Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: popsofctown on May 02, 2012, 08:31:25 pm
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I've thought about this for some time, but it was sparked a bit when my mother bought her first 5$ silver.
I think the biggest problem with the rules of Dominion is, "You must spend an action to play an action". We don't play Lighthouse for free, we play it at the expense of an action, and then we get an action rebate.
The problem is that this rebate make actions and treasures respond to dead draw (Smithies) cards differently in a way they don't need to. Silver is very similar to "+2$, +1 action", and the only thing that makes it any different from that is Throne room effects (well, not that you can Throne Room a silver, but if you could, you'd get 4$ and no actions) and dead draw.
A better structure for the rules would have been, "You get one widget point per turn. Some cards cost 0 widget points, some cost 1 widget point. You need to pay a widget point to play a card that costs a widget point."
Cards would only need a subtle redesign, cantrips get set to 0 cost, terminals have a cost of 1, Village costs 0, but gives you 1 widget point, and so on. Perhaps all the dead draw cards, as we know them now, would need a higher cost, or fewer draws.
But that makes a lot of boards that are best answered by BM/dead draw card a lot more interesting. You are allowed to put a Market in your BM/dead draw deck. You can even put a Village in and not worry about dead drawing it, and run a flexible engine deck. It doesn't make Silver obsolete any more than a board with no dead draw does, Silver is the only nonterminal way to produce 2$.
I know that the action system is easy to understand. And I do understand the value in evaluating boards and deciding whether the engine strategy can beat BM/dead draw, or it can't. And there's some value in having to evaluate what cards are so good that you should buy them even though it risks a dead draw. I kinda think it's a shame that you can look at all the fives, remember that none of them can be played off a dead draw (unless you get a kingdom treasure, and if it's a Silver+ it's the same problem), and buy a silver for your dead draw deck. I could be making more interesting decisions.
Thoughts?
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I think you are in a small minority that would consider this mechanic a flaw.
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Yeah, well, I mean, that works, I guess, but, like, you know, why? Like Obi Wan says, it's not a flaw, the game is balanced in a way that you can't just buy Envoys and Embassies and stack your deck with sick non-terminal actions and go nuts. If you can play Smithy and still keep playing action-giving actions (Villages, Markets, Bazaar, etc), you just made Smithy into a Lab* which draws an extra card and costs $1 less. Nice card!
*Yeah, I know you can't play another Smithy later on without a Village. I'm still going with "nice card!"
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I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying it would be somehow easier to understand if the nomenclature of the game was changed? Or do your ideas actually change the way the game is played? Either way, I don't really get your post.
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...but then what would happen to the 20-something versions of "hidden village" we currently have out on fan cards?!?! :'(
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To me this sounds like yet another attempt to "fix" the Big Money problem with a rules change rather than strategy improvement.
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The problem is that this rebate make actions and treasures respond to dead draw (Smithies) cards differently in a way they don't need to.
You argue that they don't need to behave differently, but I don't see why they should behave the same. Having this difference makes the game more interesting, imo.
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I think the status quo works well in Dominion, but your suggestion is a nice mechanic to explore for another deckbuilding game.
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I like how it is now.
However, I do wonder how much the game will change when you start every turn with 2 actions instead of 1....
How much turns will it shave off the average?
I guess first player advantage will skyrocket without an opening terminal collision. Just open Sea Hag/Ambassador or something...
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Thanks theory.
As I mentioned, cards were balanced for Dominion based on dead draw being dead. A widget Smithy would be about 5$ or 6$, which might be less fun just because of that I guess. Lab chains into itself, Smithies would not, so you would have to combine it with things that don't cost an action, like Silver, or Market. A better change would probably be for it to draw 2.
@Davio - are you talking about a different change, or the one I mentioned? The one I mentioned doesn't let you play both Sea Hag and Ambassador, Ambassador would cost your widget for the turn, you wouldn't have enough widgets left to play Sea Hag.
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Thanks theory.
As I mentioned, cards were balanced for Dominion based on dead draw being dead. A widget Smithy would be about 5$ or 6$, which might be less fun just because of that I guess. Lab chains into itself, Smithies would not, so you would have to combine it with things that don't cost an action, like Silver, or Market. A better change would probably be for it to draw 2.
