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2151

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Helping MF Make Dominion Online a Success

« on: November 12, 2015, 08:27:02 am »

The thing I don't really get is that this Dominion community is made up of at least dozens of smart programmers. Lots of these people are willing to *volunteer* hours to make their favorite game better (Isotropic, Salvager, MMF). And MF is already outsourcing large chunks of their code. Why can't MF just outsource some of this work to Dominion fans? They know what they want, because they're the customer base, and Dominion fans have done enough work at this point to rewrite the game a few times over between the three different versions. Or, I mean, why didn't they just buy Isotropic and make it pretty.

I know there are good answers for all of these questions, but it's just frustrating to see that the game is being made better by decompiling the code and reverse-engineering it, instead of soliciting at least feedback and maybe even patches directly from these people.

2152

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $4 cards

« on: November 11, 2015, 12:56:30 pm »

Rats is already way too high, it's a deck-destroying trap card on more than 9 out of 10 boards. Should definitely be bottom tier. I voted it second-to-last myself, just above Scout.

I don't think how good a card is when you randomly add it to a deck is a good measure of the goodness of a card. You buy Rats when you shouldn't and you definitely play the card from your hand too often. Doesn't make Rats worse than Thief and Spy. Rats has its place, Thief just really doesn't.

I agree Miser doesn't belong down here, it's really awesome if you can play it often. I Princed a Miser once which is absolutely crazy. It was basically +$6 every turn at some point.

Okay, but you really don't get to Prince it every game. Cards being crazy good with Prince doesn't make them like, ever good in general... you could say the exact same thing about Pirate Ship and there's a pretty clear consensus on that card.

2153

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $4 cards

« on: November 11, 2015, 10:03:23 am »

I think Miser belongs in the bottom tier.  I've played with Miser a half dozen times now, and I've never seen it pay off.  Every time someone gets one, they end up regretting it.  It's just too slow.  Removing one Copper from your deck with a terminal action is almost always a net downside (Moneylender provides +3 coin and is still merely average).  So you need to use the second ability enough times to make up for the lost value early.  If Miser is worth +3 coins, you'll certainly get a few uses of it, but terminal gold is meh.  You can't get 4 coins from Miser until you've played it at least five times!  And Miser doesn't help to cycle your deck much.  Now, you could dream of buying and using multiple Misers to speed this up, but it's terminal and you need a source of +buy to take advantage of it.  Too much work, not enough upside.

Miser is basically a Pirate Ship that works on yourself. They should really be around the same rank. At least Pirate Ship might hit a good opponents treasure someday, but Miser is a terminal that trashes a Copper and might be a terminal Gold after four shuffles. It's really not that good. I'm more likely to play Taxman or even Treasure Map.

2154

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $3 cards

« on: November 10, 2015, 12:40:53 pm »

Also, Steward and Amulet should be right next to each other. They're both very strong and fulfill very similar roles.

They are definitely not almost exactly as good as each other, not one bit. As trashers, Stewart is somewhat faster as it doesn't miss shuffles and trashing 2 cards now means you redraw the Stewart sooner than if you trashed one card each turn twice before discarding.

The biggest thing though is that the upside of Stewart is how it isn't useless once you're thinned out. It draws cards or gives you money. Amulet has no draw option at all, which is significantly worse in engines. It's a terminal Copper this turn and effectively a Peddler next turn.

2155

Feedback / Re: Would you be interested in some form of moderated discussion on F.DS?

« on: November 10, 2015, 12:35:15 pm »

There's no option for "I would read in it and would probably post in it, but I think it's a bad idea."

I think the harm done in splintering the community into two halves based on preferred forum rules would far, far outweigh the benefits of moderated discussion and the end result would actually be even fewer good replies than they are now. You wouldn't be turning joke posts into serious ones by doing this, you'd just be reducing activity, even slightly beyond just the removal of non serious posters.

