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