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1

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Best Randomizer App?

« on: August 07, 2013, 10:50:13 am »

Seconding Dominion Shuffle. With the added bonus that if you can somehow smuggle Androminion onto your phone (it's left the Google Play store now that Goko's up, hasn't it?), you can use DS to select cards for it.

It still has that disclaimer up saying it will be removed from the store, but it looks like it is still available. I recently switched from an Android phone to Windows phone, but I still have an Android tablet and I will be holding onto it!

Also, the answer to OP's question is Dominion Shuffle. Another reason why I'm keeping an Android device around - the equivalent Windows Phone app (Dominion Picker) is much more limited and is missing a lot of important options.

2

Dominion General Discussion / Re: "Most hated" dominion cards discussion

« on: December 12, 2012, 10:43:58 am »

Ghost Ship.  I, possibly irrationally, hate it more than life itself.

It just bogs down games, self-contributes to bogging down games, snowballs fairly well (if someone gets an early lucky one, you're going to be hard-pressed to recover if you can't luckily get one soon yourself), and offers no useful decisions.

Cards that affect what goes on top of your deck really mess with me. They slow me down so much. The only one I like is Courtyard because the application is so simple - it's terminal and you can put one of your dead actions on top of your deck to use next turn. That bit is nice.

Ghost Ship messes with me a lot though. Even stuff like Navigator and Cartographer make me take a while to count things out and make all sorts of plans.

But the worst is Secret Chamber. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT. Half the time someone plays an attack card, I don't even know if it's worth revealing and using! I end up just avoiding it entirely unless I want to use it as an action card (like a less-powerful Vault; useful for clogged decks and buying Grand Markets).

3

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Is There An Easy Way to Find In-Person Dominion Games?

« on: June 21, 2012, 04:14:31 pm »

I've gone to a couple Meetup-organized game nights. You won't always find other Dominion players there, but you will get plenty of opportunities to try different board and card games. Good way to try games before you buy. At one of them, there was a guy who had designed his own card game that was a little like Dominion, and it was fun because everyone playing was able to provide input and test out new rules as we were playing.

4

Dominion General Discussion / Re: My New Dominion Goal

« on: June 18, 2012, 06:39:02 pm »

I think that if your goal is to lower that percentage to 80%, it's going to take forever and involve you never buying Fishing Village for a long time.

It says there that you gain it 91.7% of the time, and it's been available to you in 169 games. That means you've gained it in 155 out of 169 games. For that to drop to 80%, you'd have to not gain it in the next 25 games where it is available.

Now if you want to keep separate logs on your own of how often you gain Fishing Village when it's available, that might be a good goal. But even then, it'll take a while to tease out any sort of useful numbers.

5

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Reviving an old idea: Your best/worst kingdom

« on: May 10, 2012, 12:40:47 pm »

Best:

$5 - Ill-Gotten Gains, Library
$4 - Baron, Militia, Sea Hag, Thief, Treasure Map, Young Witch
$3 - Black Market, Wishing Well

It's notable that with several of these cards, I do significantly better when I DON'T buy/gain them than when I do. I've never actually bought or gained a Wishing Well, ever, in all the time I've played on Isotropic. I've only played with Treasure Map once, and it worked, but since then I've ignored it. I've done a few IGG games and almost always do well.

For the above kingdom I'm not sure what I'd do. IGG rush is an option but I'd be concerned about the other player(s) picking up Sea Hag or Young Witch and causing the Curses and the IGGs to get "out of sync." There's no trashing and no reactions so I'd want to give out the other Curses before I get them. With a multiplayer game, I'd probably go IGG + Young Witch.

Worst:

$5 - Cartographer, Margrave, Merchant Ship, Rabble, Upgrade
$4 - Envoy, Navigator, Salvager
$3P - Apothecary
$2 - Duchess

Apparently I suck at using actions that improve or mess up the top of your deck. I have no idea how I'd play this one. Actually, anyone have tips?

6

Dominion Articles / Re: tactics: turning off the autopilot

« on: May 09, 2012, 03:03:38 pm »

Probably the hardest thing for me to do is "overpay" for cards. Say I want to go Fool's Gold. I remember the first time I opened a 4/3 with FG/FG. It was so hard not to take one of the $3 or $4 cards, but I had to force myself to do that for any sub-$5 hand. Obviously the strategy will vary depending on which cards are available in the kingdom, but there are plenty of situations where buying the cheaper card is better but I still have a hard time forcing myself to do it.

