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[TheExpressicist]

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This post was based of a premise that was later proven to be incorrect. I would suggest reading the discussion surrounding this post but not take the points I've laid out in this guide too seriously.

For those who don't want to read 60+posts, here's a brief summary: I wrote this post because I was confounded by the fact that even though I have not been playing Dominion for that long, my ranking was very "high" compared to the general population, and I concluded that the way people were developing their Dominion skills was inherently flawed and proposed a new model.  Several experienced people proposed an alternate explanation to my observations: that most people who play Dominion aren't really actively trying to get better. I hadn't considered that, which is what led me to pull the average ranking of f.ds members (who I would assume ARE trying to get better).

As it turns out, the average Iso level of a f.ds poster is somewhere around 32. Granted it's a small sample size (95 members), but a reasonable inference from this is that the average level amongst people who are actually trying to get better at Dominion is 32. So this guide is wholly unnecessary.

P.S. I'd like to thank everyone who lended their opinion to this thread.

The idea behind this thread is to provide some suggestions for how to "Power Level" your Dominion game and rapidly develop your skills. (This is NOT about how to game the leaderboard).

To provide a little bit of background; I started playing Dominion in January of 2014. My background is in statistics, decision theory, and simulation, which is what drew me to Dominion in the first place. I played for about 2 months, then took a 10 month hiatus, now I'm back. During those two months, I went from knowing nothing about the game to peaking at around a 5700 ranking on Goko and level 32 on the Isotropish leaderboards. (I have since dropped precipitously in both due to 10 months away from the game). To be clear, I am not a great player, for reasons I will elaborate on shortly. But I do think that I have some advice that can be helpful to a lot of members of the forum.

Introduction

Since people seem to be missing the point: let me start with this: This is NOT a guide to how to play Dominion well. THIS IS NOT A GUIDE TO HOW TO PLAY DOMINION WELL. These are rules that teach you how to teach yourself to get better.

Let me start with the biggest, most fundamental piece of advice I can give:

THE BEST WAY TO GET BETTER IS TO PLAY AGAINST AND OBSERVE BETTER PLAYERS  Playing most of your games against sub-par players will not make you better at Dominion. It will teach you habits that only work against sub-par players, and will give you a skewed sense of what works and what doesn't.

But here is the problem. When you're new, most good players are not going to play you. You are basically stuck playing subpar and mediocre players. And most top-tier players aren't going to bother playing against you if you're stuck in the low 4000s on Goko or <20 on Isotropish. So your first goal should be to get good enough at Dominion that top-tier players will give you the time of day.

Furthermore, when you're new, it is very hard to tell the difference between whether your opponent won because they had a good strategy, or if they won because you're new. So simply "observing what works" is rarely effective because when you're new, everything works against you.

As a new player, your meta-goals are:

• Determine whether your opponent's strategy is good or not.
• Learn from your opponent's strategy.
• Get good enough that you have the opportunity to play against good players consistently.

So to start out with, let's just lay this out there: Big Money variants are the baseline of the Dominion world. Any strategy you come up with is racing against the Big Money clock. And big money decks are shockingly fast. You have to have a well-built deck in order to beat the baseline. And you have to play the deck well. If your strategy cannot beat your board's Big Money variant, it is not a good strategy.

The biggest trap I that I see "pretty good" Dominion players fall into is they over-extend themselves and try to play meta-strategies that are above their skill level. Well-built engines will almost always beat BMV. But on many, many boards, the best engine requires very careful deck management to maintain, and if you don't have the skill to do so, you are going to lose to Big Money.  The second biggest trap I see "pretty good" Dominion players fall into is that they practice engine-building against subpar opponents. This is not good for your development as a player. This develops a false sense of confidence. It teaches you to build bad engines. And bad engines are worse than good Big Money.

So, really the first thing you should do as a new Dominion player is to learn how to play BMV well. This will do three important things for you. First it will improve your ranking rapidly because you will shred through sub-par players, and you will mostly beat good players who are being too clever for their own good. This means you will be get to be able to play top-tier players faster. Secondly, it's fairly brainless so it will give you ample opportunity to observe what other people do.  Finally, it makes it very easy to judge and mimic other people's decisions. If you beat them, chances are they picked a bad strategy or executed a good strategy poorly. So learn from that. If they beat you, then learn from that, too.

Big Money Variants[/u]
Your Goal: Learn as much as possible from your opponent. Look at the cards they buy, how they use the cards, and try to ask yourself "Why is my opponent doing this?" If they cannot beat your Big Money Variant, it means they did something wrong, so after the game, try to determine where they messed up.
The Rules:
Buy all treasure and two actions*. Your preference for actions should be:
#1. Junk Attacks
#2. Big Card Draw (+3 cards or more)
#3. Discard Attacks
#4. Little Card Draw (+2)
#5. Trashers
*Note: If the card in question is a cantrip, don't count it towards the two-action limit.

Victory Points:
#1. Don't buy a Province until you have your first gold.
#2. Buy Duchies after turn 11, and after you have your first Province.
#3. Buy Estates after turn 15, and after you have your first Duchy.

---------------

Gimmicky Strategies
Your Goal: To learn how to play in non-standard environments. You want to see how your opponent reacts under the pressure of an alternate game environment. As with Big MOney you want to ask yourself why your opponent is doing what he or she is doing. And if they don't beat you, determine where they went wrong.

Rules: If you see any of the following 3 cards, play these strategies instead:
Jack of All Trades: Buy two Jacks and treasure.
Rebuild: Buy two Rebuilds then buy all the Duchies, then buy Rebuilds again.
Ill Gotten Gains:  Buy all the Ill Gotten Gains, then buy all the Duchies. Take Copper when given the opportunity.

---------------

Copycat Strategy
Your Goal:If you are playing a player who you know is much better than you, copy them in order to learn how to build engines. Your goal is to learn, on-the-fly, how cards interact, why they are being purchased, and to look for ways to improve the engine during the game itself. After the game, ask yourself what you could have done to improve your engine.

Rules: Copy your opponent. If you cannot buy the same card they bought, look at the Kingdom and try to find cards that would fit in with what you've purchased so far. 

------------------

[TheExpressicist]

Part 1: Learning to play Big Money

Let's start by remembering that the point of this isn't to suggest that a Big Money Variant (BMV) is going to be the dominant strategy on every board. Rather, it's that playing BMV is going to give you the best opportunity to improve your skills as a new player. It will help you rise in the rankings to give you more opportunities to play against good players. And it will help you separate the good strategies from the bad strategies on the way up there.

Also since this is more of a meta-strategy on how to improve your skills rather than a thorough analysis of BMV, I'm going to mostly ignore edge cases because by definition, they aren't going to come up often enough to be worth taking up mental real estate when you first start playing. Also, as with the previous post I'm using some terms which probably have different connotations elsewhere so I'll define them:

Junk Attacks: Cards that give your opponent curses, copper, estates, ruins, etc. Examples are Witch, Sea Hag, Mountebank, Masquerade, Ambassador, Cultist.
Big Card Draw: Cards that let you draw 3 or more cards.
Little Card Draw: Cards that let you draw 2 cards.
Discard Attacks: Cards that force your opponent to discard 2 or more cards.
Cantrips: Cards that give you +1 Card/+1 Actions.


What to Buy[/u]

With Big Money variants, you will buy mostly treasure. But there are a few key additional cards you'll want to pick up.

1. Junk attacks are the most important thing you can buy. Firstly, it screws up your opponents deck. Secondly, there's only a limited amount of junk to be handed out (e.g. only 10 curses) and you want to make sure that your opponent isn't able to hand you all 10 of them. If there are junk attacks on the board, you want to buy two as quickly as possible. Your goal is to play these as fast as possible and as many times as possible.

2. If there aren't Junk Attacks on the board, you want to look for big card draw. +3 cards is worth, at the very least, $2, every time you play it. When you start to have enough money in your deck, +3 cards can be worth $4, even $5 on average. You want to pick up two of these, as quickly as possible. (If there are Junk Attacks on the board, don't bother with Big Card Draw You do not want to risk drawing in to one of your Junk Attacks and not being able to play it).

3. If there aren't any Junk Attacks or Big Card Draw, then look for discard attacks and buy one of them. If there are Junk Attacks/Big Card Draw, don't bother. With Junk Attacks, your opponent will just discard the junk and it's not going to hurt him. With BCD, there's a pretty massive chance that you will either draw into your Discard Attack, or you'll have both a Discard Attack and your Big Card Draw in the same hand. In either case, you won't be able to play the Discard Attack.

4. Little card draw   is worth buying if there's nothing else out there. If there's Discard Attack on the board, go for one of those first because that will be more helpful in the early game. A good rule with Little Card Draw is that you don't want to buy more than one every four turns.

