Race and Dominion puzzles
Here are two puzzles (sorry, not Mystery-Hunt type puzzles) for those of you out there who like Race for the Galaxy and Dominion (one for each game).
Dominion: What's the most money you can get in a single turn playing solitaire?
Dominion: Using all expansions, I managed to get 1878 money on one turn. I didn't work that hard at optimizing the strategy, so you can probably do better. I also didn't restrict myself to subsets of the set of expansions, which would also be interesting.
RFTG:
Methods below...
Methods
Dominion:
For the first part of the game, I buy up 1 Potion, 8 Workers Villages, 10 Coppersmiths, 9 Laboratories, 9 Cities, 9 Council Rooms, 1 Royal Seal, 9 Alchemists, 9 Grand Markets and 10 King's Courts. On the penultimate turn, I buy 52 coppers, putting them in my discard pile, 1 Counting House onto my deck, 1 Worker's Village ON TOP of the Counting House, and then stack the Alchemists on top of that. On the final turn, make sure that each Coppersmith is King's Courted, and that the rest of the King's Courts go toward Grand Markets.
It's pretty hilarious to see 59 coppers in your hand on Isotropic. On my final turn, I managed to buy out all of the kingdom cards except the last Grand Market (which I couldn't buy, having played 59 coppers this turn). I had $1558 left over. You can find the transcript here.
Let me know if you beat this, either with this strategy or another one.
RFTG:
For base+exp1:
COMMON CARDS:
THREE+ PLAYER:
For base+exp1+exp2:
COMMON CARDS:
THREE+ PLAYER:
For base+exp1+exp2+exp3:
Here I only did 6 player. The strategy now is to get as much prestige as you can (and cards that give you points for lots of prestige). You have a clock running as soon as you start gaining prestige, since you get one VP chip per turn once you gain the first prestige.
You now get to play some fun games with the fact that your opponents are cooperating with you. Your cardflow comes from the fact that you've played Retrofit and Salvage, Inc., and that the opponents have optimized their builds for maximum TOTAL cardflow. They then give you lots of cards at the end of each turn, so you have an effectively unlimited budget to play cards. Using this tactic, you can go through the whole deck every other turn (maybe every turn? I don't think you can make it, but I could be wrong).
Once you start playing cards that give prestige, you need to go as fast as you can; before this you can set up as much as you want.
BEFORE FIRST PRESTIGE:
ENTERING STEADY STATE (produce, let opponents develop and settle and explore):
play Alien Departure Point
sac for Imperium Capital
play Alien Guardian
play Hidden Fortress
sac for Pan-Galactic Security Council
STEADY STATE (you produce, opponents explore, develop, settle, trade)
sac Imperium Invasion Fleet to blow something up with the Imperium Planet Buster. Opponents settle new targets as appropriate.
Turn 72 (you consume x2. 14+2 prestige gained)
develop Galactic Rennaissance
settle Alien Monolith
FINAL TABLEAUX:
Alien Research Team (1)
Federation Capital (1137)
Retrofit and Salvage, Inc. (1)
Pan Galactic Hologrid (12)
Ravaged Uplift World (-1)
Uplift Gene Breeders (0)
Hidden Fortress (3)
Imperium Planet Buster (9)
Alien Departure Point (9)
Imperium Capital (6)
Pan Galactic Affluence (1139)
Alien Guardian (9)
Pan-Galactic Security Council (1)
Galactic Renaissance (24)
Alien Monolith (8)
74 VP chips
1137 prestige
I'm sure this is the right strategy, but I may have mis-executed it a bit. Feel free to correct or fill in the missing numbers of players.
Dominion: What's the most money you can get in a single turn playing solitaire?
- With the new VP chips, total score isn't that interesting anymore. Victory points gained in a single turn might be fun, but I like this better. :-)
- Don't use Native Villages: that's just cheating, since you have arbitrarily many turns.
- No shenanigans like "If I wait arbitrarily long, then I can get my deck into any configuration I'd like with probability 1!" I want a strategy that someone can actually execute.
- The answer varies by number of players and which expansions you're using. Feel free to just pick one, or do them all.
- You get to choose your starting world.
- Unlike the Dominion puzzle, I'm going to allow shenanigans. I find this puzzle more interesting if you can stack the deck whenever you shuffle. It's not needed for all the solutions, though it will make all the games go faster since you don't have to wade through the deck looking for the next card you need.
Dominion: Using all expansions, I managed to get 1878 money on one turn. I didn't work that hard at optimizing the strategy, so you can probably do better. I also didn't restrict myself to subsets of the set of expansions, which would also be interesting.
RFTG:
- 2 player (base + exp1): 143
- 3 player (base + exp1): 136
- 4 player (base + exp1): 152
- 2 player (base + exp1 + exp2): 204
- 3 player (base + exp1 + exp2): 184
- 4 player (base + exp1 + exp2): 200
- 6 player (base + exp1 + exp2 + exp3): 3569
Methods below...
