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76

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Munchkins...???

« on: April 06, 2015, 07:12:03 pm »

The Munchkin Adventure Time thing is just surreal. Somebody is pulling bad data from somewhere, in all likelihood. One thing I noted is that the model number they cite is 501RGG where I would have expected 510RGG. Anyway, I am either going to go for FLGS or funagain at this point.

Okay, so somebody on reddit first ordered Dominion Adventures from Amazon, then cancelled when it seemed that some Munchkin expansion was on offer...only to be contacted by the seller who verified it really *was* the Dominion Adventures expansion, after all. So the order was un-cancelled.

But it still won't ship from Amazon, so Prime won't get it to you faster, so I'm just going to camp outside my FLGS on the day of release. 

77

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: New mechanics

« on: April 06, 2015, 07:02:27 pm »

There will be a reserve moat

"I play Torturer."
"Huzzah!  My ReserveMoat protects me!  I call it!"
"I play another Torturer."
"Shit."

Yet another situation where you should just have avoided all of the heartache by having Watchtower in hand.

78

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Preview: Giant

« on: April 05, 2015, 09:00:19 pm »

Little late to the party, but I like the Attack on Giant a lot. It's a neat cross between a Curser and Trasher and still has some utility once the Curse pile is empty.  The Journey token is also a pretty cool dynamic.

I am *guessing* that Giant giving +$5 every other play could prove really important given the high price of some events and cards in the new set. It will be fun to see what other cards (or events?) use the Journey token and whether this affects the strength of Giant.

79

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Munchkins...???

« on: April 05, 2015, 08:17:19 pm »

Do we know why Amazon lists the release date as April 27? I usually rely on Amazon for getting my Dominion expansions and I don't want to have to wait until the 27th!

Currently they say April 23. However they also say it's an Adventure Time expansion. I don't know how Amazon comes by its info; Jay is still saying April 18.

So Amazon is often pretty cagey about availability and shipping times, noting that people are generally thrilled to get stuff early and...very angry when stuff is late. They also seem to be supplying these through third parties, and that could end up tacking on a day or two vs Amazon's robotic warehouses.

The Munchkin Adventure Time thing is just surreal. Somebody is pulling bad data from somewhere, in all likelihood. One thing I noted is that the model number they cite is 501RGG where I would have expected 510RGG. Anyway, I am either going to go for FLGS or funagain at this point.

80

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Previews #5 - Lost Arts, Borrow, Inheritance

« on: April 04, 2015, 07:31:07 pm »

I couldn't agree more. The card i trashed was an action. It's not anymore, but i don't care. If i buy a red weasel, and its fur turns white, did i buy a white weasel?

If only you knew how many graduate student-years of effort had been spent on the grue paradox... but for a taste, wikipedia has a reasonable synopsis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction

81

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Previews #5 - Lost Arts, Borrow, Inheritance

« on: April 04, 2015, 01:24:10 pm »

One way to think of it is: half of Wharf's draw is already non-terminal.

Excellent point. This does seem like gilding the lily, when you put it that way.

And thinking a bit more about cost, you are spending $6 to make whatever it is better, so having that thing be cheaper helps. And having it be something you want to play a lot helps. So now I'm definitely fascinated by Masquerade.

Which brings me to Oracle, which suddenly becomes an Oracular Laboratory that scries even deeper than Scrying Pool.

And then to Steward, which now gets to choose whether it's a Laboratory, a non-terminal Silver, or a non-terminal trasher. Holy cow; you could build an entire strategy around that.

82

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Previews #5 - Lost Arts, Borrow, Inheritance

« on: April 04, 2015, 12:22:19 pm »

Any ideas about the best card to play Lost Arts on? My current vote goes to Envoy.
And the worst card? probably Prince? Although that's not nearly as interesting as the best.

I have to admit, the very first card that came to mind to me was Wharf. Then I realized you wouldn't get the +Action next turn as well, so it wouldn't be like the very best card ever...but still. A chainable Wharf that never draws dead would be pretty impressive. Then, on a similar theme, Library. Run your engine down, play Library, and reload.

A second class of cards that can I think really use the +Action are cards like Storeroom and Vault. Storeroom has always needed more support than is sometimes convenient, but +Action helps a lot.

