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Author Topic: very short strategy article  (Read 37394 times)

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pacovf

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #125 on: March 01, 2018, 07:12:14 pm »
+3

I would like a term that allows me to say that Market is [adverb] better than Pawn though. Some of the edge cases are too edgy.
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ConMan

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #126 on: March 01, 2018, 07:14:49 pm »
+2

Typically better? Situationally better? Strictly better, 90-93% of the time?
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Witherweaver

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #127 on: March 01, 2018, 07:29:23 pm »
0

Smoother = better without consider edgy edge cases.
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weesh

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #128 on: March 01, 2018, 08:04:12 pm »
0

Maybe:
"Naturally better" assuming that in your deck is the natural state
"Characteristically better" which doesn't imply everything
"Rigorously better" which implies almost the same harshness without the absolutism
"Specifically better" which could easily apply to just 1-2 major items, ignoring cost
"Decisively better" perhaps you think the best comparison is when it's in your deck, and that's what's important

"Isolationally better" implies no edge-cases?

Which is the best at excluding costs? My opinion is that excluding costs is the prime directive of creating a new term, since the non-edgecase characteristic already exists in "strictly better"s definition.

It's not just the name though.  We'd have to agree on a definition.  I'm throwing this one into the ring:

______ better describes a card which, in isolation from other cards and ignoring purchase cost, is both of:
* superior to another card in at least one respect
* worse in zero respects.

I'm curious what the more experienced players would propose though.
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Erick648

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #129 on: March 01, 2018, 08:40:23 pm »
0

"Categorically better"?

Proposed requirements for Card A to be categorically better than Card B:
1. Everything Card B does that is usually good is also done by Card A.
2. Everything Card A does that is usually bad is also done by Card B.
3. Card A does at least one usually good thing that Card B doesn't OR Card B does at least one usually bad thing that Card A doesn't.

Note that this would require determining which abilities are "usually good," which are "usually bad," and which are "situationally good or bad," which would also depend on the purpose of the card in question (e.g., mandatory trashing is more likely to be "usually good" on a trasher and "situationally good or bad" on a card that provides large non-trashing benefits).  For example, is Nomad Camp's topdecking "usually good" (making it categorically better than Woodcutter) or is it "situationally good or bad"?

Of course, optional abilities are always "usually good," since if they're bad you just don't use them (edge case that's basically irrelevant in practice: choosing not to use it lets your opponent know you didn't want to use it).  In fact, optionality can be a "usually good" ability in its own right: for example, 2nd Edition Throne Room is categorically better than 1st Edition Throne Room because it has the optional ability to do nothing instead of playing a card (though it's arguably not strictly better due to edge cases where you want to Throne an action but you don't want your opponent to know you wanted to Throne it and would rather your opponent assume you were Throning it against your will).
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Donald X.

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #130 on: March 01, 2018, 08:41:31 pm »
+5

This illustrates why having a "strictly better" concept is useful. It's good for estimating the strength of new cards by relating them to cards you already understand. Knowing "Count is strictly better than Mandarin, apart from the on-gain effect" tells you something because you already have some idea how Mandarin plays.
I don't think that tells anyone much of anything about Count!

I personally get use out of the term "strictly better" - I need to avoid making strictly better cards, so it comes up sometimes. No, at $3 that's strictly better than Woodcutter, it has to cost $4.
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crj

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #131 on: March 02, 2018, 11:45:06 am »
0

"Categorically better"?
No. "Categorically" either means "absolutely, without exception" or "relating to a category". That's a pretty bad ambiguity to have in such a term!

"Better within its category" is clearer, but lumpier.

It feels like we're really close to grasping a good term, though. What's a close synonym for "category" which turns into an adverb better? "Kind"? No. "Genre"? No. "Group"? No. "Set"? No.

Damn. )-8
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crj

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #132 on: March 02, 2018, 11:51:11 am »
+1

"Orthogonally better"?

i.e. better considering each "axis" independently? At least as good down every axis, and better down at least one.

It's a term people wouldn't understand without explanation, but in a specialist term that may be no bad thing, as it would avoid misunderstandings whereby people thought they knew what it meant when it didn't.
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Kirian

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #133 on: March 02, 2018, 11:58:16 am »
+3

Typically better? Situationally better? Strictly better, 90-93% of the time?

There we go.  Everyone stop saying strictly better and start saying "Better 90-93% of the time."
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Kirian

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #134 on: March 02, 2018, 12:13:48 pm »
+4

"Better (p < 0.05)"
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crj

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #135 on: March 02, 2018, 12:19:32 pm »
0

Everyone stop saying strictly better and start saying "Better 90-93% of the time."
No! I'm pretty sure that what we're grasping towards isn't characterising a particular magnitude or certainty of better, but a particular sense of better.

We need a word for the sense in which Smithy is better than Ruined Library (it does more of the same good thing), as distinct from the sense in which Wharf is better than Spy (we all agree Wharf is better, but they're not at all the same kind of card).
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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #136 on: March 02, 2018, 12:24:16 pm »
+1

Something like "quantitatively better" or something that expresses the idea that one card provides all the resources of another card and more from the perspective of countable effects without a natural drawback.
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Shvegait

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #137 on: March 02, 2018, 12:31:13 pm »
+1

A fancy term obscures the meaning. You want to convey "better in at least one way; worse in no ways", with an emphasis on the "worse in no ways" part, I believe. So why not flip it around, "never worse"? Festival is never worse than Woodcutter. Worker's Village is never worse than Village.

