Neal Tibrewala

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	3,639 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	2 years, 5 months
315 badges		location			seen	May 7 at 5:58

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Oct 24	comment	When would you buy the Thief in Dominion? True. Advanced Dominion strategy involves knowing when you're behind, early, so you can take risky adjustments to catch up. The thief is just one of those adjustments. It's a 'chance' to turn the tide, so only buy/use it when warranted.
Oct 17	comment	If I own both Utilities but mortgage one, do I get 10x or 4x the die roll in rent from the unmortgaged one? The question is asking about the unusual case of owning both, having one mortgaged, and landing on the other. Your answer provides the evidence needed to come to the right conclusion, but it doesn't actually answer the question, which could be better asked as "Does a mortgaged utility COUNT for purposes of getting the 10x dice roll on the other utility"? Even with the evidence you provide, someone could (incorrectly) argue that "even through it is still owned, it doesn't COUNT because it is mortgaged".
Oct 4	comment	What are good general strategies for Pandemic? Can be, yes, but it's risky early as you don't know yet how often that color will be coming up. This is why i suggest it only for a player who can't help make progress toward the next cure that turn.
Oct 4	comment	If I own both Utilities but mortgage one, do I get 10x or 4x the die roll in rent from the unmortgaged one? This answer could use clarification. If you own both, but one is mortgaged, you get 10x for people landing on the unmortgaged one, but don't get anything from people landing on the mortgaged onr.
May 18	comment	What is a Gateway Game? I would add that gateway games, specifically, have relatively more luck than other complex games. This allows newer people to 'win' more often, despite good strategy from experienced players.
May 8	comment	Can an optimal strategy for Roll Through the Ages be created for two player games on modern hardware? Are you willing to accept probabilistic pruning of subtrees? (e.g. not exploring a subtree if you know within a certain high probability that it isn't optimal) If so, you can reduce the strategies to goal-based ones, and solve it much more quickly.
May 8	comment	How can Hot Spots be cleared? There is no way to remove them. There have been rumors of an expansion adding character cards with that ability.
Apr 13	comment	Computer Go algorithms applied to other games? Some of this comes down to the definition of "fail". The MC Catan AI will play 'well', and may beat other AIs, but they claim it is only a "Challenging Opponent" implying it's still possible for humans to win. In general, any MC search requires that the good moves and bad moves are in a fairly reasonable ratio. Put another way, there's an upper bound on how good an MC-based AI can be, which a classical pruning AI can beat (in non-degenerate cases).
Apr 13	comment	Computer Go algorithms applied to other games? @StéphaneGimenez Sorry you disagree. My claim is that MC Search is only necessary in Go because of the difficulty in creating a useful evaluation function. Most other board games do not have the complexity of Go, and are easy to write evaluation functions. Therefore, it's not necessary to create an MC-based AI, and doing so would be needlessly long and expensive to run (though they would be easier to 'write').
Apr 13	comment	Computer Go algorithms applied to other games? All, great comments. @shujaa, for example, once you are down a certain number of pieces, loss is almost inevitable. However, random play won't show that, as it's likely the other side will lose two 'randomly'. These certainties are enough so that Chess is being 'solved' because of the near certainty of certain evaluations. "games.slashdot.org/story/12/04/02/2043240/…;
Apr 4	comment	Chess variant that allows humans to be competitive vs computers @Roundtower, of course you're right, something being listed on chessvariants.org absolutely supports your claim that it is NOT a chess variant. :)
Apr 3	comment	When should I choose an Explore card in Race For The Galaxy? I very often chose explore when I think my opponent is already choosing the thing I really want.
Feb 13	comment	To what extent do mobile adaptations of board games change the games? You would rather I take the top 10 game adaptations and ask individually how they differ from the physical versions? I just want a sense of how common this practice is and how it's received.
Feb 13	comment	To what extent do mobile adaptations of board games change the games? Sure. In Reiner Knizia's Money, the iPhone version had slightly different mechanics, and wasn't true to the rules (it was changed in later updates of the app), for example, the number of currencies didn't scale down to the number of players (as the print rules proscribe).
Feb 6	comment	What kingdom set would lead to the highest scoring games of Dominion? You might want to clarify if you're looking for a set that has high scores when players are playing to win, or when players are cooperating to obtain high overall scores.
Feb 4	comment	How does the cost of designer board games compare to other forms of entertainment? It would be appropriate to add Music and Video on Demand. For music, If I have a collection of about 100 albums at a cost of about $15/album, which I listen to about an hour a day over ten years (random rotation), I'm paying $1500 to enjoy 3650 hours of music or about $0.41/hr. For Netflix, I watch about 50 hours per month for a cost of $10/mo. So that's $0.20/hr.
Jan 30	comment	With Print&Play board games, should the focus be beauty or simplicity? I haven't printed a game in a good long time, but I just downloaded one, and my first thought was "wow, this looks like crap" and I was far less inclined to print and play it. Take that for what it's worth.
Jan 28	comment	Why do cards have different rarity levels in Magic: The Gathering? I'd put #3 as #1, but the other two are also true.
Jan 25	comment	Do good bridge players memorize all cards played? This gets to semantics around 'good'. If you're playing casually, usually partners won't have detailed sequential defensive signalling techniques. If you're playing in a tournament setting, then you likely will want these. However, I posit that you can register defensive signals without memorizing every card, just like you can understand a written paragraph, and repeat its meaning, without being able to exactly replicate each word in order.
Jan 23	comment	What's a good strategy for Shadows over Camelot? I tried to find it on BGG, but I failed. I believe it was in the strategy/files download section (instead of the forum). If anyone finds it, please link it. It was quite interesting, involving drawing up all the cards, adding catapults to be able to accuse, accusing around the table, and keeping piety going so no one ever had to draw a black card.