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[werothegreat]

Council Room BM in the base set is just ridiculous.  In order to beat the bots in the base Adventures, I have to play them at their own game and join in with the Council Room, rather than attempting an engine.  Eesh.  This is why there are expansions.  And Attacks.

[sandstorm]

Using the default bots from Geronimoo's simulator Smithy BM actually has a slight edge over Council Room BM

[Kirian]

Council Room BM in the base set is just ridiculous.  In order to beat the bots in the base Adventures, I have to play them at their own game and join in with the Council Room, rather than attempting an engine.  Eesh.  This is why there are expansions.  And Attacks.

1. Play lots of multiplayer.
2. Buy lots of zaps.
3. Destroy adventures.

I mean, most of us are playing the adventures only to get promo cards...

[werothegreat]

Council Room BM in the base set is just ridiculous.  In order to beat the bots in the base Adventures, I have to play them at their own game and join in with the Council Room, rather than attempting an engine.  Eesh.  This is why there are expansions.  And Attacks.

1. Play lots of multiplayer.
2. Buy lots of zaps.
3. Destroy adventures.

I mean, most of us are playing the adventures only to get promo cards...

I mean, that is also my plan.  But I only usually zap everyone back down to 7 C, 3 E.  Which is why I'm waiting for them to fix Act 2 of Prosperity, Seaside, Intrigue and Hinterlands.  I could just zap myself to 7 Silvers, but even then the bots do a surprisingly good job of keeping up with me, usually with Council Room.

[werothegreat]

Using the default bots from Geronimoo's simulator Smithy BM actually has a slight edge over Council Room BM

I can beat Smity BM with my eyes closed.  CR BM is a different beast, my friend.

[Morgrim7]

At first I thought this was about councilroom.com

[HiveMindEmulator]

At first I thought this was about councilroom.com

Me too

But seriously, what is the board on which Council Room BM is dominant?

[serakfalcon]

But seriously, what is the board on which Council Room BM is dominant?

lol exactly

[kn1tt3r]

At first I thought this was about councilroom.com

Me too

But seriously, what is the board on which Council Room BM is dominant?

That's what I thought, but I admit I also got somewhat desperate playing these Adventures. I attempted to build up a beautiful Village/CouncilRoom/Militia thing while my opponent just rushed with CR/BM to Golds and Provinces. No idea how that's possible. Probably partly due to the lack of good trashers (except Chapel) in the base game.

[HiveMindEmulator]

At first I thought this was about councilroom.com

Me too

But seriously, what is the board on which Council Room BM is dominant?

That's what I thought, but I admit I also got somewhat desperate playing these Adventures. I attempted to build up a beautiful Village/CouncilRoom/Militia thing while my opponent just rushed with CR/BM to Golds and Provinces. No idea how that's possible. Probably partly due to the lack of good trashers (except Chapel) in the base game.

Not a rhetorical question. What is the actual board?

[dondon151]

The reason why Council Room BM seems difficult to play against with an engine is because it's pretty easy to hit $8 on a Council Room play even with a reduced handsize to begin with.

[serakfalcon]

I think the trick against Council Room BM is to not use a strong engine: get mostly treasures an a +buy. You don't need strong drawing because your opponent will do it for you. Thanks to CR helping you along you can just shoot for 8 a turn, or even prov/duchy if you can get a buy card in there, you can probably hit it faster and more consistently than the CR person if you use a relatively weak engine

[kn1tt3r]

At first I thought this was about councilroom.com

Me too

But seriously, what is the board on which Council Room BM is dominant?

That's what I thought, but I admit I also got somewhat desperate playing these Adventures. I attempted to build up a beautiful Village/CouncilRoom/Militia thing while my opponent just rushed with CR/BM to Golds and Provinces. No idea how that's possible. Probably partly due to the lack of good trashers (except Chapel) in the base game.

Not a rhetorical question. What is the actual board?

Don't remember, there were several in the base game adventure. Maybe wero can tell.

[werothegreat]

At first I thought this was about councilroom.com

Me too

But seriously, what is the board on which Council Room BM is dominant?

That's what I thought, but I admit I also got somewhat desperate playing these Adventures. I attempted to build up a beautiful Village/CouncilRoom/Militia thing while my opponent just rushed with CR/BM to Golds and Provinces. No idea how that's possible. Probably partly due to the lack of good trashers (except Chapel) in the base game.

