Messages

[Conquest]

i've realised of a much more effective way of gaining points quite indefinitely, based on Conquest (which can report at about 20, 30 or 40 VP per 6-coin buy repeatedly), rather than Triumph (which is limited by total amount of cards and impossibility of regaining estates from trash). i've just reached 4827 VP in 13 turns at first attempt on game #34673394, with this set:

Special kingdom rules: Colonies, No Shelters
Required cards: Ambassador, Bishop, Goons, King's Court, Market Square, Rogue, Peasant, City Quarter, Priest, Fortress, Tomb, Donate, Conquest, Mission.

market square is quite annoying because of recurrent trashing decisions (to avoid gaining gold, that soon becomes useless and populates trash), so i'm considering exchanging it for working's village.

then i said it unproperly, because i appreciated your comment (so much that it made me think of a possible improvement). taking into account that we can't be playing infinitely my suggestion makes sense, beyond rules... i was introducing a kind of measure of victory quality.

let me express it in another way: a challenge. reach 5000 VP in 20 rounds.
how many rounds would your "infinite game method" require to obtain such a number?

[required cards]

Maybe check the required cards first ;-)

oh, well... i didn't mean to narrow the set. it was just a personal trial.
the point here could be to design a better set, and maximize final score... open question, IMHO.

You can pretty easily get infinite VP. One way to lock the bot would be to use a masq cutpurse pin to eliminate their deck and then tax copper. Then just play a bunch of monuments or whatever.

that's right. i suffered that strategy once, a memorable occasion it was. and i didn't fully understand how it worked so well!

but thinking it twice i don't like that answer: such infinite score is theoric, as long as you need infinite time (rounds) to reach it. i would penalize the excess of time by discounting an increasing amount of VP depending on the number of played rounds (Fibonacci numbers, 2^n seems too hard). this way you wouldn't dare to trespass a threshold of 16 or 17 rounds, and the game needs to be finite.

let's say, for example:

SOLO SCORE = VP - IA - Fn


where

VP is your final score,
IA is Lord Rattington's final score,
Fn is the n-th Fibonacci number,
n is the number of rounds you've played.


this way looks far more interesting, to me.

i just played this set (#34487005):
Required cards: Scrying Pool, King's Court, Fortress, Rogue, Groundskeeper, Goons, Grand Market, Procession, Peasant, Bridge, Tomb, Donate, Triumph, Mission

i beated Lord Rattington in 11 rounds, final scoring was 1473/14. my SOLO SCORE would be 1370.

[what about 5000 VP?]

just for fun...
i managed to earn 2686 VP against AI, 2 player game. i missplayed quite a few hands, so it must be possible to reach 3000 easily. but what about 5000 VP? for solitaire lovers, only.

check #34438848:

Required cards: Council Room, Ambassador, Goons, King's Court, Groundskeeper, Procession, Bandit Camp, Border Village, Rogue, Market Square, Mission, Donate, Triumph, Tomb.

Special kingdom rules: Colonies, No Shelters

i think priest should give +2 when, after it is played, pirate ship attacks and trashes treasures ... right?
check game #33433137.

despite my joy for taking part in this championship, during the last two days i've taken the decision to retire from it. my apologies, sincerely.

as a Catalan citizen i am embarassed and concerned about the way spanish government has banned and repressed the democratical expression of our peaceful nation. more precisely, it is the unacceptable use of violence by spanish national cops against unarmed voters who intended to protect ballot boxes during the independence referendum on Sunday Oct 1st what makes me feel depressed, sad, enraged... therefore i want to stay beside my people these days: it is not the right moment to enjoy Dominion as usually.

i guess you've probably heard of all this matter. if not, and if you wish, have a look at these links to get an idea about what's going on in Catalunya:

http://bit.ly/2g7gntw
http://stanford.io/2xdlRNU
http://politi.co/2yWGJGj

[banning possession during the tournament is technicallly recommended]

fellows,
after reading all your previous comments i reach a practical conclusion: banning possession during the tournament is technicallly recommended, as long as it may behave unpredictably and, even worse, incur on complex bugs. unfortunate situations that would probably delay tournament's progress, until solved. so my original question has been answered. not worth to say i'll keep playing possession as much as i can in other games, anyway.

still i find something to add, a suggestion to put under your consideration. same as stalemate is possible in chess by players' mutual agreement, i'm thinking of a similar feature in Dominion: what about having the possibility to cancel a game by agreement? it would be useful in front of any kind of bug, including of course all those possession's bizarre interactions...

well... possibly i'm gonna feel a bit alone in this thread, but here i go: what's wrong with possession?

3 out of 4 games in which possession is involved i'm being asked about banning it. but why indeed? i understand it is kind of painful to see "your" wonderful deck being used against you, as a sort of kidnapping or ripping. no doubt bearing that vulneration can be a hard lesson to learn, even though we're just playing a game. but beyond that primary reaction, there is a tactical richness to discover.

i can tell of a number of memorable games in which mindbending strategy suddenly popped up because of possession's unexpected effects: imagine herald, golem, tactician, goons, council room, ambassador, masquerade or black market combined with it; imagine games without multiple actions; i remember many games playing the poorer the better, crazy situations in which players compete to fastly weaken their own decks...

i've been amazed no few times because of possession, regardless of winning or losing my games. just give it a try, and have fun!

[game #3598661]

hello,
it has taken a while to be able to report this bug, so i've forgotten some details about it.
possibly it has something in common with the other few ones about inheritance, but it might be different.

on game #3598661 i inherited fortress, so estates could be transmuted into gold + duchy and additionally returned to my hand. but on decision ~270 my first try on this went wrong, something collapsed, and we could not end the game.

i'm joining the tournament, thanks for this experience!