I also think that discussion would converge eventually to one forum or the other. Either the Serious form wouldn't get used, or every thread on Dominion that isn't "lol post your Scout meme" would end up there, de facto subjecting everyone to these rules that a lot of people don't like if they want to talk about Dominion. It could seriously kill the forum.

2156

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $3 cards

« on: November 10, 2015, 10:28:19 am »

Amulet isn't the tenth best $3, but it's better than Bonfire at trashing. Y'all aren't giving Bonfire enough credit, I mean you can pay for it with the money you trash which kind of offsets the cost. But Amulet is more generally useful.

Pretty much agree with the rest of the top 10. Ferry is super good. Ambassador is slightly better than Masquerade. Urchin is clearly a top 3 card. Etc etc

2157

General Discussion / Re: Seasonal Starbucks drinks

« on: November 10, 2015, 07:18:22 am »

The coffee at Starbucks is fine, but the ingredients are disturbing if you care about your health at all.

This is one of those fun urban myths that really doesn't have much basis in fact. Starbucks drinks are no different health wise than any other. To the extent that sugar / caffeine are "bad for you" mostly. You definitely make worse health decisions on a daily basis that you don't care about at all.

Did I mention it's criminally overpriced?

Hey, people are willing to pay it, whatever. It's not that much more than other local coffee shops.

2158

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Results

« on: November 09, 2015, 10:56:18 pm »

Chris is me 4 - Elanchana 2

2159

Dominion League / Re: Season 11 - Announcing Livestreams

« on: November 09, 2015, 10:02:46 pm »

I'm about to play somebody in my League, I'm pretty sure. Just not 100% sure who yet.

http://www.twitch.tv/chrisisme2791

2160

Goko Dominion Online / Re: MAKiNG MORE FUN: Mod for Dominion Online 2.0 (Windows)

« on: November 09, 2015, 03:29:26 pm »

Tournament: Always reveal Province to their Tournament.

Do you mean just after you've revealed a Province to a first Tournament, or actually always? Because I think there's enough edge cases where you don't want to reveal Province; basically if you'd rather them have their Prize in hand now instead of next turn.

Aren't there also plausible edge cases for other scenarios mentioned? For example, you may want to discard to Torturer when curses are out to gain a Gold from Tunnel, to remove a duplicate from your hand to activate Menagerie, etc.

In these cases, you wouldn't toggle the feature on. Im assuming the intent is that these won't be on by default unless they are truly unimportant (choosing a Copper to trash with Moneylender will literally never matter)

2161

Feedback / Re: A place for more moderated discussion

« on: November 09, 2015, 03:23:29 pm »

Completely serious suggestion: Could we just get a "Hide Post" button? Don't like the post, just ignore it and move on. Nobody's forcing you to engage them. I realize reading the same shitty post over and over can be quite the mental and emotional drain, so there's value in letting the user hide them. Similar to the collapse post function in Reddit.

All the people that only want serious posts on their threads can just hide the rest from view. Takes no effort, everyone gets what they want.

2162

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $3 cards

« on: November 09, 2015, 01:10:21 pm »

Black Market is too low, Gear is too high

I know you're being flippant, but Gear seriously is under-ranked.

I'm not being flippant, though admittedly I took the chance to make a parody post; I do honestly think the hype for Gear is overstated. It's a middle of the pack $3 option that looks like it is accomplishing more than it is most of the time. That's not to say it's a bad card (far from it) but I believe I ranked it in the 20s and stand by that. I am perfectly willing to accept how wrong I am when we have real data from competitive games to draw on, but well, things are how they are.

OTOH Black Market fundamentally changes the game and makes engines possible where nothing was there frequently. It takes a skill to play well, and sure sometimes it's less good than others, but the net results are more extreme than saving a few cards for next turn or being a Moat. In my ranking methodology this puts it a few tiers above Gear. The fact they are right next to each other in the rankings is what I fundamentally disagree with.

