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[jonaskoelker]

I played the following kingdom (2nd ed. base set): Merchant, Village, Workshop, Moneylender, Smithy, Bandit, Council Room, Festival, Laboratory, Library.





I opened Moneylender/Workshop (seemed sane at the time -_-), trashed one or two coppers, gained some Villages and Smithies because I couldn't afford the good parts.  By the time my deck could draw itself it was about 30 cards thick, and my turns were super long, contrary to my expectations.  My opponent suggested I should sleep on the couch for taking all that time ;-)

I won, but I think I would've lost to a half-way competent Smithy/BM bot, so there's something I'm totally failing to understand about Dominion. Hence, "help!"

My own thoughts about the board: the only thing that isn't +action/cards/money/buy is the gain from Workshop (which is ~= -1 action -1 card +$4 +1 buy), and the trashing from Bandit. The engine parts are great, so the obvious play seems to be an engine that payloads a bunch of money and buys all the green cards.  Moneylender thins out the copper, sadly the Estates stay.  Festival is clearly the best village, Library is awesome drawing along with it, perhaps supplemented by some Smithies, yes?  Throw in a Bandit for the Gold, or does it make kicking off too hard?  Do it for the attack, but only if the opponent is playing something treasure-heavy, e.g. Smithy/BM?

Once up and running, I think the engine plays itself; what I would like to get better at is putting it together.  I think what went wrong in my game is that I trashed too much money to Moneylender, which made me never get to five until waaaaaay too late.  So don't do that.  Instead get more money by drawing it with Smithy and playing Festival for a while, yes?  Open Smithy/Silver, then 60/40 of Festival/Library ASAP?

I ramble.  To bullet-list my main questions:

• What should the end-product look like?  Which mix of drawing cards?  Do you include a Bandit?
   Only if opponent is Smithy/BM-ish?
• How do you get there?  In particular, what should your first, say, six to ten buys be?  When do you get Moneylender? On the first $4 turn after the opening?

(IRL game, so no log)

[JW]

You want to get Moneylender as soon as you can, and prioritize it if it collides with other terminals. You will want Festival eventually, but it's not important to have early because you don't need the +Buy until your deck can produce enough coins to take advantage of it.

[Dylan32]

It seems like you probably played the opening about right.  When building an engine like that, try to keep track of how many villages you have, and how many terminals (anything without +action) you have. You generally need enough villages to play all your stuff, so keep adding a balance of villages and draw while you build up.

[Dylan32]

Also, welcome to f.ds!

[Awaclus]

It sounds like you're trying to mix two different strategies (Village/Smithy engine with Treasures for payload and Festival/Library engine with Festival for payload) together, and that never works out as you have apparently discovered.

The thing about Library is that it antisynergizes with Treasures and Smithies, so if you're going for Treasures and Smithies, you don't want Libraries. You also don't want that many Festivals because the only reason why Festival is so good is the synergy with Library; by using Village instead of Festival, you're drawing a lot more cards, which makes your deck faster and more reliable (a couple of Festivals are good at the point where you're already drawing your deck or very close, though, because of the increased economy and +buy which can be useful). Moneylender/Workshop is a good opening for that deck, but trashing one or two Coppers isn't nearly enough — you should prioritize playing Moneylender above everything else whenever you get the chance. There is no such thing as trashing too much money with Moneylender, especially since you have Workshop so you don't even need very much economy. Bandit is also fine, but you shouldn't get it before you're drawing your deck. If your opponent has Libraries, going for Council Room is super super good, otherwise it's still pretty good unless the opponent plays big money.

On the other hand, if you are going for Festival/Library, you don't want Smithies or Treasures for the same reason, and thusly, you don't want Workshop either because there's nothing on the board that you really want to gain with it in that case. Moneylender/Silver is a much better opener in this case, because it actually allows you to hit $5 for the key components pretty often.

Here's roughly how you would play the thing with Smithy: 2808708
Here it is with Festival/Library: 2808939

The two strategies are pretty close to one another in strength, the former is probably more reliable.

[Dylan32]

Awaclus, he is new to the forum, so you might want to explain the numbers you gave at the bottom and how to view the games they refer to.

[Awaclus]

Awaclus, he is new to the forum, so you might want to explain the numbers you gave at the bottom and how to view the games they refer to.

Well, he didn't say he was new to Dominion Online, so I figured he would know.

Anyway, the numbers are for loading an old game in Dominion Online, and you can view the games by creating a new table and loading an old game.

[majiponi]

How about a non-workshop engine?

Moneylender, Silver, Silver, Laboratory, Laboratory, Bandit, Province/Laboratory, ...