Not a rhetorical question. What is the actual board?

Don't remember, there were several in the base game adventure. Maybe wero can tell.

Latest one I played: Moat, Village, Feast, Smithy, Spy, Throne Room, Council Room, Laboratory, Library, Market

At first, I tried to do a simple engine with Labs and Markets and Golds, but consistently the two bots would get Council Rooms at their first $5 and quickly outstrip me in Province buys.

The thing that raises CR above Smithy against an engine is that CR has a +Buy built in, which makes it directly comparable to an engine.

[Morgrim7]

SmithyBM

[flies]

wero, which adventure is this?  I want to play it and see how it goes.

[werothegreat]

Base, Act 3, game 4.

[DStu]

Latest one I played: Moat, Village, Feast, Smithy, Spy, Throne Room, Council Room, Laboratory, Library, Market

I get some 2Militia-Lab-1Market+possibly TRs to ~40% against 2 CR-bots. Going from there I see some potential replacing the Market by a Councilroom getting actions from the TR and forcing discard with Milita, but I don't get the bot to play it right.

[SCSN]

I mean, most of us are playing the adventures only to get promo cards...

Huh, how/when can you gain those promo cards? Are they not included in any other expansion?

[werothegreat]

Latest one I played: Moat, Village, Feast, Smithy, Spy, Throne Room, Council Room, Laboratory, Library, Market

I get some 2Militia-Lab-1Market+possibly TRs to ~40% against 2 CR-bots. Going from there I see some potential replacing the Market by a Councilroom getting actions from the TR and forcing discard with Milita, but I don't get the bot to play it right.

There's no Militia.

[Davio]

Also I severely doubt the effectiveness of Militia against CR bots.

If you're going with a double Province engine based on CR you're also helping them get the best 3 out of 6 or 7 which for them increases the chance of having CR in hand and drawing up to $8 again. Let's say they have something like 2 Silvers and CR left after your turn, they only need to draw $4 worth in 4 cards which isn't at all impossible. Just a Gold and Copper will do or 2 Silvers, etc...

The real problem is probably them going through the piles too quickly for your engine to overtake them.

I think for the engine to be probable you need a way to exponentially get more cards quickly like a simple Remodel or trash down fast enough with Chapel. With just 1 card gain per turn and no trashing I think the complex engine is just too slow. Which leaves the question: Smithy or CR? Likely a decent mix of the 2.

[DStu]

Latest one I played: Moat, Village, Feast, Smithy, Spy, Throne Room, Council Room, Laboratory, Library, Market

I get some 2Militia-Lab-1Market+possibly TRs to ~40% against 2 CR-bots. Going from there I see some potential replacing the Market by a Councilroom getting actions from the TR and forcing discard with Milita, but I don't get the bot to play it right.

There's no Militia.

Upps.  Then I don't see a way around this.  You have no gain, no trash, no sift, no strong attack but strong BM which supports themselves.

[DStu]

Also I severely doubt the effectiveness of Militia against CR bots.

I wanted to make a Lab-engine with CR instead of Market for the buy if you can get actions via TR and reduce the downside of the draw by Militia.  Which could maybe be a bit better than with Market if it works.  But the Lab-engines is far from working without the Miliita, and the CR will not rescue it.

[jsh357]

I mean, most of us are playing the adventures only to get promo cards...

Huh, how/when can you gain those promo cards? Are they not included in any other expansion?

You have to earn 100 shield things to buy Promos, and right now you can only get those from Adventures.  Unfortunately, it seems you can only get enough for 3 Promos (4 with Guilds) so I don't know how you're getting the fifth.

[LastFootnote]

Latest one I played: Moat, Village, Feast, Smithy, Spy, Throne Room, Council Room, Laboratory, Library, Market

At first, I tried to do a simple engine with Labs and Markets and Golds, but consistently the two bots would get Council Rooms at their first $5 and quickly outstrip me in Province buys.

The thing that raises CR above Smithy against an engine is that CR has a +Buy built in, which makes it directly comparable to an engine.

