Random kingdom generation rules?

[ftl]

Just curious - what's the algorithm used to randomize the kingdom? When there's a bunch of expansions available, does it make it more likey to use multiple cards from the same one (like multiple Alchemy cards so there's more potion-costing things) or just straight random? What about the choices to use colonies or shelters or projects, etc?

[Ingix]

If we are talking about just the kingdom cards and not the landscape cards, it is just purely (uniform) random. Before the liked/disliked/banned lists, every card that was available to you (maybe limited by your familiar cards, or if you limited yourself to some expansions) was put into a pool and then 10 cards were uniform randomly drawn from it, so no special considerations for cards with Potion costs.

Now, with the lists, that is still roughly the same, execept that for cards that you like (200% likelyhood), think of it as having 2 instances of the card in the pool. For cards you dislike (50%), there is only a half card in it, so it's unlikely to be grabbed. It's a bit more complicated as your opponent's lists of course also play a role, but that's the basic idea (if you and your opponent like the same card, for example, it will now have a 4 times higher likelyhood to be drawn than a "normal" card).

For Colonies/Shelters, if you make your own table, you can select if you want these on/off or random (independently). If you choose random (which I think is the default value used for automatch tables), then it will do as the Properity/Dark Ages rulebook says.
After all the Kingdom cards are selected, it will randomly choose a card of it for determining Colonies, and one random card (independently chosen) to determine Shelters. If the card chosen for Colonies is from Prosperity, Platinum/Colony will be in the game, otherwise not. If the card chosen for Shelters is from Dark Ages, Shelters will replace starting Estates, otherwise not.

For landscape cards, this is more complicated as there is no hard rule of always using X landscapes. So when I talk about card pools above, it will also include the landscape cards. If a random draw yields a landscape card that fits a slot, it will go into that slot (not sure what happens if it fits multiple slots). If all landscape slots are filled, then landscapes are removed from the pool.

There is a known bias if there are kingdom card slots that have been preselected at a table to be from a specific expansion. Then the search for those kingdom cards will AFAIK only include the landscapes from that expansion, making it likely that the landscape slots are filled with landscapes from this expansion.
So if you make a table and select that 3 kingdom cards are from Menagerie, but do not change the standard landscape slots, you will with high likelyhood have 1 or even both landscape slots filled with Menagerie landscapes.

[elrond79]

Thanks for the information! So if I'm reading that right... say we have 3 players, 2 of which dislike a card, and 1 of which like it. Does that mean that it's odds of appearing are

.5 * .5 * 2 = .5

ie, it will appear only half as often - the same as if only 1 person had disliked it?

Also - I don't understand how respecting "familiar" cards affects this.  Can you shed some light on that?

Finally - is there some central place to look for more information about the interface? The official FAQ doesn't seem to mention any of this, and it's not at all obvious what respecting familiar/liked/disliked cards will do.

Also, I take that all these "respect" categories - familiar/liked/disliked/banned - take all player's preferences into account equally? Ie, there's no way, as a game creator, to say that you will respect MY banned cards, but ignore other people's?

Thanks!

[Ingix]

Thanks for the information! So if I'm reading that right... say we have 3 players, 2 of which dislike a card, and 1 of which like it. Does that mean that it's odds of appearing are

.5 * .5 * 2 = .5

ie, it will appear only half as often - the same as if only 1 person had disliked it?

Exactly. Each players individual "biases" are multiplied for a given card. A card banned by a player (bias=0) will not have a chance to come up, no matter how much it is liked by others.

Also - I don't understand how respecting "familiar" cards affects this.  Can you shed some light on that?

Familiar cards (if respected) limit the "starting population" of available cards. A card not in there can't come up. So an alternate forumulation would be that if familiar cards are respected, each player has banned the cards they are not familiar with.

Well, an exception would be if a player allows a certain number of unfamiliar cards. Then their unfamiliar cards are in the pool, but only the maximum number of allowed unfamiliar cards can be chosen.

Finally - is there some central place to look for more information about the interface? The official FAQ doesn't seem to mention any of this, and it's not at all obvious what respecting familiar/liked/disliked cards will do.

Each time a "big" feature was introduced, Stef wrote an explanation article in the "Announcement" forum. The one about cardlists can be found here: http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=3552.0

Also, I take that all these "respect" categories - familiar/liked/disliked/banned - take all player's preferences into account equally? Ie, there's no way, as a game creator, to say that you will respect MY banned cards, but ignore other people's?

Right. The table rules are applied to  all players.