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126

Simulation / Simulating Challenge - Harem

« on: August 08, 2011, 06:08:57 pm »

I have a project going on to produce the best-for-the-simulator single-card strategies out of every individual card in Geronimoo's simulator (well, all the nontrivial ones. Obviously I'm not doing throne room, and gardens isn't very interesting by itself, etc.). The way I'm measuring this is either in comparison to any other strategy using only that card (the best one should win more than it loses against every other iteration) or by how big of a margin it beats Big Money by. Now one of the cards that's giving me fits is Harem. There are so many different ways of programming it, it's really difficult to compare them all. So I'd like to know what you guys can come up with. For the record, here's the big money I'm using (it's not totally optimized probably, as you could tweak the endgames real slightly, but it's pretty close given the options we have now).

Code: [Select]

<player name="Big Money">
   <buy name="Province">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Gold"/>
         <operator type="greaterThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="0.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="4.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Gold"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="6.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Silver"/>
</player>


127

Dominion Articles / An Endgame Primer

« on: August 05, 2011, 09:23:22 pm »

Endgames

First of all, read this (http://dominionstrategy.com/2011/03/28/the-penultimate-province-rule/). Next, knkow that most of the rest of this article is devoted to two-player games. Once you hit multiplayer, things change a bit, and I'll address that towards the end, but I'm not much of an expert at all in multiplayer.

Okay, so the PPR is the third fundametal rule of endgame play. The first is to always end the game in a win immediately if you can (this requires point tracking, something you should be doing if you don't have software to do it for you. The second is to never end the game with yourself behind. PPR is, as I said, third, but this is a rule which you should sometimes break. More on that later.

The PPR itself, however, is merely indicative of a core principle of endgame play: depriving your opponent of the opportunity to favorably end things. This most obviously extends to not coming close to emptying that third pile. But it comes into effect in other places as well - when to start buying out things with those goons buys, when to start bishopping your golds to stay that tick ahead of the pace, etc.

Now to when breaking the PPR is correct. If you both have decks which have been very clogged, say by mountebank wars, then breaking PPR can be the right move. Also if your deck is less resilient to clogging than your opponent's, you should more often take the chance. What do I mean by this? Well, if you've played a chapel/money deck against a bureaucrat deck, say, and you're slightly behind on VP, it could well be worth it to go ahead and grab that penultimate province. The logic behind this is that the extra green of waging a duchy war is going to hurt your deck a lot more than his, and so when that duchy war ends, you will have a very difficult time hitting 8 again, while he'll have fewer problems. Alternately, after a few rounds of the PPR-fueled duchy war, it might be time to vary and buy the province. Why? Well, youe decks are both getting ever more clogged, and it's getting ever less likely for you to get back to 8.

Generally, there are two factors to consider when deciding whether or not to break the PPR. One is the likelihood of making it back to 8 of either deck. The more likely it is, the more you should follow PPR. An important factor to look at here is duration cards, which increase the chances almost always, often significantly, of making that magic 8 number. The second is resiliency to clog. This often has a lot to do with how fat your deck is - a deck beefy with money is resilient; a thin, action-fueled deck is often not, as it's more likely to gum up. But these are really deck specific.

Now let's look at some of the finer mathematical points of the various situations. The clearest is the case with only Province, Duchy, and Estate. The thing to note here is that it takes a four duchy interval to overcome the standard minimum two province deficit. This means that, without a lot of help, trying to fight provinces with duchies is a pretty big longshot. That doesn't mean it's impossible though.
If you throw Colonies in, the province is a little better at fighting against them than duchies are at fighting provinces - but not a ton. A 2-point VP card (island, nobles, harem) is a good tiebreaker which, since they give you other benefits, you can spam a bit more. A big lead in these can actually fight an extra province off better than duchies in most cases (though often it's a combination of these AND duchies), and they're great in the tiebreaking aspects. Four Point VPs (either gardens or fairgrounds typically) can actually really start to fight against those provinces, as you only need three to match out two. Curses help for sure, but their impact is actually not so big on the VP end as it is on the deck's buying power - compare to estate.

