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Author Topic: Cave - secret vp card  (Read 10136 times)

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Mr.Oatmeal

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Cave - secret vp card
« on: January 06, 2014, 01:02:13 am »
+3

When I first learned about the salvager extension for goko, I was somewhat surprised that with all of the published cards, if you are paying attention to every single play, it is actually possible to know anyone's score even IRL (edge case masquerade with more than 2 players).  I started thinking of how to create a card where your opponents don't know exactly how many points are in your deck. Here's my idea.

Cave - Action Victory - $5

Place a card from your hand face down on the cave mat.
Worth 1vp for every 2 differently named cards on your cave mat.
--
At the end of the game count the number of differently named cards on your cave mat, then return all of the cards on the mat to your deck.

Clarification: the number of cards on each players mat would be public, but other players would not know how many are unique cards.
Clarification 2: the player may look at the cards on their cave mat at any time.

So it can get junk out of your deck, but to make it be worth more, you have to toss in some useful cards too.
After play testing it in one kingdom, I noticed that the more of these you buy, the faster their score grows, since you get more opportunities to set aside cards. Not sure if this is a problem..

What are your thoughts? 

EDIT: changed from 1 per each unique to 1 per 2 unique.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2014, 01:38:29 pm by Mr.Oatmeal »
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LibraryAdventurer

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2014, 01:17:48 am »
0

I like the idea and might test it out at some point.


(I always thought using the #vpon command on Goko was kindof cheating.)
« Last Edit: January 06, 2014, 01:19:06 am by LibraryAdventurer »
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popsofctown

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2014, 02:01:43 am »
+1

Why would you prefer uncertain tracking?
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Mr.Oatmeal

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2014, 11:41:44 am »
+1

Why would you prefer uncertain tracking?

I'm not sure that i prefer it, I just think it's a cool option.
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markusin

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2014, 12:13:11 pm »
0

I would also say it's worth testing out, and I like that you've made it cost $5. It shouldn't cost any less than that.

This card reminds me a lot of Bishop. With Bishop, you might find yourself trashing Coppers, Estates, and Curses early game, getting at least 1 VP on each play. Now, Cave, will average out to less than 1VP on each play. A big difference between Bishop and Cave is that, once you acquire some VP, you can multiply your VP score by buying more Caves. With 2 or more Caves, you can probably make it worth 6VP quickly enough, but at the cost of a lot of used up actions and some decent to good cards from your deck. Pseudo-trashing is good, but at least Duchy doesn't need you to play it at least 3 times to make it worth 3VP.

So yeah, I think this can work after all. Nice to know you've tried it out a bit.
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Warfreak2

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2014, 12:32:29 pm »
0

Almost certainly OP, Fairgrounds is worth 2/5 per unique card, but this would be easy to get up to 10VP+, and even improves your deck most of the way there. In Shelters games it gets to 5VP (including Copper and Cave) before it stops improving your deck. 2VP per 5 unique cards is probably balanced, but would seem too similar to Fairgrounds even if it played very differently.

The Cornucopia cards which reward variety are interesting because normally, decks with a bit of everything aren't very good. This card lets you hide what you don't want on your mat, so you aren't ruining your deck by buying that Counting House or Transmute.
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markusin

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2014, 12:46:41 pm »
0

Almost certainly OP, Fairgrounds is worth 2/5 per unique card, but this would be easy to get up to 10VP+, and even improves your deck most of the way there. In Shelters games it gets to 5VP (including Copper and Cave) before it stops improving your deck. 2VP per 5 unique cards is probably balanced, but would seem too similar to Fairgrounds even if it played very differently.

The Cornucopia cards which reward variety are interesting because normally, decks with a bit of everything aren't very good. This card lets you hide what you don't want on your mat, so you aren't ruining your deck by buying that Counting House or Transmute.
Oh right, shelters. So then I have to go back to my initial instinct that this is undercosted. The real issue is whether or not the optimal strategy for using Cave will always be the monolithic one of only buying Caves and fodder for Caves. Edit: Or perhaps it's simply a must buy, even if you're just getting them to deny your opponent. No other Alt-VP card is a must buy.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2014, 12:48:35 pm by markusin »
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Mr.Oatmeal

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2014, 01:36:49 pm »
0

Almost certainly OP, Fairgrounds is worth 2/5 per unique card, but this would be easy to get up to 10VP+, and even improves your deck most of the way there. In Shelters games it gets to 5VP (including Copper and Cave) before it stops improving your deck. 2VP per 5 unique cards is probably balanced, but would seem too similar to Fairgrounds even if it played very differently.

Good point. This would be even crazier in a game with ruins. I'm not sure if I would want to go with the 2 for 5 uniques, since you'd really have to go for it almost all out to make it worth anything, but perhaps 1VP per 2 unique could work. That way, without shelters, it would be worth 2 with one each of the main victory cards and a copper. Now that I think about it, this might have been the way we tested it.