7

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Asynchronous play

« on: May 08, 2012, 07:11:56 pm »

Oh wow I cannot believe anyone actually thinks asynchronous play would be a good feature. I read that thread and it's clear that some of the people advocating the feature have never actually played Dominion and don't understand why it wouldn't work.

I cannot imagine having to wait, oh, possibly several hours just to get through a Minion chain or someone's KC'd Goons. There are enough cards that require interaction that it just wouldn't work.

It's annoying enough waiting for someone to finish their gigantic Scrying Pool/Lab/KC/Goons/etc. megaturn on Isotropic, and that's in real time!

Umm.. you do realize what asynchronous means right?  You aren't waiting around for someone to do their megaturn, or any turn, you're doing something completely different (maybe even playing another 50 games of dominion) until you're notified that it's your turn again.  And if you're busy you can wait till you have free time to continue.  Also, no one is forcing anyone to play asynchronously, I would think (hope) that they'd have the option to play in real time too.

I do know what it means. It means that as long as you don't have any reaction or attack cards at all, or any cards that require input from the other player in order to play (e.g. Contraband, Governor when using the remodel option, Tournament), it'll work fine.

The moment you introduce attack cards that require a choice from the player who isn't playing that turn (e.g. Militia, Saboteur) or any reaction cards at all, it falls apart because you could be waiting several minutes or even several hours for someone to click the "Reveal Moat" button. Or the "You Can't Buy Provinces With Your Contraband" button. Like I said, it's frustrating enough when I'm on Isotropic and the other player takes a long time to realize that I've played an attack that requires a response from him... I can only imagine how much worse it would be when you're playing asynchronously.

I play Words with Friends (or rather played, haven't done it in a while) and that game works asynchronously because each player does exactly one move and hands it back to the other player. Sometimes moves can take a while, but it's not the end of the world. Dominion is different.

8

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Zark Games

« on: May 08, 2012, 06:51:38 pm »

He put a lot of effort into his card descriptions, but I'm still not sold on his Library-Scout combo ...

Yeah that one looks like a nombo to me.

Oh well, just because he doesn't have the best grasp of Dominion strategy doesn't make him shady. Besides, there are a lot of people who could benefit from buying individual cards, not just those who want a few power cards from certain expansions. If RGG doesn't offer it then someone else will.

9

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Asynchronous play

« on: May 08, 2012, 06:45:36 pm »

Oh wow I cannot believe anyone actually thinks asynchronous play would be a good feature. I read that thread and it's clear that some of the people advocating the feature have never actually played Dominion and don't understand why it wouldn't work.

I cannot imagine having to wait, oh, possibly several hours just to get through a Minion chain or someone's KC'd Goons. There are enough cards that require interaction that it just wouldn't work.

It's annoying enough waiting for someone to finish their gigantic Scrying Pool/Lab/KC/Goons/etc. megaturn on Isotropic, and that's in real time!

10

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Where's the official app?

« on: May 07, 2012, 06:48:22 pm »

This is why I don't understand the anti-Apple trolls. iOS devices are actually pretty good.

I'm not anti-Apple*, I'm anti-Apple-fanboy.  The people in that thread who are whining that they won't have their native app because it doesn't integrate with the app store, or doesn't take full advantage of iPad graphics, it's not free-range... total baloney.  Serious hipsterism.

I know a lot of people who use and like their Apple products.  In most cases, they don't believe iOS is the be-all and end-all of computing.  Some people do, though, and I have a problem with those people.

*I do think, and I think a lot of people agree, that iThings are overpriced for what you get.  I don't need to justify not purchasing an iPhone except by saying "I paid a fifth what you did for my phone."

I don't really understand your argument. People are just concerned that a web app won't run as smoothly as a native app, and that concern is justified. I'm not an iPhone or iPad owner (all my gadgets are Android), but I can understand why they would want a native app instead. Smartphone and tablet owners know that native apps almost always work better with less lag and interface weirdness.

Look, I do not really like fanboys for any platform either, but I don't see how wanting a better experience makes them fanboys. I'm not sure you actually understand why they are making the arguments they're making.