But the biggest way (Duke will get its own article) to fight those extra provinces is with VP chips. Goons is ridiculous, of course, Bishop can give you a decent cushion, and the extremely underrated monument can pump up quite a lot over the course of a game. 12 points isn't so hard to get, and you can almost always get 10 and a duchy or 7 and two. And since these are all long-term cards anyway, you want to go for those duchies a lot earlier and really dig in.

And here's my biggest obvious secret of all. Rating estates. Your first estate above your opponent is, (without extra buys), almost entirely as good as a duchy. This is simply because a one-point lead and a three-point lead aren't all that different, but they're both leads. so you should be quicker than you think to snap up that first extra estate than you'd think. But the second extra is next to worthless, so you should be more hesitant to grab it. Always important though, is to watch your reshuffle and buying power. The less likely you are to see the next reshuffle, the more likely it is that you should be buying the best VP cards you can (obviously if you need to three pile or avoid three piles, this changes stuff a little). But still know the score situation - look at the case where you're basically playing big money, there are two provinces left, and you've just run the duchies out, with you being up 5-3 on duchies and even on provinces. It's the first hand of your reshuffle, and you have $6.  Nothing's happened to estates or curses since the game began. The blindly-following-rules-without-thinking player is going to buy estate here, because with only 2 provinces left, it's time to munch up estates. But that's only a rule of thumb, and it's a big mistake here - you need to grab the gold. Why? Well, if you split the provinces, you're up 6. It takes a net of 6 estates to overcome that, which means winning the race for estates 7-1 or better. That's extremely unlikely, and at any rate, you're almost assured of being able to get 2 estates later if you really need to. But the gold will really help you get that province split you need - if they 2-0 you on the last provinces, YOU need that 7-1 or better split. It's the same story if you're behind the two duchies, except that you end up needing more luck.

Of course everything changes with the cards are on the board, particularly trash-for-benefit cards like apprentice and the king endgame monkey-wrench, salvager. But that's a more complex article than this one.

Edit: fixed a typo; thanks Razzishi

128

Other Games / Bridge

« on: July 18, 2011, 12:53:23 am »

So we've had a lot of discussion on this topic, and I think its time it went where it belonged!
Okay, so here's a question I have for everyone who says bridge is by far the most complicated trick-taking game, etc. Which of these games is more complicated: Texas Hold 'Em, or Hearts?
I think Texas Hold 'em is no question more complicated, even though the rules are simpler.
In the comparison between bridge and other trick-taking games, I think that in the case of most of the other games, it's not clear which one is more complicated. They play quite differently. Certainly I doubt that bridge is twice as complicated as most of them. Twice as complicated is a lot. But I'm also not trying to argue that Spades is more complicated than bridge either. There are a lot of things that spades has that Bridge doesn't, such as nil, double nil, bags, and an almost entirely different bidding strategy which has its own complexity, among hundreds of other subtleties. But Bridge is almost unquestionably more complicated, primarily by virtue of being able to choose the trumps. However, there are a large number of other trick-taking games for which this is true, and it's not at all clear to me that bridge is more complicated than all of them.

129

Dominion Articles / Dominion 101: The Village

« on: July 14, 2011, 12:58:11 am »

Most people know that 'being the Village Idiot" is something to avoid. You don't want to open with a village because no matter how many actions you need, there's little point in picking up a village on turn one when you don't even have two terminals to play it with. Pretty simple, right?

Well, the story goes a bit deeper. Consider how a lot of players look at smithy early on. Good card. I can draw a lot with it. But man, I draw stuff dead with it. Especially other smithies. I wish there were some way around that. Hey, village! And so they then proceed to build big smithy/village decks. Lots of villages, lots of smithies, drawing like your whole deck every turn. And then they lose! The tragedy is, for a good while, players will often then chalk these losses up to bad luck. But actually, in a kingdom where smithy, village, and 'the basics' are the only cards, you know what the optimum number of villages is? 0! (and that's not the mathematical zero factorial, which would be one, but just plain zero). Huh?

