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[ta56636]

I'm just wondering whether anyone has any house rules for their own games of dominion - two things I've been thinking about:

1) Whether it is possible to make curses/ruins slightly less powerful (especially in 3-4 player games).  I just can't see many occasions when you can ignore the likes witch or marauder in multiplayer games, and would like to make it more of a choice.  One thing I'm toying with is having less curses/ruins (e.g. 5 per player), not that that would make a huge difference.  (I do understand the logic of 2(p-1)).

2) Whether there is a way of balancing out the first player advantage.  Could it be as simple as letting the round finish after the end conditions have been met?

This isn't about saying that the way things are is wrong, just about adapting to our preferences - just wondered if anyone had some ready made solutions?

[jsh357]

The only house rules I like are same starting hands and/or players stacking their initial draw decks.  The first makes the game more fair, the second adds an element of strategy to the beginning of the game. 

[SirPeebles]

Turn order advantage can be brutal in multiplayer games.

Curses shouldn't be as tempting though.  If everyone buys a Witch, you probably shouldn't.  As has been discussed before, you'll generally end up with a 10/7/7/6 curse split. If you join in with your own Witch, you would expect as an 8/8/7/7 curse split.  Often, that's just not enough of an improvement to justify spending your first $5 hand on a Witch.

[shark_bait]

First, the logic for the number.  Assume that only 1 player buys a Curser or Looter, with the given amount in the supply and assuming they are given on each play, each player would receive 10 Curses or 10 Ruins.

For the FPA, that has been discussed a lot in numerous places and the extra turn has been postulated in multiple versions most notable being the "ghost Province" wherein players can take an extra turn and buy ghost Provinces even if they aren't in the supply.  Of course there are other FPA apart from Victory points which include earlier access to playing attack cards which can help snowball an advantage (playing Militia first or putting a Curse in deck before a reshuffle)

The inherent FPA is present, there is no denying it.  That is why the DXV solution is elegantly brilliant.  Play another game, whoever lost, goes first.  The tough part of balancing the FPA is that it is different in different kinds of games and much of the strategy of playing Dominion comes down to end-game decisions.  Any sort of FPA "fix" would mess up the precise nature that the best players manipulate the end-game for their advantage.  What would be lost upon this would be a loss of 3-pile manipulation and strategic duchy dancing.

[jonts26]

Letting the second player get to take a final turn (if P1 would have ended it) would be detrimental to the dominion end game. It's in a really good place as is. One potential solution you could try without breaking the end game is to give P2 (in a 2p game) a bonus half of a point. I'm not sure this solution extends all that well to more players though.

[SirPeebles]

Letting the second player get to take a final turn (if P1 would have ended it) would be detrimental to the dominion end game. It's in a really good place as is. One potential solution you could try without breaking the end game is to give P2 (in a 2p game) a bonus half of a point. I'm not sure this solution extends all that well to more players though.

Isn't this just equivalent to saying that P2 wins on a tie?

[Tables]

I'd think the increased balance from equal turns would make up for the minor loss to tactical endgame play, personally.

[ednever]

Tactical end game is a very valuable part of Dominion. I wouldn't elliminate it for any improvement in "balance".

One relatively easy fix is that higher order players win on a tie - even if they played the same number if turns. If you look at councilroom it shows on the whole this still gives a slight advantage to P1, but its almost negligible at that point. And the only way it changes the game is that it encourages P2 to end on what would previously have been a tie. But most of the time that's the right decision anyway.


On the curses/ruins:
It's an interesting idea. Junkers are the most powerful cards in the game and can rarely be ignored. If you reduced the number of cards in those piles, they get weaker without changing much else about the game. I've never heard DXV's thoughts on whether different pile sizes were tested.

How much would the game change if there were (p-1)*8 curses instead of *10?
Likely not very much. If that was *2 cursers would not be worth buying (so huge impact).

It might be interesting if the number of curses in the supply, instead of always being *10 was instead determined randomly at the start if the game to be between *4 to *14. Just one more way to change the kingdom and require different analysis...

Ed

[ftl]

Giving P2 a phantom turn would make it impossible for P1 to end the game on piles. Ever. Because then P2 would get a phantom turn where they can spend all their coins and buys on green. P2, on the other hand, could still do the usual endgame stuff, knowing that if they end the game on piles, the game is over.

Seems like it would balance out BM+X boards at the cost of making some engine boards *very* P2-favored - if P1 has to worry about letting piles get too low but P2 doesn't.

I like ednever's solution - make P2 win on a tie. It's an advantage to P2 to counter first-player advantage, but it doesn't massively unbalance any particular boards.

[ta56636]

Interesting thoughts ...

I agree about the tactical endgame - I realised after I posted it that it wasn't a great solution.

One thing I had wondered is if there could be any balancing in the starting hand.  I had thought of a number of possibilities - different starting cards, different number of starting cards, a free low value card for later players, but again nothing seemed to sit right.

