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51

Other Games / Re: Mafia [split from In defense of Monopoly]

« on: May 14, 2012, 12:22:22 pm »

Hey all,

In case anyone is looking for another option for playing, I'd like to recommend the BoardGameGeek Werewolf forums (Werewolf is just a rethemed version of Mafia.) I've been playing on those boards for the past 5 years and the style of games there is definitely unique and stands out from other Mafia forums I've seen.

* The games tend to be one cycle per day (except for extremely complex games) so there's a lot of action all the time, and things will generally be more fresh on your memory than the longer cycles I usually see elsewhere, although it does mean you have to commit to posting a few times per weekday (games generally go on hiatus over weekends).
* The style of the general rolesets tends to differ; BGG Werewolf games both because of the mechanics and because of the players tend to place higher emphasis on strategy and analysis than most other sites, although tone reads are very important too.
* Most importantly, we have an external system that monitors the forum that we connect and archive all our games with, which allows some extremely complex games, and also helps a lot with even simple games. All game information, from the posts and votes that people make, to private chats, special virtual items and locations and role information, is stored in a database, and some of that is publicly accessible to players in a game in order to help them track what is going on. Every "standard" game automatically is set up to give each player a private chatroom with the moderator, the wolves (mafia) a private chatroom with each other, and track and post regular updates to the game thread the status of who is voting for whom at all times.

It looks like two basic/newbie friendly games just started, but if any of you are interested I could easily start another up for people here.

52

Solo Challenges / Re: My Second Solo Challenge: Nothing

« on: May 02, 2012, 02:36:24 pm »

I was sitting at work today feeling all smug because I had found out a way to do it without using Island.
It involved Feast and Embargo shennanigans

Now I walked through the door I realised I still wouldnt be able to get rid of chapel and feel a bit stupid.

Just wanted to share that, carry on.

We need this card.

Thwarted Scheme
Action $3
+1 Card; +1 Action
At the start of Clean-up this turn, you may choose an Action card you have in play. If you discard it from play this turn, trash it.

53

Solo Challenges / Re: Geronimoo's challenges - Two Headed Giant (preparation)

« on: May 02, 2012, 02:28:28 pm »

I'm interested.

Best times to play next week, all times EST

Probably not Saturday
Sunday ~1 pm - 2 pm
Most days except Wednesday: 8 pm - 11 pm
(I won't necessarily be online during those times but can be if arranged in advance.)

54

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Not a misclick

« on: May 01, 2012, 09:31:32 am »

I just played a game where I ambassadorred a province. Didn't return it to the supply, but I immediately thought of this thread.

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201205/01/game-20120501-062910-103a5b6f.html

55

Solo Challenges / Re: 4 - One of a kind

« on: April 29, 2012, 09:02:45 pm »

If Tournament is present, do you have to get all 5 prizes?

56

Solo Challenges / Re: Geronimoo's challenges - Indiana Jones and the acquisition of a lot of money

« on: April 28, 2012, 10:18:29 am »

Thanks for the challenge, Geronimoo. And as I said in my submission, it was extremely convenient that you ran this the same week as def's "no buys" because as soon as I had completed my submission for that challenge, I realized I could use the same basic approach here.

Here we had to start with a treasure map opening which was really annoying for getting the opening right. Opening chapel/treasure map, I realized after a few attempts that in order to get what would probably be the best result I would need to buy a highway as soon as possible (because ironworks -> village -> bridge is too slow when we have to carry around a worthless treasure map) so even though the opening split of 5/2 or 4/3 wouldn't matter, I had to restart until I got 5 coppers on either turn 3 or turn 4, and could trash at least two estates and another card on the other turn. However like with def's challenge, once I got the correct opening, the rest was pretty smooth sailing.

