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2376

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Expert Advice for Novices: What did I do wrong??

« on: July 06, 2011, 09:38:28 am »

And everything get's published automatically on isotropic. There is only a link on a specific game. And the difference to: "I once played a game with Worker's Village, Venture and Sea Hag" is that everybody can click the link and does not have to go to councilroom and search "DStu; Worker's Village, Venture, Sea Hag" and click on the link displayed there...

2377

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challenge 2

« on: July 06, 2011, 02:43:26 am »

It's a little bit difficult to argue against why something is overpowered if in the first place it is not stated why it should be overpowered. But I will try anyway.

Guessing why Vault should be overpowered:
a) You only buy Vaults and BigMoney and "almost always" win against someone who tries to make something more subtle.

So here we are at the "Silver is overpowered discussion 2.0". Vault is a card that usually makes the game fast. And it has no high danger of colliding with itself. When it's on the board, you have to consider this fact. So does Smithy, Envoy and Councilroom. Basically so does every setup without attacks, see the "Silver is overpowered discussion 1.0". So either you win fast, attack the vault or loose. But if you don't do this, it's not the fault of the vault.

Why Vault is (in my opinion) not overpowered:
a) Vault is in Prosperity, so Colonygames may not be forgotten. Vault is quite bad on Colonies, it looses 75:20 or so to BM-Envoy. If it goes for Provinces. If it goes for Colonies its even worse.
b) There is not much hope to get this fixed by building a small engine around the Vault, because it does not really combo very well. It only draws 2 cards with is too less to build a draw engine, so it's basically +N money where N is the number of crap (which you usually don't want to have). Not a must have. Yeah, there is double Tactician+Vault, but also only good on Provinces. You can dream of something like Village+Vault+Library which I never got to work (perhaps my fault) in the way it should, and there is Vault+Grand Market. Which is good.
c) Even on Province boards, there are other simple stratgies that beat Vault. Single Sea Hag, Witch, Mountebank beats 3xVault. 2xMilitia or Goons is tied with 3xVault. Single Ghost Ship is also tied. 2x Monument (!) is tied. When you play with Gernimoo's Simulator and the build in engines, there are some others that beats the Vaults. There are some that looses. You have to be fast. If you aren't you loose. But it's not impossible.

So for me Vault is a card that of course change the game, that may not be ignored. There are others, especially at $5++.

2378

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Beat Big Money

« on: July 05, 2011, 12:06:30 pm »

So first BM is often beaten by small pertubations of BigMoney.
BM+1 Card Draw >> Big Money
BM+1 Attack >> Big Money.

So for your first $4, get say a Smithy or Milita, and otherwise play Big Money.
BigMoney+Milita or Smithy will win in ~66%, BigMoney+Witch in 85%, of the games.

But that's of course only marginally more fun. But for a first test, you should try it.

Second: Trashing might get important. Get all your Estates and Coppers to the Chapel and start from there with  only good cards is usually also better than big money. Also there are completely other strategies. Look for Workshop/Gardens on the blog.

Important is not to buy too many Terminal Action cards, AND not to forget that in the end you usually need some money.

2379

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How do you play this?

« on: July 05, 2011, 11:23:31 am »

I had a quick look at this with the Geronimo simulator, which played the hands quite reasonably. The torturer/university deck founders as it has a slow start and has too many turns where the draw chain fails. These are not unusual problems for university decks. Nobles, tacticians, and peddlars can't rescue it; there needs to be something better to help the draw chain.

Tacticians, goons, peddlars, plus late copper seems to come out best.

I think if anything the question is if you can combine the University/Torturer with Tactician, Goons, Peddlers. And if you have the time to get this doing before 3 piles run out. If you can manage to get one turn where you play say 5 Goons out of a Tactician á 7 Buys, that's 35 VP + Greens you can hopefully buy. And you have the torturer on your opponent.

