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5376

2011 / Re: Schedule and Results: 2011 DominionStrategy.com Championships

« on: November 29, 2011, 10:18:43 pm »

Thief division, Captain_Frisk vs. Insomniac-X

Captain_Frisk 4 : 2 Insomniac

G1 Captain_Frisk 90-44 : http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-183231-4bf15519.html
G2:Insomniac-X 43-28: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-184427-3a53b51e.html
G3: Insomniac-X 33-32 http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-185159-2c87a282.html

DOH!  Ending game while losing as P1!!!

G4: Captain_Frisk 39-36: http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-185641-e6cde3e5.html
G5: Captain_Frisk - 43-30 - http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20111129-190155-6311df45.html
G6: Captain_Frisk 20:3 : http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201111/29/game-20111129-191224-85521760.html

Thanks for the games Insomniac, and I'm really sorry for game 6 there, that's not really a good way to end a match series.

5377

2011 / Re: 2011 DominionStrategy.com Championships Registration

« on: November 21, 2011, 09:48:55 am »

1. Captain Frisk
2. US Eastern (GMT -5)

5378

Dominion Articles / Re: Highway cost interactions

« on: November 07, 2011, 02:00:19 pm »

HOWEVER, there's an exception to this formula stemming from the fact that highway never reduces a cost below 0. If you play more highways than the minimum value of the x_i, it becomes possible that the highways improve your forging. It's annoying to write out the formula, but it's obvious that good stuff can happen here when you consider the extreme example where you've played 8 highways and can forge anything into a province.

IIRC - forge allows the trashing of any number of cards, where any number could be zero - so with 8 highways, forge can simply be "gain a province"

5379

Variants and Fan Cards / Grand it up!

« on: November 07, 2011, 01:55:35 pm »

Just read rinkwork's thoughts on "Grand Bazaar"  http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=935.msg14220#msg14220

This got me thinking: what other $5 actions would be made juicier by "Granding" them (cost $1 more, provide $1 more, can't buy with coppers).

Most of the non terminals sound awesome (Grand Lab, Grand Bazaar, Grand Upgrade, Grand Minion!!!)  Grand Hunting Party would be even more disgusting than regular hunting party.  As rink works pointed out though, its really the +buy on grand market that makes it so crazy - as it allows you to get into "buy province + (something else)" without really compromising your plans.  It seems that many of the other cards would come out too late to really be effective (would you really skip a province to buy a grand witch?  a grand Mountebank?)

How many cards are Grandable?  Would granding work at any other price point?

5380

Simulation / Re: Simulating challenge: beat Smithy

« on: October 11, 2011, 02:13:41 pm »

Someone asked about bureaucrat/council room in another thread and I was able to knock a useful simulation up quite easily. It has an edge on matched starts but loses if it starts on 5/2 compared to a smithy on 4/3.

Does pure councilroom BM beat smithy BM?  If so, you could just add a condition on the b-crat rule to not buy if you already have a council room

5381

Dominion Isotropic / Re: veto mode stats

« on: September 30, 2011, 11:36:30 am »

I strenuously object to the claim that Tournament increases variance - again, I'll point to it being my single highest "win rate given available". Possession is another high-skill card that I nonetheless see people complain about a lot. "Forces you outside your comfort zone" is not the same as "turns the game into a coin flip", unless both players insist on remaining inside their comfort zone rather than adapting their play to the unique requirements of the board.

I will agree that veto strategy is an interesting thing to think about. "Variant" is the right word here.

Since this topic comes up so often - i decided to check:

discounting prizes, your tournament is actually your #5... following (Harvest, Plenty Horny, Courtyard and Remake).  The thing in common there?  Most of them are cornucopia cards that you've played with ~30-40 times (vs. 150+ for your others)  My guess is that as a smart fellow - you probably picked up the use of cornucopia faster than your average player, and as a result have a disproportionate win rate with them on the board - and that as everyone else catches up and you play more games - they will regress closer to your mean of overall win rate - which is around 1.35 +/- 0.03.  (your tournament is 1.51 +/- 0.29 - as of 9/30/2011)

I checked - and I have a similar skew at the top of my rankings, although for me its Hunting Party and Horse Traders.

Now I don't disagree that you clearly now how to play tournament better - its my WORST win % given avail - i win (but lower % than normal) when I buy it, and i lose HORRIBLY when I don't.