My turn 10 in this challenge is remarkably similar to my turn 9 in def's naturally. I was actually foolish and the first time I got to a turn 10 with everything set up correctly I just blazed through it incorrectly assuming that my experience from the previous challenge would allow me to intuitively gain things in the right proportions to complete the challenge. I was wrong. I ran out of ironworks and I hadn't put in workshops into the kingdom so I ran out of gains. Whoops. I restarted, putting in workshops, and the next time I got the correct opening I realized I accidentally had bought an ironworks instead of a treasure map on my opening buy. I played it out, gaining a treasure map with the ironworks on the first available opportunity, and I got the 10 turn solution and I was half considering just submitting it. But I figured if I could get to that point twice I could do it again, so a few more restart attempts and I got it. And somehow after mapping out my gains for turn 10 I realized I wouldn't need the workshops at all, but if I got them I could gain a few bridges just for fun, so I did.

57

Solo Challenges / Re: 3 - No buys allowed

« on: April 28, 2012, 09:56:34 am »

That's awesome by Avin. I'm terrible at seeing / setting up Puzzle 1 like plays (even though I had to be creative in my KC game to get there,), so looking at his turn 8 (very nicely set up), and his turn 9 were quite enjoyable. Also great job using Governors remodel TWICE to great effect. I wondered about the first chapel turn, when he had at least one Estate in hand, but chose to trash 4 Coppers.

Well done everybody.

Thanks!

Yes, I initially started with Ironworks/Chapel attempts, and I got 10 turn solutions that way using roughly the same ideas, but I was so close to getting a 9 turn solution, that I realized that if I wanted to get the critical boost earlier on I had to open Governor/Chapel instead. The reason for that is that it was critical to be able to use the chapel more often earlier: with Ironworks/Chapel, you can only use the chapel once between turns 3 and 4, but with Governor/Chapel, you can use the Chapel twice.

Once I settled on that though I ran into the annoying scenario that I had to keep restarting until I got the following:
1. A 5/2 opening
2. Turn 3 had to include either the Governor or the Chapel or both
3. Turn 3 could not include the chapel with all three estates (because I needed at least one estate in order to get my first ironworks before I was done with the chapel)
4. Turn 4 likewise had to include either the governor or the chapel or both, and I had to leave at least one estate untrashed. This was I think much more likely assuming turn 3 had gone well.

After that it was just a matter of building up to the megaturn which I got quite proficient at after several attempts. My turn 9 was entirely deterministic once I saw my starting hand. I wrote down my 10 cards, 5 of which were in my hand, and mapped out my route to the almost infinite (only limited by supply of KCs and IWs) turn. You'll notice that I structured the gains with Nobles so that I was able to determine exactly which cards would end up in my hand in order that I would never run out of King's Courted actions, Ironworks, or drawing cards (either Nobles or Governors) until I had played all my bridges.

And as soon as I finished this challenge, I immediately realized I could use a lot of the same basic ideas on Geronimoo's solo challenge running concurrently. That one ended up being easier to set up but slightly tougher to map out the megaturn with the slightly different set of cards I had had to start with there.

58

Dominion Articles / Re: Traders Questions.

« on: April 27, 2012, 12:09:52 pm »

Ah, I was wondering if the buy still went through even if the gain didn't. Thanks for the clarification.

59

Dominion Articles / Re: Traders Questions.

« on: April 27, 2012, 11:52:41 am »

1. You can gain a silver instead of the copper, but the silver goes into your discard pile instead of into your hand, because the Trader's ability cancels completely the former copper gain.

2. You're correct, you can't gain a silver in this circumstance because you were never about to gain a card.

3. You can get estate/silver as long as either the copper pile or the curse pile still has cards left. If both piles are depleted, you wouldn't be able to gain a second card from the Haggler, and therefore you wouldn't be able to react to a second card.

Also if you replace the Festival with the trader's gain of a silver, I don't think you would still be capable of getting the Jack of All Trades from the Haggler, because the Trader replaces the gain of the Festival with the gain of a silver, and since you therefore never completed your purchase, the Haggler can't take effect. However you could certainly purchase a Jack of All Trades and gain a silver even without the Trader...

60

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ridiculous Dominion House Rules

« on: April 26, 2012, 11:23:21 am »

Anytime a card says +N cards, you may immediately gain N new cards from the supply, regardless of cost. Including Colonies.

61

Solo Challenges / Re: Geronimoo's challenges - Indiana Jones and the acquisition of a lot of money

« on: April 26, 2012, 10:23:30 am »

After making this submission, I don't think I'll ever open Treasure Map again (until the next zany challenge that requires it). So annoyed at having a treasure map show up in my hand when I had no plans to purchase my second map for a while.

