Matt E
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
-
It used to be that if you used default card selection on isotropic, it would either put 0 or 3-5 Alchemy cards in the set it generated. Now that feature has been removed. Why? I know this doesn't bother everyone, but I'm getting pretty sick of seeing one Alchemy card in most of my sets.
EDIT: Correction: according to the simulations I'm running, you'll see exactly 1 Alchemy card in about 40% of sets. You'll see exactly 2 Alchemy cards in about 18% of sets.
-
Jason Gische
United States
San Carlos
California
-
I would guess it's because you can tell the server to create a set with 3-5 Alchemy cards if you want to, and not everyone feels the same way you do about that Alchemy card recommendation.
-
Matt E
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
-
LastFootnote wrote: I know this doesn't bother everyone
gische wrote: not everyone feels the same way you do about that Alchemy card recommendation.
Yes, thank you for reiterating that.
Anyhow, being able to stipulate 3-5 Alchemy cards is nowhere near the same as being able to stipulate 0 OR 3-5 Alchemy cards.
-
-
It got removed? I'm glad to hear. It's a terrible recommendation IMO. If there's Familiar and no trasher, you're really not going to buy a Potion? It all depends on what the Alchemy card is and what the other cards are, not on the number of them.
-
Matt E
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
-
gf1024 wrote: It got removed? I'm glad to hear. It's a terrible recommendation IMO. If there's Familiar and no trasher, you're really not going to buy a Potion? It all depends on what the Alchemy card is and what the other cards are, not on the number of them.
For some of them, sure. You think you'll ever buy a Transmute if there are no other Alchemy cards out? How about a Philosopher's Stone?
-
-
Like I said, depends on many other factors. I most likely ignore Transmute in the presence of a multi or a non-terminal trasher. But hey, I may do the same thing to Salvager. Otherwise, Estate to Gold? Any day. I look at the function I need, not the cost I pay. P. Stone? If the game looks like it could be prolonged (Curses, most likely, or no quick trashers) I am likely to get some Stones, yeah. Of course, there are the ignore situations for everything but that's only natural.
-
Matthew Saloff
United States
Edinboro
Pennsylvania
A Lannister always pays his debts.
I'll Have Another WILL win the Triple Crown.
-
LastFootnote wrote: For some of them, sure. You think you'll ever buy a Transmute if there are no other Alchemy cards out? How about a Philosopher's Stone?
I've not only done both of those things, but I've won games doing those things.
That's cool if you like the 3-5 recommendation though. Our group plays a LOT of Dominion & the 3-5 recommendation just gets real old as that's 30-50% of the kingdom setup each time 1 shows up & there isn't very many combinations with only 12 Alchemy cards. After a while it makes a lot of Alchemy games feel very "samey". It sounds like a lot of other groups are also moving on from the 3-5 recommendation as well.
But yeah, ANY Alchemy card can be really useful even by itself. It just depends on what the other kingdom cards are.
-
-
I think this was removed due to the "variety" issue of cornucopia.
-
Matt E
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
-
yukonhorror wrote: I think this was removed due to the "variety" issue of cornucopia.
What? How does that make any sense?
-
Jeff Wolfe
United States
Columbus
Ohio
Zendo fan, Columbus Blue Jackets fan, Dominion Fan. These are 'permanent microbadges' to free up space on my microbadge row
-
The Alchemy recommendation is not a rule, so implementing it is a Bad Thing. It is a recommendation, so having the option to use it would be a Good Thing.
-
Matt E
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
-
jeffwolfe wrote: The Alchemy recommendation is not a rule, so implementing it is a Bad Thing. It is a recommendation, so having the option to use it would be a Good Thing.
I agree 100%. It would be nice if this option were available.
-
Drew Spencer
United States
Tucson
Arizona
-
LastFootnote wrote: gf1024 wrote: It got removed? I'm glad to hear. It's a terrible recommendation IMO. If there's Familiar and no trasher, you're really not going to buy a Potion? It all depends on what the Alchemy card is and what the other cards are, not on the number of them. For some of them, sure. You think you'll ever buy a Transmute if there are no other Alchemy cards out? How about a Philosopher's Stone?
Are you kidding? The answer to both of those is a solid "absolutely." Of course, it depends on the remaining make-up.
With Transmute you can trash Estates for Gold, then Coppers for Transmutes, then Transmutes for Duchies. At each stage of the game you get more of what you need to keep progressing.
Philosopher's Stone is amazing in sets with multiple buys and cards like Cellar/Warehouse. It's the same as Silver pretty much by the time you play your first one. It's the same as Gold a couple turns after that. Pretty soon it's better than Platinum. Of course it's less good if the set has good card drawing power or something like that.
-
Ido Abelman
Israel
Hod Hasharon
-
DonaldX said, in the "secret history" article that he designed all of the cards to be worth buying a potion just for them. Most of them are the "if you want one you'll want several" category - that's why most of them are non-terminal. Others are just too strong to be ignored.
Of course, sometimes you won't want the potion. But that's a part of the game! If the potion was always a must-buy it was much less interesting. 1-2 alchemy cards make that "buy a potion or not" much more interesting.
By the way, the example of transmute isn't very good IMO. I LOVE tranmute. I bought potion just to get transmutes several times. It works better when there are +buys and I won't do it if there is better trashing, but when I do it it's great. I usually buy around 2 transmutes and then they duplicate themselves by trashing coppers. If I'm lucky I can trash the potion itself for another transmutes. Estates for gold? Yes please! And also late game points in transmuting transmutes into duchies. And don't get me started on dual-colored cards...