@Davio - are you talking about a different change, or the one I mentioned? The one I mentioned doesn't let you play both Sea Hag and Ambassador, Ambassador would cost your widget for the turn, you wouldn't have enough widgets left to play Sea Hag.
Okay, so the question remains, what is the difference here? Other than renaming "actions" to "widgets"? When you say "a widget Smithy would be about 5$ or $6," is that the equivalent of a card that gives +3 cards and +1 action? In other words, a Governor without the downside, or an upgraded Lab.
Again, it seems like all you're doing is changing the game's nomenclature but not the game itself. The only consequence I see is if there's no distinction between treasure cards and +1 action cards (which are both considered "free actions" in your setup), it would allow you to play treasures and actions in any order you want, which would make Tactician, Library, and some other cards much more powerful. But otherwise the game would play exactly the same.
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The difference is, you could play any card that (currently) gives +1 action AFTER playing a terminal action. So for example, with Smithy, you can play one, and hope you draw a village to continue your chain. And if you draw a market from your Smithy, it's no longer dead. In fact, Market is never a dead card.
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The difference is, you could play any card that (currently) gives +1 action AFTER playing a terminal action. So for example, with Smithy, you can play one, and hope you draw a village to continue your chain. And if you draw a market from your Smithy, it's no longer dead. In fact, Market is never a dead card.
Okay I think I get it now.
So basically it's saying that cantrips are always free to be played anytime, whereas in the current rules you can only play them when you have at least 1 action remaining. And I'm assuming village cards would be free to play as well?
That would quite change things. For instance, if you have two Nobles in your hand, you could actually play the first one as a +3 cards, and if you happen to draw a cantrip you can still play it. Or if you draw a terminal you can play the other Nobles as a +2 actions and still play that terminal.
I imagine it would make the turns take a lot longer. And it would have to be further clarified by making no-cost cards a different card type or something. Like Theory said, it could be the basis for a different deckbuilding game, but obviously it would bend the established rules and strategy of Dominion a lot.
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When I first played Dominion, in some way this is how I thought of the game (although I understood that actions can be drawn dead). So for Village, I really thought of it as "give me one extra action and one card", and a cantrip as "give one more card with no change in actions". For that reason, it was a bit confusing to figure out the effect of playing Throne Room on a non-terminal. The fact that TR+cantrip can be used as a village is, to me, very unintuitive.
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I could be making more interesting decisions in between all my shuffling.
I feel you about not wanting to shuffle so much. Even if you do it quickly sometimes you have to do it in the middle of your turn or someone finishes their turn right before being attacked and it becomes a bottleneck as everyone waits for someone to get done randomizing their deck before play can continue.
It's not a dealbreaker for anyone I've played with, but it's still a pretty big drag on the game. Changing the way actions work isn't a good solution to that problem. In fact doing it that way would exacerbate the problem by making it much easier to make a fast-cycling deck which means triggering a reshuffle more often.
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@shmerker, no, the the rule I'm talking about doesn't affect how often you shuffle. Shuffling in IRL Dominion was just a catalyst for posting.
@everyone - Nowhere in my post do I suggest that Dominion should be errata'ed to work differently. And this post isn't in the variant forum. The game as it is definitely can't be changed to work this way, the costs don't outweigh the benefits.
It was just something I wanted to talk about. It's not totally irrelevant; people can and do make Dominion clones, and the ones I've played mimic this structure which I view as a mistake.
Tables' post explains my OP clearly, refer to it if you're confused.
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If I'm understanding this correctly then the main upshot of this change is that any card that currently says "+1 Action" becomes playable even if you have already used up all our actions for the turn, so if you were to play a smithy and draw a laboratory, you could play it immediately rather than just cursing your bad luck.
There are a lot of situations where that leads to more shuffling, because any +cards cards in your deck are going to get drawn dead less. This applies to terminal draws too since villages can now be played for "free" so if you, say, have a hand with two smithies you can play both if there's a village in your hand or any of the top three cards in your deck. Essentially you get to activate your +cards cards more which means you get to draw more cards which means more shuffling.