[ta56636]

PS I may try with less curses/ruins - see how it plays...

[SirPeebles]

For a two player game, you should at least keep the number of Curses even, or else first player advantage could be even greater.

[popsofctown]

Yeah all the junkers in Dominion are undercosted by at least 1$, it's just a thing *shrug*.

[AJD]

On the curses/ruins:
It's an interesting idea. Junkers are the most powerful cards in the game and can rarely be ignored. If you reduced the number of cards in those piles, they get weaker without changing much else about the game. I've never heard DXV's thoughts on whether different pile sizes were tested.

How much would the game change if there were (p-1)*8 curses instead of *10?
Likely not very much. If that was *2 cursers would not be worth buying (so huge impact).

Changing the number of Curses in the supply would have a strong effect on how Ill-Gotten Gains plays, though.

[AJD]

Yeah all the junkers in Dominion are undercosted by at least 1$, it's just a thing *shrug*.

Junkers are undercosted in the same way Chapel is: i.e., not actually.

They're very powerful for their cost in the early game, but that's compensated for by the fact that they generally turn into dead weight later on.

[Eran of Arcadia]

I thought "P2 wins on a tie" was already an official rule.

(The only house rule that I use is that in a colonies game, emptying the province pile isn't a win condition.)

[ftl]

I thought "P2 wins on a tie" was already an official rule.

(The only house rule that I use is that in a colonies game, emptying the province pile isn't a win condition.)

The official rule is that in the case where some players have the same number of points, whoever had the fewer number of turns wins. So, if P1 ends the game on his turn, and the number of points is the same, then P1 loses because they had one more turn than P2. However, if P2 ends the game on their turn, both players have the same number of points AND the same number of turns, so that's a tie according to the original rules.

[dondon151]

Yeah all the junkers in Dominion are undercosted by at least 1$, it's just a thing *shrug*.

Witch/MB etc. costing $6 would be so much more infuriating than they are now.

[blueblimp]

One potential solution you could try without breaking the end game is to give P2 (in a 2p game) a bonus half of a point.

This is heading in the direction of komi. In principle the right choice of komi would, when averaged over all kingdoms, make the starting positions equally favourable. Trouble is, the magnitude of first-player advantage varies a lot among kingdoms, so komi would lead to some kingdoms favouring P1 and some kingdoms favouring P2. I guess that's not horrible, but it doesn't seem significantly better than what we have now.

[popsofctown]

Yeah all the junkers in Dominion are undercosted by at least 1$, it's just a thing *shrug*.

Witch/MB etc. costing $6 would be so much more infuriating than they are now.

Hey, I said at least 1$.  I was thinking 7$, but it might have to be ideal for them to cost 8$ or something so that no one gets one (except in special strategies.)

[AdamH]

This should probably be moved to the Variants board.

I suppose the only "variant" I've ever done is that I don't play with Tournament and Black Market (and I'm thinking about removing Knights as well). I really love the idea that all options are available to everyone in Dominion and these cards break that by having cards with only one copy available

I haven't tried any of these yet, but some house rules I had thought of (heard some of them mentioned on here).

Make all ruins do the same thing (I don't think this is a big deal, really).

Make all Knights do the same thing (bigger deal, mainly I think the trashing knight and the +Buys knight shouldn't be there (or at least make the +Buys knight still cost $5, but even then I don't really like it)).

Tournament: Something I've thought about doing is that when you win a Tournament, you can select from your own prize pile instead of a communal prize pile. The game may still be a race to the Followers, but even if you "lose" that race you can still get a Followers. I would have to use blanks or something to try this.

I wonder if anyone else has tried these?

[Tables]

...[I think the] +Buys knight shouldn't be there (or at least make the +Buys knight still cost $5, but even then I don't really like it)

.

I'm not convinced with what some people have been saying, that equal turns would favour 2p in engine games. It does mean 2p can pile out if they're in the lead while 1p can't... except they still can, but they have to be more confident in their lead. Sometimes it means taking a calculated risk on ending the game, not knowing what the opponent might be able to potentially do, and that's part of what Dominion is about, no? Often, P1 will be able to end the game just like they could normally, and keep their lead after P2 goes all green on their turn.

I think it's the kind of thing that would require a good deal of playtesting to properly understand, kind of like judging the value of the effects of new cards, which we've been known to be notoriously bad at. But in my experience, I've enjoyed equal turns games just as much and sometimes more than end-immediately games. Especially the 3-4 player ones, actually.

[eHalcyon]

This topic has been discussed before.  One of the better suggestions I remember is using a doubling cube.

[Dsell]

Make all the cursers give ruins and all the looters give scouts.

[Powerman]

Make all the cursers give ruins and all the looters give scouts.

Why does Cultist need to be stronger?