All what you havepto buy, I think. You don't have to earn $16, 2 Buys.

[DrHandsomeface]

Thanks to OP for great post; I'm pretty new to Dominion and I often struggle with the finer details for constructing an engine and I'd love to see more examples / articles/ tutorials from experienced players about this. Lord Rat and his pseudo-BM strat has taught me many valuable lessons, such as it's hard to quickly build a double province engine if gold is only payload :-/

[terminalCopper]

How about a non-workshop engine?

Moneylender, Silver, Silver, Laboratory, Laboratory, Bandit, Province/Laboratory, ...

All what you havepto buy, I think. You don't have to earn $16, 2 Buys.

I am almost sure that this loses both against engine and straight BM (with smithy or lib/bandit), because the concept is neither fish nor flesh.

[jonaskoelker]

Thanks for all the replies.  I am in fact new to Dominion Online as well---so new that I created my account after reading your replies---and thanks for the guidance.  I get the error "More cards required than available" when I try to load the games.  Any idea why, and what to do about it? I haven't purchased anything on DO, but I hear you get to play the base set for free. I played a game against a bot, and that game had Bandit, so it's not like I can't play 2nd ed. base set I would think...

Here are my thoughts in response to all the great comments:

"mix[ing] two different strategies", I think I did that in my post. I don't think I did that in my game.  I think I built a fairly well-running Village/Smithy engine, supplemented by a bunch of Laboratories, even though that wasn't my initial plan.  I think I did it waaaay too slowly, though.

"Library [...] antisynergizes with Treasures and Smithies." True, and a good point.  It also anti-synergizes with green, but almost everything does.  Is Library or Smithy worse with green?  Not on the board, but does Cellar help Library or Smithy more?  I'm thinking green is worse for Library, because each green in hand makes each subsequent Library worse, but that's not true about Smithy (and that's true in general for +cards vs. draw-up-to-n).  I'm thinking Cellar helps Library more, because the net -1 card doesn't hurt Library, and delivering its payload mid-turn (Festival, maybe some terminals) makes the next Library a stronger draw.  Agree, with both conclusion and reasoning)?  Nice point regarding Council Room only giving Library what it would have gotten by itself.  (Unless of course you help someone into a kickoff they didn't have otherwise).

"[in Village/Smithy you don't want too many Festivals]", right, it's a Silver/Village in one, with relative -1 card and +1 buy. The +1 card of Village helps the pieces connect better, which is more important during kickoff, the +$2 is not an amazing payload, and +1 buy should be enough both for building and greening. So you only want one.  Maaaaaaybe two.  Yes?  And if your opponent is playing Library, go for Council Room over Smithy for more cards with +1 buy as a side benefit, and you won't even need the Festival.  (I get why you skip CR vs. Big Money; in that case, playing Bandit every turn should grind your opponents deck into Smithy/Copper/green which loses, yes?)

"[play Moneylender often]" In general, thinning helps your engine pieces connect better, that's why you want to do lots of it, yes?  Losing copper doesn't harm your money base too much during build-up on Village/Smithy because the parts are cheap and you have Workshop, nor on Festival/Library because Festival carries money which compensates for the lost copper.

I really like Laboratory. No one talked about it.  I bought lots of them in my trainwrecked game.  Here's a bit of math: Village+Smithy gives +2 actions, +4 cards, the same as 2xLaboratory, in both cases by spending two cards and actions.  To kick off with Laboratory you just need enough of them. To kick off with Village/Smithy you need enough of them *and* in the right mixture (more Smithy than Village makes you run out of actions), which I guess you could model as some kind of random walk that should never cross the zero point, maybe.  So I guess Laboratory can be a good supplement to Village/Smithy, but not so much Festival/Library, for many of the same reasons that Smithy is bad with Library.  Also, 2xLaboratory costs $10, whereas Village+Smithy only costs $7, and with a lower threshold (3/4 vs. 5) when buys are spread out among several turns.

Could a Laboratory-based engine work here?  Open Smithy/Silver, get Laboratory whenever you can, a few villages on dud turns to support the Smithy, plus Moneylender and Bandit later?  Maybe Festival instead of Village if you never dud, for the +buy/+$?  Or is opening Moneylender/Silver better here?  Drawing and shuffling often with Smithy is a virtual thinness, of sorts, I think, maybe, and the Laboratory will only amplify this.  Once Smithy draws Laboratory dead often, you should also collide Laboratory and Smithy in your opening 5 often, so this will probably not be a problem?  Will the cheapness and extra gain from Workshop in the cheaper engine outrace this?