Methods
Dominion:
- Potion
- Worker's Village
- Coppersmith
- Laboratory
- Counting House
- City
- Council Room
- Royal Seal
- Alchemist
- Grand Market
- King's Court
For the first part of the game, I buy up 1 Potion, 8 Workers Villages, 10 Coppersmiths, 9 Laboratories, 9 Cities, 9 Council Rooms, 1 Royal Seal, 9 Alchemists, 9 Grand Markets and 10 King's Courts. On the penultimate turn, I buy 52 coppers, putting them in my discard pile, 1 Counting House onto my deck, 1 Worker's Village ON TOP of the Counting House, and then stack the Alchemists on top of that. On the final turn, make sure that each Coppersmith is King's Courted, and that the rest of the King's Courts go toward Grand Markets.
It's pretty hilarious to see 59 coppers in your hand on Isotropic. On my final turn, I managed to buy out all of the kingdom cards except the last Grand Market (which I couldn't buy, having played 59 coppers this turn). I had $1558 left over. You can find the transcript here.
Let me know if you beat this, either with this strategy or another one.
RFTG:
For base+exp1:
COMMON CARDS:
- Improved Logistics (2)
- Galactic Federation (15)
- Alien Tech Institute (14 in 2p, 10 in 3+p)
- Galactic Imperium (12 in 2p, 9 in 3+p)
- Galactic Survey: SETI (10 in 2p, 8 in 3+p)
- New Galactic Order (9 in 2p, 8 in 3+p)
- Imperium Lords (12 in 2p, 10 in 3+p)
- Lost Alien Battle Fleet (4)
- Lost Alien Warship (3)
- Rebel Homeworld (7)
- Rebel Outpost (5)
- Damaged Alien Factory (2)
- Rebel Colony (4)
- Rebel Base (6)
- Terraforming Guild (8)
- Deserted Alien Library (5)
- Alien Robot Scout Ship (2)
THREE+ PLAYER:
- Galactic Rennaissance (12 in 3p, 16 in 4p)
For base+exp1+exp2:
COMMON CARDS:
- Imperium Blaster Gem Consortium (4) (from Doomed World)
- Galactic Federation (17)
- Galactic Imperium (14 in 2p, 10 in 3+p)
- Imperium Lords (18 in 2p, 15 in 3+p)
- New Galactic Order (16 in 2p, 10 in 3+p)
- Galactic Survey: SETI (13 in 2p, 10 in 3+p)
- Rebel Alliance (16 in 2p, 12 in 3+p)
- Rebel Colony (4)
- Hidden Fortress (3)
- Imperium Seat (22 in 2p, 20 in 3+p)
- Improved Logistics (2)
- Rebel Stronghold (9)
- Rebel Base (6)
- Rebel Outpost (5)
- Rebel Homeworld (7)
- Prospecting Guild (11)
- Lost Alien Battle Fleet (4)
- Rebel Underground (4)
- Alien Monolith (8)
THREE+ PLAYER:
- Galactic Rennaissance (13 in 3p, 17 in 4p)
For base+exp1+exp2+exp3:
Here I only did 6 player. The strategy now is to get as much prestige as you can (and cards that give you points for lots of prestige). You have a clock running as soon as you start gaining prestige, since you get one VP chip per turn once you gain the first prestige.
You now get to play some fun games with the fact that your opponents are cooperating with you. Your cardflow comes from the fact that you've played Retrofit and Salvage, Inc., and that the opponents have optimized their builds for maximum TOTAL cardflow. They then give you lots of cards at the end of each turn, so you have an effectively unlimited budget to play cards. Using this tactic, you can go through the whole deck every other turn (maybe every turn? I don't think you can make it, but I could be wrong).
Once you start playing cards that give prestige, you need to go as fast as you can; before this you can set up as much as you want.
BEFORE FIRST PRESTIGE:
- Alien Research Team
- Retrofit and Salvage, Inc.
- Pan Galactic Hologrid
- Federation Capital (play this after the 6 cost developments; you're not ready to go yet)
- Ravaged Uplift World (don't produce after playing this until you're ready to go)
- Uplift Gene Breeders (don't produce after playing this until you're ready to go)
ENTERING STEADY STATE (produce, let opponents develop and settle and explore):
- Turn 0 (6 prestige gained)
play Alien Departure Point
- Turn 1 (12 prestige gained)
sac for Imperium Capital
- Turn 2 (12 prestige gained)
play Alien Guardian
- Turn 3 (11 prestige gained)
play Hidden Fortress
- Turn 4 (10 prestige gained)
sac for Pan-Galactic Security Council
STEADY STATE (you produce, opponents explore, develop, settle, trade)
- Each turn (16 prestige gained)
sac Imperium Invasion Fleet to blow something up with the Imperium Planet Buster. Opponents settle new targets as appropriate.
Turn 72 (you consume x2. 14+2 prestige gained)
develop Galactic Rennaissance
settle Alien Monolith
FINAL TABLEAUX:
Alien Research Team (1)
Federation Capital (1137)
Retrofit and Salvage, Inc. (1)
Pan Galactic Hologrid (12)
Ravaged Uplift World (-1)
Uplift Gene Breeders (0)
Hidden Fortress (3)
Imperium Planet Buster (9)
Alien Departure Point (9)
Imperium Capital (6)
Pan Galactic Affluence (1139)
Alien Guardian (9)
Pan-Galactic Security Council (1)
Galactic Renaissance (24)
Alien Monolith (8)
74 VP chips
1137 prestige
I'm sure this is the right strategy, but I may have mis-executed it a bit. Feel free to correct or fill in the missing numbers of players.