I can't speak to whether Smithy/BM will beat Council Room/BM, but other than that, it's hard to beat Council Room on this board. Library is terrible, since you usually start with a large hand size. Without any trashing, it's hard to put together a great engine. If you really want to try, I think Throne Room is going to be key. Throne Room on Labs and Markets to get extra actions, then Smithy to further increase your draw. You'll have to buy 2 or 3 Golds, but the vast majority of your buys should be Action cards.

That's just my 2¢. I'm far from the best Dominion player and I also had a heck of a time against these Council Room bots, if memory serves.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Game 7:
Moat, Chancellor, Village, Bureaucrat, Militia, Spy, Thief, Council Room, Festival, Library

I played the AI a few times going CR/Festival/Militia/Village/Spy/Thief and won 3 out of 4, but only one of the wins was solid. The other two were like one bad draw away from losing. And it's hard to prevent bad draws with no trashing and no non-terminal draw of more than 1 card (I guess 2 if you count Spy's sifting effect). Plus the AI seems to only buy 1 CR and opens Silver/Silver.

The problem here is there is no gain/trash/cycle to help set up the engine faster, and none of the attacks are really strong enough on their own to really cause trouble. If I were actually playing this board in a Tournament setting, I'd probably go Bureaucrat/Silver opening into big money with CR or Library (depending on if my opponent goes Militia).

[Jeebus]

Isn't the key here also that you're playing a multi-player game, so that their Council Rooms help each other? If only one player went with CR/BM and the other 2 or 3 players went with some kind of engine, wouldn't the first player probably lose? Not sure, just asking.

The other thing is that sometimes in multi-player when several players play poorly, the one guy who doesn't, can get screwed. That's mostly because of draining piles quickly I guess. Extreme example of this: I downloaded a Dominion simulator once (it's just called "Dominion", by jatill), and in certain Kingdoms I couldn't win against three AI's playing stupidly. In a garden game several of them would open Gardens, and then three piles would be drained before I could get ahead playing like I would against more skilled opponents. (Often they would drain Bureaucrats too, but I don't remember if that was in the Gardens Kingdom.) The result was that one of them randomly won, and I lost. Only when I did the same thing did I have a random (25%) chance of winning. I tried a Kingdom 20 times without finding any better way of doing it.

[heron]

If they win, I wouldn't say that they're playing stupidly. Gardens is a reasonable opening in a 4p Workshop/Gardens game, I think.

[SirPeebles]

Isn't the key here also that you're playing a multi-player game, so that their Council Rooms help each other? If only one player went with CR/BM and the other 2 or 3 players went with some kind of engine, wouldn't the first player probably lose? Not sure, just asking.

The other thing is that sometimes in multi-player when several players play poorly, the one guy who doesn't, can get screwed. That's mostly because of draining piles quickly I guess. Extreme example of this: I downloaded a Dominion simulator once (it's just called "Dominion", by jatill), and in certain Kingdoms I couldn't win against three AI's playing stupidly. In a garden game several of them would open Gardens, and then three piles would be drained before I could get ahead playing like I would against more skilled opponents. (Often they would drain Bureaucrats too, but I don't remember if that was in the Gardens Kingdom.) The result was that one of them randomly won, and I lost. Only when I did the same thing did I have a random (25%) chance of winning. I tried a Kingdom 20 times without finding any better way of doing it.

Perhaps it's a Nash equilibrium?  If so, then one could hardly say that it's poor strategy to join in.  This reminds me of Donald's discussion of the early development of Dominion and tweaking the game rules to dampen the Duchy rush.

[ftl]

4 player is like that. If 3 players go for the same piles, they will empty in a flash. Theres no time to build up. You have to play very reactive.

[ednever]

Latest one I played: Moat, Village, Feast, Smithy, Spy, Throne Room, Council Room, Laboratory, Library, Market

At first, I tried to do a simple engine with Labs and Markets and Golds, but consistently the two bots would get Council Rooms at their first $5 and quickly outstrip me in Province buys.

The thing that raises CR above Smithy against an engine is that CR has a +Buy built in, which makes it directly comparable to an engine.

I can't speak to whether Smithy/BM will beat Council Room/BM, but other than that, it's hard to beat Council Room on this board. Library is terrible, since you usually start with a large hand size. Without any trashing, it's hard to put together a great engine. If you really want to try, I think Throne Room is going to be key. Throne Room on Labs and Markets to get extra actions, then Smithy to further increase your draw. You'll have to buy 2 or 3 Golds, but the vast majority of your buys should be Action cards.