There are also some attacks that are just begging to be chained, like Rabble, Witch, Goons, and even Ambassador. Also very impressive would be a self-sustaining Masquerade chain.

Finally, there are some trashers that I think (surprisingly at first, maybe) get much better. Develop, when you are using it to gain cards you really want, is improved a lot by getting an action so your following cantrip finds something nice. I still kind of suck at this game, but one problem I not infrequently have is terminal collisions with Remake and some other terminal, often an attack. Lost Arts could help me with this personal problem of mine.

So terminal draw is an obvious target, but I think there are lots of situations where Lost Arts could be amazing.

83

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Previews #2 - Guide, Duplicate, Coin of the Realm

« on: April 04, 2015, 11:12:25 am »

Oh man, that art on Duplicate.  Stellar.  Guide's not bad either!  Coin of the Realm, well, it's some coins.  What more do you want, really?

Well, when I look at the image struck onto the Coin of the Realm, I think I see a Village or City (originally, I thought it was actually the Lost City, but it doesn't seem to match).

I thought that was a nice touch.

84

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Previews #5 - Lost Arts, Borrow, Inheritance

« on: April 03, 2015, 07:29:09 pm »

So if "Your Estates turn into another card" does that mean they literally inherit the card text? So your Sir Martin Estates attack like a Knight, but if you are attacked by a Knight, Sir Martin the Green escapes because he only costs $2?

But if you put your Estate token on Treasure Map, that means you can collide two "Estates" with each other or one with a real Treasure Map and trash both cards just las if they were real?

"Your Estates turn into another card" is a convenient inaccurate shorthand. Your Estates gain the abilities and types of the card. They don't copy anything else, including cost, or name, or "what pile was that from."

So Sir Martin Estates have the types of Sir Martin, and give +2 Buys and attack like he does. They can die to other Knights if they hit one, but other Knights attacking skip over them since they cost $2.

Your Estates gain the abilities of Treasure Map but are Estates rather than Treasure Maps, so they don't find you any treasure.

Thanks; that was really useful. I understand there will a FAQ on this, but, in general, I can see where if card text refers to the card name, and it ain't "Estate", then you're all done. Is the use of the word "this" neutral enough for you to play "as if" it were the same card?

So specifically, Urchin's card text reads: When you play another Attack card with this in play, you may trash this. If you do, gain a Mercenary from the Mercenary pile.

This leads me to believe that if you put your Estate token on Urchin, you can trash an Estate played as an attack if you play another attack (which could be another Estate played as if it were an Urchin). Is that right?

(Note: I have no idea whether this is just a Fancy Play most of the time, but the idea of Turn 2 Mercenary in contrived circumstances is amusing.)

And then there's cases like Pirate Ship, whose text reads: Choose one: Each other player reveals the top 2 cards of his deck, trashes a revealed Treasure that you choose, discards the rest, and if anyone trashed a Treasure you take a Coin token; or, +$1 per Coin token you’ve taken with Pirate Ships this game.

(Emphasis added by me.) In this case, it seems like if you put your Estate token on Pirate ship, that you can take choice 1...but then have to put the Coin token gained some place that's not the Pirate Ship mat since the second choice tells you that only Coin tokens "taken with Pirate Ship" yield money. But by the same token (heh), maybe you can play Estate and take the second option and get money for the tokens on your Pirate Ship mat, if there are any. (Again, no suggestion you would actually want to do that, but...seems possible.

85

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Previews #5 - Lost Arts, Borrow, Inheritance

« on: April 03, 2015, 12:38:42 pm »

Inheritance is maybe the strangest thing in Adventures. Your Estates turn into another card. Again that's Estates you already have, and any new ones you buy. You put the token on say a Village; now your Estates are cards that cost $2 and are worth 1 VP and are Action-Victory cards and can be played for +1 Card +2 Actions. It is a great feeling when you're staring at your hand and it sucks and then you remember, oh yeah, these Estates are Villages, this hand is awesome. You actually set aside a card with the token, rather than just putting it on a pile, because Dominion has crazy stuff like the Knights from Dark Ages. Lost Arts can give all of the Knights +1 Action for you, but when your Inheritance is Sir Martins, your Estates are all Sir Martin, they aren't any other Knights. And if that's not clear, there's a lengthy FAQ.

