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[popsofctown]

What are they?  It varies from person to person of course.  But much of the criteria must overlap because selection methods don't splinter much, fully random is highly popular.

Here's several criteria that might mean a nothing, a little, or a lot to you.

1. Multiple apparent viable strategies

2. Interactivity
2a. A rock-paper-scissors relationship involved in the strategies on the board

3. Low variance

4. Variance (usually in a kitchen table concept with players of varying skill)

5. Unique from other kingdoms you've played, at all.

6. The degree of uniqueness from other kingdoms you've played.

7. Has your favorite cards (this isn't the same for everyone, and even favorites tend to get overridden in favor of uniqueness.)


The most popular method, to my knowledge, is full random, and has been for a long time.  It's intended to maximize 5 and 6, which for many people is important.  Tinkering to improve the others endangers 5 and 5.

This thread isn't really about anything but 5 and 6, to be honest.  There is such a massive amount of variety in Dominion to start with, you could probably trim it with very limited damage to 5.  But  any such change would be very controversial, particularly if a favorite kind of board is removed for the sake of perceived variety.  If there are too many Jack boards, so one person argues that cutting Jack's probability to half improves the magnitude of uniqueness between games, but the other players who enjoy Jack games have a right to cry bloody murder.


So why did I make a thread about a change that can't happen?  I think there is a very narrow set of changes to full random people could agree on - ones that treat TOTALLY identical kingdoms as if they were one kingdom.  5 is important, no one wants to play the same kingdom twice. 

By an identical kingdom, I mean ones that contains X unbuyable, ungainable, not-even-feeling-blackmailed-by-its-presence, cards. 
Hold the flamethrowers, there is NO card in dominion that is unbuyable in every kingdom it appears in.  However, there are several weak cards or board combinations that can algorithmically be determined to make a weak card "obsolete" - reasonably skilled players will ignore the card, every time.

There's also the case when one strong card makes everything else in the kingdom obselete.  There's several Jack only boards, and Jack-assisted-by-X boards.  It's harder to build an algorithm for these cases, but maybe the brightest could eliminate the simplest cases where the lack of a village causes the board to be "pick the best terminals to go with your money".  In such a board, Fortune Teller/9 terminals is not unique from Woodcutter/9 terminals one of those terminals will be a Vault or Merchant ship or Rabble, and the value of an action point will render the weak terminal Silvers an unbuyable part of the kingdom in both cases.

An example of the sort of rules you could add to an improved random algorithm is to define Scout as a blank card whenever every kingdom VP card, Ambassador, Tournament, Wishing Well, Swindler, Baron, Hoard, Menagerie, Hunting Party, Horn of Penty, and Crossroads are all missing.  Counting House may happen to be a dead card some of the same kingdoms.  Thus, the 9 card kingdom of x1, x2, ... x9, Scout or Counting House, can be considered one unique kingdom.

[werothegreat]

Sometimes I do full random - that can be fun.  But other times I like to pick and choose what I want to play with.  I usually like to at least ensure the Kingdom has a village and a source of +buy, possibly trashing and drawing.

[Morgrim7]

Hmmm. I like to make kingdoms this way, too. Have certain criteria. Here is a kingdom that fits these criteria: Moat, Ill-Gotten Gains, Young Witch, (bane: Cellar), Haggler, Apprentice, Mining Village, Tournament, Silk Road, Stash, Swindler. Colonies and Platniums included.
1) Many strategies: IGG-Haggler, YW, Moats, Tournaments
2) Moat beats attacks but loses to IGG, IGG loses to cursers, Cursers lose to Moat.
3 and 4, which would you rather, low variance or high variance?
7) Favorites: IGG, Haggler

[popsofctown]

Hmmm. I like to make kingdoms this way, too. Have certain criteria. Here is a kingdom that fits these criteria: Moat, Ill-Gotten Gains, Young Witch, (bane: Cellar), Haggler, Apprentice, Mining Village, Tournament, Silk Road, Stash, Swindler. Colonies and Platniums included.
1) Many strategies: IGG-Haggler, YW, Moats, Tournaments
2) Moat beats attacks but loses to IGG, IGG loses to cursers, Cursers lose to Moat.
3 and 4, which would you rather, low variance or high variance?
7) Favorites: IGG, Haggler

I'm a low variance person, I was just mentioning individual things that are sometimes people's motives.

