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5051

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Any ideas for a lower-variance Black Market deck?

« on: February 02, 2013, 05:45:45 pm »

Now I'm wondering if perhaps if it makes sense to have each of these ideas be a separate on-line promo cards.

Isotropic Black Market: 25 random cards not in Supply.
Full Black Market: All cards not in Supply.
Vaccarino Black Market: All cards from a random expansion.  (maybe x2 for the mini-expansions)

That way, there are more things you can spend your coins on...

I do not think it makes sense. Let's keep the promos distinct and special.

You don't spend coins on promos, you spend the VP shields. It takes endless adventuring to get them all.

Just tell 'em everything available except potion-costers (even if the game has one too) and Young Witch, with only one Knight. This is better than full/isotropic for the already-given reasons. Someday when there aren't other things I am waiting for them to get done already, they can look at making a user option somewhere to specify isotropic-style or whatever.

5052

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Any ideas for a lower-variance Black Market deck?

« on: February 02, 2013, 05:40:38 pm »

Heh, maybe the black market could contain cards that the player hadn't bought yet.

I think for a typical player that has acquired Black Market that would just be the other promos, and probably not all four.

In the long run a few campaign levels will sprinkle in potentially unowned cards, and then of course you can play against someone else who started a game with expansions you don't have. And if they have Black Market and it's in this game, their cards that you don't have can show up in the Black Market deck.

Very slight rules change I know.
But you could use a random $3 or less card that is already in the kingdom as the bane.
You don't really need to add an 11 pile.

I prefer to follow the rules in the absence of a compelling reason not to. There may not be a $2 or $3 on the table; and people used to Young Witch will be wondering where the 11th pile is when they see something marked as the bane.

5053

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: February 02, 2013, 05:30:44 pm »

Sorry if this has been asked already, but why did you have Trusty Steed "discard" your deck when you gain 4 Silvers?  On the whole, I suppose that gets the Silver to you a bit quicker, without going so far as to top deck them.  But what was the thought process?  Perhaps I should be asking why you added 4 Silvers to the "discard" option.

I wanted four options, and they needed to all be different. +2 Buys was paired with +2 Actions at one point but I only wanted one prize to give +buy. Anyway it wasn't cutting it as a separate option, even though there's a certain something to just mirroring Pawn. So, a 4th option, and well gaining cards is a go-to thing there, as a very basic thing you can do that's worth doing, and gaining Silvers is a simpler version of it. It was four Silvers to be enough to feel it and you flip your deck so that you get to them and your Steed faster. You don't get a Trusty Steed turn one, you often don't see it many times, which is why Tournament puts Prizes on your deck.

I am happy with the Silvers option, I pick it sometimes. If I were making the Prizes today I might put +3 Actions on Bag of Gold and then replace the +2 Actions option on Trusty Steed, I don't know what with.

5054

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Any ideas for a lower-variance Black Market deck?

« on: February 02, 2013, 05:15:49 pm »

One consequence I hadn't thought of before, is that if BM automatically has all cards not in your kingdom, then BM's presence will guarantee an 11th pile, Ruins, and Potions.

That's true. The issue with the 11th pile is just that it pushes a pile to page two. The Ruins won't matter most of the time and won't be visible, and if you want one whatever. Potion is mostly just relevant for Swindler, although for sure you aren't buying one just to try to line it up with Black Market and turning over a card you need it for. Trade Route is just some familiar marks on piles that don't matter much; it's already like that in some games with Trade Route. Spoils / Madman / Mercenary / Prizes are all invisible page two things.

So I like: the Black Market is one of each card the game instance creator has that isn't in the game, except for Young Witch and cards with Potion in the cost. For Knights, just include one at random.

IRL I use a single expansion that I'm not playing with for Black Market. The beauty of this is that you can know what's in there without looking at a list. It's Prosperity, there will be some treasures and $7's and VP tokens. However they may be using all expansions they have in this particular game online, and aren't guaranteed to have anything beyond base set and Black Market. I think "nearly everything" is next best though, letting me not bother looking at the list because man, it's all in there.