But since you're talking about an alternate game with potentially radically different cards I may be completely off here. Maybe in free-cantrip-dominion Laboratory doesn't exist or is so expensive that it just isn't that easy to build unstoppable cycling engines. Which, now that I think about it, would lead to people just buying money a a lot wouldn't it?
Anyway if you think you can make a better game I say go ahead. I am always in the market for better games.
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I find that the action mechanic is a big part of the strategy. It means that on a board that is viable for engines you have to build your engine in the best possible way to factor out luck.
If you open Village+Silver for a Village Smithy engine that's probably suboptimal.
A better example is probably we both start 5/2 on a base game set. We see festival+Library and decide to go for it over BM.
You might decide Festival/Nothing. I would argue that while valid Library/Nothing is probably stronger as it will get you to 5 and you have no risk of collision before the purchase regardless and it'll trigger reshuffle faster after that next 5 purchase.
Yes this makes BM easier to play in some ways than an engine, but hey building the engine in the right order is a super fun and strategic part of the game.
Note: I could be wrong about my evaluation because perhaps the +Buy is stronger but my suspicion is that Library is the better open.
Edit: With your system it is far less relevant as if I buy Library Library festival I need only to draw a festival to allow the playment of my second library instead of as currently you need to control the luck as best you can.
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Edit: With your system it is far less relevant as if I buy Library Library festival I need only to draw a festival to allow the playment of my second library instead of as currently you need to control the luck as best you can.
How do you control luck, again?
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By trying to make sure that you have a deck which works even if you don't get perfect draws. Maybe get a few extra villages to make sure you don't draw your whole deck dead; or, in a BM+X game, get the right number of terminals, balancing the power of the terminal with the probability of collision.
I'm not sure I get your question. 'controlling luck' is a major part of the game. Planning for best-case, worst-case, or average draws.
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A better structure for the rules would have been, "You get one widget point per turn. Some cards cost 0 widget points, some cost 1 widget point. You need to pay a widget point to play a card that costs a widget point."
Cards would only need a subtle redesign, cantrips get set to 0 cost, terminals have a cost of 1, Village costs 0, but gives you 1 widget point, and so on. Perhaps all the dead draw cards, as we know them now, would need a higher cost, or fewer draws.
Thoughts?
It would make for a different game. To work it into Dominion you'd need an expansion that worked on rule-breaking cards, which I don't know is feasible...
$6 Bribe (Treasure: $2 or Trash this card. Gain an Action)
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There are TCGs with similar mechanics. In the Pokemon TCG, Trainers can always be played for free, but there is a sub-type called Supporters of which you can only play one a turn. There's no analogue of Village though. (This information could be many years out of date.)
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Slightly related to the OP's idea of the game's largest 'structural flaw', in my opinion there are three 'big' (yes, this term is relative) flaws with the game:
1). Level of variance, particularly with terminal actions (essentially the OP's argument) but also with specific cards. For example, opening Sea Hag + Masquerade.. both good cards, and with good shuffle luck *very* good.. but quite poor if you, for example, draw the Sea Hag with the Masquerade. I don't know if anyone here has played a lot of fantasy RPG games (anything based off of Dungeons & Dragons), but over the decades of digital versions of these games, the concept of a 'critical hit' has been the classic example of the problems of high variance events. For those not familiar with the concept, typically every attack has a small (often 5%) chance of dealing double damage. This variance, both in frequency and power, has the effect of trivializing encounters when the player gets 'lucky', and causing balance issues when they don't.. the problem being predictability. The more rarely critical hits happen, the greater the impact they have in those rare fights where they actually happen. The solution? Well, D&D 4th edition chose one of the two routes: weaken the effect of critical hits. Critical hits in 4e only deal maximum rolled damage, instead of double rolled damage. The other option, chosen in games like World of Warcraft, is to increase the probability of the critical hit event. If, for example, critical hits happen roughly 40-50% of the time, they can be relied upon to happen numerous times each fight, and thus can be correctly balanced for. For a game like Dominion, however, realistically adjusting variance of action collision (as well as dead actions) would totally remake the game.. plus simply weakening the impact of action collision by making actions overall weaker sounds like a bad plan.
