Should this undo be granted?

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randomUserName

#15
Quote from: jdsdog10 on 20 April 2020, 04:14:55 PM
Randomusername. I definitely see it as very similar in the sense of "I now realize that I can't win after executing my INTENDED plan".

To anyone still following this, let me boil this down to a broader family of question. This is now not about justifying my previous game, but about how undo's should be handled late game.
Let's assume that in a different hypothetical hand, Villain is on his last turn and if he doesn't end the game, Hero will. Villain has different ways he can play out his last turn. One way would give him a 5% chance of victory, another 20%, another 50%, another 80%, and another immediate victory.
Villain, unaware currently of other plans, chooses to go with the 5% plan. After executing he realizes that this leaves him with roughly a 5% chance of victory.
He reconsiders and realizes there was a plan that would give him a better opportunity, and requests undo to go with the 20% plan. After executing he realizes that this leaves him with roughly a 20% chance of victory.
He reconsiders and realizes there was a plan that would give him a better opportunity, and requests undo to go with the 50% plan. After executing he realizes that this leaves him with roughly a 50% chance of victory.
He reconsiders and realizes there was a plan that would give him a better opportunity, and requests undo to go with the 80% plan. After executing he realizes that this leaves him with roughly a 80% chance of victory.
He reconsiders and realizes there was a plan that would give allow him to win immediately. He requests undo and goes on to win outright.

I assume most would agree that something is wrong with villain doing this (but maybe I'm wrong in that assumption). At what point does it become wrong? Should this maybe just be granted once (although that doesn't really seem justifiable)? Is this scenario different if the probabilities changed (such as changing 100% win to 70% win as the upper limit, or maybe even something low like 30%)?
Most people who have responded to this thread make it sound like the following information does not matter: villain only considering other options after he played out his entire buy phase as INTENDED to then realize that the victory counters looks very unfortunate for him winning.


If no new information was revealed, villain/opponent can try whatever he/she wants (5%, 10%, 20% backtrack, 30% whatever), and I will grant the undo. Again, I want to emphasize because it seems you are conflicted about the definition of fair undo (which is subjective anyway, and a made up term according to consensus here on this platform), if no new information is revealed, undo grants are considered fair and should be granted.
Buying duchy and wolf den kicking in, is not acceptable, because you should have kept track of your buys..another example, buying gold thinking palace would give you 3vp but realizing that you should have bought silver instead is a kind of undo I wouldnt grant, because again, you should have kept track of those buys. In the last two cases, new information was revealed which wouldnt warrant an undo, and i have seen top players not even asking for an undo in those cases, because they realize it is not fair.

Let me give you another example, I was playing with a very good player who tried to do a 3-pile and would have won, but the game involved page, and page was one of those 3-piles, but by mistake he ended up returning pages in play so 3-pile case was not there anymore (auto exchange is tricky, very tricky), and he ended his turn. Now I could have won, but i knew this was a genuine mistake, so I immediately granted him the undo. Your opponent, similarly, realized he made a mistake with buys and he wanted to fix it. "Enhance" is a new card, we are all learning these new menagerie cards, and the interface is not super intuitive for some things, at least for people who have not spent hours on it. Is it too wrong to expect some slack? Trust me, if you continue to deny undos towards the end of a game due to one made up reason or the other, but those undos were fair ask, you will get blacklisted, and soon you wont have good players to play with. 

I feel i repeated myself a lot there. Sorry

jdsdog10

I was just about to reply to your first edition of your post before the new edits, about how I disagree with what counts as new information.
It seemed at first that you were advocating for new info meaning any information that could not possibly be attained in the current system. With this definition, the wolf den situation is exactly the same as the enhance in terms of new info. It's also the same as the palace scenario and the page scenario. It's almost like the standard is whether or not a completely competent player (or maybe just an AI) would have had the knowledge. This is a fine way to apply "no new information", and probably the most straight forward. 

Another way would be whether the knowledge is new to the player. In other words, did the opponent even realize something to be an option. With this more subjective version of new knowledge, both the wolf den scenario and the enhance scenario would not be ok, since the interactions and effects of enhance and wolf den were not understood at the time that the actions happened. This is very similar to palace and even similar to page. The difference is that page and wolf den were much easier for an average opponent to catch then would have been palace which requires you to keep a mental running tally of every single card in your deck. This version is much more subjective to what your opponent was considering and his intents.

Another option would be a variant of the subjective version just mentioned, which seems to be what you are advocating after the edits. That would be something like "how reasonable is it for my opponent to have been aware of this knowledge". For something like palace it is rather unreasonable (it is unusual for opponents to keep a mental running tally of their deck), but for something like wolf den, page, enhance these are far more reasonable. So if it is reasonable for an average opponent to have had this knowledge then we don't consider it "new". I would argue this is more messy than the second option.

Again, I normally don't even stop to consider whether undo's are justified before I grant them. Exceptions are very late game, card drawn, or we are in a later turn. I always give the opponent to make an argument for himself. I have maybe not allowed 3 or so undo's in late game ever, and the other two were far less grey. And when I did make not grant a more controversial one, I went to the forum to ask others for their opinions. Because of this I think it is really unlikely that all of my opponents will blacklist me leaving me with no one to play against.

