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[FishingVillage]

I think Spice Merchant would be useful. It can reliably get rid of my Coppers for me and I can draw or get more coin than I would've out of the Copper originally. It's better than Moneylender since it works on any kind of treasure, so I can kill Silvers as well if I get to the point that I don't need them. Loan and Lookout are less reliable, but I might gravitate towards them if there's no other way to trash.

In a big money game, you never want to kill silvers.

Sure. So my response was originally to Geronimoo, who mentioned Spice Merchant as a "bad card" that would lead to a BM favored game, to which I disagreed with. Certainly I'm not going to mass Spice Merchants, but I can see myself going for one or two in order to keep my deck slim and to make better use of Coppers.

I think the list Tmoiy posted is a supply that gets very close to the restriction from the OP:

So I'm wondering, are there Kingdoms out there for which BMU is the predominant strategy (Never buy any single Kingdom card throughout the game), or is there always at least 1 card that will at least slightly improve on BMU? What would such a Kingdom look like?

[WanderingWinder]

I think Spice Merchant would be useful. It can reliably get rid of my Coppers for me and I can draw or get more coin than I would've out of the Copper originally. It's better than Moneylender since it works on any kind of treasure, so I can kill Silvers as well if I get to the point that I don't need them. Loan and Lookout are less reliable, but I might gravitate towards them if there's no other way to trash.

In a big money game, you never want to kill silvers.

Obviously this is true for Province games.  But what if Colony is out?

Hypothetically, you can get to the point you don't want them. Practically, it isn't going to happen unless you're building a massive action chain.

[Geronimoo]

The advantage of trashing Coppers in a Big Money Province game is vastly overrated. Having a trimmed deck is nice, but Province games are over too quickly for that advantage to show. Colony games are quite different and you'll have enough turns to make up the slower start with superior buying power in the end game.

That's why Loan, Lookout AND Spice Merchant are good additions for this exercise.

[cherdano]

I think the OP is asking for a set where the dominant strategy is a bot that buys Treasure only.  So Tunnel can't be in the set, because a bot that buys Treasure only will lose to a bot that buys Treasure only but Tunnel with $3 after more than 4 Provinces are bought.  OTOH, I'm pretty sure that a Golem-Village-Village bot would lose to a Treasure-only bot.

If that's the goal, why aren't we putting Venture+Loan in the set? Or did you mean to say "bot that buys Copper/Silver/Gold(/Platinum) only"?
I would think Venture+Loan is dominant not that infrequently.

[jomini]

A note on the popular "make a list of villages" idea - for the strictest criteria where the card could never be a better purchase than a treasure (or stock VP card) when playing optimally - villages can be better buys than silver or nothing.

As a corner case consider a deck where the average treasure is 2.1 coin (say hitting nothing but 6 - 10 coin for as long as mathematically possible) in a colony game. At this point, silver decreases the value of the deck, but what about nothing?

Well as noted a +2 action/ +1 card village theoretically can allow you to better time reshuffles. This is of marginal utility, but regardless is "better than nothing".

I suspect that this corner case is pretty rare (perhaps getting to plat as soon as mathematically possible and getting to colony as late as mathematically possible), but it represents a possible game state where villages are superior to silver.

[Tmoiy]

I suspect that no board would be perfectly non-optimal given such exacting requirements, but I'll give it another shot. Here's one with no +cards at all.

• University
• Fishing Village
• Loan
• Lookout
• Coppersmith
• Quarry
• Throne Room
• Golem
• Outpost
• King's Court

[Geronimoo]

I suspect that no board would be perfectly non-optimal given such exacting requirements, but I'll give it another shot. Here's one with no +cards at all.

• University
• Fishing Village
• Loan
• Lookout
• Coppersmith
• Quarry
• Throne Room
• Golem
• Outpost
• King's Court

This one I like! But you need to replace the Coppersmith because Coppersmith/nothing is stronger than Silver/nothing with a $5/$2 opening.

[popsofctown]

I think Fishing Village's division of its payout isn't a big enough drawback to keep Loan-Fishing Village from being a stronger strategy there.  "Teehee my Loan is blind to my 'silvers', making it stronger than usual".

And then once your deck is densely populated with Fishing Villages, KC is better than Gold because it becomes a nonterminal Merchant Ship.  Unless Merchant Ship is THAT bad, and I don't think it is.

[Geronimoo]

I think Fishing Village's division of its payout isn't a big enough drawback to keep Loan-Fishing Village from being a stronger strategy there.  "Teehee my Loan is blind to my 'silvers', making it stronger than usual".

And then once your deck is densely populated with Fishing Villages, KC is better than Gold because it becomes a nonterminal Merchant Ship.  Unless Merchant Ship is THAT bad, and I don't think it is.

Fishing Village/Merchant Ship is indeed  much stronger than Silver/Gold, but getting to $7 with a bunch of Fishing Villages is a lot harder than getting to $5. By that time the simple money player will have gotten too big a lead to catch up.

[Tmoiy]

Silly 5/2 openings...

How about Philosopher's Stone?

[Geronimoo]

Silly 5/2 openings...

How about Philosopher's Stone?

That would work just fine.

[popsofctown]

With a deck seven copper heavier, I don't see how he would get there faster..

[Axxle]

I think Fishing Village's division of its payout isn't a big enough drawback to keep Loan-Fishing Village from being a stronger strategy there.  "Teehee my Loan is blind to my 'silvers', making it stronger than usual".

And then once your deck is densely populated with Fishing Villages, KC is better than Gold because it becomes a nonterminal Merchant Ship.  Unless Merchant Ship is THAT bad, and I don't think it is.

I tried to quickly simulate this, I haven't played around with the simulator that much but this is what I have so far:

<player name="Bad Loan" author="Axxle" description="">
 <type name="Generated"/>
 <type name="Bot"/>
 <type name="Province"/>
 <type name="SingleCard"/>
 <type name="UserCreated"/>
 <type name="TwoPlayer"/>
 <type name="BigMoney"/>
   <buy name="Province"/>
   <buy name="Duchy">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="5.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Estate">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInSupply" attribute="Province"/>
         <operator type="smallerOrEqualThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="2.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="Loan">
      <condition>
         <left type="countCardsInDeck" attribute="Loan"/>
         <operator type="smallerThan" />
         <right type="constant" attribute="1.0"/>
      </condition>
   </buy>
   <buy name="King$s_Court"/>
   <buy name="Fishing_Village"/>
</player>

It only beats BMU 3% of the time