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[theory]

I don't think the possibility of complexity is equivalent to it being desirable. For example, even with Isotropic, I loathe the philosopher's stone and silk roads cards. The issue is that though the software might be able to calculate their values, the player generally cannot. Which means that if the player has to make strategic decisions on whether to buy or play a card, it's too hard for the player to know in advance how much a silk roads is worth, or how much cash a philosopher's stone is going to generate. With sufficient complication, the results of cards becomes effectively random, or worse the game becomes a race of who is best at card counting or crunching sums in their head, decreasing the fun of the game. It's pretty lame if one player beats another because one bought silk roads and the other duchies, when, unbeknownst to both players, the silk roads were worth more.

This is a bit of a moot point, since if the software can calculate the value, the software can also display its value to you.

Any electronic implementation would almost certainly have a full point counter and deck tracker.

[WanderingWinder]

There are things that you can do when designing a computer game that you simply cannot in a real-life game.  How could you imagine changes to Dominion, if you didn't have to worry about messy real-life decks of cards?

For instance: you can have cards like Philosopher's Stone, but much more in-depth.  A Treasure whose value depends on Victory cards: like Silk Roads or Gardens, but dynamically changing on each turn. 

Alternatively: many, many more kingdoms, with a greatly prolonged game time.  Make it a war, not a battle.

I don't think the possibility of complexity is equivalent to it being desirable. For example, even with Isotropic, I loathe the philosopher's stone and silk roads cards. The issue is that though the software might be able to calculate their values, the player generally cannot. Which means that if the player has to make strategic decisions on whether to buy or play a card, it's too hard for the player to know in advance how much a silk roads is worth, or how much cash a philosopher's stone is going to generate. With sufficient complication, the results of cards becomes effectively random, or worse the game becomes a race of who is best at card counting or crunching sums in their head, decreasing the fun of the game. It's pretty lame if one player beats another because one bought silk roads and the other duchies, when, unbeknownst to both players, the silk roads were worth more.

I wholeheartedly disagree, and I don't like you denigrating the skill to remember what's in people's decks, which I think is a pretty important part of the game, not some kind of 'random luck' thing.

[rinkworks]

I don't think the possibility of complexity is equivalent to it being desirable. For example, even with Isotropic, I loathe the philosopher's stone and silk roads cards. The issue is that though the software might be able to calculate their values, the player generally cannot. Which means that if the player has to make strategic decisions on whether to buy or play a card, it's too hard for the player to know in advance how much a silk roads is worth, or how much cash a philosopher's stone is going to generate. With sufficient complication, the results of cards becomes effectively random, or worse the game becomes a race of who is best at card counting or crunching sums in their head, decreasing the fun of the game. It's pretty lame if one player beats another because one bought silk roads and the other duchies, when, unbeknownst to both players, the silk roads were worth more.

As a computer game, though, a UI element would probably tell you outright how much a Silk Road is to you with your current deck.   Basically anything to do with calculations would be done for you in advance, such as a Bank in your hand having a number which says what it'll be worth in coins if you play it next.

That said, I don't necessarily disagree.  It would be nice if the player could do the calculations in his head as well, so that prospective plays can be thought out more than one turn in advance.   On the other other other hand, RPGs do just fine with more complex math than one can manage off the top of one's head.  In WoW, if I pick up a piece of armor that provides me with 5 more agility than I currently have, I have this vague sense that that improves my long-ranged attack hit probability and/or the damage I do with long-ranged attacks and/or my critical hit chance and/or something to do with whether enemies can hit me?  But I don't know the specifics.

Different kind of game, I know, and in Dominion, anticipating the exact numbers is more important.  Still, I think the computer ought to be able to tell you the numbers you most need to know.

Anyway, that brings me to a kind of card that ought to be doable in a computer game that would be impractical as a card game.  How about a Treasure whose $ value is derived from the total number of cards left in all the supply piles?   Or a Victory card worth a point count derived from this number?  Tedious to count by hand.  Easy for a computer to calculate and report to you.  And then you have some interesting cards that care about the pace of a game and combo or anti-combo in interesting ways with +Buy cards and Goons/Gardens and stuff like that.

[Fangz]

I wholeheartedly disagree, and I don't like you denigrating the skill to remember what's in people's decks, which I think is a pretty important part of the game, not some kind of 'random luck' thing.

It can be a factor, sure, but if it becomes too dominant, then I'd argue that it detracts from the fun of the game. Dominion isn't, and shouldn't become just a variant of blackjack.

