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301

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Some observations from a Goko newbie

« on: December 26, 2012, 11:17:28 am »

On the other hand, it would be a nice feature if in a casual, unranked game one was allowed to give opponent zaps. I showed Dominion today (using paper cards) to my sister and her husband, they enjoyed the game, but to make it even and interesting I replaced two of my starting Coppers with Curses. And this worked really well, being able to do the same when playing online would make introducing beginners to the game really easier.

302

Help! / Could I end this faster?

« on: December 26, 2012, 05:29:14 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/25/game-20121225-115828-d5c10a1c.html

Opening 2/5 with Familiar was not that great, I started Torturer/nothing against his Potion/Scheme. Then we both went for Familiars (I got Potion turn 3 and he could not buy Familiar until turn 7, so my opening didn't hurt as much as I was afraid of) and his worked better due to Schemes.

After 12 turns I was losing Curses 3-5 and with no Familiar in hand I was quite sure I'm going to lose the split, quite likely even 3-7 (he had Scheme topdecked). The only thing I liked about my deck was that I had some economy (Vault, Goons, 3 Silvers) while he had mostly cantrips doing nothing as soon as Curses ran out (3 Familiars, 2 Schemes, 2 Pearl Divers - all he could use to buy good cards were Apothecary and Philosopher's Stone, one of each). So, seeing that once he gets some economy he should be able to buy Colonies, my plan was to end the game before he can do it. I decided to empty Pearl Divers and Schemes - two cheap cantrips, already a few taken, and they will let my pseudoengine run at least from time to time despite all Curses and Coppers getting in the way.

Next turns I was:
- buying as many cheap cards as possible when I played Goons (Scheme, Pearl Diver, Copper whenever I had buys left),
- buying big cards that sped up my plan (second Vault, 2 Grand Markets) or upped my score (a Province 3 turns before I ended the game) whenever I got Vault or some money but no Goons,
- topdecking Goons whenever possible, if not, Grand Market or Vault.

And somehow this worked - I ended the game 7 points ahead, just after he bought his first Colony and had some working economy (1 Goons, 2 Vaults, 1 Grand Market, 3 Philosopher's Stones at $5). So I'm mostly happy with how the game went, but it gave me a lot to think about and I'd appreciate an opinion of more experienced players.

I'm sure that my turn 11 Familiar buy was wrong, I should go with Scheme there - it was sure at least 6 Curses will be gone before I have any chance to play it. Was there any other place where I could speed my game up? Were Coppers for 1 extra point from Goons (turns 13, 16, 19) worth it? Do you see some other way to cope with so many Curses I overlooked?

303

Game Reports / Re: My first Stale mate!

« on: December 24, 2012, 03:38:59 am »

There is a simple possibility of a stalemate if both players go for a deck of 4x Bishop, 4x Fortress (12 VP per turn, no trashing, no buying).

304

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Really bad card ideas

« on: December 23, 2012, 10:57:50 am »

Moat should be "Dry Moat"

Fallen Monument
+0 VP. +$0.

(I was thinking about a playable Fallen Monument ruin, giving just VP and no cash, but it would need some penalty, Monument is $4 card and we have a ruin that is an $3 card - Woodcutter with no +$2)

305

Game Reports / Re: Post your cute double Tac decks here!

« on: December 23, 2012, 09:48:23 am »

http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201212/23/game-20121223-061545-739284c0.html

Board:
- important cards: Tactician, Black Market, Crossroads, Warehouse, Moneylender
- less important or unbought: Pawn, Duke, Talisman, Herbalist, Nomad Camp

Black Market findings:
- me: Mining Village, Tunnel (both helped)
- opponent: King's Court (!!!), Masquerade (not played even once), Laboratory, Market, Stables

I got 2/5 and opened Crossroads/Tactician, he started with Moneylender/Black Market. Next two turns I got Moneylender and Black Market as well, he went for Crossroads and Laboratory from BM. Then I went straight for double Tactician deck, using BM most of the time only to play cash in action phase, while he was way slower with this, buying second Tactician very late. Turn 10 I played BM/Tactician and next 6 turns I had 10 cards starting hand, buying a Province each of them, usually with some extra engine piece to keep me going while greening.

306

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Some observations from a Goko newbie

« on: December 23, 2012, 05:19:36 am »

But when I run out of zaps, then I have to buy more or grind away at playing 15,000 games of Base Dominion until I get good enough shuffle luck to overcome my starting disadvantage.

You don't need RL money to get more zaps. You can use Dominion coins to pay for them and you get those coins for each game you play (IIRC 15 for a win against human player, 10 for a win against bot, 2 for a loss). 350 coins give you 53 zaps, this should set you for some time.