5. Cantrip trashers like Upgrade or Junk Dealer are good options if there isn't anything else on the board. Buy two of these if there isn't anything else out there.

When to buy Victory Cards[/u]

1. If you somehow manage to get 8 coins before you have a gold, go ahead and buy a gold first.
2. Once turn 11 (turn 15 if there are JA on the board) hits, if you don't have enough money to buy a Province, buy a Duchy.
3. Once turn 15 (turn 19 if there are JA on the board) hits, if you don't have enough money to buy a Duchy, buy an Estate.


Notes:
There are obviously a lot of glaring holes in this. But again this is not meant as an exhaustive strategy guide for Big Money. In general, Big Money is rarely the dominant strategy on the board, so if someone is going to be spending a lot of time learning a particular strategy to 99% effectiveness, their time would be better spent on learning to identify engines. Following these simple rules will establish enough of a baseline to allow a new player to beat (and thus identify) mediocre strategies or poorly executed good strategies.

[TheExpressicist]

Part 2: Gimmicky Strategies That Work

As a newer player, if you see one of the following cards on the board, you should play the corresponding "gimmick" strategy. They're called "gimmicks" because they don't really follow the usual rules, but they tend to be pretty dominant. It's important to play these because it gives you some experience playing in non-ideal conditions, but it still lets you easily identify whether or not your opponent's strategy was good or bad. Furthermore, statistically almost 1 out of 7 games you play will involve one of these cards.

Jack of All Trades: Buy two of these as soon as possible. Then buy treasure and VP. This strategy is called DoubleJack and it's surprisingly fast and resistant to attacks. If your opponent's strategy can't beat generic DoubleJack, it's not a good strategy.

Ill-Gotten Gains: Buy all the Ill-Gotten Gains. When the Ill-Gotten Gains run out, buy all the Duchies. The game will end on piles and your opponent will have a ton of curses and you'll have a ton of Duchies. Always gain copper when given the opportunity with IGG. The junking effect of the curses plus the VP from the Duchies is usually enough to make life very tough on your opponent. If your opponent's strategy can't beat a generic IGG rush, it's not a good strategy.

Rebuild: Buy two rebuilds as quickly as possible. Then buy as many Duchies as possible. When the Duchies run out, start buying Rebuilds again. Buy silver and Provinces with the rest of your money. If your opponent's strategy can't beat a generic Rebuild deck, it's not a good strategy.

[Awaclus]

Always gain copper when given the opportunity with IGG.

This is very much not true. If your opponent also does the IGG rush, the one who gets a lucky Province turn wins, and by gaining Coppers all the time, you minimize the chances of that player being you. Only gain a Copper if it makes the difference between hitting or not hitting $5 or $8 this turn (and other edge cases).

[pingpongsam]

If your opponent's strategy can't beat a generic Rebuild deck, it's not a good strategy.

Not necessarily true. It might be said that Rebuild is the dominant strategy on the large majority of boards and thus not mirroring is usually a bad plan. However, Rebuild is so fast and so good that even a good non-mirror strategy can still lose to it. When Rebuild is on the board one must have a very clear idea of why they are not going for Rebuild themselves. While Rebuild is often the dominant strategy it does require some skill to correctly implement. I have seen many a mirror match involving Rebuild get ruined by one of the players for themselves and not just shuffle luck. Rebuild strategies are generally going to involve emptying the Duchy pile ASAP. You have to win the Duchy split to win the game. This can mean forgoing buying additional Rebuilds until you have secured the split. Shelters and Alt-VP can complicate traditional Rebuild strategy.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I think you ought to clarify what iso levels you think this approach makes sense for, because at some point just playing BM isn't going to do anything for you at all (both in skill improvement and rating increase). I suspect the cutoff is lower than you think.
edit: Ok, I see now that you mention iso ~20, that seems fair. Maybe make it more prominent?

I am generally opposed to making a big distinction between "strategy" and "execution", since only one of those things is meaningful in the game (execution). What does it even mean to have a "good strategy" with "poor execution"? If you buy your cards in the wrong order and play them incorrectly it just means you have a garbage strategy. Most "strategy" considerations can be described as openings and gaining cards in a certain order, but that is just stuff you "execute", you have to actually buy the card.

I think your suggestions of the main BM variants portrays junkers, card draw and discard attacks as being mutually exclusive when they really aren't at all. You can certainly put two or even all of those things in a big money deck. Might be worth a mention that there are a few cards that combine two of those features and these cards are strong for BM.

I really hate your turn based victory card rules, it should definitely be based on # of Provinces remaining. With some note that it really needs to be based on the score, the # of Provinces left and the relative deck strengths. I get that you are trying to make general rules, but I think these in particular are bad enough to not be worth mentioning.

I think this approach might be boring enough that few people will be able to stick with it.

I'm not sure if you're advocating "always play BM to level up early" or just "usually play BM to level up early", but when you see boards that are overwhelmingly engine you ought to just go for the thing and try it out. Maybe leave out a few pieces if you aren't sure how it all needs to come together, but at least try combining some action cards.

[-Stef-]

These are excellent posts. I wouldn't know how to get you from level 0 to level 20 with less text, and that's exactly what these posts are trying to achieve.
Please don't let the ton of f.ds people that will find edge cases (and are all above level 20) stop you.

One suggestion: please replace "JA or BCD" with "Junking Attacks or Big Card Draw". That makes it a lot easier to read.

I really hate your turn based victory card rules, it should definitely be based on # of Provinces remaining. With some note that it really needs to be based on the score, the # of Provinces left and the relative deck strengths. I get that you are trying to make general rules, but I think these in particular are bad enough to not be worth mentioning.

ok this one I agree with. Probably better remove that paragraph.

[TheExpressicist]

Part 3: The Copycat Engine

If you follow Part 1 and Part 2 for a hundred games or so, you'll probably get a high enough ranking to where you can start pretty consistently playing against high-ranked players. The goal with this strategy is to leverage a superior opponent's strategic skill in order to start learning how to build good engines.

You want to master Part 1 and Part 2 before you start attempting this. The goal of this is to simultaneously develop your ability to develop strategies based on the board, and also your ability to execute those strategies. By copying a superior opponent, you can be somewhat confident that you are playing a strategy that is, at the very least, pretty good. And by following these rules of thumb, you will spare yourself some of the more grievous execution errors. Furthermore, it will force your superior opponent into a sorta-mirror match situation and you will get to see how they react when both players are going after the same engine components, instead of them having unopposed access to the entire pile.

As with the previous two parts, the copycat strategy is rarely going to be dominant. But the goal with this is to give you hands on experience with building an engine, but you're using your opponent as "training wheels". Your goal is to try, as much as possible, to figure out WHY your opponent is buying the cards he or she is buying so that you can get better at identifying similar interactions in the future.

Note: for Copycat to be worth it, your opponent needs to be measurably better than yourself, and you need to be the second player to take their turn.

The concept is pretty simple, mirror your opponent. The only part of this that is slightly complicated is keeping track of how many terminal actions you've purchased and how many "Village" type cards you've purchased. Other than that, it's fairly basic: if realistic and reasonable, buy the same thing your opponent bought.  Make the same decisions your opponent makes. This will be fairly easy for the first four turns. After that, it becomes less and less likely you'll have the same position as your opponent.

If you find yourself unable to mirror your opponent, follow these rules of thumb:
1. If you have fewer "villages" than terminal actions, buy/gain a "village".
2. If not, follow the same buying rules as Big Money.

[-Stef-]

Ugh, I claimed these are excellent posts too soon. I don't think you can get above level 20 or build any engine at all using these simple heuristics / rules you're trying to provide, and part 3 makes very little sense to me.

New suggestion:

Part 3: observe
go watch some high level players on twitch/youtube

[TheExpressicist]

Ugh, I claimed these are excellent posts too soon. I don't think you can get above level 20

I did.

To be fair, I probably should have waited and posted all of these as one log post rather than as a series of separate posts. Part four was going to be "supplemental education" which basically is, like you said, watch high level players on youtube, read strategy articles, and look at game logs of high level players.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Ugh, I claimed these are excellent posts too soon. I don't think you can get above level 20

I did.

So you played every game following these rules exactly? Never adjusting in any way to what is going on in the game? I don't believe it for a second.

[TheExpressicist]

Ugh, I claimed these are excellent posts too soon. I don't think you can get above level 20

I did.

So you played every game following these rules exactly? Never adjusting in any way to what is going on in the game? I don't believe it for a second.

Seeing as how I wrote them myself it would be tough to follow the rules exactly before I actually codified them. But I understand your and Stef's skepticism. And, at my current skill level (which still isn't really that great), it's now harder for me to follow these rules because they aren't as necessary.

But I tell you what. I'm always interested in a good scientific experiment. So I'll create a new account and follow these rules exactly. For, say, 100 games. And then we can see what the results are. Any constraints you think would be worth putting on the experiment (e.g. I have to play players of ranking +-X or higher?)

