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Messages - Aidan Millow

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51
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Least favorite card?
« on: March 07, 2014, 12:42:00 am »
1: Torturer (Swingy and the game can easily be decided early but still need a lot of miserable playing out unless you want to resign)
2: Tournament (Really, really swingy)
3: Rebuild (Very frequently makes most of the rest of the board almost irrelevant)

52
Goko Dominion Online / Re: can't log in at all
« on: March 01, 2014, 09:16:13 pm »
Is the problem people are having a white text screen coming up instead of the regular login screen? I had this problem and got around it by clicking play.

53
Looking at the log I'm (unfortunately) pretty sure that this was just your opponent playing badly. Not only does every pillage play cripple a turn but I'm pretty sure that scavenger BM is just plain faster than your strategy.

54
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: New Sporcle Quiz: Dominion By the Numbers!
« on: February 27, 2014, 11:32:09 pm »
17, couldn't remember the exact name count and didn't think of KC for the max starting handsize one. Also the vineyards question fails to take looters, rats or young witch (but that's kind of implied out by 9 kingdom piles) into account.]

Edit: Realized that I really should use spoiler tags

55
Help! / Re: A Rude Opponent Claims I Made A Mistake
« on: February 25, 2014, 05:13:41 pm »
In the interests of getting better: Fap_on_it makes what seem to me to be several glaring play mistakes involving Margrave and spice merchant:

Turn 7: He keeps SM, Copper, Silver instead of triple Silver (which is reasonable enough) and then draws 2 with SM meaning he misses Caravan money.

Turn 9: He keeps Crossroads, Estate, SM (again instead of triple silver), and ends up trashing a silver and being unable to buy anything (on his potion turn).

Is the cycling Fap_on_it is getting in these turns really worth the buying power he looses or was this more likely mistakes made due to being on tilt or something?

56
Dominion Articles / Re: Strategies in intrigue
« on: February 14, 2014, 03:58:16 pm »
Played again tonigh with the same 10 cards. and i won! it seemed ineffective at first, he was buing provinces at turn 6, but the torturers really did some work this time, i was able to chain a lot of them.

The guys are absolutely right about engines being superior most of the time and being more fun for the engine builder. The question is: Do your friends still like the game? Because: To watch engine player's turns is really awful for BM players, especially real life and especially with chained torturers involved.

I'm serious. If I try to build complex engines real life with relatively new players they might not want to play again.

Entertaining anecdote along these lines. I was playing with my family (none of whom really build engines) and using a Menagerie engine with a bunch of other cards in it that required me to think about which one I'd play next. After a couple of turns of drawing approximately my deck and buying double fairgrounds I was feeling very self conscious about how over half the game was spent in my turn and I was in the middle of another such turn when my mother announced "I could kill you." She was in fact talking to a fly that she'd been paying attention to for quite some time and had now landed near her.

57
If you want a simple first game then I'd vote for no durations. People who don't know the game will sometimes have a horrible time remembering when and when not to discard them and get their benefits.
I'd also avoid attacks that scale in multiples as multiplayer games can get ridiculous with them.
There are also some cards with choices that new players simply won't know what to do with and you should avoid them as well.

Hence I'd rule out the following:
Pawn, Swindler, Saboteur, Torturer, Tribute, Embargo, Haven, Lighthouse, Native Village, Ambassador, Fishing Village, Caravan, Pirate ship, Sea Hag, Merchant Ship, Outpost, Tactician, Wharf.

Here's some things that you probably want in your first game.

Terminal Draw:
Courtyard, Masquerade, Steward, Nobels, Ghost Ship

A Village:
Shanty Town, Mining Village, Nobels, Bazaar

Virtual Money and +buy (the latter being contained in the former here):
Secret Chamber, Steward, Baron, Bridge, Conspirator, Minion, Cutpurse, Navigator, Salvager, Bazaar, Treasury

An Attack:
Minion, Cutpurse, Ghost Ship

A cantrip:
Great Hall, Wishing Well, Mining Village, Upgrade, Pearl Diver, Bazaar, Treasury

Here's a possible suggestion:
Courtyard, Shanty Town, Wishing Well, Bridge, Nobels, Smugglers, Warehouse, Cutpurse, Salvager, Bazaar

58
Also, there's another item of potential 'bad form' that could be mentioned here.

7: Complaining about luck
Honestly I occasionally do this myself and then usually apologise as I'm sure that it is bad form. It does get frustrating when you lose because of luck but dominion is a game where this happens.

