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[Elanchana]

I think part of it is that playing more cards per turn feels more powerful. Having more to do when it's your turn feels like you're really taking advantage of the cards. There's also the thing about how cycling faster makes you see your cards more often, which makes the purchases feel more worthwhile.

Generally in Dominion, doing more = feeling better, no matter how much it actually helps you.

[Dingan]

Generally in Dominion, doing more = feeling better

Edge case: Advisor

[Elanchana]

Generally in Dominion, doing more = feeling better

Edge case: Advisor

Depends on the board.

[pacovf]

Because greening is boring, and with engines you spend the least fraction of your time doing that.

EDIT1: Also winning (or losing) in style.

Also it's a bit uncommon to have an engine actually do the same exact thing every turn. Sure they can be reliable, but you are hopefully having lots of mid-turn gains, so your deck composition and buying power is unlikely to stay constant. Especially because when you go full green sometimes you ditch all your engine pieces (e.g. mining villlage, apprentice, salvager, remodelers, general TfB...)

EDIT2: Also making your own shuffle luck. Man, there are a lot of great reasons.

Also Watchtower isn't much of a BM card, though it does have a place in every deck, or failing that, in my heart.

EDIT3: Also I like sentences beginning with also.

This post was too beautiful to upvote it only once, so I went ahead and upvoted three other posts of yours.

[liopoil]

I guess I should have quadruple posted instead of editing then!

[Infthitbox]

I think engines are okay, but they tend to make turns longer. Which matters a lot more in multiplayer games (it's not exactly rare i play with 3+ other people). I enjoy the relatively short turns on non-engine boards, allthough i know playing a successful engine is fun. It just doesn't make up for the time it takes, especially if other players do it.

Personally, I'm far more likely to play an engine on a given board if I'm playing online than if I'm playing IRL.

Sometimes, with the physical cards in front of me, I have to balance my desire to win by relentlessly persuing Scrying Pool or Hunting Party or something, with my desire to still have the will to live twenty minutes later.

That's one of the great things about Online play, I'd say.  Engines are still long winded, but no shuffling required, and cards like the above (And Storeroom!  Oh god, Storeroom!) are actually more feasible to play.

I have enough trouble with Storeroom online, trying to figure out exactly the damage I'm doing with terrible reshuffles with it, let alone playing it with physical cards. I can't say for sure why this is the case, but I've never gained Storeroom in paper (admittedly, only owned Dark Ages for a few months now). Maybe I have an unconscious bias towards the card because of shuffling.

In general, I go back and forth on engines in casual, physical play. I often play with 3-4 players when playing with physical cards, and I can actually see players getting disinterested in real-time when I'm taking forever playing all my cards every turn, shuffling every 30 seconds, etc. It doesn't help in this particular group that they rarely will play engines in the same way, so I'm actually getting something like 2/3 of the play time in every game of Dominion we play. Intrinsically, this is fun for me. However, I would like to continue playing Dominion with them, both on a time-local basis of that sitting, and in the future, so sometimes I'll just do something else so everyone will have more fun.

[Asper]

I guess I should have quadruple posted instead of editing then!

Posting a lot means you do more, so it's more fun.

[smcrtorchs]

While I would point to the excellent book of Raph Koster "A theory of fun", I will try to point the basics that I remember of it. There is also a few nice pdfs online if anyone is interested.

According to this pdf at least, Raph defines fun as "the emotional response to learning". He talks about the positive emotional response though and he goes on to talk about patterns and how our mind recognizes, categorizes and eventually uses which eventually leads to learning.

There is a lot of pattern recognition and use as you build an engine so part of the fun comes from there. Then still according to what I remember from the book just collecting things gives to many many people pleasant emotions, as it is in our genes from the very old humans that used to collect fruits and other things from trees and simply those that found it pleasant were more succesful in it and passed their genes to the next generations.

Finally and still according to what i remember from the book there is also another big thing that gives us pleasant emotions from playing an engine and this is achieving and exhibiting mastery. We make something that is not easy at least in our eyes and probably to the eyes of our peers and we do it well and we eventually feel good from all this and we tend to do it over and over again to get this feeling of pleasantry.

I am sorry for my bad english or if the text is not very easy to understand, but if I am to make the above text more readable, I will have to spend a substantial amount of time to do so.

Hope it helps.

Here are the really nice links - pdf's

Excertion from the book     

http://vk.com/doc-55569780_205361293

Quick powerpoint presentation that I do not remember what it includes   

http://www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf

A cool pdf that I just found it exists and is named a theory of fun 10 years later.

http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdco12/Koster_Raph_Theory_Fun_10.pdf

[Roadrunner7671]

While I would point to the excellent book of Raph Koster "A theory of fun", I will try to point the basics that I remember of it. There is also a few nice pdfs online if anyone is interested.

According to this pdf at least, Raph defines fun as "the emotional response to learning". He talks about the positive emotional response though and he goes on to talk about patterns and how our mind recognizes, categorizes and eventually uses which eventually leads to learning.

There is a lot of pattern recognition and use as you build an engine so part of the fun comes from there. Then still according to what I remember from the book just collecting things gives to many many people pleasant emotions, as it is in our genes from the very old humans that used to collect fruits and other things from trees and simply those that found it pleasant were more succesful in it and passed their genes to the next generations.

Finally and still according to what i remember from the book there is also another big thing that gives us pleasant emotions from playing an engine and this is achieving and exhibiting mastery. We make something that is not easy at least in our eyes and probably to the eyes of our peers and we do it well and we eventually feel good from all this and we tend to do it over and over again to get this feeling of pleasantry.

I am sorry for my bad english or if the text is not very easy to understand, but if I am to make the above text more readable, I will have to spend a substantial amount of time to do so.

Hope it helps.

Here are the really nice links - pdf's

Excertion from the book     

http://vk.com/doc-55569780_205361293

Quick powerpoint presentation that I do not remember what it includes   

http://www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf

A cool pdf that I just found it exists and is named a theory of fun 10 years later.

http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdco12/Koster_Raph_Theory_Fun_10.pdf

This is awesome. And my English is probably worse than yours :p.

Thanks! I think this is a really solid way to close out this thread.
+1 for sure.

[2.71828.....]

I think this is a really solid way to close out this thread.
+1 for sure.

As you post one more time in the thread.

Edit: quote fails