[Mic Qsenoch]

But I tell you what. I'm always interested in a good scientific experiment. So I'll create a new account and follow these rules exactly. For, say, 100 games. And then we can see what the results are. Any constraints you think would be worth putting on the experiment (e.g. I have to play players of ranking +-X or higher?)

I wouldn't put any constraints, but I would never ask someone to do that! Don't do it unless you really want to. I'm not sure the engine rules really let you win ever since you can't buy a green card unless your opponent did.

FWIW the extremely general prescription of: learn basic BM, know some core power strategies, and imitate better players sounds like a great way to level up (it's what everyone necessarily does while levelling up). It's all these lists of rules that I think are misleading and bad. They're too complex and not worth memorizing. I mean, how do I even use those, do I print them off and tape them next to my monitor? When do I learn to think about the game? Some of them (like the VP one) are actually just plain bad advice.

[DG]

Always gain copper when given the opportunity with IGG.

This is very much not true. If your opponent also does the IGG rush, the one who gets a lucky Province turn wins, and by gaining Coppers all the time, you minimize the chances of that player being you. Only gain a Copper if it makes the difference between hitting or not hitting $5 or $8 this turn (and other edge cases).

Generally you do want the copper in the IGG mirror. Simulators can show that. Generally however there is at least one card in the kingdom that makes a difference in the IGG strategy, such as militia or remodel.

[TheExpressicist]

But I tell you what. I'm always interested in a good scientific experiment. So I'll create a new account and follow these rules exactly. For, say, 100 games. And then we can see what the results are. Any constraints you think would be worth putting on the experiment (e.g. I have to play players of ranking +-X or higher?)

I wouldn't put any constraints, but I would never ask someone to do that! Don't do it unless you really want to. I'm not sure the engine rules really let you win ever since you can't buy a green card unless your opponent did.

I'm a scientist at heart, and I am genuinely curious to see if these rules, if followed verbatim, would actually work. The first game is in the books: http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20150116/log.54b938fae4b018a67fa54979.1421426208320.txt

I do agree that my presentation is a bit all over the place. I vacillate between in depth explanation for the benefit of higher-level players, and over-simplification for the benefit of newer players. The result is a bit of a mishmash. I will try to edit my posts with a "simplified version" for new players. 

A few notes regarding your earlier post: the turn-based VP suggestion is an oversimplification. I'd say if you're playing strictly according to these rules, going based on turns will approximate a more complex VP-card related rule with maybe 80% accuracy? This is a fairly naive approach but in Dominionate, BigSmithy using turn-based VP rules narrowly edges out the "standard" BigSmithy VP rules 53.5% vs 46.5%.

Re: strategy vs. execution, I agree with your premise, I think it's just a question of definitions. For the purpose of this, Im defining strategy as "Decisions you make in absence of any additional information about the game state". Whereas execution involves the decisions you make once you start seeing how the game unfolds. The above game is a good example to me, of this dichotomy. I think this guy had a good basic strategy: "Use Death Cart to buy early Grand Markets, then Masquerade away the junk to thin my deck." He just did not really execute this strategy very well. As a result he was beaten by an extremely naive Big Smithy deck.

[-Stef-]

But I tell you what. I'm always interested in a good scientific experiment. So I'll create a new account and follow these rules exactly. For, say, 100 games. And then we can see what the results are. Any constraints you think would be worth putting on the experiment (e.g. I have to play players of ranking +-X or higher?)

A very similar experiment was already done by Geronimoo. I don't the exact rules or results he had, but if you're interested in something like this you should definitely talk to him.

[markusin]

Imitate good players? Well actually, that's what my brother does when he plays me IRL. Not exactly imitate, but for example seeing how I use Chapel and Horn of Plenty lets him know the potential of these cards and helps him play better the next game.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Re: strategy vs. execution, I agree with your premise, I think it's just a question of definitions. For the purpose of this, Im defining strategy as "Decisions you make in absence of any additional information about the game state". Whereas execution involves the decisions you make once you start seeing how the game unfolds. The above game is a good example to me, of this dichotomy. I think this guy had a good basic strategy: "Use Death Cart to buy early Grand Markets, then Masquerade away the junk to thin my deck." He just did not really execute this strategy very well. As a result he was beaten by an extremely naive Big Smithy deck.

"Decisions you make in absence of any additional information about the game state" don't exist (though I'm not exactly clear what you mean by game state here). You are always considering game state when you decide stuff. So if that's the definition of strategy, then strategy doesn't matter at all.

"Use Death Cart to buy early Grand Markets, then Masquerade away the junk to thin my deck" is just a terrible idea period. This isn't a case of "good strategy, bad execution", it's rotten from start to finish. It's so much worse than the other ways of building the engine there that it shouldn't even be on anyone's radar.

I am generally trying to get people to think way more about how/when they play/gain cards rather than just I bought X/Y/Z at some point during the game and it lost so X/Y/Z must be bad here.

[SCSN]

You should probably rename this to How to get some semblance of acceptable results by acquiring bad habits and never actually learning anything. It gives susceptible players a more honest appraisal of what they'd be wasting their time on.

Let me throw in two bonus guides I just composed according to the same principles:

Cooking 101: Get your hands on a microwave and buy some ready-made meals at your local grocery store.

Drawing for Dummies: Superimpose a piece of transparent paper on a model drawing; then trace the outlines of the more or less distinctly perceived objects.

I wouldn't know how to get you from level 0 to level 20 with less text, and that's exactly what these posts are trying to achieve.

Emmerson wrote a much better guide in a single sentence: Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

It is not as efficient though, I'll grant you that.

[TheExpressicist]

"Decisions you make in absence of any additional information about the game state" don't exist (though I'm not exactly clear what you mean by game state here). You are always considering game state when you decide stuff. So if that's the definition of strategy, then strategy doesn't matter at all.

"Use Death Cart to buy early Grand Markets, then Masquerade away the junk to thin my deck" is just a terrible idea period. This isn't a case of "good strategy, bad execution", it's rotten from start to finish. It's so much worse than the other ways of building the engine there that it shouldn't even be on anyone's radar.

I am generally trying to get people to think way more about how/when they play/gain cards rather than just I bought X/Y/Z at some point during the game and it lost so X/Y/Z must be bad here.

"Decisions you make in absence of any additional information about the game state" don't exist (though I'm not exactly clear what you mean by game state here). You are always considering game state when you decide stuff." 
Specifically I'm referring to the plan that you decide on when you first see the board. So for that log I posted, it would be: " I'll start buy buying two Foragers, then grab a Death Cart and a Silver. By doing so I'll have a 65% chance of getting a GM by T4, with the goal being to have a dense deck filled with GMs."  Whereas the execution would involve what I do when things go off the rails.

...is just a terrible idea period. This isn't a case of "good strategy, bad execution",
That's fair, I didn't want to put the guy on blast too hard.

I am generally trying to get people to think way more about how/when they play/gain cards rather than just I bought X/Y/Z at some point during the game and it lost so X/Y/Z must be bad here.
I agree that is the smarter approach. That is why I talk about "the opponent's strategy" and not "the strategy itself" or "the cards" or whatnot. There's a big difference between saying, "You played that engine badly" and "That engine is bad". That's one of the reasons I advocate focusing so much on Big Money in the beginning; it frees up your mental real estate as a new player to let you focus mainly on what your opponent is doing and why, rather than trying to figure out what you're going to do next.

[TheExpressicist]

You should probably rename this to How to get some semblance of acceptable results by acquiring bad habits and never actually learning anything. It gives susceptible players a more honest appraisal of what they'd be wasting their time on.

Ouch.

I agree that, if someone were to take this as a guide to "How to Play Dominion", you'd be 100% right. But I said pretty explicitly several times that these are not optimal strategies for winning Dominion games, these are strategies that put you in the best position to learn as much as possible. I suppose I wasn't explicit enough. I'll put it in bright red writing, maybe that will help.

On a more serious note; I strongly believe that building and playing engines against sub-par players is far more likely to develop bad habits. People read the advice on this forum and read the articles and watch the videos and think, "I'm going to go build an engine!" and then they build mediocre engines that win against mediocre players and never learn how to build an engine that's actually robust, and wonder why they stagnate as a player.

At least this guide is honest: you will not be playing real Dominion using this guide. You will be following a robotic set of rules so that you can observe other people, better than yourself, playing Dominion. As long as you keep that in the back of your head it's going to be hard to pick up bad habits.

[Mic Qsenoch]

"Decisions you make in absence of any additional information about the game state" don't exist (though I'm not exactly clear what you mean by game state here). You are always considering game state when you decide stuff." 
Specifically I'm referring to the plan that you decide on when you first see the board. So for that log I posted, it would be: " I'll start buy buying two Foragers, then grab a Death Cart and a Silver. By doing so I'll have a 65% chance of getting a GM by T4, with the goal being to have a dense deck filled with GMs."  Whereas the execution would involve what I do when things go off the rails.