307

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Why aren't *you* playing on Goko?

« on: December 23, 2012, 05:13:58 am »

An interesting point, though one could reasonably suggest that these are two different populations anyway--people who are playing vs. bots aren't going to hang around Isotropic anyway.

I am playing single player on Goko quite a lot. I have 143 multiplayer games on Isotropic. On the other hand, I have played one solo game on Iso (doing a solo challenge puzzle) and three multiplayer games on Goko.

When I started playing online I used Goko with base set only, buying Prosperity+Seaside+Intrigue soon after. I knew about Iso as I've already been registered here, but chose Goko because of solo play - I wanted to learn the cards and have time to think whenever I wanted.

I started playing on Iso when I knew all the cards Goko had at that time and wanted to learn Hinterlands, Cornucopia and Alchemy. This was also because I had to learn the interface because I wanted to play in the tournament. Since then I think my playing is 50/50. I choose Iso when I'm on a slower computer, when I want a human opponent, when I want an opponent stronger than me (Goko bots are not an easy opponent for me now, but I definitely win against them more often than not), when I want to practice using Potion-cost cards. I choose Goko when I want a relaxed game where I can stop for a while whenever I want, when I want to look at original card art which is way better than Iso pictures, when I want Dark Ages cards.

The problem of Goko multiplayer is simple - no automatch. You can find an opponent (all three times when I started a table someone asked to join in a few seconds, Iso automatch sometimes makes me wait longer), but I have no idea if the opponent's skill level will be similar to mine (that's why I prefer the bots, they are weaker than me but strong enough to give me an interesting game and win if I make mistakes).

Security awareness and concern. Rather, lack thereof.

What are the current security problems at Goko? I don't even see any place where their security awareness could affect me in any way - I log in via Gmail and pay them via a Polish internet payment company I used many times before. I know there were multiple problems in August during the failed launch, but do any of them still exist?

308

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Crazy Thing You Can Do On Goko

« on: December 23, 2012, 04:28:12 am »

Did you gain points for winning the game where you played 2 of the 3 seats?

I think this is an accidental, but nice feature, now it needs to be improved a bit. For me the best solution would be that you can take any number of seats in a game, but if any human player has two or more the game is automatically unranked (and opponents who take only one seat are warned and given opportunity to leave and find another game).

This would be a good moment also to reintroduce single seat games.

309

2012 / Re: Upsets

« on: December 22, 2012, 04:32:21 am »

In Asia they are quite decent team, one of the 5-6 strongest. Out of the title defence games only Australia was an opponent at a similar level, other teams were weaker.

310

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Cornucopia?

« on: December 22, 2012, 04:25:01 am »

DA cards are complicated. I guess it's way easier to learn bots how to use Hinterlands at least at a decent level.

311

Game Reports / Re: Explorer into a bishop - province engine

« on: December 21, 2012, 12:20:12 pm »

Squire is very nice to use as "glue" to put your engine together because once you have one getting next ones is easy. I remember a game yesterday where there were many terminals I wanted to use but nothing else than Squire that could provide +2 actions. So turn 4 when I had 4 coins I bought a Squire. 2 or 3 turns later I got a hand of Squire, Silver and 3 Coppers, used +2 Buy and got 3 more Squires, so I was done with need for villages for some time.

312

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Mega Pack on Goko

« on: December 21, 2012, 12:01:48 pm »

My point is this: You need 450 Gokoins to buy the stuff. So they can advertise that it costs $45. As long as I can pay $45 or less and get that thing, I'm happy. But, if you could only buy 200 Gokoins for $20 and I need to pay $60 in real money to get the thing I want, that's not cool.

As of now, that doesn't appear to be the case. It looks like I can pay $40 in real money to get what I want, which is great! I LOVE money! I guess my apprehension is that if I do that now, and Guilds comes out and I'm forced to get another chunk of 100 Gokoins for $10 for a $4 expansion, now I've paid more money than I should and I have these Gokoins that I don't care about. It makes me not want to buy their thing until Guilds comes out

There are multiple ways to buy Gokoins and you can buy even small amount if you want. 20 for $2 is the smallest available. So, if Guilds costs 40 Gokoins as expected, to get full Dominion you need to pay $44 (20+20+2+2).

313

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Mega Pack on Goko

« on: December 21, 2012, 10:09:03 am »

But that's still paying more real money, isn't it? If this thing works out with Bonus funny-money when all the expansions are released, fine, but I don't particularly enjoy the use of said funny-money in the first place...

I don't think I get your point.