Now, you could complain that "never worse" is not technically correct, because of edge cases. But the same thing applies to "strictly better", since "strictly" means "with no exceptions; completely or absolutely". You could also complain that two cards that are identical could be compared using "never worse", but when are you ever comparing two identical cards?
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crj

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #138 on: March 02, 2018, 12:33:10 pm »
+1

A friend has just suggested the term "bigger". I like it. Thoughts?
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Kirian

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #139 on: March 02, 2018, 12:36:26 pm »
0

Everyone stop saying strictly better and start saying "Better 90-93% of the time."
No! I'm pretty sure that what we're grasping towards isn't characterising a particular magnitude or certainty of better, but a particular sense of better.

We need a word for the sense in which Smithy is better than Ruined Library (it does more of the same good thing), as distinct from the sense in which Wharf is better than Spy (we all agree Wharf is better, but they're not at all the same kind of card).

You know that the 90-93% isn't intended as quantitative right?  It's a joke.
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AJD

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #140 on: March 02, 2018, 12:55:11 pm »
0

A fancy term obscures the meaning. You want to convey "better in at least one way; worse in no ways", with an emphasis on the "worse in no ways" part, I believe. So why not flip it around, "never worse"? Festival is never worse than Woodcutter. Worker's Village is never worse than Village.

Now, you could complain that "never worse" is not technically correct, because of edge cases. But the same thing applies to "strictly better", since "strictly" means "with no exceptions; completely or absolutely". You could also complain that two cards that are identical could be compared using "never worse", but when are you ever comparing two identical cards?

I like "never worse" because it means the same thing as "strictly better" (well, modulo equality), and the goal here seems to be to come up with a term other than "strictly better" that can be used to mean 'strictly better'.
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FemurLemur

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #141 on: March 02, 2018, 01:04:14 pm »
0

A fancy term obscures the meaning. You want to convey "better in at least one way; worse in no ways", with an emphasis on the "worse in no ways" part, I believe. So why not flip it around, "never worse"? Festival is never worse than Woodcutter. Worker's Village is never worse than Village.

Now, you could complain that "never worse" is not technically correct, because of edge cases. But the same thing applies to "strictly better", since "strictly" means "with no exceptions; completely or absolutely". You could also complain that two cards that are identical could be compared using "never worse", but when are you ever comparing two identical cards?

I like "never worse" because it means the same thing as "strictly better" (well, modulo equality), and the goal here seems to be to come up with a term other than "strictly better" that can be used to mean 'strictly better'.

"Never" is a strong enough word that people will absolutely argue about it. "X is never worse than Y", "oh yeah, how about in this edge case?"

"Rarely worse" would get the point across just as well and probably cause less arguments
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pacovf

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #142 on: March 02, 2018, 01:09:55 pm »
+8

Honestly, if this forum wasn’t this forum, I would say that Market is better than Pawn, Worker’s Village is strictly better than Village, and Mountebank is stronger than Scout.
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crj

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #143 on: March 02, 2018, 01:12:47 pm »
0

You know that the 90-93% isn't intended as quantitative right?  It's a joke.

Well, I kinda inferred that, yes. What I was taking issue with was the notion that the concept being grasped for was in any sense to do with how rare it is for one thing to be worse than the other.

"Rarely worse" would get the point across just as well and probably cause less arguments

Again, "rarely worse" is a completely different concept from the notion of "strictly better". Nothing like the same thing.

Fortune is rarely worse than Pearl Diver. That's not the point. Fortune is not "[mumble] better than" Pearl Diver. We're not looking for a word for the way Fortune is better than Pearl Diver. We're looking for a word for the way Festival is better than Woodcutter which distinguishes it from the way Fortune is better than Pearl Diver.
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crj

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #144 on: March 02, 2018, 01:17:01 pm »
+1

Actually, this may be a good analogy: think about how card costs work in Dominion, including Debt and Potions. Dominate doesn't cost more than Vineyard.

That's similar to the kind of sense of betterness of card effect we're looking to succinctly describe.
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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #145 on: March 02, 2018, 01:21:08 pm »
+1

Alternatively, we could just take an existing term and have it mean what it actually means: a card is weakly better than another card when there are no situations in which it is worse, and some situations in which it is better.
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FemurLemur

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #146 on: March 02, 2018, 01:27:18 pm »
+4

"Better (p < 0.05)"

I'm totally down to start p-hacking all of my Dominion arguments from now on.
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FemurLemur

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #147 on: March 02, 2018, 01:38:16 pm »
0

"Rarely worse" would get the point across just as well and probably cause less arguments
Fortune is rarely worse than Pearl Diver

If that's how you would choose to define "rarely", then I can't argue with that. It's not what I meant when I said it though.

So then setting the "rarely" idea aside: What I'm saying is that "never worse" is untrue, and just like "strictly better", people will argue about the technicalities. That doesn't mean I don't get what we're going for with this discussion. I get the goal, I just don't think it has been achieved by "never worse".
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FemurLemur

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #148 on: March 02, 2018, 01:52:12 pm »
+1

Upon further reflection, I think the term I'd be using is that one card is a better version of another. "Festival is a better version of Woodcutter", "Mining Village is a better Village", etc. That term doesn't imply that the costs are the same, so I feel like it's close to what people are after.

But I could be totally off with how others would interpret it. Plus, I'm not completely convinced there could ever be one term that would totally satisfy everyone.
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crj

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Re: very short strategy article
« Reply #149 on: March 02, 2018, 01:59:07 pm »
+2

Upon further reflection, I think the term I'd be using is that one card is a better version of another. "Festival is a better version of Woodcutter", "Mining Village is a better Village", etc. That term doesn't imply that the costs are the same, so I feel like it's close to what people are after.

As I say, a friend suggested "bigger", and I like it.

"Festival is a bigger Woodcutter"; "Mining Village is a bigger Village". Not bad. Not bad at all.

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