So if "Your Estates turn into another card" does that mean they literally inherit the card text? So your Sir Martin Estates attack like a Knight, but if you are attacked by a Knight, Sir Martin the Green escapes because he only costs $2?

But if you put your Estate token on Treasure Map, that means you can collide two "Estates" with each other or one with a real Treasure Map and trash both cards just las if they were real?

86

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Preview: Messenger

« on: April 02, 2015, 04:23:57 pm »

Or maybe you're a jerk holding a Watchtower and you decide to hand out Curses in the most convoluted way possible. Man, what's your problem? Well, go for it, I guess.

Actually, I think the way to hand out Curses in the most convoluted way possible would be to have some cost reducer like Highway in play, buy Messenger, and choose to gain IGG.

Then, if you are playing multiplayer (say in that five-player game you suggest), a total of 20 curses will be gained, and if you reveal Watchtower each time, I'm guessing somebody is going to shoot you...

87

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Preview: Haunted Woods

« on: April 01, 2015, 10:00:05 pm »

Wow, you guys have been april fooled big time.  That isn't the real Haunted Woods Art.  Nice fake, though, but I can tell it's a shop due to some pixels here and there.  This one's the real deal:

Holy crap; he's right. The real art is totally in keeping with the fact that Amazon just launched pre-orders for Dominion: Adventures, and it turns out actually to be a Munchkin expansion.

Seriously, check it out and read the description on their site:http://www.amazon.com/Rio-Grande-Games-501RGG-Adventures/dp/B00TF7YMVW

DXV, this was the mother of all April Fool's jokes. You really had us going there.

88

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Preview: Transmogrify

« on: March 31, 2015, 04:20:50 pm »

Awesome card. Glad to see the interactions with watchtower are already being explored.

Most notably being able to gain a Watchtower into your hand whenever you have a card that costs $2 or more in your hand and Transmogrify in the tavern. You can *call* that creative synergy, if you like. :-)

89

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Important poll on Adventures

« on: March 30, 2015, 10:44:06 am »

Guys, be serious.  He obviously didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.  He meant to hurt their bodies.

I think the choice of Harem as the "payload" implies some attempt to shame...

Anyway, The first preview is just out, so all is forgiven. 

90

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Really Low Iso Level Players on Goko

« on: March 22, 2015, 05:12:54 pm »

Maybe it's because they play against the bots a lot and the bots games don't count for the iso leaderboards anymore.

Also, lower-rated players are/were more likely to play players whose ratings were inflated by bots, and, if I understand how the board was re-done, your wins against those opponents are now also worth less.

But to be honest, I really do think there is a connectivity issue going on; top players are much more likely to play each other and lower/mid-tier players are more likely to play each other, and although there is no doubt that the top-tier players are indeed much better, they may not be as much better as the ratings difference would indicate. And it could just be a limited sample size thing, but the top of the leader board was around Level 53/54 7-10 days ago, and now it's down to Level 50.

If there is a connectivity issue, but it is decreasing, I would predict some additional slippage, maybe even to the mid-40s. If this happens, and if we can discount the idea that the very top players all got worse at the same time, it suggests either a lot of improvement in the ranks of the lower-rated, or (I think more likely) some significant under-rating due to selective pairing.

91

Dominion: Adventures Previews / Re: Rio Grande page for Dominion: Adventures is live

« on: March 22, 2015, 03:28:36 pm »

I hear Donald is a massive Bosch fan.

Not sure if that means he is into his Renaissance Dutch artist, or just a big fan of power tools.

You misheard - it's borscht. And it's not true, in fact I don't think I've ever had borscht.

Aw, man, you haven't lived.
Anyway, sorry about the Erroneous Bosch.

I swear I was going to post this, but you beet me to it.

92

Dominion Articles / Re: Ruined Market as the only +Buy

« on: March 08, 2015, 07:35:16 pm »

In this game I realised on turn 3 that I should have opened Ruined Market/Trading Post instead of -/Trading Post, so I bought the RM with $3. I ended up with 3 double-Province turns in a row (with the help of King's Court of course).

I myself am better at being lucky than good. Here is a game I won because I got absurdly lucky enough to turn up the Ruined Market I had previously given to my opponent while possessing him, good for the game's only double Province turn.

