Kingdom generation in version 1.6.5

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AdamH

QuoteLiaisons were previously being generated at a slightly lower frequency than other kingdom cards. This was because if there was no space to fit an ally in the kingdom, a liaison would not be allowed to be added. The kingdom generation algorithm has been tweaked so that liaisons will now be generated at the same frequency as other cards.

As a consequence, automatch games can now have up to 2 normal landscapes (Events, Landmarks, Projects, Ways) along with an ally.

I came across my first game the other day with three landscapes, went to report a bug, but I saw this.

It's not clear to me why the possibility of three landscape cards is a consequence of whatever issue was being dealt with here -- I recently had to write a kingdom generation script of my own and I had no trouble getting the proper frequency of liaisons by just choosing my 10 kingdom cards first before any landscapes are selected. Sure there are some edge cases where maybe Way of the Mouse was your second landscape, and now you don't want the Mouse card to be a Liaison, but these probably don't affect things that much and you can still work around it.

The issue is, the rules recommend a maximum of 2 landscapes in a kingdom and suddenly now I have no way of making that happen, even in unrated games. So why did we deviate from the recommendation like this? After playing just one game with three landscapes I was reminded of why that recommendation exists in the first place.

Ingix

The discussion on discord had the opposite view, that with Allies the recommended maximum of the "previous" landscapes is still 2, but that an Ally should not factor into that, one exists or does not exist in the kingdom purely ony wether a Lisaion is present.

AFAIK potential landscapes are chosen at the same time as kingdom cards on dominion.games, following the "shuffle randomizers and landscapes together" approach. I assume that lead to many "I already have 2 landscapes after 5 kingdom cards, so Liaisons are now removed from the randomizer deck" situations before.

This view from discord is supported by the rulebook in several places:

Page 2, preparation:
QuoteIn games using one or more Liaison cards, give each player a Favors mat and deal out a single Ally card. The Ally cards are a separate deck, not combined with Events and so on.

Page 3, Allies:
QuoteOnly use one Ally per game, even with multiple Liaisons. You can still have as many other landscape cards (Events,
Landmarks, Projects, Ways) as you otherwise would have.

AdamH

The rulebook seems pretty ambiguous to me. I read those excerpts and come to the conclusion that even including allies, there should be a maximum of two landscapes, but I could also see how it could be interpreted another way. Did DXV make a ruling on this? Seems like that would be appropriate, and would be a much more credible source than a hypothetical discussion on discord.

Coding a fix for this using that method would not be hard to do. The second landscape can just be replaced by the ally if needed.

ceviri

This was exactly the approach suggested by DXV.

AdamH

Well, I guess I'm not mad a Shuffleit about this then. Other than the fact that I haven't been able to get a screen layout with three landscapes that doesn't look awful on my screen -- it seems to make everything super tiny.