The thing is, village isn't a bad card. Like basically all other at-least-a-cantrips, in the vast majority of decks, if you gave me the choice of having a village or not, I'd have it. I almost always give the village to myself. So why then, is it better to not buy the villages here? The answer is opportunity cost. Basically every time you buy a village, you've wasted at least $3 and a buy; you could have bought, if nothing else, silver. And most decks need silver early on to ramp up to buying 5s and 6s and eventually provinces.
Let's take a closer look at the village/smithy deck. Of course one of the other biggest problems here is that you can draw the villages dead. To reliably be able to chain stuff up, you need to make sure you have a village in your original 5 card hand, so you need more villages than smithies. So to draw most all your deck, you'll need something like 5 villages and 3 smithies. Let's say you've thrown a couple silver in 'cause you realize you need them. Well shoot, now you need a couple more smithies, which means a couple more villages. So that's 7 villages, 4 smithies, 2 silvers... that took 13 turns to set up, and you can still start without the right combination sometimes. Big money baselines to 4 provinces in 17 turns. With smithies, cut that to 14. Our strategy, it seems, is just too slow then.

So the next logical progression is to ask about if you have good reasons to draw a big hand every turn with actions to spare. Good question! There are definitely some good terminals out there to help your village/smithy engine. How about Merchant ship? That's good. It speeds your deck up - maybe you can skip some of the money (it's pretty risky). But it doesn't really get you into the speed you need. Plus, why not just buy money and then ramp up to merchant ship? Do you really need to play it every turn? No. So what cards do you want to be able to play every turn? Most of them are attacks. The problem is, basically every attack does more damage to an engine like village/smithy than it does to money. Curse-givers especially fill your deck with muck and you'll only be able to get the key cards in the right order very rarely.

The same story goes for most other cards - you should just buy those cards without village support. Yes, they can have terminal collision. But you would need both those cards WITH the village to avoid that, and that's pretty unlikely. And if you correctly gauge how many of the terminal you buy, you won't get that collision too often anyway.

Okay, so village isn't the uber-card we all thought it was back when we got actions with every buy. But does it really suck so bad you should almost never get it? No, it can be good in a decent number of situations, like most other cards. What are those? First of, there are basically two cards, I think, that warrant heavy village strategies almost by themselves, if there's no other amazing thing in the kingdom: Torturer and Goons. Both of these cards share the property that they're really, really good if you can play multiple copies in a single turn, especially if you can do that reliably. Torturer chains can shut the opponent down cold. Goons stacks build up VP chips really quickly. There are two other cards that have this property, bridge and conspirator, and village works well with them too, but you really need to play a lot of bridges for htat to be super good, and with village as the only support for conspirator, it's going to be tough to hit the critical action mass to get them going very quickly and you won't be able to do all that much with it once you do. But with a little other support, village with these can be good too.
But the most common reason you want village is in the midgame. You already have a handful of silvers, and you've bought three or four good terminals and would like to buy more, but you're worried about terminal collision. Well, since village IS a cantrip plus, and since you've already got a pretty good amount of money, and these terminals are good enough that you'd really like to be able to play multiples sometimes (especially if they aren't card-draw), then village can be a very good fit in this deck.

Basically all of the above applies to many of the 'village plus' cards. I'm specifically thinking of worker's village and walled village. Shanty town is usually even worse if you want to use it as a village. But there are some caveats for some of the variants:

Bazaar is much better, as that $1 helps actually quite a lot. Of course, it also costs $5.
Mining village is much better since you can (and pretty aggressively should) trash it for a one-time silver
Native village shouldn't really be thought of in this class at all, as it doesn't draw the card in your hand directly. Thus it's much worse at being a prototypical village, but better for a lot of combo decks. But again, plays differently.

Finally, there's fishing village. Fishing Village is really another beast entirely, generally a much better card, and deserves its own article, which will come at some point.

Admin edit: added whitespace between paragraphs for readability

130

Rules Questions / Potion costs

« on: July 11, 2011, 05:23:12 pm »

Okay, my basic question is encapsulated by this: why is it that when I swindle an alchemist, I can't turn it into a silver, but when I forge it, I can?

131

Game Reports / Another interesting combo

« on: July 06, 2011, 03:26:21 pm »

So I played a game with this board yesterday:
Forge, Moneylender, Native Village, Navigator, Peddler, Potion, Stash, Trade Route, Transmute, Treasure Map, and Village
I had 2/5 and went first.
Please think of what you would do and maybe post it in the comments before looking at what I did and reading some comments below in spoilers.