5055

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Game freezes

« on: February 02, 2013, 05:23:45 am »

In my cases it was not due to disconnection. It was just that the game and log stopped - the very last played card wasn't even displayed in the log. I can still zoom in on cards, but cannot do anything else anymore (nor write in the chat).

Like two weeks ago there sometimes used to appear a message that I lost internet connection (apart from Goko everything else worked fine though), and whether I'd like to reconnect. However, clicking OK on this message did literally nothing, so the game was still frozen.

Now there doesn't even appear a message anymore. The game just stops running.

When I say "freeze" I mean, you can click on cards to read them but not much else.

I have not seen a reconnect message.

Obv. it sounds like your opponents quit out of Goko, and this caused it to lock up waiting to communicate with them. We can't tell for sure but it's a problem we would expect; remember that your opponent may be 13. If that's the issue then the solution in the end is friend/blocked lists and having players time out (ideally letting you choose between claiming victory or continuing vs. a bot). For sure it's important to fix.

If against all odds it's not people quitting then the question is, what is your OS/browser, is there something relating the different cases that can help locate the bug.

5056

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Game freezes

« on: February 02, 2013, 04:14:04 am »

I am using Chrome and only playing against bots. Most of the time it's fine. I have seen it freeze due to a lost connection, verified by trying to access other sites. I haven't seen other crashes since the Chrome update.

5057

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Any ideas for a lower-variance Black Market deck?

« on: February 02, 2013, 04:07:16 am »

I mean, I don't really know any other game where promos have become part of the regular game in this manner. I know nothing about Magic, does it even have promos?

In the early days there was a card you only got at one con, that they then included in an issue of the Duelist; and there were cards that came with books, which were never available other ways, which included one very powerful card, Mana Crypt. These cards are all legal in the format that lets you play with any cards. I think they recognized that this sucked and since then promos have just been normal cards from expansions, either the same as in the expansion, or with alternate art, or foil, or both of those, or giant-sized, possibly with alternate art.

I do not have much experience here, but Dominion, Kingdom Builder, and Gauntlet of Fools all have promos, and that's three different publishers.

It's also weird because some of the promos were just regular cards that were taken out because they wanted a promo.

Zero of them are this. Four of them are cards that were taken out for other reasons and then that made them available to be promos (Governor is the exception and was just designed to tie in with Puerto Rico).

So I'm not really sure where I stand: Should we just embrace the promos as part of the Dominion canon or should we treat them as variants? If someone has compelling arguments either way I'm interested.

We are talking about Goko.

On Goko, promos are hard to get; currently you need to beat several campaigns and then choose to "buy" one over the other promos. Black Market and Stash aren't even programmed yet but of course they will be.

Once you get the promo though, that's it, it will randomly show up in games you start just as often as any other card you got. The only thing that distinguishes it is that most people won't have it.

For sure you do not want extra setup decisions to spring into being if you have Black Market show up in a game you start. To do such a thing for Pro games you would need to pick a player to get to make that decision, which would not be great. For casual games you could have the decision made in an options panel somewhere, and just stay whatever you picked last for future games that you create that have the card.

But whatever; here is something to spend zero energy on, instead doing things that will make the game better, like making the unplayable campaigns playable. The FAQ's "for example, you could agree to use one of every Kingdom card you own that is not a part of the Supply" looks good, let's go with that, problem solved, only a little time wasted. Let's put "hey the Black Market deck could maybe be generated some cool way, whether or not it's some way that will suck the joy out of it for people who actually love the card" way way way down on the list of things to pretend to someday get around to.

5058

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko game speed

« on: February 02, 2013, 01:10:10 am »

You don't need to see the numbers change. Anything you don't have, they must have, barring games where VP cards are getting Swindled or what have you.

Well, some players like to play games with more than one opponent, after all. 

