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Author Topic: Greening traps?  (Read 3612 times)

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Elanchana

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Greening traps?
« on: November 05, 2014, 08:36:53 pm »
+1

I'm sure everyone here has heard of PPR - in a game without or with unreliable +Buy it's dangerous to get the second-to-last Province because the other player might have more VP than you blah blah blah. There's also that tactic of trashing all but one opening Estate so you can win on an even Province split.

But there are definitely other ways you can trick your opponent in the greening phase/endgame. The one I've noticed a lot when I play my default Base deck is what I call the "Three Province Trap". It happens when both players are aiming for engines that get double Province and goes something like this:
Quote from: Setup
Player 1 buys one Province before their engine is finished
Player 2 finishes engine and buys two Provinces
Player 1 finishes engine and buys two Provinces
Now there are three Provinces left and the split is Player 1: 3, Player 2: 2. This normally goes in one of three directions:
Quote from: Outcome 1
Player 2 buys two more Provinces
Player 1 buys the last Province plus some combination of Duchies and Estates and wins
Quote from: Outcome 2
Player 2 buys just one Province and some combination of Duchies and Estates
Player 1 buys the last two Provinces and wins
Quote from: Outcome 3
Player 2 buys some combination of Duchies, Estates, and non-VP cards
Player 1 buys two more Provinces
Player 2 buys the last Province and some combination of Duchies and Estates (and then loses from not enough VP)
Obviously this is in a game where the only VP come from Province/Duchy/Estate. The only way I've managed to beat people who pull this off is by them getting bad draw on their would-be winning hand. Are there ways to avoid this trap? What would you do?

But more importantly, what other greening traps are there out there? There are a lot more VP cards than the basic three, so there have got to be more tactics like this.
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amalloy

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #1 on: November 05, 2014, 09:36:15 pm »
+6

I'm sure everyone here has heard of PPR - in a game without or with unreliable +Buy it's dangerous to get the second-to-last Province because the other player might have more VP than you blah blah blah. There's also that tactic of trashing all but one opening Estate so you can win on an even Province split.

I'd like to step in here because this is a common mis-statement of PPR that can lead to some really disastrous decisions if applied literally. A good, concise statement of the Penultimate Province Guideline is: If there are two Provinces left, and +buy is hard to come by, and either deck could hit 8 any time, and you are currently behind but could get ahead-or-tied by buying anything but Province, then don't buy the Province. So if you are losing by one or two: buy a Duchy. If you're behind by three as second player, buy a Duchy.

Otherwise, get the Province. I have seen countless games in which someone is winning by two points, and buys a Duchy because there are only two Provinces left, citing PPR. This is a disastrously poor decision when the next turn is only good for another Duchy, while opponent gets both remaining Provinces for the win. If the leading player had just bought the province, extending their lead to 8 points, the game would be much, much more secure. Similarly I have seen players who are losing by four points pick up a Duchy. PPR does not tell you to do this! If you're already behind by four, you need both Provinces to win! So, buy one of them now while you still can!

Anyway, this is only tangentially related to your more general "greening traps" question, but I try to prevent these misunderstandings of PPR.



On the topic of your original question: similar things happen in games with (for example) Remodel, where either player has the "option" to remove a Province from the supply by remodeling a Province into another Province. I recall a game I played against Temron about a month ago, where he had out-done me in the engine-building phase, ending up with a much better deck than me. We could each reliably hit single Province, so it looked very bad for me, but I bought the first Province, and with six Provinces left in the supply I bought one and milled another, leaving only four. This altered the pace of the game enough that I could come out ahead.



Now for some more abstract theory-stuff about the general case of such situations: this is all an interesting situation related to the theoretical "game" of Nim, which is covered in some math and computer-science classes. There are N objects and you take turns removing between 1 and M of them, and the goal is to be the player who takes the last object. In terms of the Dominion game I mentioned, N is 6 and M is 2: you want to take the last Province because then you can do some other stuff on the same turn, like get Duchies or Forge your Tactician or whatever. You use your trashing flexibility to get you on the winning side of that Nim divide.