2380

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challenge 2

« on: July 05, 2011, 10:44:02 am »

They are both more or less tied with "_Three Vaults" ("_Single Vault" that buys 3 Vaults instead of 1)

2381

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challenge 2

« on: July 04, 2011, 11:59:26 am »

So my thoughts on the Province-case:

As we saw in Ootd1, Alchemist without attack/trashing is quite weak. Now we no trashing and Saboteur/Fortune Teller. In contrast to Vault, which is quite strong without Colonies and should be quite robust against FT.
_SingleVault:_SingleFT is 60:30,
_SingleVault:Alchemists+1FT is 78:17
_SingleVault:Alchemists+1Sab is 81:15
_SingleVault:Alchemists is 89:9

so I would propose we forget about the Alchemists. The only alternative I see is something like Hamler/Smithy spiced with some attacks, but I'm not confident enough that this will work to hack the rules for >1  buy.

2382

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening of the Day #1 (Strategy Discussion)

« on: July 04, 2011, 11:40:12 am »

It seems like the big money deck doesn't have THAT much support, so the issue is more to do with lack of support for the alchemist engine?

What do you want for "ideal" support for the BigMoney. I thought pretty much by definition, BigMoney with support is BM+one card, which you have in this case. CR is quite strong for that.

So where is the problem? Is it the lack of a solid trasher? Is the problem that the alchemist deck starts strong, but then it begins to miss alchemist stacking in the later stages of the game due to poor trashing?

I'm not quite sure here. First is: No attacks. You need time to get the engine started, you get this time by attacking the other player. Trashing, I think at least some kind of trashing would be nice. The alchemist does not draw so many cards each turn, so if you need to get through 10 bad cards that's a long way. Some trash-for-benefit (e.g.Moneylender) would certainly help.

2383

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challenge 2

« on: July 04, 2011, 04:15:18 am »

You might need to be careful of your definition of a 'best' player in this kingdom. There might be a simple player with fortune tellers that can beat pure money. The fortune teller player however loses to a horse trader player, even though the horse trader player can't beat pure money.

I always hoped that something like that happend last time. I don't think it is a big problem.
a) It's interesting. If you have A>B>C>A, it just happens, there is no prize to win, so if B beats A and you have rules that beat B but not A, just post it, and we will see what happens.
b) If really A>B>C>A, there probably exists D (perhaps somehow reacting on the opponents choice, to a small extend this is possible with Geronimoo's simulator), that beats A, B and C.

edit: That said, I think on many boards you can create strategies A,B and C with A>B>C>A, but on most boards there will still be a better one.

2384

Dominion Isotropic / Re: All previous turns occasionally visible in Isotropic games

« on: July 01, 2011, 11:29:47 am »

And unless the AI is near-elite, I can't see many people on this forum caring about its existence at all.

/fixed

2385

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challange #1

« on: July 01, 2011, 11:08:32 am »

Also I wanted to mention that this is probably not the greatest board for the sim, as even though there aren't really any tough play decisions (deck cycling obviously still an issue), judging how close the game is to ending, piles are to running out, whether you can three-pile and win, are all things that human players can and need to do on this board, and the simulator has a tough time judging.

I thought that makes it a extremly good board to simulate, as it's more or less on the boarder of what the simulator can do.

You are right with three-pile ending, that is the second thing I would like to ask the simulator for the buy decision: a) #Buys. b) #empty piles.
Is there any chance that you can add these two in the simulator Geronimoo?

2386

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challange #1

« on: July 01, 2011, 09:28:19 am »

Love the idea. Now to see if I can beat Geronimoo....

You have to beat my second one at the moment...

2387

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challange #1

« on: July 01, 2011, 09:01:43 am »

Code: [Select]

<player name="Sim Challange #1 DStu.2">
   <buy name="Woodcutter">
      <condition>
         <left type="countVP"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="countMAXOpponentVP"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Talisman"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Woodcutter"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="3.0" />
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Quarry"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="City"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Caravan"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Colony"/>
   <buy name="City"/>
   <buy name="Quarry">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Quarry"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Talisman"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Caravan"/>
   <buy name="Woodcutter">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Woodcutter"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Great_Hall"/>
</player>
My original with no Talisman at all. 54:45. Prob Lookout will improve, but it's your turn

2388

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challange #1

« on: July 01, 2011, 08:49:50 am »

I crushed your bot 76-to-22  :

Nice.

I copied your "buy all the Woodcutters to end the game when ahead"-strategy.

