former and not as strong in the latter, whereas I feel DG is somewhat the opposite.  I tend to lose to the latter (DG, BenWarden, Dstern).
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: ackack on December 09, 2011, 03:58:21 pm
Also, why do you think your margin of error is so comparatively high (just for my own curiosity)?

Playing infrequently, especially under the new system. Before today I'd played maybe 10 games this week and my uncertainty had crept up by a little less than a point, I think.

I think the best players are generally the same as the very good players, just slightly better. Fewer outright mistakes, better build orders, better feel for which of several plausible plans is actually best, etc. I don't think there's anything you can point to and say "yep, that's the missing piece."

added: Along those lines, as I think Geronimoo expressed elsewhere, I don't believe the best players at the moment are necessarily strong compared to the game. I bet that there's still plenty of room for general improvement in technique, and I won't be surprised if somebody eventually makes a real AI opponent that is markedly stronger than all of us. Getting to rough skill parity would already be enough to do it, most likely, as the information tracking capabilities of a bot would probably allow for pretty big improvements.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: olneyce on December 09, 2011, 04:26:55 pm
Building off ackack's post: I have a feeling that the very best players have an intuitive sense that matches up very well with what a truly great AI would do.  That is: they manage to hold in their minds their own deck composition, and a sense of what is coming for the opponent.  They intuitively grasp the balance of +action and +cards and +buy that will be necessary to keep the engine going.  They are able to turn on a dime when necessary, but have the good sense to not panic when things get slightly off kilter.

Some of this just comes from experience, some of it certainly can come from running simulators, and some can be deductively produced.  But some of it probably can't be taught or learned.  I get the sense the more that I play that my absolute ceiling is just a bit below the best players - even if I resolved all my fixable problems, I would still lag behind a bit.  But maybe that would change if I played another 10,000 games.  Who knows?

Someone in another thread pointed out that we don't really have savants in this game.  It's not popular enough.  A Dominion version of Kasparov would probably be level 65.  But the perfect AI would almost certainly be better. 

Going a bit further off track, it does seem like there are two competing elements there, though. Unlike Chess, there is some absolute level of randomness to this game.  Shuffle luck means that it's simply impossible to win all the time, no matter how good you are.  On the other hand, computers are far better at coming to terms with randomness than human brains.  The ability to perfectly calculate probabilities is likely the biggest advantage a well-constructed bot would have against a flesh and blood competitor. 
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: DG on December 09, 2011, 04:35:01 pm
I think everyone can think of something they don't do when they play Dominion, something that could be done by a top player. A master of memory could probably keep track of every card in their deck and and know whether it is in the draw deck, hand, or discard. I certainly don't do that. I even tend to go through games thinking I'd bought a card when I'd never actually got round to it. So that's certainly something a top player could improve on. Even if they don't track every card perhaps they can track gross treasure value, net deck size, or some other measure they find useful. Perhaps they have a little applications on their desktop that can do it for them, who knows?.

A top player may also not be doing some things and that makes them better. At times I play the cards based on past games and it all turns out different, especially after new expansions. Throwing away past experience and applying fresh thinking to a board can be important. Four player experiences can weigh against two player strategy, and visa versa.

It's also worth remembering that you're only as good as your last game. If you lose only a little bit of the judgement about the relative strength of decks, pace of openings, or closing strategy, then you might find a number of games slipping away. As soon as your confidence goes you tend to find a lot more complications and false promise amongst the kingdom cards.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: kn1tt3r on December 09, 2011, 05:50:50 pm
The guys that I'm scared to play against are the ones that can identify and build engines better than me. It's really easy to buy a Smithy and money and get to 4 provinces in like 15 turns, but when the board has Smithy, Village, Market, etc. it's hard for me to know which pieces to buy and when and how many to shave a turn or two off my share of the provinces.

One of the best engine builders I've ever played against is Ben Warden. Obi Wan Bonogi is also a sick engine builder.
That's very much what I'm thinking.

I've developed from a mediocre engine-addicted player to a rather solid one with a bit more focus on BM. I'm currently stumbling around level 40, however, I really feel I should be lower. When it comes to sophisticated engine building I'm still so damn bad...
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: jonts26 on December 09, 2011, 06:16:47 pm
I guess I should chime in here.

1) Fabian, I think you're selling yourself short if you don't think you are one of the very best. But I know how you feel. When I first made it to the top, I did so on the back of a ridiculously good streak. I think I jumped close to 5 levels in around a week. So I fully expected myself to fall back to the high 40's any day, and yet it's been some time and well, here I am. Actually, I still kind of feel like that. I make mistakes, some subtle, some glaring, all the time. Though I do think recognition of what constitutes a mistake is something high level players are very good at.