In games with 4-5 players, I don't bother tracking the score; I'm not passing up on the last Province even if I know I'm losing, because man it's not getting any better. In a 3-player game I usually don't track the score but might. However we are specifically talking about games on Goko. In a 3-player bot game on Goko I am for sure not tracking the scores of individual bots, and with non-bots I'll play on fast and have plenty of time to see what everyone buys.

5059

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko game speed

« on: February 01, 2013, 11:30:45 pm »

See, this is where I find it helpful talking to myself in my commentary videos - I find myself keeping track of all the Victory cards bought better - you may have noticed some of my Bishop games involve me trying to figure exactly how ahead I am.

Yes, when I want to remember the score in a Goko game, I say it out loud.

5060

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko game speed

« on: February 01, 2013, 10:33:42 pm »

With 2 players, if you count how many Provinces you have, you can figure out how many they have.

My problem comes when I see green, but don't notice the numbers change. Then I have to figure out if something bad just happened, open the log, figure out what that green flash was, then I lose my flow.

You don't need to see the numbers change. Anything you don't have, they must have, barring games where VP cards are getting Swindled or what have you.

5061

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Any ideas for a lower-variance Black Market deck?

« on: February 01, 2013, 10:32:20 pm »

The big thing is to preserve the value of Black Market to the people who currently value it. Some people like being able to play treasures and then Tactician, somehow I have to mention that, but the big selling point to the card, again for the people who actually love it, is the high variance you don't like. *I would preserve the high variance!* There's no point making the card more fun for people who currently hate it if you also make it less fun for the people who love it. I get zero pleasure being the only one to have that Witch or Chapel or what have you if the Black Market is in fact all Witches or all Chapels.

5062

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Goko game speed

« on: February 01, 2013, 03:56:37 pm »

My biggest problem with the speed is that either the important things are not slow enough when playing at the only acceptable speed (very fast) or the lack of perma-log.

If they are set in their ways that the log has to be pulled up and down and cannot be open all the time or integrated like a normal person would expect, then the amount of time cards pause as they are gained/trashed/etc when they are magnified needs a floor, no matter what speed you play at (like the Ascension app).

Sometime you see a green flash at the end of an opponents turn, check the numbers of the piles and realize you've just lost count of the VPs somehow and have no idea what was bought despite having a firm grasp on it a few seconds ago.

I play on fast, switching to very fast only when there are 2-3 bots. On fast the speed for gaining Ruins etc., is a little slower than I'd like. On very fast you can't really tell what's going on, but I'm not sure I'd change it. Maybe card gains and Knights etc. could be slightly slower.

They just answered a question about the log, it sounded like they'd someday have one on the same screen for people playing on PC's.

With 2 players, if you count how many Provinces you have, you can figure out how many they have.

5063

Goko Dominion Online / Re: A Goko Quitters Blacklist?

« on: February 01, 2013, 01:25:56 am »

The intention is to let people have friend lists and blocked lists. I don't know when that will happen but it's obv. worth having.

5064

Dominion General Discussion / Re: How to play the "iconic" kingdom

« on: February 01, 2013, 01:24:14 am »

Clearly we wait to find out what the iconic card from Guilds is, add Stash, and then play a 10-card kingdom.

I would have gone with Black Market or Governor to represent the Promos.

I believe DXV has previously said that stash is his favorite promo. I can't find the quote now though.

If I remember right, his reasoning was that it was
1) Exotic
2) Simple enough that it could be a promo and doesn't need a rulebook/faq
3) Not something that you'd miss if you didn't get promos

but I could be misremembering.

Stash is the promo that does the best job of being a promo, for the reasons you cite. As cards I like Black Market and Governor more.

5065

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 31, 2013, 03:55:24 pm »

I can pick a poster child for each set though.

Main: Laboratory
Intrigue: Nobles
Seaside: Wharf
Alchemy: Golem
Prosperity: Bank
Cornucopia: Fairgrounds
Hinterlands: Haggler
Dark Ages: Graverobber

It's interesting to me that you chose Bank for Prosperity, considering it would have been an Alchemy card if the sets had come out in the intended order. If Philosopher's Stone were in Prosperity instead, would that still be your pick for the set?