So the act of opening Forager/Forager to me is just an "execution." You see your opening hand, take that information about the game state, and make a choice. The Death Cart/Silver bit is just a happy daydream. And in this case it can't be very likely with a Forager/Forager opening. Having the daydreams is fine and maybe it's necessary, but I think they are put on too high of a pedestal in discussions about strategy. In the game itself you buy the Foragers, then you shuffle and see what you get and make an actual decision.

I prefer to think of the game as always being "off the rails."

[markusin]

To be fair, I don't see how learning to play Big Money Variants very well leads to picking up bad habits. The question is how to best play Big Money Variants, and of course no strict guideline will apply to every game. Guidelines are much more likely to work for BM than with Engines.

The advice of "play Big Money variants at the start, see what it beats and what beats it" seems solid enough.

For me, strategy is what you plan to do when you analyze the board before making your first move even. Execution/Tactics are the decisions you make as the shuffle luck plays out, which is the majority of the game. Still, saying "I don't want to buy oracle here because I'll be buying Smithy instead next turn" is something that is guided by strategy.

[TheExpressicist]

"Decisions you make in absence of any additional information about the game state" don't exist (though I'm not exactly clear what you mean by game state here). You are always considering game state when you decide stuff." 
Specifically I'm referring to the plan that you decide on when you first see the board. So for that log I posted, it would be: " I'll start buy buying two Foragers, then grab a Death Cart and a Silver. By doing so I'll have a 65% chance of getting a GM by T4, with the goal being to have a dense deck filled with GMs."  Whereas the execution would involve what I do when things go off the rails.

So the act of opening Forager/Forager to me is just an "execution." You see your opening hand, take that information about the game state, and make a choice. The Death Cart/Silver bit is just a happy daydream. And in this case it can't be very likely with a Forager/Forager opening. Having the daydreams is fine and maybe it's necessary, but I think they are put on too high of a pedestal in discussions about strategy. In the game itself you buy the Foragers, then you shuffle and see what you get and make an actual decision.

I prefer to think of the game as always being "off the rails."

BTW that was supposed to read "T6" not "T4".

I agree with what you're saying and I still maintain that mostly we're just using differing definitions of the same core concept. My thought is that, "strategy" is basically a complex decision tree you create for yourself at the beginning of the game.  Typically these decision trees only last for two to three turns before they have to be reformulated. "Execution" or "tactics" is what you do when you encounter a situation that your decision tree doesn't account for. Once you've reached the end of your decision tree, you have to formulate a new one. You can call that strategy, you can call that execution, it's really 6 of 1 half dozen of the other, because if you'll notice in my hierarchy I put a much greater emphasis on "execution" than I do "strategy".

So in this case, the decision tree could be: Turn 1, Forager. Turn 2, Forager. Turn 3, if $4 buy Death Cart, if $3, buy silver. Turn 4, if $4 buy death cart, if $3 and no silver, buy silver. Now, there are plenty of things that could happen here that don't fall within this decision tree. If that happens, that's the 'execution' part. "Good strategy, bad execution" would be if I encountered one of those situations and made a bad decision. (Of course that's assuming that Forager/Forager is a good opening, which I'm not sure it is)

[dondon151]

I think the most important skill for improving at Dominion is game sense, which admittedly isn't a very helpful statement.

Good players look at a kingdom and can quickly visualize how the deck will come together and how it can score points. I think this comes from experience at execution and a little bit of interaction memorization.

I would still suggest that the best way to improve quickly (especially in the Goko/MF era where games take much longer to play) at the deck-building aspect of Dominion is to play solitaire games with choice kingdoms. It doesn't help very much with reacting to the game state, but once you get the deck-building aspect down, you can actually hone in on how best to react to what your opponent is doing.

[Mic Qsenoch]

I agree with what you're saying and I still maintain that mostly we're just using differing definitions of the same core concept. My thought is that, "strategy" is basically a complex decision tree you create for yourself at the beginning of the game.  Typically these decision trees only last for two to three turns before they have to be reformulated. "Execution" or "tactics" is what you do when you encounter a situation that your decision tree doesn't account for. Once you've reached the end of your decision tree, you have to formulate a new one. You can call that strategy, you can call that execution, it's really 6 of 1 half dozen of the other, because if you'll notice in my hierarchy I put a much greater emphasis on "execution" than I do "strategy".

So in this case, the decision tree could be: Turn 1, Forager. Turn 2, Forager. Turn 3, if $4 buy Death Cart, if $3, buy silver. Turn 4, if $4 buy death cart, if $3 and no silver, buy silver. Now, there are plenty of things that could happen here that don't fall within this decision tree. If that happens, that's the 'execution' part. "Good strategy, bad execution" would be if I encountered one of those situations and made a bad decision. (Of course that's assuming that Forager/Forager is a good opening, which I'm not sure it is)

Yes, I don't think we disagree much about this. I am just trying to do some propaganda against what I perceive to be a problem in typical Dominion strategy discussion. And I think it bleeds into and harms our ability to play well also. And your responses help me clarify my thoughts (though probably only for me!) Sorry for derailing your thread, and if a mod wants to split this nonsense off that's great.

I want to dismiss the "develop a decision tree for the future" approach as being counterproductive to getting a realistic picture of how my decisions will impact my future options. Rather I'd just like to picture "what options will I have in the future if I choose X now." I don't need to decide between those options yet.

If you paint yourself too rosy a picture, then when the real shuffles arrive you are at a loss for what to do. If you dream too small then you often miss opportunities that could give you complete control of the game. But if you look at your turn with fresh eyes then you can consider the options with a little less bias. The advantage of making plans is that it might save you some brainpower, but it always restricts you by making your thoughts lean towards the plan first.

[Witherweaver]

I agree with what you're saying and I still maintain that mostly we're just using differing definitions of the same core concept. My thought is that, "strategy" is basically a complex decision tree you create for yourself at the beginning of the game.  Typically these decision trees only last for two to three turns before they have to be reformulated. "Execution" or "tactics" is what you do when you encounter a situation that your decision tree doesn't account for. Once you've reached the end of your decision tree, you have to formulate a new one. You can call that strategy, you can call that execution, it's really 6 of 1 half dozen of the other, because if you'll notice in my hierarchy I put a much greater emphasis on "execution" than I do "strategy".

So in this case, the decision tree could be: Turn 1, Forager. Turn 2, Forager. Turn 3, if $4 buy Death Cart, if $3, buy silver. Turn 4, if $4 buy death cart, if $3 and no silver, buy silver. Now, there are plenty of things that could happen here that don't fall within this decision tree. If that happens, that's the 'execution' part. "Good strategy, bad execution" would be if I encountered one of those situations and made a bad decision. (Of course that's assuming that Forager/Forager is a good opening, which I'm not sure it is)

Yes, I don't think we disagree much about this. I am just trying to do some propaganda against what I perceive to be a problem in typical Dominion strategy discussion. And I think it bleeds into and harms our ability to play well also. And your responses help me clarify my thoughts (though probably only for me!) Sorry for derailing your thread, and if a mod wants to split this nonsense off that's great.

I want to dismiss the "develop a decision tree for the future" approach as being counterproductive to getting a realistic picture of how my decisions will impact my future options. Rather I'd just like to picture "what options will I have in the future if I choose X now." I don't need to decide between those options yet.

If you paint yourself too rosy a picture, then when the real shuffles arrive you are at a loss for what to do. If you dream too small then you often miss opportunities that could give you complete control of the game. But if you look at your turn with fresh eyes then you can consider the options with a little less bias. The advantage of making plans is that it might save you some brainpower, but it always restricts you by making your thoughts lean towards the plan first.

[Mic Qsenoch]

If only I had known about this gif I could have saved some typing!

[Polk5440]

I also do not like the victory card buy rules or the copycat engine section.

Though I do see (I think) where you are coming from with the "copycat". A clueless player has no idea what is going on with complex boards. Trying to do what the smart guy seems to be doing will at least force beginners to think a little and play with cards they may not have otherwise picked up. Who knows, they may luck into a win, too. 

Also, the point of resorting to buying a village or doing what you would do in big money if you are clueless when playing the "copycat engine" seems like you are leading beginners in the wrong direction. I would remove that.

[Witherweaver]

Copying is good because you can't help but wonder why you do things as you do them.

[TheExpressicist]

Yes, I don't think we disagree much about this. I am just trying to do some propaganda against what I perceive to be a problem in typical Dominion strategy discussion. And I think it bleeds into and harms our ability to play well also. And your responses help me clarify my thoughts (though probably only for me!) Sorry for derailing your thread, and if a mod wants to split this nonsense off that's great.