*as for the iThings comment, iPhones cost the same as Android smartphones and iPads cost the same as 10" Android tablets. Obviously a basic feature phone will cost way less than any smartphone. For the sake of this thread I'm just going to leave it at that*

I don't have any problem with that...but a number of the complaints seem to be of the form "why aren't they releasing for iOS exclusively/first?" and some even take the form "the non-iOS market is tiny and should just be ignored". 

I've got no problem with people who run iOS devices, I just don't want Apple's walled garden to drive the development process for the Dominion app.

I'm not seeing that being said or implied in the BGG threads that were linked earlier. They just would like to see a native app, not one person said that they think they ought to develop for iOS exclusively or give them preference in terms of release date and so on.

11

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Where's the official app?

« on: May 07, 2012, 05:32:30 pm »

Thinking there should be a distinct iOS version: sure, okay, that is at least a sane position to take. A naive position, but a sane one.

It's very rare to see a multiplayer game with distinct implementations that interoperate with each other, because the cost of developing it is so high, and the historical success rate of making it work correctly is so low.

This company is making a very wise choice by making an HTML5 platform they can use everywhere.

I dunno, just thinking of Words With Friends... I like how I can play it on my Android phone, or I can go home and play it on my computer, against people on computers and iPads.

I will say that as an owner of a Kindle Fire and an Android phone, I would love to see a native Android version of the game rather than a web interface. Isotropic just barely works on my Fire; it tends to disconnect fairly often and it's pretty frustrating to use, but it can be done. It's been my experience that web interfaces/in-browser apps just don't work that well on mobile devices. So hey, chalk me up as one of those naive people who wants a native app rather than accessing it through a browser.

I suppose since Dominion is not a time-sensitive action game, a browser app COULD work. If they put some good effort into it, I could see it being totally usable on a tablet or phone, much more so than Isotropic. The other advantage to a browser game is that, assuming it is paid or has a paid option, you wouldn't have to pay more than once for multiple devices.

12

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The game's largest structural flaw, imho

« on: May 03, 2012, 01:43:52 pm »

The difference is, you could play any card that (currently) gives +1 action AFTER playing a terminal action. So for example, with Smithy, you can play one, and hope you draw a village to continue your chain. And if you draw a market from your Smithy, it's no longer dead. In fact, Market is never a dead card.

Okay I think I get it now.

So basically it's saying that cantrips are always free to be played anytime, whereas in the current rules you can only play them when you have at least 1 action remaining. And I'm assuming village cards would be free to play as well?

That would quite change things. For instance, if you have two Nobles in your hand, you could actually play the first one as a +3 cards, and if you happen to draw a cantrip you can still play it. Or if you draw a terminal you can play the other Nobles as a +2 actions and still play that terminal.

I imagine it would make the turns take a lot longer. And it would have to be further clarified by making no-cost cards a different card type or something. Like Theory said, it could be the basis for a different deckbuilding game, but obviously it would bend the established rules and strategy of Dominion a lot.

13

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The game's largest structural flaw, imho

« on: May 03, 2012, 01:30:52 pm »

Thanks theory.

As I mentioned, cards were balanced for Dominion based on dead draw being dead.  A widget Smithy would be about 5$ or 6$, which might be less fun just because of that I guess.  Lab chains into itself, Smithies would not, so you would have to combine it with things that don't cost an action, like Silver, or Market.  A better change would probably be for it to draw 2. 

@Davio - are you talking about a different change, or the one I mentioned?  The one I mentioned doesn't let you play both Sea Hag and Ambassador, Ambassador would cost your widget for the turn, you wouldn't have enough widgets left to play Sea Hag.

Okay, so the question remains, what is the difference here? Other than renaming "actions" to "widgets"? When you say "a widget Smithy would be about 5$ or $6," is that the equivalent of a card that gives +3 cards and +1 action? In other words, a Governor without the downside, or an upgraded Lab.

Again, it seems like all you're doing is changing the game's nomenclature but not the game itself. The only consequence I see is if there's no distinction between treasure cards and +1 action cards (which are both considered "free actions" in your setup), it would allow you to play treasures and actions in any order you want, which would make Tactician, Library, and some other cards much more powerful. But otherwise the game would play exactly the same.

14

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The game's largest structural flaw, imho

« on: May 02, 2012, 10:16:35 pm »

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying it would be somehow easier to understand if the nomenclature of the game was changed? Or do your ideas actually change the way the game is played? Either way, I don't really get your post.