In fact, ordinary PPR is related to Nim too: take N=2 and M=1. You want the last Province, but you need to be ahead before reducing N to 1 so that your opponent can't take the last one and still win. This would even extend out to N=8: if players built perfectly-reliable decks before even beginning to green, you would never want to buy the first Province!
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liopoil

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #2 on: November 05, 2014, 10:15:33 pm »
+2

It's really best to think about things like PPR on a case by case basis. There are just too many exceptions. It's really all about preventing your opponent from being able to win the game on their turn, while still having a chance to win even if they do what they were threatening to do anyway. Sometimes that means abiding the pen-pen-pen-pen-ultimate province rule, which states that you shouldn't get the fifth to last province if your opponent can quad province on their turn as long as you still have the chance to win after they quad province anyway, leaving just one province. Sometimes that means not getting that last city you really want, as that would empty a second pile for your opponent to finally get +buys to win the game. Sometimes that means getting a province to prevent your opponent from winning on a 3-pile.

I wouldn't call this scenario really a trap. Player 1 probably just played better or got luckier to get to that situation in the first place, which is how you win games of dominion.
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Awaclus

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #3 on: November 06, 2014, 01:33:05 am »
+4

Yeah. The name PPR can be quite confusing, since the concept isn't limited to penultimate things or Provinces and it's not a rule.
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DG

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #4 on: November 06, 2014, 08:31:39 am »
0

Quite often when players have the option to buy two provinces they have options to buy duchies, options to buy extra estates, options to invest heavily in green cards sooner or later, and so on. These options prevent anything like rules being formed. The PPR only works because the opponent has so few options because they have no buys or gains.
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Eran of Arcadia

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #5 on: November 06, 2014, 07:59:46 pm »
+2

Yeah. The name PPR can be quite confusing, since the concept isn't limited to penultimate things or Provinces and it's not a rule.

Other than that it's quite accurate.
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assemble_me

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #6 on: November 07, 2014, 03:28:14 am »
0

The PPR is more a simplified directive not to open up the opponent the possibility to end the game on a win. Overall, this is much more complex when playes have extra buys, extra gains, three-piling is threatened, and so on.
PPR in its most simple form simplifies this to games where ppl can only gain a single green a turn. Of course, in many games there are more options you have to keep in mind and you have to think beyond the simple PPR. Liopoil mentioned a lot there, great.
But, it's a good start to thinking deeper about what you do in your endgame.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2014, 03:35:43 am by assemble_me »
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silverspawn

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #7 on: November 07, 2014, 09:26:52 am »
+2

All I can say about this is that I have won a lot of games because people refuse to buy the province even if they totally should. I think this "rule" is doing more harm than good for a lot of people, especially because it's stuff that you're going to figure out anyway. you don't really need this rule.

theright555J

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #8 on: November 07, 2014, 10:07:30 pm »
0

A good deal of the PPR stuff comes (IIRC) from the base-only era when people complained that Dominion was merely a race for 4 provinces big money fest. This led to the equal turns argument and the "phantom province" variant. PPR was a pretty revolutionary way to think about the game in its time but has very little direct application in engines, other than the concept that you should try not to leave the game in a state where your opponent can end it with a lead.
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jomini

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Re: Greening traps?
« Reply #9 on: November 07, 2014, 10:39:14 pm »
+1

Even the "not leaving the game in a state where your opponent could win" is not always applicable. Part of the problem for a well executed endgame between two high skill players is that as you wind down the game your reliability should be dying in a lot of decks.

Take the simple case, you are two provinces from game end and tied. You draw GGGSS, do you buy the penultimate province? Well in any sort of BM deck that is likely your last province buying hand for the shuffle. If you go duchy, then your opponent can see that are highly unlikely to make province before the shuffle, so he can take several shots at drawing for $8. On the flip side, if you see your opponent's power cards (gold, draw, remodel, etc.) hit the discard you really need to play odds that they won't hit $8 for a turn or two.

Likewise, with engines there comes a point where you are going to stop hitting the engine reliably. If you fire off one time, what are the odds that your opponent's engine will fire off enough to make the win happen for them next turn? Barring megaturns, and a few really reliable setups (Scheme, golden decks, Scav/Stash, etc.) you will see runs of cards where you need to adjust away from just assuming that the opponent's best (your worst) hand is coming.

I have no idea how often people tell me I'm lucky because they drew 3 greens at the end, but if you've both played strong that should be a common outcome. If I can see good odds that you won't hit $8 (or whatever magic price/+buy point) then I sometimes need to play the odds. 40% chance your engine hits and I lost vs 60% it whiffs and I win can be the best odds I can expect in some late games. Avoiding them is not good in the long haul.
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