I want to dismiss the "develop a decision tree for the future" approach as being counterproductive to getting a realistic picture of how my decisions will impact my future options. Rather I'd just like to picture "what options will I have in the future if I choose X now." I don't need to decide between those options yet.

If you paint yourself too rosy a picture, then when the real shuffles arrive you are at a loss for what to do. If you dream too small then you often miss opportunities that could give you complete control of the game. But if you look at your turn with fresh eyes then you can consider the options with a little less bias. The advantage of making plans is that it might save you some brainpower, but it always restricts you by making your thoughts lean towards the plan first.

Agreed. Whether you frontload the computations in advance ("strategy"), or do them on the fly ("execution"), ultimately it's still the same computation. Ultimately that's the reason why I say "execution" is more valuable than "strategy"; people tend to be much worse at "execution" than they are at "strategizing". This gets a bit into a specific individual and how they process information, but I suspect this is because people tend to be much better at data storage than they are performing complex calculations quickly. 

 

[eHalcyon]

Instead of just going copycat, why not use what you've observed up to that point to just experiment as you will?  If you and your opponent mirror, great, you can analyze where you diverged and what mistakes each player made.  If you don't mirror, you can still consider mistakes made and get an idea of how the two strategies match up.  If you get absolutely crushed, you can focus on your opponent's choices and think of that player's choices on your own time.  Copying on the fly isn't really helpful. 

The more you do this, the better an idea you have of Dominion as a whole.  In other words, play more games.

[TheExpressicist]

I also do not like the victory card buy rules or the copycat engine section.

Though I do see (I think) where you are coming from with the "copycat". A clueless player has no idea what is going on with complex boards. Trying to do what the smart guy seems to be doing will at least force beginners to think a little and play with cards they may not have otherwise picked up. Who knows, they may luck into a win, too. 

Also, the point of resorting to buying a village or doing what you would do in big money if you are clueless when playing the "copycat engine" seems like you are leading beginners in the wrong direction. I would remove that.

Well, remember this is not really meant as a "This is how you build a good engine". It's more like, "You have a great learning opportunity here. Here's how to make the most out of it." (That said, I do need to clarify that it's the same *ACTION* buying rules as Big Money. Obviously you rarely want treasure in an engine.)

But yeah, part of the idea here is, if you choose a card that is completely out of sync with the engine, you should try to learn from it and figure out *why* that card didn't work, but the other cards your opponent picked DID work.

[TheExpressicist]

Instead of just going copycat, why not use what you've observed up to that point to just experiment as you will?  If you and your opponent mirror, great, you can analyze where you diverged and what mistakes each player made.  If you don't mirror, you can still consider mistakes made and get an idea of how the two strategies match up.  The more you do this, the better an idea you have of Dominion as a whole.

In other words, play more games.

Because new players only have a certain amount of mental real estate. If you're spending most of your mental energy trying to figure out your own plan, you're wasting a golden opportunity to learn from a player who already has a plan (which is probably a lot better than yours would be in the first place).

Plus people are experts at rationalizing their poor decisions. If you work really hard to build the Little Engine That Couldn't, it's a lot more likely that you will try to irrationally justify why you tried doing it Your Way. Copying the opponent makes it very impersonal and takes that potential bias out of the equation.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Because new players only have a certain amount of mental real estate. If you're spending most of your mental energy trying to figure out your own plan, you're wasting a golden opportunity to learn from a player who already has a plan (which is probably a lot better than yours would be in the first place).

If the goal is just to expose yourself to higher level play, then watch videos or read logs between high level players. Then you get two people playing well, not just the opponent you're copying. And using videos or logs means your mind isn't distracted by a bunch of clicking on cards. So you free up even more mental real estate for other stuff.

If you want to play the game, you should be actively engaged in what your deck is doing since you have way more information about those decisions. You can't see your opponent's hand and may be missing a lot of the subtlety related to how they are building and playing their engine.

You can absolutely learn a lot by watching your opponent while playing, but I'm not sure this "shut off most thinking about your play and just watch them" is a very quick way to get better.

[eHalcyon]

Because new players only have a certain amount of mental real estate. If you're spending most of your mental energy trying to figure out your own plan, you're wasting a golden opportunity to learn from a player who already has a plan (which is probably a lot better than yours would be in the first place).

Plus people are experts at rationalizing their poor decisions. If you work really hard to build the Little Engine That Couldn't, it's a lot more likely that you will try to irrationally justify why you tried doing it Your Way. Copying the opponent makes it very impersonal and takes that potential bias out of the equation.

If they've already played hundreds of games of big money, they aren't new players anymore.

As for rationalizing, just put that in the guide.  "You may think you had a good plan and just ran into bad luck, but you're probably wrong.  Even experts make mistakes, and you're no expert at this point.  Accept that you aren't perfect and learn from those mistakes."

[Polk5440]

You can absolutely learn a lot by watching your opponent while playing, but I'm not sure this "shut off most thinking about your play and just watch them" is a very quick way to get better.

That's the danger with watching videos, though, too. Your thinking can just shut off because you are not being forced to play yourself. You are being entertained.

I do agree STUDYING videos and logs of the best players are the best way to learn quickly, but that's not the same thing as simply watching.

(That said, I do need to clarify that it's the same *ACTION* buying rules as Big Money. Obviously you rarely want treasure in an engine.)

That is how I read that section and what prompted the comment: Same treasure/victory card buying rules.

[TheExpressicist]

The "copycat" strategy is really just an educational gimmick. It's a good way to get someone invested enough that they take it seriously but not so invested that they start rationalizing their mistakes.

If getting people to think rationally was as easy as just telling them to be rational, there wouldn't be any billion dollar weight loss, self help or stop-smoking industries...

[WanderingWinder]

The big money strategy is wrong on most of the points, but whatever, it's not so hugely consequential - you go the biggest gist of it right. (Specifically, I think you way overvalue "big draw", which is good).

Honestly I don't think a few hundred games of big money is worth it. Somewhere between two and maybe 50 max. In terms of overall what's best, it's pretty niche though.


The biggest problem, though, is the engine section. And the biggest problem with that is that you give no indication whatsoever of what an engine is. You want to say that your deck is usually going to do more powerful and more consistent things if you can get to the point where you are playing all your (important) cards every turn, and once you can get your deck to coalesce to that point, you can really start unlocking the powerful potential of most of your cards, as well as having something which is really consistent. You want to explain that this means you want to have a large amount of +cards relative to overall cards in your deck. And then villages come in because you need to be able to have the actions available to play your action cards.


In terms of your A beats B beats C stack, I think that that is mostly wrong, but it's at least not very helpful based on the very subjective and relative nature of "good" and "bad". The biggest point I think you could make here is that good execution beats bad execution, which is pretty just the biggest truth.


Copying your opponent in the same game really doesn't work. You end up not getting the same shuffle luck as them, and what you want to do at any given point really really depends on that.


Building an engine is much more than buying random villages at some point. If you don't want them to buy treasure, you really need to say that; it's not at all obvious you don't want treasure, and very often you actually do, even if it's only one or two silvers. Actually, you don't talk about keeping thin at all, which is very much not obvious, especially given that you haven't talked about what engines are trying to do (but really, not obvious anyway).

[eHalcyon]

The "copycat" strategy is really just an educational gimmick. It's a good way to get someone invested enough that they take it seriously but not so invested that they start rationalizing their mistakes.

If getting people to think rationally was as easy as just telling them to be rational, there wouldn't be any billion dollar weight loss, self help or stop-smoking industries...

If telling them bluntly doesn't work, I don't think your gimmick does either.  If nothing else, you can blame it on first player advantage or shuffle luck.  McQ has pointed out how you lack a lot of info behind their decisions, making the exercise much less educational. And since it falls apart after turn 4, you're really doing your own thing anyway!  Might as well make your own choices from turn 1.  If you are so irrational that you can't acknowledge the possibility of your own imperfection, you are not going to learn much no matter what educational gimmicks you try.

[Gherald]

Gherald's Guide to Getting Better at Dominion

1. Play opponents who are better than you

2. Pay attention to what your opponent is doing, and why it is working

[markusin]

Gherald's Guide to Getting Better at Dominion

1. Play opponents who are better than you

2. Pay attention to what your opponent is doing, and why it is working

3. Post game logs in the "Help" subforum to find out why what you did didn't work.

[Davio]

Gherald's Guide to Getting Better at Dominion

1. Play opponents who are better than you

2. Pay attention to what your opponent is doing, and why it is working

3. Post game logs in the "Help" subforum to find out why what you did didn't work.

4. Try wacky stuff that might or might not work. You won't learn a lot from always doing the same thing.

There are a lot of specialized cards in Dominion and you might miss out on the fun when they're actually useful if you only play by the books.