59
People who would appreciate a gg if it was given don't necessarily 'want' it enough to ask for it. Given that people tend to quit after a couple of seconds one can't really wait if one actually wants to say it.
ok this i don't buy, if you care about getting a gg you don't quit after a few seconds, and if you do, you don't care.
I'm not actually talking about 'caring.' I'm talking about getting a miniscule warmth inside you and moving on. I only wait a couple of seconds between saying gg and quitting myself.

60
Quote from: Aidan Millow
On 6: The thing about saying gg is that people have greatly differing reactions to it. It makes me feel better after a game when my opponent says gg, regardless of the outcome; I assume this is the case for most people as well. Obviously some people are offended by this but I'm almost certain that they are in the minority and furthermore (and I apologise to anyone whom what I'm about to say offends) the people who assume that a winning "gg" is a gloat and get noticeably upset by this are people who I'd rather not play with anyway. So I choose to cater to the feelings of the majority rather than them.

This is definitely the best argumentation I've yet heard for your side. I still disagree though, and I'd make the following point: while it may be true that most people like it if their opponents write gg, there can't be any disadvantage if you only write gg if the losing player does so first. People like you who want to see a gg from their opponent only have to write gg first, and will still get one. As long as there isn't anyone who, after he lost, needs his opponent to write gg first to feel good (which would make no sense whatsoever) this would be the ideal solutions for all sides.

People who would appreciate a gg if it was given don't necessarily 'want' it enough to ask for it. Given that people tend to quit after a couple of seconds one can't really wait if one actually wants to say it.

Then there's this whole argument of "gg" being good manners. Look, if you really want to exhibit good manners, put in the effort to say something more thoughtful (just a little bit!), and maybe empathize with your opponent a little if you just crushed him instead of gloating like you've just snatched candy from a baby with Down syndrome.

Simple courtesies are typically something that requires next to no effort (like saying "fine" is response to "how's it going?") it is obviously nicer to say more but it's quite a lot more effort (again, people quit after a couple of seconds). Less than saying "fine" (ie saying nothing or responding with a grunt) is usually considered rude. Obviously this is different to the first "gg" but I feel that it's still nicer to put in the minimal effort to say "gg" than it is to say nothing.

61
My opinions

On 3.5: If the game is lagging badly on your turn you shouldn't be obligated to resign unless you're already loosing substantially. You should probably apologise and you definitely shouldn't start a game if you expect to suffer lag like this but, given that games are rated (regardless of how ridiculous the ratings might be) you shouldn't be forced to resign a 50:50 game due to circumstances beyond your control (This is what the wording of your OP implies to me, if that's not the case you might want to change it).

On 6: The thing about saying gg is that people have greatly differing reactions to it. It makes me feel better after a game when my opponent says gg, regardless of the outcome; I assume this is the case for most people as well. Obviously some people are offended by this but I'm almost certain that they are in the minority and furthermore (and I apologise to anyone whom what I'm about to say offends) the people who assume that a winning "gg" is a gloat and get noticeably upset by this are people who I'd rather not play with anyway. So I choose to cater to the feelings of the majority rather than them.

62
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Mega Kingdom Strategy
« on: January 04, 2014, 02:34:07 pm »
I always figured that some sort of rush involving stonemason and cost reduction would be best here.

63
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Lab Variant (?) - Village of Outcasts
« on: December 23, 2013, 05:12:04 pm »
I do think that this is too weak for 5. Compared to Inn's on play you're throwing away a card that you most likely want as opposed to those you don't want and only getting bonus actions based on how much you wanted the card you discarded. It's not 2 weak though, you're getting either a small hand size increase or multiple extra actions with no cost in hand size. I'd think this would be a pretty reasonable card at 3 or 4.