Care to share your magic tips? (Perhaps a topic for another post)

On the subject of vetoing, I'm finding myself torn on the subject.  On one hand - i enjoy the ability to have some control of the board - from the 2p position I can zap things that are likely to hose me over heavier (torturer, cutpurse, militia) - so I can protect my precious rating... on the other hand, it almost says: "you don't get to play with possession any more".  Even though I dislike alchemy, it's part of the dominion landscape, and I want to make sure that I at least pretend like I can play with all of the cards. (In the case of tournament - clearly I can't)   

I have previously banned veto mode when auto matching, but I'm thinking about turning it on... I hate you militia!

5382

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The Decline of My Dominion Skills

« on: September 29, 2011, 07:44:14 pm »

I've tried a Masquerade opening twice now and got my ass kicked, its too damn slow to work?

Oh no... Masquerade is AMAZING.  I would say its just under "elite" opening status

Elites I would say would be: Mountebank, Witch, Torturer, Ambassador, Sea Hag, Trading Post, Wharf, Chapel


See: http://councilroom.com/openings?card=Silver

Masq / Silver is a level 4 opening... everything 5 or above involves 1 (or more) of the elites - except for: Tournament / Masq.

5383

Dominion General Discussion / Re: University

« on: September 29, 2011, 08:54:52 am »

Epoch is correct.  You may gain an Action card costing up to $5.

University is better in games that take longer to finish (Colony games, for example) and useless in quickie games.  The basic problem with University is that you have to shuffle at least three times before you can use any cards you gain from it.  Some games are pretty much decided by then.  Also, it only gains action cards, and in some sets you may not want that many action cards.  Sometimes University is very powerful, but it's a bad card to buy just because it's there.

Oh snap!  I can't believe I've never noticed the option to not gain...  DOH!

5384

Dominion General Discussion / Re: University

« on: September 28, 2011, 07:06:45 pm »

University i generally view as a trap.  Most people see the "+2 actions" and think that its a village - but you can't build an engine with it because you are FORCED to gain a card... having multiple universities results in very quickly draining piles and being stuck with cards you don't want.

See: http://councilroom.com/win_rate_diff_accum.html?cards=University

The more you have - the worse you do!  Most of the places where I consider university (note - my historical plays may not back this up) are:
1- there are other alchemy cards in play - so I can get 1 or (maybe) 2 uni's and then the other alchemy cards for my potion buys - or UNI can be my backup plan when I whiff on buying a familiar or alchemist.
2- must have power 5's (wharf, torturer)
3- cards you want millions of (treasury, lab, caravan)
4- i anticipate attacks that might make getting to 5 difficult (i'm in 2p and someone opens militia)

5385

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Can there be a second-player Advantage?

« on: September 26, 2011, 01:04:59 pm »

This is a long long long shot, but what about Jester?

A 2nd player's jester played played on turn 4 (in most normal situations) 4 cards out of 14 that you could potentially want, while player 1 can only hit 2 cards.

I seriously doubt if that is enough to make up for the fewer turns issue, and of course the 1st player has a chance to Jester 2p's jester before he can even play it... but i figured i'd throw it out there.

5386

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Can there be a second-player Advantage?

« on: September 23, 2011, 12:12:43 pm »

Situations I can think of where being second player might have an advantage:

Embargo + alchemy - if your opponent goes potion you can slap down an embargo on that alchemist... and if your opponent doesn't buy embargo, you might decide to go alchemist instead.  Embargo wouldn't stop me from going familiar though.

The previously mentioned young witch / bane card.  If the bane card is sub-optimal you can use the "2nd player advantage" to know whether or not its utility has increased.

I'm not certain that either of those actually make up for the possibility of having one less turn than your opponent, although I suspect that there exists some set of 10 for which a 2nd player advantage truly exists.

5387

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: A Noob's Expansion - Come Rip it Apart...

« on: September 20, 2011, 06:08:31 pm »

Yes, either our OP is as noobish as he claims in the thread title, or he is a clever troll!

I like the clever troll theory better than n00bish.  Just reading that post made me want to go propose a board with some village and an ambassador.  Nothing better than a game where the opponent finishes with 15+ coppers.

5388

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Simulating challenge: Geronimoo's an idiot... or not

« on: September 13, 2011, 10:23:24 am »

Too lazy to simulate, but I suspect that any power 5+ card (mountebank, witch, goons, torturer, trading post, wharf) might warrant mining village / silver over silver / silver, as being stuck @ double 4's is a killer.  In the torturer case, you'll want the mining villages anyway.