-
-
LastFootnote wrote: yukonhorror wrote: I think this was removed due to the "variety" issue of cornucopia. What? How does that make any sense?
Well, it changed as soon as cornucopia was added.
Having a potion available adds one more card to the normal basic cards to improve the variability of your deck.
-
Jason Gische
United States
San Carlos
California
-
yukonhorror wrote: LastFootnote wrote: yukonhorror wrote: I think this was removed due to the "variety" issue of cornucopia. What? How does that make any sense? Well, it changed as soon as cornucopia was added.
Correlation != causation
Quote: Having a potion available adds one more card to the normal basic cards to improve the variability of your deck.
That tautology has no relationship to your earlier statement. How does removing the rule requiring a minimum number of Alchemy cards have any effect on the "variety issue" (as you put it) of Cornucopia?
-
Drew Spencer
United States
Tucson
Arizona
-
gische wrote: Quote: Having a potion available adds one more card to the normal basic cards to improve the variability of your deck. That tautology has no relationship to your earlier statement. How does removing the rule requiring a minimum number of Alchemy cards have any effect on the "variety issue" (as you put it) of Cornucopia?
I think it was speculation on his part, but it wasn't unreasonable. The reason you want 3-5 Alchemy cards or 0 is because 1 or 2 Alchemy cards may make the cost of getting a Potion too high. With Cornucopia, having an extra card on the table is beneficial for the sake of extra variety, which is rewarded by multiple Cornucopia cards. Cornucopia thus lowers the cost of getting the Potion. It also raises the value of 1 or 2 cards with Potion costs, because having them increases the amount of variety in your deck.
Again, I think that's speculative, and I doubt it's the actual reason for the change, but it makes some sense.
-
-
pure speculation and a guess. But makes more sense than anything else.
In terms of cornucopia, you have a better chance of having 5 different cards in hand for menagerie, 4 different cards drawn for harvest, it is easier to get 15 different cards for fairgrounds, in play, that potion makes horn of plenty worth more, etc....
-
Matt E
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
-
Well, since I've got this thread anyway, might as well ask this here.
What does the new "Bias selection toward SetX" feature do, exactly?
-
Doug Z
United States
California
-
It's a way to push the kingdom card selection for auto-match towards using particular sets, which works in a way that can be combined for all the users being auto-matched. (The hard constraints available when you propose a game manually are hard to combine in a way that doesn't frequently turn out to be unsolvable.)
I'm leery of explaining exactly what it does, since in the past that has been treated as an invitation to redesign it in committee, but what the hell, here's how it works:
- make a deck consisting of one of each available kingdom card
- for each player:
- for each set that player has checked:
- add 4 more copies of each card in that set to the deck
- shuffle the whole thing
- deal from the top of the deck until you have 10 different cards
And that's the set of cards that auto-match proposes. The value 4 was somewhat arbitrarily chosen after I did some simulations and decided that the level of emphasis it gave to a checked set felt about right to me. (Multiple checks stack, of course; if all the players check "cornucopia" then there should be a lot of cornucopia in the result.)
-
Matt E
United States
St. Paul
Minnesota
-
spongyform wrote: - make a deck consisting of one of each available kingdom card
- for each player:
- for each set that player has checked:
- add 4 more copies of each card in that set to the deck
- shuffle the whole thing
- deal from the top of the deck until you have 10 different cards
Huh, cool. Seems like a decent algorithm for adding bias. I assume from your comments that it works for auto-match games. Does it also work for normal invite games?
-
-
One more OT question. A feature request really: How about adding an option to make all players get the same initial hand, like when you check "league" but without invalidating all other constraints?
I generally don't like playing with random differing opening splits anymore.
-
Dave G
United States
Illinois
-
PunchBall wrote: One more OT question. A feature request really: How about adding an option to make all players get the same initial hand, like when you check "league" but without invalidating all other constraints?
I generally don't like playing with random differing opening splits anymore.
As long as it's an option. The symmetrical starting hand requirement is why I quit the league.
-
-
djgutierrez77 wrote: PunchBall wrote: One more OT question. A feature request really: How about adding an option to make all players get the same initial hand, like when you check "league" but without invalidating all other constraints?
I generally don't like playing with random differing opening splits anymore. As long as it's an option. The symmetrical starting hand requirement is why I quit the league.
Wow, that's taking it seriously.
Anyway, I see that the option is implemented now.  
-
Dave G
United States
Illinois
-
PunchBall wrote: djgutierrez77 wrote: PunchBall wrote: One more OT question. A feature request really: How about adding an option to make all players get the same initial hand, like when you check "league" but without invalidating all other constraints?
I generally don't like playing with random differing opening splits anymore. As long as it's an option. The symmetrical starting hand requirement is why I quit the league. Wow, that's taking it seriously. Anyway, I see that the option is implemented now.
It's a luck-based game, and overcoming those disadvantaged starts is part of the fun.
-
-
djgutierrez77 wrote:
It's a luck-based game, and overcoming those disadvantaged starts is part of the fun.
I can see that. I just meant that even though I much prefer it the other way (similar starting hands), I'd still play in tournaments etc with random starting hands. It's really not that vital a part of the game.
-
|
|
Posted Mon May 2, 2011 6:26 pm
