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Author Topic: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture  (Read 7567 times)

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sffc

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Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« on: July 27, 2012, 06:38:16 am »
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Venture is a card most often associated with powerful money-based decks.  In such decks, it's guaranteed to be at least a Silver, and if you have a high enough concentration of Silver/Gold/Platinum, it may often be a better purchase than Gold.

However, Venture has another unique trait: in a deck without any other treasures at all, Ventures cascade off one another.  In a deck with 8 Ventures and no other treasures, all that is needed to guarantee a Province is a single Venture in hand.

But such a deck is going to take a little while to develop.  How can we slow down our opponents, without slowing down our own deck development?  Enter Embargo.

Many, if not most, strategies rely on Gold in one way or another.  However, our Venture Cascade can do perfectly well without any Golds at all.  So, we buy Embargoes to embargo the Golds.  We can double- or triple-embargo the Gold so that our opponents' money-based decks cannot pan out as planned.

But now, what is the fastest way to trash all of our starting coppers?  If we're not buying any silvers, traditional trashers (Chapel, Remake, etc.) will destroy our economy before we can invest in Ventures.  Enter Spice Merchant.

Spice Merchant is a quick, non-terminal way to get rid of our coppers.  But it needs some +Coin in order for us to hit that crucial $5.  Guess what?  We already have Embargo to do that for us!  Spice a Copper, draw an Embargo, embargo the Gold, buy a Venture.

Okay, great!  We have a cool combo that even has some nice thematic flavor.  But does it actually work?

To the Simulators

First, I want to preface this by saying that I searched Council Room, and I could not find a game in which this strategy was played in pure.*  I also have never to my knowledge played a game in which this combo was available.  So, my stats will be coming from the simulators.

For reference, here is an XML of the Embargoed Spice Venture compatible with Geronimoo's Dominion Simulator: http://pastebin.com/BJK9BU0c

First test: The Embargoed Spice Venture obliterates BMU, with a win rate of 94.2%.  Check.

Second test: BMU was modified to also buy Ventures.  Embargoed Spice Venture still wins, this time with 83.3%.  Check.

Third test: BMU was modified to also buy an Embargo in order to embargo the Ventures.  While the margin is closer, Embargoed Spice Venture wins with 62.9%.

I have also run dozens of additional tests, and here is the general trend.  Embargoed Spice Venture obliterates any discard-based attack engine, like Fishing Village/Ghost Ship.  In most money-based strategies that ignore it, Embargoed Spice Venture wins.  However, it loses by about 10% to DoubleJack.  The big thing that makes other strategies hold up against Embargoed Spice Venture is when they buy an early Embargo themselves and embargo the Ventures: this approximately doubles the opponent's win rate.  Nevertheless, in a real game, it is likely that the opponent would not catch onto the whole Venture thing until it's too late to for the opponent to embargo the Ventures for any good.

* My search did turn up a few close matches (kudos to the players who performed the combo): Link (no Embargo used) | Link (no Embargo used) | Link (no Embargo used; player with least treasure at end of game wins) | Link (included for completeness; both players embargo the Golds)

Additional Commentary:

Spice Merchant's closest relative is Moneylender.  Could Moneylender replace Spice Merchant in this combo?  Well, the answer is that Moneylender is indeed a substitute, although it performs about 10% worse in the simulators.  The reason is probably two-fold: first, Moneylender risks a terminal collision with Embargo (or your alternative terminal silver), and second, Spice Merchant cycles your deck faster, allowing you to play it more often.

Additionally, if Embargo is not available, this strategy still works, although not nearly as well, with a decent $2 or $3 terminal silver.  For example, with Fortune Teller or Swindler, the win rate against BMU falls to about 55%.  With only Woodcutter, we lose to BMU, which is never a good thing.  It seems that Steward would be a decent choice as it helps in both early game and in late game, but I can't get any stats on it because the simulator plays Steward suboptimally for this particular strategy (it trashes when it should be giving +$2).

In Colony games, Embargoed Spice Venture still obliterates BMU, though it needs a single Platinum in order to hit $11 fast enough against other strategies.  Depending on the kingdom, the simulators seem to indicate that Embargoed Spice Venture does best in Province games.


Disclaimer: I came up with this card combo because I was looking for a quick way to achieve a Venture cascade.  It is very possible that there is still a faster way to get to a pure Venture deck.  This is my first article on Dominion Strategy, so I hope it is appropriate to write about a manufactured card combo that hasn't really been used before.
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kn1tt3r

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2012, 07:37:30 am »
+1

Thought experiment: You hit $6 an a non-engine board with Venture, and Gold is embargoed. What's your move?

