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3451

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

« on: July 08, 2011, 07:53:02 am »

The minions are a fair point, but if people want to learn about mistakes in their games you need to follow their line of play to some degree. The minion strategy is severely complicated by cities and needs quite a bit more explanation.

3452

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Combo: Horse Traders/Library

« on: July 07, 2011, 08:05:43 pm »

You've spotted one combination where you can play or discard cards from hand and then use a library to draw up to 7 cards again. There are plenty more and it's a fair strategy, so keep looking.

3453

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

« on: July 07, 2011, 04:22:47 pm »

First game - Don't buy village style cards if you don't need them, just use a couple of actions and take the odd loss if they clash. You also got into a mess with the hoard even though you might not have realised it. Get platinum or good drawing cards first so that you'll use the hoards to buy colonies and provinces. Buying an early hoard then buying a duchy to get an extra gold is poor, worse than buying a gold then a gold.

Second game - If you look at your salvaging again I bet you'll be able to see better choices for trashing. It's hard to get to the high value cards so salvaging a mountebank for a king's court or salvaging a gold for a platinum is worth it.  Trashing the curses wasn't a good idea as they give no salvage value and they protect from further attacks. The horn of plenty was a waste of time and it was always like to be a bad board for possession unless you could shrink your deck to a reasonable size, which wasn't going to happen.

3454

Dominion Articles / Re: Conspirator

« on: July 07, 2011, 02:05:52 pm »

The combination of conspirators with thrones, king's courts, and golems is certainly worth noting.

I'd suggest that there is a bit more flexibility in using conspirators than it first appears. Sometimes you can run a deck where a conspirator is 'better than silver' but no more than that, perhaps if you have a market, a haven, and a pile of treasure in your deck. More often you can create a drawing engine for some other purpose, perhaps with a young witch and villages, and can then add a conspirator at low risk for good value.

I can see a lot of possible ways to play the kingdom suggested by Anon79, for example. If you use a chapel you might want to create a powerhouse deck that is all actions with the conspirators providing a lot of coin. On the other hand you could try a fast deck with one conspirator, apprentice, bit of treasure and some hunting parties, enough to bring home quick provinces before a stronger deck is up and running.

3455

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Transmute

« on: July 07, 2011, 09:45:20 am »

Transmute is one of those cards that can seem repeatedly bad until you see someone play it amazingly well. It's first problem is that it is very limited in its uses compared to a remodel, say. The second problem is that it is so slow: buy potion, buy transmute, use transmute to make a gold, spend gold, game over. It's third problem is that you usually give priority to another terminal card.

Generally you need to make use of at least two transmute abilities during a game to make them effective. Changing estates to gold is clearly good in the early game. Changing excess actions to duchies can be good in the endgame, especially if there is no extra buy in the deck, and this typically features in a good transmute strategy. Changing treasures to transmutes is much more situational and can easily congest a deck, but if you're using scrying pools, vineyards, or ventures it could be just what you need. Also once you find a good transmute strategy, more transmutes might be just what you need. Like most cards that act on another card in hand, it works well with bigger hand size and good hand management.

Alchemy kingdoms are the best homes for a transmute. You do get bad potion draws where buying a transmute is better than buying nothing. It does work well with familiars, scrying pools, vineyards, etc.

3456

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Jester

« on: July 07, 2011, 07:38:29 am »

The first way to counter a jester seems to be trashing your estates early and buying your victory cards a touch later. You sometimes get an opportunity to style your deck so it is full of cards that you can use but your opponent can't, perhaps with transmutes or horns or plenty, but you still need to be careful that you're not damaging yourself by pursuing some strange defence that isn't needed. If it's a good kingdom for jesters then just buy your own.

Also watch for three pile depletion. This can happen very quickly and unexpectedly in jester games.

3457

Game Reports / Re: Crazy Remake Strategy Works

« on: July 07, 2011, 07:27:04 am »

Loan/remake seems better. You could also have remade the estates into menageries and then remade cards with more variety to fuel bigger draws.

3458

Game Reports / Re: Surprising (to me) strategy

« on: July 06, 2011, 01:07:11 pm »

You use golem - chancellor - counting house. Play the chancellor first and put the deck into the discard pile. Play the counting house to take the copper from the disacrd pile. Add an extra copper so that you can still buy a province on any turn you draw the golem without the counting house in hand.

3459

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

« on: July 06, 2011, 03:49:25 am »

There might be an opportunity to skip the chapel and use a baron/warehouse opening to get some early deck development. The warehouse is much stronger than the silver used in the actual game. You might be able to build that wharf/native village engine much faster or sit on your opponent's chapel with some goons. If you can grab a majority of native villages you might have a permanent advantage over the chapel player. If you've got enough actions you can use a late chapel to remove copper and buy it back with goons. Chapel openings are strong but not automatic.

