Proliferate and counters
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Proliferate and counters
by Korath » 08 Mar 2014, 02:54
The major new feature in the upcoming patch is to give each counter type its own artwork and let any card have any type of counter.
An Aven Riftwatcher with three time counters, a phylactery counter (from Phylactery Lich), two -2/-1 counters (from Contagion), a +0/+1 counter (from Dwarven Armorer), three +1/+1 counters (from Ashnod's Transmogrant and Nature's Blessing), and a divinity counter (from That Which Was Taken).
This becomes a problem with the proliferate mechanic. (An example for reference: Contagion Clasp .) Previously, since a card could only have +/- counters and a type specific to its card, finding the best type was easy: if it's controlled by your opponent, add the worst minus power/toughness counter it has; otherwise, if it has any of its special type, add that; otherwise, add the best plus power/toughness counter it has. This worked fairly well, with a few exceptions like Dark Depths and Bloodletter Quill (where the cards' special counters are detrimental).
The waters are a lot murkier now.
What I need is a list ranking each counter type on a scale from -10000 to 10000. Counters with values below 0 are detrimental, and the type with the lowest value will be picked to put on the opponent's cards; counters with values above 0 are beneficial, and the type with the highest value will be picked to put on the proliferator's cards.
Counters with a value of 0 are assumed to have no possible effect (like the manifestation counter from Arbiter of the Ideal, but not just one that has no current effect, like a divinity counter once That Which Was Taken has left play), and won't be added with proliferate. They may still be picked to be added or removed by other effects, like Chisei, Heart of Oceans, though.
No two counter types should share the same exact value, other than 0; this is why the range is so wide, even though there's only 124 counter types.
If anyone's feeling especially industrious, the values can be made dependent on the gamestate: for instance, a divinity counter might be worth 9000 if it's on one of the five Myojin cards; 8500 if the card it's on has a Bant effect ("That creature is indestructible as long as it has a divinity counter on it."); 8000 if there's a That Which Was Taken in play; or else 150.
This becomes a problem with the proliferate mechanic. (An example for reference: Contagion Clasp .) Previously, since a card could only have +/- counters and a type specific to its card, finding the best type was easy: if it's controlled by your opponent, add the worst minus power/toughness counter it has; otherwise, if it has any of its special type, add that; otherwise, add the best plus power/toughness counter it has. This worked fairly well, with a few exceptions like Dark Depths and Bloodletter Quill (where the cards' special counters are detrimental).
The waters are a lot murkier now.
- An exhaustive list of counter types, and fairly complete list of what puts them on anything | Open
What I need is a list ranking each counter type on a scale from -10000 to 10000. Counters with values below 0 are detrimental, and the type with the lowest value will be picked to put on the opponent's cards; counters with values above 0 are beneficial, and the type with the highest value will be picked to put on the proliferator's cards.
Counters with a value of 0 are assumed to have no possible effect (like the manifestation counter from Arbiter of the Ideal, but not just one that has no current effect, like a divinity counter once That Which Was Taken has left play), and won't be added with proliferate. They may still be picked to be added or removed by other effects, like Chisei, Heart of Oceans, though.
No two counter types should share the same exact value, other than 0; this is why the range is so wide, even though there's only 124 counter types.
If anyone's feeling especially industrious, the values can be made dependent on the gamestate: for instance, a divinity counter might be worth 9000 if it's on one of the five Myojin cards; 8500 if the card it's on has a Bant effect ("That creature is indestructible as long as it has a divinity counter on it."); 8000 if there's a That Which Was Taken in play; or else 150.
Last edited by Korath on 18 Apr 2014, 09:20, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by gmzombie » 08 Mar 2014, 03:47
dude you are doing things that blow my mind..keep up the great work.
can I maze of ith your snowstorm?
http://home.comcast.net/~gmzombie/index.html old stuff in here. don't use this stuff right now till I get time to get back into it and readjust.
http://home.comcast.net/~gmzombie/index.html old stuff in here. don't use this stuff right now till I get time to get back into it and readjust.
