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76

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How to open this board with 5/2?

« on: February 07, 2013, 03:09:24 pm »

It's very interesting how divided opinion is on this board. It is a fascinating one. Anyone tried testing anything yet?

77

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How to open this board with 5/2?

« on: February 07, 2013, 10:33:30 am »

To my knowledge, an IGG rush could have real problems with Mountebank on the board, simply because the curse pile will run out faster than the IGG pile. As a result, to go for the three pile Duchy rush, you will have to buy the terrible IGG card without the benefit of the on-gain curses. (This information I basically lifted from here.)

With that in mind, I like GendoIkari's strategy a lot. I have a question though: wouldn't it make sense to go for vineyards if you already have the potion for the university anyway? Especially as the Duchy rush is going to be slower for the IGG player?

78

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Playing the best opening

« on: February 07, 2013, 04:31:28 am »

I think it depends on the rest of your hand. If it's all Copper, you may want to play your MB and buy a 5. Otherwise, you probably usually want to trash. The Estates are just like Curses, and by trashing sooner, you're going to get to play your curser more.

I agree with this post in general, but especially the bolded section. While early curses are more painful (see: IGG or Sea Hag), you really want to win that curse split. Cycling your deck faster is an obvious way to pull ahead of your opponent without buying a second curser and praying that they don't collide. I'm sure there are a ton of cases where this isn't true - as always, it depends on the board - but I think this is the general principle.

79

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: February 06, 2013, 02:28:58 pm »

I'm afraid of getting more than 382 respect.

It's a perfectly reasonable fear. It's why I dare not post memes. I'd end up with a respect to post ratio higher than Chromatic Chameleon's and no one wants that.

80

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Swedish Online Championships on Isotropic!?

« on: February 06, 2013, 02:23:58 pm »

You will soon find out. When a bunch of swedes turn up at your doorstep with bears and mooses on leash, ready to tear it up!

There had better be pictures. I'll be disappointed if there are no pictures.....

81

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Watchtower+Trader

« on: February 05, 2013, 03:50:17 pm »

I was trying to do this with pen and paper. Not only was I beaten to the punch, but it looks like my reasoning was entirely flawed too.

Stop trying to be clever Ava =/

82

Rules Questions / Re: Border Village and Top-Decking?

« on: February 04, 2013, 02:56:41 pm »

I'm also the guy who wants to see your Treasure when you buy something. I hate when people just dump their whole hand in their discard and pick up a Gold, silently. 

This is also me. When someone just picks up a card (or three) and throws it into their discard with their hand, I feel a little like waving and saying "hello, I'm still here and interested in what you're doing!"

83

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Random city question

« on: February 03, 2013, 10:52:23 am »

My cities go all the way up to 4....

Why don't you just make 3 higher?

84

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: February 03, 2013, 07:45:37 am »

I'm also thinking that "piledrove" needs to be taken out back and shot.

(as a non-native speaker) "piledrived"?

Also as a non-native speaker: My dictionnary says the past-forms of drive are drove and driven. So it will be the same for piledrive.

As a native speaker: piledriven just sounds more natural to me, but as I believe piledrive is not really a standard English word (it's used in wrestling, but I guess that it is a technical term there as well) then both should be acceptable. GwinnR's dictionary speaks the truth. 

85

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Stupid Pet Tricks

« on: February 03, 2013, 07:22:33 am »

Played a Mint without revealing a Treasure, just to activate my Conspirator.

Funny. I typed out a long question asking why having the mint in the first place would be useful to a treasure-less conspirator engine, before it slowly dawned on me that it's pretty spectacular at destroying treasure on buy .___.

I just woke up - that's my excuse.

86

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Adventure mode strategy thoughts

« on: February 02, 2013, 08:02:39 pm »

In my experience, it's usually more important to up your Copper to Silver, since it speeds you up more.  Downgrading your opponent's Province to Duchy can take precedence.

In a Chapel game, or other game with sufficient trashing, your starting deck isn't as important since it will be trashed (although Silver can help speed you up at the start).

Also, if your opponent starts with a wad of Silver, it can be difficult to overcome their big money strategy, in which case you should downgrade their Silver.

This. I've basically been finding exactly the same. An opponent's silvers can just out-pace you entirely, and if they don't have extra silver then I tend to boost myself for those 5/4 or 6/3 openings (unless they have a province, where I'll downgrade that first).