Also, personally, I'd consider things like the WoW +5 agility thing as actually a bad gameplay design, albeit one necessitated by wanting to make games massively scalable. But that's a separate topic.

IMHO, the chunkiness and simplicity of dominion is to its advantage as a game generally, not just as a board game. The game would be awful if (as an extreme case) each card, for example, RPG style gave you a +0.12 wealth stat which you add and multiply by a level modifier then roll to generate your money this turn and discount percentage. With that sort of obtuseness, you'd be reduced to either gut feeling 'oh this card feels a bit better', or looking up the optimal formula on the internet.

That said, I can think of one mechanic which might be neat:

'Blessings'. Which would be modifers you tag on to individual cards. For example, you might tag on a spectral laboratory blessing to a copper, so that you can play that copper as an action for +2 cards +1 actions. Or a blessing to draw an extra card whenever it's drawn.

[play2draw]

Wondering how nobody has mentioned this... I know I'm not the only programmer to read these boards...

Cards with random results/powers.  Imagine...

...a $3 Remodel that chose your target randomly.  You could even pro-rate the odds for cards that cost more - e.g. if you Random-Remodel a Gold, you will get a Province most of the time... but sometimes you'll just get a Gold back.

...or a $2 random Steward.  (Don't play it when you're only holding Provinces...)

...or a $5 Gold that, 25% of the time, prohibits you from buying Victory cards.

Shuffling is the only random aspect of card-based Dominion - but if we're designing the game to be a video game, why not add some more random elements?

*cough*

[ftl]

'Blessings'. Which would be modifers you tag on to individual cards. For example, you might tag on a spectral laboratory blessing to a copper, so that you can play that copper as an action for +2 cards +1 actions. Or a blessing to draw an extra card whenever it's drawn.

Similarly, you could have variable-cost cards. Something like "Cost: 3+X", where what the card does depends somehow on X. Or something like "Cost: 4 or 6. [stuff] If this card was bought for 6, [other stuff]. "

[popsofctown]

And, perhaps most importantly, it could give you all the possible trashing combinations for when you play Forge! No longer will you have to add up every possible combination of cards from your hand, and then check the board to see what you get. Think of how much time will be saved! 

You don't want a list with the 2^(#cards in hand) possibility what to trash, each entry dublicated for (#how many cards you can gain for that price) times. What you perhaps could do is hover over a "target" and get a list of cards that could be forged to this target, excluding dublicates, likely excluding 0-cost cards. Which you must add by hand.

Also +1 for no autoplay on Village. There are so many situations where you don't want it, to add some to the list:
KC,TR
Trash for benefit
reshuffle
good cards left in your deck, but already enough value in the hand
Menangerie/HP
Bad cards on your deck (Spy et al) and Native Village/Lookout
Pearl Diver/Apothecary/Scout usually wants to be played before the first Village the first time, for the second one it depends on what you see
empty deck + Vault/SC

I think you're looking at this the wrong way.  Several of those situations are thoughtful, interesting decisions, yes.  Added together maybe they even add up to a tenth of the times you draw a village.  Maybe I'm off, maybe it's even 20%. But if the decision of whether to play a Village or not is removed, the time you would have spent deciding whether to play Villages vanishes.  You throw out the baby and the bathwater and you chunk out 100 decisions per hour, 20 of which were interesting.  That leftover time gets used somehow, and it's not going to get used for a slow animation where you watch the computer play your villages for you.  (they wouldn't even really be cards probably, instead they'd be randomly occuring +action "events" or +actions you've enchanted your coppers with or something I can't think of)

Instead of that time you would have been quickly making sure "yes, I ought to play the village", you'll be choosing between Remakes and Tournaments, Markets and Outposts, Silvers and Chancellors.  Those decisions are interesting at least half the time.  So overall you spend more of your time doing more interesting things.

I guess it would decrease the overall breadth of all possibilities, but Dominion already has enough that it'd take a lifetime to see it all so I don't think that's an issue..

[olneyce]

My impression from this thread is that Dominion would be a lot worse if it had been designed for the computer.  But I'm a bit of a traditionalist about games.  I find most computer games to be complex for the sake of being complex, without most of the interesting gameplay you get in physical games.

In my experience, creativity is given the best chance to flourish when it's structured by reasonably severe limitations.

