Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: Geronimoo on January 28, 2016, 05:49:32 pm
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Long long ago there was Single Smithy. Quite a bit later came Double Jack. Now, hail the new king of Big Money: Triple Gear!
The game plan is extremely simple:
Turn 1: Buy Gear
Turn 2: Buy Gear
Turn 3: Buy Gear
Turn 4-7: Buy Money
Turn 8-...: Buy Province
This beats all other (non-junking) Big Money enablers by a significant margin (even Wharf).
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It also beats most engines!
I don't think Gear / Gear is the best opening though? I think you want Silver / Gear, then 2x more Gear on turns you can't hit $6, then Golds and Provinces. Is that slightly faster? I feel it would be.
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It also beats most engines!
I don't think Gear / Gear is the best opening though? I think you want Silver / Gear, then 2x more Gear on turns you can't hit $6, then Golds and Provinces. Is that slightly faster? I feel it would be.
This was my gut reaction. Then I did a long consideration of all the draws. I think Gear/Gear is better now.
Will note that you should buy Gold before the 3rd gear if possible, though, and I think actually silver in a lot of cases, too, but it depends on the draw.
Lightning Edit: Goons (tuned for the matchup) might be the best BM against this?(???)
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Lightning Edit: Goons (tuned for the matchup) might be the best BM against this?(???)
I feel Cultist BM should also do well (admittedly, this is an unqualified guess - I have never played with Gear).
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Is there any intelligence for what to set aside?
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Is there any intelligence for what to set aside?
I guess you set aside extra Gears or money/green to (nearly) exactly hit 3, 6 or 8$
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Ah, but say you have an early $8, set aside $2 to buy Gold?
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Lightning Edit: Goons (tuned for the matchup) might be the best BM against this?(???)
I feel Cultist BM should also do well (admittedly, this is an unqualified guess - I have never played with Gear).
Well, yes, I was going along with the "non-junking" mentioned in the OP.
Is there any intelligence for what to set aside?
Yes. As assemble_me notes, you can go a long way by simply saving your actions and money that isn't helping you get to a price point - and I believe this is how Geronimoo programmed his simulator (meaning it's enough to get these stellar results). At the same time, I think this can be improved upon a bit. You point out a very obvious example (though I think the clever Mr. 'moo got around that one a bit by requiring enough money in deck before greening, which mostly corrects this problem). Still, of course, an endgame sense of what VP cards are important right now is going to help a lot in the endgame (saving more to obey PPR makes the rule a bigger deal here than in normal BM, but also sometimes if you have $6 or something, the Duchy has little equity over an estate, etc.).
In general, there are a few things you want to be conscious of: first of all, you want to know as best as possible what your next hand will hold. This will help you sculpt out your next few turns now. Also, keep track of when shuffles are happening. You get way less equity from saving good cards if it means they'll miss the shuffle, and you get some positive equity from saving bad cards (green in particular) to make them miss a shuffle. You can also sometimes save nothing so that your Gear itself doesn't miss the shuffle.
Furthermore, these things probably get more important as you start adding more kingdom cards that might be useful. Ironmonger is good and better than silver, but enough to not save an extra money? And Venture is good but worse than Gold - how much worse, really though?
For just a little taste of this, let's look at the case where we open Gear/Gear and draw a Gear on turn 3 (as will happen 68% of the time). If you draw to 6 coppers, you're going to buy Gold. Ok, that one's easy. But it's worth noting that in every case, you know you will have your other Gear next turn, that it will trigger a shuffle, and indeed you will know the exact cards you will have in that hand before playing your Gear. There are a lot of combinations of 6 cards you can have, but after giving a lot of thought, I actually think what you want to do, if as-it-usually-will-be, it's possible (with the only exception being 6 coppers->gold), is to make your current hand 1 estate and 3 coppers, buy a Silver. This makes your next hand 4 coppers, 2 estates, and a Gear. You'll play the Gear, which will trigger a reshuffle, where the only cards are Copper, Copper, Silver, Estate. You have a 1/3 chance of drawing Copper/Estate, in which case you save 2 coppers and buy a Gear, a 1/6 Chance of drawing Copper/Copper, in which case you save nothing (I think) and buy Gold, a 1/6 chance of drawing Estate/Silver, in which case I think you save 2 estates (not 100% on that, might be better to save nothing) and buy a Gold, and a 1/3 chance to draw Silver/Copper, in which case you probably save Copper/Estate and buy a Gold (but this is the hardest for me to work out). Following that, you are buying Golds about every turn, though you want a 3rd Gear if you don't have one and brick off (which is more likely to happen if you only have 2 Gears, so it works out nicely). And then you can green.