Lab is a vanilla card that you buy a lot (so, better than a vanilla card you want less often). Nobles is a victory card that does something and has a choose-one. Wharf is a duration card where the effect is the same next turn (well as written, obv. not using an action on Wharf makes it different). Golem gets in the action chaining theme and the slow to resolve unintended theme, and has potion in the cost. Bank is a treasure, cares about treasures, and costs $7. Fairgrounds cares about variety in your deck directly, which is the broadest form of the variety caring-aboutness. Haggler doesn't have a when-gain for itself, but gives everything a when-gain. It when-gains the most. Graverobber upgrades cards and involves the trash.

Philosopher's Stone might not have cost $7. If it didn't I might pick Hoard - a treasure, involves treasures, costs $6 at least. I would represent treasures-that-do-things over costs-$7 and VP-tokens.

5066

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 31, 2013, 03:45:02 pm »

How about a Kingdom? What condiments should a Kingdom have to try to people get a feel at the greatest percentage of the game from just one game? (or better, several games with the same Kingdom). I'm not asking for a simple Kingdom, but the contrary:

Which 10 Kingdom cards would you take to a desert island? (assume you can take an unlimited supply of base cards)

This seems too much like busywork. In the desert island scenario I would try to pick cards suited to playing other games, because I will not want to play endless games of "Dominion with these ten cards." I would take Rats because there are twenty and Knights because there are 11 different cards there. If I take Young Witch do I get an extra pile? If Black Market do I get a Black Market deck? I take cards with different colors. Probably I don't take into account "will this make for a good game of Dominion" at all.

I teach people the game with 5 cards from the set I'm testing and 5 from the other set I brought today; if I go easy on them at all it's by not including anything in game one that requires remembering a wording change I haven't printed out. I want to make a good first impression but don't feel like I have to do anything special to do that.

You can try to pick 10 cards to show off as much of Dominion as possible; go for it.

5067

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 31, 2013, 03:13:02 am »

What do you think is the card that embodies the spirit of Dominion best? Say someone where to ask you "Dominion, what's that all about?" and you could only show him one card, what would it be?

Well I haven't made any cards specifically so they'd sum up Dominion in one card, so I can only fail here. Which letter in Davio best sums you up as a person? We want the real Davio; that letter has to really embody your spirit.

The list of ideas for Golem included having it take turns with its own deck. "If you have a Golem deck, take a turn with it; otherwise, set one up. / At the end of the game, combine your Golem deck with your deck." There you go.

Dominion is a game of building a deck. You have resources, abilities, and VP, and they all go in your deck. Your options are on the table and vary from game to game. There aren't any cards that communicate enough of this to bother. Show someone Grand Market and they've got no clue what this game is about. It might as well be Curse.

I can pick a poster child for each set though.

Main: Laboratory
Intrigue: Nobles
Seaside: Wharf
Alchemy: Golem
Prosperity: Bank
Cornucopia: Fairgrounds
Hinterlands: Haggler
Dark Ages: Graverobber

I can see arguing for Village, Apothecary, or Squire.

5068

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Greatest Moments uhh... I mean Misclicks of Dominion 2013

« on: January 31, 2013, 12:31:57 am »

This game is going too slow, I'm going to get in another game on the side. Just tell me when it's my turn okay.

5069

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Which Internet Browsers Work Best?

« on: January 30, 2013, 10:14:16 pm »

I seem to remember in another thread Donald saying that he was using the beta version of the next version of Chrome with good results.

I never downloaded the beta. I was using Chrome; it stopped working; then Chrome was updated and it started working again. That's where it is now. I am having no problems with Chrome. It does not do a good job of regaining lost connections; maybe that code isn't in yet, I dunno.

5070

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Random city question

« on: January 30, 2013, 06:30:26 pm »

I have looked into the bot trap subforum, and I think SMF would require a lot of mods and jiggering to get that set up.

