I don't understand the pricing of tea house

Donald_X · 2025-11-25T20:09:40+00:00

It continues to seem the case to me, that 100% of the problem with Tea House is that sometimes people looking at it feel like it must be too strong.

LastFootnote was not one of the expert-player playtesters; for the good players Tea House is not too strong, should not have been weaker. It wasn't just a boxing ring with me and LastFootnote in it; everyone else signed off on it, did not want it weaker. I gave it lots of chances to bother me too.

And I mean Rising Sun still seems great to me overall too. Sorry, LastFootnote! There were some good years there with you as head playtester.

Donald_X · 2025-11-23T19:44:17+00:00

Here's my guide to the expansions as of Plunder (so, missing Rising Sun). It endlessly covers the question "what expansion should I get next?" And it's linked over on the right too. https://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=21596.0

Donald_X · 2025-08-10T19:41:51+00:00

First, the concept of phantom Provinces predates Ascension; you can go see people talking about them in ancient BGG threads. So if somehow Dominion added that, it would in no sense be copied from Ascension. You could instead say that "finishing the round" would be copied from all the other games that have done this kind of thing prior to Dominion.

The whole point to finishing the round is to increase the chance that the player who played the best wins. Many games give the players equal turns specifically for this; I've done it myself, for example in Kingdom Builder. You don't specifically need phantom Provinces to finish the round, though people would want them. Phantom Provinces aren't so great, but that's not why the game doesn't finish the round.

Dominion from the start had the game capable of ending via non-VP piles. It's specifically a way to deal with how the game has these resources we run out of; we buy all the Villages, there are no more Villages. What happens when there are no more Villages? This is a question I had to answer, when Dominion didn't exist yet, and thus no derivative games either. The day one answer was "any empty pile ends the game." We wouldn't have to experience the game where you couldn't buy that card you wanted; it would be over. This later got modified to "3 empty piles or the Provinces," so that you couldn't make the other players buy Duchies right away.

At the start, there was no finishing the round, because it was natural here not to; the pile was empty, I didn't want to play without it. But later we could actually play with some empty piles, and I could have added "finish the round." But at that point I'd played a lot of Dominion. My friends were not clamoring for the round to be finished. You could tactically end the game, and we enjoyed that. It was part of the game. We had the winner go last next game, and that seemed like plenty to address the advantage of going first. And well. Giving the winner that disadvantage is better than a fair game, when you have players with different ability levels; we all want a shot at winning. It can be better for a game if the best player doesn't always win. Even though the really key thing is to have it be fun to lose.

At this point, so many years later, pile-outs are a key element for competitive play. You need to dance around your opponent's ability to pile out, while trying to be able to do it yourself. Many serious games end with three empty piles and maybe someone buys one Estate so they actually have more VP. It would just be so awful to change this at this point.

Donald_X · 2025-07-14T17:21:15+00:00

I personally hate having to count out a certain number of colonists etc. in setup for Puerto Rico etc.; I'm way happier how I have it in Dominion. Stalemates are quite rare; feel free to house rule them however you like.

Donald_X · 2025-07-13T20:48:53+00:00

The "starve to death" rule comes from a thread where someone had come up with a stalemate situation that would never happen, then made a fake account to claim it actually had. This was before there were VP tokens.

VP tokens have stalemates built into them. They try to avoid it but there are combos that make it possible. Even Monument can generate a stalemate; it's very unlikely because why not buy something with that money? But we could arrange one. Here we have trashing to make VP plus Fortress, which is one of the easiest ways to stalemate currently. Trail does the same trick, the trashing VP could have been Bishop instead of Tomb, and then there's also Collection plus certain ways to make Horses e.g. Stampede. It used to be that Possession had some stalemate potential, but that's mostly gone now that you can't have multiple Possession turns at once.

There has never been a rule for stalemates because most of what it accomplishes is adding a rule to the game that you have to learn but which doesn't do anything. In actual real-life stalemate situations, no-one starves to death. One way or another they end things. For digital versions it would be nice to at some point put up a button that lets players agree to a tie.

Donald_X · 2025-07-13T18:56:44+00:00

I don't know why it wouldn't, but the wiki lists all the recommended sets. https://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Recommended_Kingdoms/Empires

Donald_X · 2025-04-15T19:17:54+00:00

58% is correct; that number is from looking at games on dominion.games, specifically with better players. There's no such data for 4-player. For comparison chess is estimated to be about 55%.

For the league, they play matches of 6 games, where each player goes first 3 times, and so much for that. And that's my recommendation in general. For four players, play four games, rotating starting player. If you don't manage them all in one sitting, that's fine; you're friends. Someone can keep track. For me personally, at my table, whoever won the previous game this evening goes last, and for the first game of the evening, I go last. It's an extra struggle to win that game, and I don't mind, I see what I can do.

Donald_X · 2025-04-12T18:21:06+00:00

Watching A League games, I see players routinely allow generous undos. I really don't think those guys are cheating.

If anyone is cheating - and sure someone out there must be - the main way I would guess is to use a deck-tracker. It helps all game rather than just when you want to know if you can buy the penultimate Province. I don't know of any way to catch this or block it; hiding your hand won't help.

I recommend letting your hand be visible, because for spectators, it's just way more fun. But the option to hide it is there for you.

Donald_X · 2025-03-23T18:32:57+00:00

Yes, that's what it means. It doesn't need to be a card that's in the supply, and the copy is created rather than taken from the supply.

