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26

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: Adam's and WW's podcast

« on: March 22, 2016, 10:52:54 am »

You're saying, "I know AdamH + WW don't want to interact with f.ds, but they should grit their teeth and do it anyways for the sake of promoting their podcast." If they wanted more viewers they would have, but not posting here is a way to say they care about other things more.

Not quite what I meant. They can advertise without interacting. They do not have to respond to anybody or read responses, or anything. You are correct that they do not have to do anything at all here and not even posting new projects shows that they care about other things more.

For several reasons, I have lowered my opinion of both of them enough that I wanted to voice general disapproval, and I guess encourage people to support other Dominion strategy content creators instead.

That's all I'll say on this. Sorry for bringing down the thread.

I really dislike your post. I have no idea about the quality of Adam or WW, but you write something bad for them, on a place that they do not write anymore and cannot defend them selves. What you did just feels bad for me.

27

Dominion League / Re: Season 13 - Game Reports & Discussion

« on: February 26, 2016, 07:28:11 am »

"I wonder if it's better to skip Urchin altogether in favor of Steward."

It should be, steward goes extremely well with Hunting party and you can open with both. This allows you to continue getting more parties with steward the next turns and start trashing the coppers as you build, because you would have more than 7 coins every turn very soon. Lighthouses seem a really good compliment here, because they can be bought even on a steward trashing turn and they offer both protection and economy.

28

Dominion League / Re: Season 13 - Results

« on: February 26, 2016, 06:38:16 am »

C4

smcrtorchs - Dunduks: 4-2

29

Help! / Re: funkdoc's journey to 5k (& beyond)

« on: February 20, 2016, 12:14:17 pm »

Hey Funkdoc,

Defenitely take your break, then at a point note you own comment close at the end of your post: "but this game seems too board-specific for that to do a whole lot?" I could not agree more with this. The ration between getting better and studying a game is very much depended on the way that you study a game. While I believe that studying you tube videos can help, it should be incorporated in a much bigger learning plan. I will try to share some of my thoughts, but be aware that every person learns differently and what works for me, might not work for you.

People are really bad at studying any game for many reasons. If you try to just have a single way to understand the whole game of dominion you will eventually keep bettering and bettering that way until it becomes something different. As you start using the different way, you will slowly but surely forget what you already learned with the old way of thinking. Assuming that you can keep  bettering and bettering the way you understand a game, which is something natural, the process above might be repeated many times. This can lead to a non improving rating for a long time, especially if the new way of thinking creates new interesting decisions that you never faced before.

A much better way to study complex strategy games like dominion is to approach them like a concept with many many different areas that you have to master. One Area can be madman market square, another can be madman coppersmith, a third example can be cultist familiar etc.

What is important when you study those areas is to leave no unanswered questions behind. For example, Rebuild is also such an area and there are excellent articles written on it. I no longer remember their content, but I remember thinking: ok after 2 rebuilds I need to go for duchies, but why? As I understood later this was because we are expecting the opponent to contest the duchies. If opponent does not care for the split, we can probably get a third rebuild as it will turn it self into a duchy sooner or later. Another example of a question is whether I need to buy a Junk dealer first if I am playing Journeyman BM. I believe that no Junk dealer should be better at the moment but this question is one I should answer if I want to better my self in the Journeyman big money area and the broader big money area.

You can always ask for such details, or just go through the more time consuming path of playtesting. Asking is probably better, even if you flood the forum with questions. Just be sure that you reached the bottom of the why question. In many cases you will wrongly think that you reach the bottom, but this is good enough to progress and you cannot do better at that time. After you study an area, take written notes on it, revise them from time to time and do add new findings as you understand the game deeper and deeper. An example of what to take note might be for example on how many turns you expect on average to get 4 provinces with a specific strategy and how this can change when you play with colonies. This way you have a rough guide to use for comparing strategies when you play.

There is a specific excercise that certainly helped my game, although it is very time consuming. Take every drawing card and every village in dominion and some trashers and try to build continuously up to double province each time while you keep changing the villages, the drawing cards and the trashers that you use in your deck. Yes the list is long, but it does help. Take down notes on how the game differs with each cards.

Every learning process should start by identifying your leaks and coming up with a specific way to fill the blanks. Dividing a game to many many areas, makes sure that you can do both. It is hard to see how you can use the You tube videos of the best players directly to fill blanks and so I would defenitely not expect anything great from it. Watching those videos actually helped me more to identify my leaks, as people there were doing things I would not think at all on my own.

Finally note that maybe you do not consider fun such an approach and you prefer to follow a slower but more fun route. I defenitely believe that people should follow the funnier route which is not the same for everyone.