PS. I have made that same mistake with page. I did not request an undo. It doesn't feel right to me to ask my opponent to let me do something different so I can go back and win a close game.

randomUserName

I am sorry in all that explanation I didnt really understand the point you are trying to make  :(
Normally I would stop replying after this point, but you seem like you genuinely want to understand others point of view so I will give it one last shot. Also, I would recommend joining the discord server, your post and replies will get more traction there and you will get much better answers to your question, because not every one checks forum, so the assumption that players will not BL you because they know your point of view from this post is not very solid.

Now coming back to your point, I dont understand at all how wolf den scenario and enhance scenario is similar. Sorry I cannot get it through my thick head. Wolf den gives you -3vp for a unique, and you as a player, is responsible to keep track of duplicates and unique, whereas, enhance is used to trash something that is already in your hand, and doing a trash with enhance and undoing that, doing enhance again on different card, with wolf den or palace NOT involved is completely fine, I dont understand the counter argument to that. I will try again, if no new information is revealed (no new cards drawn, triumphal arch, palace, wolf den and cards like these which involves tracking are not involved), undo requests are fair and should be granted. And you are well within your rights to refuse that, but chances are you will be BL after denying fair undo requests, irrespective of your stand here on this forum. Take care :)

jdsdog10

My point was in regards to how we define "new info". With palace, if a player cared enough (or was an AI), he could know (and maybe would know) the exact contents of his deck. In other words, the info from buying a Gold when Palace is in play is not information he could have attained otherwise. Or maybe more simply said, the player has the ability to go through the log and see exactly how many coppers/silvers/and golds he has. This is knowledge that any player COULD have if they cared enough to have it. So to me, strictly speaking it is not "new info" in that sense.
If we talk about "new info" in the sense that the opponent did not possess the knowledge initially (not that he couldn't have it, but that he doesnt have it), then yes the palace scenario would not be ok (which i agree with). With this understanding of "new info", the wolf den scenario would also not be ok. I easily could have had that knowledge(and should have), but I didn't consider the effect. *As an aside, I think I left out the fact that there were 8 duchies in the supply, so it was very obvious that I did not have one already, I just didn't consider how wolf den would effect*.

Thanks for pointing out that most use discord. This was pretty much my first post here, so I am rather ignorant on that matter.

My point about not being worried about being blacklisted was that in my 4000 games (I am not proud of that number lol), this would result in maybe 3 users blacklisting me, tops.

In sum, I understand (and even agree) that undo's should be veto'd only on the grounds of new info. We disagree on what constitutes as new info. If you have a game with goons/groundskeeper/vineyard, villain might buy the last village for a 3-pile thinking that all the effects of those 3 cards will give him the win. You can argue for both sides of an undo on the basis of "new knowledge". A perfect opponent (or an AI) would be fully aware of how many points he would have after the purchases. It's not that a player is incapable of having the knowledge of the consequences of his buy, it's that he wasn't careful enough throughout the game to keep track. Which is a different take than saying he was unaware of the consequences of his buy thus the knowledge was "new" to him.

jeebus

#19
Sorry for necroing, I just want to add my voice to those saying that the undo should be granted. IRL there is no reason to deny a player the opportunity to change their mind when no new info has been revealed - even on the last turn, obviously before you start counting points. The reason this is even a topic in online play is because some players confuse clicking buttons with playing Dominion. Clicking is not an integral part of playing Dominion.

Because of the online VP counter, there is some disagreement in this thread on what constitutes new info. When it comes to Wolf Den etc. - which rely on knowing the contents of your deck - you first have to realize that it matters, then you either have to remember the game state or go back through the log. If you didn't realize that it mattered (since you had forgotten to think about it), the score after your turn would alert you to it, and this would be new info for you (since you had forgotten). If you did realize, but you misremember the game state, or don't bother checking, the score after your turn would likewise be new info for you. (In any case, there is no way for the other player to know exactly why you made the mistake.)

If you played Treasures with a certain plan in mind, and realize during your turn that you shouldn't have, that is not based on new info. Maybe you could say that the point counter goes up as you're buying Provinces. I would not view this as new info, it's just that the VP counter is helping you add 6 to your score. You already knew that buying a Province would give you 6 VP. There is no way that is unforeseen or something you didn't think about. The reason you want to change your plan is based on your own brain power.

santamonica811

To continue on from what Jeebus was writing...

To use Wolf Den as an example (of why I'd always give an Undo there):  If I were playing you, and you wrote to me in chat, "I want to buy Card X, but not if it's my first such purchase.  I'm not remembering.  I can carefully go through the game log, and that will take 4 minutes to do.  Or, is it okay for me to buy it, and I'll do an Undo if I lose 3 points for it being my only X in my deck?" . . . I would *always* say, "God, save me and you the wasted time of searching the game log.  Buy the card and Undo it if it ends up being your first X." 

Since I would do the above, I see no reason why I would not grant the Undo if my opponent--at least partly in an effort to keep the game moving--bought the card without asking my permission in advance.  But then, I don't take the game particularly seriously, and I care not a whit about my ranking...and I know for sure that many players do not share my relaxed and strictly-fun-based approach.  :-)