2). Single cards and 2-card combos that are optimal in exclusion of anything else. I'm talking here about 'combos' like Minion + more Minions.. or Hunting Party + $2 action + more Hunting Parties.. or Fool's Gold + more Fool's Golds.. or Bridges + Native Villages.. or Chancellors + 4x Stashes.. or any number of specific 1-2 card 'combos' that really can't be improved upon by adding any other (action) card to the deck.. or sometimes any other card at all. Cards like these really defeat the function of a 10-card Kingdom.
3). First-turn advantage. For a high-quality competitive game, a first-turn advantage of the scale that exists in Dominion seems to defeat the function of the game from a purely competitive standpoint. What I'm getting at here is that all games fall somewhere along an axis of luck vs. skill.. 'casual' games typically fall closer to the 'luck' end, while 'competitive' games typically fall closer to the 'skill' end. In my opinion, for the depth and complexity of discussions and the playerbase of Dominion, the game is surprisingly higher on the 'luck' side than most other purely 'competitive' games.
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A better example is probably we both start 5/2 on a base game set. We see festival+Library and decide to go for it over BM.
You might decide Festival/Nothing. I would argue that while valid Library/Nothing is probably stronger as it will get you to 5 and you have no risk of collision before the purchase regardless and it'll trigger reshuffle faster after that next 5 purchase.
I tested BM/Library and Festival/Library in Solitaire. BM/Library bought 4 provinces more quickly, as I expected. (2 samples of BM/Library, 4 samples of Festival/Library with varying ways of playing the engine. All 5/2 opening Library).
Your example is actually my example then. You can't tune the Festival/Library engine at all - you should be playing Library/BM.
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The problem is there's zero value in chaining two libraries (this applies to watchtower as well) unless your handsize goes down in between. So in order to get the benefit of two libraries in one turn you would have to play at least two festivals or some other non-terminal that reduces your handsize like hamlet or lighthouse.
First turn advantage isn't really a luck thing. Pretty much every symmetrical game has it and people who are serious about competition find some way to control for it, either by giving a small handicap in favor of the player who goes second (as with komi points in go) or by making sure that in a tournament settings players get equal time in all positions or by limiting the moves available to whoever goes first (as in checkers).
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eh, most games do more to weather first turn advantage using the rules than Dominion does. In MtG, second player draws an extra card. In Dominion second player gets curses and militia'ed purchases in earlier reshuffles and the only compensation is that they win if the winner ties taking more turns.
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While we're finding flaws, here are some I see.
There's no mitigation for under-spending.
When you spend less than the maximum amount on a turn, you're (usually) strictly worse off than if you had simply drawn less treasure on that turn, because you aren't going to see that treasure again this shuffle. An extreme example is how drawing $9 then $7 is enormously worse than $8 then $8. Another example is $6/$4 vs $5/$5 on T3/T4 when some $5 card is better than gold (such as IGG in some kingdoms).
Cards like Courtyard and Haven help to mitigate this, because they can save extra money for a future turn. In most kingdoms, though, you're put at a significant disadvantage.
Gold is a little bit too good.
- If gold weren't available, you'd need a bit more creativity to buy a province. To buy provinces without kingdom cards, you usually need gold. In my experience, the $8 will mostly come from hands like GGCC, GSSC, GSCCC, while SSSS and SSSCC are quite unusual. The problem is that it's not very interesting to buy a province using only basic cards (unless you did something clever like using a kingdom card to flood your deck with silver).
- $5 kingdom cards compete with gold. It's not uncommon to play a game where you rarely hit exactly $5, and in these games, gold is often a better buy than the $5 kingdom cards. I'd prefer to buy something more interesting, but it's hard to compete with non-terminal $3 you never draw dead.
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or by limiting the moves available to whoever goes first (as in checkers).