30

Dominion General Discussion / Re: doubling cube

« on: February 11, 2016, 08:38:08 am »

Of course there is a doubling window (what you call doubling zone) in Dominion. Gammons and backgammonsa are not activated in "money games" in backgammon until after the first double and still for sure you have a doubling windon. There is a doubling window even if both players have taken a checker off in which case you can never win a gammon or be too good to double.

Yes, you are right. But I still think the doubling mechanism is more interesting when there are more possible outcomes. (And that it is not by chance it has been applied to such a game, but never has really been a hit in for example Chess, even though people have suggested and tried it lots of times.)

I do agree that the doubling cube mechanism is more interesting when there are more possible outcomes. Still the way that you should use it is pretty different depending on the volatility of the position and this does create a lot of different interesting situations, even if they are less in number than what they would be if there were more possible outcomes.

I cannot really see an argument though for it not being applied to chess. First of all it is really really difficult to convince people to try any variant of a game they already enjoy as it is. Take Monopoly for example. Its design flaws are widely known to those who are interested in board game design. Now try to convince people to play Monopoly in a better and more exciting way. It is not going to work. Why? ostly because of marketing reasons and because people are resistant to learn something new when they enjoy what they did so far and they just seek the joy of a game as they remember playing it in the past with family and friends.

Trying to convince chess people to accept the doubling cube would be such a difficult task. It would probably be as difficult as trying to convince them that they should play chess with an alternative horse movement. Even if you could prove that the gameplay would be better with the alternative horse movement, very few would listen. Even if you spent millions of dollars for marketing to convince them for the alternative horse movement you would still fail to make it the standard.

For what it is worth it, I do remember people on Stick's backgammon forum saying that they apply the doubling cube almost to every game it can be applied and they do prefer it that way. Does this say much? Well it comes from people that had experience with the cube but probably also were in favor of it anyways. So probably it does not say much, but certainly the fact that it is not used in other games does not say much as well.

31

Dominion General Discussion / Re: doubling cube

« on: February 10, 2016, 04:07:09 am »

I like having it here. The "Variants and Fan Cards" forum might as well be just "Fan Cards" forum because that's all the content, and I don't care about fan cards, so I never check it. But this discussion is interesting.

Is the unstated portion of this mechanic that there is money involved? I'm confused about what exactly the stakes are.

The "stakes" are, that you're not playing just a single game, but a series of games, with the objective to be the first to reach X wins. The doubling cube helps accelerate games (in any game where one player is guaranteed, or nearly so, to win, they can use the cube to prompt a resignation). It also adds some interesting meta game -- if I pass you the cube, and you feel like you have a 40% chance to win, do you take the guaranteed one game loss? Or do you play a doubled game? What about 35% How accurately can you determine who's ahead, anyways?

I don't quite see how this works. Let's imagine you're playing first-to-3 (which is best-of-5). If you have 2 points already, then there's no reason for you to offer a double, right? It doesn't help you and does help your opponent.

When the stakes are points in a match, then not every point has equal value. You would never double in the case you mentioned, but this is because of the match score. At this match score the takepoint of the opponent would be 0.00001% as he has nothing to lose by accepting the doubling cube. If the score was 2-1 in your opponent's favor and the match was at 3 you would like to double almost at every opportunity as you cannot lose anything by doubling. Your opponent should pass the cube even if he has 49.9% to win the game as this will be the deciding game of the match and he can always start a new one. Therefore his takepoint in this situation is 50% This could lead to a very short game. There are many situations in between depending on the score.

Assuming optimal play, the games are shortened whenever you move directly from a no double position, a position where it is theoretically not correct to offer the cube, to a double pass position, a position where you should theoretically pass the cube when it is offered to you. This can happen for example after a lucky roll/draw.

32

Dominion General Discussion / Re: doubling cube

« on: February 09, 2016, 05:55:36 pm »

With equally skilled players, does a doubling cube reduce the component of chance?  It brings estimation of winning probabilities into the game, but is there some other mechanism at work besides making the game harder (and so more rewarding to players who master both skills)?

Personally I'm not that interested in trying Dominion with a doubling cube. I think a big part of what makes it interesting in backgammon is that you even without the cube you can win more than with a regular win (gammon, backgammon). That means you often get a position which is too good to double, where it's better to play on trying to have a extra valuable win. You get a doubling zone inside of which it is right to double, which increases how interesting the cube is. If you don't double now, is it too high a risk that you will have a too good position next?

In a game like Dominion where there is nothing better than just a win there is nothing like that doubling zone, and I think doubling decisions would be less interesting.