62

Solo Challenges / Re: allfail's solo challenge: I like VPs!

« on: April 21, 2012, 11:01:53 pm »

Just curious, is it actually even possible to do this without Farmlands?

63

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Card Picker (forked from veto thread)

« on: April 19, 2012, 10:28:34 am »

This is a great tool!

I have a few concrete suggestions and a few vaguer ones.

First there are a couple obvious omissions I noticed. Tunnel and Trader both should be treated as exceptions for some of the rules you have for reaction cards, because their reactions don't trigger based on attacks:

* Only allow Reaction and Lighthouse cards (other than Watchtower and Fool's Gold) if there is at least one Attack card.
* Don't allow more than 1 Reaction or Lighthouse card (except Watchtower and Fool's Gold).

In addition, shouldn't there be a rule on that list that ensures that Tunnel only shows up if there is at least one other card in the game that allows discarding (either your own cards or an attack that makes opponents discard)? I mean I know that Tunnel can be used purely for the low cost 2 VP but some of your other rules seem more restrictive (such as not allowing more than 1 standard reaction, even though using 2 reactions to the same attack can create interesting scenarios - e.g. you play a secret chamber in response to a witch to draw a moat into your hand that you didn't have before, allowing you to block the curse. Probably a strongly inferior strategy to just getting a witch yourself but it would be interesting anyway, right?)

A subtle comment then about use of those rules: Does your algorithm work by generating a random set of 10 meeting the other simpler constraints, and then throwing away anything that violated the more complex functional restrictions? If so, then it will end up having an inherent bias against the cards that have the heaviest functional restrictions on them: e.g. if the rule "don't allow both Throne Room and King's Court" means that anytime a set is generated which has both, that set is thrown out and you start over, then that will end up making both Throne Room and King's Court slightly less likely to show up even alone in the final chosen set than any other unrestricted card. For a single rule like this one it's probably rather low odds that it'll have a significant effect on the final card distribution but some cards look like they'll have multiple functional restrictions that potentially cause them to be thrown out so the effect will stack. It's possible for you to adjust for this by calculating the probability that any given card will get thrown out due to functional restrictions, and prior to choosing your set increase the odds of picking that card by compensating for that, but this might be a rather complicated calculation.

Last a vague suggestion that I'd love to see but I'm not sure entirely how to best implement it, but given that those functional restrictions are all "negative" restrictions, the effect is to "guarantee" that you won't have a horrible set (although that's a matter of taste), there's nothing to positively increase the chances of interesting combinations of cards. Much as you have specific rules in place to exclude combinations that result in perceived uselessness, it would be great to have rules to somehow actively encourage card combinations for which the combination is worth more than the collected value of the individual cards. Some of these can happen randomly quite often just with the existing restrictions, such as village and draw engines, but others are specific to certain card effects that happen to coincide nicely. I'm not sure that there's a better way of implementing this though other than listing for each card all the things that it "combos well with" and then using that data for the first 6-7 cards to pick out the last 3-4 cards, and that sounds like a lot of work to accumulate that data, in addition to it being subjective.

64

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Nonrandom Kingdoms

« on: April 19, 2012, 09:57:11 am »

Hey thanks! This is definitely the best card picker tool I've seen now from the links people provided above and after I looked at a similar topic on BGG. I have some feedback and suggestions which I'll post on your own thread for it.

65

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: April 18, 2012, 08:52:40 pm »

66

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math request: Nomad Camp

« on: April 18, 2012, 05:29:25 pm »

Avin, that works for strategies of the form "wait until there are n cards left, then guess", but there are more complicated strategies that you could follow (you can take into account the number of black cards seen so far, or make a choice randomly if you like).  The easiest way to sidestep these problems is to observe that the problem doesn't change if you switch to betting on the last card instead of the next card, as mentioned above.

The hardest thing about the question as presented is that it comes after three basic calculations, which primes you to calculate rather than look for a more elegant solution.

You can't "guess" because the requirement is that the card has to be black - you don't get to say what color it is. If you got to pick what color then there WOULD be a strategy that would win 100% of the time - wait until you've seen 26 cards of either color, then guess the opposite color for the next card.

