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Isotropic (Dominion)
I don't know if any of you play on Isotropic, but if you do, we should play sometime! (I'm amoeba amoeba) Meanwhile, post epic games/results.
Comments
http://boardgamearena.com
is also a great site that has Dominion Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy and a bunch of other games.
I just played IRL using fishing village, bishop, city, grand market, bridge, mountebank, and some others. I won w/ 140points. thanks
Still, some people are really smart. This one game the final score was 8 to 6. He ended it right as I was about to buy all the provinces by buying all the cellars.
http://councilroom.com/game?game_id=game-20120112-210851-28c4873d.html
iphone app, temporarily free!!
First is that when colonies are in play, the game still ends if just provinces run out. That is bullshit. It's a colony game now. The game should only end if colonies run out, or three other piles. If just provinces run out and the game ends, that's garbage. Someone can just play an easier and faster strategy that clears out the provinces faster than anyone can get colonies. It should be a harder game that forces you to get the colonies.
Second is that depending on which cards you are playing with, the luck factor can be too big. I played a game earlier where it was a typical rush for the witches. I was doing the exact same thing as the other guy. But due to the luck of the draw, he was able to give me all the curses, and even king's court the witches. I was trying to do the same thing. Had the exact same opening moves. I just drew the words hands, and he drew the best hands. Then because he started out slightly faster, I was slowed down by being full of curses, and there were no trashes. The momentum carried straight through to the end.
The other part I like is that even if there is an optimal strategy for a particular set of cards, you can potentially win by taking one of the other strategies that show themselves. I've found that the players on this particular service are overall very predictable and always go for certain obvious winning card combinations (everyone seems to love infinite action regression of some sort). So, especially with 3 or 4 player games, I go for a lot of alternative strategies. It certainly doesn't always work, but I still am able to keep myself entertained.
But luck is going to be a big factor no matter what, which is why I think of Dominion as a light, fun game, and not a serious competitive game. This is not to say that you can't do a lot to mitigate the luck factor, but there are times when you'll just get hosed.
have also won by ambassadoring the last colony...
I think a simple way to fix this is for every player to have the same number of turns exactly.
Another more complicated fix would be to add "extra" cards to empty piles. For example, let's say I went first and a card pile empties on my turn. That pile is still considered empty for determining whether the game will end this round. However, until the round actually ends and every player has taken the same number of turns, those piles still infinitely spit out cards.
This does have some interesting side effects, though. I could create some sort of infinite curse machine that gives out like 20 curses in one turn. If there were only 5 left during my turn, it would give each of the other players just one more turn to try to dish curses onto me. It would also create weird situations with cards like the ambassador.