[popsofctown]

olneyce I definitely understand where you're coming from.  Most "improvements" you come up with that would result from electronic conveniences would take dominion in a different overall direction.  If you look at the game as it is, pretty much every card is designed with physical limitations in mind, random stewards and maximum deck control and whatnot would feel foreign and make the game into a different animal.

But if the answer to the OP's question was "yeah.  A couple Philosopher's Stones and a point tracker." it's less interesting than pondering more radical changes that wouldn't necessarily be everyone's cup of tea.


I don't think the question really matters because making a game like Dominion as a pure electronic game isn't a great business model.  If the game is easily represented physically, the cost/benefits ratios dictate that you'll want to have a cardboard version of the game to make its own profits and garner interest, whether or not you have a computer game as well. 

Computers do get scary fast.  The closest way something along these lines would come to reality is a widespread Ipad app that people could lay down at a card shop to go toe to toe.  That'd be dependent on pretty saturated ownership of Ipad/Ipad style products but it would work pretty well.  I think there's miles of difference between that and sitting in front of eachother with laptops, as someone who has played games like MtG both online and in person I feel like eye contact and body gestures and such is large part of the appeal (though I do appreciate a piece of paper with nice art on it too)

Once Ipads get cheaper in ten years or so this question doubles in relevancy imo.  But in 2011 I think this discussion show that there is too little to be gained from fully electronic card-based games in terms of design flexibility to justify it.


This is probably ranty because I think about such things and have been designing a board game in my closet.  so.

[dondon151]

I don't think that a decision being trivial 95% of the time is a justification for removing that decision completely. Sometimes the other 5% of the time is kind of important.

[jotheonah]

Am I the only one who hates the point tracker? Gardens, Silk Roads, Vineyards, Fairgrounds - all cool because they screw up the easy math of "Does he have more Provinces than I do?" Suddenly no one knows who's winning, it's a gamble whether to 3-pile. I find zero fun in a Gardens game with the point counter on.  It's not about making Dominion blackjack, it's just the opposite. When you choose to pursue a strategy based on math too big to fit in your head, it's like taking a gamble.  And then doing everything you can to make your deck as big/action-ful,diverse, etc. as you can.  Buying those cards re-routes your objective and throws your opponents' pre-conceptions about the state of the game out the window. If you know exactly how many cards are in your deck, the choice between buying a Gardens and a Duchy with that late 5 is just a choice between 4VP and 3VP. If you don't, it's a choice between a guaranteed 3VP and a what you think is 3 or even 4VP, but might actually end up only being 2.

[popsofctown]

@dondon - But I'm saying you're taking a 95% trivial decision and replacing it with a half trivial decision.  Is there something particularly fascinating about village play that makes you went to spend time clicking it instead of clicking Stewards?

@jothenoah - you're not alone, lots of people feel the way you do.  Turn the point tracker off on iso, play with others like you.

[DStu]

@dondon - But I'm saying you're taking a 95% trivial decision and replacing it with a half trivial decision.  Is there something particularly fascinating about village play that makes you went to spend time clicking it instead of clicking Stewards?

I don't really see that. What is "better" at playing a (Grand) Market, Spy, Lab,  Worker's Village, Scheme, Familiar, Peddler........." than playing a Village? So if you autoplay Village, you should autoplay these. What you propose is to introduce a different "type" of "card", replacing some Cantrips+ by a event that randomly occurs at the start of your turn (or better each time you draw something) and gives you the +. Which would really be a possibility for a computer game, but I don't see them being the same cards, and I would see them more as a addition to the game than a replacement.
Because, these "exceptions" might occur at a relatively small part of the times I draw a Village, but they occur at a relatively large part of the games at least once. Trash for Benefit alone is given in many games, and you take away some of the potential of Village if you are not allowed to trash the Village on your (then) last turn to get the last Province.

[Thisisnotasmile]

I think what popsofctown is suggesting, in a rather long-winded way, is:

"If Dominion had been designed from the start as a computer-based game, it would include a lot more 'decision' based cards and a lot less 'vanilla' cards."

I think. And if that is the case, I agree.

[yuma]

In addition to my first post, another interesting Philosopher's Stone type card could be a kingdom/treasure card that provides a victory point for every reshuffle that you perform--or, if you wanted to make things even more interesting, for every time your opponent performs a reshuffle. Either for the whole game or for after buying the card would work. The first way could be a great addition to a deck that has minion, chancellor or other heavy discard cards or the second way a possible defense against such.  I know I would think twice about cycling minions over and over again if my opponent was getting 5 victory points every time I did so.