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by Aswan jaguar » 08 Mar 2014, 06:09
gmzombie I would applaud even without the incredible work Korath done in this one just for the work to find and write down all the cards with counters. 
Maybe this question for help should be advertised in the main topic so more people can see it.I believe this needs to be done by a player who knows how to play really well proliferate decks and has good knowledge of the cards and of course is willing to help.I can't be of any help with the first 2 important steps.
Maybe this question for help should be advertised in the main topic so more people can see it.I believe this needs to be done by a player who knows how to play really well proliferate decks and has good knowledge of the cards and of course is willing to help.I can't be of any help with the first 2 important steps.
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Trying to squash some bugs and playtesting.
Trying to squash some bugs and playtesting.
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by Sonic » 08 Mar 2014, 14:33
Humm... sounds yummy. What artwork format are we looking at... Vertical bmp strip maybe?
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NOOOOOOOOOOO!
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by Korath » 09 Mar 2014, 02:48
You can put them in a vertical strip if you really want to. The geometry's specified in Duel.dat.
- Current art, at 1/3 scale so the file's not immense
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by Nexhro » 10 Mar 2014, 01:39
Is it too much work or not doable to integrate a selector popup that detects the different types of counters on permanents into the proliferate cards? After all, there's not too many cards that have the ability.
The problem I see with ranking the counters instead is that certain cards, like for example Carnifex Demon, might rather want to get another detrimental (in this case -1/-1) counter than a higher ranked but situationally less useful (second divinity) counter - depending on the board state, of course.
There's also scenarios where you don't want a Dwarven Armory counter over a +1/+1 counter. The former would doubtlessly be higher ranked, but if there's a Meekstone / Crackdown etc in play... Well, I know that even an Ornithopter would already have 3 power before proliferate even resolves, if it has a +1/+1 and a +2/+2 counter on it, but there could also be Ascendant Evincar or Cumber Stone s on opponent's side or whatnot. Arachnus Web / Domestication, Retribution of the Meek, Ensnaring Bridge or Phyrexian Devourer are other examples for this problem.
I understand that these are fringe cases, but then again isn't that kind of board state flexibility an essential part of MtG?
That being said, I'll have plenty of work-free time from Tuesday on, if I'm productive enough tomorrow, so I could spend a lot of time on creating such a list, unless somebody else would like to chip in.
The problem I see with ranking the counters instead is that certain cards, like for example Carnifex Demon, might rather want to get another detrimental (in this case -1/-1) counter than a higher ranked but situationally less useful (second divinity) counter - depending on the board state, of course.
There's also scenarios where you don't want a Dwarven Armory counter over a +1/+1 counter. The former would doubtlessly be higher ranked, but if there's a Meekstone / Crackdown etc in play... Well, I know that even an Ornithopter would already have 3 power before proliferate even resolves, if it has a +1/+1 and a +2/+2 counter on it, but there could also be Ascendant Evincar or Cumber Stone s on opponent's side or whatnot. Arachnus Web / Domestication, Retribution of the Meek, Ensnaring Bridge or Phyrexian Devourer are other examples for this problem.
I understand that these are fringe cases, but then again isn't that kind of board state flexibility an essential part of MtG?
That being said, I'll have plenty of work-free time from Tuesday on, if I'm productive enough tomorrow, so I could spend a lot of time on creating such a list, unless somebody else would like to chip in.
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by drool66 » 30 Mar 2014, 19:01
Hi, I posted here: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=13987; I do run a few EDH decks that play with counters (Proliferate effects, Vorel of the Hull Clade , Vorosh, the Hunter , Gilder Bairn, Myojins, That Which Was Taken , Skeleton Ship , Prime Speaker Zegana , Doubling Season et al., Planeswalkers ...)
Let me know if I can help!
Let me know if I can help!
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The latest Manalink installation directory will be here. Well, not quite, anymore. Check the latest patches.