I really don't like the card drawing three, it might be balanced (I'm sceptical though) but it's not interesting . You play the card, draw 3 and discard a silver or something if you have more actions you want to play. You're getting all the actions and all the draw you need from one variety of card.

All of this was assuming a "may" in the text, using the other option would make the 5 cost 3 cards version more reasonable and the 3 or 4 cost version weaker. I still feel like the 3 or 4 cost with a may is the most interesting version though.

64
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Cards with maximum buying value
« on: December 18, 2013, 01:21:37 am »
Pirate Ship's maximum value is not infinite.  It doesn't have a maximum value.  Those are different things.
So technically those top two cards are not on the top 10 list, since they don't have maximum values.
Shouldn't you say the same for Vault, Secret Chamber, Store Room, and Bank?  There's no upper limit on the number of available Coppers in the Supply.

Uh... There's only 60 - number of players * 7 Coppers in the supply...

No, there's no upper limit.  There just happen to be only 60 Coppers printed in each set.  But you can combine all the Coppers from all the sets in all the universes into one pile.  It's in the rules to Intrigue.  The Copper pile was intended to be inexhaustible.

"Copper, Silver, and Gold cards are the basic Treasure cards, and they are available in every game. After each player takes 7 Copper cards, place the remaining Copper cards and all of the Silver and Gold cards in face-up piles in the Supply. The Treasure cards from Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue can be combined, since these cards are intended to be in abundant enough supply to not run out. (If a type of Treasure card does run out, that becomes an empty pile in the Supply, which can be important for game ending conditions.)"

There's still a limit to how many cards you can get into your hand (Unless you can perpetually play, trash and draw cards with procession and graverobber, please tell me if that's possible.)

65
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Donald X on Rebuild
« on: December 16, 2013, 11:32:20 pm »
Could Rebuild have worked in the "Remodel for victory cards" if it trashed itself on play?

Something like:
Rebuild
Action-$4
Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a victory card. You may trash that card and gain a victory card costing up to $3 more than it, if you do trash this card.

66
Dominion General Discussion / Silverspawn's trashing formula
« on: December 13, 2013, 04:25:39 pm »
I was still only lurking here when Silverspawn started a fight with half of the forum by suggesting that lookout was a better trasher for 3 than ambassador but I watched it with amusement and interest. One thing that interested me was his 'ratio' for the reduction in deck size vs the damage done to your current hand (which no-one actually refuted by the way) and I decided to reprise this here.

Silverspawn's 'ratios' were off as he treated all cards in hand as being of equal worth when they're clearly not; estates are worth nothing financially so removing them does nothing to harm your current hand while the spot taken in your hand by the trasher is likely worth 2 as it could have been a silver.

Here are my revised 'ratios'.

Lookout:
1/2

Ambassador (treating junking your opponent one card as equivalent to trashing one):
1/2 (does not return anything, just junks your opponent), 2/3 (returns a single copper), 3/4 (returns 2 coppers), 2/2 (returns a single estate), 3/2 (returns 2 estates)

Obviously Ambassador is superior here but I thought it would be interesting extending this to other trashers that cost 4 or less (for simplicity's sake I'm only going to consider gaining money and trashing copper or estates even though most of these cards are worse than normal in such a situation).

Chapel (obviously has many more possibilities but I'm going to assume you trash all the estates and coppers you see):
3/5-3/2 (collides with your other opener), 4/6-4/3 (doesn't)

Moneylender:
1/0

Remodel:
0/2 (draws without estates and doesn't trash a copper), 0/-1 (trashes estate, grains silver (yes I am aware that gaining a card worth 3 is not equivalent to the worth of 3 money in your hand))

Masquerade (early on +2 cards vs 2 money is a wash):
0/-1 (passes estate for copper, doesn't trash), 1/0 (passes estate, trashes whatever's recieved), 1/-1 (passes estate for copper, trashes estate), 0/0 (passes copper for copper, doesn't trash), 1/1 (passes copper, trashes)