[qmech]

The benefit of randomness (in life as in Dominion) is that it prevents you from making bad decisions.  Knowing that Chancellor is frequently useless is a skill involved in playing Dominion, but so is spotting the few occasions when it can really shine.  With any kind of algorithm for filtering Kingdoms you risk making decisions that deprive the players of the chance to demonstrate various kinds of skill and stopping Kingdoms with potentially new strategies from ever seeing the light.

[WanderingWinder]

The benefit of randomness (in life as in Dominion) is that it prevents you from making bad decisions.  Knowing that Chancellor is frequently useless is a skill involved in playing Dominion, but so is spotting the few occasions when it can really shine.  With any kind of algorithm for filtering Kingdoms you risk making decisions that deprive the players of the chance to demonstrate various kinds of skill and stopping Kingdoms with potentially new strategies from ever seeing the light.

While what you say is true, I would say this, which is related but different. Because if you always play with a certain way to pick, those skills aren't ever going to be useful, unless you start changing how you pick. So I think that the real benefitt, apart from creativity which you point out but CAN get in other ways, is that it has the possibility of valui all skills in an impartial manner.

[popsofctown]

The benefit of randomness (in life as in Dominion) is that it prevents you from making bad decisions.  Knowing that Chancellor is frequently useless is a skill involved in playing Dominion, but so is spotting the few occasions when it can really shine.  With any kind of algorithm for filtering Kingdoms you risk making decisions that deprive the players of the chance to demonstrate various kinds of skill and stopping Kingdoms with potentially new strategies from ever seeing the light.

I am interested only in very narrow modifications that have zero or nearly zero probability of ruling out kingdoms that MIGHT be unique.  Erring on the side of caution.

Chancellor would be hard to make many rules for.  Unsupported Scout, no-trash Adventurer outclassed by an Envoy, stuff like that is what seems promising to me.

[Schlippy]

We usually shuffle the whole bunch of blue cards, randomly pick 10 from that pile, play a game and then set the 10 aside. We do this until we have played all cards. If there are less than 10 cards left all of those make it into the next game and the rest will be randomly picked from all other cards.

Recently I supposed we should pick our 10 cards differently.
My favourite method at the moment is randomly picking 10+X cards (where X is equal to the amount of players multiplied by 2). Then everyone bans a card beginning with the last player in reverse order. Then everyone bans a card beginning with the first player in regular order. (So in a three player game, player 3 bans 1 card, player 2 bans 1 card, player 1 bans 2 cards, player 2 bans 1 card, player 3 bans 1 card.)
All banned cards will be part of the next game and can not be banned in that game.

This method may not work as well for four players (because you'll only have a pool of 10 cards with 8 getting banned and forced in the next game, unless you're playing the first game of the evening), but for two or three players it is neat. (It might work with four players, but we never tried as we are nearly never four.)

It is still relatively random distribution, you will still play every single card when you play through your whole blue pile, but it gives players the some chance to lower poor or annoying interactions or cards that are utterly useless in a specific kingdom. Especially hard big money boards become really rare with that method. Another good thing is that you can ease the tension of boards that lead to very long games with very little fun, as those are especially exhausting in real-life rounds.
It also has some strategical point, like veto-mode on isotropic. (Banning Smugglers as player 1 a.E.)

[qmech]

I am interested only in very narrow modifications that have zero or nearly zero probability of ruling out kingdoms that MIGHT be unique.

If you come up with a small list of equivalences then they're unlikely to significantly affect the distribution of Kingdoms, as randomly selected Kingdoms are unlikely to be similar in any case.

We usually shuffle the whole bunch of blue cards, randomly pick 10 from that pile, play a game and then set the 10 aside. We do this until we have played all cards. If there are less than 10 cards left all of those make it into the next game and the rest will be randomly picked from all other cards.

This is how we'd ended up playing towards the end of my groups interest in physical cards.  I don't like it as much as fully random selection as, although the distributions of individual hands are the same, it's unsatisfying seeing Fishing Village (or whatever) go past and knowing you'll never see it again.

[popsofctown]

I am interested only in very narrow modifications that have zero or nearly zero probability of ruling out kingdoms that MIGHT be unique.

If you come up with a small list of equivalences then they're unlikely to significantly affect the distribution of Kingdoms, as randomly selected Kingdoms are unlikely to be similar in any case.

There's not many.  Little is better than nothing though.

[Insomniac]

One that I use from time to time is
IF there is an attack on board, ensure there is a reaction on board.

I don't use it all the time and most of the time when I'm playing it I want to see more tunnel....