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Innovation General Discussion / Re: 59.990
« on: April 11, 2013, 05:21:28 am »
how do you access that page again?
Each inspire and echo effect on your board counts as part of this stack. When executing, order them from bottom to top, red, blue, green, purple, yellow.
If you would claim an achievement, first return three cards from your hand.
If you do, claim all other cards in your hand as achievements, ignoring eligibility.
If you would splay a ffth color left, instead you win.
If you would claim an achievement, first if no other player has as many or more achievements as you, instead you win.
personaly i'm happy as long as i hit at least age 6,atomic theory is a great draw and meld card and if you use it,there is a chance you overmeld publication,and if you overmeld publication then you can pull math out of your pile again,even if you don't get atomic theory there is still a chance to remove the math obstruction with canning or better yet,use electricity,if you remove the obstruction with electricity not only you have access to math again but you also now have a 8 to feed to math so you can jump immediately from 7 to 9
if you get to 8 then you have quantum theory which let you cheat directly to 10,and at age 9 you have computer which is actualy better than math as long as you don't get unlucky and execute software -> robotics -> A.I
if math overmeld itself early on age 3 or 4... well time to find another plan then,but the potential is huge
anyway i think rather than discussing math in specific we should talk about teching up in general... it's true that earlier scoring wins the game but the planets don't always align perfectly for you,and when that happens the way for a runaway victory is teching up... not to mention you need to tech up to score the achievement anyway beside as far as i'm concerned i am as happy when i draw math as i am when i draw alchemy,use alchemy to meld experimentation,meld physics with experimentation and find atomic theory with physics
This is the type of game i don't really like to play (though I never say I don't know it --- in fact I know it really well), which I call 'gambling innovation'.
It is like a game of 'drawing the cards which you will win from a pile of pokers', without much about manipulating those cards or interaction to your opponent. If you draw this or that, then you win, else you lose. This is the type of meta bounded to that type of game.
A simpler case is that say you math a 8 and you got computer, while you have zero leaves. Are you going to dogma computer while your opponent have 4 leaves, 5 factories and you are losing in score? Say if you melded Bioengineering or Globalization you immediately lose, if you melded robotics or Software and followed these cards you immediately lose too, but if it is something else you are very close to win the game. There is a computable chance that you can win the game or lose the game, just by what you would draw from that age 10 deck.
These plays involve little interaction to your opponent, as you have already said it is all about how far can you tech up yourself and find a card which gives you the victory. It do not involve demanding your opponent or controlling your opponent, just all about yourself. Say 30% skills and 70% luck, just like Texas Poker.
I do not say the chance of winning by such kind of meta is significantly lower as I suggested you can still get some 5-6 out of 10 games by it. It is just too much on the luck side instead of the skill side.
You're assuming your opponent can't share a dogma effect or activate a bum Optics to force cards into your score pile. Which he'll happily do before he even sees the genome since it gives him a bonus draw and you aren't going to use the score to achieve.
There's lots of other assumptions happening there too.. Math spam is pretty bad in echoes. Echoes is fast, with more games ending in an earlier age.
Math is so much weaker in echoes though, most of the heated discussion is about base.
Yet another thing is that, the chance of math-ing all the way to age 10 is not that easy. Say you skipped the age2 -> age3 step as I suggested, the chance of you age up from age3 to age10 without Math being covered is about 20.0%. So yes if you can reach there you do have a good chance to win, but the chance is only about 1 out of 5. It makes the whole thing like a gamble, too.
You plan to tech all the way to Age 10 with Math? Age 10 cards are not insta-win by any stretch.
Metalworking empties the piles even faster than Fermenting
Where are you finding Gunpowder if you're teching to Age 10?
How do you plan to maintain all other symbols? Are you magically hitting all the splay cards and building depth at the same time you're teching up?
If you really are counting on Databases to save you from a Metalworking spree you are in for a rude awakening. How many score killers are there? Vaccination (can be blocked by leaves, teleports me to Age 6 so your tech lead is gone); Combustion (can be blocked by Crowns, takes only 2 cards at a time so weak vs Metalworking); Rocketry (stops your teching up and only returns 1 card at a time at first).
I don't even know what to say. It is astonishing to me that you can get to Level 30+ and still think it's worth melding and executing Writing to go for Mathematics. It can work against slow opponents who mainly use draw actions, but any kind of early scoring will be on average more consistent than Math. Math is just too slow and luck-dependent otherwise.
Really it is that you are fixated on the idea that Math "randomly melds BETTER stuff on your board". This is the core misunderstanding -- in most ages, I would rather have a card that says, "Draw and meld a card of whatever age you are on" rather than Mathematics. The most powerful card in each age does get much more powerful in each age, but the average power rises much more slowly.
The odds of:
3) Me being unable to find something in the low ages that takes tech (there are just so many ... Construction, Road Building, Machinery, Archery, Sailing etc. etc.) while he is literally not drawing form those piles
4) Me being unable to find something that empties the piles and therefore is equivalent to teching (Fermenting/Pottery/Reformation)
5) Me being unable to score fast (Metalworking/Currency/Pottery/Clothing/etc.) OR he lands one of the few high cards that hurts my score pile (Vaccination is the best option but that catches me right up in tech)
6) Me being unable to share/block his dogmas with superior icon count