5389

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Optimizing your level

« on: September 02, 2011, 10:18:00 am »

Easy. You can do the exact same strategy 79 times out of 84 games to become level 40+

Are you suggesting the BM or BM/Singlet is likely to win against most players?  I suspect this is incorrect.

I'm pretty sure they are talking about Paralyzed here. See the current leaderboard.

5390

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Smugglers/Jester

« on: September 01, 2011, 10:42:27 am »

DG and Mustard beat me to it...

Things that make me want either:
Caravans, Labs, Hunting Parties, Menageries, Fishing Villages, Grand Markets, Nobles (maybe), Throne Room (maybe)

Things that make me want jester:
King's Court
alchemy (maybe)
Ambassador + Villages
Massive drawing engines that maximize the number of times I can play it.

A jester played 4 or 5 times over the course of the game isn't really reliable enough.  When you can start playing the jester every turn, then it starts being good.

Sometimes if my opponent has ignored sea hag on a 4/3 split, I MIGHT consider smugglers / sea hag, and hope they don't collide, especially if there wasn't anything else tasty to buy with the 3/4 that I expect to have on my next shuffle due to the hag.

5391

Dominion General Discussion / Re: Am I reading this board correctly?

« on: August 31, 2011, 02:14:29 pm »

Juts to add some confusion, these may also be a bishop strategy to counter gardens. You get a share of the gardens, trash them out for bishop points, then add some green card vp at the finish. I wouldn't like to say how successful it would be since I've never played that combination!

Yep, bishop trashing gardens nets 3VP, probably the same #of points that a gardens player is going to get if the game ends early, and even just 1 double Goons turn with activated cities will probably sink a pure gardens rush.  (Brotip: don't let the other person get all 8 gardens)  And, the biggest weakness of bishop (that the opponent gets to trash cards too) doesn't even matter!

I would probably open ironworks / silver, and closely monitor the situation before committing to HARD ironworks / gardens, or countering with bishops.

Of course, this is 2p... with 3 or 4 I'd try to play Le Havre instead.

5392

Game Reports / Re: Goons/KC/Masq-Hand Deletion/Infinite Pin

« on: August 30, 2011, 05:05:08 pm »

I think it's kinda funny that you forbid Tournament for this experiment. I mean, I understand a lot of people think it's some silly circus card, but man, it's my single highest "Win Rate given avail" so I've never agreed with the contingent that finds it to be high-variance.

(moving this edit to a new post since it got ninja'd by the guy it was written for )

This was probably an over-reaction.  I lost at least one game in which i had more tournaments AND more provinces, but my opponent hit the combo first, and then proceeded to go prize crazy for the rest of the game.  I actually intend to require tournament for a while (not sure if as _Frisk or conjecture) to learn how to play with it properly after avoiding it for so long.

5393

Game Reports / Re: Goons/KC/Masq-Hand Deletion/Infinite Pin

« on: August 30, 2011, 04:18:34 pm »

Nice experiment. "The board most likely to induce mistakes by your opponent" is an interesting exercise.

I think Paralyze has this one cornered!

Ha, that experiment is my friend! He even made a twitter account for it: http://twitter.com/#!/d_moneybot

I begged him to change the name to something less obvious than "moneybot," so that an opponent who believes him can't take advantage of his strategy from turn 1, but it hasn't really slowed moneybot down. :-)

I'm so sad that this is a human following bot rules, instead of someone who actually unleashed a bot on isotropic.

5394

Game Reports / Re: Goons/KC/Masq-Hand Deletion/Infinite Pin

« on: August 30, 2011, 02:03:55 pm »

Forbidding requirements for ranked games helps, but it doesn't stop people from rejecting boards they think they will be more likely to lose. If one views the maintenance of unbiased rankings as a paramount concern, then there should be a separate class of game where no requirements are allowed and the board is not revealed until after all players have accepted the game, and only this class of game should count for the leaderboard. My own approach is to just not worry too much about the leaderboard and trust that my own TrueSkill rating is pretty accurate: I simply do not play rated games with requirements, nor reject a rated game (ever) based on the board, nor play with people who have demonstrated that they will reject games based on the board.

