dominion strategy thread

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Fungah!: Apr 30, 2011

sector_corrector posted:

i typically give each player a veto, and use mine on boring poo poo like chancellor

yeah that's what i do too, and if people want to do a reshuffle after all the vetos we'll do it

# ? Jun 4, 2015 23:46

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# ? May 3, 2024 21:41

Hyphen-ated: Apr 24, 2006; Not to be confused with endash or minus.

The biggest strategic thing that I took way too long to learn in this game is tracking my draw/discard piles and managing reshuffles
it's really important not to trigger a reshuffle if it will give you crappy hands for the next few turns! that means sometimes you need to sit on a smithy or whatever, it's something you should consciously consider every single time you're about to make yourself reshuffle.

# ? Jun 5, 2015 17:08

Scyther: Dec 29, 2010

# ? Jun 5, 2015 19:27

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

Scyther posted:

# ? Jun 5, 2015 19:38

Fungah!: Apr 30, 2011

# ? Jun 5, 2015 19:42

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

today's card is,

familiar!

this is the first alchemy card, and arguably one of the most powerful attacks in the game. i'm pretty sure it's the only cantrip witch archetype. cantrip meaning that it replaces both its card and its action, and witch meaning a card that forces your opponents to gain curses (which are negative victory points, and dead weight in a deck). this is comparable to a card like sea hag, which has no utility outside of the witch attack, and also becomes useless once curses are depleted.

its downside, of course, is that like all alchemy cards it requires a specific resource to buy: the potion. potions take up a 4-buy, and have no utility other than buying potion cards. therefore, once the curses are gone you're left with a useless potion, unless there are other compelling alchemy cards to buy.

so it's powerful, but slow. that means it loses out to modified big money decks that can draw into provinces. your opponent won't see curses until at least turn 4, which gives them plenty of time to set up an economy and a draw card, and you've done nothing but set up your first attack.

# ? Jun 5, 2015 21:22

PleasingFungus: Oct 10, 2012; idiot asshole bitch who should fuck off

played some dominion last night for the first time in a while. turns out remodel is pretty good (wow, whoa). might've gotten wrecked anyway if my opponent had gone heavily into thieves to steal all my silver/gold, but she got distracted by some kind of throne room/secret chamber/mining village nonsense instead. oops

in her defense, she'd misunderstood the card and thought that throne rooming secret chamber doubled the cash you got from it.

sector_corrector posted:

today's card is,

familiar!

iirc, the first (and only?) time I ran into familiar was one of those fun games where the curse pile gets completely emptied

good times, if you like seeing the color purple in your hand.

# ? Jun 5, 2015 21:22

Fungah!: Apr 30, 2011

gently caress familiar, it's not super great for all the reasons you listed but having it in the game slows everything to poo poo because it absolutely clobbers everyone's deck. it's the same problem i've got with a bunch of attack cards, they just turn the game into a vile slog

# ? Jun 5, 2015 21:32

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

i might try a few games against the attack friendly AI in dominion.net and see how well a draw heavy big money strat works where you just totally ignore familiar

# ? Jun 5, 2015 22:19

Hyphen-ated: Apr 24, 2006; Not to be confused with endash or minus.

sector_corrector posted:

so it's powerful, but slow. that means it loses out to modified big money decks that can draw into provinces. your opponent won't see curses until at least turn 4, which gives them plenty of time to set up an economy and a draw card, and you've done nothing but set up your first attack.

yo I don't think this is correct; familiar crushes terminal draw big money. to beat familiar you pretty much need to either contest the curse split, have plenty of trashing, block the attack consistently, or have a deck so ridiculously fast that you don't need to worry about the curses (like something with hunting party and horn of plenty that can empty the provinces on turn 12 or whatever)

the most annoying thing about familiar to me is how it adds a huge swingy piece of variance in the early game: whether you hit $3P on turn 3/4 or not. If you get an early $2P hand without a nice $2P card to fall back on buying, it just feels like death

# ? Jun 6, 2015 01:33

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

Hyphen-ated posted:

yo I don't think this is correct; familiar crushes terminal draw big money. to beat familiar you pretty much need to either contest the curse split, have plenty of trashing, block the attack consistently, or have a deck so ridiculously fast that you don't need to worry about the curses (like something with hunting party and horn of plenty that can empty the provinces on turn 12 or whatever)

the most annoying thing about familiar to me is how it adds a huge swingy piece of variance in the early game: whether you hit $3P on turn 3/4 or not. If you get an early $2P hand without a nice $2P card to fall back on buying, it just feels like death

idk, big money and smithy took 3 out of 4 games and 1 tie against the AI I had playing a familiar strat. although the AI plays slightly sub-optimally, I was still able to overdraw the provinces early in the game, and then coast by on the remaining duchies. i'm actually surprised too, since i go for familiar no matter what.

