F.A.Q.

How do I start simulating?

Check out the tab “My first simulations”.

I don’t see the games played out when I click the Quick/Accurate Simulation button!?

The games are played in the background. If you want to see a game played out, just click on the “Sample Game”-button to see one random game out of those 1000 games.

What do the graphs mean?

The graph in the top right corner indicates the average amount of Victory Points gained by each player each turn. The graph in the bottom right corner shows the average $ available for each player each turn. The bar graph shows the win percentage of all players and the percentage of tied games (ties bar).

Where/how do I define the 10 starting Kingdoms of a game?

You don’t need to. The available Kingdoms on the board will be the ones in the chosen player’s buy rules. (This means there will sometimes be less than 10 Kingdoms) . If you want to add cards to the board, but not to the buy rules of the bot, you can do this by clicking the “board” tab in the editor.

What does Big Money, Engine, Combo… mean in the player types?

These indicate the type of strategy. “big money”-strategies will get a few actions, but are mainly going for Gold or other good treasures. “engine”-strategies will go for some combination of actions to get the needed $ (sometimes with a few treasures thrown in). “Combo” stands for a strategy relying heavily on a combination of 2 (or more cards). These Combos are described in more detail on dominionstrategy.com. “annotated games” are bots based on the same series published on dominionstrategy.com. “Colony” bots are strategies for Colony boards. “Three/Four player” means the bot is tuned for a multi player game (3 or 4 players). “Computer generated” bots are not optimized in any way and you’ll need to modify them yourself to get best results.

Where are the card images?

I used to have all the card images to aid in constructing the player’s buy rules, but Donald X. couldn’t allow me to use them (he designed the game).

I don’t understand how these buy rules work

Check out the “How does it work” tab for more details.

I tried to create my own strategy, but the Editor confuses me

Go to the Edit/Create tab for more info.

Where and how do I define the play rules?

You can’t/don’t need to. Find the play rules for most cards here. I chose to let the actions play out automatically to decrease complexity when creating your own player strategies. This is fine for cards that involve little player choices like Laboratory, because you will play that card 99% of the time, but Remodel involves a lot more complex decisions so will sometimes be played wrong by the simulator.

Can I play a game against the simulator?

No. I might implement this in the future.

Can I generate a random set of 10 Kingdoms with the simulator?

No. I might implement this in the future.

My friend sent me an e-mail with a player strategy, but it’s a bunch of weird code. What do I do with it?

That’s the XML-code that contains the buy rules. Just copy it in your clipboard and click the copy/paste button next to an empty player. Voila, you can now simulate your friend’s strategy.

How does the “Colonize” button work?

When you press this button all the currently selected strategies will be modified so they will work in a Colony setup. A Colony line will be added to the top of the buy rules and a Platinum line will be added after the last green card line (most of the time after Estate). Then the Province, Duchy and Estate buy rule conditions will be reset and appropriate conditions will be added so they work better in a Colony setup (for instance, Provinces will be bought after there are 6 or less Colonies left in the supply). A little caveat: it’s better to manually modify your bot for Colony games. Your bot might not want to buy Colony at the first opportunity, but wait until its engine is properly built.

What is the Start State tab for in the bot editor?

You can set a start state different from the normal 7 Copper, 3 Estate. This is interesting to test mid-game decisions or for instance to find out how bad you’ll lose when you have $2P versus $3P in a Familiar game (see the Familiar (lucky/unlucky 3rd turn) – bots)