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I really just think having an option to extend the 3-pile rule to a 4-pile rule would be so huge. A mode that ended only from provinces disappearing would be nice also, but I 'd be satisfied with just a 4-pile rule. At 4 piles the winner would definitely be who built the better deck, it would rarely be "whoever has the vp edge at the fortunate moment".

I'd rather have some games that go longer (take forever is a huge exaggeration) than have the very common scenario we now have:

All three players are building decks (what a deckbuilding game is supposed to be about). Incidentally the piles get low. Whoever was lucky enough to receive the least curses and keep the most estates (even though it's actually smart to trash them, but hey, luck turned that into an advantage) decides to deplete the 3rd pile. Whoops, game over!

Honestly, think back to all the times the 3-pile rule meant "Whoops, game over!" and notice each time it happens from now on. It's nearly all the times the rule happens. Yeah, you can pivot to exploiting the 3-pile rule, but it's mainly chance that put you at having a bit more VP than the opponent(s) so that you happen to be the one who can use that pivot. The 'deckbuilding' element of the game gets diminished when a tiny differential in VP early on becomes the more important thing.

One of the important things about trashers is that they can offset the luck involved in how many curses people get early and how much those curses hinder their hands. But that balance plays little role when the game just ends early from the 3-pile rule.

It's like maybe one fifth of the time when there's a 3-pile rule ending that it's because someone actually strategized to make it happen as fast as possible. Four fifths of the time it's more like an incidental and premature event. It's especially bad in 3 player games.

Wow, I disagree greatly. Every engine is wildly different, wherein the game's variability lies. A game ending by 3 piles always has the same essential formula for it to come into play: curses and cards that gain cards, like ironworks for instance. Just because you can get an early lead and then pull the same trick as every other time it was pulled, does not mean you're increasing the game's variability. And this is all assuming the trick was pulled intentionally, which it so often isn't. I see so many game in which people don't even realize they could end the game by 3-pile rule, and I'm rated 51.7, so I'm not largely playing new players. Every time the 3-pile rule happens it's very similar to the last game in which it happened. Had the 3-pile rule not existed and the game was played out fully, it would have been a far more dissimilar game to the last full game, compared to whatever slight variation there is between this curse/ironworks situation and the last one.

Plus: how are you even talking from a point of view of "variability", when I'm the one talking about increasing options, and I'm not talking about ending the 3-pile rule as the main option, assuming you like it. It's like if you said: "We can't add extra flavors to the ice cream shop, because vanilla can taste a bit different at the top of the container vs. the bottom."

Some games are just fast-ending non-games due to the 3-pile rule. Particularly games with both ruins and curses. They would play out as much more interesting proper games if they didn't end by the 3-pile rule.


So that's why it would be great if this rule could be adjusted in the advanced options, or even better in the autoplay options. There could be multiple options: extend to 4-pile or 5-pile instead of 3-pile, end only by provinces running out, or just give an exact number of turns and then the game ends at that point (I'll bet experts would have fun crafting challenge games with that option). I can think of some more cool options but I think I'll leave it at that now for brevity.


I surmise that the 3-pile rule was originally made to accommodate the base game, which didn't have so many powerful cards, and on top of that to accommodate the game as experienced by new players. Because, for new players, they could reasonably both build dysfunctional decks, and no one's deck would have been strong enough to buy provinces often, except through the occasional lucky hand. And so in that case the game would have just dragged on and on, so it needed an alternate end condition in the 3-pile rule. If new players experienced the game dragging on and on while failing to be able to buy provinces, it would've seemed like the game didn't "work", which could be a thing to cause bad reviews, so I surmise that the 3-pile rule was important when Dominion was still a new game.


But today, Dominion is very established and popular, and the conditions of playing online are different from playing with cards in so many ways. We have tons of expansion sets with more powerful cards on average than the early sets, and this makes it much more rare that the board is so weak that tedium occurs before all 8 provinces get bought.


Do people agree with my assessment? Even if you don't agree perfectly with it, would you still prefer if there was a way to turn off the 3-pile rule or select other options that cause the game to end?

But I guess with the undo button someone could (very theoretically) just continue clicking it infinitely without inevitable game progess. I think the true solution would be to make it so after deny has been pressed, the undo button can't pressed again until something else happens.

If someone got annoyed that you were denying their undo request, they could still idle to be a nuisance in game just as easily, waiting a long minute before each click. Someone did this to me once.

I don't see how that's possible. You just press deny.

If you request an undo, the opponent can say "brb" and then disappear a while. Then it allows him to force you to resign, as if YOU were the idle one... even though it's waiting on him to either deny or grant your undo request.

Looking at you, MrDemon77.

Ah, I didn't think I'd get a reply from Donald X. himself, very cool  :)

I guess I'm asking if the asking if the digital version can make an exception to this rule, since you can't look through your discard pile regardless. I hope some other players might back me up that they'd like this feature. It seems it be would a nice feature for new players, but perhaps some veterans might not like it since they already have experience with knowing their discard pile size intuitively.

Also, since I'm talking to Donald X., I have a cool feature request for a possible mechanic in a future expansion. My idea is to have cards similar to Events or Landmarks which either: 1. give a minor penalty to the player going first, 2. give a minor advantage to the player going second,or 3. Take an effect on a specific number turn of the game, like say "on turn 12"

I think the intent of that rule is so that in games with actual cards, people don't sift through their discard pile, strategizing, which would slow the game to a crawl.

And that's a totally different thing than have the red number which just tells the quantity of cards.

Well that's a stupid rule. We all know there are cards that actually instruct you to look through your discard pile, yet you can't count?

I think that we be really great if the game could tell you the size of your discard pile, unless there's a reason that it doesn't.

Cards like Knights, Rogue, Giant, certain Hexes that trash your cards etc.

If the text line can just be a unique bright shade of red or pink, this would help a lot.

The way it works now, in games with these cards, either:

-You have to play very slowly so you notice when one of these cards trashes something on top of your deck
-Or, you don't notice what card was trashed quickly enough to adapt your strategy. If you don't notice for just one turn, that a unique card was trashed, it may be easily be too late to adapt your strategy before you get enough coins again/before you deck reshuffles.

Whenever these cards are involved, I have to play REALLY slowly as well as squint and look up the log to see if I missed anything, which isn't fun, I know I see a lot of people complaining about time constraints.

I just thought of another solution to this: play a unique sound when one of your cards is trashed. But not when an opponent's card is trashed. The idea is to be made aware when something your opponent does changes something in your deck. The sound could also happen when an opponent causes your to gain something, commonly a curse or copper, that wouldn't hurt.