Daily Dominion 8/31
Posted Aug 31, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC
98
I managed to get all of my points on the last turn, where I bought 8 cities (emptied them), and the AI emptied the duchies. The last round I had like 90 gold and a lot of buys so I bought the seven colonies that were left. Extremely satisfying. The AI had like 65 points and I had like 15 until the last turn and I won, ended on 97, though I think I still had some cash and buys for some provinces, but didn't bother with them.
Edit: writing
2
Ah I was wondering how realistic it would be to get the Cities fully empowered. It seemed risky to me to rely on emptying 2 piles (which piles?) in order to get the Buys. But I suppose it can lead to some very crazy engine popoffs.
2
I played this daily one twice (got two accounts), where I on the second game just rushed all of the cities as fast as I could, but he got a lot of war chests early on. It lead to three piles being almost empty by the time I got my cities. It was closer this time but I still managed to win on my last round again. Managed to pick up like 2 colonies and the last duchy.
2
I again had success with scrying pool. When you hit that with a King's Court you pull a huge fraction of your deck if you're action heavy. I strategically emptied the monuments after city was cleared out to get buys out of City, and with the scrying pools, King's Courts, and cities I was making massive moves in the last 3 turns.
It was a bit of an unexpected catch-up though. The AI was at 83 VP while I was at 24 until the last three turns. I used triple King's Court on monuments, and a few on cities for buys, and in the final turn I emptied 3 colonies and 3 provinces for a final score of 123 to 83. Great fun, didn't think I was going to win that one so I optimized for enjoyment through abusing King's Court.
2
48 cash, 1 buy. Awesome.
I failed at this one, sadly. Tried to monopolize Banks on this one and it was too slow and not very consistent. I have a lot to learn. (I win about 3 of these a week, so I'm not hopeless either)
1
I also abused the ai's poor war chest play on this one. They took a ton of duchies way too early basically junking their own deck. While they did that I just king'd monuments every turn for points and slowly piled the cities. Probably could have won faster but just waited for a huge unnecessary colony buyout once I had the cities powered up
1
So today's Kingdom lacked Buys, but it certainly wasn't lacking in powerful engine components. I had 3 King's Courts by the end and managed to play all of them this turn, including the almighty King's Court onto King's Court. 37 gold wasted, but the game was won.
Also the AI's ability to evaluate War Chest seems pretty bad, it felt like it was completely random given that it chose Province on one turn and Copper on another. Though it did know to block off Duchy's at the end.
Overall it seems bad at War Chest. I got "lucky", and had it deny me City the first 5 or 6 times I used it. Luckily it didn't actually buy any of the Cities for itself so I was able to catch up.