I post this in rules question so people can confirm that we played this game correctly. (recommended game from Empires + Darkages).
Tomb of the Rat King: Advance, Tomb • Castles, Chariot Race, City Quarter, Legionary,
Sacrifice • Death Cart, Fortress, Pillage, Rats, Storeroom
The following combo:
Landmark (+1 point on trash) + rats (trash a card from hand) + Fortress (return card to hand when trashed)
Became the winning strategy on our first play of these cards. The winner obtained a few fortress, as mans rats as possible. Every turn consisted of playing like 9 rats or so, trashing a fortress, and getting like 9 points. It was very quick. And the deck was a gold deck in that it could generate points forever without destroying the deck or ending the game.
One of the things I've always enjoyed about dominion is that increasing your deck and obtaining points has always brought a game closer to conclusion. Growing your deck and obtaining victory points (via Goons for example) more or less required emptying piles.
In Prosperity there was one major exception - Monument. This card could gain points infinitely without causing the game to end. In practice, this never comes up because it's too slow compared to other point gaining options. Later, once cards could be gained out of the trash, an edge case entered with Bishop as well. First with monument, and later via a combo with Bishop, it's possible to gain points forever without actually ending the game.
It seems that with empires though (an expansion I'm very grateful for Donald
) - there are now many more ways to competitively gain points without ending the game.
If Donald happens to see this, i humbly request a rules modification or addition should more 2nd edition rule books come out, that limits these types of games somehow. One example modification would be to make a certain number of alternate victory points generated be a terminating game condition. This could be done without contradiction of the current rules - no limit needed on gaining points on your turn after the threshhold for game finish has been met. Perhaps could the threshhold could be equal to the number of province points, or colony points in a colony game. Setting it lower might make for interesting "point rushes" instead of "3 pile rushes". Just brainstorming.
If such a rule exists already - in which case please let me know so we don't get stuck with infinite games.