The latest Manalink installation directory will be here. Well, not quite, anymore. Check the latest patches.
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by Aquillion » 20 Apr 2014, 04:01
Sure, why not.
So far I've just done a quick ordering. I can convert these to exact values for each if you need them, but I assume that's easy to do. Some counter types are listed multiple times if they have different values in different situations; tell me how you need those organized.
Some of these feel a bit subjective, but often the chances of both counters ever being on the same permanent are so incredibly narrow that it's probably not worth worrying too much... these rankings will at least ensure automated or AI-controlled token-placing makes reasonable amounts of sense, and if a player has a hugely complicated combination of unusual different tokens or play, they probably want to go manual anyway. If anyone has any objections, feel free to suggest changes.
For things that affect everyone equally (eg. Armageddon Clock), I decided to rate them as "good" counters because my assumption is that the person who controls the card probably played it with the intention of taking advantage of its effect using other cards, and therefore wants more counters on it to amplify what it's doing.
Some notes about cards I'm unsure of, if people want to discuss them...
Powder Keg: Adding fuse counters can be good or bad depending on whether you want to accelerate to a specific number of counters, or force it past that number. I left it as good because the Powder Keg's controller has the option to trigger it immediately before proliferate goes off if they've reached the number they want already.
Voodoo Doll: Forcing counters onto this card can be good for its controller, but given how fast costs increase, it's reasonable to assume that adding an extra counter or two with proliferate is going to destroy it (and deprives the controller of one of their chances to use it by shooting 'past' it towards the point where they can no longer afford it), so I counted it as negative. It might also be counted as good or neutral, but honestly this card sucks so much it hardly matters.
Helix Pinnacle and its Tower Counters: Capable of winning you the game, but adding one doesn't really matter much when they only cost 1 mana each; in the unlikely event that there's another type of beneficial counter on the card (most likely via Opalescence) we probably want to add that instead.
Time / Fade counters vs +1/+1 counters: This is one of the few choices that is likely to actually come up with some regularity, so I thought it'd be worth mentioning. I figure Time / Fade counters should be valued higher, since if you keep proliferating +1/+1 counters instead, the creature will eventually die no matter how big you make it. A few other counters are also rated above +1/+1 counters, generally because they're attached to abilities so overwhelming that they're worth more than making the creature huge. On the other hand, any toughness-lowering counter is treated as the nastiest counter available, since it will rapidly kill most creatures on its own (and few other negative counters really do very much more than that.)
Level counters vs +1/+1 counters: Not sure about these. It's another situation that is comparatively likely to crop up a lot.
Fungus counters: One of the most annoying counters to rate; they appear on only two cards, Mindbender Spores and Sporogenesis, but both can put them on any creatures, so their rating is actually important. And while fungus counters are always negative with respect to Mindbender Spores, with Sporogenesis they benefit anyone who controls a copy of Sporogenesis. On top of this, both cards are viable candidates to be played by someone who uses Proliferate in green (often together, since they interact in a useful fashion), so it's important for their ratings to make sense and consider their context.
For people reviewing the list, I have bolded counters that appear on a large number of cards in situations where there could be multiple types of counters to consider, to make it easy to check the important comparisons (eg. the most important consideration for a beneficial counter on a creature is whether it is above or below +1/+1 counters.)
Anyway, the counters, in descending value. The groupings are just for easy reference, explaining why those counters are rated in that area.
So far I've just done a quick ordering. I can convert these to exact values for each if you need them, but I assume that's easy to do. Some counter types are listed multiple times if they have different values in different situations; tell me how you need those organized.
Some of these feel a bit subjective, but often the chances of both counters ever being on the same permanent are so incredibly narrow that it's probably not worth worrying too much... these rankings will at least ensure automated or AI-controlled token-placing makes reasonable amounts of sense, and if a player has a hugely complicated combination of unusual different tokens or play, they probably want to go manual anyway. If anyone has any objections, feel free to suggest changes.
