I have a couple of suggestions concerning the interface for selecting kingdom cards.
Basic Ideas
- Sort order: After some recent update, the cards are sorted alphabetically by expansion, which is already an improvement. However, this can make setting up a specific kingdom a pain, as it requires remembering which specific expansion each card comes from (which even as an experienced player I don't always do for the less thematic ones). Even if you remember the expansion, you have to spot it in the list first, as there is no visual cue where one edition ends and another starts.
As a default, I would simply sort all cards alphabetically. If you want to focus on a specific expansion, you can still do this by restricting the selected expansions on the right.
- To improve this further, simply make the sort order selectable:
- alphabetically
- by expansion, then alphabetically [current behavior]
- by card cost, alphabetically
You might also offer filters, not for restricting which cards can be used, but to reduce the list that is shown to facilitate selection:
- card type ('I want two attacks')
- card class (gainers, villages, trashers, cursers...)
- expansion ('now I pick four alchemy cards')
- cost type (potion/debt)
- ...
Advanced Ideas
- Allow more control over the random kingdom generation. If you don't know it, Jack of all Dominion is my favorite among all the many Dominion card selector apps for Android, and showcases all the options one could wish for:
- require (with at least n cards) / exclude expansion
- require (with at least n cards) / exclude card type
- require (with at least n cards) / exclude card class (cantrip, village, gainer, trasher, curser, coins, VP tokens, debt cost...)
- special rules, e.g. Alchemy rule: no or at least n potion cost cards
- use only events / only landmarks
Allow preview of randomly generated kingdoms, with the option to regenerate.
Taking this one step further, allow generating a kingdom and then editing it. Sometimes I don't want to make any or at least not all of the choices, but then see a kingdom where I would like to replace a specific card, either because I think that would make the board more fun, or because a card clashes with the rest of the board (e.g. Wolf Den + Prizes/Castles/Knights) so that nobody will buy it anyway.
Note that you can type in any card name in the text field on the bottom left to add a card without looking for it in the list.
Ah, thanks, I had missed that.
Additional idea:
Ability to save and load kingdoms. Optionally: At the end of a game, when the score is displayed, allow saving the kingdom after the fact (when a randomly generated kingdom turns out absolutely awesome, or if you want to replay it later to analyze where you went wrong).
This is in line with my suggestion and has a lot more options that could be implemented for even better customization.