Exactly, you buy Venture.

And that's what your opponent will be doing, which somewhat conflicts with your idea of getting 8 Ventures yourself.
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yudantaiteki

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2012, 07:40:15 am »
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I think in general any combo that relies on having 8 copies of a single card is going to be hard to pull off.  Now, maybe you can go for duchies or something instead...I don't know if that's effective, though.
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Cuzz

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2012, 07:43:43 am »
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This is an interesting idea, but seems really difficult to set up in practice, and also maybe not a scenario that would be well-simulated. There are only 10 ventures in the supply, so getting 8 of them is no simple task, as with getting 8 of 10 of any valuable kingdom card, especially one that costs $5. I'm also not sure I buy the whole
Quote
Nevertheless, in a real game, it is likely that the opponent would not catch onto the whole Venture thing until it's too late to for the opponent to embargo the Ventures for any good.
thing. Decks in which one card is crucial to a strategy are exactly those which are most vulnerable to embargo, and it's usually not too hard to pick up on when an opponent is going for such a deck.

Then again, once you have 4 or 5 ventures, the rest come almost automatically, and this deck would handle curses pretty well, so who knows. I'm curious as to how long it took the simulations to obtain X number of ventures/trash all the coppers/place Y embargoes.
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Geronimoo

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2012, 08:39:28 am »
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It's definitely an interesting idea, but since it's a three card combo it will be rare to see in a real game. On top of that if you start Embargoing Golds your opponent will not stupidly buy Gold anymore and look for an alternative (the simulator is stupid, so it doesn't mind buying stuff that's Embargoed).
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Asklepios

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #5 on: July 27, 2012, 08:48:26 am »
+2

Also, what happens when your opponent embargoes venture? As you say, the combo then loses big. So what you're relying on is an opponent who sees you buying ventures, and isn't smart enough to either embargo ventures, or compete with you for them.

Sure, once you have a clean Venture deck, you can generate $8 off your Ventures, but embargo can come in fast, and those curses will make it harder for your Spice Merchant to hit copper.

The real combo here is Venture + a card that trashes coppers for good benefit. Venture is no doubt a strong card, being a treasure thats always at least a silver, and potentially worth a lot more.

Embargo just isn't a card thats easy to simulate, unless you simulate some good decision making as to whether to buy an embargoed card or not. Plus the way embargo works is that it shifts around what is optimim strategy in a kingdom as each embargo hits. This could make weaker strategies more valid, so requires a reassessment of the Kingdom each time an embargo lands.
« Last Edit: July 27, 2012, 08:50:56 am by Asklepios »
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Powerman

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #6 on: July 27, 2012, 08:29:47 pm »
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Doing solo games, I get 4 provinces in ~15 turns, which isn't too bad.
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DG

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #7 on: July 28, 2012, 07:22:19 am »
+1

Remember that the opponent could embargo ventures.
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jamuspsi

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #8 on: August 03, 2012, 06:57:28 pm »
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If the ventures aren't embargoed before you get, say, 4 or 5 of them, it probably won't matter.  A hand of 4 curses + 1 venture gets your whole chain off anyway, in theory.  The real problem is that it would drain the curse pile earlier- which makes me wonder how it would play in multiplayer? 
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #9 on: August 03, 2012, 07:51:02 pm »
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A 3-card combo which relies on 8 copies of a single card and is incredibly obvious?
Zounds!

sffc

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #10 on: August 05, 2012, 06:11:46 am »
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Then again, once you have 4 or 5 ventures, the rest come almost automatically, and this deck would handle curses pretty well, so who knows. I'm curious as to how long it took the simulations to obtain X number of ventures/trash all the coppers/place Y embargoes.

Here is a simulation where the bot manages to kill all of its coppers and get 8 Ventures, and here is a more realistic simulation where the bot ends up with 6 Ventures and 2 Coppers.  In both games, since the bot likes to open Embargo, the Golds get embargoed right off the bat, and the Silvers get embargoed not long after (around turn 5).  By turn 8, there are two embargo tokens on Gold in both simulations (and also two on Silver by turn 8 in the first simulation).  The Venture cascade starts by around turn 10, at which point it generates enough money to buy more Ventures.  By turn 15, both simulations are busy buying Provinces almost every turn (indeed, the less-ideal simulation starts even earlier than the more-ideal simulation).

