If you’re not getting curses at all the only way you could lose points (IIRC) is by trashing victory point cards. Trashing your estates early in the game is common–is that what you’re doing?

Data from real play on the old website that ran Dominion online.

That openings page is fascinating. Where do the numbers come from? Some kind of head-to-head mass simulation?

It would depend on how money rolled out and what other actions I’m taking. Assuming there’s something I really want to Throne Room I’d probably try to get it into the second reshuffle–so turn 4? If it’s just going to be gravy and not a central part of my strategy probably the mid-game–around turn 8 or 9 in a normally-paced game.

awesome, thanks! in a similar vein, do you have a feel/rule of thumb for how long to wait before buying first throne room? after buying 4 actions?

I’ve never thought about trying to mathematically figure out how to balance terminal and non-terminal actions. I’ve just developed a feel for it when I play frequently. I think that would be a hard thing to quantify, as you’d have to weigh the negative of drawing multiple terminals against the relative advantage of those cards against the opportunity cost.

For further opening analysis, dominionstrategy.com is a fantastic resource. There’s also this list, which I believe took data from the old isometric site to determine the best openings. It’s only applicable to the first few expansions, but it’s interesting data. http://councilroom.com/openings

Thanks for this, it’s got some good tips to help concretize concepts I’m trying to wrap my head around as a fairly new player.

For #7, is there any rule of thumb for how many terminals to balance against +1Action/+2Action cards, like 1 terminal per village, 1/2 terminal per cantrip, or something like that?

Also, for #5 (and #1, and #2, and I guess kind of all of them), is there any tool out there that you can enter a kingdom, and it will tell you (almost as well as a human expert) ‘the best strategy is to open with these two buys, and build to the following set of actions: …’ ?

You are correct. Thanks!

Uh, I mean 1 – (2 * (5 choose 3) / (10 choose 3)). Doh.