Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: carlosthedwarf on October 24, 2011, 09:29:42 pm
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Just won a rather strange game, and I'm wondering if there was a better way to play this one:
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/24/game-20111024-182432-c7c3facc.html (http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201110/24/game-20111024-182432-c7c3facc.html)
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I probably would have done something boring like smithy + money and used salvager to try end the game.
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I think this might be a board where bureaucrat's attack really shines!
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Smith BMU. Not even up for debate
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OK, but suppose you ignore provinces all together and force the Smithy BMU player to buy 8. How long does that take? How much are silk roads+ islands + some duchies + estates worth by then? I don't think it's obvious. At least the province player needs to be rushing the game with a salvager or something.
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Bureaucrat seems like the right card for an island/silk road victory card rush. If you want to use a smithy then taking a couple of islands beforehand will probably be an advantage.
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OK, but suppose you ignore provinces all together and force the Smithy BMU player to buy 8. How long does that take? How much are silk roads+ islands + some duchies + estates worth by then? I don't think it's obvious. At least the province player needs to be rushing the game with a salvager or something.
I tried it. It's a job for the simulator, but I did it by hand a few times... BMU-smithy, buying only provinces, ended the game somewhere between turns 20 and 28, with 8 provinces and 3 estates for 51 points. So going by the points carlos had accumulated, (53 by turn 22), it's close. Whether BMU+s could end the game on turn 20 or 28 depends on shuffle luck. The point total for BMU+s would be between 51 (no duchies) and, realistically, probably 60-63 or so (doubt you'd fit more than 4 duchies in). Whether the BMU+s player got duchies at the right time or started going for them too early or too late would determine whether the duchies would slow down him ending the game on provinces or not.
Of course, given that this hypothetical BMU+S player is not competing with you for either Silk Roads or Islands, the non-smithy player would be able to keep his deck a little slimmer (more islands) and higher-value (more silk roads, which were worth almost as much as provinces by the end of the game). Those silk roads were worth 5 - only 1 less than a province! Silk Road + island was worth more than a province.
It's close enough, I think, that I'm not comfortable saying "BMU+smithy is better than silk_road-island-pawn" or vice versa, without going into more detail.
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The number I remember for BMU goldfishing from sims is 24 turns. BMU smithy should be faster. I can run it tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure it's not *that* close. If the numbers you have are right, I would agree. But I think they are two high
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I just tried it on Dominiate. Out of 100 tries, with no opponent, BigSmithy never got to 8 provinces before turn 20. In 66 of the 100 runs, it took 23 or more turns to get to 8 provinces.
I stand by the numbers I'd estimated before.
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I just tried it on Dominiate. Out of 100 tries, with no opponent, BigSmithy never got to 8 provinces before turn 20. In 66 of the 100 runs, it took 23 or more turns to get to 8 provinces.
I stand by the numbers I'd estimated before.
100 games is far too small a sample size. I regularly run 10,000 gam sims and see win-rate fluctuate as much as 3-5%. With 1000 game samples the interval is around 8-10%.
Run 100,000 games and I'll believe you
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You know, if you're actually *curious* rather than argumentative, you could do that yourself, since both Dominiate and Geronimoo's simulator are just a click away.
But fine, whatever. Big Money Basic takes an average of 26 turns to get to all 8 provinces, Smithy Big Money takes an average of 24 turns, rounding to the nearest turn and using the Ultimate Simulation option on Geronimoo's simulator.
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I'd probably go for island+silver, and buy province > gold > island > silver, and eventually add in silk roads and estates. Islanding your estates can allow you to get a reasonable gold density and provinces.
The other strat I'd consider is salvager+smithy+money. With the salvager, it won't stall as hard as smithy+money, and will potentially be able to use the +buy to get an extra estate or two.
Unfortunately, salvager is hard for the simulator to get right. And choices about when to buy duchies takes some real-life intelligence too.
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What's this about Smithy BM? If your opponent catches wind that you're not going to buy a single Province, surely he's going to grab a Salvager or two? Does he deny you your 7th and 8th Silk Road?
I think simulation does a really poor job here.