They key to becoming a good player is understanding why and when certain combinations work and why and when they don't.

[TheExpressicist]

@Gherald: The problem is, when you're new, everyone is better than you. And unless you have a cohesive strategy, almost everything is going to work against you. And, furthermore, players who are actually good are very unlikely to be playing you.  So you're going to be learning from a bunch of mediocre players.

@WanderingWinder and @eHalycon: For context, see my discussion with Mic Qsenoch. After playing a bunch of games under a new account following these rules, I need to either scrap or seriously retool the engine section. Even though I told myself I was committed to following the rules, when it came time to do the "copycat" strategy, I ended up just building my own engine rather than copying my opponent. If I'm not able to follow my own "copycat" rules, I doubt a new player would either.

@WanderingWinder: Remember that the point of the Big Money section is not to say "This is the best way to play Big Money." It's to say, "If your opponent can't beat you when you're using this method, their strategy is probably no good and you should try to learn from that. If they DO beat you, they probably have a pretty decent strategy and you should try to learn from THAT."

[WanderingWinder]

@WanderingWinder: Remember that the point of the Big Money section is not to say "This is the best way to play Big Money." It's to say, "If your opponent can't beat you when you're using this method, their strategy is probably no good and you should try to learn from that. If they DO beat you, they probably have a pretty decent strategy and you should try to learn from THAT."

This can't be something I'm remembering, since it isn't something I knew to start with. But the bigger point is that it's bad advice. There are plenty of bad strategies that beat big money, particularly on a given board. And quite frankly, I think people can figure out what is good well enough just by looking at what wins, especially coupled with what is by far the best advice in the article of always trying to play against stronger opponents.

[TheExpressicist]

@WanderingWinder: Remember that the point of the Big Money section is not to say "This is the best way to play Big Money." It's to say, "If your opponent can't beat you when you're using this method, their strategy is probably no good and you should try to learn from that. If they DO beat you, they probably have a pretty decent strategy and you should try to learn from THAT."

This can't be something I'm remembering, since it isn't something I knew to start with. But the bigger point is that it's bad advice. There are plenty of bad strategies that beat big money, particularly on a given board. And quite frankly, I think people can figure out what is good well enough just by looking at what wins, especially coupled with what is by far the best advice in the article of always trying to play against stronger opponents.

I agree that Big Money is rarely the dominant strategy on any given board. But I think it's fair to say, if your opponent LOSES to your Big Money (especially a big money implementation as simplistic as the one I'm suggesting), they probably did something wrong.

My issue that I keep coming back to is, when you first start playing, you really don't get any opportunities to play against opponents who are significantly better than yourself. Most top tier players won't play anyone with a Goko ranking of <5k. And most good players won't play people with a ranking <3.5 to 4k. Which means until you break that barrier, you're stuck playing against a lot of mediocre players. The idea of this guide is to help get you past the "Only crappy players will give me the time of day" hump, so that you can start learning against players who are actually worth learning against.

[WanderingWinder]

@WanderingWinder: Remember that the point of the Big Money section is not to say "This is the best way to play Big Money." It's to say, "If your opponent can't beat you when you're using this method, their strategy is probably no good and you should try to learn from that. If they DO beat you, they probably have a pretty decent strategy and you should try to learn from THAT."

This can't be something I'm remembering, since it isn't something I knew to start with. But the bigger point is that it's bad advice. There are plenty of bad strategies that beat big money, particularly on a given board. And quite frankly, I think people can figure out what is good well enough just by looking at what wins, especially coupled with what is by far the best advice in the article of always trying to play against stronger opponents.

I agree that Big Money is rarely the dominant strategy on any given board. But I think it's fair to say, if your opponent LOSES to your Big Money (especially a big money implementation as simplistic as the one I'm suggesting), they probably did something wrong.

This is true, but I don't see how it's relevant.

My issue that I keep coming back to is, when you first start playing, you really don't get any opportunities to play against opponents who are significantly better than yourself. Most top tier players won't play anyone with a Goko ranking of <5k. And most good players won't play people with a ranking <3.5 to 4k. Which means until you break that barrier, you're stuck playing against a lot of mediocre players. The idea of this guide is to help get you past the "Only crappy players will give me the time of day" hump, so that you can start learning against players who are actually worth learning against.

The thing is, they should just learn against the players they can play against. Even if they can't get games against the strongest players, they can indeed get games against players stronger than they are. And they can get exposed to more and learn. Your argument is that they will end up learning bad strategies this way, because what works against weaker players might not be good. But I would counter that, while this may be true to some extent, what they are learning the way you suggest is certainly not good, and what they are learning otherwise, learning for themselves rather than following this script, is way more likely to be better.

[TheExpressicist]

But I would counter that, while this may be true to some extent, what they are learning the way you suggest is certainly not good,

I agree that the methods I am suggesting are NOT optimal Dominion strategy. What remains to be seen is if this is a better method to LEARN optimal Dominion strategy. Which brings me to the next point...

what they are learning otherwise, learning for themselves rather than following this script, is way more likely to be better.

This is where I pretty strongly disagree. I think there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that the prevailing common wisdom of "how to learn Dominion strategy" isn't working. There are too many mediocre players. The median skill on Iso is Level 12. That should not be the case if the prevailing teaching methods were effective. I consider myself a "very slightly above average" Dominion player. But according to the leaderboards, I am a somewhere around a "Top 10% player". And back when I was playing more regularly, I was a "Top 5% player".

It just doesn't make sense to me that after two months of playing, and using fairly simplistic heuristics, that I could somehow be THAT good. I highly doubt that I am some kind of prodigy or savant. My initial conclusion was simply that Dominion was a broken, solved game. But after playing several matches against elite, top-tier players, it became clear that this was not the case. So the only other reasonable conclusion I could think of was that the way people are learning Dominion skills right now is flawed and highly ineffective.

My method might not be the best one, but I think its a decent start at improving upon something that clearly isn't working.

[Awaclus]

This is where I pretty strongly disagree. I think there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that the prevailing common wisdom of "how to learn Dominion strategy" isn't working. There are too many mediocre players. The median skill on Iso is Level 12. That should not be the case if the prevailing teaching methods were effective. I consider myself a "very slightly above average" Dominion player. But according to the leaderboards, I am a somewhere around a "Top 10% player". And back when I was playing more regularly, I was a "Top 5% player".

It just doesn't make sense to me that after two months of playing, and using fairly simplistic heuristics, that I could somehow be THAT good. I highly doubt that I am some kind of prodigy or savant. My initial conclusion was simply that Dominion was a broken, solved game. But after playing several matches against elite, top-tier players, it became clear that this was not the case. So the only other reasonable conclusion I could think of was that the way people are learning Dominion skills right now is flawed and highly ineffective.

My method might not be the best one, but I think its a decent start at improving upon something that clearly isn't working.

Well, if you're an average player, your estimated skill is 25 and then there's the uncertainty which brings the level down so it's just natural that the median would be 12, regardless of how effective the teaching methods are. Even if everyone was almost as good as Stef, the median would probably still be 12.

Also, you consider yourself an average player because you're on f.ds and you compare yourself to other f.ds people. A vast majority of the players suck at the game, not because our prevailing common wisdom of "how to learn Dominion strategy" is wrong, but because those players have never heard of said wisdom, and because they are completely fine with sucking at Dominion so they don't even waste any effort trying to get better.

[WanderingWinder]

But I would counter that, while this may be true to some extent, what they are learning the way you suggest is certainly not good,

I agree that the methods I am suggesting are NOT optimal Dominion strategy. What remains to be seen is if this is a better method to LEARN optimal Dominion strategy. Which brings me to the next point...

what they are learning otherwise, learning for themselves rather than following this script, is way more likely to be better.

This is where I pretty strongly disagree. I think there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that the prevailing common wisdom of "how to learn Dominion strategy" isn't working. There are too many mediocre players. The median skill on Iso is Level 12. That should not be the case if the prevailing teaching methods were effective. I consider myself a "very slightly above average" Dominion player. But according to the leaderboards, I am a somewhere around a "Top 10% player". And back when I was playing more regularly, I was a "Top 5% player".

It just doesn't make sense to me that after two months of playing, and using fairly simplistic heuristics, that I could somehow be THAT good. I highly doubt that I am some kind of prodigy or savant. My initial conclusion was simply that Dominion was a broken, solved game. But after playing several matches against elite, top-tier players, it became clear that this was not the case. So the only other reasonable conclusion I could think of was that the way people are learning Dominion skills right now is flawed and highly ineffective.

My method might not be the best one, but I think its a decent start at improving upon something that clearly isn't working.

Okay, I figured it out. Median 'skill' (actually, level) being level 12 tells you very little - the ratings are entirely relative. If you add 50 points to everyone's rating, suddenly the median skill is 62, but nobody is actually better. Median being level 12 rather than 0 is mostly down to the fact that as you play more, uncertainty naturally drops.