93

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bot "Pro" Games Effect Leaderboard

« on: March 08, 2015, 05:18:27 pm »

That playing bot games can inflate your rating means there is a fundamental problem with the rating system, it's not doing its job correctly.

Okay, so I have gone back and forth, up and down on this, because I agree this is a troubling result. I also peeked into some of the recent stuff on chess ratings, which have had a surprisingly checkered and complicated history (I thought things were weird enough decades back when I was still playing "competitive" chess). At the very end of the day, I think the root of the issue is ultimately the one raised by Polk5440:

Also, Trueskill is designed to be very good when players of similar rankings play each other (which is why microsoft paired it with an automatch system for its games). Trueskill will be bad if players don't sufficiently mix. There aren't "enough" comparisons made and comparisons between sets of players who don't play each other become much less reliable.

I think what was really going on here was that we had was a mixture of two subpopulations of "Pro" Dominion players. One subpopulation played a really low proportion of games against bots. Another subpopulation, rich in novices, played a pretty high proportion of games against bots, and humans who played a lot of bots. Most of the novices who play bots are, not to be too judgmental, really poor players. And there are a lot of them, and, in aggregate, their role in this story is to "feed" points to the bots.

A relatively small number of players playing mostly bots and players who played bots were of somewhat higher skill, so were in turn "fed" some of the points the bots ate. Back before the "Play Bots" rating system switch, this wasn't a major problem in Pro land. But after the "Play Bots" button defaulted to Pro, there really was a big inflow of points to bots from novices now suddenly playing in "Pro" land, which were in turn "fed" to the mediocre players (including me).

Problem: this population of middling players don't mix nearly as much as you might think with stronger human players, so "The points stopped here". Without the kind of mixing Polk5440 mentions, two players that have (say) a 5000 rating could be very different in skill if one player's rating was padded by bots and the other player's wasn't. The good news, is that I think we can (and just have) "drained" the bots points out of the system, but there is still a fair amount of disconnection or lack of mixing in the system, and my hunch is that when/if there is some correction for that, there may be some downward ratings pressure on at least a subset of the (say) Top 500 or so as they lose the same proportion of games as previously to the bot-inflated players, who now have lower ratings.

In any case, it's an empirical question.

94

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bot "Pro" Games Effect Leaderboard

« on: March 05, 2015, 09:23:36 am »

I would be surprised if (2) holds.

I agree. Most of the 1400 who disappeared won't care. Some who played more games with those 1400 will be annoyed for a minute, but won't care for very long. I think the board shift is mostly a "concern" (in terms of ratings loss) for players with Iso ratings between about 15 and 25, for reasons I will get to below.

I think the real reasons why there was a lot of bot ply by people who played Pro basically all the time and humans most of the time were:

1) Nobody seems to be joining their game and they were bored.
2) They weren't trying to juice their Isotrophish ratings, but they *were* trying to juice their Goko Pro ratings to get above (say) 4000 or 5000 or some popular ratings limit.

I suspect people not playing bots much or at all but who are between Iso 15 and 25 are possibly more likely to have been in ratings limit games with people who "bots-ed up" their ratings. And, yes, gained more points from those matches than the true skill (heh) differential would have indicated. So let's fix that.

95

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bot "Pro" Games Effect Leaderboard

« on: March 05, 2015, 09:05:03 am »

The main leaderboard page only shows players with games played in the past month and 0+ ranking, but the full leaderboard includes all players. Player with level less than 0 or without games in the past month are counted in the rankings, and your games against them count for the rankings, they just don't show up on the main leaderboard page. https://gokosalvager.com/leaderboard/?full=False&sortkey=level

To be clear...I knew that. And, needless to say, you don't get much ratings bump from playing somebody who now has a rating of, oh, -3, and heaven help you if you lose...

I think there's no question that the leaderboard needs to change this way; it leads to a much more accurate picture of relative skill, thus potentially better matches, and possibly (in the long run) more rapid improvement in play.

One adjustment to behavior this move might suggest is for people to specify ratings limits for games in terms of Isotropish levels. Right now, you do confuse people if you specify (say) "4000+" but then leave or kick them out when they turn out to be Iso Level 8 or something (I don't do that and think it's a bad idea). If you say "ISO 20+", that will confuse some people in the short-run, too, but my guess is that there really are only like 3000 or so people who play a lot on line, and a smaller number who play really a lot, and the number of people you would have to chat with to describe ISO isn't that large and would get smaller.

