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[Captain Stupendous]

Hey all, I'm back with another card idea that's been bouncing around in my head. Here it is:

Palace
Cost: $5,
Victory
10 Victory Points
At the end of the game, after counting your initial victory points, this card is worth 1 victory point less for every ten victory points you have.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In games using Palace, whenever a player gains a victory card that is not a Palace, trash the top two Palace cards from the supply.

Pretty weird, huh? The idea was to make a very powerful rush card that allowed a player to amass a lot of victory points quickly, but at some point capped and is unable to help you any further. Lets analyze how this card would actually play.

The first Palace you buy gives you ten victory points for $5, AMAZING! However, its not as good as it would first appear. In reality, your first palace only supplies nine victory points, since you add up your initial points (3 from estates + 10 from palace) and then reduce all your Palaces' value by 1. Each additional palace you buy is worth two points less than the previous Palace. Observe the following chart: 1 palace = 10 initial vp; 9 total points. 2 palaces = 20 initial vp; 16 total points. 3 palaces = 30 initial vp; 21 total points. 4 palaces = 40 initial vp; 24 actual points. 5 palaces = 50 initial vp; 25 actual points. Any palaces bought beyond the fifth one will actually decrease your total vps, as 6 palaces = 60 initial vp but each palace is now worth only 4 vp, for a total of 24 again. This creates a situation where a player who commits heavily to palaces will jump into the lead very quickly, but then has to end the game because the more palaces he or she has the lower their maximum vp cap is going to be.

I thought this card was interesting, but I don't really know what the optimum strategy for its use would be since it actually discourages you from amassing huge amounts of victory points. Any insights?

[Awaclus]

Sounds too good for the price at least. 4 Provinces gets you 24 points too, these cost $3 less.

[silverspawn]

Sounds too good for the price at least. 4 Provinces gets you 24 points too, these cost $3 less.

but with 4 provinces you aren't set in a trap where more greeing decreases your vp count.

i think it'll be brutal on fast 3pile games, dominate slugs, and will be dead on other boards. but maybe i'm wrong.

[sudgy]

i think it'll be brutal on fast 3pile games, dominate slugs, and will be dead on other boards. but maybe i'm wrong.

Yes, if you drop this card on one, it will kill a slug instantly.  It's like some type of uber-salt.

...sorry...

[Awaclus]

Sounds too good for the price at least. 4 Provinces gets you 24 points too, these cost $3 less.

but with 4 provinces you aren't set in a trap where more greeing decreases your vp count.

i think it'll be brutal on fast 3pile games, dominate slugs, and will be dead on other boards. but maybe i'm wrong.

Even if you buy 4 Provinces and 4 Palaces, you'll have more VP than the person who bought 4 Provinces and 4 Duchies.

[Captain Stupendous]

Even if you buy 4 Provinces and 4 Palaces, you'll have more VP than the person who bought 4 Provinces and 4 Duchies.

Yeah, that's a definite problem and I now realize that this is almost certainly too powerful relative to its cost as it's now written. What do you think of the overall idea though? Is there a way to fix the cost/victory point imbalance, or is the concept just a bad one?

[silverspawn]

Sounds too good for the price at least. 4 Provinces gets you 24 points too, these cost $3 less.

but with 4 provinces you aren't set in a trap where more greeing decreases your vp count.

i think it'll be brutal on fast 3pile games, dominate slugs, and will be dead on other boards. but maybe i'm wrong.

Even if you buy 4 Provinces and 4 Palaces, you'll have more VP than the person who bought 4 Provinces and 4 Duchies.

let's see...
4 provinces + 4 duchies + 3 estates = 4*6+4*3+3=6*6+3= 39 VP's
4 provinces + 4 palaces + 3 estates = 4*40+4*6+3 = 40+24+3 = 67. Minus 6*4 => 67 - 24 = 43.

that's more, but only quite, so what you can do is not buy 4 provinces but go for more duchies instead. if you force him to break the 70 vp border, his palaces decrease even more in value.

scales better than I thought, probably does need a nerf. still dominates #slogs

[Awaclus]

Sounds too good for the price at least. 4 Provinces gets you 24 points too, these cost $3 less.

but with 4 provinces you aren't set in a trap where more greeing decreases your vp count.

i think it'll be brutal on fast 3pile games, dominate slugs, and will be dead on other boards. but maybe i'm wrong.

