3 ms·

I wouldn't say that's procedural content, I would say that it's emergent, or even less impressively, combinatorial. I would probably call it emergent, in that

by newobj 12y ago

I wouldn't say that's procedural content, I would say that it's emergent, or even less impressively, combinatorial. I would probably call it emergent, in that the designers likely could not test the entire state space of all strategies. What's impressive, in light of that, is that the game ends up balanced, or at least not fundamentally broken. To your point though, is that the "content" (cards) introduces mechanics. Most procedural gameplay content doesn't necessarily introduce mechanics. That's why it's easy to feel "boring".

aetherson 12y ago
Dominion is balanced largely through the fact that it's symmetrical. No matter how good or bad the kingdom cards, both players are interacting with them in the same way, so, barring things like writing cards that give additional advantage to the first player, it's hard to unbalance it. If you played "a game like Dominion, except each player had their own independent set of Kingdom cards," it would be big-time not balanced. Like, kingdom sets aren't balanced against each other. Or perhaps you meant that it's balanced like "a given card tends to be about as good as a given other card." But that's just... not very true. In any Kingdom, there are typically a few must-buys and a few must-not-buys, and there are cards that are almost never good buys and cards that are almost always good buys. Source: played a few thousand games of Dominion on isotropic back when that was a thing. Disclaimer: Haven't played Dominion since Hinterlands, so this may not still be accurate.
- newobj 12y ago
  Thanks for clarifying, I've only casually played Dominion.
- quarterto 12y ago
  Dark Ages and Guilds don't change this.
MisterBastahrd 12y ago
Oh, you can definitely break the game with the wrong combination of cards in the same game. When we were starting to play, I did just that... I could essentially cycle through my entire deck on a single turn. But here you can always choose which cards to include or exclude, so the overall game is mostly not breakable unless you choose to or luck into it.

by newobj 12y ago

aetherson 12y ago

Dominion is balanced largely through the fact that it's symmetrical. No matter how good or bad the kingdom cards, both players are interacting with them in the same way, so, barring things like writing cards that give additional advantage to the first player, it's hard to unbalance it. If you played "a game like Dominion, except each player had their own independent set of Kingdom cards," it would be big-time not balanced. Like, kingdom sets aren't balanced against each other. Or perhaps you meant that it's balanced like "a given card tends to be about as good as a given other card." But that's just... not very true. In any Kingdom, there are typically a few must-buys and a few must-not-buys, and there are cards that are almost never good buys and cards that are almost always good buys. Source: played a few thousand games of Dominion on isotropic back when that was a thing. Disclaimer: Haven't played Dominion since Hinterlands, so this may not still be accurate.

newobj 12y ago
Thanks for clarifying, I've only casually played Dominion.
quarterto 12y ago
Dark Ages and Guilds don't change this.

MisterBastahrd 12y ago

Oh, you can definitely break the game with the wrong combination of cards in the same game. When we were starting to play, I did just that... I could essentially cycle through my entire deck on a single turn. But here you can always choose which cards to include or exclude, so the overall game is mostly not breakable unless you choose to or luck into it.