2) In response to your actual question ... I really don't know. But I guess I can add a little to the discussion.

The biggest thing I notice about this thread is the perceived division between Big Money strategies and Engine strategies. But I feel this is far too simplistic. We have engines with villages, engines without villages, engines with major trashing, minor trashing, no trashing, engines with alt VP's, engines with attacks etc. Even big money can be decomposed along many of these lines.

I think the critical thing to understand about each of these scenarios is how fast they make the game. And I think everyone understands this, but it bears repeating. Some strategies need a slower board to shine. Some shine in faster ones. Some shine when there are attacks. Some are crippled by attacks. The difference between a level 40 and a level 45 is a small one. Most boards have a fairly dominant strategy which lvl 40+ will pick out quickly enough. In these games there is no difference between the two skill levels. The difference comes when the standard strategies we've seen dozens, maybe hundreds of times, get even a small wrench thrown in. The lvl 45 player has to be able to discern how that wrench can add even percentage points to his or her win probability.

I guess it boils down to this: those extra percentage points which take you from 40 to 45 require some combination of intuition and experience. So that might sound kind of vague, and I guess it is. And perhaps that isn't actually that insightful. But like I said before, I don't really know the answer.


Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: painted_cow on December 09, 2011, 08:40:07 pm
Why do you think that is, compared to other players? Also, why do you think your margin of error is so comparatively high (just for my own curiosity)?

Well, like you I cant know his excactly of course, maybe my expierience from many high level Magic events gives me that "intuition" some called it here. While building engines its not often, that I really need to think about what piece I really need next, it is kind of intuition that tells me that.

Also maybe my idea of reducing luck whenever I can in Dominion gives me the best results (e.g. not playing mirror match BM most of the time, because you cant lose against level 0 while doing that, when he got good draws). Hence I prefer engines (which you all know from my posts already :-))

Your second question is really easy to answer, nowadays I dont play alot games per day. While having about 2000 games like many of the other players about level 40 I played them in the past. In the last 1-2 months when I started to play again I played like 200 or 300 games, and still my uncertainty rises like hell, because for like 20 days I have played only my tournament matches in IsoDom and the Championship right now.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: chwhite on December 10, 2011, 01:23:19 am
Honestly, I'm not sure.  I think that in my case a lot of it is just the fact I have played a ridiculous number of games, so I've internalized a lot of experience, I've seen most of the big interactions, and my variance is low.  I don't feel that I'm nearly the best out there: take a look at my record versus WanderingWinder, for instance.

I'll try to throw some more thoughts here later, when I have time.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: mathguy on December 10, 2011, 01:30:47 am
Interestingly, I was going to make a post similar to this, asking what player you are most afraid of.

I am most afraid of playing WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE (although I suspect that it is mostly from the all-caps).
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Mean Mr Mustard on December 10, 2011, 02:01:14 am
I am most afraid of playing WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE (although I suspect that it is mostly from the all-caps).

Man, he is a good player.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: olneyce on December 10, 2011, 03:40:18 am
I am most afraid of playing ehunt, but that's because he's my friend in real-life, so I can't fully immerse myself in the Isotropic abstraction.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: timchen on December 10, 2011, 04:06:18 am
Interesting topic...

I guess I am afraid of lots of people. Probably I don't actually get to play with lv 40+ players all that much...
On the other hand, I also know how far away I am from playing the game optimally, but this fact is very well hidden by the randomness in the game.

This is a big reason why I am not sure how to play better at modified BM strategies. In any single game those games are mostly determined by the draw if two players play above the bottom line. It is very hard to see the effect of your choices, say, buying this duchy one gold earlier. Simulation can help a lot, but I suspect there is a big chance left open, by taking into account the draw of your opponent.

And I am always very afraid of engine build races, especially the ones that is bound by the number of cards (cities, minions.) Sometimes it is just hard to single out the reason why you lose the race. On the other hand, if you see an engine builder just beat you hands down at building some engine without the card number limit, that can sometimes be quite interesting.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Geronimoo on December 10, 2011, 04:12:57 am
A bit off topic, but might be related: How many of you +40s are competitive Magic players? I used to play quite a lot and my best results were 3rd and 5th at nationals and one feature match at a GP (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpbru10/day2#4), but whenever I played against the top players (like Ruel) I got a similar feeling I sometimes get when I play Dominion against a +45: "I can't ever beat this guy, he's outplaying me on all fronts"
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Fabian on December 10, 2011, 07:34:58 am
I won Swedish nationals a few years ago, and have played two PTs (Worlds in Memphis and Amsterdam last year). I agree that playing against the very best magic players is the same kind of feeling as playing the very best dominion players; obviously I can win, but I feel outplayed for sure.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: painted_cow on December 10, 2011, 08:52:08 am
I used to play good in 2006/2007, but played only PT Prague 2006 (had to play Kenji Tsumura in Round 1 and lost because I took a manaburn earlier in the game  ::)) and some GP Day2s. Nothing spectactular. But I was fairly sure, that some of the level 40+ are good Magic players as well :-)
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Rabid on December 10, 2011, 09:03:40 am
I only play FNM now, but have a few GP day 2's and a couple of bad finishes at Worlds from around 2000 - 2003.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: ackack on December 10, 2011, 09:16:22 am
I don't feel that I'm nearly the best out there: take a look at my record versus WanderingWinder, for instance.