So if you didn't check the link, I went Native Village/Stash and won in 16 turns. Could've had the 7th province on 17 if my opponent hadn't ended her misery. Might this even be stronger than Chancellor/Stash?

132

Simulation / Simulating Challenge 2

« on: July 03, 2011, 08:19:33 pm »

Much like the first simulating challenge, the goal here is to produce a player on Geronimoo's simulator that beats all others. Okay, first of all, here's the Kingdom:
Alchemist, Fortune Teller, Hamlet, Harvest, Horse Traders, Outpost, Potion, Saboteur, Smithy, Vault, and Watchtower
Now, unfortunately there are a couple of problems with simulating this set, mostly all dealing with the choice card, Hamlet. So some strategies, probably those dealing with Watchtower mostly, aren't going to do so well in the simulator. Feel free to discuss that in your comments/solitaire it - I like being able to point out the sim's limitations even while acknowledging that it's an immensely useful tool. In that vein, in the game I played with this set, I went in with one strategy (basically Big Money w/Vaults) and ended up playing a different one (Big money with a lone smithy) based only on the money I got hand-to-hand. I think this was more or less the right call (except that maybe those hamlet/watchtower/x deals could have been really strong). But beyond this, I'd like to add a couple more wrinkles: Firstly, encouraging opening/strategy discussion in general, like in Opening of the Day. Secondly, I'd like to make this a double challenge - part A without colonies, and part B with. This will help us (and especially me - Platinum and colony are some of my worst cards) learn about how much the presence of these super-important cards affect the game and what strategies are king.
I'm going to try to come up with bots for this setup in a bit, but I wanted to get this up while I had a little free time

133

Puzzles and Challenges / All Estates are in their place

« on: July 01, 2011, 06:07:44 pm »

This has actually happened in a game I'm in right now. How, in a two player game, can you have 14 estates in the supply?

134

Game Reports / Horse Traders + Duke/Duchy

« on: June 28, 2011, 02:31:45 pm »

Here is a game where I showed some of the power of Horse Traders in a Duchy/Duke Strategy. My opponent was Blooki (Triceratops), consistently a top-10 player on Isotropic. Here is the spread: cards in supply: Duke, Ghost Ship, Horn of Plenty, Horse Traders, King's Court, Moneylender, Royal Seal, Smithy, Walled Village, and Wishing Well
Note: I'm using the abbreviations HT for Horse Traders and WV for Walled Village.
Blooki went first and opened Silver/Moneylender. I opened Silver/Horse Traders.
               Blooki                                                           WW
Turn 3: 4-> Walled Village                                             6->Duchy
4          Moneylender,6->Gold                                     HT, 5->Duchy
5          Moneylender,6->Duchy                                   HT, 5->Duchy
6          WV,4->HT (return WV)                                  4->HT
7          WV, Monelyender, 8->Duchy (return WV)        4->Silver
8          WV,3->Silver (return WV)                              HT,4->HT
9          WV, HT, 6->Duchy (return WV)                      4->Silver
10        WV, 6->Duchy (return WV)                            HT, 5->Duchy

Okay, there are a few things I want to point out here. All the Duchies are now gone, I've just gotten my fourth to make it an even split. I could have bought a gold on turn 3, but with the HT strat, I think this was the right way to go. I'm not sure about blooki buying a Duchy rather than a province on turn 7 - yeah, he wants to deny my, but he's trying to win the game on provinces (I think), and he's really hurting his chances to do so. I think on one or two of the fours that I went silver, I should have gone HT. I probably also should have bought coppers with some of my extra buys. Moneylender doesn't seem to work well with Duke boards. But the thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is WV, which just looks worthless here. Also, you can assume that Walled village is getting returned every chance it can (I'm going to stop putting it)
Blooki                                                                             WW
11 WV, Moneylender, 3->Silver                                     3->Silver
12 WV, HT, 5->Duke                                                   HT, 7->Duke+Estate
13 WV, 8->Province                                                     5->Duke
14 WV, 3->Silver                                                         HT, 7->Duke+Estate
15 WV, 3->Silver                                                         0->Copper
16 WV, Moneylender, 5->Duke                                      HT, 6->Duke+Copper
17 WV, Moneylender, 8->Province                                 HT, 6->Duke+Copper
18 WV, 3->Silver                                                         HT, 5->Duke+Copper
19 WV, 4->Smithy                                                       3->Estate
20 WV, HT, 5->Ghost Ship                                           HT, 5->Estate x 2
21 WV, 4->HT                                                             3->Estate
22 WV, HT, 6->Gold                                                     4->Estate
23 WV, Moneylender (no copper), 2->Estate
Game Over
Decks:
Blooki: 2 Prov, 2 Gold, 4 Duchy, 2 Duke, 1 GShip, 2 HT, 1 Moneylender, 1 Smithy, 1 WV, 6 Silver, 4 Estate, 1 Copper
WanderingWinder: 4 Duchy, 6 Duke, 3 HT, 4 Silver, 10 Estate, 11 Copper
Final Score: Blooki 36, WW 46