What are you referring to here? I'm not aware of any rule in Checkers that treats player 1 differently.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_draughts
In tournament English draughts, a variation called three-move restriction is preferred. The first three moves are drawn at random from a set of accepted openings. Two games are played with the chosen opening, each player having a turn at either side. This tends to reduce the number of draws and can make for more exciting matches. Three-move restriction has been played in the United States championship since 1934. A two-move restriction was used from 1900 until 1934 in the United States and in the British Isles until the 1950s. Before 1900, championships were played without restriction: this style is called go-as-you-please (GAYP).
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There's no mitigation for under-spending.
When you spend less than the maximum amount on a turn, you're (usually) strictly worse off than if you had simply drawn less treasure on that turn, because you aren't going to see that treasure again this shuffle. An extreme example is how drawing $9 then $7 is enormously worse than $8 then $8. Another example is $6/$4 vs $5/$5 on T3/T4 when some $5 card is better than gold (such as IGG in some kingdoms).
Cards like Courtyard and Haven help to mitigate this, because they can save extra money for a future turn. In most kingdoms, though, you're put at a significant disadvantage.
I think the game would be considerably less interesting if there was some sort of compensation of underspending. Knowing when underspending is worth it is one of the things that I feel really separates skill levels in Dominion.
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There's no mitigation for under-spending.
When you spend less than the maximum amount on a turn, you're (usually) strictly worse off than if you had simply drawn less treasure on that turn, because you aren't going to see that treasure again this shuffle. An extreme example is how drawing $9 then $7 is enormously worse than $8 then $8. Another example is $6/$4 vs $5/$5 on T3/T4 when some $5 card is better than gold (such as IGG in some kingdoms).
Cards like Courtyard and Haven help to mitigate this, because they can save extra money for a future turn. In most kingdoms, though, you're put at a significant disadvantage.
I think the game would be considerably less interesting if there was some sort of compensation of underspending. Knowing when underspending is worth it is one of the things that I feel really separates skill levels in Dominion.
I half agree. Yes, it helps separate good players from okay players. But among good players, it adds a significant luck factor. (Familiar is another example, in a different sense: you're underspending a 2P hand by not using the potion.)
Compensation for underspending could be done in a way that doesn't eliminate player skill. For example, maybe at the end of each turn, you'd be allowed to put an unplayed treasure on top of your deck. You still need to know which card you really want.
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Has anyone tried playing with "pie rule" openings? This is where one player plays the opening move, and then the other player decides whether to accept that opening and take over that seat or to challenge it by playing as player 2. The player who opens has an incentive to make a good move, since he may be forced to continue with it, but also to not do anything that might be unbeatable, since then he will get pushed into the other seat and have to deal with the consequences from the wrong side.
Top-decking unplayed treasure during cleanup sounds like a potentially interesting reaction or while-in-play effect. Not exactly a +buy, but still a way to avoid wasting a hand with lots of treasure.
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There's no mitigation for under-spending.
When you spend less than the maximum amount on a turn, you're (usually) strictly worse off than if you had simply drawn less treasure on that turn, because you aren't going to see that treasure again this shuffle. An extreme example is how drawing $9 then $7 is enormously worse than $8 then $8. Another example is $6/$4 vs $5/$5 on T3/T4 when some $5 card is better than gold (such as IGG in some kingdoms).
Cards like Courtyard and Haven help to mitigate this, because they can save extra money for a future turn. In most kingdoms, though, you're put at a significant disadvantage.
I think the game would be considerably less interesting if there was some sort of compensation of underspending. Knowing when underspending is worth it is one of the things that I feel really separates skill levels in Dominion.
10$ Provinces and 7$ Golds is what I think is being considered bad uncompensated overspending. I don't think anyone is saying people should get bonuses for buying 5$ Ambassadors.
As for Gold being too good, if dead draw is involved it dovetails with my opening post..
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There's no mitigation for under-spending.
When you spend less than the maximum amount on a turn, you're (usually) strictly worse off than if you had simply drawn less treasure on that turn, because you aren't going to see that treasure again this shuffle. An extreme example is how drawing $9 then $7 is enormously worse than $8 then $8. Another example is $6/$4 vs $5/$5 on T3/T4 when some $5 card is better than gold (such as IGG in some kingdoms).
