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Article request: Sharing

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elglin1982:
Disclaimer: A single newbie can ask more questions than ten grand masters can answer.

It is obvious that most of the time, you would not want to share a dogma. E.g., sharing Writing defeats the purpose of the card (getting to Age 2 several turns ahead of your opponent). However, there are cases when sharing is... okayish to good.
1) Most certainly if your opponent cannot share the dogma due to other dogma prerequisites, e.g. Mathematics or Currency with an empty hand, or Paper with a single card in both green and blue stacks.
2) When a dogma benefits you way more than your opponent, say, playing Masonry for Monument against a castle dominance when the opponent has less than 4 cards. The definition of "way more" is, of course, a big question each time.
3) A special case is, I think, splaying, if it allows you to gain a dominance in an icon and play another (or the same) dogma unshared.
4) When sharing is likely to hurt your opponent. Cases like Sailing when your opponent is well into higher ages but for some reason there's a single "1" hanging there. An edge case may be Alchemy if your opponent has a large dominance in castles (9 or preferably 12) since the probability of drawing a red will be pretty high for him and the card can effectively play as "I demand you return your hand".

Of course the decision to share or not is dictated by the actual game state and the edge cases may and will be multiple. What I attempted to put down (and would ask stronger players than me to expand) were some general guidelines.

antony:
Sometimes the extra draw of sharing is really powerful too.  Typical example may come from Math: say you Math a 3 (the highest level you've reached so far) into a 4, and they do the same.  Now you draw a 4 for sharing and get to Math it too, reaching lvl 5 when your opponent is still at level 4.
When forecasts come into play then the extra draw is even stronger of course.

HiveMindEmulator:
I think the fear of sharing is largely unwarranted. Ideally, you'd like the dogma to benefit you "way more" than your opponent. But even if it benefits you only a little more or about the same, when you add in the extra draw, it can become better than your next best alternative.

Not every action you take can be the best thing ever. But it should be the best thing among your choices. If you're considering just drawing a card, you're probably better off sharing a dogma, since you still get to draw the card, but you also do something else that at least helps change your current (unfavorable, since you were considering just drawing) situation, and only might help your opponent. The only time I wouldn't share is if it is clearly going to be more beneficial to my opponent than to myself.

Davio:
Is it like Governor and such?

There's a lot of irrational fear of letting your opponent do stuff for free in Dominion, like playing Council Room and Governor. But as long as the benefit to you is greater, it's still profit $$$. :)

popsofctown:
I don't feel the urge to write a lengthy sharing article, but I'll point out this: a great way to overcome natural human biases about sharing is to put "the burden of evidence" on your standard draw action.  Every turn, I always ask myself, "Do I have proof that sharing Metalworking is worse than drawing a card normally?".  If I can't prove to myself that is the case, I share the dogma.

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