96

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bot "Pro" Games Effect Leaderboard

« on: March 04, 2015, 06:20:38 pm »

If you've played opponents who have played against bots, or who have played opponents who have played against bots, or ... then you'll still feel some influence from bot games on your rating.

Right; this is the "How did I beat that  person 10 levels above me?" issue I noted above. The answer is that their ratings were inflated by bots. Also, I think I figured out another reason why the bot ratings were "wrong" at least with respect to the upper levels of the leaderboard despite playing a ton of games against non-bot opponents: there was a lot less connectivity between players who played bots and players who did not. Almost 1400 people dropped off the leaderboard either because they played only bots or played so poorly against people they were below level zero...that's huge.

97

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bot "Pro" Games Effect Leaderboard

« on: March 03, 2015, 06:21:36 pm »

I knew I was terrible.

I knew I was...way, way, way more terrible than Mic Qsenoch. :-)

But more seriously, the new leaderboard removes almost 1400 players (!) who were above Level Zero when bot games were included, but not above that (or possibly not even eligible) with bot games removed. So, although it's possible the bots included board would be a better predictor of how you would do against bots, the human game is certainly different, and if that's what we're after here, yeah, go with that. Some day the AI might be worthy of the name, and including games against them would have some meaning, but that empirically that doesn't seem to be the case now.

Disclaimer: I lose 2.something levels but gain almost 100 places on the no bots board (and my 3sigma goes up). In some cases, that helps give the answer to "how did I beat the crap out of that Level 28 person?" when it turns out that they are, well, not as good against humans as that rating would indicate.

98

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening Mandarin

« on: March 03, 2015, 04:24:09 pm »

Oh and there's Hunting Party Mandarin, I don't know if that's a turn 1 thing but I know it's a thing.  I don't understand why it's a thing but I've seen WW thing the thing.

Not sure if it's universally a thing, but if you buy Mandarin/HP/- on turn 1, the cycling speed of HP helps make up for Mandarin, Mandarin does help you hit $5, which gets you another HP, and once you get up to speed, you can use Mandarin to top deck an HP, making sure the party never stops. Not a guaranteed win, but an interesting combo.

That said, there are definitely a lot of Mandarin nombos out there. And then there are things like Mandarin/Tactician which can be awesome with the right support and way too slow in others.

99

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Bot "Pro" Games Effect Leaderboard

« on: March 01, 2015, 10:51:48 pm »

I've played quite a lot of bots recently to see what effect it has on my rating, and the answer is that it has certainly increased. 

Skipping the boring background, I can now confess that I never actually made a conscious decision to play Pro games on Dominion Online, but started to do so when I found out that I was actually on the Isotropish leaderboard because bot games had started to count as Pro. In any case, I had a ranking of about 200 and Isotropish thought I was about Level 30 at the end of October, 2014. That gave me (over)confidence, and I have played about 300 real games after that...and at first watched my rank and rating sink like a stone. In my case, I would estimate the "Bot Effect" as being 10-12 Isotropish levels.

So that *sounds* like a serious distortion, but I am actually not sure the problem is completely with the Bots' ratings in the broad sense (they have all played about 250K games apiece in two-player, against all levels of opponents) as it is that when you are playing Bots, you are playing only one of 6 opponents, and opponents who do not learn or change, rather than the dozens or hundreds of different opponents you could in real life. I don't know for sure (it's an empirical question, though), but my guess is that stronger players would have some "ratings inflation" generally against hapless weaker opponents they played relatively often. In general, there may be meaningful effects of the diversity of opponents you play. My intuition is that if you had two players equal in mu and sigma and games played, the one who had played a significantly larger number of opponents would be the favorite in a match played between them.

100

Game Reports / Re: Philosopher's Stone is cool.

« on: February 25, 2015, 07:10:33 pm »

I think you could do better with just Scavenger/Masterpiece/BM.

I'm doubtful. Scavenger is very good for Phil Stone, nothing great for Masterpiece (except possibly Phil Stone itself)

So would you also want a Scheme or two here as well, to replay Scavenger as often as possible?