That's just my 2¢. I'm far from the best Dominion player and I also had a heck of a time against these Council Room bots, if memory serves.

The other wild card here is Feast. If you can build a reasonable engine (and you can here I think- even without trashing) then you can use Feast to dramatically expand your economy fast. Opponents playing CR may even help you in connecting your pieces to get your engine going.

Key is to Throne Room the Feasts, so your $4 purchase gets you $10 in value one turn later. (Generally Markets, but maybe Labs too).

I think it's definitely do-able to beat CR-BM on this set, but its close. Add a Remodel , or a Workshop and it destroys CRBM.

Ed

[eHalcyon]

Isn't the key here also that you're playing a multi-player game, so that their Council Rooms help each other? If only one player went with CR/BM and the other 2 or 3 players went with some kind of engine, wouldn't the first player probably lose? Not sure, just asking.

The other thing is that sometimes in multi-player when several players play poorly, the one guy who doesn't, can get screwed. That's mostly because of draining piles quickly I guess. Extreme example of this: I downloaded a Dominion simulator once (it's just called "Dominion", by jatill), and in certain Kingdoms I couldn't win against three AI's playing stupidly. In a garden game several of them would open Gardens, and then three piles would be drained before I could get ahead playing like I would against more skilled opponents. (Often they would drain Bureaucrats too, but I don't remember if that was in the Gardens Kingdom.) The result was that one of them randomly won, and I lost. Only when I did the same thing did I have a random (25%) chance of winning. I tried a Kingdom 20 times without finding any better way of doing it.

In the Gardens example, how much are the Gardens worth at game end?  Depending on how fast they drain the piles, maybe the best move is to rush Duchies and let them pile out with weak Gardens.

[Jeebus]

In the Gardens example, how much are the Gardens worth at game end?  Depending on how fast they drain the piles, maybe the best move is to rush Duchies and let them pile out with weak Gardens.

I don't remember, but it wasn't much, probably 2. But I'm pretty sure there wasn't enough time to get enough Duchies to beat them.

It was not a Workshop game.

It was not poor strategy to join in, because as I said, it was the only way to get an equal shot at winning. But if all players had been top players, I guarantee you none of them would even consider that play, because 1) if you played like that and nobody else did, you would lose, and 2) if three or four people played like that, a random player among them would win, whereas if most people played well, the best player among them would (theoretically) win, which good players would prefer.

[SirPeebles]

In the Gardens example, how much are the Gardens worth at game end?  Depending on how fast they drain the piles, maybe the best move is to rush Duchies and let them pile out with weak Gardens.

I don't remember, but it wasn't much, probably 2. But I'm pretty sure there wasn't enough time to get enough Duchies to beat them.

It was not a Workshop game.

It was not poor strategy to join in, because as I said, it was the only way to get an equal shot at winning. But if all players had been top players, I guarantee you none of them would even consider that play, because 1) if you played like that and nobody else did, you would lose, and 2) if three or four people played like that, a random player among them would win, whereas if most people played well, the best player among them would (theoretically) win, which good players would prefer.

Good players would prefer that?  Now you're implying a preference other than winning.  You see, that's the thing about Nash equilibria.  Diverging from it unilaterally will only hurt your odds of winning.  You seem to believe that any good player would have some aesthetic reason to prefer a different style of game, despite a decreased probability of winning.  Alternatively, you appear to be implying that your hypothetical players are not perfectly skilled and each is under the delusion that he or she is the mostly highly skilled player (not that there is even a total ordering to compare relative to).  While it may be true that many play for pleasure, I wouldn't say that playing to win is "playing stupid" necessarily.

[Jeebus]

In the Gardens example, how much are the Gardens worth at game end?  Depending on how fast they drain the piles, maybe the best move is to rush Duchies and let them pile out with weak Gardens.

I don't remember, but it wasn't much, probably 2. But I'm pretty sure there wasn't enough time to get enough Duchies to beat them.

It was not a Workshop game.

It was not poor strategy to join in, because as I said, it was the only way to get an equal shot at winning. But if all players had been top players, I guarantee you none of them would even consider that play, because 1) if you played like that and nobody else did, you would lose, and 2) if three or four people played like that, a random player among them would win, whereas if most people played well, the best player among them would (theoretically) win, which good players would prefer.