Obviously imperfect play from both sides here, but still fairly good, and I think this shows the general strength of the HT+Duke Strategy.

135

Game Reports / Ambassador/Ambassador vs. Ambassador/Silver

« on: June 23, 2011, 12:52:51 pm »

This is a game I played yesterday against theory where the two openings were played. I was on the silver side, while theory took the double ambassador.
cards in supply: Ambassador, City, Fairgrounds, Feast, Festival, Harem, Laboratory, Minion, Pirate Ship, and Salvager
(If somebody can tell me how to make a table in here, I'll reformat this).
    WW                                                                          theory
3. 4->Amb                                                               Amb (estate x 2)
4. 5->Lab                                                                Amb (copper x 2)
5. Lab, Amb(estate x 2), 3->silver                              Amb (copper x 2)

At this point, theory's had more or less the ideal draw, though I've been fairly lucky too. I have more power in my deck (the lab, 3 silvers to none) but also more bloat.

6. Amb(copper x 2)                                                  Amb (estate), 3->Silver
7. 4->Feast                                                             Amb (copper x 2)
8. Amb(copper x 2)                                                  Amb (copper), 3->Silver
9. Lab, Amb(copper x 2)                                           Amb (copper x 2)
10. 4->Silver                                                           Amb (estate)

theory has continued to get good draws here, having played one of the ambassadors every single turn. I wonder now whether my turn 7 play was the best - maybe I should have grabbed a silver instead. In any case here's what our decks looked like:
WW (Lab, Feast, Amb x2, Lab x3, Estate x3, Copper x6)
theory (Amb x2, Silver x2, Copper)

11. Lab, Amb, 5->Festival                                         Amb (copper x 0) 5->City
12. Amb (estate x2)                                                 City, Amb (estate), Amb (copper)
13. Lab, Feast (Lab), 7->Gold                                    City, Amb (estate x 0), Amb (estate), 4->Silver
14. Festival, 5->Lab                                                  City, 6->Lab
15. Amb (copper x2)                                                 Lab, City, Amb (cop x 0), Amb (cop), 6->Festival
16. Lab, Lab, Festival, 6->Amb x 2                             City, Festival, 6->Lab

I think this 16th turn from me was a definite overreaction. I should have gone for a gold. theory's now had a couple turns where he didn't play an ambassador, but he's still played 17 in his 16 turns.

17. Lab, 8->Province                                                 Lab, Lab, City, Festival, 8->Province
18. 3->Silver                                                            City, Festival, Amb(Amb), 6->Lab
19. Lab, 4->Feast                                                     Labx3, City, Festival, 8->Province
20. Lab, Amb (Copper x 0), 8->Province                      6->Lab
21. Festival, Amb (Cop x 0), Amb (Cop x 2)                 Labx3, City, Festival, Amb (Cop x 2), 6->Lab
22.Lab, Festival, Amb (Cop x 0), 8->Province               Labx5, Festival, City, Amb (Cop x 2), 8->Province

Let's take stock here. Decks:
WW (Province x 3, Gold, Festival, Lab x 3, Feast, Amb x 5, Silver x 4, Estate x 4, Copper x 8) Total: 22
theory(Province x 3, City, Festival, Lab x 5, Amb, Silver x 3) Total:18
So I'm up by 4 with 2 provinces left, but I'm in a very difficult position; I've got a much worse deck, I need to grab basically all the VP I can get, and I still need to be able to get one of the last two provinces. As a note, after theory played all his actions on 23, he took a long think (maybe  a minute or two) and then we started talking. He didn't want to hurt his engine, but he didn't want to leave himself vulnerable to me hitting a good hand and ending the game. At this point, I knew my hand for turn 24 and that he was fine to grab the penultimate province, but I made suggestions to him based on what I'd do in his position - basically Harem. Well, you'll see what happened.

