Messages

1

Lost Cities / Low Cards, discards and picking up

« on: 22/08/19, 05:42am »

So, it may be difficult to iterate on developing your strategy with Lost Cities because there's a lot of luck, so you can't exactly tell if individual decisions are +ev or -ev.

This won't be a math post, haven't exactly grasped Lost Cities math, also there's not a lot of posts on it.

So what do you think about discards? Some people do it often, to buy time and also gamble for investment cards. I think I rarely do discard and usually just play the low card. But maybe I'm not using discards to their full potential. Also one downside is that the opponent can discard investment cards.

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And how about picking up discards.

Obviously good to get an 8 card bonus but usually you won't get an 8 card bonus even if you pick up discards.

The most basic scenario is a 2 that was discarded and you have a doubler. Disregarding the 8 card bonus, is it worth it to pick up the 2? You get 4 points but the opponent gets to draw an extra card. The card the opponent gets can be worth more than 4 points. You also miss out on more doublers but you don't always want to risk having more. Benefit is that you also get some tempo to play the 2 (delay time). Tempo can be worth a lot, maybe the card draw for the opponent is worth less in the early game. I generally do this but not sure if it's +ev.

So, I'm not really that sure how bad picking up discards are, or how good.

2

World, castle, market... / Re: Grocery sense?

« on: 22/08/19, 05:31am »

Lol, the grocery can get old. Doesn't really seem worth it. Just bought it once to try it and used it once.

3

Tutorial, training, online play / Re: Any info on how the AI works?

« on: 17/08/19, 09:22pm »

So, interestingly I think I do quite well against other players but the computer can be hard to beat. Computer seems to play quite differently than normal players. Very aggressive discards, see discards up to 4,5. Most humans just avoid aggressive discards, not sure when to use them or how to counter.

Obviously, the program will also recognize the end game and try not to get stuck with all his good cards in hand at the end (as we humans always do).

I think this might be one of the weakness's of the AI. I think it delays the endgame too often. It might be correct to delay the endgame at that point, but it might've been better to play more cards earlier (or not start a new colour so late).