It's actually a bit startling how far you can plan ahead from so early a point. Really, you're taking out most of the luck except for whether you get a gear in the top of the shuffle or not - in some ways, it's kind of like an engine. And the 'secret' is that if Big Money draws perfectly, it's actually very strong. Big shocker ;)
(edit: fixed an obvious small math error - counting is hard)
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Let's call this "third gear" instead before it becomes automatic.
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Let's call this "third gear" instead before it becomes automatic.
Agreed. "Triple Gear" reminds me of this logo (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7241329.stm).
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Don't you sometimes want a 4th gear? On a random $5 hand mid-game
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Don't you sometimes want a 4th gear? On a random $5 hand mid-game
I'm pretty sure if you're playing it right, you'll never have $5 in the midgame. Maybe $3.
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By the way could you test doublegear witch/sea hag/marauder/familliar. These should be lot be much better than junker/bm if you could add logic to set it aside when it doesnt cause reshuffle.
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So how does this compare to when we thought doubleJack was hot stuff?
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So how does this compare to when we thought doubleJack was hot stuff?
Jack defends against attacks (and sustains greening) so double jack was seen as a universal solution. Gear won't do that.
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So how does this compare to when we thought doubleJack was hot stuff?
Jack defends against attacks (and sustains greening) so double jack was seen as a universal solution. Gear won't do that.
What I'm going for here is, when the simulator showed doubleJack was strong, the conventional wisdom became, always play doubleJack unless you're iso 97 and know how to incorporate other elements.
Now that's completely faded away, as far as I can tell.
I am seeing a similar community reaction here to Third Gear. So I am curious, is something different this time, or is this another scenario where we are like beginners playing Base, and a simulator comes along and says "play BM" and we foolishly think the game (Gear) is broken?
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What I'm going for here is, when the simulator showed doubleJack was strong, the conventional wisdom became, always play doubleJack unless you're iso 97 and know how to incorporate other elements.
Now that's completely faded away, as far as I can tell.
I am seeing a similar community reaction here to Third Gear. So I am curious, is something different this time, or is this another scenario where we are like beginners playing Base, and a simulator comes along and says "play BM" and we foolishly think the game (Gear) is broken?
I am hoping Gear-BM will be found to not be so great in real games, but I am still worried. In fact I was worried during development, and Donald and I played several games where I played Gear-BM and he didn't. I think he won those games, but 1) I always opened Gear/Silver rather than Gear/Gear, and 2) this might have been back when Gear cost $4. At one time Ranger cost $3 and Gear cost $4, and Donald eventually switched them, I believe mostly for perceptual reasons; Ranger looks stronger than Gear to most players. I was very against this swap because I thought (and still think) Gear is nuts.
EDIT: Pretty sure these games were after the cost switch, although I can only find two of them logged and one was a Colony game.
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Gear-BM is still beat by TF/CH and RC/Bridge.
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Gear-BM is still beat by TF/CH and RC/Bridge.
In English? Also, whatever cards those are (I hope they're Dominion cards), they're 2-card combos, not one card like we're talking about here.
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How does it fare against Rebuild?
Gear-BM is still beat by TF/CH and RC/Bridge.
In English? Also, whatever cards those are (I hope they're Dominion cards), they're 2-card combos, not one card like we're talking about here.
Traveling Fair/Counting House and Royal Carriage/Bridge.
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So how does this compare to when we thought doubleJack was hot stuff?
Jack defends against attacks (and sustains greening) so double jack was seen as a universal solution. Gear won't do that.
OTOH, Gear is at least two turns faster than Jack on average. Triple Gear has a better best case and a worse worst case.
As for Gear BM being overpowered - I'm thinking that people will find Gear has a lot of utility in building certain engines as well - pass components you don't need this turn to the next turn, optimize Treasures, etc. I think it's just powerful in general.