And I believe the proof above is sufficient for all possible strategies because it doesn't take into account what strategy you're using, it just takes into account which turn the final declaration was on. So you could randomly pick a turn by rolling a 52 sided die prior to the game begins and guess that way, or you could attempt to wait until you've seen more reds than blacks and declare then - it wouldn't matter.

67

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Math request: Nomad Camp

« on: April 18, 2012, 04:59:35 pm »

This is annoying me, because I can't find the main source material that we used way back when to prove this. However:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-042j-mathematics-for-computer-science-spring-2010/readings/MIT6_042JS10_chap18.pdf

Problem 18.5. (Do a ctrl+f) is designed to get you to exactly the right section, or:

"Problem 18.5.
I have a deck of 52 regular playing cards, 26 red, 26 black, randomly shuffled. They all lie face down in the deck so that you can’t see them. I will draw a card off the top of the deck and turn it face up so that you can see it and then put it aside. I will continue to turn up cards like this but at some point while there are still cards left in the deck, you have to declare that you want the next card in the deck to be turned up. If that next card turns up black you win and otherwise you lose. Either way, the game is then over.

(a) Show that if you take the first card before you have seen any cards, you then have probability 1/2 of winning the game.

(b) Suppose you don’t take the first card and it turns up red. Show that you have then have a probability of winning the game that is greater than 1/2.

(c) If there are r red cards left in the deck and b black cards, show that the probability of winning in you take the next card is b/(r + b).

(d) Either,
1. come up with a strategy for this game that gives you a probability of winning strictly greater than 1/2 and prove that the strategy works, or,
2. come up with a proof that no such strategy can exist."

Point (D) 2. is asked because, against intuition, the only proof that exists is one showing that no strategy can exist, that is, your odds never change. They were determined at the outset.

I can prove this (D2).

What I will show is that the odds of winning this game when there are n cards left in the deck (in other words 52-n cards have been flipped over) in an arbitrary deck are 50%.

This can be expressed as the sum from b=0 to n of the probability of there being b black cards left multiplied by the odds of winning with b black cards left in the deck.

Here's the interesting part. Consider all permutations of 52 cards and divide them up into two groups, ones which have "black" as the final card on one side and ones with "red" as the final card on the other side. You can form a one to one correspondence between these two groups because if you take each card in one group and swap each black card with a red card and each red card with a black card (in other words, inverting the color of each card), you will get a unique permutation from the other group.

Now you can see that the probability of there being b=k black cards left has to be the same as the probability of there being b=(n-k) black cards left, because for each permutation that has k black cards left, we can use that inverting function to obtain a corresponding permutation that has n-k black cards left.

Also, the odds of winning when there are b black cards left out of n cards is b/n (see part c, only I am using n instead of r+b), and the odds of winning when there are n-b black cards left is (n-b)/n. If we suppose we were playing on both situations simultaneously, the odds then of winning one of them is the sum of the odds of winning either one, since the decks are opposite each other:

(b/n) + (n-b)/n = (n-b+b) / n = n/n = 1

So now we can reduce our big summation above by pairing up those inverted scenarios:

sum from b=0 to n of the probability of there being b black cards left multiplied by the odds of winning with b black cards left in the deck
= sum from b=0 to n/2 rounded down of the probability of there being b black cards left multiplied by the odds of winning with either b black cards or n-b black cards left in the deck *
= sum from b=0 to n/2 rounded down of the probability of there being b black cards left multiplied by 1
= 1 * sum from b=0 to n/2 rounded down of the probability of there being b black cards left
= 1/2 * sum from b=0 to n of the probability of there being b black cards left
= 1/2 * 1, since the sum of the probability of every possibility has to be 1
= 1/2

* edit to note the case in the above step that if n is even, then the case where b=n/2 is also 1/2 because then n-b=b, meaning there are just as many reds as blacks left.

P.S. 40% to the OP

68

Solo Challenges / Re: Geronimoo's challenges - Priest gone wild

« on: April 17, 2012, 11:46:16 am »

I just played a game with a 6 turn solution.