FWIW, the isotropish board actually shows you as just outside the top 15%.

I think you have to judge how good someone is by a kind of eyeball test.


Anyway, your big point is, you don't feel like you're great, and you feel like you're way too close to the top of the standings. Thing is, there just aren't that many people to compete against. You can be pretty mediocre and get to the top, say, 200, just because there aren't all that many people who are playing and, more important, who are really making a concerted effort to win a lot.

PPE: Seems Awaclus has covered the same idea basically.

[Mic Qsenoch]

This is where I pretty strongly disagree. I think there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that the prevailing common wisdom of "how to learn Dominion strategy" isn't working. There are too many mediocre players. The median skill on Iso is Level 12. That should not be the case if the prevailing teaching methods were effective. I consider myself a "very slightly above average" Dominion player. But according to the leaderboards, I am a somewhere around a "Top 10% player". And back when I was playing more regularly, I was a "Top 5% player".

It just doesn't make sense to me that after two months of playing, and using fairly simplistic heuristics, that I could somehow be THAT good. I highly doubt that I am some kind of prodigy or savant. My initial conclusion was simply that Dominion was a broken, solved game. But after playing several matches against elite, top-tier players, it became clear that this was not the case. So the only other reasonable conclusion I could think of was that the way people are learning Dominion skills right now is flawed and highly ineffective.

My method might not be the best one, but I think its a decent start at improving upon something that clearly isn't working.

It's just a thing people have to do inside their own heads. You have to pay attention to the games, identify what leads to wins and what leads to losses. Avoid the losing things and do the winning things. It's as dumb as that. This is what I did while levelling up (and still do today):
- Deride myself when I made obviously dumb play errors or missed auto-wins
- Learn the power cards/strategies and learn the roles that the different cards play in various decks
- Think about games after they're over (mock yourself if you played stupid). Consider decision points where you were unsure, if you had gone a different direction how would the outcome have been different?
- Honestly evaluate the probabilities of the outcomes in the game (Were my shuffles super lucky?)
- Practice extrapolating from past games to new boards. You can be both conservative and experimental! If everything on the board points to a particular engine, I would give it a try confident that it could beat BM, even if I hadn't played this particular engine.
- Actually read the logs from game reports (or your own logs). Turn by turn. Construct both players decks in your head and consider what each one is capable of at different points in the game. Always look for mistakes in their play.
- Watch WW play on Youtube, do all the stuff you do for your own games. Identify mistakes, think about the likelihood of outcomes. Think about how you would open on the boards. If he says something is terrible but he loses to it, think about whether it's actually terrible. Maybe you'll learn something that even a pro isn't seeing.
- Go for Duke. When I started on isotropic, going for Duke was often an auto-win in the upper 20s/low 30s levels. It was really weird. Like playing the bots today.

All those people who suck at Dominion don't suck because "common wisdom" about how to improve is bad. They suck because they aren't trying to get better at Dominion. Winning isn't their focus. They don't change how they are playing. They continue to pick strategies and build their decks in pseudo random fashion, either based on the cards they like or who knows what (maybe the weather?). Many of those vast masses probably aren't exposed to "conventional" Domininion strategy tips (or Dominion Strategy) at all. You can read hilarious posts by some of these people on Reddit, BGG, and occasionally on these very forums. They are stubborn about what strategies are good, but they haven't got a clue, and they won't change.

These people aren't committed to winning, and that's perfectly okay, they should play in whatever way gives them enjoyment. But it's not right to hold them up as evidence of some failed teaching by Dominion Strategy. Some people are not willing to do the mental work necessary to improve.

Your heuristics are a mixed bag of good and bad advice, but someone who starts out with them can of course get better if they pay attention and learn the cases where they work or don't work. Which is exactly what you've done I'm sure. There's no other way to improve. When I started playing on iso I more or less instantly reached upper 20s level. But I wasn't magic either, I just tried to win! It took a lot more games to reach the top. Plenty of people have reached high levels of play without using your heuristics at all (some faster than you and some slower). It's way more likely that the important factor is yourself! You aren't unique, but if you're willing to change how you play at all you can expect to reach iso levels 20-30.

TL;DR: what Awaclus said.

[liopoil]

Getting beat really badly because you chose the wrong strategy is the best way to improve. It means you found a large flaw in your dominion ability that you won't make again. The first time you get beat because your opponent got ambassador and you didn't goes a long way. Obviously it becomes harder and harder to find kingdoms where you play it completely wrong, but whenever you do get crushed, make sure you understand what your opponent did and why.

[Flip5ide]

Why are we ripping apart this guy's post (or attempting to)? Seriously?

[TheExpressicist]

A few notes, then a concession:

WW and Awalcus: I realize the relativity of using median level, but that was kinda what I was getting at. Even if you say that the average level of an f.ds regular is 26, that means I'm better than 50% of them which I just don't think *should* be the case. Given that, even still I play according to fairly simplistic rules and tend to freeze up when things don't go according to plans

That's really where the impetus behind this post came from; resolving the question of "Why are there so many players worse than myself?" The overwhelming response to that seems to be, "A lot of people just aren't really trying to get better." Which, I will admit, I didn't really consider. For those people, these posts of mine will at best, be ignored, and at worst, followed to the letter and thus contribute to the problem.

[TheExpressicist]

Why are we ripping apart this guy's post (or attempting to)? Seriously?

The general sense that I've been getting is something along these lines: "Dominion is too complicated of a game to be reduced to a simple set of rules, and we get very very annoyed when an unestablished player comes along and starts undoing the advice we've been giving out for years, which is: X, Y, and Z."

[Awaclus]

Why are we ripping apart this guy's post (or attempting to)? Seriously?

Because it's useful.

WW and Awalcus: I realize the relativity of using median level, but that was kinda what I was getting at. Even if you say that the average level of an f.ds regular is 26, that means I'm better than 50% of them which I just don't think *should* be the case.

I was under the impression that it was higher. I don't have any actual data on this, though, just a feeling, so I could certainly be wrong.

Why are we ripping apart this guy's post (or attempting to)? Seriously?

The general sense that I've been getting is something along these lines: "Dominion is too complicated of a game to be reduced to a simple set of rules, and we get very very annoyed when an unestablished player comes along and starts undoing the advice we've been giving out for years, which is: X, Y, and Z."

That's not really true. You're not undoing advice that we've been giving, you're attempting to argue that your contradictory advice is not completely bad. Also, we don't get very very annoyed when an unestablished player comes along and says something groundbreaking, if what he's saying is actually useful.

[pacovf]

I feel like this thread is going to get really interesting aaaaanyyyy tiiiiiime now.

[TheExpressicist]

@Awaclus: My post was made under the assumption that there's a sufficiently large group of people out there who are mediocre, and trying to get better. If either is untrue, then you are right, nothing in my post will be useful.

As I mentioned above, I hadn't really given any thought to the idea that many/most of these people arent trying to get better. I don't think there's any real way to conclusively prove this one way or the other, so there's really no reason to argue this point. It's an explanation I hadn't considered, and if it's true it renders this post (and most of this forum) moot.

What I *am* interested in exploring is what the actual median or average skill level of a f.ds poster is. Because THAT is provable, AND the answer says a lot about just how effective this forum is as a teaching tool. So here's what I'm going to do: to the best of my ability, I am going to pull a list of the Goko usernames of N f.ds posters. (We'll put a minimum of, say, 50 posts, 50 games).

I'll find the weighted and unweighted mean and median. (If possible for shits and giggles I'll see if there's a correlation between post count and Level). Given that my entire premise is based on the idea that "I am much higher on the leaderboards than I feel that I should be", I will promptly hush up if it turns out this premise is wrong.

[Ratsia]

What I *am* interested in exploring is what the actual median or average skill level of a f.ds poster is. Because THAT is provable, AND the answer says a lot about just how effective this forum is as a teaching tool.

That's a rather strong assumption as well. I would certainly count as f.ds poster, but I do not typically read the strategy discussions, individual match threads, the strategy articles, etc. In other words, I am not here to become a better Dominion player (and I have zero interest in that anyway), but instead I just want to keep updated on what's happening in the Dominion world, I want to see how a community built around a single game thinks about games in general, and I actually like reading the RSP forum because of the funny US-centric content there.

Also, even if I were here to learn more about Dominion you still could not attribute my (mediocre) skill to the forum. By the time I joined, I had already been playing Dominion for years and had even won a national championship title, and quite likely similar story holds for a lot of people -- they come here because they have played Dominion a lot, instead of first coming here and then playing a lot. How could you tell how much of their current skills would be because of the forum?

[eHalcyon]

I will promptly hush up if it turns out this premise is wrong.