Libraries would work well with the native villages and warehouses here. However once you get a lot of wharves they are much better than a lot of libraries, especially with an extra buy to feed the goons. The extra cards arriving at the start of turn really cut down on the number of bad draws.

3460

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challenge 2

« on: July 05, 2011, 08:42:56 pm »

If Vault is not OP then what is? Today i played a game vs. some 35-36 lvl player, bought only money and vaults (3) and won province fight 7v1. Nuff said.

You could probably have bought courtyards and money for the same result.

3461

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Turn 4 Treasure map Action

« on: July 05, 2011, 06:50:29 pm »

Start council room, pawn. Turn 3 play pawn for +1 coin, +1 action, draw up to seven copper with the council room. Buy two treasure maps and draw them on turn 4 with the three estates.


Start cellar, treasure map. Turn 3 play cellar and discard four cards, draw four copper, buy treasure map. Draw both maps on turn 4, or draw one map and use the cellar again to discard three cards and draw the second map.

3462

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A New Variant (and a question): The Pocket Copper

« on: July 05, 2011, 06:33:11 pm »

There's no way of calculating it. Let's start hamlet/witch, draw 6 copper with the witch and spend the bonus copper on a king's court for turn 3.

3463

Game Reports / Re: Sabotuer is a terrible card

« on: July 05, 2011, 06:21:23 pm »

When is the board "right" for Saboteur?  After learning here how weak Saboteur is, except in just the right situation, I'm now struggling to figure out what the right situation might be.

Sometimes you can look an opponent's deck, minus a few cards, and it seems a lot weaker. This might be because it has some key cards that cards that can't be replaced from a depleted pile or the black market. Knocking out a few minions might stop the minion draw chain and make all the cards bought to support it seem weaker too.

Something that you also have to consider is the underlying deck. Lets firstly consider an opponent who set aside all his estates onto the island mat and bought some silver. If you sabotage those silver the opponent will always still be able to spend 5 coppers next turn and buy something better, since that's the worst his deck can perform. Sabotage is going to be pretty weak. However, if you consider an opponent who has bought some familiars, a harvest, a loan, a potion, and taken some curses, then removing the harvest might leave the opponent with really poor draws that can't replace the harvest.

Another important consideration is how much damage you do to your deck by taking a saboteur. There's generally an 'opportunity cost' for the saboteur in that you could have bought a different 5 cost card (like a festival), and a playing cost in that it takes up a slot in hand without providing any coins and takes an action. Sometimes however these costs aren't so bad, typically in a deck where there are no extra buys or you can use something like a golem to play your actions.

As an example of all that I'll mention I game I played recently that started with both my opponent and I buying young witches and villages (the bane card). The village stack ran out and we both started buying rabbles. I then took a saboteur and could use it very regularly with all the drawing cards. The saboteur needed a few plays but eventually took out enough villages so that the bane protection was removed and the young witches dealt a lot of curses. The rabbles then clogged up my opponent's deck even more but he could still buy some duchies, the next step being that the rabbles left duchies on top of the deck for the saboteurs to trash. So all in all, the combination of cards was very effective and any tempo lost in the development of my own deck was irrelevant.

3464

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challenge 2

« on: July 05, 2011, 02:11:58 pm »

There seem to be a number of decision problems with with simulator bot playing hamlets, unsurprising since their feature is choice. The hamlets are not discarding for extra buys and actions at the right time (or at any time perhaps). The simulator will also play hamlets before another drawing card such as an alchemist. This really handicaps any strategy other than vaults.

Even despite the simulator favouring the vault strategy strongly in cardplay, you can still make a strong alchemist deck for a colony game. Once it has a hand of 5 alchemists the bot will not discard cards to its own disadvantage when the opponent plays a vault. This deck would be stronger if you could add a hamlet, and it's barely weakened with a saboteur even without a hamlet for the extra action.

A single smithy also outperforms a single vault for colony games.

Code: [Select]

<player name="Complex Alchemist">
   <buy name="Colony"/>
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Colony"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Colony"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Colony"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Platinum"/>
   <buy name="Alchemist"/>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Outpost">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Outpost"/>
         <operator type="equalTo" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Potion">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Potion"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Silver"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
</player>


3465

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Beat Big Money

« on: July 05, 2011, 12:19:29 pm »

Start by using just a few actions cards and you should beat a pure money player. Just one smithy, or just one library, or just one militia should give you an advantage. Even just one woodcutter will be no worse than a pure money strategy.

Once you learn how action cards work in simple decks you can put more actions together and learn how that changes their success.

3466

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

« on: July 05, 2011, 12:02:34 pm »

I think if anything the question is if you can combine the University/Torturer with Tactician, Goons, Peddlers.

Once you add up the number of cards you're buying to make this happen it looks far too optimistic, considering you need a university for every extra action, considering you get dead turns when you play a tactician, considering that all your starting cards and silver will clog up the deck.

3467

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

« on: July 05, 2011, 11:01:39 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.

Hoard, ventures, and nobles is decent fast deck.