Cards like Courtyard and Haven help to mitigate this, because they can save extra money for a future turn. In most kingdoms, though, you're put at a significant disadvantage.
I think the game would be considerably less interesting if there was some sort of compensation of underspending. Knowing when underspending is worth it is one of the things that I feel really separates skill levels in Dominion.
10$ Provinces and 7$ Golds is what I think is being considered bad uncompensated overspending. I don't think anyone is saying people should get bonuses for buying 5$ Ambassadors.
As for Gold being too good, if dead draw is involved it dovetails with my opening post..
I disagree actually that $5 Ambassador should receive no bonus, since that usually happens when one player draws 5/2, and on most boards that player will be at a disadvantage compared to 4/3.
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You know what I meant. Ambassador/Lighthouse doesn't care.
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You know what I meant. Ambassador/Lighthouse doesn't care.
In the case of Ambassador/Lighthouse, the 4/3 player is overspending too. I guess I'm not really seeing why spending $9 on a Province vs $5 on an Ambassador are fundamentally different. In both cases, you're at a disadvantage because you drew more treasure than you needed.
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I can't even remember what that tangent started about.
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There's a pretty large subset of the cards in the game as it exists that work as tools for solving the "too much treasure" problem. Mostly the ones that give you extra buys, but there are a few that explicitly let you set something aside for the next turn somehow.
What is it you're actually trying to fix?
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There's a pretty large subset of the cards in the game as it exists that work as tools for solving the "too much treasure" problem. Mostly the ones that give you extra buys, but there are a few that explicitly let you set something aside for the next turn somehow.
What is it you're actually trying to fix?
I'm not explicitly trying to fix anything. I don't know whether it can be fixed within the rules of Dominion. I'm just saying that this aspect of the game introduces one of the more annoying luck factors.
Anyway, I agree that set-aside cards are great. Courtyard+BM is one of the most fun (and strongest) BM+X's. But there really aren't that many of these cards. Courtyard, Haven... and in some sense Mandarin's on-gain effect? If there were a card like CY or Haven in every set, that would be great. But in the vast majority of kingdoms, if you have too much to spend on a turn, you simply accept your disadvantage and that's that.
+buys are not a solution to the overspending problem, since $9 and 2 buys still just gets a province, $7 and 2 buys only gets two FVs if you're building FV-Wharf, etc. Also, they do nothing about the opening split, and are usually not relevant on T3/T4. It's true they do mitigate massive overspending in mid- to late-game. In my opinion, the main purpose of +buys is to make building an engine possible and worthwhile.
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Puzzle Strike's pig mechanic is neat for overspending. It lets you keep a card in your hand during the discarding step, essentially, havening one card at the expense of one draw for your next turn.
Since Haven reduces your hand size to 4, I guess they are both similar. So Puzzle Strike has Haven effects running rampant I guess.
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I'm not explicitly trying to fix anything. I don't know whether it can be fixed within the rules of Dominion. I'm just saying that this aspect of the game introduces one of the more annoying luck factors.
I think if you want to eliminate "annoying luck factors" focusing on something like "sometimes I have too much treasure" is missing that it's a game where you blindly draw cards from a shuffled deck. It's pretty unlikely that you're going to make an interesting game that uses that mechanic and doesn't have some shuffling orders be more optimal than others.
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There's high variability games and low variability games. You can make changes to increase and decrease that, and it's plausible there is some medium between high and low that he's looking for.
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There's high variability games and low variability games. You can make changes to increase and decrease that, and it's plausible there is some medium between high and low that he's looking for.
Yes. Also, in the dominion downer thread, variations on having-the-wrong-amount-to-spend total around 47% of the votes, so I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way.
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Unprint Alchemy and maybe that drops in half :P
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There's high variability games and low variability games. You can make changes to increase and decrease that, and it's plausible there is some medium between high and low that he's looking for.
Yes. Also, in the dominion downer thread, variations on having-the-wrong-amount-to-spend total around 47% of the votes, so I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way.
Just played a game with Wharf where I had 2 $8 turns (3x Silver, 2x Copper) on my 3rd and 4th shuffle and never a perfect $5. Of course I had the amazing $4/$4 on my 2nd shuffle.