I hadn't thought about that with chapels. I'll take trashing into account more when evaluating zaps I think.

87

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bizarre bot strategies?

« on: February 02, 2013, 10:46:57 am »

Yeah, I'm actually getting worse. That or I'm over-thinking this or I'm getting board fatigue now... I keep losing to KC+Thief trashing the Platinum out of my thin deck. Pretty embarrassing...

Speaking of building engines, if you haven't already read Geronimoo's Article I strongly recommend it.

Yeah, I spent pretty much a whole weekend with that article and that kingdom trying to make the engine work, playing against myself doing Smithy+BM to measure my technique. I managed to get it working reasonably consistently it in the end, but had to cut back on the recommended markets. I found spending that many $5's on markets really slowed getting my other engine pieces. I learned a lot but enough it seems >_>

Maybe I should give it another look....

88

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bizarre bot strategies?

« on: February 02, 2013, 09:56:07 am »

I tried a pure BM Masq strategy last night, and I got to 6 Colonies and 1 Province in 19 turns I believe.  I was slowed down a bit by some KCed Thieves who stole lots of Plats and Golds.

Also, I made this topic, and I'm all for whatever discussion comes from it.

The BM+Masq is weirdly fast here. I can't seem to hone the engine down as quickly as you either. I guess that's what experience does huh? I've tried several approaches, but all seem to take me longer than my first game which was simply Masq+BM (I don't think it helps that the bot seems to go Thief on me now when I start getting Platinum, which seems to slow me down =/). Clearly I'm missing a trick (or four).

Well I'm glad you're all for this conversation. It's kind of turned into "let's teach Ava to build an engine" though =P

89

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bizarre bot strategies?

« on: February 02, 2013, 08:39:31 am »

Okay, I don't want to end up hijacking this thread with this kingdom - but this is insightful for me dammit! >_<

Well, my strategy beat Lord Bottington, but then Lord Bottington didn't do much of anything.  He got 2 Provinces and 0 Colonies in 17 turns.

Yeah that's what he had in my game after 21 turns. Looks like your KC+Upgrade strategy is faster (that or I played my BM badly, though I did feel I had excellent shuffle luck). I'll try it myself now to see if I have the technique to pull it off. Thanks for your help =)

90

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bizarre bot strategies?

« on: February 01, 2013, 09:26:10 pm »

There's cute stuff to be had with Counting House/Pawn. I don't know how good it actually is, but for a colony game I'd try it. Dunno if it beats masq-BM for colonies.

Even after saying that, it took me a good while to work out why that particular combo might work. Use the pawns for non-terminal +buy to grab a ton of copper before using Counting house to bring it all back to your hand, right?

I would probably open Masq-Quarry and go for an Upgrade and King's Court strategy.  Upgrade -> Gold -> King's Court -> Province looks strong, particularly since you can play King's Court on the Upgrade.

I considered this at the time, but it all felt too slow and wasn't sure how useful upgrading to Provinces was in a Colony game (I'm still pretty new to the feel of Colony games).

Thank you both for the tips. I really need to get more creative when I see a kingdom and just accept that I'm going to lose a lot as I get a feel for this creativity >_<

91

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bizarre bot strategies?

« on: February 01, 2013, 08:55:04 pm »

I was playing a game against Lord Bottington today and had a really meh kingdom using Colonies (Pawn, Great Hall, Masquerade, Shanty Town, Mining Village, Quarry, Thief, Counting House, Upgrade, King's Court). I can't see anything too great here, but I'd love to hear from anyone who sees something I've probably missed. I basically went Masq + BM, which is the kind of style I tend to shy away from in province games, let alone Colonies. Lord Bottington certainly couldn't see anything here, but rather than going BM (which I'm assuming they've been programmed to try and avoid to add variety) he spent the ENTIRE game buying low cost actions and upgrading them one by one. As you can imagine, the game ended 80-19.