Steward:
0/0 (doesn't trash), 2/4-2/2 (does)

Island:
1/3-1/2

Loan:
0/1 (hits silver), 1/1 (hits copper)

Trade Route:
1/2, 1/3

Remake:
2/4 (cc), 1/0 (ce), 0/-4(ee)

Develop:
1/3, 0/-3

Jack:
0/-1 (trashes), -1/0 (doesn't)

Spice Merchant:
1/1

Trader:
1/3, -1/-6

Forager:
1/2 (trashes copper or estate (having not trashed a treasure earlier)), 1/1 (trashes estate after trashing copper)

Hermit:
0/-3 (trashes), -1/-3 (doesn't)

Rats:
0/0-0/1

Doctor:
0/2-3/2

What do people think: how much value does such an analysis actually have?

67
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Gain the Hydra!
« on: December 13, 2013, 01:17:22 am »
Beginnings of a probable max money solution (since that's where this is going):

Kingdom: Black Market, Hermit, Philosopher's stone, Coppersmith, Cache, Contraband, Counterfeit, Stash, Bank, KC

Start with all the Coppers in you discard pile (somehow). Use things from black market deck to get all your Phil Stones, a black market and a Scrying Pool in hand (with at least 3 spare actions (or using kc somehow). Play BM and all your phil stones, get a lot of money, play Scrying Pool to draw all your actions, Counting House to draw all your Coppers and madman (or two) to draw everything else. Play all the money-giving actions you can including KC-Coppersmith. Play all your treasures, (Counterfeiting the Banks last).

You'll get well over 5000.

68
Dominion General Discussion / Re: The stupidest mistake you ever made
« on: December 10, 2013, 10:39:59 pm »
At the end of a really long game in which I built a mediocre University/Rabble engine I counterfeited my only gold when I didn't really need to not realising that I'd already counterfeited all of either my silvers or coppers and thus that it reduced my 7 fairgrounds to 4 points.

69
I'm going to mention this about house rules:

If the game was badly designed, then you can use house rules.  Not too many.  There's a game I've played before where we realized something that makes the best card in the game the worst card, so we added a small house rule that barely changed the game to fix it.

If the game was pretty well designed, either play by the rules or don't play.  There's no middle ground.

I disagree; if a house rule makes the game more balanced and/or enjoyable (without harming the other) then there's no real reason not too just because the game isn't broken (although the only house rule I play is always shelters if rebuild is in the kingdom).

70
Most of the people I play rate watchtower where I feel it should be rated (rather highly). My baby for an underutilised card is Scout.

*Pause for Scout jokes*

I know it's a terrible card but there are games where both players decks get bogged down with green and I'm almost certain that a scout to filter some out for a turn would be better than a silver or other alternatives but people don't buy it just because it's scout.

71
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Luck-based Cards
« on: December 07, 2013, 08:27:58 pm »
Knights, Lookout, Doctor (for the overpay) and Scout all belong in "Randomness from the deck." Also I'm sceptical of calling most of the "opponents choice" cards luck based and not Chapel and other cards that don't explicitly need to line up with certain cards but are much better if they do.

You know what the outcome of Chapel will be before you play it.  Not so for "opponent's choice" cards.  And Chapel doesn't have to line up with specific cards to have the desired effect - it can still trash things.

I will add Explorer to the "line up" ones, though.

Advisor's desired effect is getting two worst cards of the top three of your deck. It shouldn't be considered luck if your opponent makes a play mistake and gives you a better outcome. The same principle applies for Contraband and Envoy (although Contraband involves a reasonable amour of guesswork on your opponent's part). I also don't find the argument of knowing what will happen when you play it compelling; if you open Chapel, X there's a huge difference between drawing (for example) Chapel,X,C,C,C and Chapel,E,E,E,C and you don't know which of these (or, more likely, something in the middle) will happen. The variance in the performance of the Chapel based on the shuffle of the deck is (I'm pretty sure) a good deal greater than Masquerade or the others that I've mentioned and similar to Smugglers. You could also argue that any draw card is luck based because you don't know what will happen when you play them.