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Apart from the Salvager this board is perfectly suited for the simulator. It does require quite a bit of tuning to get the bots right, because small paramater changes can have huge effects. Here's the conclusion:
- If you go for the pure Silk Road rush (starting with Silk Road as your first buy), you're going to stall pretty hard because of all the greens
- If you go for Smithy and the other guy is rushing the Silk Roads, you'll need a few extra Gold before diving into the Provinces to make sure you'll be able to buy all 8 before stalling (Salvager is an alternative to this, but can't be simulated)
- And finally, Bureaucrat is the perfect card here! It builds your economy while you're rushing the green cards AND it hurts your opponent pretty bad if he's rushing as well!
I'd suggest you open Bureaucrat/Silver (or Bureaucrat/nothing), get another Bureaucrat and then start grabbing all the green cards you can get :Province first, then Silk Road (will be worth 5VP most of the time), then Duchy, then Island. This strategy crushes a Smithy player going for 8 Provinces 75%-25%. If the Smithy player uses Salvagers he will probably get better results, but I'm quite sure it will not be sufficient to beat the Bureaucrat strategy since it's so dominant.
Here are the bots to try it for yourself:
<player name="Bureaucrat into Silk Road rush" author="Geronimoo" description="Use Bureaucrat to keep adding fuel while aquiring obscene amounts of green cards for Silk Road.">
<type name="Competitive"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="Attacking"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<type name="Engine"/>
<buy name="Province"/>
<buy name="Gold">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Bureaucrat"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Bureaucrat">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Bureaucrat"/>
<operator type="smallerThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silk_Road"/>
<buy name="Duchy"/>
<buy name="Island"/>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silver"/>
<buy name="Pearl_Diver"/>
</player>
<player name="Smithy to get all 8 Provinces" author="Geronimoo" description="Use Smithy to get all 8 Provinces">
<type name="Competitive"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="SingleCard"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<buy name="Province">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silk_Road">
<condition>
<left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Duchy">
<condition>
<left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Island">
<condition>
<left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Smithy">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Smithy"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="countCardTypeInDeck" attribute="Treasure"/>
<extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="13.0" />
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Salvager">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Salvager"/>
<operator type="equalTo" />
<right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
</condition>
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
<operator type="greaterThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silver"/>
</player>
<player name="Pure Silk Road rush" author="Geronimoo" description="Immediately start aquiring green cards for Silk Road and hope to three-pile before opponent gets enough of a lead.">
<type name="Competitive"/>
<type name="Bot"/>
<type name="BigMoney"/>
<type name="TwoPlayer"/>
<type name="Province"/>
<type name="UserCreated"/>
<buy name="Province"/>
<buy name="Island">
<condition>
<left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Island"/>
<operator type="equalTo" />
<right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Silk_Road"/>
<buy name="Duchy"/>
<buy name="Island"/>
<buy name="Estate">
<condition>
<left type="gainsNeededToEndGame"/>
<operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
<right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
</condition>
</buy>
<buy name="Gold"/>
<buy name="Silver"/>
<buy name="Secret_Chamber"/>
</player>
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You know, if you're actually *curious* rather than argumentative, you could do that yourself, since both Dominiate and Geronimoo's simulator are just a click away.
But fine, whatever. Big Money Basic takes an average of 26 turns to get to all 8 provinces, Smithy Big Money takes an average of 24 turns, rounding to the nearest turn and using the Ultimate Simulation option on Geronimoo's simulator.
I am sorry. I was on my iPod, which does not allow me to run the sim.
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I think there may be a rare counting error in the simulator involving islands. All the cards on the island mat are listed as islands at the end of game and I can't get the scores to tally. The simulator will probably still show the bureaucrat performing well here even after any correction.
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I think Menagerie was the way to play that pool. One bureaucrat, One salvager, Menageries, Pawns, Pearl Divers, and of course plenty of Islands. Island is amazing with Menagerie, it's the only way to keep provinces from being duplicated in your deck.
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I think Menagerie was the way to play that pool. One bureaucrat, One salvager, Menageries, Pawns, Pearl Divers, and of course plenty of Islands. Island is amazing with Menagerie, it's the only way to keep provinces from being duplicated in your deck.
I don't think this Kingdom is particularly condusive to Menagerie. There's no source of extra actions for you to be able to use Salvager or Island to reliably get hands with different cards, so Menagerie is going to be a cantrip almost all of the time, even with Islands.
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Well it's not particularly conducive to anything.
Theoretically your opponent should buy bureaucrat so theoretically that helps with the duplicate vp cards.