Of course there is a doubling window (what you call doubling zone) in Dominion. Gammons and backgammonsa are not activated in "money games" in backgammon until after the first double and still for sure you have a doubling windon. There is a doubling window even if both players have taken a checker off in which case you can never win a gammon or be too good to double.

As long as you have market losers you will also have a doubling window. Market losers are the rolls in backgammon and turns in dominion that turn the state of a game from a position where your opponent can accept the cube if you offer it to him (double/take) to a position where he cannot accept the cube (double pass). If we assume for simplicity that the takepoint (necessary winning percentage to be able and accept the doubling cube) is at 25%, then any turn that could boost your chance from below 75% to above 75% could be a turn where you lose your market (you lose the opportunity to double). And the probability that the above fact will happen (market losing probability) would be what we would care for in Dominion.  In every Dominion game you would have a doubling window, with volatility  being the most important factor into determining how big this window is and the potential power of a recube also affecting the width of the window a bit, but much more it effects the exact value of the takepoint.

In backgammon the too good to double cases are not that common, so I would not really consider that you lose a lot.

Here is a link that probably explains things better than I do for backgammon of course and not for dominion.

http://www.bkgm.com/articles/GOL/Aug99/double.htm

33

Dominion General Discussion / Re: doubling cube

« on: February 09, 2016, 09:22:40 am »

I would like to try some matches with the doubling cube if anyone is interested, PM me. I am an ok player if you are interested in my skill level.

I have a lot of prior experience using the cube in backgammon and think this might be a cool idea.

I would like to try different points where you can offer the double, like before you see your hand and after you see it, adding some bluffing opportunities at the second case.

If you know how to use a MET (match equity table) which is necessary to take proper cube decisions in matches, then I would prefer to try some short matches up to 5 points. If you have not used a MET before in backgammon, I assume that it would be best if we played X number of games with the doubling cube with our aim being managing the best score. We would keep the score and the value of the cube manually.

34

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Why are engines fun?

« on: February 05, 2016, 06:51:09 am »

While I would point to the excellent book of Raph Koster "A theory of fun", I will try to point the basics that I remember of it. There is also a few nice pdfs online if anyone is interested.

According to this pdf at least, Raph defines fun as "the emotional response to learning". He talks about the positive emotional response though and he goes on to talk about patterns and how our mind recognizes, categorizes and eventually uses which eventually leads to learning.

There is a lot of pattern recognition and use as you build an engine so part of the fun comes from there. Then still according to what I remember from the book just collecting things gives to many many people pleasant emotions, as it is in our genes from the very old humans that used to collect fruits and other things from trees and simply those that found it pleasant were more succesful in it and passed their genes to the next generations.

Finally and still according to what i remember from the book there is also another big thing that gives us pleasant emotions from playing an engine and this is achieving and exhibiting mastery. We make something that is not easy at least in our eyes and probably to the eyes of our peers and we do it well and we eventually feel good from all this and we tend to do it over and over again to get this feeling of pleasantry.

I am sorry for my bad english or if the text is not very easy to understand, but if I am to make the above text more readable, I will have to spend a substantial amount of time to do so.

Hope it helps.

Here are the really nice links - pdf's

Excertion from the book     

http://vk.com/doc-55569780_205361293

Quick powerpoint presentation that I do not remember what it includes   

http://www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf

A cool pdf that I just found it exists and is named a theory of fun 10 years later.

http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdco12/Koster_Raph_Theory_Fun_10.pdf

35

Dominion League / Re: Season 12 - Results

« on: January 03, 2016, 10:59:55 am »

D4

smcrtorchs - Mike Koeman 3-3

36

Dominion League / Re: Season 12 - Results

« on: December 30, 2015, 06:11:38 pm »

D4

Smcrtorchs - Micha 1980    4-2

37

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Results

« on: November 16, 2015, 04:17:40 pm »

D5

smcrtorchs1 - Micha 1980 4-2

38

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Results

« on: November 10, 2015, 08:06:09 am »

D5

smcrtorchs1 - Qvist:

3-3

39

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Results

« on: November 08, 2015, 07:52:01 am »

D5 :  smcrtorchs1 - Mike Koeman 3-3

40

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Signups

« on: October 18, 2015, 04:28:18 pm »

Thank you guys.

41

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Signups

« on: October 18, 2015, 07:07:46 am »

Please assign me to a division.

My Goko username smcrtorchs1
My isotropish rating was level 30 two days ago. However since yesterday, I can no longer find my username on the isotropish leaderboard at all. It looks like I never played. I have no idea why or if it will be fixed in the near future.


my time zone is GMT +2