I changed it in the OP
« Last Edit: January 06, 2014, 01:39:41 pm by Mr.Oatmeal »
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cluckyb

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #8 on: January 06, 2014, 01:51:41 pm »
0

Similar mechanic to Secret Plot from the Intrigue round of the treasure chest design contest. That one gave you points for cards other people didn't hide rather than straight up cards for points stashed which makes it play differently but there is at least a lot of discussion about the idea on that thread.

To get around the ruins problem, you could maybe use "priced" instead of "named"? Might be too hard to make it worth three then.
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Warfreak2

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2014, 02:51:31 pm »
+1

1VP / 2 unique cards is still a bit high; you can still get it up to 7VP+. Fairgrounds cost $6, are junk themselves, normally max out at 6VP, and require good planning so that all the uniques-for-the-sake-of-it don't clobber your deck. Conversely, pseudo-trashing improves your deck, and Cave's diversity-reward doesn't come with the typical downside of ending up drawing hands full of cards which don't work well together.

Removing Estates from your deck without losing the VP from them is another small bonus - smaller than Bishop's bonus, but Bishop has a very significant nerf which is often forgotten when comparisons are made. As for Duchies not "requiring" you to play them three times - thinning your deck is something you probably want to do anyway - Trade Route, Develop and Island thin your deck at the same rate for less reward, yet are still often good plays in the early and middle game.

If Island stayed in your deck when you used it, it would probably have to cost $5. Your idea is nice, but I don't think it can work at $5 if it's trivial to make it worth more than 2VP. I'm skeptical that it can be balanced at $6 either.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2014, 02:54:06 pm by Warfreak2 »
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GendoIkari

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #10 on: January 07, 2014, 12:58:09 pm »
0

I definitely agree with the concept... making it so that you can't know for sure if you're winning or losing I think would add a lot to the game. I don't know if I would do it with differently-named cards. For one thing, it makes it too similar to Fairgrounds. For another, I don't think it adds enough guesswork. If your opponent is playing with this card, you can safely guess that 3 of the cards on their mat will be Estates (assuming an Estates game). Then it's safe to assume that a couple more would be Coppers. So as a whole, I think you'll know at least within 1 point how much their Caves are worth.
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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #11 on: January 07, 2014, 01:01:00 pm »
0

Perhaps if it cared about the total cost of cards on the mat? This is probably not a great idea, but I'm just throwing it out there.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #12 on: January 07, 2014, 01:12:08 pm »
+1

Perhaps if it cared about the total cost of cards on the mat? This is probably not a great idea, but I'm just throwing it out there.

That would certainly add more variety as to possible guesses of your opponent's score. But I don't know how you could balance such a thing; adding a Province to the mat is already a great thing to do, so you don't want to reward them for using higher-cost cards.
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Warfreak2

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #13 on: January 07, 2014, 01:25:30 pm »
0

How about just total number of cards on the mat? 1vp per 5 cards, or so.
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Polk5440

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #14 on: January 07, 2014, 01:49:51 pm »
0

How about just total number of cards on the mat? 1vp per 5 cards, or so.

Because your opponents can count them:

I started thinking of how to create a card where your opponents don't know exactly how many points are in your deck.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #15 on: January 07, 2014, 01:59:54 pm »
0

Perhaps if it cared about the total cost of cards on the mat? This is probably not a great idea, but I'm just throwing it out there.

That would certainly add more variety as to possible guesses of your opponent's score. But I don't know how you could balance such a thing; adding a Province to the mat is already a great thing to do, so you don't want to reward them for using higher-cost cards.

Right, and you can't specify that only non-Victory cards go on the mat without them revealing cards as they're set aside, thereby negating the entire concept of the card. Good call.
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sudgy

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #16 on: January 07, 2014, 02:05:27 pm »
0

How about one vp for every ten cards, and an additional vp for every two action cards (or something like that)?
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

GendoIkari

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #17 on: January 07, 2014, 02:15:58 pm »
0

Or a completely different way to have unknown number of points... each player secretly writes down a number at the start of the game. At the end of the game, Cave is worth however many points you wrote down.

Oops, this isn't the "really bad card ideas" thread.  :-[
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Warfreak2

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #18 on: January 07, 2014, 02:18:59 pm »
+2

Right, and you can't specify that only non-Victory cards go on the mat without them revealing cards as they're set aside,
Uh... sure you can. If, at the end of the game, there is a victory card on the mat, then they cheated. There's only an accountability issue if they can also anonymously remove cards from the mat.

Alternatively, if you want to exclude victory cards, just say they are allowed to put any card on the mat, but only non-victory cards are counted.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2014, 02:21:16 pm by Warfreak2 »
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GendoIkari

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #19 on: January 07, 2014, 03:02:56 pm »
0

Right, and you can't specify that only non-Victory cards go on the mat without them revealing cards as they're set aside,
Uh... sure you can. If, at the end of the game, there is a victory card on the mat, then they cheated. There's only an accountability issue if they can also anonymously remove cards from the mat.

