beat me at dominion !!!!!

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beat me at dominion !!!!!

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Mon Aug 02, 2021 12:55 pm

Post by schadd_ »

whatsa goin on!!

hi! i am former site chat and discussion* moderator schadd. i am also adept dominion player schadd! one time i bumped into someone on mafiauniverse who recognized my username from having written a few articles on the dominion strategy wiki, which was surreal.

i'd be interested in playing against mafiascum users and trying to see who can beat me. you'll have to take my word that the answer is 'pretty much anyone', although for sufficiently non-adept players it might take a really long time.

i'm opening myself up to being challenged!! you can ping me on discord if i'm online and theres a fairly large chance id be happy to play with you right then and there. additionally if you see that i'm logged in or like actively playing with someone on the website, i'd probably also be happy to switch gears. it is pretty simple to play online, if you have not done so i will talk u through it - you don't have to buy anything but you do have to make an account. additionally i am happy to explain unfamiliar cards / mechanics, though if you don't know the rules to the game i don't know if i'm the one to play it with for the first time. Lol

how good are you!!!

Spoiler: credentials that you might want to spare yourself from finding out
i am 55th on the leaderboard, and would approximate that i've played like 5,000 games of dominion in my lifetime. there's only a handful of people in the world who i would say can beat me most of the time, though those people can beat me
most
of the time (i get a little stressed out when i'm playing with one of the top top players lol.)

i will blindly estimate that someone "average" at the game can beat me in like, one out of every 20 games ?? like if you've played with the physical cards a bunch and know how the game works and have some grasp of the strategy and whatnot, it's somewhere around there. i guess this exercise will be a way of testing that


convince me that i can beat you anyway!!

i would say the game of dominion is overwhelmingly skill-based, though like many things i can really only guarantee that to be true in the long run. on the basis of an individual set of 10 cards (plus bonus stuff), there's a lot of ways the skill element of the game can be reduced. a player called
markus
did some data mining about each card and found that cards vary in their impact on skillㅡpeasant increases the 'skill' of the game by 10% (dont know how thats measured exactly) because it inflates the amount of necessary decisions of the game and nearly guarantees higher-concept games, whereas mountebank brings it down by a horrifying 15% by doing the opposite. you can message the bot at dombot#0234 on discord to check out some of these stats (you'd pull up my cited figures with "!stats peasant" and "!stats mountebank")

something you could theoretically do is find some of those high-skill cards and ban them (see
cardlists
on the website. Lol! i essentially do the opposite of that). more applicably, if we play like 20 games together, probably one of them will end up being a coinflippy game so long as you understand a basic requisite strategy. oftentimes, this is something like "buy silver, gold, some drawing card that costs 4 or 5, then provinces". sometimes we find some pair of cards like beggar and guildhall, or lurker and hunting grounds, that focuses the game exclusively on the interaction between those cards (it is left as an exercise to the reader what the deal is with those two pairs of cards).

additionally, i think that if you pay attention to what i'm doing, certain nuances of the strategy of the game will reveal themselves to you. you always have this point of comparison, like, what did it do that i didn't do, and how did that change its deck, etc. naively, you could just copy the cards that i buy, but i'm skeptical as to how far that could take you within a game (also i will always have challengers go first). i'm also just happy to comment on your choices in a game after we've finished. even if it's hard to learn some things on a game by game basis, maybe you'll see a little bit of beauty just watching the stuff that i do.

results:

Image

Image


every time a player beats me or ties with me, i will post in this thread; when you beat me you will be immortalized in this opening post. you can request for me to post in the thread whenever i beat you, however this is optional. a handful of people are surely able to do so, such as something_smart (who is in fact like very close to my skill neighborhood. Lol.), isis (who has come very close to beating me in the past) and hellbooks (who has sporadically already beaten me in the past, which are not retroactively counted for the purposes of this thread). i only plan to do this with 2-player games, and in fact i don't think i'm remotely as good at 3-or-more-player games. each game will be played with complete random selection from every card

good luck everyone !!



*5/8/2022 edit: no idea whether i just meant to type "discord moderator" or if i meant to say discussion moderator and be lying
Last edited by schadd_ on Sun May 08, 2022 8:53 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:22 pm

Post by hellbooks »

In post 0, schadd_ wrote:hellbooks (who has sporadically already beaten me in the past, which are not retroactively counted for the purposes of this thread)
proof of concept at this being a winnable challenge.

- i am a casual player who has historically only had experience with the original set and plays very rarely
- i would say i am not particularly brilliant at board games or learning board game mechanics
- i know, on average, less than 10% of the action cards going into any given game with schadd
- i comfortably understand, on average, about 60% of the action cards in any given game with schadd
- although i'm sure i ought to be applying myself more in the "reading cards" category. this is like an instant improvement that any person can make upon my play!
- my record against it is currently 1-16 ever since i started tracking in late november and at least a couple more probably came within a single major inaccurate choice's worth of difference (maybe?)
why does your ferret thing have a waterfall?
your guess is as good as mine
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Mon Aug 02, 2021 2:18 pm

Post by Who »

Further proof of concept: Despite not having played in like a year, I won first try.
Ignore all rematches, the important thing isn't the record it's the fact that I won first try
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Chamber. It's all a conspiracy.
Or is it?
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Mon Aug 02, 2021 2:30 pm

Post by tris »

who won first try
here's what it says
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Mon Aug 02, 2021 5:58 pm

Post by schadd_ »

congratulations to whom
for instantly inaugurating the list of players who have beaten me.