Captain Frisk followed the same general guidelines... although I've found that by requiring colony, i'm really enjoying the game alot more.  The extra 2 turns to really get an engine going is so much more fun than the "build a deck that buys 3-4 provinces and then stutters doing duchy dances until the game ends".

5395

Game Reports / Re: Goons/KC/Masq-Hand Deletion/Infinite Pin

« on: August 30, 2011, 01:11:31 pm »

Tat actually challenged me once, and won largely due to some clever Scout play which I just completely missed since I tend to auto-ignore Scout most of the time.  (Nobles and Tactician were on the board along with some other stuff which I forget right now; I tried to race to a quick five provinces basically just using Tactician, but his/her slower Scout/Nobles engine caught up in the end.)  I don't know if he/she deserves to be #1, but tat did strike me as legitimately a high-level player.

I don't doubt that he/she is a legit high level player.  The question is... is is thegap between tat (lvl 48) and me (lvl 36) the same as between me and a lvl 24?  Man would I like to learn those tricks.  I'm pretty confident that I'm not the 3rd best active player, but that's what the leaderboard says.

 

5396

Game Reports / Re: Goons/KC/Masq-Hand Deletion/Infinite Pin

« on: August 30, 2011, 12:52:25 pm »

So... are you gaming the rankings by cherry-picking boards? or have you found some legitimate flaw in how TrueSkill is calculated?

You can see my restrictions from the councilroom game logs... not nearly as offensive as what Paralyzed is doing, which really just seems unfair.  My goal was to in general make the game more skill based by removing high variance cards.  The 2nd thing that I did was try to exploit the relatively large skill jump that occurs between "ooh shiny action cards" and "maybe I should buy more silver".  The dumb strategy of Single <card> + Big Money will win an alarming % of time against even expert level players.  It might only be 30%, but thats enough to hold you back from climbing over rank 40.

Look at the record for this player: http://councilroom.com/player?player=moneybot

5397

Game Reports / Re: Goons/KC/Masq-Hand Deletion/Infinite Pin

« on: August 30, 2011, 12:00:15 pm »

At the moment in the top 4 of the council rankings we've got one person who seems to auto-match mostly low ranked opponents, two people who mainly seem to play just one or two opponents (friends maybe?), and one alter-ego (nothing wrong with that either). This does mean however that the top rankings aren't backed up by evidence of good play against other high ranked players in competitive games. In that respect I don't think it's a great worry that someone else is rising up the rankings with some method of choosing matches. I know that my ranking is probably a reasonable rating of my own play and that's all I'm worried about.

Well, its probably time to come clean, as its taken alot longer than I thought it would, and I don't think i'm going to have the time to finish the job (and Paralyzed may beat me to it).

Conjecture is not actually theories alt (although I did choose the name to throw suspicion at him).  After seeing tat ranked so high above everyone else, I wanted to test the hypothesis that such a high ranking (and ridiculous win %) could be attained by a good, but non-elite player.  I found it hard to believe that tat was really 10 levels better than me (Captain_Frisk is currently lvl 36 I think?), so I wanted to see if I could beat him.  I'm currently 1.5 levels behind, and I'm pretty sure that I will do it eventually.

I fully support changes to the leaderboard system to encourage real competition at the top of the leaderboard, vs. playing an alternate form of dominion to climb those last 10 spots.

tat - I would love to play you as Captain_Frisk a few times just to see how bad you destroy me.

5398

Puzzles and Challenges / Re: What's missing?

« on: August 22, 2011, 08:02:48 am »

Reveal (some) cards and send it to trash.
Reveal a card and leave it in your hand
Reveal (some) cards and discard it
Reveal a card and send it to the play area

Maybe?

Can't be, because then throne room would also be a valid solution.

5399

Dominion Articles / Re: Pace

« on: August 21, 2011, 10:01:36 pm »

Don't forget about using pace to annoy an opponent in resignation.  I suggest 8-9 pawns, at 30 seconds each to check the appropriate boxes.

Other fun ones:
- Revealing Moat or other reactions - over and over again - every 10 seconds or so.  (Not sure if isotropic punts you for doing this, i'm not rude enough to try it myself)
- Excessive Minioning (like pawn, taking a while to decide for each minion)
- Take 30 seconds to respond to every Torturer, vault or bishop
- Spy, Scrying Pool

5400

Dominion Isotropic / Re: Settings no longer maintained?

« on: August 19, 2011, 02:28:50 pm »

Seconded!