Even if you buy 4 Provinces and 4 Palaces, you'll have more VP than the person who bought 4 Provinces and 4 Duchies.

let's see...
4 provinces + 4 duchies + 3 estates = 4*6+4*3+3=6*6+3= 39 VP's
4 provinces + 4 palaces + 3 estates = 4*40+4*6+3 = 40+24+3 = 67. Minus 6*4 => 67 - 24 = 43.

that's more, but only quite, so what you can do is not buy 4 provinces but go for more duchies instead. if you force him to break the 70 vp border, his palaces decrease even more in value.

scales better than I thought, probably does need a nerf. still dominates #slogs

How often do you buy 4 Provinces and 4 Duchies in Dominion? And even if you force him to break the 70 VP border, the Palaces are still as good as Duchies.

[eHalcyon]

There is a fatal flaw with this card  as it is -- it isn't stable.  What happens if you have no VP other than one Palace?  Palace is worth 10VP... oh, you have 10, so it should be reduced in value to 9VP.  But now your total VP is less than 10, so Palace shouldn't have been reduced.  And so on.

That's a simple case, but it can get more complicated.  I believe a similar concept has been suggested in these forums before, and someone presented a situation where there were multiple equilibria that satisfied the equations.

A possible solution is to not count VP from itself, except that then you just buy Palace and nothing else and get tons of VP.  That's an even worse situation.

Overall the idea is interesting, but I think it would be difficult to balance the numbers.  Ignoring the problem I've just described, I would also suggest adding a minimum value.  At the least, you should prevent a situation where Palace is worth negative points.

[Captain Stupendous]

There is a fatal flaw with this card  as it is -- it isn't stable.  What happens if you have no VP other than one Palace?  Palace is worth 10VP... oh, you have 10, so it should be reduced in value to 9VP.  But now your total VP is less than 10, so Palace shouldn't have been reduced.  And so on.

That's not how I intended the card to work. As its written, you count your initial victory points once, then apply the vp reduction to all your palaces once. Is this not clear from the card text? That's why I used the word "initial" which I hoped implied that you only did the calculation/reduction step once. The far worse problem as I see it is not the mechanics of how the card works but the imbalance which Awaclus pointed out; the reduction isn't nearly drastic enough relative to its low cost.

I do agree with you in regard to its need for a minimum point value, probably 1.

Balancing the numbers would undoubtedly be really difficult, but I think it might be possible and would be pretty cool if we could figure it out!

[Co0kieL0rd]

To avoid paradoxical VP counting, it would rephrase the card text like this: "At the end of the game, after counting your initial victory points, subtract 1 point from that number per Palace in your deck for every 10 initial victory points (rounded down)."

But how about having Palace's VPs scale down with the numer of victory cards in your deck instead of the initial VPs?

The card then could look like this:

Palace
Cost: $5,
Type: Victory
Text: 12 VPs | This is worth 1 VP less for every other victory card in your deck.

So 1 Palace would be worth 12, 2 would be 22, 3 would be 30, 4 would be 36, 5 would be 40 and 6 would be 42. 7 are also worth 42 and from then on, it's less. Yeah... I lost my initial train of thought here, so I leave this as it is for now^^

What were your thoughts on the "In games using Palace, whenever a player gains a victory card that is not a Palace, trash the top two Palace cards from the supply." part of the card text, I wonder?

[popsofctown]

I prefer counting actual VPs to counting VP cards.

I can't figure out a nonparadoxical wording, but it needs one.