i did throw in a few five buys though, so it wasn't pure big money

# ? Jun 6, 2015 01:42

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

i do agree that it would be interesting to see simulated with regulated AIs over a few thousand games. sometimes with cards there's a psychological element, and i have a hunch that familiar might not be as good by the numbers as it seems in a human v. human game

# ? Jun 6, 2015 01:54

Hyphen-ated: Apr 24, 2006; Not to be confused with endash or minus.

sector_corrector posted:

i do agree that it would be interesting to see simulated with regulated AIs over a few thousand games. sometimes with cards there's a psychological element, and i have a hunch that familiar might not be as good by the numbers as it seems in a human v. human game

there are tools to do this, we can run this simulation right now
http://rspeer.github.io/dominiate
there's "bigsmithy" already in there, I'll make a familiar one

# ? Jun 6, 2015 02:01

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

Hyphen-ated posted:

there are tools to do this, we can run this simulation right now
http://rspeer.github.io/dominiate
there's "bigsmithy" already in there, I'll make a familiar one

cool. i'm interested to see how that breaks down.

# ? Jun 6, 2015 02:05

In Training: Jun 28, 2008

Flame war in the dominion strats thread. Look out

# ? Jun 6, 2015 02:17

Hyphen-ated: Apr 24, 2006; Not to be confused with endash or minus.

well it sure looks like i was wrong!
I modified BigSmithy to put potion and familiar in and it's losing like 80% of the time
maybe a more optimized familiar-buying strat would do better, but i guess smithy is really fast enough

code:

{
  name: 'Familiar'
  gainPriority: (state, my) -> [
    "Potion" if my.countInDeck("Potion") == 0
    "Colony" if my.countInDeck("Platinum") > 0
    "Province" if state.countInSupply("Colony") <= 6 \
               or state.countInSupply("Province") <= 6
    
    "Duchy" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 5
    "Estate" if 0 < state.gainsToEndGame() <= 2
    "Platinum"
    "Familiar" if my.countInDeck("Familiar") <= 1 
    "Gold"    
    "Silver"
    "Copper" if state.gainsToEndGame() <= 3
  ]
}

# ? Jun 6, 2015 02:23

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

yeah, it was counter intuitive to me at first too

# ? Jun 6, 2015 03:29

Arbitrary Coin: Feb 17, 2012; Cat Army
2nd Battalion

Oh sweet, this exists.

I played with the most recent expansion and Magpie seems pretty great

I got it as one of my first cards and soon the entire pile was emptied. I got two silvers with a card that lets you double get anything costing less than 4, a few golds at some point and 1 platinum. Managed to get a colony on like turn 5-6 and was getting one per turn for a while after that.

My friend managed to set up a turn where he couldve gotten three colonies in one go, but it started too late to make up the difference.

# ? Jun 6, 2015 04:35

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

Arbitrary Coin posted:

Oh sweet, this exists.

I played with the most recent expansion and Magpie seems pretty great

I got it as one of my first cards and soon the entire pile was emptied. I got two silvers with a card that lets you double get anything costing less than 4, a few golds at some point and 1 platinum. Managed to get a colony on like turn 5-6 and was getting one per turn for a while after that.

My friend managed to set up a turn where he couldve gotten three colonies in one go, but it started too late to make up the difference.

it seems really good.

unlike rats i'm not seeing the downside to loading up on them, except maybe in a terminal draw deck

i'm psyched to play with adventures at some point.

# ? Jun 6, 2015 04:56

Zombie #246: Apr 26, 2003; Murr rgghhh ahhrghhh fffff

Someone talk about chapel pls

# ? Jun 6, 2015 06:03

Mega64: May 23, 2008; I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.

Adventures is pretty sweet. My favorite so far is a five-cost silver that has you gain a gold and a copper every time you play it.

The new durations are also pretty drat awesome.

# ? Jun 6, 2015 11:37

Fungah!: Apr 30, 2011

Zombie #246 posted:

Someone talk about chapel pls

what's there to say, it's the best card in the game

# ? Jun 6, 2015 16:13

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

it's like the key that unlocks the game, because when you first start playing it seems awful, and then you try getting rid of all of your junk cards and you go 7:1 on pronvinces

# ? Jun 6, 2015 16:20

Ralp: Aug 19, 2004; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Fungah! posted:

gently caress familiar, it's not super great for all the reasons you listed but having it in the game slows everything to poo poo because it absolutely clobbers everyone's deck. it's the same problem i've got with a bunch of attack cards, they just turn the game into a vile slog

I actually like that better than really fast race games. When a game is a frenzied rush for provinces straight from turn 3, it feels more like plain luck for whoever comes out on top. I don't want every game to be a drawn out grind but those are fun to me because every time you just trash a curse or cellar an estate for a silver it feels like a little victory. It makes the little things matter, as long as everyone is in the boat with a junked up deck.