Good players would prefer that?  Now you're implying a preference other than winning.  You see, that's the thing about Nash equilibria.  Diverging from it unilaterally will only hurt your odds of winning.  You seem to believe that any good player would have some aesthetic reason to prefer a different style of game, despite a decreased probability of winning.  Alternatively, you appear to be implying that your hypothetical players are not perfectly skilled and each is under the delusion that he or she is the mostly highly skilled player (not that there is even a total ordering to compare relative to).  While it may be true that many play for pleasure, I wouldn't say that playing to win is "playing stupid" necessarily.

First of all, you did not refute my point (1), which I think is the most important reason good players would not play that way, and which shows that it's false to call this "playing to win" in this case.

Second of all, I do think that both your interpretations of my point (2) is to some degree true for many good players. That is to say A) many (most?) good players would in general prefer to play a game where the best player wins over a game where a random player wins, and B) they would like to play a game where they get rewarded for good play because they want to believe they they have a good shot of playing best, and even if they suspect (or know) that they're not the best player in the game, they hope (or "delude" themselves into thinking) that they can find a way to play better than the others. To add to point (b): If on the other hand one knows that one has a slim chance of winning (meaning of course that one is a bad player playing against good players), then one might want to play just to win even if that means the game is more random. So in this case, if several players knew that they were outmatched by a good player, they might want to play in such a way that a random person among them won instead (invoking the Nash equilibrium).

[olneyce]

I can play a game against Stef where we each have a 50/50 chance of winning right now.  It'll take just one second...

Hmmm, the coin came up heads.  So Stef won that one.  But if we play again, maybe it'll be my turn.

Which is to say, I play(ed) Dominion because I like playing Dominion.  Choosing strategies that guarantee a random result is a stupid idea even if I'm playing someone that I am pretty confident is better than me.  Unless it's like, the finals of a tournament.  Or I'm playing for my life against a movie-villain-Dominion-mastermind or something.

[timchen]

Yeah, I think BM+CM here is better than BM+smithy because there are two opponents.

[HiveMindEmulator]

In the Gardens example, how much are the Gardens worth at game end?  Depending on how fast they drain the piles, maybe the best move is to rush Duchies and let them pile out with weak Gardens.

I don't remember, but it wasn't much, probably 2. But I'm pretty sure there wasn't enough time to get enough Duchies to beat them.

It was not a Workshop game.

It was not poor strategy to join in, because as I said, it was the only way to get an equal shot at winning. But if all players had been top players, I guarantee you none of them would even consider that play, because 1) if you played like that and nobody else did, you would lose, and 2) if three or four people played like that, a random player among them would win, whereas if most people played well, the best player among them would (theoretically) win, which good players would prefer.

Good players would prefer that?  Now you're implying a preference other than winning.  You see, that's the thing about Nash equilibria.  Diverging from it unilaterally will only hurt your odds of winning.  You seem to believe that any good player would have some aesthetic reason to prefer a different style of game, despite a decreased probability of winning.  Alternatively, you appear to be implying that your hypothetical players are not perfectly skilled and each is under the delusion that he or she is the mostly highly skilled player (not that there is even a total ordering to compare relative to).  While it may be true that many play for pleasure, I wouldn't say that playing to win is "playing stupid" necessarily.

It could be the case that there are multiple Nash equilibria. It's not a one-shot everyone plays at the same time kind of game, so there is a notion like a stackelberg leader, where the first player, by how he starts to play, can dictate which of the equilibria the game moves toward. This I think is pretty common with multiplayer Dominion. If you're the only one playing a slow strategy while everyone else is piling, you lose. If you're trying to rush but can't pile on your own, you lose. So you do have to follow. If you're third player and the other guys are rushing, you follow. If they're building up, you follow as well. But if the leaders tend to prefer engines, you get an engine game, and if they prefer rushes you get a rush. I guess there's an implication that "good" players prefer engines, but that's another subject entirely.

[Davio]

I can play a game against Stef where we each have a 50/50 chance of winning right now.  It'll take just one second...

Hmmm, the coin came up heads.  So Stef won that one.  But if we play again, maybe it'll be my turn.

