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Dominion => Feature Requests => Topic started by: santamonica811 on 27 October 2019, 07:21:39 AM

Title: clean up/clarify workflow for Haggler + Duplicate
Post by: santamonica811 on 27 October 2019, 07:21:39 AM
This currently does work, sort of.  But the steps are pretty confusing and I had to hit Undo a few times to figure out how to play it correctly.

I just played a game with Lord Rat, where Duplicate was already in play and I had 2 Hagglers in hand.  I wanted to buy a Gold, to then duplicate the Gold, and to then get my two 5-value cards via the Hagglers.

But here is the current workflow.  (a) Buy Gold, (b) be prompted to gain a lower-value card for Haggler.  When this card is identified and gained, I see a prompt to get a similar card via Duplicate.  (c) get a prompt to get another lower-value card (via 2nd Haggler). (d) after gaining this, a prompt for duplicating the 5-card in selected in (c).

When this happened, I got confused.  "Wait; what?  Why didn't I get a prompt to duplicate my gold?  Did I miss something in the log?"  So, I hit Undo a bunch of times and repeated the above.  Nope, did not miss anything.  So, I sort of gave up and just duplicated one of my gained 5-value cards.

Later in that same game, it was the same situation.  This time, I made a point of ignoring all the prompts to duplicate the Haggler-gained cards.  And now, at the end, I indeed did finally get a prompt to duplicate that Gold.

Looking at the text for Haggler, I am guessing that the reason for this is that, technically, I bought the Gold but did not immediately gain it, as Haggler's effect superseded the gaining of the Gold, while any gain via Haggler is indeed immediate.  Yes?

But this is really counter-intuitive.  I gather that there might be edge cases where this effect is important (Perhaps if Villa is in the kingdom??).  But I suspect that a lot of people will be very confused by the way it's currently set up. 

It does not matter in bot games.  But if this crops up in games with other people, I can see them getting annoyed as a bunch of requests for Undo's and very long turns are occurring.  Any chance of cleaning up the interface, to make this a bit more clear?
Title: Re: clean up/clarify workflow for Haggler + Duplicate
Post by: Ingix on 27 October 2019, 09:31:48 AM
Unfortunately for you, Dominion differentiates between triggering on "buying a card" (usually called "on-buy", like Haggler) and "gaining a card" (usually called "on-gain", like Duplicate).

The reason is sometimes game-play related, for example if Port triggered on gaining, gaining the first Port would then gain all the remaining Ports one after another, which was not the intension. It took until Renaissance and Experiment to get a wording that triggers on-gain but doesn't iteratively empty the Experiment pile "at once".

For Haggler the reason may be more lore related (you can haggle when you buy something IRL, not when you make it yourself in your own Workshop), but I guess in reality the design process may often just use the distinction for balancing purposes: A card that is 'to good' when using on-gain may get the on-buy wording, and vice versa.

The online client has to be rigid about the rules, because AI's usually have a hard time getting arguments like "I know I need to get all the other cards before, but I really want to Duplicate the Gold, so there's no harm in doing that right now".

Now that you know about it, you shouldn't be confused. Just like when I get money from an ATM machine, I know that ATM will first give me back my debit card, which I already had before and is not my prime interest now, but I know I will get the cash afterwards. You now know that when you have Duplicate + Haggler(s), you will be prompted for the effects of the Haggler(s) first and then if you want to Duplicate those gained cards as well, before it finally asks you if you want to Duplicate the Gold.