Question on Automatch

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andwilk

First time back to Dominion in a few years (lots of new cards to learn!) but I have a question on how automatch works.  I believe that it randomly generates a kingdom from all available cards in a game level, but it does not seem like that in practice.  I'm playing at level 10, but I've played about 25-30 games now over the past few days but I am yet to see a single Landmark, Way, Project, or Event let alone any of the Nocturne cards that deal with the Night phase or anything to do with Allies or debt.  On the flip side, as a specific example, I've played with Tide Pools in over half of my games today (4/7 games).

Just seems odd... am I missing something on how these kingdoms are generated in automatch?  Is it that rare to see a Landmark, Way, Project, or Event?  Back when I was last playing, I thought you could bias automatch towards certain expansions.  I remember setting something and that all of my games had Nocturne and Empires cards in them.

andwilk

Quote from: andwilk on 04 October 2022, 10:34:17 PM
First time back to Dominion in a few years (lots of new cards to learn!) but I have a question on how automatch works.  I believe that it randomly generates a kingdom from all available cards in a game level, but it does not seem like that in practice.  I'm playing at level 10, but I've played about 25-30 games now over the past few days but I am yet to see a single Landmark, Way, Project, or Event let alone any of the Nocturne cards that deal with the Night phase or anything to do with Allies or debt.  On the flip side, as a specific example, I've played with Tide Pools in over half of my games today (4/7 games).

Just seems odd... am I missing something on how these kingdoms are generated in automatch?  Is it that rare to see a Landmark, Way, Project, or Event?  Back when I was last playing, I thought you could bias automatch towards certain expansions.  I remember setting something and that all of my games had Nocturne and Empires cards in them.

As a follow up to this, I checked what is actually in each card level and it seems my kingdoms are not generating cards with levels 6-10 even though I have the level range set from minimum 5-10.  I have a core subscription but when I enter a match, it always states the kingdom was generated at level 10 yet I have not seen any cards higher than level 5.  Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Ingix

First, welcome back to Dominion play!

It looks like you are mostly/only matched with players that do not have a complete subscription (so core as you or no subscription). In that case, no cards from level 6+ will be used, as neither player has them. That the match shows as using level 10 is then a bug.

I think it is by design that you cannot wait for a game with someone with a complete subscription. Since "free" players highly outnumber subscription players, the chance for you to be matched with someone without subscription wanting to play a game outside the base set (level 1) is very high.

For Tide Pools, that is a card from the recent 2nd Edition of Seaside. In the automatch screen it is possible to select "extra 2E", so players can familiarize themselves with the new cards. Maybe you have that set inadvertantly?


andwilk

Thank you for the insight!  Should I report as a bug?  If so, I can probably play a few more games and take screenshots if necessary.

Ingix

For now a screenshot of your automatch setting, including card levels would be nice here, so I can see if something else is amiss.

andwilk

#5
These are my automatch settings.  As you can see, all cards in the generated kingdom are level 5 and below even though the Card Pool level listed in the game on the right says level 10.

Edit/Update:  I just tried to generate a match with minimum level 10 and level 10 so I would have to wait for someone with a complete subscription.  It still generated a match with level 5 and below cards but listed it as generating the kingdom at level 10.

Ingix