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[Cutnose]

Just can't seem to get past this non-Boss adventure encounter. I'm not even sure now how many times I've played this one over the past few weeks.

Prosperity; Act 1: Bigger & Better - Encounter #15
In kingdom; Vault, Witch, Goons, Bank, King's Court, Moat, Woodcutter, Bureaucrat, Worker's Village, Council Room + Colony/Platinum.

Zaps used only to put both myself and the AI to (7) Copper, (3) Estate. Yet the AI lucks out so fast every game, either getting $5-$6+ first or almost always getting one of it's opening cards in the first shuffle, usually a Witch.

Nothing seems to work, with Vault or Council Room seeming to only help the AI beat me faster/worse.


Typical game examples;

Game Over
Gentleman Althalos - cards: 3 Witch, 3 Worker's Village, 2 Vault, 7 Copper, 4 Silver, 3 Bank, 2 Gold, 1 Platinum, 7 Estate, 5 Province, 4 Colony, 4 Duchy
Gentleman Althalos - victory point chips: 0
Gentleman Althalos - total victory points: 89
Gentleman Althalos - turns: 31
 
Cutnose - cards: 7 Worker's Village, 3 Council Room, 2 Moat, 1 Bureaucrat, 1 Vault, 7 Copper, 4 Silver, 4 Bank, 1 Gold, 4 Colony, 3 Estate, 10 Curse
Cutnose - victory point chips: 0
Cutnose - total victory points: 33
Cutnose - turns: 30

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Game Over
Gentleman Althalos - cards: 2 Witch, 1 Worker's Village, 1 Bureaucrat, 7 Silver, 7 Copper, 6 Bank, 2 Platinum, 6 Duchy, 5 Colony, 5 Estate, 2 Province, 3 Curse
Gentleman Althalos - victory point chips: 0
Gentleman Althalos - total victory points: 82
Gentleman Althalos - turns: 31
 
Cutnose - cards: 9 Worker's Village, 3 Vault, 3 Goons, 2 King's Court, 2 Witch, 7 Copper, 4 Silver, 2 Gold, 4 Province, 3 Estate, 2 Duchy, 1 Colony, 7 Curse
Cutnose - victory point chips: 15
Cutnose - total victory points: 51
Cutnose - turns: 30

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Game Over
Gentleman Althalos - cards: 1 Worker's Village, 1 Bureaucrat, 1 Witch, 7 Copper, 5 Silver, 3 Gold, 2 Platinum, 1 Bank, 5 Province, 3 Estate, 3 Duchy, 3 Colony, 5 Curse
Gentleman Althalos - victory point chips: 0
Gentleman Althalos - total victory points: 67
Gentleman Althalos - turns: 25
 
Cutnose - cards: 3 Witch, 7 Copper, 5 Silver, 3 Gold, 3 Bank, 2 Platinum, 3 Colony, 3 Estate, 3 Province, 5 Curse
Cutnose - victory point chips: 0
Cutnose - total victory points: 46
Cutnose - turns: 24

[Rabid]

Looks like you need to add Goons.
Try to play several Goons in the same turn.
Then you can score points as you buy cards.

PS. Welcome to the forum.

[sudgy]

Goons is very powerful, as Rabid said.  Also, you usually don't want to use Council Room in an engine unless you're playing a discard attack or Possessing your opponent afterwards.

[shark_bait]

Get a Witch, with no trashing, getting Curses in your opponents deck is absolutely critical.  Don't buy a single Province/Colony unless it's the last turn and you are 3-piling for the win.  Focus on getting a KC/CR/WV/Goons engine going and use your plethora of +Buy to end the game with a 3-pile on Curse and 2 other piles, probably will end up being something like WV/KC/Goons as those are the main cards you want to fill your deck with.  Also, don't overbuy Silver, later in the game, Silver becomes a dead card as it doesn't add to the ability to draw your deck.  I'd open Silver/Silver and then not get another one after that.

[sudgy]

Oh right, you can use Council Room if you're ending the game that turn.  Forgot about that.

[StrongRhino]

You wanted to see how many times you've played him? Look no further: http://gokologs.drunkensailor.org/

[gman314]

So, the obvious key cards on this board are Witch, Goons and King's Court; with the first two being powerful attacks and KC just amplifying the power of whatever else is in your deck. These guys, along with some good +cards in Council Room and Vault, and a Village in Worker's Village with +Buy everywhere, just scream "ENGINE!!!" at you. So, you probably want to avoid Bureaucrat, minimize your use of Silver beyond the early game, and try to focus on Gold, Platinum and maybe Bank for treasure, although you probably want KC over Bank and Goons over Gold, and want to use KC-ed Goons or Woodcutters and Vaults as your +$.

The big thing that this board lacks for an engine is trashing or sifting, so you'll need more action cards than normal to get any consistency in an engine. Also, the curses will really mess up your engine, so you need to be cursing as soon as you can.

So, my game plan:
Open Silver/Silver, try to get 2 Witches ASAP, get Worker's Villages on your $4s, and on $3 prioritize Woodcutter over Silver unless you think you'll have a lot of terminal collisions. From there, try to get a Goons ASAP, and keep getting Workers Villages. You also want to buy as many KCs as you can, and on $5 get one Council Room and then Vaults. If you ever get stuck with only $2, you may want a Moat, but I don't think so. Your goal will be to get a bunch of Goons going, and get a pile of chips as the game progresses. You'll probably still want to get Colonies, but you can probably avoid Provinces until there's about 3 Colonies left.