23. Amb (Copper x 0), 2-> Estate                                 Lab x 5, Festival, Amb (Cop), City, 8->Duchy
24. 7->Harem                                                              Lab x 5, Festival, City, 8->Duchy, Silver
25.Lab, Lab, Feast (Duchy), 2->Estate                           Lab x 5, Festival, City, 10->Duchy x 2
26. Amb (Copper), 2 ->Estate                                       Lab x 4, Festival, 8->Province
27. Amb (Copper), 2->Estate                                        Lab, City, 4->Estate
28. Lab x 2, Festival, Amb (Cop x 0), 7->Duchy, Estate   Lab x 3, Amb(Copper x 0), 6->Fairgrounds
29. Lab, 4->Estate                                                       Lab x 3, Festival, Amb(Prov x 0), 7->Fairgrounds

Game Over: theory 45, WW 42

136

Rules Questions / Black Market + Ambassador = ?

« on: June 21, 2011, 10:22:07 pm »

So I just thought of this while reading the "really bad card ideas" thread (mischievous face), but actually it applies to cards that already exist, so hey! What happens if you reveal a card from the black market with ambassador? Does it go back to the BM deck? Does the first available opponent gain it? does it just disappear from the game? Can you not pick to return it to the supply at all, since the supply is not from whence it came?
Obviously, this won't come up much - maybe most often in a Possession game.

137

Dominion Articles / Combo: Native Village & Bridge

« on: June 17, 2011, 12:23:46 am »

We all know that KC-KC-Bridge-Bridge-Bridge is a killer, killer combo. But it's so hard to pull off. There is, however, another extremely reliable way to get many Bridges played in the same turn, and that is through the use of Native Village.
This is more of a total-game-strategy rather than just a little combo. You want to start NV-Bridge (you can do this on either 5/2 or 4/3, which is nice), and then simply keep buying those cards, and more or less only those cards, for the rest of the game.
Every time you play Native Village, always choose to set aside the card. What you're going for eventually is to pick up a massive native village mat, play a ton of bridges (fueled by the actions from NV itself), and win.
There are a few ways you can look to win, and you really need to watch your opponent for that. If they're going for a rather conventional strategy, like big money, you want to hold off on "going off" for quite a long time, so that you can get like 6 bridges (or maybe even more) in one turn and just scream through the provinces and win.
In the mirror matchup, you have to be VERY careful about the game ending on piles and/or be ready to set the combo off what seems like prematurely in order to three-pile and win. In general, three piles are something you always have to watch out for, as the native villages and bridges themselves are going to go pretty quickly, and with so many extra buys, you can easily run out even a fairly full pile pretty quickly.

This combo is very powerful and pretty fast, but it has some limitations. First of all, it's somewhat vulnerable to curse-givers and other deck-bloaters (see ambassador). On the other hand, if you adjust by increasing your NV ratio a little, you can actually trim this a little - not that I'd suggest it against a good curse-giver, but you could probably hold against a weaker one, like Young Witch (needless to say, if NV is the bane, this is a no-brainer).
As for speed, it's pretty fast, but maybe not chapel fast. In fact, I don't know all the baselines for chapel OR for this combo, but I'm guessing this actually beats a standard chapel/big money setup, but you may need to do this with a little guile. For instance (and this is not uncommon with this combo), your chapelling opponent has 5 provinces, a chapel, and money, and you pull the trigger on your combo. If you can get 6 bridges played in a turn, that's enough, even without any money, to buy 3 provinces and 4 duchies, which is as much VP as the 5 provinces, and your 3 estates will win it for you.
Other cards to add to this combo: Well, generally you want to get the native villages and bridges first. Of course, an early Lab or two or three is going to help, but in the most common scenario for this, c+c+c+bridge, it may well be better to grab a bridge and a native village than the lab plus nothing. Of course, any other type of village is going to help, especially in the mirror, but again, you need to prioritize the main combo elements. Cities throw a monkey wrench.