Alternatively, if you want to exclude victory cards, just say they are allowed to put any card on the mat, but only non-victory cards are counted.

Still probably too strong with Peddler.
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Warfreak2

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #20 on: January 07, 2014, 03:29:18 pm »
+1

I think it's OK if Cave/Peddler is a brokenly-strong combo - although probably weaker than Masterpiece/Feodum and Beggar/Gardens, not to mention Hermit/Market Square which is within a single expansion. It's going to have to be something like "worth 1VP per $8 in the total cost of cards on the mat, rounded down" in order to be balanced anyway.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2014, 03:31:15 pm by Warfreak2 »
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scott_pilgrim

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #21 on: January 07, 2014, 03:50:14 pm »
+1

Right, and you can't specify that only non-Victory cards go on the mat without them revealing cards as they're set aside,
Uh... sure you can. If, at the end of the game, there is a victory card on the mat, then they cheated. There's only an accountability issue if they can also anonymously remove cards from the mat.

Alternatively, if you want to exclude victory cards, just say they are allowed to put any card on the mat, but only non-victory cards are counted.

Still probably too strong with Peddler.

Bishop also trashes cards and scores based on their cost, so I don't think this is any different in that regard.

The bigger issue that I see with any card which scores based on cards it puts onto a mat is that it will run into the original Duke problem.  (For those unfamiliar with the original Duke, it said "Worth 1 VP per Duke in your deck"; which turns out to be un-balanceable at any ratio because they are terrible if you don't get enough of them and broken if you get a lot of them (or they are always terrible or always broken).)  The way that I see this being a problem with Cave is that, with one Cave in your deck, you'll be getting cards onto your mat at some rate, x, and you'll be scoring once based on that rate.  If you have two Caves in your deck, you'll be getting cards onto your mat at a rate of 2x, and then you'll be scoring twice based on that rate, so you'll be getting roughly 4 times as many VP than you would if you had one cave.  With three caves, you'll be getting cards onto your mat three times as quickly, and then scoring three times as many points per card on the mat, so that's 9 times as many points.  You see where this is going; the number of points each Cave is worth increases quadratically, which is exactly the same problem the original Duke had.

Okay, so that's an approximation and in reality I don't think it's as bad as the original Duke, since there's terminal collision, and maybe you can't always get what you want onto your mat.  It's still a pretty big problem though.  The original version, "x VP per differently named card on your mat", actually does a reasonable job of dealing with this issue, by making it harder and harder to squeeze more points out of Cave with each subsequent play of it.  The cost-based version I think is a lot more likely to be terribroken, since you can always keep feeding it more cards for points.  In fact, the cost-based version just seems like a poorly executed version of Bishop; it scores points based on the cost of the card trashed (or pseudo-trashed), but this version has an un-balanceable ratio problem, since it scores quadratically with the number of Caves in your deck.

Edit: I should mention though that I don't think the original version does a good enough job of dealing with the issue.  Either the ratio will have to be really low to make sure it isn't broken, in which case the fact that it slows down makes it even weaker; or the ratio will have to be reasonably high, in which case it will probably be a dominant strategy to amass them and try to store away as many cards as possible.  It's a little slower than quadratic, but I suspect still faster than linear, so the problem is still present, just to a much lesser degree.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2014, 03:55:22 pm by scott_pilgrim »
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LastFootnote

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #22 on: January 07, 2014, 04:33:29 pm »
0

Agreed. The version that cares about costs is just going to be a worse Bishop. Bad idea!  :D
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rrwoods

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #23 on: January 07, 2014, 04:46:38 pm »
0

What about:

(?s are values I haven't thought about, not variables)

Cave
$?  Victory
Worth ? VP per ? on your Cave mat.  (At the end of the game, reveal those cards, ?, and return them to your deck.)
---
When you gain this, set aside a card from your hand face down on your Cave mat.

[ to solve the problem of it being "too good" a trasher and doubly rewarding ]



or



Cave
$?  Action-Victory
Set aside a card from your hand on your Cave mat.
---
At the end of the game, reveal the cards on your Cave mat, ?, and return them to your deck.  Then trash copies of Cave from your deck until you have only one.  Cave is worth ? VP per ?.

[ to solve the problem of the number of Caves you get having the "original Duke" problem ]
« Last Edit: January 07, 2014, 04:48:16 pm by rrwoods »
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Warfreak2

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Re: Cave - secret vp card
« Reply #24 on: January 07, 2014, 04:58:10 pm »
+1

With three caves, you'll be getting cards onto your mat three times as quickly, and then scoring three times as many points per card on the mat, so that's 9 times as many points. 
That's not true, because Cave is terminal, and decreases handsize. Without villages you can't put away more than one card per turn, and without villages+draw you can't put away more than two per turn.

There is no rule against quadratic payoffs - see Bridge, Goons and Merchant Guild - but notice that for each of them, it's hard to play a lot of them, because they don't give either +actions or +cards. Madman has exponential payoff, but that's OK because it's hard to get a lot of them in the first place.
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