I think they use Gokoins so that it's easier for both them and users when they have multiple games running with a decent part of player base playing more than one of them. And, while a bit strange for people using just one game, this isn't so hard to work out. To buy all the existing expansions you need 450 Gokoins. 230 Gokoins cost $20, so it's easy to see that you need to pay those $20 twice and you are set, not wasting any substantial amount of money. The fact that you have to make two separate payments can be a bit annoying, but with internet payment taking less than a minute I think I can live with it. I don't know how they will work out Guilds addition, but even if I have to make two micropayments of $2 to get 40 Gokoins I need, that's something like 2-3 minutes for the whole process including actually purchasing the set once I have Gokoins, not a huge problem for me.

Man, I love me some Power Grid, but the thought of playing it on the computer just isn't attractive to me. Oh well

I think playing Power Grid agains 3-4 decent bot opponents would be a great opportunity to learn, as games would speed up a lot allowing more plays. Currently a game of Power Grid requires multiple people to find 2 hours time window to meet, which, at least in my case, rarely happens. If additionally each of those people can play a game whenever he has 30 minutes to spare, they will understand the game much better and when they can meet for a RL game the experience will be much more interesting.

This holds for any longer game - it's hard to be good at it because it's hard to play it multiple times. Playing online solves a big part of this problem.

314

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Mega Pack on Goko

« on: December 21, 2012, 09:09:19 am »

I think it's extremely dishonest that they can say all Dominion expansions cost $X but you can't actually give them $X and get all the Dominion expansions.

You can. All expansions up to Dark Ages cost $40. If you really don't want extra 10 Gokoins on your account, just buy each part of Dark Ages separately. When Guilds come out, this will remain true, but the cost of all cards will go up to $44.

But I sit in front of a computer all day at work and my idea of fun isn't playing computer games. Dominion is just an exception to that rule because it's SO awesome (and I can also play it IRL).

I think you can play all of Goko's games RL, they don't design games, they make computer versions of various boardgames. The question is what other games are awesome for you. I don't know if I ever buy any other of their products because I haven't checked what games do they have rights for. If they do Carcassonne, 7 Wonders or Power Grid, I'd probably buy straight away.

Where is Cornucopia?

First Alchemy should be Cornucopia.

315

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Cornucopia?

« on: December 21, 2012, 05:23:46 am »

It seems everyone has this problem, they said they're running a script to fix this.

316

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2013 Edition

« on: December 21, 2012, 04:05:22 am »

Just run "python DominionCardSorter.py" and everything else should be self-explanatory from there!

I have downloaded Python 3.3 and your file. I tried to run it the way described in http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2004-July/030634.html - when I hit Enter I see a black window appear for a moment and then nothing happens. I'm on Windows XP. What am I doing wrong?

317

Rules Questions / Re: Counterfeit and Horn of Plenty

« on: December 19, 2012, 05:46:19 pm »

I'm asking in particular because I discovered that Goko doesn't allow this option, it automatically trashes whatever Treasure you play after Counterfeit, and I thought I'd clarify the ruling before writing them about it.

I have just played a game with Counterfeit to check this. When I play Counterfeit I am asked "Choose Treasure to play as Counterfeit or click Done" - when I click Done I can play the treasures and none of them gets trashed.

318

Council Room Feedback / Re: Anyone want to maintain councilroom?

« on: December 19, 2012, 02:22:53 pm »

I think Goko just should include starting decks in logs (which will be useful not only with adventures, but also with Shelter games) and indicate which players are bots. And I guess they can be talked into it, maybe not to do it tomorrow, but in some reasonable time. Probably we should start a "We want better logs" thread at getsatisfaction more or less when Hinterlands 2 is released and list all improvements to logs we would like to see.

I don't think we should exclude bots, at least the casual play bots. They are not bad. I think if we let them play on Iso they'd be around level 10-15 (I'm level 21 and have more or less 70% win rate against them). And we don't exclude level 5 or less players from Iso statistics (at least I guess we don't).

319

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Haggler/Mandarin

« on: December 19, 2012, 12:54:07 pm »

True. I looked too much at being sure I can gain Mandarin with HoP, forgetting about the Province.

So the 5th Treasure need to either be worth at least $2 or be Venture to get some 6th treasure and $8 in total for Province. For Colony only Platinum or Philosopher's Stone with a lot of cards in deck/discard works. Bank won't work as you'd have to play it before HoP.

320

Dominion General Discussion / Re: I rarely find [insert card here] useful, but when I do it is a TON of fun!

« on: December 18, 2012, 04:02:35 pm »

I have just been given 4 Oracles thanks to my opponent's Swindler. So I had to make them work and this was fun.

(hsiale draws: a Silver, a Copper, a King's Court, an Oracle, and a Worker's Village.)