For things that affect everyone equally (eg. Armageddon Clock), I decided to rate them as "good" counters because my assumption is that the person who controls the card probably played it with the intention of taking advantage of its effect using other cards, and therefore wants more counters on it to amplify what it's doing.
Some notes about cards I'm unsure of, if people want to discuss them...
Powder Keg: Adding fuse counters can be good or bad depending on whether you want to accelerate to a specific number of counters, or force it past that number. I left it as good because the Powder Keg's controller has the option to trigger it immediately before proliferate goes off if they've reached the number they want already.
Voodoo Doll: Forcing counters onto this card can be good for its controller, but given how fast costs increase, it's reasonable to assume that adding an extra counter or two with proliferate is going to destroy it (and deprives the controller of one of their chances to use it by shooting 'past' it towards the point where they can no longer afford it), so I counted it as negative. It might also be counted as good or neutral, but honestly this card sucks so much it hardly matters.
Helix Pinnacle and its Tower Counters: Capable of winning you the game, but adding one doesn't really matter much when they only cost 1 mana each; in the unlikely event that there's another type of beneficial counter on the card (most likely via Opalescence) we probably want to add that instead.
Time / Fade counters vs +1/+1 counters: This is one of the few choices that is likely to actually come up with some regularity, so I thought it'd be worth mentioning. I figure Time / Fade counters should be valued higher, since if you keep proliferating +1/+1 counters instead, the creature will eventually die no matter how big you make it. A few other counters are also rated above +1/+1 counters, generally because they're attached to abilities so overwhelming that they're worth more than making the creature huge. On the other hand, any toughness-lowering counter is treated as the nastiest counter available, since it will rapidly kill most creatures on its own (and few other negative counters really do very much more than that.)
Level counters vs +1/+1 counters: Not sure about these. It's another situation that is comparatively likely to crop up a lot.
Fungus counters: One of the most annoying counters to rate; they appear on only two cards, Mindbender Spores and Sporogenesis, but both can put them on any creatures, so their rating is actually important. And while fungus counters are always negative with respect to Mindbender Spores, with Sporogenesis they benefit anyone who controls a copy of Sporogenesis. On top of this, both cards are viable candidates to be played by someone who uses Proliferate in green (often together, since they interact in a useful fashion), so it's important for their ratings to make sense and consider their context.
For people reviewing the list, I have bolded counters that appear on a large number of cards in situations where there could be multiple types of counters to consider, to make it easy to check the important comparisons (eg. the most important consideration for a beneficial counter on a creature is whether it is above or below +1/+1 counters.)
Anyway, the counters, in descending value. The groupings are just for easy reference, explaining why those counters are rated in that area.
- Counter rankings | Open
Last edited by Aquillion on 17 Dec 2014, 10:20, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Proliferate and counters
by Nexhro » 24 Apr 2014, 21:26
That's pretty spot-on!
Proliferate can only interact with permanents and players, though. Exiled cards like All Hallow's Eve or suspended spells are not affected.
Proliferate can only interact with permanents and players, though. Exiled cards like All Hallow's Eve or suspended spells are not affected.
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by Korath » 25 Apr 2014, 03:04
This'll be used to hint the AI whenever it's making a choice of counter type to add/move/remove etc, not just proliferate, so there's value in ranking them anyway. Clockspinning, for example, needs to know whether it should rate removing a time counter on a suspended card higher than adding a +1/+2 counter to a card on the bf.
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by Nexhro » 30 Apr 2014, 00:31
Not sure whether Korath's inbox is full, because I bugged him with all the questions I had via PM, or he just can't be bothered to reply anymore and has given up on me for the very same reason, but I noticed the files I sent haven't been dl'ed, so here's what I've come up with based on Aquillion's relative ranking.