[ftl]

Here's an example game with mostly gman's strategy. http://dominionlogs.goko.com//20130620/log.50612a9b51c36e573294bfd0.1371768169908.txt .

Could be tough though. With a little bit of bad luck in cursing, you could get stuck below $5 for a very long time.

[Cutnose]

OK, that order of gain worked much better - more like a regular game anyways, and I actually didn't get stuck on $4 for extra turns.

I could've sworn I had played that AI encounter more, but I'm probably confusing it with one of the countless other adventure encounters or bot games where Witch gets added into the kingdom. That card is a tad broken; pure advantage without the balancing of something like Sea Hag where you have to decide between cursing/discarding or playing a different action to benefit your current turn.

( http://dominionlogs.goko.com//20130620/log.51453927e4b0f9222536f595.1371785404669.txt )

IMHO, Witch and similar cards do not make for a fun game, even when playing versus the AI. And when the AI has bought out entire supply piles, and almost all of the Provinces plus some Duchies, the fact it will even buy Witch so late in the game (turn 17 there) for absolutely NO advantage is the computer being programmed to imitate "that guy". Nothing more, nothing less. All I can figure otherwise is it being something intentional to get you to buy more Zaps after already needing something like eight to even out the starting hands.


As for Althalos;
http://dominionlogs.goko.com/20130620/log.51453927e4b0f9222536f595.1371768121148.txt
 
------------ Game Over ------------
Cutnose - cards: 9 Worker's Village, 7 King's Court, 6 Goons, 31 Copper, 3 Vault, 3 Woodcutter, 2 Witch, 1 Council Room, 2 Silver, 4 Colony, 3 Estate, 1 Province, 2 Curse
Cutnose - victory point chips: 92
Cutnose - total victory points: 139
Cutnose - turns: 32
 
Gentleman Althalos - cards: 1 Vault, 1 Bureaucrat, 1 Worker's Village, 1 Witch, 7 Silver, 7 Copper, 7 Bank, 2 Gold, 7 Estate, 6 Duchy, 4 Colony, 8 Curse
Gentleman Althalos - victory point chips: 0
Gentleman Althalos - total victory points: 57
Gentleman Althalos - turns: 32
 
1st place: Cutnose
2nd place: Gentleman Althalos

[...]

PS. Welcome to the forum.

Thanks.

I've only been playing Dominion itself since last August or so, and even though we started with [Hinterlands + Base Cards] rather than [Prosperity] we did manage to get it all figured out. Over the Winter I purchased [Intrigue] and [Cornucopia] which, to be honest, we probably could have skipped. A few weeks back I added [Seaside] and [Dark Ages], which both alter how the game plays and were a nice change of pace - although we still tend to pick up the orange duration cards during Clean-Up.


I think I started with Goko online  around late Winter, and play maybe 2-3 times a week or every other week. The program kind of hogs my system even over DSL so I don't try multi-player with IRL folks since it hangs or drops so much. Aside from buying [Hinterlands] and obviously [Prosperity] after working through the base set adventures I bought access to [Dark Ages] last weekend to try and figure out how to use some of the more confusing cards.

[DG]

If you're playing that 3 or 4 player you definitely want to open moat/silver.

[lespeutere]

OK, that order of gain worked much better - more like a regular game anyways, and I actually didn't get stuck on $4 for extra turns.

( http://dominionlogs.goko.com//20130620/log.51453927e4b0f9222536f595.1371785404669.txt )

Congrats. There's, however, still some room for improvement. I disagree with gman on the number of CRs, as you want much more carddraw, i.e. you want to draw most of your deck (and for that CR >>> vault = moat), so you want more council rooms, especially against somebody playing BM w/o goons (it may be somewhat different against someone playing the same engine but I'd say the advantage you get from CR is bigger than his; if you really don't want to give your opponent more cards to discard from, get moats, they'll get you as many cards as vaults, provide defense and - most important - are less than 1/2 in price). You'll typically play goons at the end of your turn anyway, so that Gentleman needs to discard down to 3 cards. Yes, he'll keep his 3 best cards in hand, but you should have 3 or 4 goons in play EVERY turn which should make for a much more obvious result in your favour.

edit: you generally underestimate carddraw. Look at this turn, e.g. (although I obviously don't know whether this is misclicked or misplayed)


Cutnose - draws King's Court, Worker's Village, Copper, Goons, Copper

---------- Gentleman Althalos: turn 30 ----------
doesn't matter

---------- Cutnose: turn 30 ----------
Cutnose - plays Worker's Village
Cutnose - draws Copper
Cutnose - plays King's Court
Cutnose - plays Goons
Gentleman Althalos - discards Duchy
Gentleman Althalos - discards Duchy
Cutnose - plays Goons
Cutnose - plays Goons
Cutnose - plays 3 Copper
Cutnose - buys Province
Cutnose - receives 1 victory point chips
Cutnose - gains Province
Cutnose - draws Copper, Woodcutter, Curse, Estate, Vault

I'd say, with a proper deck with enough carddraw (which you hadn't, admittedly), I'd prefer to play KC on WV and hope to draw something providing substantial carddraw. You don't really want to buy a province, yet, imho, so whether you get to 8 or 6 doesn't make much of a difference.

[gman314]

Yeah, after I wrote my strategy, I realized that because of Goons, Council Room is much better than Vault in this deck, so I would revise my strategy to be one Cr, one Vault, and then more CRs.

[lespeutere]

Actually, you don't want any vaults at all. Maybe at the end, if you need more VP but are in fear of your opponent 3piling when he's in front (or if you draw your deck reliably and desperately need the $ from the few green you have).