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1

Weekly Design Contest / Weekly Design Contest #198: No Fear When the End is Near

« on: September 09, 2023, 09:41:08 am »

Design something* that either provides a new endgame trigger besides or instead of the normal two (3 piles, Provinces) or a new winning condition besides or instead of Victory points.

* - No restriction, so card, landscape, split pile, Traveller line, anything goes.

2

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Card Mechanics Week 67: This land is your land, this land is my land

« on: June 10, 2023, 10:27:57 am »

Design something like ThetaSigma12ˋs Landmarks. The idea is to have a landscape with tokens that restrict how often you can use it.
I think that the purest form, i.e. no limitation like an Event that has to be bought in the Buy phase, makes most sense but if you have an idea to combine Landmarks with an existing landscape type, go for it.

As ThetaSigma12 has pointed out, the pure form should feature a cost, risk or other downside. For example: „At the start of your turn, you may remove a token from this for +1 Action. If you end your Buy phase with 1 or more Actions, gain a Curse. | Setup: Put 6 tokens here per player.“.
With two non-drawing terminals in hand, it is safe, but with only a Smithy in hand, you risk not drawing into another terminal.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Fan Mechanics Week 59: Play now, Buy later

« on: February 27, 2023, 02:22:40 pm »

We got tokens (well, with Horses, kinda) for all vanilla effects except for Buys.
Well, technically it is not really a fan card mechanic as it was tested during Renaissance. But as we have virtually no information (except for two designs) I think it is OK to go down that road.

No limitations in any way, so cards and landscapes of any type are fine as are other fan card mechanics. Your design should just have something to do with Buy tokens in the broadest sense. That means if you want to do go down the Horse road and do a one-short Market Square or something similar that is also fine.

4

Dominion General Discussion / DeepMind for Dominion

« on: April 24, 2020, 07:05:47 am »

I read yesterday that Google's self-learning AI project, which has been mainly known for excelling at chess and Go, is also pretty good at a RTS game like Starcraft.
My hunch is that this is far more complex than a turned based game like chess which features an average of 20 choices per turn and around 80 plies.

So if that AI is brillant at dealing with the giant decision space of a real time game with hidden information, shouldn't it be able to tackle a turn-based game with randomness like Dominion?

Is this feasible, is it likely that Google would be interested in that ... and would this hypothetical scenario ruin the game or actually imply a possible balancing tool for new cards (not that this is necessary)?

5

Variants and Fan Cards / Collecting Ways

« on: April 07, 2020, 02:10:47 pm »

I think it might be fun to collect some Way ideas.



Alligator, Beetle, Goose, Hippo and Tiger are based on ideas from here .
Gargoyle is Way of the Demon by grrgrrgrr.
Hare is based on the Kingdom card Rabbits by kru5h

Alligator is a terminal Cursed Gold, Bear and Goose are obvious, although not everybody will like a Bear which can teleport over Moats.
Bettle is a bit weak and Eagle is a this-turn Dungeon / smaller Warehouse. Meh, we already got a sifter with Mole. These two still need work.
Fox is kinda like a universal Coppersmith or a scaling sheep, Gargoyle by grgrgrgr is simple and good (there are only 6 Ghost so nothing too crazy can happen) and Hare is hopfully as fun as kru5h's Rabbits.
Hippo seems like the most thematic card (submerge and wait), Magpie is probably mainly good in money (in an engine, Mule is likely better), Manatee is just a delayed Throne (I though about playing it this turn and next, like the card that DXV tested for Seaside, but that seemed too strong), Octopus might be wacky with TfB, Panda tries to do stuff with Villagers while not being better than Ox and Parrot is again thematic, copying stuff (that could obviously be too good, increasing consistency like crazy: if you start your turn with a village in hand you can never dud).
Reindeer is based on a fan card called Deer (I somehow cannot find it though) which had the very same text, Tiger is BoM (but is that really good if you play Tiger on a $4 or $3?) and Zebra is hopefully not that much better than Otter.


UPDATE 1: Thanks for all the feedback, especially concerning Magpie. I tried all kind of stuff with drawing and digging but did not find anything that felt interesting or balanced. So into the bin she flies.
Parrot got a slight nerf. It is simple and avoids complicated wordings (emulators are already rule-wacky enough), but I am not sure whether it suffices.


This is a mock-up Aquila's self-Throning idea, slightly modified. Harsher with the self-trashing, softer and perhaps mega-turny due to the lack of a once per turn restricton.


Two further mock-up for Aqulia's card (his Fox is my Wolf).


This is a wild idea and I hope that the cost mechanism prevents this from becoming too crazy. But you never know. Hey, at least Prince never duds now. Unless Prince of Mammoths finds mere green.