For kicks, here is a simulation where the opponent embargoes the Ventures.  Embargoed Spice Merchant wins despite having 4 curses clogging its deck.

If the ventures aren't embargoed before you get, say, 4 or 5 of them, it probably won't matter.  A hand of 4 curses + 1 venture gets your whole chain off anyway, in theory.  The real problem is that it would drain the curse pile earlier- which makes me wonder how it would play in multiplayer?

In Multiplayer, the Embargoed Spice Merchant (ESM) still holds its ground.  There are more curses in multiplayer, so the curse pile does not run out any more quickly than in 2-player.  In a game against 3 BMUs, ESM wins 92.5% of the time; in 4-player, that's not too shabby.  If the BMUs smarten up and buy Curses, ESM still wins 40% of the time versus only 19% for each BMU+Embargo.

Another interesting thing is that ESM even wins if two players are going for the Ventures: 2 ESM vs. 2 BMU+Embargo => 32% for each ESM vs. 17% for each BMU+Embargo.

A 3-card combo which relies on 8 copies of a single card and is incredibly obvious?
Zounds!

Having 8 Ventures is only an ideal situation: in a real game, you will normally have 5 or 6 Ventures with a couple Coppers or Silvers that never intersected your Spice Merchant (or other money-trashing card).  In this case, though, multiple Ventures in hand should do the trick: let the first Venture cascade and find the Copper, then let the second Venture cascade and find the Silver.  If that doesn't hit $8 on its own, your early-game terminal silvers continue to work in the late game.

And it must not be too incredibly obvious if it hasn't been documented before and, given the presence of the combo on an Isotropic game, no one has ever executed it.  ;)
« Last Edit: August 05, 2012, 06:13:41 am by sffc »
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ftl

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #11 on: August 05, 2012, 06:44:40 am »
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Quote
And it must not be too incredibly obvious if it hasn't been documented before and, given the presence of the combo on an Isotropic game, no one has ever executed it. 

Wrong way around - it's so incredibly obvious that it's useless. You'll never have such a stupid opponent that they'll keep buying golds after they're embargoed and spice merchant and venture is available; and if they do that, then you probably could have won without embargoing the golds anyway.

Spice Merchant + Venture is definitely a combo - clear out the coppers and buy ventures. That's been talked about, and/or is worth talking about. I searched a few top players's game histories for games with spice merchant and venture, and that combo gets played - open spice merchant, buy some ventures.

I do not think that the example games you posted are particularly educational for the following reasons.

1) Because you're comparing to a strategy which is pretty stupid - just pure BMU. Obviously, Venture+Spice merchant (with no help at all from embargoes), also beats BMU, with no help from embargo.
2) Because embargo is a card which requires opponents to react to you, which your example games did not do. Presumably, any human opponent would react to gold being embargoed by buying ventures himself?
3) I'll reiterate again: you're comparing to a pure BMU which continues with its strategy regardless of embargoes! That bar is so impossibly low as to be a nearly usless metric for determining whether a strategy is useful a real game. Beating that does not really earn a strategy many points at all.

...I think there needs to be an Embargo strategy article. Is there one?
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ftl

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #12 on: August 05, 2012, 06:52:43 am »
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Yes, there is an embargo strategy article. It's at http://dominionstrategy.com/2010/11/16/seaside-embargo/ . It's a little old, but still valid.

I think the key quote is at the end:

Quote
[embargo]Works with:
  • Any set that encourages your opponent to adopt a predictable buying pattern.
Whenever your opponent is forced into a predictable buying pattern which you can avoid and they can't - such as when they NEED to get particular cards and you don't - embargo is a good tactical move.
I do not think that Spice Merchant+Venture alone create a situation for embargo to shine. You can embargo golds; they can work around the lack of golds by just buying ventures instead. You haven't created a tough choice where they have to bite the bullet and take the curse or skip a key card. Vice versa, they can embargo ventures, and you can get around that by buying golds instead


I think simulations are typically a pretty bad way of determining Embargo's effectiveness unless you're really, really careful; the very setup (the fact that it's a simulation) leads to a predictable buying pattern (and predictable buying patterns are great fodder for embargo to beat up on!) even when in a real game, there would be no reason for an opponent to continue his predictable buying pattern in the face of an embargo.