138

Council Room Feedback / Win Type

« on: June 15, 2011, 03:40:31 pm »

Is there a way we could have a player-by-player breakdown, much like those for # of players, last X days, and starting position, of record by how the game ended (i.e. Colonies, Provinces, Piles, or resignation)?
I have a feeling that I'm best in Piles endings (okay, I'm discounting resignation here), followed by Provinces, and suck at colony, based on anecdote and my popular buys page, where Platinum/Colony are tied for my 9th-worst win rate when available, but I'm interested in more concrete data.

Love the site by the way.

139

Dominion Articles / Openings: Horse Traders

« on: June 15, 2011, 12:48:07 am »

While playing a game with theory this morning, he remarked that he needed to do the math on Horse Traders to see whether HT/Silver or S/S was better at getting to $6. I felt I did too, so when I had some time tonight, using his basic opening probabilities, I did. So here it is, with Silver/Silver first and Horse Traders/Silver to follow.
Warning: Huge Collimated lists follow:
Silver/Silver
Probability    Hands    Coin    Coin
15.2%    ccces|ccees    $5    $4
10.1%    ccces|ccces    $5    $5
10.1%    cccee|ccces    $3    $5
7.6%     cccce|ccess    $4    $6
7.6%            cccee|ccess    $3    $6
7.6%            ccccs|ccees    $6    $4
7.6%     cccce|ccees    $4    $4
5.1%     cccce|ccces    $4    $5
5.0%            cccee|cccss    $3    $7
3.8%            cccce|ceess    $4    $5
2.5%            ccccs|cceee    $6    $2
2.5%            ccccs|ceees    $6    $3
2.5%            ccccs|cccee    $6    $3
2.5%      cccss|cceee    $7    $2
2.5%     ccccs|ccces    $6    $5
1.5%            ccccc|ccees    $5    $4
1.5%            ccccc|ceess    $5    $5
1.3%            cccce|cccee    $4    $3
1.2%            cccce|cccss    $4    $7
1.0%            ccccc|ceees    $5    $3
0.7%            ccccc|ccess    $5    $6
0.3%            ccccc|cceee    $5    $2
0.2%            ccccc|eeess    $5    $4

Drawing $7                          8.8%
At least one $6 or $7               42.4%
Not drawing $5 on either turn    8.8%
Drawing $5 or better twice       14.9%
Average total money               $9.17

Horse Traders/Silver

Probability    Hands    Coin    Coin
10.1%    ccceh|ccces    $5    $5
7.6%            ccces|cceeh    $5    $5
7.6%            ccceh|ccees    $5    $4
7.6%            cccce|ccehs    $4    $6
7.6%            cccee|ccehs    $3    $6
5.05%    cccee|ccces    $3    $5
5.05%    cccee|ccceh    $3    $5
5.0%            cccee|ccchs    $3    $6
3.8%       ccccs|cceeh    $6    $5
3.8%            cccch|ccees    $5    $4
3.8%            cccce|cceeh    $4    $5
3.8%            cccce|ccees    $4    $4
3.8%            cccce|ceehs    $4    $6
2.55%    cccce|ccces    $4    $5
2.55%    cccce|ccceh    $4    $5
2.5%            ccchs|cceee    $6    $2
1.5%            ccccc|ceehs    $5    $6
1.3%      cccce|cccee    $4    $3
1.25%    cccch|cceee    $5    $2
1.25%    ccccs|cceee    $6    $2
1.25%    cccch|ceees    $5    $3
1.25%    ccccs|ceeeh    $6    $4
1.25%    ccccs|cccee    $6    $3
1.25%    cccch|cccee    $5    $3
1.25%    cccch|ccces    $5    $5
1.25%    ccccs|ccceh    $6    $5
1.2%            cccce|ccchs    $4    $6
.75%            ccccc|ccees    $5    $4
.75%      ccccc|cceeh    $5    $5
0.7%     ccccc|ccehs    $5    $6
0.5%            ccccc|ceees    $5    $3
0.5%            ccccc|ceeeh    $5    $4
0.3%            ccccc|cceee    $5    $2
0.2%      ccccc|eeehs    $5    $5