I thought this turn summed up his dutifully aimless style nicely (starting with KC, Upgrade, Upgrade, Silver, Copper):

---------- Lord Bottington: turn 17 ----------
Lord Bottington - plays King's Court
Lord Bottington - plays Upgrade
Lord Bottington - draws Mining Village
Lord Bottington - trashes Mining Village
Lord Bottington - gains Duchy
Lord Bottington - plays Upgrade
Lord Bottington - draws Upgrade
Lord Bottington - trashes Silver
Lord Bottington - gains Mining Village
Lord Bottington - plays Upgrade
Lord Bottington - shuffles deck
Lord Bottington - draws Upgrade
Lord Bottington - trashes Upgrade
Lord Bottington - gains Gold
Lord Bottington - plays Upgrade
Lord Bottington - draws Silver
Lord Bottington - trashes Upgrade
Lord Bottington - gains Gold
Lord Bottington - plays 1 Copper, 1 Silver
Lord Bottington - buys Silver
Lord Bottington - gains Silver
Lord Bottington - draws Pawn, Silver, Masquerade, Mining Village, Thief

92

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bizarre bot strategies?

« on: February 01, 2013, 04:53:13 pm »

Someone mentioned this in another thread, and I tried it last night to great amusement: using Masquerade to give a bot Rats.  The bot has no idea what to do with Rats, and just plays it because it's a cantrip.  Within a few turns, the bot will have a deck of all Rats and the one Copper it can buy each turn.

I just mentioned this in stupid pet tricks before realising this thread existed. Turns out this trick is already well established.

I agree - this is hilarious.

93

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Stupid Pet Tricks

« on: February 01, 2013, 04:44:28 pm »

I'm not really sure if this counts, but I've enjoyed passing Rats to bots on Goko using Masquerade. In my experience they tend to play it whenever they draw it and quickly destroy their own deck. I don't think a human would fall for it as badly, but could still be fun to play on newer players (such as myself .___.)

94

Introductions / Re: The time has come...

« on: February 01, 2013, 03:23:58 pm »

I'm starting to feel like the nerdiest matchmaker ^^

95

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The +2 cards engine

« on: February 01, 2013, 08:05:59 am »

I just made a successful Throne Room and Witch/Moat engine.  The moats came from Remodeling Curses.

Just give me a moment to picture the horror on your opponent's face when you transformed their vicious cursing into useful engine components.

..................

Okay I'm good now. The sadistic streak is satisfied for an hour or so.

96

Introductions / Re: The time has come...

« on: February 01, 2013, 07:47:17 am »

Hooray for game of life gliders!

I know! Every place I post someone will bounce up to me excitedly and talk about them ^^

Someone must know -- when I was younger, my grandparents had "The Game of Life" on their computer. I (being like eight) had never heard of Conway's Game of Life. It had 2 modes, one standard simulation, and another actual game. There were two colors of occupied cells, red and blue, and when a new cell was generated, the color of the new cell was based on the majority color of its neighbors. On your turn, you would generate a cell, erase a cell, and increment the time one tick, and then the other player would get a turn. I've never been able to find it since.

This sounds familiar actually, but I can't say I know more than you here, sorry =(

Nice game earlier today!  Let me know if you want to do another recorded one.

Sounds good to me. Seems like people tend to hang out in outpost, so catch you there some time perhaps? You migght even get some decent shuffle luck for once

Welcome to the forum!  You should play Mafia or some other forum games: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=26.0

/upvote bait

My upvote bait failed.  I shall +1 the OP in defeat.

Awww. Well let's call it a draw shall we?

Well good day to you sir, lovely to have you on this fine establishment that is Dominion Strategy Forum.

You are bound to learn lots of interesting and wonderful things during your stay here.

Ozle

Thank you very much. It would appear that I have already learned a lot. For instance, I can now use the quote button

97

Dominion Videos and Streams / Re: I got on the bandwagon. :3

« on: January 31, 2013, 08:08:17 pm »

#70 THREE PLAYER HELL

Thanks for the game. Sorry you had such bad shuffle luck. My play should speed up as I get used to more and more cards (my first game with FV, Scavenge and Farmland there).

98

Introductions / Re: The time has come...

« on: January 31, 2013, 06:24:00 pm »

Thanks for the welcome. I'll check it out some time. 

99

Introductions / The time has come...

« on: January 31, 2013, 05:44:43 pm »

...to stop lurking and actually say hello to everyone!

Hi there, I'm Avalanchian and I got Dominion + Intrigue for Christmas. I've been avidly reading everything I can on Dominion Strategy and the wiki (because I am a total nerd), as well as throwing myself into Goko. I realised that I wanted some thoughts from people and decided that now is the time to say hi to everyone and learn with other people (you know, the scary way).

So hello to you all and I hope to catch you on some of the other boards here.