Really? Posters with 0 posts are Newbies; posters with 1 are Pawns. You make the Newbie group only allow posting in that one forum. They can read them all but can only post in that one. That seems like a normal forum software option.

5071

Rules Questions / Re: Border Village and Top-Decking?

« on: January 30, 2013, 06:13:58 pm »

Donald, I read this thread and it all makes sense, given the rules that have been stated.

I'm just curious about the reasoning that covering a card in the discard pile loses track of it.  Is there a specific interaction this simplifies?  I'm not suggesting it should be any other way, but I could also understand if a coarse "it's in the discard" was all the cards cared about for tracking.

The rules don't let you look through your discard pile without permission. So uh that's something. Otherwise it's playing it safe.

5072

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.

« on: January 30, 2013, 06:05:38 pm »

How to you refer to Cities when no piles are empty, when 1 pile is empty, and when 2 piles are empty?

In the past I usually just said "boomtown," regardless of the number of empty piles. If I wanted to refer to the number of empty piles I said how many, or something like "they didn't get going" or "the Menageries ran out," you know. I mean the empty pile may well be part of this story.

Okay I am looking through old posts on the secret forums. In one place onigame says "+2/+2;" in another Locus says "at max;" and once I say "super Boomtowns." Every other place the number of empty piles was either spelled out or not mentioned.

So, if we're your role models, and you decide against spelling it out, there's no special term to let you know it hasn't upgraded, but with one empty pile it's +2/+2 and with two it's max or super.

5073

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Random city question

« on: January 30, 2013, 05:48:42 pm »

Thanks for noticing this -- it prompted me to go look and it seems that someone is spamming our registration.  Though it predates this poll, so the two don't seem related.

If bots are an issue, one thing you can do is have a "bot trap" subforum. You have to post there once to be able to post anywhere else. Bots don't know that and so never post.

5074

Rules Questions / Re: Border Village and Top-Decking?

« on: January 30, 2013, 03:42:47 pm »

Sure, that's not confusing me; it's that gaining necessarily means the thing has to visit a discard pile and then possibly leave that seems weird to me. I guess my mind is stuck on something like bureaucrat, where it never visits the discard (right?), but goes straight on the deck, though I suppose there is a subtle difference there? I mean, this makes sense, it just surprised me.

It is in the discard pile when when-gain things happen. This is a consequence of when-gain triggering after gaining. Gaining put it in your discard pile. So that's where it is.

"When you pass go, collect $200." Has the thimble already moved when you collect the $200? "When x" happens after x in almost all games.

Bureaucrat's Silver doesn't visit the discard pile. There has to be some way to indicate that you gain a card to a certain location, without making the card texts incomprehensible. "Put it on top of your deck rather than into your discard pile" is too much. No-one ever puts the Silver into their discard pile first, and the Dark Ages rulebook covers this immediately after "lose track," for people who suddenly wonder about it.

That actually clarifies the original requested ruling here though - BV goes into discard, then lab goes into discard, then it can be pulled off by royal seal, but now because it stopped being the top of the discard pile for a second, even though it is now again, BV can't be pointed to as being 'when gained' by RS anymore, and so that effect fizzles.
Which would imply that... I'm still not sure on the top-deck-BV THEN gain another card thing. I am guessing you can't, but it doesn't seem entirely clear.

"Lose track" *only* stops cards from being moved. Once Border Village triggers, it will happen, there is just ordering to deal with. Border Village can end up trashed or whatever and that doesn't matter.

5075

Rules Questions / Re: Border Village and Top-Decking?

« on: January 30, 2013, 03:18:23 pm »

On the other hand, I'm also confused about what exactly he's saying about the whole circumstance below. The Border Village goes to the discard pile BEFORE you make the choice of whether to activate the RS or the BV gain effect first?

"When-gain" happens directly *after* gaining (though it can be delayed by resolving other when-gain abilities first).