None of this is to disparage Spice Merchant+Venture, which is pretty good. Copper trashing plus venture is a combo for sure.
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sffc

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #13 on: August 05, 2012, 09:16:42 am »
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For clarification, I used BMU as the opponent in the sample logs because the logs were meant to demonstrate the mechanics of a pure Embargoed Spice Venture player (how many turns it took to reach a Venture cascade, etc); BMU just makes a nice generic benchmark.  They weren't intended to demonstrate the competitiveness of the combo.

If you'd like, I can get some logs for an opponent other than BMU, but those should be easy enough to make just using Geronimoo's simulator.  As was mentioned in the OP, this combo does indeed beat a number of competitive strategies, especially ones like Ghost Ship that force discards (since we're seeing our whole deck every turn anyway, it doesn't matter if we have to discard/topdeck some junk).  That's not to say it works well against all competitive strategies, of course.

I very much agree with your points about the Embargo.  Embargo is indeed a very difficult card to simulate.  The reason it ended up in the combo was because it seemed to perform the best against the benchmark than the other $2 and $3 terminal silvers.

Also, although this combo may be obvious to level 30+ players, the purpose of writing about a combo is to point out unique features and/or interactions of Dominion cards.  (Indeed, the bulk of the documented combos are also "obvious" to mid-to-high-level players.)  Venture/Spice Merchant demonstrates the cascading quality of Ventures, and for reasons I mentioned in the OP, it is likely one of the most efficient ways to achieve the cascade. :)
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WanderingWinder

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #14 on: August 05, 2012, 10:16:50 am »
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I don't think that at least a high percentage of the documented combos were 'obvious' before their articles.
You can't use the Sim to do this worth almost anything, since it plays embargo so wrong.
The real baseline you should compete against is SM/Venture, which totally outclasses this, because you don't waste time on embargoes.

ftl

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #15 on: August 05, 2012, 04:45:54 pm »
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For clarification, I used BMU as the opponent in the sample logs because the logs were meant to demonstrate the mechanics of a pure Embargoed Spice Venture player (how many turns it took to reach a Venture cascade, etc); BMU just makes a nice generic benchmark.  They weren't intended to demonstrate the competitiveness of the combo.

If you'd like, I can get some logs for an opponent other than BMU, but those should be easy enough to make just using Geronimoo's simulator.  As was mentioned in the OP, this combo does indeed beat a number of competitive strategies, especially ones like Ghost Ship that force discards (since we're seeing our whole deck every turn anyway, it doesn't matter if we have to discard/topdeck some junk).  That's not to say it works well against all competitive strategies, of course.

I very much agree with your points about the Embargo.  Embargo is indeed a very difficult card to simulate.  The reason it ended up in the combo was because it seemed to perform the best against the benchmark than the other $2 and $3 terminal silvers.

Also, although this combo may be obvious to level 30+ players, the purpose of writing about a combo is to point out unique features and/or interactions of Dominion cards.  (Indeed, the bulk of the documented combos are also "obvious" to mid-to-high-level players.)  Venture/Spice Merchant demonstrates the cascading quality of Ventures, and for reasons I mentioned in the OP, it is likely one of the most efficient ways to achieve the cascade. :)

Yeah, Venture/Spice Merchant is good stuff, and I do agree it made for a good article.

I think your simulators misled you on the embargo being the best terminal silver to stick in there, though. They're the best to stick in when the opponent does not respond to their presence.
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Asklepios

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Re: Combo: The Embargoed Spice Venture
« Reply #16 on: August 06, 2012, 08:46:49 am »
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Here is a simulation where the bot manages to kill all of its coppers and get 8 Ventures, and here is a more realistic simulation where the bot ends up with 6 Ventures and 2 Coppers.  In both games, since the bot likes to open Embargo, the Golds get embargoed right off the bat, and the Silvers get embargoed not long after (around turn 5).  By turn 8, there are two embargo tokens on Gold in both simulations (and also two on Silver by turn 8 in the first simulation).  The Venture cascade starts by around turn 10, at which point it generates enough money to buy more Ventures.  By turn 15, both simulations are busy buying Provinces almost every turn (indeed, the less-ideal simulation starts even earlier than the more-ideal simulation).
[/quote]

So the combo beats a player that determinedly buys big money even when the golds are embargoed?

It just makes no sense. Even if the BM player doesn't switch to buying Ventures instead of golds, he'll be buying something else. No real player is going to buy embargoed golds till he has 10 curses in his deck.

Simulate it instead with the proposed combo deck against Big Money that buys Ventures when Gold is embargoed, and see if it does as well. Or, as WW says, try it against Spice Merchant / Venture without the Embargoes.
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