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[ednever]

The thread on a Kingdom design program got me re-thinking of an idea I had a while back for kingdom design.

The ideas going on in the other thread seem to create very artificial kingdoms. They do things like guarantee reactions with attacks or make sure there is a single +buy. But there is something interesting about playing a game with no village; or a game with no +buy; or a game with no defense to attacks. All involve different ways of thinking - and are part of what makes Dominion interesting every time you play.

That said, there is something to playing with cards that provide synergy or anti-synergy to each other. It's exciting when you play a game where Pirate Ship or Develop or Scout was directly responsible for your win. It's also exciting when you manage to line up three or more cards and pull off a fun combo.

One way to do it is have people hand design kingdoms (like the sample kingdoms in the rule books, or the ones designed in the Kingdom Challenge). I have an idea to do it automatically.

The idea is to use the Supply Based Stats in Council Room.

If you choose a card and then select "true" for interactions you can get a list of how that card interacts with every other card in Dominion. If you sort by Change in Quality you get a good proxy for which cards combo best with it. If you reverse that sort order you get a list of cards that are the best 'counters' to your selected card.

My idea is to use these stats to design cool kingdoms. I've tried a few different ways, but here is a simple one:

Pick two cards at random (call them your ALPHA cards). For Alpha card randomly select 2 cards in the top ten "improve quality". Then select two cards in the top ten "lower quality".

Here's an example Kingdom I just created randomly:
Two Alpha cards: Black Market, Mountebank

Two Black Market Quality Enhancers: Fairgrounds, Walled Village
Two Black Market Quality Destroyers: Militia, Tournament
Two Mountebank enhancers: Festival, Highway
Two Mountebank destroyers: Gardens, University

So you are left with:
$2P: University
$3- Black Market
$4- Tournament, Militia, Walled Village, Gardens
$5- Mountebank, Highway, Festival
$6- Fairgrounds

Looks to me like a really interesting board with a lot of different possibilities:
1- Use Black Market and University to pick up a bunch of cards and win with Fairgrounds
2- Use Festival and Highway to get a bunch of cards and win with Gardens
3- Go for a Tournament rush to province. Slow the other guy down with attacks (Militia, Mountebank)
4- University to Festival+Highways for a mega-turn
Plus who knows what will be in the Black Market...


The 2 alphas + 2 synergies + two anti-synergies seems to work well. Another option I looked at that is also fun is 1 alpha and then chain it:

Alpha
Synergy Card 1, Anti-Synergy Card 1
Synergy for Synergy Card 1 + Anti-Synergy for Synergy Card 1
Synergy for Anti-Synergy Card 1 + Anti-Synergy for Anti-Synergy Card 1
...and so on

The key is using Council Room to find the cards that work best and worst together and then throwing them in the same Kingdom. Almost by definition it creates multiple potential ways to win (and potential counters for each way)

I would love the communities thoughts.

Also: If anyone has the programming skill to pull the CR APIs, it would be pretty cool to do it automatically instead of manually (i.e., Press a button and it randomly selects two Alphas and then randomly pulls the synergy/Anti synergy cards to build you a complete kingdom automatically - you would then have to guess/use your own skill to figure out how each card ended up in the kingdom...)

Ed

[rrenaud]

You can do the true trick in reverse to find which cards are helped by a given card.  You might want a symmetric relationship for the helpers, for example.

http://councilroom.com/supply_win?&targets=true&interaction=Mountebank&nested=false&unconditional=true

How many of the enhancers/destroyers do you really believe?

Fairgrounds/Black Market?  Totally awesome.
Mountebank/Festival?  Sure, it helps double mountebank a bit, but I don't think it's super amazing.

Gardens against Mountebank?  Yeah, I can definitely buy that.

Black Market/Walled Village?  I don't think it's that amazing.

Militia or Tournament against Black Market?  I buy tournament, black market decks are often unfocused, and focus is usually important to get a province and a plan.  I don't see how Militia is particularly bad for Black Market.

[eHalcyon]

The 2 alphas + 2 synergies + two anti-synergies seems to work well. Another option I looked at that is also fun is 1 alpha and then chain it

Interestingly, Donald X. suggested something similar in one of the Secret Histories:

Anyway if you want more sets of ten, I am not the guy to come to. I am too busy writing essays on secret histories of things. It's easy to make a set of ten though. Try it out! Here are some approaches:

- Deal out a random ten, then tweak it. Look for a theme to them and improve on it.
- Pick a card. Then pick a card that's a combo with it. Then a card that's a combo with the 2nd card, and so on. A combo chain.
- Pick a card. Make a set of ten that tries to make that one card as good as possible. Just, everything that that card could want. If it works, everyone will buy that card, but that's fine. Conversely you can pick a card and try to make it horrible.
- Pick some aspect of a card and focus on it. Include all of the cards with that aspect, and if there aren't ten, throw in more cards that resemble those, or go to two aspects. For example: All cards costing $5. All of the +1 buy cards, rounded out with cards that gain you cards directly. All cards giving +1 card +1 action.
- Non-functional themes. Nothing but people. The ten cards that you most like the art for.

I like your idea of adding both synergies and anti-synergies.

[Tables]

This sounds like a pretty cool idea. I think sometimes the top and bottom 10 are really going to contain some pretty irrelevant cards, but that's not really a problem. Also, if I were to use this system, I'd quite like it to hide which cards were the alphas. I mean, you'll probably realise pretty quickly in evaluating the board, but sometimes it'd be fun to sit there wondering, is there really something to hinder X/Y on this board?

[Papa Luigi]

I was thinking it might be fun to design a kingdom where certain bad (or at least mediocre) cards are actually useful. Like, when I bought Prosperity and first saw Loan, I thought it was an awful card. Then I thought about it some more and read a strategy article about it and thought it might be pretty good. Then I played with it and realized it's mediocre at best. But bad cards like Loan still have the potential to be good - if there are no other cards that fulfill the same function! Loan is a below-average copper trasher that can sort of cycle the deck (although it's pretty random and often throws out actions that you want to play) and has the sole advantage of being a treasure card so you don't have to worry about having enough actions to play it. But if Loan was the ONLY way you could trash coppers, it would be a fairly valuable card.

I guess I'd say it might be fun to design a kingdom around a couple of bad cards, and try to create a rare situation in which those bad cards can actually be good. Think Chancellor/Stash, Develop with a nicely synergized $3/$5 pair, or any card that is bad unless it's the only option (like Loan as the sole trasher).

[ednever]

Funny you describe Loan as a bad card. It's in my top ten for chances of winning if it's in a kingdom (with a gain rate of ~50%). I like Loan a lot - even with other trashers available...

[jotheonah]

I think of Loan as the Little Copper that Could, quietly doing it's own thing, improving your deck during your buy phase while you're worrying about other things.