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[ThaddeusB]

Code: [Select]

Poor House, Secret Chamber, Chancellor, Market Square, Advisor, Bridge, Ironworks, Knights, Mine, Harem
Log: http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20141015/log.53be12a0e4b00ccce8075fbc.1413431439555.txt

My opponent went for Ironworks-Advisor, which I thought would be too slow.  I got a Chancellor, then went with Mine+Big Money, seeing nothing else.  I also picked up a couple Market Squares with later 3-4s, perhaps a waste.  Sir Destry was on top of the Knights so Destry-BM was a possibility, perhaps the best option (skipping Chancellor&MS for sure in that case). 

The Advisors didn't do much, but he did win rather easily.  I had marginally bad luck after getting to 8.  All-in-all it is not at all clear to me what is best on this board.

Thoughts?

[Titandrake]

Advisor-BM doesn't sound that good, but enough Advisors from Ironworks could make it enough. I wouldn't be surprised if it was better than I thought, but I do think Mine-BM should be better.

I think the correct open here is Ironworks/Silver, use Ironworks to gain Silvers for Mine. At minimum, Bridge/Silver > Silver/Silver, eveng with the plan to buy Mine, and you don't want Chancellor here in the BM deck. I like Ironworks opening more because it gives you options - if your opponent goes for Advisor you can consider denying Advisors. If your opponent tries to go for the Knight attacks, you can Ironworks MS to gain replacement Golds.

Some of your later MS buys should definitely be Bridges instead. Mine - MS is a neat interaction but you never actually get it since it's tricky to line up without any other draw - perhaps Ironworks to mass gain MS is worth it here? Not sure.

Almost a neat board - with any other source of +Actions this turns into a really hard to play engine board (Advisor for draw, Bridge in play lets you Ironworks-Knight, MS can defend it but the Knighting player will want them too.)

[DG]

The chancellor doesn't sit well with other terminals in a kingdom like this. If you don't need then it take silver instead.

Market square with mine is weak. They are not likely to collide often, all the benefits come late, and you are behind on income until they've hit at least a couple of times. Advisors improve this but it is still likely to be cumbersome.

[pingpongsam]

I probably would have gone with IW/silver on the opening and then used IW to grab Advisors and the occasional Silver going for handsize BM since there are no immediate discard attacks and I would want to deprive my opponent of the same tact. As I started greening I might get myself a secret chamber to capitalize on the green cards when i couldn't get my target value from treasures. I probably would have succumbed to IW a Bridge at some point because, well, bridge. A 3 pile on IW/Advisor/Estate is an alternate ending.

Personally, I love zero +Action games because most people choke hard on them and they require a better understanding of hand dynamics over just drawing in as many as possible or trying to nuke the other guy.

[JacquesTheBard]

I could be wrong here, but Mine/BM strikes me as very weak BM. In two base-only BM games I once played with a friend, I found Chancellor/BM to be substantially more effective.

The presence of Market Square supports Mine due to the on-trash effect and the fact that it can be a cantrip in case of emergencies, but I don't know if it will contribute more than silver in the long run.

[silverspawn]

I think I'd go BM here. The three support cards are Chancellor, Mine, and Ironworks. I think I want two of those, but I'm not sure which. I'm leaning towards Ironworks & Mine (get silver with Ironworks, if it collides with mine, get MS)

[flies]

i really want knights to work here, but after playing a few games against banker bot, i think it's just not fast enough.  you can get enough advisors so taht you're playing multiple knights per turn (if you can get bailey and/or molly) but that's not enough to come back from a serious province deficit, which you will get.  Money is weak here, so if you get the right knights - early trasher, non-terminal are best, the gainer works well with advisors - then knights/advisor should be competitive i think.  (harems help the engine player, but they help the mine/BM player as well...)

[ThaddeusB]

So, I ran a bunch of simulations today (http://rspeer.github.io/dominiate/play.html)...

First, and least importantly my opponent did indeed get lucky. 

My opponent went for Ironworks-Advisor, which I thought would be too slow. 

Advisor-BM doesn't sound that good, but enough Advisors from Ironworks could make it enough. I wouldn't be surprised if it was better than I thought, but I do think Mine-BM should be better.

Mine-BM is way better than IW/Advisor.  I could not find anyway to increase Advisors above a 35% win rate or so against unoptomized Mine-BM.

Now, the important questions:

I could be wrong here, but Mine/BM strikes me as very weak BM. In two base-only BM games I once played with a friend, I found Chancellor/BM to be substantially more effective.

The presence of Market Square supports Mine due to the on-trash effect and the fact that it can be a cantrip in case of emergencies, but I don't know if it will contribute more than silver in the long run.

On a generic board (i.e. no other cards bought), simulation suggest Mine-BM and Chancellor-BM are almost equal.  I got 52.5%-47.5% for MineBM vs. ChancellorBM after several thousand runs.  My strategy of Chancellor+Mine-BM was also about equal, scoring 49% against Mine-BM.  Those difference are small enough that tweaking the algorithms (or making better decisions when terminal collide in Chan+Mine) could make the difference.  However, with Harem on the board, Mine-BM is clearly better (57-43) due to the ability to mine Silver into Harem.


The other strategy offered up by several here was Ironworks-BM.  Without Harem, IW-BM beats Mine-BM 55-45.  With Harem on the board, Mine wins 51.5-48.5, again close enough that tweaking the Harem rules\other things coudl make the difference easily. 

IW+Mine scored 49% agaisnt Mine.  I would lean toward that as the best strategy.  In reality you can use IW to gain Market Square in those cases, whereas the simulator will either use Mine or gain Silver with IW.   Market Square isn't implemented in the sim and even it is was, it probably wouldn't play it very well (i.e. decideing when to draw v.s when to hold for Gold/other reasons).  Thus, I can't say if it helps or not in the general case (but surely helps when obtained for free).

Knights also aren't implemented, but I doubt they can compete (unless Anna/Michael is on top).  I tried adding Bridge to most strategies and at best it was neutral.  I do not think it is worth getting.  Adding a second Mine also seemed neutral at best.

Overall, all non-Advisor strategies offered here are pretty darn close.  That would explain the lack of consensus.

Best algorithm I found:
{
  name: 'MineBM'
  requires: ['Mine', 'Harem']
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Province"
    "Harem" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Harem" if my.countInDeck("Gold") >= 2
    "Estate" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Gold"
    "Mine" if my.countInDeck("Mine") < 1
    "Silver"
  ]
}

[flies]

Ideally you'd want to check to see if mining into gold over harem enables you to get a province this turn; I don't know if the sim will let you do that...

[soulnet]

IW/Advisor+Mine?

[ThaddeusB]

IW/Advisor+Mine?

Advisor is really weak w/o trashing.  It will rarely draw in more than 2 coins, and often less.  Worse, key cards (such as Mine) will be skipped often...  IW/Advisor/Mine does significantly better than IW/Mine, but still not great - about 42% against just Mine.