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

3468

Other Games / Re: Are any Dominion inspired games worth playing?

« on: July 04, 2011, 01:51:23 pm »

Ascension was ok. It seemed to deliver a fantasy deck building game with simple rules that you could play straight from opening the box. I'd worry about playing it 100 times though.

3469

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

« on: July 04, 2011, 08:03:15 am »

I think this software issue is a lot more complicated than some people are realising. Some issues that might seem trivial to one user of a system are major to another user of the system and the developers have to act accordingly. If there's a jerk with an offensive name on Isotropic you just accept that it's a free server and you ignore it. If someone creates an offensive name on a paid product it probably will need to be dealt with somehow by someone with some software, and that all needs paying for even though it's not Dominion.

If the new product can run both stand-alone and connected to a central sever then it will need AI for the stand alone. The AI then needs to be decent quality or people will want refunds. An awful lot of time then goes into AI and it drives other factors of the development, such as how many cards will be supported upon release and also the workings of the interface. I actually hope there's no AI at all, or just something limited such as a few kingdoms with scripts for a set of computer players.

Anyway, I suspect this will all mean that many people won't like the new product as it won't provide the same functionality as Isotropic. New products rarely do everything better than their predecessors. It'll do some things better, such as having Dominion rules available for beginners, but those things won't appeal to experienced isotropic users. As Donald says, we'll just have to get used to it. If there's money around the product then someone might find some new ways to promote the game to make it more accessible and competitive, so that might be good.

3470

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Which order to play?

« on: July 04, 2011, 07:07:33 am »

Why would you spend $2P on a Scrying Pool when Apothecaries are available and you have a deck full of Potions and Coppers? Seems a waste of a buy to me.

Apothecary and scrying pool are a better pair of cards in hand than two apothecaries, especially since most decks will mature and fill with something other than copper.

3471

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Ambassador vs Sea Hag

« on: July 04, 2011, 06:55:32 am »

I don't think it's a good idea to skip Ambassador in the face of Possession. If your opponent gets an Ambassador, you're going to have a lot of trouble to get $6P with all the junk in your deck.

It all depends. I played a game recently where my opponent took an ambassador and got the possession many turns before me and some provinces as well. There was something like king's court or golem in the kingdom though so as soon as my possession arrived the balance of power shifted until I had every useful card from his deck.

3472

Simulation / Re: Simulating Challenge 2

« on: July 03, 2011, 10:16:05 pm »

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.

If you skip to 3 or 4 player games to minimize this problem then you might run into other difficulties with some players competing for key cards such as alchemists and hamlets.

There will also be problems with discards from an opponent's vault. The simulator will probably discard poor cards even if they are needed for a horse traders, vault, or hamlet during its turn. The assistance from an opponent's vault will effectively become an attack instead.

3473

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Dominion:Underworld feedback (fan expansion)

« on: July 03, 2011, 09:59:49 pm »

Slums should cost 3. If nobody else gets them then they are weaker than a village since each opponent can still play reactions. If more than one player is competing for slums then the price is self-balancing. I've got two problems with it though. The first problem is that the village concept allows a lock down when paired with big draw cards. Once one player can draw and play all their deck each turn their slums might shut any opponent out of the game if they have no alternative source of actions. Secondly I'm not sure that hostile slums are a good theme.

The attack could instead be passive defence if you keep slums as a village - Cost 2. +2 actions, when you play a slum each other player may reveal a slum card from hand: if no player does so +1 card.

If you kept the attack component then it might work better as a type of criminal that fights amongst themselves: thugs +2$, name a treasure card, each opponent must discard a thugs, discard a named card, reveal a hand containing neither.

3474

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Opening of the Day #2

« on: July 01, 2011, 07:22:34 pm »

I'd probably look to play ambassador(s)/young witch/village(s) for a while, buying great halls while the size war is being fought, then taking an option to move onto vineyards. Curses, great halls, and vinyards will probably then deplete, or swindlers might deplete something else. I suspect that trying to ride out the deck expansion with philospher's stones for provinces will just result in you just getting 10 curses for a losing game. I suspect swindlers can be ignored as a calculated risk.

The extra attack cards probably push the balance in favour of ambassador over a chapel as there will be a continual deterioration of your deck and you might as well pass that problem back to your opponent. The villages also help ambassadors more than chapels.

Knowing the bane card for the young witch will change everything btw.

3475

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Supporting Alchemists

« on: July 01, 2011, 03:11:40 pm »

So, DG, I'll go back to my original question: what is necessary in order to make Alchemists a viable strategy, since Alchemist-BM is not going to cut it?

I'll stick to my original answer. They work best when you can repeatedly put your alchemists on top your deck in the clean up phase. This is either because you have shrunk your deck or can manage your cards so that you always put a potion into play. Once you can do that, you can get maximum benefit from other cards that rely on card combinations or large hand sizes since the alchemists will provide a large hand every turn.