Until I noticed one rule that disqualified my starting setup. 

7 Coppers and 3 Estates in the trash

69

Solo Challenges / Re: Geronimoo's challenges - Priest gone wild

« on: April 17, 2012, 10:31:38 am »

Does time spent getting down to the challenge starting position of a 1 chapel deck count towards the solution's time, or are you only going to count the number of turns starting from the first turn that has a single chapel?

In other words, do we need to immediately restart if we don't get the chapel in each round from 3rd until we have one chapel?

70

Dominion General Discussion / Re: That realization that your strategy has a gaping flaw

« on: April 16, 2012, 12:23:55 pm »

In a game I played just now:

I play several King's Courts in a row on Schemes, a Laboratory, a couple Bazaars, and a couple Woodcutters, and buy up almost all the duchies, because my opponent has a massive province lead and as long as I get another turn, my Schemed Kings Courts will allow me to get another massive turn to end it next turn.

So with 9 cards I may put back due to King's Courted Schemes, I put back: King's Court, King's Court, King's Court, King's Court, King's Court, Laboratory, Scheme, Scheme, Woodcutter.

I get very excited because my opponent must have had a lot of green on the top of his deck: he has two kings courts and schemes, and they're not able to draw most of his engine and he just buys a single gold. I'll be able to pull off the victory from behind and buy up all the remaining provinces and duchies with my next turn for sure.

So I excitedly start my mega turn. I play a King's Court, on a King's Court, on a King's Court, on a King's Court, on a King's Court

... on nothing because I have no remaining action cards, times nine.

71

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion Limericks!

« on: April 12, 2012, 01:12:31 pm »

Stables (based on an actual hand I drew)
My engine's completion enables
my deck to now turn the tables.
I'll win this game yet!
But what do I get?
A hand that consists of five stables.

Scheme
I scheme and I scheme and I scheme,
I conspire as much as I deem,
and then play my witch!
Oh this will be rich,
I think of my next turns agleam.

I scheme and I scheme and I dream.
Conspirators love my regime.
I give you a curse,
Your retort is much worse.
There's no need to be so extreme.

I scheme and I beam and you scream!
Your deck starts to lose all its steam.
The curse pile runs out.
I'm mostly without.
The game is now over it seems.

72

Dominion General Discussion / Re: That realization that your strategy has a gaping flaw

« on: April 11, 2012, 02:14:44 pm »

I can't count the number of times I've mapped out a Farmland strategy only to realize that it's a Fairgrounds, not a Farmland. I don't know why those cards are so easy to confuse while other Kingdom cards are not. I've never mixed up a Gardens and a Silk Road, nor a Contraband and a Cache.

I definitely bought what I thought was a Fairgrounds and got very confused at why Isotropic forced me to trash the Province in my hand.

73

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Nonrandom Kingdoms

« on: April 11, 2012, 01:36:24 pm »

Ah, thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for. I had seen dominiondeck.com for its use linked to some of the main articles here but for some reason hadn't browsed around on it.

74

Dominion General Discussion / Nonrandom Kingdoms

« on: April 11, 2012, 01:02:04 pm »

Are there any resources or lists available to generate "interesting" (either human designed or created by an algorithm built to constrain the cards used in some way) sets of 10 from a list of available expansions?

I just recently started playing on Isotropic and perhaps I'm just getting spoiled by the wider variety of cards that I'm relatively unfamiliar with and therefore seem more interesting to me than the ones I own, but I feel like whenever I play with my own cards now and form my kingdom by dealing 10 cards out randomly, I'm much more likely to generate an "uninteresting" kingdom, by which I mean relatively easy to analyze and low variety of card types. That could of course just be based on the expansions I have too - Base, Intrigue, and Hinterlands. But it also made me curious if the Isotropic random cards were additionally constrained beyond the players's specified constraints to attempt to generate a more interesting game.

My own perception aside, it seems to me that the problem of designing custom kingdoms would be an interesting challenge either for an AI or for players to come up with - it looks like there was a Kingdom Design competition here some while back (which I can't use with my own cards since even the set that I own the most of, I would still need to replace at least one card I don't own.) Other than those sets, are there any lists anywhere?