I'm not saying Black Market isn't under-ranked; I don't think I can really put forth an informed opinion there. I do worry that Gear-BM is so good that it's competitive with a lot of engines. I think it's pretty clearly better than Courtyard-BM, and you can get three Gears and still guarantee that they'll never meaningfully collide (when you play one, you can always set aside the other two). I really do wish that Gear had stayed costing $4 and Ranger $3.

I think part of Gear being so low ranked is that people aren't likely to have played Gear BM very much. There's a bias toward engines in high level play for good reason, so it's just never occurred to most players to try Gear BM and have 4 Provinces by Turn 12. People are going to try Gear BM more once Adventures is online - if you're going through all the effort of setting up a physical game of Dominion why would you kill the fun of making an engine by just playing Gear BM?

Gear is also at least situationally useful in engines - if you have Actions to spare you can essentially use it either as a temporary Island or a place to hold engine components to kick start the next turn. It's deceptively simple.

I do think I'm overhyping it a bit certainly but seriously, give Gear a chance.

2163

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $3 cards

« on: November 09, 2015, 07:11:40 am »

I get the feeling that Guide is overrated here. Also, why is Dungeon not higher than Warehouse?

Dungeon really isn't as good as it looks, honestly. It sifts more cards over 2 turns, but only 1 more card total, and +2/-2 is really a lot less benefit than +3/-3. Even though on the second turn you keep a 5 card hand, I think Warehouse is often a better card.

Now Gear at just 14 is a travesty. I didn't finish my $3 list but I'm pretty sure it's in my top 5. If you put it in the bottom 30%, you haven't played enough Adventures.

I think there is a tendency to underrate Villages in general because people perceive them as cards that don't do anything. I know I did. People don't call it a "Village engine", they call it a "Margrave engine" for a reason. But the mid teens is not a horrible place for vanilla Village to be ranked really.

2164

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $3 cards

« on: November 08, 2015, 12:46:54 pm »

Scheme adds more than just a little bit of reliability, especially when Throne Room or Kings Court is involved. And it allows for playing an early key action more than once in a row, which is often huge.

Yeah, I think "Scheme is low impact" is the biggest understatement of this thread, really. It can be absolutely critical to getting early attacks off, heavy trashing early, and general reliability of an engine. Some games it does relatively little, but other games it's completely essential.

2165

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $3 cards

« on: November 08, 2015, 09:57:36 am »

I guess I just have really poor luck with Shanty Town. I never feel like there's a good time to buy it, other than when heavy draw is available and it's the only Village. It's a Necropolis when you need a Village and sometimes a Lost City, but only when you're not likely to use the 2 Actions anyway. It's the best Village when you don't need a Village and one of the worst when you do. I dunno. I recognize Tunnel's pretty weak in these post-Gold times we live in, especially since Market Square is a lot better.

2166

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $3 cards

« on: November 08, 2015, 08:59:29 am »

Poor Tunnel. It's not that good, but... worse than Shanty Town? Really? Shanty Town is garbage.

Doctor worse than Lookout??? Doctor is WAY safer than Lookout, and more useful.

Storeroom is better than people give it credit for, particularly in Gardens or Silk Road games (or Tunnel games!), but I see why it's not super popular.

Bonfire is better than all of these cards.

2167

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $3 cards

« on: November 07, 2015, 08:47:30 am »

I think Chancellor is still in last place at this point out of pure momentum - people put her there as automatically as they put Chapel and King's Court in first place of their respective lists.  Poor Angela here is easily better than both Great Hall and Woodcutter, methinks.

I think if +Buy wasn't so scarce, I'd put Chancellor over Woodcutter, but more often do I find myself going "oh shit I need a Woodcutter" than I go "well I have a spare action so I should get a Chancellor".

Really, they shouldn't even be different cards - adding a +Buy to Chancellor makes it a reasonable $3, if still not that good.

Caravan Guard is pretty bad, it could probably fall a few places.

2168

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Lowering piles

« on: November 06, 2015, 12:45:11 pm »

I think it's easy for not-expert players to lower piles too early, so I try and be really conservative about it - I lower piles when I'm winning by more than one "big turn" worth of points. Lots of times when I miss three pile opportunities this way though.