Also, Swindler and Jester will do something no matter what card is revealed (with edge cases of course) and should possibly be in a new category along with things that have "reveal until X".

72
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Luck-based Cards
« on: December 07, 2013, 04:56:34 pm »
Knights, Lookout, Doctor (for the overpay) and Scout all belong in "Randomness from the deck." Also I'm sceptical of calling most of the "opponents choice" cards luck based and not Chapel and other cards that don't explicitly need to line up with certain cards but are much better if they do.

73
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Pricing vanilla cards
« on: November 29, 2013, 05:18:40 am »
My opinions:

In general:
A lot of these cards haven't been made for reasons beyond simply being boring, some effects just aren't balanced or good for the game at any cost.

Putting +cards and +money on the same card is really awkward as they both serve the same purpose. Peddler variants only get around this due to being nonterminal and only giving 1 of each. #teachingasIwastaught

On +1 card:
+1 card on a terminal is awkward because it'll make people really sad if they draw another action with it (illustrated buy the lack of cards that do this in the game: Pawn, Ironworks and Ruined Library are the only ones that do so and two of these have options that don't involve drawing 1 cards terminally and the other is intended as junk (there might be others but they'll be similar cases)).

On +money:
+$ is the least interesting of the 4 vanilla effects. In particular vanillas that give large amounts of money are really awkward as you can't do much to work with them. Most of (all except harvest I think) the terminals that give $3 or more have some kind of drawback attached so you can play around them to get a worthwhile card. These cards can't really be balanced as if you cost them so as not to be overpowered you'll be able to craft much better strategies with cards at the same or less cost that have better interaction. For this reason I feel like all of the +x Cards +$y are worse than +x+y Cards at the same cost. Also I feel that the +$4 is a real problem for game aesthetic at $6 (despite thinking it worse than hunting grounds).

On the discard cards:
DXV tested +2 Cards, +1 Action, Discard 1 and found it too strong at 4. It makes sense when you consider that if you spam them it's not hard to draw the 5 best (other) cards in your deck every turn. Discarding first does change these as you're discarding from a strict subset of the cards you do if you draw first which weakens them a lot. I feel that both the -1+2 and the -2+3 would be okay at $4 (with the former being stronger). Also I feel that you've substantially overcosted +3-1 (I'd put it at six and expect it to be strong but balanced)  This things are best when you mass them and that gets pretty costly when you could buy gold instead.

On the 4 cost silvers:
Both of the +buy silvers should cost 5 (even though they're strictly* worse than Festival) as there are still plenty of situations where they're worth buying at 5 (probably more than stash(for instance)). The village silver is a bigger problem as it's probably not strong enough at 5 but still too much better than silver to cost at $4

On the "between"s:
Smithy +buy is a 5 I think as both cards are fairly strong for their cost so it's probably more balanced as a fairly weak 5 than a very strong 4. The market square without reaction is probably better at 2; it's good but probably still worse than the likes of Hamlet and candlestick maker.

I agree with you on the costing of other cards.

74
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Homage to the Best Card
« on: November 24, 2013, 03:20:02 pm »
I always thought of Vagrant as more like a fixed scout personally.

75
Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A Crazy Idea for a Use the Trash Duo
« on: November 22, 2013, 03:26:49 am »
I feel with card designs applying K.I.S.S principle is usually advisable wherever possible. Here you can quite comfortably make one card that does almost the same thing.

Other issues:
  • How do you want this to work with things like highway? If you want to let it not be terrible with them then you need to have them stay in play until the cleanup step.
  • Return to the trash is rather strange wording in terms of dominion standardisation. How averse are you to it trashing things?

Here's a single card rework that addresses these issues while trying to stay true to the idea I think you were working with to start with.

Forbidden Tome
$6-Action
Choose one: Play an action card from the trash, trash it in the clean-up step; or +1 Card, +1 Action and trash an action card from the supply if no copies of it are in the trash.


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