— hsiale's turn 14 —
hsiale plays a Worker's Village.
... drawing 1 card and getting +2 actions and +1 buy.
hsiale plays a King's Court.
... and plays an Oracle.
... ... hsiale draws and reveals 2 Caravans.
... ... hsiale puts them back on the deck.
... ... doochie draws and reveals a Swindler and a Gold.
... ... hsiale makes doochie discard them.
... ... drawing 2 cards.
... and plays the Oracle again.
... ... (hsiale reshuffles.)
... ... hsiale draws and reveals a King's Court and a Caravan.
... ... hsiale puts them back on the deck.
... ... doochie draws and reveals a Copper and a Worker's Village.
... ... hsiale makes doochie put them back on the deck.
... ... drawing 2 cards.
... and plays the Oracle a third time.
... ... hsiale draws and reveals an Estate and a Caravan.
... ... hsiale discards them.
... ... doochie draws and reveals a Copper and a Worker's Village.
... ... hsiale makes doochie discard them.
... ... drawing 2 cards.
hsiale plays a King's Court.
... and plays a Caravan.
... ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
... and plays the Caravan again.
... ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
... and plays the Caravan a third time.
... ... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
hsiale plays a Caravan.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
hsiale plays a Caravan.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
hsiale plays an Oracle.
... hsiale draws and reveals a Baron and a Province.
... hsiale discards them.
... doochie draws and reveals a Crossroads and a Copper.
... hsiale makes doochie discard them.
... drawing 2 cards.
hsiale plays a Crossroads.
... hsiale reveals a Province, 5 Silvers, 2 Coppers, and 2 Oracles.
... drawing 1 card and getting +3 actions.
hsiale plays an Oracle.
... hsiale draws and reveals a Baron and a Copper.
... hsiale discards them.
... doochie draws and reveals a Baron and a Silver.
... hsiale makes doochie discard them.
... (hsiale reshuffles.)
... drawing 2 cards.
hsiale plays a Caravan.
... drawing 1 card and getting +1 action.
hsiale plays an Oracle.
... hsiale draws and reveals a Baron and a Province.
... hsiale puts them back on the deck.
... doochie draws and reveals 2 Inns.
... hsiale makes doochie discard them.
... drawing 2 cards.
hsiale plays a Swindler.
... getting +$2.
... doochie turns up a Swindler and trashes it.
... replacing doochie's Swindler with an Oracle.
hsiale plays a Baron.
... getting +1 buy.
... discarding an Estate.
... getting +$4.
hsiale plays 5 Silvers and 3 Coppers.
hsiale buys a Province.
hsiale buys a Province.
hsiale buys a Fishing Village.
(hsiale reshuffles.)

I managed to draw and play every card in my deck except the second Baron (and both Barons were in my deck due to my opponent Swindling my Trader and Caravan).

321

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Haggler/Mandarin

« on: December 17, 2012, 02:31:13 pm »

Horn of Plenty lets you do it for quite long (not indefinitely as finally Mandarins will run out and this will happen before you get all the Provinces in 3-player games or when your opponent buys Mandarins) as long as there are 5 different treasures available - so you need either Platinum (with added bonus that you can buy a Colony this way), Potion or another kingdom card that is a treasure. This is covered in this solo challenge: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=5471.0

322

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Cornucopia?

« on: December 13, 2012, 05:28:25 pm »

I don't know, it just did so. Haven't looked into it before there were 30 or so cards trashed.

323

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Cornucopia?

« on: December 13, 2012, 05:10:16 pm »

The card display had 4 pages (36 different cards in the kingdom, should have added Fairgrounds but this would simplify setup).

I guess I'm not seeing what had four pages...

There are 4 buttons above the trash. If you click the top right one you will see non-basic cards used in this game. In standard games there are 10 of them and they fit on one screen. Here 4 screens are needed (10 Knights, 9 kingdom cards and the bane, Spoils, 5 Ruins, 5 Prizes, 3 Shelters, Madman and Mercenary).

324

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Cornucopia?

« on: December 13, 2012, 04:31:38 pm »

All 3 should work now.

325

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Cornucopia?

« on: December 13, 2012, 04:23:57 pm »

I kept the kingdom, so it was no problem replaying the game, and this time doing it the way that screenshots show full power of those cards. I put something on all 5 mats used in the game (which was not that easy, because the bot, after initial Young Witch cursing, went for multiple Knights and trashed my Goons and Pirate Ships before I could use them.

The main screen:
http://img105.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=429285412_img1_122_449lo.jpg

Cards page 2:
http://img120.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=429270326_img2_122_342lo.jpg

40 cards in the Trash just before I buy last Estate to end the game:
http://img203.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=429258671_img3_122_118lo.jpg