Soo much question.  Maybe I should simulate some of this if I want to know what's best :-)

(Dylan) "You need [just?] enough villages to play all your stuff, so [add Village/drawing ~50/50]", yep, you don't want to over-plus-action'ate if you don't have a use for it.  I think maybe in the Festival/Library strategy, you want more Festivals than Libraries, (a) because Festival is your payload, and (b) because playing multiple Festivals per Library makes the Library better.  Agree/disagree?

So, for building V/S, open Moneylender/Workshop, then trash/gain/buy as trash/gain/buy can.  In the end, I want balance between Village and Smithy, plus extra Villages for Moneylender and maybe Bandit.  Should I aim for balance during the opening (before drawing the deck)?  Or buy expensive parts whenever possible and cheap parts when impossible?  How important is faster shuffling due to more draw from Smithy?

When building F/L, open Moneylender/Silver, then... grab as grab can?  I'm thinking early on, a turn consisting of "Library, then buy a $5'er" is not so bad, and more drawing and shuffling is good, so perhaps the first $5'er should be a Library, then a Festival, then a second Library, then pile on the Festivals?  Turns with just "Library, then buy" get progressively worse as Moneylender does more of his job, though, but by then you should have more of your engine together, so those turns will also become a lot rarer.

Finally, thanks to everyone for your thoughts, and DrHandsomeface for your praise of my post.

[Awaclus]

I don't know what's up with the "More cards required than available" error, I used that exact kingdom in both so you should be able to play it for free.

Library is worse than Smithy with green, and Cellar helps Library more than Smithy, exactly for the reasons you mention. Cellar also helps Library more because the engine isn't as reliable to begin with (you preferably want more than one Festival with every Library whereas one Village per Smithy is enough) so the sifting is nice to give it a bit more consistency.

Playing Bandit every turn is not going to grind your opponent's deck into Smithy/Copper/green unless you're insanely lucky, but it will slow them down a bit. It'll probably hit Coppers and non-Treasures a lot since your opponent isn't trashing them, and your opponent has a pretty good deck going before you even have time to buy Bandit, so it does some significant damage but it's not going to completely shut the opponent down.

Laboratories are good if you happen to have a $5 buy, especially in the early game, but because they are so much more expensive, it's very inefficient and too slow to build the engine mainly by buying Labs. They're more useful for just adding a bit of extra reliability to your deck which mostly consists of Villages and Smithies. In some other cases though, building an engine with just Labs can be good, but here the big money is almost competitive with the engine even when you use the cheaper components, so you don't have enough time for it.

Yes, you do want more Festivals than Libraries in a Festival/Library game, and you might even want to overbuy Festivals early on just so that you can win (or at least, not lose) the split.

When building the V/S engine, a 1:1 balance between Villages and Smithies should be pretty good for the entire duration of the game (starting with Village and getting another Village before the first Smithy, I think). This will work out because it's not the end of the world if you don't get to play all of your Smithies during the building phase, and when you're drawing your deck, you will probably have leftover Smithies that you want in your deck anyway just for extra reliability, so you have enough actions left for Bandit and Moneylender.

In F/L, I think you want way more Festivals than one before getting the second Library. Something like 3-4 at the very least. If you don't manage to hit $5, it's fine to buy a Village or two, but Merchants are also pretty good since you already have that Silver anyway.

[jonaskoelker]

I don't know what's up with the "More cards required than available" error

Would it be easy for you to record a video of you playing back the two games, and posting it somewhere?  It'd be a shame for the work you put into creating the games to go to waste, and I don't know how to progress beyond the error message.

Bandit every turn [is good, but not that good]

Sure, I agree with your more nuanced statement.  I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole :-) I think in the limit, as the number of turns approaches infinity, my stated effect will happen with probability one, but then the Bandit deck will be flooded with Gold and not be able to play Bandit every turn, and piles will run out, and... infinity is not relevant for Dominion, you just buy up all the provinces :-)

Cellar also helps Library more because the engine isn't as reliable to begin with

Interesting.  I guess the reason is that you have fewer Libraries (per total number of cards) than V/S has Smithy, so you're more likely to have an opening hand with no draw in it.

[Lab engine is sometimes good]

Yeah; I figure that's mainly when the other draw and/or village cards are expensive and/or weak?  I guess Lab is trivially the best when everything else is weaker; is Lab-engine worse than the median village plus the median draw (for being more expensive)?

