Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Articles => Topic started by: Jimmmmm on August 17, 2011, 10:17:18 am
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Can someone please explain Diadem to me? I don't think I've ever seen it taken, and certainly all the other Tournament Prizes seem a lot more useful. What kind of (good) deck is going to have a bunch of spare actions that will make Diadem either better than any other remaining prize, or better than a Duchy given that the game has gone on long enough for all the other prizes to be taken? To me it seems like it would normally be a silver, sometimes a gold, rarely 4 or 5, but even then you'd rather be spending your actions on cards that will benefit you more by more than $1/action. And because there's only one, it doesn't seem possible to build a viable strategy around it.
I also notice that the Council Room popular buys page has Diadem at 0.0 buys/deck for which it's available:
http://councilroom.com/popular_buys (http://councilroom.com/popular_buys)
This is because you don't buy it, you gain it. Though its gains are significantly lower than the other prizes:
Trusty Steed: 0.35
Followers: 0.31
Princess: 0.26
Bag of Gold: 0.19
Diadem: 0.11
Does anyone consider it a worthwhile prize? If so, do you have any examples of effectively incorporating it into an already-made deck?
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All prizes have 0.0 buys/deck because you can't buy them. It's the gains that you need to look at.
And as for when Diadem is useful: Cities.
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All prizes have 0.0 buys/deck because you can't buy them. It's the gains that you need to look at.
Thanks. Edited.
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I've gone for Diadem on occasion (mostly in real life, there's only one or two examples on iso and those were not great games). It's a relatively rare situation, but it can be useful in some scenarios. For instance, I've had games in which I used Universities to acquire non-terminals (like Treasury or City); in those decks, it's quite possible to have extra actions left over. Hamlets and Fishing Villages can also leave you with extra actions. But in general you're right that it's not a great option on a lot of sets, because usually you'll get more from playing your terminal actions than from converting the actions into money.
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I haven't really used it too much, but KC can be very useful for obtaining large amounts of excess actions that make diadem worth more.
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Mostly I go for diadem when I need instant money (to buy the last province or something) and trusty steed's already gone, or I've got a couple villages in play. This is pretty rare. As has been mentioned above, it can get obscene with city. But it is very rare that you think "hey, what I really want here is diadem". So it's not so good among the prizes. And I don't think there's really all that much to it.
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what's going through my mind when i buy diadem:
90% of the time: winning the diadem gives a gold equivalent this turn (or silver, if i can't resist playing a terminal in my hand) and this gives me another province this turn.
5% of the time: um, there's no other prizes left, my deck is filled with curses from my opponent's followers, i should really just resign, i guess i'll take a diadem??
4% of the time: i know i should take a duchy, but i'm mega-winning and i just want all the prizes.
1% of the time: fishing village + UCS + diadem = win.
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If you happen to have an Ironworks in your deck and you've been slowly gathering an inane amount of villages throughout the game, then Diadem could be worth it (assuming you have the +buys to really make it work for you), or need the diadem immediately to buy a province. Otherwise, better to just grab the Dutchy or a more reliable prize.
King's Court and City helps quite a bit too.
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If you happen to have an Ironworks in your deck and you've been slowly gathering an inane amount of villages throughout the game, then Diadem could be worth it (assuming you have the +buys to really make it work for you), or need the diadem immediately to buy a province. Otherwise, better to just grab the Dutchy or a more reliable prize.
King's Court and City helps quite a bit too.
you shouldn't have bought the ironworks in the first place if you're just getting villages with it. I can see that happening in a gardens game though.
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What about in a Native Village scenario? Native Village seems like at least a decent strategic complement for Tournament, to allow you to get your Tournaments and Provinces in the same hand; and when you've got a lot of Native Villages in your deck Diadem can be worth a bundle.
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If you happen to have an Ironworks in your deck and you've been slowly gathering an inane amount of villages throughout the game, then Diadem could be worth it (assuming you have the +buys to really make it work for you), or need the diadem immediately to buy a province. Otherwise, better to just grab the Dutchy or a more reliable prize.
King's Court and City helps quite a bit too.
you shouldn't have bought the ironworks in the first place if you're just getting villages with it. I can see that happening in a gardens game though.
I don't know that I agree. There are some games where I would get an ironworks more or less just to get villages, though that is pretty rare. OTOH, I don't think I'd ever grab a bunch of villages just to power up diadem.
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I chose Diadem in a recent Torturer game: I used a lot of Fishing Villages and Festivals to power my Torturer engine, and once the engine got going I picked up a couple Tournaments with spare $4 turns. Diadem seemed the right choice since my FVs and Festivals were typically leaving me with a wealth of actions to spare. (I think I took Trusty Steed first, though. Ordinarily I'd probably take Followers for my second prize, but I feel like it would have been a bad idea in this case since it would weaken my Torturer engine.)
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Diadem has possibilities when you have lots of surplus actions. KC games can make it better than a platinum. For instance KC/Lab games tend to draw huge and have huge +actions. KC/Bazaar can make diadem easily a second province all on its own.