15

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card

« on: May 01, 2012, 01:04:26 pm »

Since this was being discussed in another thread...

16

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A list of cards that cause problems

« on: May 01, 2012, 01:00:56 pm »

In that case, here's one - long Villager/Market/Laboratory/etc. chains when playing in person. It can be hard to determine the number of actions. I have a method for doing it - you count one for yourself, add up all the +actions on all cards in play, and then subtract one for each action in play - but it slows things down and sometimes causes problems if someone plays so many Villages he just assumes he has unlimited actions when in fact he might go over by one.

17

Dominion General Discussion / Re: A list of cards that cause problems

« on: May 01, 2012, 11:40:53 am »

Do you mean, like, if you're introducing the game to new players? If I'm playing a game with the base set I try to avoid cards that have too great an effect on the strategy. Particularly Gardens and Chapel. For those I'll try to introduce them after a few games.

18

Dominion Isotropic / Re: First player bias

« on: May 01, 2012, 10:58:01 am »

I just checked my stats and I've won about 45% of my games and I am first player about 54% of the time (I threw out 3- and 4-player games). I have a better record as first player (62-67-3) than as second player (45-66-2). So I would say it seems to be working, at least in my case.

The other thing is I tend to play several games in a row rather than playing just one and then leaving. I might do that if I'm playing one quick game on my lunch break, but I usually play at home and I have time to do several. I'm also more likely to log out after winning than after losing - I prefer to end on a high note, and if I lose several times in a row (which happens often; just look at my record) it makes me want to keep trying until I win.

19

Game Reports / Re: Most bizarre ending conditions

« on: April 30, 2012, 11:34:10 am »

I don't have a game log for this one, since it was played in person. I only have base and Prosperity, and it was a Colony game with four players.

The kingdom was Woodcutter, Loan, Talisman, Militia, Mountebank, Vault, Counting House, Rabble, Mine, Adventurer. In other words, no +actions, no trashing except from Loan, and Woodcutter was the sole +buy.

Because of the combination of Mountebank handing out Coppers and people buying Counting Houses, the game wound up ending on three piles - Counting Houses, Coppers, and Curses. I was the only one who didn't buy a Counting House, hoping that handing our Curses with Mountebank and otherwise basically running a big money strategy would help. It didn't.

Never seen the Copper pile depleted.

20

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Great responses / counters

« on: April 26, 2012, 12:25:47 pm »

In conclusion: play more Native Villages.

Er... um.... derp.

I tried a couple of solitaire games with NV/Bridge and it takes some getting used to. The strategy article I read said to always put stuff on your mat whenever you play NV. The problem I ran into was I sometimes got unlucky and put too many coppers on my mat, causing me to hit $4 less often, and as a result I wasn't able to buy as many Bridges as I was NVs. So I wound up with maybe 1-2 Bridges and 6-8 NVs. Wasn't sure when to pull the mat contents and start over. In other solitaire games I was luckier and was able to keep pace, drawing enough Copper early to buy more Bridges, and thus being able to play the Bridges to buy more Bridges.

Clearly though, if my opponent is topdecking Estates or Curses, that's a good thing because I can just NV them.

21

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Where's the official app?

« on: April 26, 2012, 10:36:09 am »

Yeah, I think we can all agree that this situation is primarily the fault of sales/marketing guys falling down on the job.

That is specifically not what I'm saying. I don't know what the deal is here, because nobody's telling us anything.

While I generally don't like to agree much with barsooma, he's correct here I think.

The very fact that no one's saying anything is the PR/marketing falling down on the job.

Look... if RGG had never announced anything until, say, a month before an official release date, everyone here would basically be all <salivate...>  The complaints would be entirely about lack of features, if any features were lacking as compared with isotropic.  No one would be complaining about lack of information.

Instead, we've dealt with nebulous rumors for over a year, I think, at this point.  We've had official PR from RGG (click the PDF links at the bottom) that has gone from "late 2011" to "early 2012," and I think it's reasonable to suggest that Early 2012 ends at the end of this month.  We have a shadowy figure, or figures, or possibly androids or lizard people, programming the game; they won't let their names be released, they won't let a date be released, they won't let any information about the programs be released, and they insist they alone be arbiters of this information.