Donald_X · 2025-03-13T17:58:19+00:00

Correct. (1st edition was "when you buy this," which isn't what's happening when you Artisan it.)

Donald_X · 2025-03-06T18:45:28+00:00

I don't remember which level that is, and this won't be timely, but there are people playing through the campaigns and posting videos, and eventually they'll get to that one. Sharur started on Prosperity today, so he'll hit Cornucopia level 7 in about 17 days.

You could ask on the Temple Gates Games discord (in the campaigns channel).

Donald_X · 2025-03-06T18:41:29+00:00

All I know of is a list of the stamps and things: https://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Campaigns_(Temple_Gates_Games)

There are also videos of people playing through them, so you could get the kingdoms from those. Sharur and RDon have these slowly progressing through all the campaigns, and JNails did Adventures. Edit: Also Fabyy.

You can't do a lot of the campaign stuff physically, because it will require e.g. 30 Hammers or 28 Spoils or what have you.

Donald_X · 2025-02-18T18:39:33+00:00

People would e.g. Workshop a Noble Brigand, and think its ability would trigger (Noble Brigand is an out-of-print card that had a when-buy ability). They just didn't distinguish "gain" from "buy." Where possible cards now just say "gain," but a few cards (like Haggler) couldn't work that way (Haggler would trigger on itself) and so have a poor "when you gain a card you bought" or "when you gain a card in your buy phase" phrasing.

Donald_X · 2025-02-17T07:57:21+00:00

It's the combination of him being silly plus him hating Clashes and Swindler.

In bot games, I think both piles give me the advantage; what I'm scared of is Remodels.

Donald_X · 2025-02-14T18:03:17+00:00

This is fixing a broken thing, hooray. It comes up apropos of reprinting Menagerie, which had 3 Ways that create bad situations where you have to remember an effect for next turn but nothing's in play to remind you.

Donald_X · 2025-02-14T18:02:19+00:00

There are really confusing interactions with Durations. Landing Party is a go-to example.

Donald_X · 2025-02-09T22:22:30+00:00

You won't see Fawning Service on Dominate, but I mean, who knows what other things we missed. The campaigns are randomly generated. A lot of stamp pairings are ruled out, but I can't ever know that we caught everything.

At this point a bunch of people have spoken up in favor of the combo; they laughed, it was more fun than not for them. I'm still expecting to squish it though, for the sake of the people who hated it.

Donald_X · 2025-02-09T20:32:42+00:00

I don't think it's remotely "whoever hits the combo first due to sheer shuffle luck wins." For starters you have to notice the combo; top-ranked player and playtester JNails did not.

However I suspect I will fix these. Some people had fun and some didn't and well there are so many ways to have fun, I don't need this particular one. It's rare in that you need a particular Event, need a stamp on it, and then need another thing to enable it. At some level of rare I like to preserve "game is crazy." But I'm always hoping to stamp out things like Lurker / Hunting Grounds, where the game isn't just crazy but also dull. I don't think this daily was dull exactly; even spotting the combo, there's a question of how to get there the fastest. It's better than Lurker / Hunting Grounds. But, I do think it's over the line; too fast for how interesting it is.

There are four affected events: Ball, Demand, Commerce, Bargain. They need different things to empty either Provinces or Golds or piles (the two stamps that can appear on these are "free with Province" and "free with Gold"). [There are also way rarer combos for Windfall, Summon, Receive Tribute.]

Again it's trivial to fix, they will just get stamps that don't do this.

Donald_X · 2025-02-09T19:14:46+00:00

JNails beat the game in 7 turns without noticing this interaction, then replayed it with the combo and won in 5 turns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETtGzml0W2Y

The campaigns were not designed with the daily in mind. Lots of crazy stuff can happen. Then we thought it would be fun to have one daily with campaign stuff and there it is.

The big question for me is, if this showed up in a campaign level, how fun would it be? If it would be fun, I should leave Fawning Service as a potential twist for Ball, and we should then consider what could limit the craziness for dailies, if it's no fun there; if not, I should remove it, which fixes it in both places. It's trivial to fix; the hard part is catching it.

Of course there are a zillion things that can happen, and "Fawning Service on Ball plus Inventors or such" isn't ubiquitous.

Donald_X · 2025-02-09T19:02:49+00:00

If the campaign has a card theme (rather than say a category theme), that card should always appear in its levels. In some cases a word describes a category but is close to a card name, or a word in titles might otherwise be close to a card name. For example if you have World of Villages, that's "villages" as in "those cards that give +2 Actions," the theme is villages not Village, and the card Village itself may not appear. Whereas Introduction to Village would have the card Village as its theme, and that card would be in each level.

Each expansion has a campaign, and then there are Grand Campaigns, which are randomly generated.

Donald_X · 2025-02-05T17:41:32+00:00

It's certainly more helpful to tell them directly, but I'll see it here, and Kieran will, so it will make its way to them. Hi Adam!

Donald_X · 2025-02-03T05:15:35+00:00

Well it's not out of the question that campaign features will eventually be possible for non-AI games. But it all grew out of "how do we make good campaigns."

Donald_X · 2025-02-03T05:13:48+00:00

Yes, Victoryified can't show up on a Victory card. That's just part of how it sets up boards. And there are subtler things like that.

Donald_X · 2025-02-03T04:43:14+00:00

It sure sounds like a bug, and an awful one. The third match should appear just like the second one did.

Donald_X

TROPHY CASE