Yes, you do want more Festivals than Libraries in a Festival/Library game, and you might even want to overbuy Festivals early on just so that you can win (or at least, not lose) the split. [...] In F/L, I think you want way more Festivals than one before getting the second Library. Something like 3-4 at the very least. If you don't manage to hit $5, it's fine to buy a Village or two, but Merchants are also pretty good since you already have that Silver anyway.

This is the bit where I'm not certain I understand the reasoning. Well, I understand winning the split, but let's say Festival is uncontested; you still want several Festivals early, and a second Library later, I take it. Why?

I can think of some reasons:

• Economy -- Festival gives you money, which makes it more likely to hit $5, which is critical for buying more engine pieces.  I guess the underlying rule would then be "buy whatever maximizes the expected ratio of turns in which you hit $5 in your next shuffle (over the total number of turns in that shuffle)", and Festival is (almost?) always be the card that satisfies this criterion. Even more generically, buy whatever makes further engine development most successful, in expectation.
• It's the payload -- I'm thinking it sometimes makes sense to get the payload of an engine first, if it does something interesting on its own, and the connective parts later; either if the payload kinda' sorta' works without the connective parts, or if it does something interesting on its own. I don't think that's the reason here, though, except perhaps that it does economy, in which case see the previous point.
• Situation-specific: with only one Festival, a second Library doesn't have anything useful to draw, except on the freakishly rare occasion where you pull of a Festival+Library+Moneylender turn.  Also, for Library action draws to be useful, you have to play some kind of village first, so you want to have plenty of Festivals to make it likely that the Libraries collide with them.
• Here's a (bad?) rule of thumb: in the first k turns, you should buy engine components in proportion to how you want the end product to look like, for almost all values of k. I would ask: why? That seems pretty arbitrary.  In case of Village/Smithy, I would lean towards a little bit more Smithy early, for economy reasons (drawing copper). But maybe that's bad, because it clutters your deck with colliding terminals and not enough money density to buy even a Village.

Also, welcome to f.ds!

Thanks :-)

[Awaclus]

I don't know what's up with the "More cards required than available" error

Would it be easy for you to record a video of you playing back the two games, and posting it somewhere?  It'd be a shame for the work you put into creating the games to go to waste, and I don't know how to progress beyond the error message.

I could possibly do something like that. I would want to put in a little bit more effort so that it can be more interesting/useful for other people to watch as well though, so at the very least it'll take some time and ultimately I'm not going to promise anything, but I'll think about it.

Bandit every turn [is good, but not that good]

Sure, I agree with your more nuanced statement.  I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole :-) I think in the limit, as the number of turns approaches infinity, my stated effect will happen with probability one, but then the Bandit deck will be flooded with Gold and not be able to play Bandit every turn, and piles will run out, and... infinity is not relevant for Dominion, you just buy up all the provinces :-)

Actually, that's not exactly how it would work out, either. It's easier for the big money deck to have $6 than it is for you to trash one of his Golds, so he can just replace the Golds you trash at a faster rate than you can trash them. Normally, big money doesn't clog at all and it can just keep alternating between Gold and Province pretty much forever, so in this case, he just buys Golds more often than he usually would to replace the ones you trash, gains Provinces at a slower rate as a result, and still doesn't clog at all. But the fact that he gains Provinces at a slower rate is good enough for your purposes.

Cellar also helps Library more because the engine isn't as reliable to begin with

Interesting.  I guess the reason is that you have fewer Libraries (per total number of cards) than V/S has Smithy, so you're more likely to have an opening hand with no draw in it.

That's true, and Festival doesn't draw so that's another factor.

[Lab engine is sometimes good]

Yeah; I figure that's mainly when the other draw and/or village cards are expensive and/or weak?  I guess Lab is trivially the best when everything else is weaker; is Lab-engine worse than the median village plus the median draw (for being more expensive)?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Well, there are also Lab engines of different strengths. A Lab engine with Gold for payload and no trashing is really bad, whereas a Lab engine with Chapel for trashing and Goons for payload can be really good. In the usual case, you would rather build a Village variant/Smithy variant engine every time, but sometimes you might have to work with less than ideal conditions and the fact that your draw doesn't cost +actions can be crucial. It's also possible that Lab is literally the only draw in the entire kingdom.

This is the bit where I'm not certain I understand the reasoning. Well, I understand winning the split, but let's say Festival is uncontested; you still want several Festivals early, and a second Library later, I take it. Why?