There's no need to hush up.  Nobody should feel discouraged from discussion as long as they are open to discussion.

And I don't think the points have been torn apart.  I think the general ideas of playing against better players, observing their choices and getting a handle on a baseline (Big Money) are all fine things to do.  I just think that the copycat section doesn't work at all, even on a theoretical level.  Part of the premise I disagreed with was that the article seems targeted at people who are (1) bad at Dominion who are (2) trying to improve but (3) can't rationally acknowledge their own mistakes.  I think 2 and 3 are contradictory.  If you are trying to improve, you have already acknowledged that you have more to learn, which necessarily means that you make mistakes.

[Mic Qsenoch]

What I *am* interested in exploring is what the actual median or average skill level of a f.ds poster is. Because THAT is provable, AND the answer says a lot about just how effective this forum is as a teaching tool. So here's what I'm going to do: to the best of my ability, I am going to pull a list of the Goko usernames of N f.ds posters. (We'll put a minimum of, say, 50 posts, 50 games).

I'll find the weighted and unweighted mean and median. (If possible for shits and giggles I'll see if there's a correlation between post count and Level). Given that my entire premise is based on the idea that "I am much higher on the leaderboards than I feel that I should be", I will promptly hush up if it turns out this premise is wrong.

This is also not sound reasoning, as a large number of f.dsers don't play Dominion competitively either. They are members here to play forum games, participate in random threads, make fan cards, do puzzles, get Dominion news, or just talk about Dominion related stuff. The community is called "Dominion Strategy", but there's not as much strategy as you might think (which is one reason why the community isn't dead!)

It's also worth mentioning that there is no "f.DS approved course of study for levelling up at Dominion." This forum is NOT a teaching tool for how to level up at Dominion. Some small subsections of it are devoted to strategy articles and/or game reports and help. And some even smaller portion of that consists of actual correct advice from people who know what they are talking about.

The only way to get better is to think about and play Dominion! It happens inside a person's head and no amount of strategy articles can do that for anyone.

[TheExpressicist]

Mic and Ratsia: Let me be clear; I absolutely would not interpret a positive result "in my favor" as proof of my premise. The point of doing the test is to attempt to disprove my own premise. If it turns out that the average level of f.ds members is higher than X, that categorically disproves the premise I based the post on.

If it turns out to be lower than X, well, that doesn't prove much, as you both pointed out. But I'm not trying to use this to prove my premise; it's not good science to devise one highly specific test and hold that up as proof.

[TheExpressicist]

I will promptly hush up if it turns out this premise is wrong.

There's no need to hush up.  Nobody should feel discouraged from discussion as long as they are open to discussion.

And I don't think the points have been torn apart.  I think the general ideas of playing against better players, observing their choices and getting a handle on a baseline (Big Money) are all fine things to do.  I just think that the copycat section doesn't work at all, even on a theoretical level.  Part of the premise I disagreed with was that the article seems targeted at people who are (1) bad at Dominion who are (2) trying to improve but (3) can't rationally acknowledge their own mistakes.  I think 2 and 3 are contradictory.  If you are trying to improve, you have already acknowledged that you have more to learn, which necessarily means that you make mistakes.

For me it's not about being discouraged, it's about being intellectually honest with myself. You all presented an alternate explanation to my observations. And there's a fairly easy to run test which would disprove my premise and I don't have any interest in continuing to believe something that's not true.

I agree with your second paragraph. I already updated the "copy cat" section and intend to re write it completely once I run that test.

[TheExpressicist]

Sample Size: 95 Players
Average Level: 31.25*
Median Level: 34
Weighted Average Level**: 35.73

*Standard Deviation: 10.16
**(Sum(Individual Games Played*Individual Level))/(Total Games Played)

So there it is, then. I'll leave the original posts up for posterity's sake but I'm pretty comfortable at this point saying that my initial premise was flawed and people reading the original posts should take them with a pretty big grain of salt.

[Davio]

So we can just conclude that good players play more often?
That makes sense.

I mean, Dominion doesn't have super secret strategies, you just have to try a lot of different things and see what works and what doesn't. The only thing you have tp lose is a few rating point and you shouldn't care about rating at all.

Learning in Dominion is mostly about pattern recognition (a lot of boards play in a similar manner) and looking at every board without bias. If you always ignore Coppersmith because it's supposed to be a bad card, you'll miss the times when it's good!

Every card has an inherent base strength which gets modified by the presence of other cards to give them a relative strength for a given board. Smithy's base strength is probably higher than Moat's, but the presence of nasty attacks can give Moat a higher relative strength.

Then there is the concept of gravity. Strategies on a board tend to gravitate towards the cards (or combination of cards) which have the highest relative strength. You can throw in cards with lower relative strength, but your strategy revolves around the most powerful cards. Having both Apothecary and Wishing Well on a board ups the strength of both for example, but that doesn't mean you can't throw in a Mountebank which has a high raw (and thus also often relative) strength.

Let's construct a simple kingdom, starting with 0 cards, assigning relative strength on a scale from 0 (useless) to 10 (superduperpowerful).

I will add Village, and it has a relative strength of pretty close to 0.
Okay, now I will add a Smithy and both Smithy's and Village's relative strength will rise to like 5.
Let's add Nomad Camp, hey everyone's relative strength goes up again! Villages and Smithies love each other and Nomad Camp loves big hands to spend its +Buy on.
As we keep adding powerful action cards, the relative strength of plain Treasures, which starts out pretty high, will drop as well.

Like the kingdom, your deck also has a base strength (how well you would do in solitaire) and a relative strength (how well it is suited to beat your opponent's deck). So you might take your default Rebuild deck and get 4 Provinces in 11 turns in solitaire. But then you go up against a super engine and lose in 10 turns.


There are a lot of variables in Dominion and they all have their use in making good decisions about what to do and what to get. Some are very important (which cards are powerful on this board) and some are not so important (whether you start with Necropolis/Overgrown Estate instead of Necropolis/Hovel), but they all count!

[werothegreat]

I'd like to defend my probably abysmal rating by saying I don't play pro games very often on Goko.  I tend to either spend my Dominion time introducing new players, diving into theory, or obsessively editing and adding to the wiki.

[jomini]

Playing great players is overrated.


Great players show you strong combos:
When I was back testing a new combo (Masq/Cutpurse/Village x2/Gainer) I went on isotropic and used a name that said I was playing pin games with a half-selected deck. I played up and down the ladder and it worked insanely well because it was a crazy combo that few people had seen. However, the odds getting any two card combo are freakishly small, playing ANY specific combo well is unlikely to net you more than 1 additional win in a hundred. I've designed all manner of pin decks (its a hobby) and I've even seen strong players use some of the less obvious ones (Masq/Kc/Outpost). Learning this combo from a strong player won't win that many games for you.

Great players show how to time buys:
You lack a lot of information that the great player has to determine why he buys what when. He opens Death Cart/Silver intending to do something with Altar, but instead gets an early Plat and keeps his Death cart. Or he buys something expecting you to make a much stronger play at some point and you make a poor one; now a lot of his optimization is rendered moot because you just made a bad play that gives him a far easier path to victory than what he had in mind. I mean I cannot count the number of times where I start tanking my deck because my opponent is setting up to go Possession, and they do something vastly worse. I could have won a lot sooner & with a wider margin, but I made decisions predicated on the cards the opponent shows & they go down a suboptimal path.

Great players show how to react:
A lot of boards do have dominant strats if they aren't contested at all. On no trashing boards cursing is very often dominant. If you do your thing to see how your opponent reacts, you may well encounter them basically ignoring you.

The big thing you need to do is figure out how to think for yourself. Ask questions - how many villages do I need? Which village is better for me? When would card X be strong when it is normally weak (e.g. Transmute is good when you are already going Pool and you whiffed on Pool)? Most of the great players have a crapton of tacit knowledge in my experience and that just doesn't translate by mimicry or reading their opinions. Go out and experience it yourself, if you play enough you are bound to get relatively good.

Anybody who reads the boards can rise in rank. The number of times I taken a Guest account above 5K is laughable. You don't need a guide to play the best (even when they refuse to welcome new folks to the game) and you certainly can just plug away with Guest accounts if you really want to get the odd streak dropping you into exalted territory where you can play your idols.

[LibraryAdventurer]

Declaimer: All I read of this thread was the red writing on the OP and a couple skimmed messages on the last page.

wow. "the average Iso level of a f.ds poster is somewhere around 32" 
average.
Apparently, I'm really really bad compared to just about everyone here. (Iso level -1) Of course, not playing pro very often has a lot to do with that, but I tend to think of Iso level 10+ as a great player because the highest I've ever gotten mine is level 1*.
It's not that I don't try to get better, but getting better is secondary to having fun -including playing opponents that I have some chance of beating.

(*I've gotten mint to level 9, but that was with Altoids to help.)