2169

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: November 06, 2015, 10:55:48 am »

Lost Arts + Gear - Sure this general concept works with any draw card, but a $3 Laboratory that sets aside Victory cards (to avoid dead draws) or even other Gear (for insurance) is extremely potent.

Gear is probably my favorite card in Dominion at the moment.

2170

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Latest Release

« on: November 06, 2015, 10:40:58 am »

For me the game is definitely much better than Goko at this point. I can finish a game super quickly now. There are plenty of annoyances, but with MMF installed they are mostly negated and I'm just so much more efficient with my time now. If only MF would just contract out some code to SCSN we could get the improvements in the official implementation!

To celebrate / indicate my approval / whatever, I finally bought the remaining promos I didn't own yet. Hooray Walled Village, Prince, Black Market!!!

2171

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $0-$2 cards

« on: November 06, 2015, 10:39:08 am »

Hamlet is definitely better than Fool's Gold, in that it's more often useful. I skip Fool's Gold way more often than I skip Hamlet. But it's pretty close.

That does not mean Hamlet is better though. Of course you don't skip Hamlet often; it's a cantrip. But FG impacts the game way more when you do get it, and thus it deserves to be above Hamlet.

FG is more dramatic - it's either a huge effect on the game or a minimal one - but Hamlet is just so really good, and has an impact on more boards than Fool's Gold does. Maybe I've just played too many Tunnel, Menagerie, Watchtower, etc. games where Hamlet availability and winning the split made all the difference.

2172

Game Reports / Re: whaaat a kiiingdom

« on: November 06, 2015, 08:18:47 am »

You definitely want to open baker-ambassador as its gives best economy in ambassador war.

I wouldn't buy Baker over Ironmonger on a 5/2 opening.

I dunno, here Ironmonger is going to quickly resolve into just a Village. Not saying it's a mistake to open it, but that there's ample +Actions, strong thinning, and limited draw, so that's a pretty solid argument for Amb / Baker or even saving a coin token and opening double Amb.

2173

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Dominion Cards Lists 2015 Edition: $0-$2 cards

« on: November 06, 2015, 08:15:57 am »

Hamlet is definitely better than Fool's Gold, in that it's more often useful. I skip Fool's Gold way more often than I skip Hamlet. But it's pretty close.

I think Stonemason is more often critical than Peasant, which can be a bit slow for a lot of games. Page at 2 isn't insane but I think it will fall in future years.

Ratcatcher I think is a bit overrated. It's nice how it doesn't really impact your deck, but it's often difficult to decide what you want to trash as your turn starts.

2174

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Neat and potentially useful card interactions

« on: November 06, 2015, 08:12:47 am »

I'm very sure this isn't the first time anyone's noticed this, but Herald is a phenomenal Ghost Ship counter.

2175

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Making more fun with SB learning otter new things about Adventures

« on: November 05, 2015, 07:49:22 pm »

You otter just give up now because I'm playing in the tourney also?

Shh, I wanted to steal more free advice too!

Alright, here's some special adventures advice tailor made for people playing in the tournament.

1. Miser. Always miser.
2. If you suspect it will be your last turn but you can't end the game on a win, buy a lost city!
3. With wine merchant, moderation is key. Never call more than one at a time.
4. Inherit scout. Now your estates will draw themselves!
5. Travellers are not unwanted Christmas presents. Don't make them feel bad by exchanging them.
6. Look out for the killer combo: royal carriage/bridge troll.

Finally, whenever possible, play your knockout matches against Adam Horton. Every game one of you guys play against him is one that I won't have to

i know this is a joke, but miser's not bad, right?

Miser is just Pirate Ship that works on you instead of your opponent, while also reducing your hand size and buying power for the turn. It's about the same speed too. It's not great. If you can play it more than once a turn, or the game's gonna go long, or there's no other way to trash copper etc it's better, but it's just SO slow.