I'm glad people are acknowledging Gear is super good now instead of going "meh, it's only +2 Cards, I mean Oracle isn't that great..."
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I think gear helps the majority of draw deck engines more than jack Simply because gearing village/draw is really good.
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Seeing as this is still in Dominion Articles section, this must be a super duper thing if you want write a brief description about a money based strategy and call it an article. I'll have to try Gear BM soon.
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How does gear hold up against junking or discard attacks?
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How does gear hold up against junking or discard attacks?
Against mountebank, it wins 48.15% to 48.03%. So it is clearly superior
It loses to witch 30% / 67%
Both cultist and sea hag beat it handily as well 80% / 18%
Against goons, it wins 64% / 34%, against militia it is even worse. Ghostship / fishing village doesn't fare much better at 58 / 37
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wait, sea hag-BM is actually a thing?!?
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wait, sea hag-BM is actually a thing?!?
Whatever the option on Geronimoo's simulator does
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Where are the simulator results for this?
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wait, sea hag-BM is actually a thing?!?
It's a reference. :)
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I am not surprised this beats straight Wharf. Is that supposed to be alarming? Cus to my understanding, straight Wharf (i.e. no villages) is not incredibly strong. Best case scenario, you start every turn w/ 7 cards and an extra buy. This is good, but not like game-breaking good. And it's not nearly 100% reliable that you can play a Wharf every turn, either. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Here is the thing
Wharf bm is good but in a engine it becomes a whole lot better
Gear bm is great but in a engine it olny becomes slightly better
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Here is the thing
Wharf bm is good but in a engine it becomes a whole lot better
Gear bm is great but in a engine it olny becomes slightly better
I think we have not had enough time to play with Gear to conclusively prove the latter. Maybe they were flukes, but I've played a game or two of Adventures where Gear in an engine significantly helped versus an engine without Gear, and the engine was still better than BM.
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Triple gear is good as far as bm goes but bm isn't good as far as strategies go.
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Here is the thing
Wharf bm is good but in a engine it becomes a whole lot better
Gear bm is great but in a engine it olny becomes slightly better
I think we have not had enough time to play with Gear to conclusively prove the latter. Maybe they were flukes, but I've played a game or two of Adventures where Gear in an engine significantly helped versus an engine without Gear, and the engine was still better than BM.
Yes, but what would you rather have in an engine, wharf or gear? I'm pretty sure you want wharf.
With that said, I think Gear/BM is decent where the engine is rather weak. The card does help out engines, but cards that draw better, will of course be better for the engine. I could be wrong though.
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gear in an engine will be *tremendous* for draw-to-x, or engines without trashing. that kind of stuff
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Here is the thing
Wharf bm is good but in a engine it becomes a whole lot better
Gear bm is great but in a engine it olny becomes slightly better
I think we have not had enough time to play with Gear to conclusively prove the latter. Maybe they were flukes, but I've played a game or two of Adventures where Gear in an engine significantly helped versus an engine without Gear, and the engine was still better than BM.
Yes, but what would you rather have in an engine, wharf or gear? I'm pretty sure you want wharf.
With that said, I think Gear/BM is decent where the engine is rather weak. The card does help out engines, but cards that draw better, will of course be better for the engine. I could be wrong though.
You're thinking too much about what Gear does when the engine is "complete" and not enough about what it does when you're building it, I think. Gear helps in building an engine the same way it helps when "building" Big Money - you hit price points, pass unused actions to other turns, and otherwise reduce waste and increase efficiency.
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You're thinking too much about what Gear does when the engine is "complete" and not enough about what it does when you're building it, I think. Gear helps in building an engine the same way it helps when "building" Big Money - you hit price points, pass unused actions to other turns, and otherwise reduce waste and increase efficiency.
Gear also helps your draw-your-deck style engine set up the next turn once you have redundant components. With two Gears, you can pass two engine components to your next turn - every turn. Like Haven and Save, but unlike Scheme, Courtyard, and Scavenger, these cards are in addition to your starting five. Gear is a good engine card; solidly better than Oracle or Courtyard, I believe.
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one engine thing that is great for gear is with no trashing you can save villages and draw until they collide. I can see my self playing a dead gear with a village in hand just so I can save it.