Dominion Deck Simulator Lessons

 Some things I noticed...

•  Labs are so much better than villages and smithies for deck control.  If you have 6 stop cards (imagine they are nonterminal actions like lighthouses), then 2 labs is better than 5 villages and 3 smithies.
• It's also interesting how if you set constant the number of villages plus smithies, the optimal split is highly in favor of villages, with example optimal village/smithy ratios of 5/2 and 8/3 (assuming 6 stop cards in deck).  So, interestingly, even if you are just focusing on deck control, you will often have surplus actions for your terminal stop cards.
• In fact, even if you have more villages than smithies, adding a smithy can reduce your chances of drawing your whole deck.  For instance, with {6 lighthouses, 5 villages, 3 smithies}, adding a smithy makes your chances of playing all lighthouses go from 88.5% to 87.2%.

Table for 6 lighthouses

total cards	stop cards (like lighthouses)	village	smithy	lab	chance to play all nondraw payload cards (drawn live, not dead; pretend they are lighthouses)
8	6	1	1		0.446
9	6	2	1		0.594
10	6	2	2		0.695
7	6			1	0.714
11	6	3	2		0.784
12	6	4	2		0.830
13	6	5	2		0.854
14	6	5	3		0.885
8	6			2	0.893
15	6	6	3		0.909
16	6	7	3		0.923
17	6	7	4		0.930
17	6	8	3		0.932
18	6	8	4		0.944
9	6			3	0.952
19	6	9	4		0.953
10	6			4	0.976
11	6			5	0.987
12	6			6	0.993

 

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