Drawing $7                          0%
At least one $6 or $7               38.7%
Not drawing $5 on either turn    5.1%
Drawing $5 or better twice       27.2%
Average total money               $9.10


What does this mean? Well, to answer theory's question, Silver/Silver is a bit better at pulling a $6 out of the hat. It also produces a little more money in turns 3-4 overall. But if you want to consistently hit $5, Horse Traders is your best bet. Of course all of this assumes your opponent isn't attacking you, which will favor Horse Traders, and Horse Traders gives you an extra buy (although this isn't such a big deal early game so often). Silver's going to shine midgame while Horse Traders' value will start picking up again late, for 2 reasons - it gives the extra buy, and your deck has more green in it. Of course neither are probably so great in a big engine, HT is a terminal, so you need to watch out for that, but it gains a lot of value from attacks being on the board - particularly the big $5 attacks as well as your militia/goons attack. HT/Silver with a village follow-up later on can be really powerful on a Witch or Mountebank board. In a straight-up big money deck though, I'd be surprised plain ole silver doesn't outperform.

140

Dominion Articles / Hunting Party

« on: June 13, 2011, 04:08:56 pm »

Hunting Party is one of the "Power Cards" which emerged from the new Cornucopia release. The obvious comparison is to Laboratory, against which it is usually better but sometimes worse. Like Laboratory, it usually nets you +1 card (+2 cards +1action -1card and action for actually playing it). But the ability here is really key, in that it gets you a card you don't already have in your hand. This makes it look like it would combo well with Menagerie, but it can also get your hand so big, and you often want so many Hunting Parties, that the synergy is not so strong as it might be.
The cons of Hunting Party are, in addition to the uselessness of Lab when you're drawing your whole deck every turn, when there are no more cards in your deck that you don't have in your hand, it turns into a cantrip with the chancellor effect. This is still not so horrible, but not really what we're looking for in a power $5. So naturally, Hunting Party is at its weakest in a very trimmed deck and/or a deck where you have one card (especially a treasure or terminal) that you want to spam a lot. Hunting Party is also not so resilient against handsize-reducing attacks, as the cards you're dumping away are probably going to be the ones you want Hunting Party to skip over anyway, and now it won't.
On the other hand, Hunting party is at its best when you have a handful of cards that you want to all draw at once. Want to be able to play KC and Bridge in the same turn? Hunting Party is your card. Want to have multiples of each? Not so much. But generally a good Hunting party strategy is to use it to need only one of the top money (gold or platinum, depending on whether or not there are colonies) card and still be able to draw it every turn. For instance, in a non-colony game, I'll often get a single gold, an attack or useful card that nets me $2, at least one silver, and then a bunch of Hunting parties. This nets $8 pretty reliably, with an attack every turn to boot. It's important to note that in this kind of deck, every turn you get $5-$7 after you have your one Gold, you want to go Hunting party until either a) they run out or b) it's time to turn for duchies. But this is extremely powerful. Check out this game where I smash my opponent's Chapel(!) opening  with a good Hunting party deck of this type, with Cutpurse as my $2-gaining terminal.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20110610-211238-aabfd032.html
Obviously you'd rather have Militia, Monument, or Mountebank for this spot, but even Cutpurse is pretty good.
You can also play every Conspirator in a deck with pretty good frequency in a HP deck, which is a fairly good combo to have. Just remember to play your Conspirators BEFORE your HPs after they're non-terminal. It's to remember that if you do get the chancellor-effect out of HP because you have everything, you probably don't want to play that last card-drawer in your hand without another HP, as then all of the actions you've just played in your chain will miss out on the reshuffle, and your next time through you'll see only the cards you've got multiples of - your coppers, estates, and maybe silvers - without having a shot at any HPs to restart the chain.

Works With:
Other Hunting Parties
Spammable non-terminals (see Conspirator)
Fairly tight decks where you want to get exactly 1 of every card
Attacks, which it lets you play very often
Opponents' curse-givers (sort of), which it helps you sift through


Conflicts With:
Spammable terminals (see Goons, Wharf)
Opponents' Handsize-reducing attacks
Your own trashers