Which is to say, I play(ed) Dominion because I like playing Dominion.  Choosing strategies that guarantee a random result is a stupid idea even if I'm playing someone that I am pretty confident is better than me.  Unless it's like, the finals of a tournament.  Or I'm playing for my life against a movie-villain-Dominion-mastermind or something.

I once played Stef in the 3p finals of a tournament (Dutch championships)....and I went with Workshop-Gardens as 1st player as did the other guy who was 2nd. This pretty much forced Stef to join in, also there really wasn't anything on the board able to outrace 2 players going WS/G. The result was that both me and the second player tied for first while Stef had 1 Duchy/Estate/Gardens less. We had to do a rematch and I won, but that's not the point.

I looked long and hard at that board and couldn't come up with anything better than WS/G, but if the second player would have just gone big money then Stef would have had an interesting choice. Two big money players can maybe outrace one Gardens player, but two Gardens players can outrace one big money player. Because of the three player aspect, this board and the reactionary part was much more interesting than the way we ended up playing it.

[serakfalcon]

I caved and played thru just to see what the kingdom was,
with Smithy BM and a 4/3 start I got thru the bots on my second try (first try was a 5/2 start, a little hard on that board unless you join the CR party)

[lespeutere]

I just played it and after the game I remembered this thread. So here's my engine try (with first turn advantage, though):
Base, Act 3, Game 4

[dob3444]

I feel like such a noob being stuck at Act 1, Game 7 of Adventures against "Squire Edwin"

The set up is : Moat, Chancellor, Village, Bureaucrat, Militia, Spy, Thief, Council Room, Festival, Library

The opponent plays a very straightforward Council Room / Big Money. I've tried every combination of attacks, and he always gets those provinces first. Please advise me with a strategy!

Oh, by the way, I kinda refuse to use Zaps. It's Act 1, the hands are equal, I should be able to win fair and square!

[clb]

I would think you should be pretty successful if you are able to consistently play your Militia as part of a Militia-Festival-Library engine. There are aother bits you can add in to help if necessary. I don't knoow if it is optimal, but I like to avoid buying much treasure in those sorts of decks, prefering to get most of my coin from Militia and Festival. It shouldn't be too difficult to double Province and control the end game.
But, that is the topic of conversation here, and it seems that you will often be one bad draw away from losing. Huzzah for Base only.
(The above is stipulated on having a single opponent.)

[LastFootnote]

I would think you should be pretty successful if you are able to consistently play your Militia as part of a Militia-Festival-Library engine. There are aother bits you can add in to help if necessary. I don't knoow if it is optimal, but I like to avoid buying much treasure in those sorts of decks, prefering to get most of my coin from Militia and Festival. It shouldn't be too difficult to double Province and control the end game.
(The above is stipulated on having a single opponent.)

Library is pretty bad when playing against Council Room. If you're going to attempt an engine on that board, you should build one with Festivals/Villages, Council Rooms, and a Militia or two. Play a bunch of Council Rooms, then play the Militia last so that your opponent has to discard most of his huge hand.

[dob3444]

Library is pretty bad when playing against Council Room. If you're going to attempt an engine on that board, you should build one with Festivals/Villages, Council Rooms, and a Militia or two. Play a bunch of Council Rooms, then play the Militia last so that your opponent has to discard most of his huge hand.

That did the trick! I won handedly! Why didn't I think of that? Don't think it could work without the militia. Thanks, LastFootnote.

[markusin]

Hey, how come they only made the starting hands equal in the base set? Are they planning to do something similar for the other adventure sets or will the hands always be lopsided in either your favour or your opponents without zaps?

[hsiale]

Different adventures have different starting hands. The most awful are Hinterlands, Prosperity and Seaside, where Act 2 and Finale give heavy advantage to bot (for example Prosperity Finale Game 5, which is where I am now, gives the bot 3 Provinces, 6 Silvers and 1 Copper, while human player gets 6 Copper and 4 Curses).

Other sets are quite ok, you probably have to use zaps at later levels but not heaps of them.

[markusin]

So far I've only played through base and intrigue. For Intrigue, you wanted to use a few extra zaps towards the end, but nothing unreasonable. Is there an expected set order for a consistent story timeline and/or game difficulty? I just assumed it followed physical expansion release order i.e. Base/Intrigue/Seaside/Alchemy etc.