The best scenario I've seen for diadem was Library/Hamlet/Baron. This let's you get an early province (as soon as hamlet/library can hit the baron and 4 coppers), cycle your deck heavily to always get your tournamet in hand with province, and lets you rack up more than 8 spare actions. The big key is that you can discard dross (coppers and estates) multiple times and keep drawing them back with libraries. Depending on how well I have the hamlet/library engine built, I might take trusty steed (when +2 cards/+2 actions will make the engine hit more readily) or followers (when the engine is set up well enough that I can shrug off estates easily) first, but diadem can easily make this two province per turn engine on its own.
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So the story goes, it was too powerful to be a Kingdom card. What I would like to do is try play-testing it as a Kingdom card with this adjustment:
Crown
Cost: $2, 1 Potion
Worth $2.
When you play this, +$1 per unused Action you have (Action, not Action card).
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This costs $2 more for each Kingdom card in the supply at the start of the game that can give more than 1 Action.
TYPE: TREASURE
The "can give" phrasing makes sure Hamlet and Crossroads count.
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What, so start with 10 Villages and it costs $12P? I guess you mean "$2 more for each pile of Kingdom cards". If so, how would this deal with Black Market?
Edit: I guess they're not in the supply so it doesn't count them. Does it count TR/KC which can very often be excellent sources of spare actions?
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And because there's only one, it doesn't seem possible to build a viable strategy around it.
That's the point. Donald found Diadem's power to have way too much variance to make it a normal kingdom card, so he made it a prize. You're not supposed to build a strategy around obtaining any prize, because there's always the chance someone else will get it before you do. Anyways, here's what Theory had to write about Diadem when Cornucopia was first leaked:
I think this card is underrated. It’s generally worth at least a Gold, and definitely at least a Silver. Of course, the one situation Diadem is best in (when you have a huge surplus of +Action) is really not a situation you want to be in, ideally, but sometimes you do end up with a surplus of +Action through no real fault of your own. Fully upgraded Cities are the obvious choice, but those are only really viable if you’re going for Colony, and detouring for Provinces might be a bit too slow. Worker’s Village/Hamlet into Peddler is a more likely scenario: there, you have both a ton of +Action as well as sufficient +Buy to take advantage of an obscene Diadem. Fishing Village / Wharf strategies also tend to run into a surplus of +Action sometimes, since the Fishing Villages get distributed a little unevenly and you often overinvest in them to block your opponent. And King’s Court and non-terminals often leads to some ridiculous +Actions shenanigans. But you generally shouldn’t be building a deck with massive surplus of +Action specifically hoping to take advantage of Diadem; after all, might as well load it up with Monument or even Saboteur if you have that many Actions to spare.
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So the story goes, it was too powerful to be a Kingdom card. What I would like to do is try play-testing it as a Kingdom card with this adjustment:
Crown
Cost: $2, 1 Potion
Worth $2.
When you play this, +$1 per unused Action you have (Action, not Action card).
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This costs $2 more for each Kingdom card in the supply at the start of the game that can give more than 1 Action.
TYPE: TREASURE
The "can give" phrasing makes sure Hamlet and Crossroads count.
I don't see much of a reason to have it cost more for each pile of kingdom cards that can give more than 1 action. look at a kingdom with Nobles, Bazaar, Festival, and City, vs a kingdom with Crossroads and Fishing Village. Doesn't seem right that Crown should cost more in the first Kingdom than the second. The number of piles that have +2 actions doesn't necessarily relate to how easy it will be to get a bunch of +2 action cards.
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Diadem is also quite nice with black market as you can get lots of bonus $ from actions that you will still later use.
I lost because of this in a tactician/BM game, even though I got my engine set up first my opponent hit the BM tournament and even though steed and followers were pretty bad I think the +$6-8 this was consistently givving him allowed him to rush out the last few provinces ahead of me...
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How does bag of gold have a better gain rate than diadem? Diadem seems way more useful, you certainly look at the weaker prizes during a phase of the game where gold is better than bags and silvers are better than workshops
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BoG is comparatively better than Workshop because it is non-terminal and drops the Golds on your deck.
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How does bag of gold have a better gain rate than diadem?
You can trash down and buy one province with a bunch of +1 card/+1 action cards but it will quickly clog up unless you put gold into the deck.
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FWIW, I just gained my first Diadem in memory (http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/26/game-20111126-052957-bc1daa02.html) (apparently I've gotten it 6 times before - must have been in some of my first few Tournament games). The key card for it was Fishing Village (which seems extremely obvious now). Sure, I only used it twice, but it was worth $5 then $4 and along with Princess helped me to a double Province turn and a Province/Duchy finish. I'm not saying it won me the game, but it was an excellent card for my deck.
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You're not supposed to build a strategy around obtaining any prize, because there's always the chance someone else will get it before you do.
From this thread is seems like if I built my strategy around obtaining Diadem no one would fight me for it. ;)
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I've gotten Diadem exactly once, here. (http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111120-210929-7b9dc788.html) My logic at the time was "I need to end this game right now, the game likely won't get through another reshuffle, and Diadem is going to at least be a Gold, so it'll be 1 turn faster than BoG". Admittedly, it didn't matter because I already had >50% of total VP available, and with Trusty Steed in my next hand I was getting $8 no matter which one I picked.
However, if I knew I would be drawing the prize instead, then picking Diadem = $3 now rather than +$3 later, which might be enough to push you over the edge for a Province gain.