Took me the better part of last weekend, and cost me a barbecue with friends in the process. But that was basically because I got sh*t wrong and spent a lot of (aka wayyy too much) time ordering the individual cards associated with a certain counter type by relevancy/usefulness after our beloved Mr K had mentioned the spinning of clocks. Spending that much time in front of the bawkes made of plastic, aluminum and noble metal when the sunniest, hottest spring in centuries is waiting outside was rather annoying. Well they're still in that relative order, albeit in some cases split up into smaller clusters, in case that becomes a necessity in the future. /end self-pity
Attached you'll find 2 charts: the first, named "Complete" has room for additional counter types, should they emerge, but is pretty illegible due to its sheer size and the resulting huge gaps between assigned values. This still looks like it did when I was done, except for the fact I removed the ranking values from individual cards associated with a counter type and grouped them to single values - should be easibly restorable using Complete, though.
In the second one, named "Tidy", I removed all those gaps. In order to prevent the combustion of my right forefinger by intense use of the mouse croll wheel, I had to zoom out big time when deleting the empty rows, so it might be a good idea to compare the lists and see if anything's missing. I was careful, of course, but at that max zoom factor, the deletion of one or two values can't be ruled out completely.
If anyone sees room for improvement or feels like breaking it all down to pieces and start anew, go ahead! I'm fine as long as it doesn't involve me editing an xls file or making any kind of list
Oh, and before I forget. I really like OpenOffice and the philosophy behind it, but Calc is a steaming pile of dung. Tell your friends to never use that for spreadsheets longer than 50 rows x 2 columns. Randomly freezes when cutting/pasting from one cell to another?!? And its "restore" function is broadly useless for restoring stuff after a freeze/crash!?! What the actual...
(Disclaimer: I'm aware that Korath has to take care of more pressing issues like JOU and whatnot and wasn't being too serious about the first paragraph.)
Took me the better part of last weekend, and cost me a barbecue with friends in the process. But that was basically because I got sh*t wrong and spent a lot of (aka wayyy too much) time ordering the individual cards associated with a certain counter type by relevancy/usefulness after our beloved Mr K had mentioned the spinning of clocks. Spending that much time in front of the bawkes made of plastic, aluminum and noble metal when the sunniest, hottest spring in centuries is waiting outside was rather annoying. Well they're still in that relative order, albeit in some cases split up into smaller clusters, in case that becomes a necessity in the future. /end self-pity
Attached you'll find 2 charts: the first, named "Complete" has room for additional counter types, should they emerge, but is pretty illegible due to its sheer size and the resulting huge gaps between assigned values. This still looks like it did when I was done, except for the fact I removed the ranking values from individual cards associated with a counter type and grouped them to single values - should be easibly restorable using Complete, though.
In the second one, named "Tidy", I removed all those gaps. In order to prevent the combustion of my right forefinger by intense use of the mouse croll wheel, I had to zoom out big time when deleting the empty rows, so it might be a good idea to compare the lists and see if anything's missing. I was careful, of course, but at that max zoom factor, the deletion of one or two values can't be ruled out completely.
If anyone sees room for improvement or feels like breaking it all down to pieces and start anew, go ahead! I'm fine as long as it doesn't involve me editing an xls file or making any kind of list
Oh, and before I forget. I really like OpenOffice and the philosophy behind it, but Calc is a steaming pile of dung. Tell your friends to never use that for spreadsheets longer than 50 rows x 2 columns. Randomly freezes when cutting/pasting from one cell to another?!? And its "restore" function is broadly useless for restoring stuff after a freeze/crash!?! What the actual...
(Disclaimer: I'm aware that Korath has to take care of more pressing issues like JOU and whatnot and wasn't being too serious about the first paragraph.)
- Attachments
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CountersPriorityComplete.xls- (741 KiB) Downloaded 689 times
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- CountersPriorityTidy.xls
- (55.5 KiB) Downloaded 641 times
Last edited by Nexhro on 04 May 2014, 17:54, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Proliferate and counters
by stassy » 30 Apr 2014, 04:16
Yes, unfortunately OpenOffice and LibreOffice can't handle big files like Manalink.csv, which is a shame since they are handy on others sheet tasks.
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