The blame here does not lie with Donald; he has been extremely frank in basically saying "Look, I can't tell you guys anything."  I've never even seen Donald suggest a date; that's all been straight from RGG!  The problem here is squarely with Jay and RGG, for contracting with such secretive programmers in the first place (I really think this was the most serious mistake), and then for lousy PR management--i.e., telling us that it's coming but that they can't say anything else.

This is a serious PR disaster.  I don't know about anyone else, but RGG has already lost money from me due to this fiasco.

At this point, I'm going to move forward assuming this thing is vaporware.  And if it does come out, they're going to have to seriously impress me to get me to buy it.

Vaporware? Seriously? When was the last time a piece of software was released on schedule?

That said, you do raise some valid points - you'd think that with RGG being fully aware of how much we love Dominion, they'd at least try to placate us in a way other than "it's coming." If you don't give people anything to talk about, they'll assume the worst.

22

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ridiculous Dominion House Rules

« on: April 26, 2012, 10:29:49 am »

When I just started playing I've often played with an accidental house rule: All cards (not just the kingdom cards) have an extra "randomizer" card (with the blue border). This meant we've probably played quite a few games with 13 Provinces.

Yeah, the first few times I played the game I didn't read the rules closely enough and ended up putting all the randomizer cards in and playing with every victory card and curse card. So 13 Provinces, 11 of each kingdom card, and who knows how many Estates and Curses.

The other thing we did (and this was only maybe the first 1-2 games I played) was whenever someone played Moat, it would stop the attack and they would discard it and draw 2 cards.

23

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Great responses / counters

« on: April 26, 2012, 12:16:39 am »

Playing a game on Isotropic this evening. I go Native Village/Bridge. Opponent picks up a Fortune Teller, causing me to fill up my NV mat with Estates. It didn't help that I got some extra unlucky NV draws even when he didn't play Fortune Teller, and he could have bought more but he didn't.

Still, it's a good counter to NV/Bridge. I guess anything that topdecks junk like Sea Hag would work equally well.

24

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Where's the official app?

« on: April 26, 2012, 12:09:21 am »

I'm not a programmer but I can say that in all my years of following various software releases, mostly games, I have never gotten the impression that you can simply "code faster," nor do I think I have ever seen a situation in which a game being released sooner was a good thing.

Sometimes you have big publishers enforcing release dates with an iron fist - see EA and Activision. The end product usually ends up being subpar because they must release an unfinished, unpolished product, and then patch any problems after the fact (and after people have already bought the game). Of course they're not always so nice as to actually fix those problems, and if you ask some people, you're "entitled" for asking for fixes.

Other times you have the smaller, quality-focused developers who are more concerned with making sure their product is excellent upon release. Maybe they want things to be too perfect. But the schedules tend to slip. Sometimes they slip A LOT. In many cases, the end result is worth the wait.

Also remember that the people here are on the bleeding edge of the Dominion world. We get to try out new cards before they're even released for sale. We get to play with ALL the promo cards that many people don't even know exist. We get to have conversations with the game's creator! So while we've known about the official app for months, most casual Dominion players may not know of it yet. A lot of them probably haven't even heard of Isotropic; I know I didn't until maybe a month or two ago. Essentially, to us, the official app has been stuck in development for a long time. But to a lot of more casual fans of the game, they may not know it exists until it's released.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to it, but I'm certainly not hoping they rush it. I want the official app to play every bit as well as Isotropic. I wouldn't mind having a slick, pretty interface that maybe works better on tablets or phones, but the real important thing is making sure the game plays exactly as it does in real life, and that's where Isotropic has done so well.

Long story short, there's no real sense in asking about it because software development is way, way over most of our heads and there's already a perfectly good online implementation available that you can use whenever you like.

25

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Major Dominion slump

« on: April 24, 2012, 12:35:54 pm »

I've never really cared about my ranking. I recently went on Council Room to check my stats for the very first time and I have more losses than wins. Oh well. It really helps if you don't think about it. I remember I used to play Call of Duty and Halo and stuff on Xbox Live, and I used to actually care about my k/d ratio, but it's just an exercise in frustration. It puts you on edge, causes you to not play "for fun" but instead for the ranking, and all that tension causes you to get worse.

Hell I remember sometimes my friends would come over and I'd get all nervous if they wanted to play a game on my Xbox because I was afraid they'd hurt my stats.