Thread

1. SwellJoe · 1790971326 · focus · HN ↗

   I loved Stratego so much as a kid. But, I eventually couldn't find anyone to play with me because I crushed everyone, including my dad who was much better than me at chess. But, I never would have thought it'd be a game that models would have a hard time with. It feels relatively simple. And, inexplicably, I never even thought that there might be serious players...I've kept the board game, one of the very few things I have from young childhood, but it's been twenty years since I played. I guess it's time to find an online Stratego. Surely someone in the whole world can beat me.

   Too bad I never played against an AI before they cracked it.

   1. m463 · 1790981061 · focus · HN ↗

      > But, I eventually couldn't find anyone to play with me because I crushed everyone

      I think this is a problem with many deeper games. I remember going over to other people's houses and they would pull out obscure-board-game-xyz. The rest of the night for me was trying to figure out how to play, while others were 30 steps ahead of me.

      I think you need something like chess club - stratego club - where people have all gotten to the nuance level and you can play with people of appropriate level.

      1. zahlman · 1790984096 · focus · HN ↗

         I feel like the depth of a lot of board games gets undersold simply because of how inconvenient it would be to play a large number of games physically. And/or because it's easy at the start to try something complicated, fail to get it right and end up concluding wrongly that only the simple things actually work.

         At one point in my life I got in literally thousands of games of Dominion, and I was definitely still not as good as some of the people I discussed the game with online, but in person I could barely find anyone to play with, ever. (In fact, of the people I knew who were familiar with it, few even seemed to think it was any good as a game.)

         1. xyzzy_plugh · 1790986320 · focus · HN ↗

            I've played a lot of Dominion with people who have played thousands of games. I've even beat them with some frequency (it's not that hard!).

            I don't think Dominion is a good game. It's good if you maybe think cubing is good. And it can be a lot of fun!

            But as a game? It's not good. If you have no idea what you are doing and are totally unfamiliar, you can even win pretty easily with some luck. But you won't understand why you won, or rather why others lost.

            There are many, many games where everyone can read the rules together and be, more or less, on even footing. Dominion can sometimes be that way, but it can pretty easily be extremely opposite of that.

            1. SubiculumCode · 1790987889 · focus · HN ↗

               Or another way of saying it, when the default no-thinking baseline strategy can win frequently enough by chance that it becomes difficult to learn from a single game. In this case, just 'buy silver, then gold, then provinces) can win too often just by chance.

               1. eszed · 1791039234 · focus · HN ↗

                  Yeah, but that's what makes it such a good game, in my opinion. Ten or so years ago I played a lot with / against two friends. With other "deep"(-ish) games someone who's never played before never has even a remote chance against experienced players - we had other games we'd never pull out with a n00b at the table - but with Dominion you can give them that strategy, plus a few tips, like "trashing cards is really helpful", and they know enough to hang. They'll lose, mostly, but they won't be immediately crushed, and they'll want to play again.

                  Anyway, the main fun is trying to get an approach working with unfamiliar card combinations - and yes, we owned all the expansions, thank you for asking. :-)

                  1. kelseyfrog · 1791043617 · focus · HN ↗

                     There's a level of play in Dominion where it feels like there's two turns. One starts before the first card is played where you devise a strategy given the board. The second is just playing it out. Dominion leaves very little room for strategy switching - if you devise a second rate strategy, there's no realistic way to catch up. Very little of a player's choices depend on the actions opponents have taken. Short of a stack running out, curses, and a few others, you're mostly playing solo. That lack of being able to adapt is why I can't, even after hundreds of games, I can't bring myself to play it anymore.

                     1. eszed · 1791112428 · focus · HN ↗

                        That's a fair point. Fortunately, most games are short enough that you don't lose a lot of time when that happens. Mostly, though, I see a way I could have tweaked my card mix a bit to have made it work, so I want to play the same board again.

                        But, sure, if you're looking for a game with a lot of player interaction then Dominion isn't for you.

            2. GoatOfAplomb · 1790993104 · focus · HN ↗

               >If you have no idea what you are doing and are totally unfamiliar, you can even win pretty easily with some luck. But you won't understand why you won, or rather why others lost.

               Interesting, this is a _feature_ of poker games like Texas Hold'em. If the losing players didn't go on convincing winning streaks, they'd stop playing. And those winning streaks can convince them they don't need to learn anything else about the game in order to be a winning player.

               1. xyzzy_plugh · 1790997976 · focus · HN ↗

                  The key difference is gambling.

                  Have you ever gambled over a game of Dominion? I wouldn't.

                  Have you ever played Hold'em without gambling? I wouldn't either.

               2. matwood · 1791010643 · focus · HN ↗

                  I’ve played a lot of Hold’em and don’t really see that. Sure, any single hand could be won with luck by a clueless player, but even over a short amount of time, the lesser player will lose.

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