The horrible part about this kind of grouping is that your other turns are going to be awful and then you're faced with a real decision: Should I buy Wharf/Nothing on my $2 hand or grab a Gold or even an early Province (without having as much as a Gold or a Wharf)?
I wonder if using a simple counter (a d20 will suffice) can reduce money variance? Everytime you underspend, just up the counter. Everytime you want to overspend, just reduce the counter. This doesn't help the problems of your action cards of course.
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Just played a game with Wharf where I had 2 $8 turns (3x Silver, 2x Copper) on my 3rd and 4th shuffle and never a perfect $5. Of course I had the amazing $4/$4 on my 2nd shuffle.
The horrible part about this kind of grouping is that your other turns are going to be awful and then you're faced with a real decision: Should I buy Wharf/Nothing on my $2 hand or grab a Gold or even an early Province (without having as much as a Gold or a Wharf)?
I wonder if using a simple counter (a d20 will suffice) can reduce money variance? Everytime you underspend, just up the counter. Everytime you want to overspend, just reduce the counter. This doesn't help the problems of your action cards of course.
I wouldn't say all these ideas are terrible, but kind of you will end up with a completely different game, as theory already noted on page 1 somewhere. The cards are balanced given their downsides, if you now can't draw Villages dead, or if you can influence the distribution of your money per shuffle you increase the value of some cards (Village-Smithy / money) and decrease the value of others Cellar/Warehouse/Scheme. And you change the speed of the game, when you always get what you want.
And where do we end? Once we get rid of these "problems", do we end up complaining that the KC never find it's action, or the Treasure Map the TMs? Do we want a game where we always start with an "average" hand?
I've seen enough crucial cards hiding in the last card I couldn't draw this round, so I think I could really like a Dominion that has a little bit less chance, but I don't think there is an easy fix to without completely rebalancing the game.
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I DO NOT see dead draw as a variance problem. I see it as a design flaw in that it cuts down on the flexibility of how a BM/dead draw deck can be designed. It's still a deck, and still depends on variability a lot (you can't draw Market dead, but now that Smithy costs 6$ you have to hope it doesn't miss reshuffles). The difference is you can throw in Markets and Lookouts and what have you.
I think most decks would not combine Smithy and Village, that makes the deck less efficient in that it's hard to ensure you end turns with exactly 0 actions remaining, full use of resources. I think dead draw + money + cantrips would be common, creating a choice of which cantrips to use, and in a minority of boards adding villages would be worthwhile and would be a meaningful decision.
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I DO NOT see dead draw as a variance problem. I see it as a design flaw in that it cuts down on the flexibility of how a BM/dead draw deck can be designed. It's still a deck, and still depends on variability a lot (you can't draw Market dead, but now that Smithy costs 6$ you have to hope it doesn't miss reshuffles). The difference is you can throw in Markets and Lookouts and what have you.
I think most decks would not combine Smithy and Village, that makes the deck less efficient in that it's hard to ensure you end turns with exactly 0 actions remaining, full use of resources. I think dead draw + money + cantrips would be common, creating a choice of which cantrips to use, and in a minority of boards adding villages would be worthwhile and would be a meaningful decision.
They'd not only be common, they'd be overwhelmingly powerful. Like, in almost every game, you just play the biggest draw with the best cantrips. Now, you could redesign which cards do what, what cards are printed, costs and whatnot to compensate, but now you're just playing a totally different game. I wouldn't call one way or the other a flaw, for sure. They're just different.
I'm not sure which is better or more fun. But I do know that I really really like Dominion the way it is, even though the variance can be frustrating at times.
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Yes, it would be a different game, one I think I'd like slightly more.
When that's my biggest Dominion complaint besides Treasure Map it means Dominion is a pretty good game.
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There's high variability games and low variability games. You can make changes to increase and decrease that, and it's plausible there is some medium between high and low that he's looking for.
Yes. Also, in the dominion downer thread, variations on having-the-wrong-amount-to-spend total around 47% of the votes, so I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way.
But the dominion downer thread was not "Which downers do you think should not exist", it was just which is your least favorite to experience.