# ? Jun 6, 2015 18:43

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

here's an idea: a card like baron, but instead of discarding estates you discard curses. you can call it the "curse baron"

# ? Jun 7, 2015 16:57

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

Ralp posted:

I actually like that better than really fast race games. When a game is a frenzied rush for provinces straight from turn 3, it feels more like plain luck for whoever comes out on top. I don't want every game to be a drawn out grind but those are fun to me because every time you just trash a curse or cellar an estate for a silver it feels like a little victory. It makes the little things matter, as long as everyone is in the boat with a junked up deck.

i like both, but playing a bunch of slogs or a bunch of races one after the other gets boring, so variety is good

# ? Jun 7, 2015 16:57

Arbitrary Coin: Feb 17, 2012; Cat Army
2nd Battalion

In my group we usually don't use attack cards; everyone just finds them annoying and we like faster-ish games. No one is good enough to optimize their decks for 1 province/colony a turn so its not really a race. Maybe it'll change when we play more and get better.

Also, here's a strategy with Adventures that my friend used that would've been terrifying if he got it fully working a turn or two earlier:

--There's a card Journey that gives you +1 Buy and +5 cards every other time its played.

--There are one time events you can buy, and one of them is to make it so that one certain card gives you +1 Action every time you play it.

So with this and some treasure at endgame he had crazy turns where he could buy 3 colonies in one go with some to spare.

# ? Jun 7, 2015 18:48

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

Arbitrary Coin posted:

In my group we usually don't use attack cards; everyone just finds them annoying and we like faster-ish games. No one is good enough to optimize their decks for 1 province/colony a turn so its not really a race. Maybe it'll change when we play more and get better.

Also, here's a strategy with Adventures that my friend used that would've been terrifying if he got it fully working a turn or two earlier:

--There's a card Journey that gives you +1 Buy and +5 cards every other time its played.

--There are one time events you can buy, and one of them is to make it so that one certain card gives you +1 Action every time you play it.

So with this and some treasure at endgame he had crazy turns where he could buy 3 colonies in one go with some to spare.

that's essentially an every turn tactician without the downside of losing a turn to set it up, which is cool

# ? Jun 8, 2015 00:52

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

today's random dominion card is...

nobles!

nobles is doing three things in a deck: acting as a disappearing village, acting as a smithy, and giving you points. you have to choose one of the first two, and you always get the third. the benefit is the flexibility (which is one of intrigue's themes). engine decks require both villages and smithies to work, typically, and at a somewhat steep cost, and the downside of not getting a +1 card on the village, they can act as glue that holds an engine together while also bumping your point total. also, for cards that check type, this counts as two. so if you're ironmongering your deck and this pops up, then you get both +action and +card, and you draw to it, meaning that you can immediately set off its +3 card draw and still have an action left over.

the six buy hurts it a bit, because that's making you not buy a gold, and therefore not being able to move from nobles to provinces. the obvious combo (nobles and nobles) is also hurt because at that return it's only as good as a single five buy lab, but requires two costly six buys (at least) to set up, and they're effectively dead cards if you start with a single nobles, no +action, and draw to them.

all that being said, i like nobles a lot. i love any card that has flexibility, and smart buys of nobles can really improve an engine deck.

# ? Jun 8, 2015 18:01

MindSet: Dec 21, 2008; If this goes badly, and I make a crater, I want it named after me!

I really like nobles in theory but I've never been able to make it work -- that could just be due to poor draws in the games I've played, since we don't seem to use it much. It has been the 2-pointer that gave me the win, however.

# ? Jun 8, 2015 19:36

sector_corrector: Jan 18, 2012; by Nyc_Tattoo

MindSet posted:

I really like nobles in theory but I've never been able to make it work -- that could just be due to poor draws in the games I've played, since we don't seem to use it much. It has been the 2-pointer that gave me the win, however.

i think it's intentionally a tricky card. a lot of it has to do with what else is on the board, and if anything does what you want nobles to do but better.

# ? Jun 8, 2015 21:22

Basilisk: Jul 10, 2004; Pirates have it all – cool hats, swords, and hooks for hands.

If you folks want to look at all the latest cards, formatted in a pleasing way, you can look at them here on my website: http://dominion.diehrstraits.com/?set=Adventures

# ? Jun 9, 2015 17:23

Fungah!: Apr 30, 2011

Basilisk posted:

If you folks want to look at all the latest cards, formatted in a pleasing way, you can look at them here on my website: http://dominion.diehrstraits.com/?set=Adventures

wait

# ? Jun 9, 2015 17:27