He may be better than you head to head, but that's not what the leaderboard measures. It would be pretty surprising if skill in Dominion could be completely projected to a scalar. So it could well be that you have complementary games such that his relative strengths match up very well against your relative weaknesses. While you do have a lot of games to sort out the random noise, how recent are they? With opponents that I have a lot of history with I can find games I played against them where I was 20ish levels lower, and while I was definitely underrated for a long time, I am also clearly much better now. Without a pretty large recent sample, it's tough to get a handle on these things. I have top 20 players that I have lopsided positive records against, and I can find level 20ish players that beat me 5 in a row.

Quote from: timchen
On the other hand, I also know how far away I am from playing the game optimally, but this fact is very well hidden by the randomness in the game.

Yeah, I think this is what makes the final push in learning Dominion tough. Many of the general concepts are pretty robust against draws and thus are relatively easy to see and learn. But the final refinements are going to be subtle, and in those cases discerning the effect of your play against the random background is going to be challenging.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: WHARF 2 THA BRIDGE on December 10, 2011, 10:45:20 am
A bit off topic, but might be related: How many of you +40s are competitive Magic players? I used to play quite a lot and my best results were 3rd and 5th at nationals and one feature match at a GP (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpbru10/day2#4), but whenever I played against the top players (like Ruel) I got a similar feeling I sometimes get when I play Dominion against a +45: "I can't ever beat this guy, he's outplaying me on all fronts"

I made level 4 in the pro player's club this year.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: ehunt on December 10, 2011, 11:21:16 am
Two unrelated comments:

1. When I compete against a player who is much stronger than me, I find that they tend to fall into two different types (admittedly this is vague). One is the type that just doesn't make mistakes. The other is the type that somehow outclasses or transcends my thinking about the game. When I manage to beat class one it's because I also don't make mistakes myself (usually easy big money boards), or because I try a high-variance strategy; I don't beat class two very often at all.

2. Completely separate: I think there is too much emphasis on the distinction between engine and non-engine strategies. It can be helpful to think of them as not falling into a dichotomy. One of the worst boards for me is: there's goons, but there's not really extra actions; there's... kinda... extra card draw... sorta? but man... goons... These aren't good boards for engine players or for big money players; they're good boards for people who understand the fundamental mechanics of the game.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Geronimoo on December 10, 2011, 11:34:00 am
The Goons board without Villages is actually quite simple: race to the Goons, buy about 3 of them then alternate buying Goons and Golds. If you have other terminals you'll buy 2 Goons then start alternating. Yes, you're going to have a lot of collisions, but Goons is so much better than Gold that you can't avoid it. I guess that's where your frustration comes from.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: chwhite on December 10, 2011, 12:22:58 pm
I played Magic a bunch in middle school, around the bad old days of Visions and Weatherlight.  Never competitively.  Haven't kept up with it since, though I've played a couple of games here and there with the old cards.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: chwhite on December 10, 2011, 12:54:51 pm
I'm not one of those players that "never makes mistakes": I often flub up; I buy Gold when I'm greening, I frequently break PPR and even suicide on the last Province.  I'm not the best at Big Money (WanderingWinder regularly beats me) or even at massive chaining (I've seen much better, more consistent engine building out of players like KP-funclub and the cat emoticon).

I think that I do have a very good sense of when to go money and when to go engine.  Before I got on isotropic I had become pretty good at avoiding terminal clashes and won many of my early games with modified BM, but had no idea about the power of even obviously good cards like Minion and Torturer and Lab.  Then I started going engine-crazy with Prosperity and Cornucopia, and jumped up a bunch of levels, and have been playing money a bit more now with Hinterlands.  I think that overall strategic sense of "when to go long" and "when to go short" is probably the best thing about my game, though of course even there I screw up from time to time. 