And it works? In my N=5 test of individual games it never buyed Woodcutters, but I though the conditions are satisfied.

"Opponent's Max VP" are really the VP the opponent has at the moment? I don't really understand the "Max" there...
Edit: OK, is probably the max of all opponents. Two much 2-player games somehow makes blind for the obvious...

2389

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challange #1

« on: July 01, 2011, 08:02:32 am »

Careful, Dstu's code has a [\code] tag at the end that must be deleted when copied into the VXML (or you get an error)

... or in his post. Is deleted, Thanks

2390

Simulation / Simulating Challange #1

« on: July 01, 2011, 04:33:20 am »

So as Geronimoo has developed us this nice simulator, and yesterday we kind of had a little challenge with this Alchemist/Councilroom/Venturedeck, I thought maybe we can repeat this. Also I just played funny little Talisman/Quarry/Caravan/City Deck
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110630-224321-720e54a4.html
I won somehow think did not play optimal, and wondered what optimal would be. For instance, Woodcutter/Talisman > Silver/Talisman obviously, as there is no other terminal in my deck.

So here my XML for my first try, the first "Buy out Woodcutter if you have a lot of Talisman/Quarrys and this will cause you to win"-Clause somehow does not seem to work, it buys out GHs instead. Anyway, at least it beats BigMoney this time, but it's not tweaked much, anybody likes to challange it, probably even with a completly different strategy?

Code: [Select]

<player name="Talisman/Quarry/City">
   <buy name="Woodcutter">
      <condition>
         <left type="countVP"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="countMAXOpponentVP"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Talisman"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Woodcutter"/>
         <extra_operation type="divideBy" attribute="3.0" />
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Quarry"/>
         <operator type="greaterOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="City"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Caravan"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Colony"/>
   <buy name="City"/>
   <buy name="Talisman">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Talisman"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="3.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Talisman"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Talisman">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Talisman"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Talisman"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Quarry">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Quarry"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInPlay" attribute="Talisman"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Caravan"/>
   <buy name="Woodcutter">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Woodcutter"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Great_Hall"/>
</player>


2391

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening of the Day #1 (Strategy Discussion)

« on: July 01, 2011, 01:10:45 am »

Council Room is such a bad opener, man, you're giving your opponent a free card at the exact moment when it is the most useful because they want to get an awesome buy at turn 3/4 before shuffling again.

If it beats a Venture opening I guess I can believe that. Like I said 5/2 is awful on this board, so an awful CR opening might be better than an awful Venture opening.

Geronimoo's Bot beats itself 50:44 when starting 5/2 against 4/3.
I would guess on this board the CR-Start is not really a problem. The best strat we have fouond so far is more or less BigMoney with CR, marginally assisted by Ventures as better Silvers, but the Bot does not often buy them. Often ends with just 1 Venture in the Deck.
So when you look on what you want to buy, the 6th card in the beginning is not usefull that often. Assuming its a Copper, improving from 3->4 has no effect, 4->5 is Silver->CR with is the CR the 5/2start has already bought. 5->6 is CR->Gold, which probably is the biggest improvement, but it is also not sooo huge. The 5/2 on the other hand is likely to just skip silver completely for Ventures and Golds, and has a highly increased cycling from the beginning.

2392

Simulation / Re: Dominion Simulator available for download!

« on: June 30, 2011, 02:53:54 pm »

With n buys, it goes from the top n times.
You can condition on "inPlay(Bridge)>0" or something like that. Buys would be nicer, but this works for easy setting.

2393

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening of the Day #1 (Strategy Discussion)

« on: June 30, 2011, 12:55:58 pm »

Yes, I realized it looses _SingleCR etc... and yours by 20:80

2394

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening of the Day #1 (Strategy Discussion)

« on: June 30, 2011, 12:50:54 pm »

So simulator:

<player name="Alchemist/CR/Venture">
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Council_Room">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Council_Room"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Alchemist">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Alchemist"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Potion">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Venture"/>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>

Victory Points>Gold>1CR>5Alchemist>1Potion>Venture>Silver
was the best I could find this fast compared with Markets thrown in and/or Ventures taken out.