Image

Spoiler:
Image
druid held the swamp's gift, the moon's gift & the forest's gift
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:33 pm

Post by tris »

congrats which!!!!!
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Tue Aug 03, 2021 6:27 am

Post by Something_Smart »

oh you already called me out hi. I feel like I'm not exactly the target audience for this thread but I will ego in it nonetheless.

I don't believe that I've ever played schadd. As he mentions I am fairly close to him in skill, he would likely have a plus score if we played a bunch of times but I imagine I'd get some wins.

If anyone wants tips I'm happy to provide them.
It's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken. How many lives shattered. How much blood will spill, until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning... SIT DOWN AND TALK!
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Tue Aug 03, 2021 6:30 pm

Post by tris »

CASTLES!!!!
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:17 pm

Post by schadd_ »

congratulations to tris


Image
Spoiler:
Image

this one was interesting. i had convinced myself that i'd be able to draw more reliably than i did (in fact i dont think i really ever got a particularly strong shepherd). shepherd is tricky for me, i don't like to play with it and so i don't learn how to calibrate around it - other top players start buying estates way sooner than it occurs to me to do so. you'll note shepherd was also something i tried to do in the who game. i'm pretty much always convinced university is good, like experience + just thinking about the card indicates that even if you're not doing so much with it it's still great. but the potion and two universities must have slowed me down a lot. i envisioned getting moving reliably by using a university to gain hostelries and get a bunch of horses but i never really got a turn where that happened to great effect

there was a turn where i skipped out on playing university (i put it down with border guard and instead took a copper) to buy haunted castle, which was probably a bit of a blunder. i think of that attack as being strong almost always but i think tris got to just put an errant shepherd on top of her deck and move on, so i skipped out on two potentially valuable other cards just to do that. otherwise, i think tris got to line up shepherds pretty nicely with stuff & the castles kept her deck moving also faster than i expected


now its like a matter of who can be a challenger that steps up to bat and does not win. lol !
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:28 pm

Post by tris »

some say the shepherds are still wandering the unbounded fields between the uncountable castles
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Sat Aug 07, 2021 4:11 pm

Post by schadd_ »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERHEIFZF5xw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCX4d83eRDU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcJv02OjN5c

played 3 games with isis. i think i was very scattered but also i was like talkin for the whole 90 minutes so its likely that some ideas will be useful or interesting or whatever. lol ! i think the third game/kingdom was the most interesting and i think my thoughts were best collected at that time BUT its also like the longest of the videos. i put an image of the kingdom in each of the descriptionts with the full card texts

something i think i never did is talked about cards i didn't buy, like each board had a couple cards that were just not worthwhile to me & i probably didn't justify ignoring them. so like you can poke me about those if you wanna know lol
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Sun Aug 08, 2021 11:31 am

Post by Isis »

In post 8, schadd_ wrote:now its like a matter of who can be a challenger that steps up to bat and does not win. lol !
ow
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Sun Aug 08, 2021 12:06 pm

Post by tris »

why is schadd hitting isis with a bat :(
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Sun Aug 08, 2021 5:16 pm

Post by Isis »

it has no compassion for me and my desire to buy the cute lil druid and villa
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Sun Aug 08, 2021 5:28 pm

Post by tris »

thank you! <3
here's what it says
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Post Post #15 (ISO) » Sun Aug 08, 2021 7:50 pm

Post by Isis »

For what? Did you beat him again?
"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
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Post Post #16 (ISO) » Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:33 pm

Post by tris »

for calling me cute
here's what it says
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Post Post #17 (ISO) » Sat Aug 14, 2021 7:42 pm

Post by schadd_ »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIIH0NBh6CQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXlnnwHRg-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j14giVJdjaQ

more isis dominion matches just dropped. The Amount Of Golds I Buy In The First Game May Shock You! The Amount Of Curses I Buy In The Second Game May Shock You! i suspect the commentary in the third game will be not so impressive but its also one where just the way i played out each turn is probably informative.
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Post Post #18 (ISO) » Sat Aug 14, 2021 9:05 pm

Post by tris »

the first person i played dominion with hated village
here's what it says
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Post Post #19 (ISO) » Sun Aug 29, 2021 11:13 am

Post by schadd_ »

WE HAVE A ISIS VICTORY
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Post Post #20 (ISO) » Sun Aug 29, 2021 11:39 am

Post by schadd_ »

WE HAVE A ISIS VICTORY
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Post Post #21 (ISO) » Sun Aug 29, 2021 11:44 am

Post by tris »

OHHHH GREAT COOOL!!!!! YES!! MEOW!!!!!!!
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Post Post #22 (ISO) » Sun Aug 29, 2021 11:50 am

Post by Infinity 324 »

i like dominion but i'm pretty new

why would you buy a curse
Show
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<3 you are valid

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Post Post #23 (ISO) » Sun Aug 29, 2021 12:10 pm

Post by schadd_ »

WE HAVE A ISIS WIN
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Post Post #24 (ISO) » Sun Aug 29, 2021 12:22 pm

Post by Who »

In post 22, Infinity 324 wrote:i like dominion but i'm pretty new

why would you buy a curse
Possible reasons include:
To trigger a 3-pile ending
To give to your opponent with ambassador (Though not actually sure but I think this strategy is more shiny than it is good)
Various cards which give you VP or other bonuses based on number of differently named cards in your deck.
Maybe some very strange game involving gardens and blockade where a curse yields less curses than a copper, but probably not.
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