It's hard for me to go further without getting into the weeds of specific cards I've gotten really good at maximizing value from; one thing that I think has served me really well is keeping in mind that Provinces and Colonies are not the be-all and end-all, and if I can build an engine that keeps its strength even as it amasses points then I will invariably do so, and usually do well.  Vineyards and the three VP chip cards are particularly good for this.  (Dukes are very bad at this, OTOH, and it should thus come as no surprise I lost most Duke games.)  Take a look at the top five cards in my "Effect Without" list to see this principle in action. :P
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: mathguy on December 10, 2011, 02:07:33 pm
1. When I compete against a player who is much stronger than me, I find that they tend to fall into two different types (admittedly this is vague). One is the type that just doesn't make mistakes. The other is the type that somehow outclasses or transcends my thinking about the game. When I manage to beat class one it's because I also don't make mistakes myself (usually easy big money boards), or because I try a high-variance strategy; I don't beat class two very often at all.

One of the tricks I learned from drafting a lot of Magic was to keep a d8 with you while you play your matches. Every time you make a mistake/misplay notch up one on the d8 (you forgot to do something at EOT, you played things in the wrong order, etc.). This should give you a strong numerical sense of how many small mistakes you are making. Then you try to lower this every time you play. You'd be amazed at how well this works. When I started using this I was at about 4-5 errors a match, and now I am regularly at 0-1 errors per match.

This doesn't teach you how to draft well, but it teaches you to play properly the cards you do have.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: KristianBahle on December 10, 2011, 03:42:03 pm
I used to play a lot of Magic but I wasn't a really good player, I only played in 3 nationals and 1 PT back in 2004. I am really curious about discovering some of your identities !

In case you haven't noticed, matignon is the real Guillaume Matignon who was still the reigning world champion a couple of weeks ago ;)
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: painted_cow on December 10, 2011, 03:55:09 pm
Sry for bit off topic but, some real names would be fun, when we have that many Magic players here :-)

Maybe a new thread?
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Geronimoo on December 10, 2011, 03:58:09 pm
I've seen Jeroen Remie and Chad Ellis online (their nicks = their name). And I've seen Randy Buehler playing Dominion on a youtube video against theory.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Davio on December 11, 2011, 05:52:26 am
Sry for bit off topic but, some real names would be fun, when we have that many Magic players here :-)

Maybe a new thread?
I never took to Magic or any other CCG, mostly because I didn't want to spend insane amounts of money on cards and have to keep buying new ones when they come out to be at least a competitive player.

This is why Dominion was ideal for me, because I still liked the deck-building/card drafting idea. But Dominion gives both players an equal chance by making the same cards available to each player.
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Marcus316 on December 11, 2011, 08:40:49 am
This is a great outpouring of interesting ideas for a level 10 like myself. I, too, have been a MTG player for a long time (though never competitively).

@mathguy - that d8 mistake tracking is interesting. I might just try doing that in my Dominion games, as I frequently make play mistakes and kick myself immediately after. I might need to start with a spindown d20, though, given the number of mistakes I make at the moment. :)
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: rls22 on December 11, 2011, 04:37:36 pm
Interesting to hear that some of the other 40+ people don't actually feel like they're "the best" at Dominion.  I sort of wonder how on earth I got to be a lvl 40... I make plenty of mistakes, usually due to lack of concentration (I get easily distracted when opponents play long turns) or discipline (e.g., buying cards that are "good cards" but don't support my strategy).  I would wager the difference between me and a 45 is fewer of those mistakes and the ability to be truly creative in thinking about card combinations.  I'm just not that creative of a player....  This was borne out when Hinterlands was released -- I dropped a bunch of levels, because it took me awhile to really figure out how those cards could work together with others (I kept trying different combos, particularly with Highway, that were....  unsuccessful).

What I do have going for me is probably an intuitive sense of what my deck really needs at any given time (e.g., how many terminals it can support) and how many green cards it can handle (e.g., when to start buying duchies).  And lots of experience playing games, so I've been exposed to more good combos that I've added to my arsenal....
Title: Re: What makes a level 45 player stronger than a level 40 player?
Post by: Elyv on December 11, 2011, 05:51:46 pm
Interesting to hear that some of the other 40+ people don't actually feel like they're "the best" at Dominion.  I sort of wonder how on earth I got to be a lvl 40... I make plenty of mistakes, usually due to lack of concentration (I get easily distracted when opponents play long turns) or discipline (e.g., buying cards that are "good cards" but don't support my strategy).  I would wager the difference between me and a 45 is fewer of those mistakes and the ability to be truly creative in thinking about card combinations.  I'm just not that creative of a player....  This was borne out when Hinterlands was released -- I dropped a bunch of levels, because it took me awhile to really figure out how those cards could work together with others (I kept trying different combos, particularly with Highway, that were....  unsuccessful).

What I do have going for me is probably an intuitive sense of what my deck really needs at any given time (e.g., how many terminals it can support) and how many green cards it can handle (e.g., when to start buying duchies).  And lots of experience playing games, so I've been exposed to more good combos that I've added to my arsenal....
This is exactly how I feel as well.