I can think of some reasons:

• Economy -- Festival gives you money, which makes it more likely to hit $5, which is critical for buying more engine pieces.  I guess the underlying rule would then be "buy whatever maximizes the expected ratio of turns in which you hit $5 in your next shuffle (over the total number of turns in that shuffle)", and Festival is (almost?) always be the card that satisfies this criterion. Even more generically, buy whatever makes further engine development most successful, in expectation.
• It's the payload -- I'm thinking it sometimes makes sense to get the payload of an engine first, if it does something interesting on its own, and the connective parts later; either if the payload kinda' sorta' works without the connective parts, or if it does something interesting on its own. I don't think that's the reason here, though, except perhaps that it does economy, in which case see the previous point.
• Situation-specific: with only one Festival, a second Library doesn't have anything useful to draw, except on the freakishly rare occasion where you pull of a Festival+Library+Moneylender turn.  Also, for Library action draws to be useful, you have to play some kind of village first, so you want to have plenty of Festivals to make it likely that the Libraries collide with them.
• Here's a (bad?) rule of thumb: in the first k turns, you should buy engine components in proportion to how you want the end product to look like, for almost all values of k. I would ask: why? That seems pretty arbitrary.  In case of Village/Smithy, I would lean towards a little bit more Smithy early, for economy reasons (drawing copper). But maybe that's bad, because it clutters your deck with colliding terminals and not enough money density to buy even a Village.

It is situation-specific, but it's a bit more specific than that. The reason is that you already have a Moneylender in your deck. If you get a Library, the chances are pretty good that either you collide your terminals or Library skips Moneylender, both of which are super bad. If you get a Festival, you can collide it with Moneylender all day and everything is completely fine and it helps you hit $5 without having to take the risk of skipping the Moneylender.

After the first couple of Festivals and the first Library, it just becomes the case that having a bunch of Festivals with your one Library is super good, having any number of Festivals without a Library is fine, having a bunch of Libraries with your one Festival is pretty bad and having any number of Libraries without a Festival is super bad. So you want to maximize the odds of getting the super good situation while minimizing the odds of the pretty bad situation and the super bad situation, which you do by getting more Festivals than Libraries.

[jonaskoelker]

I'll think about it.

If you do it, I'll fax you a cookie ;-) (and/or appreciate it very much. Probably the latter.)

[If you Bandit every turn, BM] just buys Golds more often than he usually would to replace the ones you trash, gains Provinces at a slower rate as a result, and still doesn't clog at all. But the fact that he gains Provinces at a slower rate is good enough for your purposes.

If BM has a deck full of fictitious Bronze treasures, costing $6 and providing $1.2 each, I trash one and BM buys a replacement, leaving BM at a steady state.  But if BM buys Gold instead, average money density should go up, since 3 > 1.2.  Letting k=#Gold, n=#cards, if 3k/n = 1.2 then k/n = 0.4, putting the average hand at two Golds and three greens for money density to be at steady-state in expectation.  This will likely never happen, since some Golds plus that many greens likely means the game has already ended; two treasures and three greens sounds representative of my Gardens games. Also, this analysis doesn't take Smithy into account, and shuffle unevenness means sometimes BM will have three Golds and buy Province, sometimes one and buy Silver.  Meh.

So Bandit every turn slows down BM, as you said, but the Gold-minting effect is likely the more important.  (Yes?)

That's true, and Festival doesn't draw so that's another factor.

Right, the even more generic statement is that F/L in general has a lower density of actions with +cards.

This is the bit where I'm not certain I understand the reasoning.

It is situation-specific, but it's a bit more specific than that. [Festival+anything: OK to good/great, terminal collision and skipping Moneylender: bad.  This is even more true the more of each you add. You should approximately maximize expected goodness]

Those are some good points. Thanks for stepping through your reasoning.

[Awaclus]

So Bandit every turn slows down BM, as you said, but the Gold-minting effect is likely the more important.  (Yes?)

Well, at least in the sense that you can actually count on the Gold-minting effect to do something every time. Both of the effects are important though.

[Awaclus]

If you do it, I'll fax you a cookie ;-) (and/or appreciate it very much. Probably the latter.)

[jonaskoelker]

[putting-a-cookie-into-a-fax-machine.jpg] [standing_ovation.jpg] +1like(y)

Your pronunciation of my name is pretty spot on; I have no idea how to pronounce it in English, but I have a sense of how to pronounce it in English-with-a-vaguely-Germanic-accent (I'm Danish myself), which is less than half an epsilon different from how you do it ;-)

Also, I appreciate your experience report on F/L vs. V/S, and CRoom vs. no CRoom in V/S vs. BM.

Cool job, bro' :-)

[LaLight]

If you do it, I'll fax you a cookie ;-) (and/or appreciate it very much. Probably the latter.)

This video is awesome.

[Awaclus]

Thanks!