Edit: OK, it looses by far against _SingleCouncilroom
Edit2: And WanderingWilders

2395

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening of the Day #1 (Strategy Discussion)

« on: June 30, 2011, 12:34:57 pm »

3p: Alchemist
3: Watchtower
4: Ironworks
4: Treasure Map
4: Spy
5: Council Room
5: Saboteur
5: Bazaar
5: Market
5: Venture

Random thoughts on potentially intersting cards and the setup:
a) Ironworks -> no intersting cards for <=4.
b) no trashing
c) Only expensive cards for action/draw Engine
d) Treasure Map is difficult under this conditions
e) Venture also

So for me the interesting cards is the Alchemist in this setup. Spice this up with a Councilroom in midgame for +Buy. So start would be Potion/Silver. Get a second Potion somewhen to stabilize the Alchemist chain and get more, 1 CR, +some Gold, see what happens.  5/2 take the Councilroom to accelerate the start, Market, Bazaar, Venture are quite weak at the start, Saboteur is Saboteur, but of course a danger for the alchemists if you don't manage to get them back on top of the discard-pile (or if you have more than 5, which is prob. not a good idea against saboteurs anyway).
Alternative take Markets instead of CR, but I would guess CR is stronger.

Seems like a good question for Geronimoo's simulator...

2396

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Most VPs in 4 turns

« on: June 30, 2011, 11:34:48 am »

Hmm, I get Province in T3 and $7 in T4 with some selftributing trick, but I don't think you can squeeze out a 8th coin on the second turn...

2397

Game Reports / Re: Fun Board: Kingdom of Choices

« on: June 30, 2011, 07:55:53 am »

Don't think full commitment to Minions is necessary here. You can don't want to use them for the $2 coins, but for draw, so you don't mind if you draw a lonely Minion to your hand. You want to have a lot Native Villages, so you hopefully can play all these and all Goons before the Minion picks up 4 new cards. Native Village is not so bad, espescially in strategies where you like too have a few very good turns instead of some good, like Goons. Picking up Princess is of course a Bonus, you get NV and Pawns for free, but is of course a little bit difficult, and overall I would guess the Tournament on the board hurts more than it helps.

edit:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?action=post;quote=2331;topic=206.0

Wrong Link?

2398

Dominion Isotropic / Re: All previous turns occasionally visible in Isotropic games

« on: June 30, 2011, 07:09:11 am »

skill-based matching for any number of players

Think that would be easy on isotropic also, trueskill is working, so if it wasn't a lame duck...

Anyway, I think all this concerns come from not knowing what will happen. There are some nice features of isotropic that are likely not to enter a commercial version, starting from the logs (impling all of the councilroom analytics), possibly the leaderboard, and worst of all at least temporarily not all cards.

And as long as there is no communications from the developers with the community, it will discuss its fears. Does one even know who developes the game?

2399

Rules Questions / Re: Throne room/king's court

« on: June 30, 2011, 04:13:44 am »

Or worse, Golem --> Ambassador --> Province. Yes, I just did that recently. Good times.

Or to get you in a real dilemma: Golem -> TR -> Ambassador -> Province
(Give your opponent 2 or return 1 and give your opponent 1)?

2400

Dominion Isotropic / Re: All previous turns occasionally visible in Isotropic games

« on: June 30, 2011, 01:35:08 am »

blah blah blah copyright

Q: What people discuss the precise degree to which I can be ripped off without being able to sue?
A: My enemies!

I'm not a lawyer and don't know what precisely would be allowed to do without Donald's or RGG's permission and what is not, my feeling is that isotropic clearly crosses the line (and if it doesn't it should, even if I'm usually not so convicent (in the other direction) of some of our current IP laws), but even if it doesn't:

Realisticly, there is nothing you can do without people being able to sue you, because they can always sue you. The question is if they want to and if they will win. And even if the chances are high that you will win, when it's company vs. private non-profit project, I think nobody can ask dougz to fight an unsecure battle with probably high finance risk and time investment just to let us play for free.
And also nobody can ask dougz to make himself an enemy of everybody behind Dominion by just modifying isotropic so much that it is compliant with the law but clearly provokes them. Just to let us play for free.