Obviously anything that puts curses into circulation would be anathema. I'm not necessarily looking for one player to have the highest score possible, so much as to have games where everyone's scores where really high.
I figure Monument is obvious, and Great Hall, Island, etc. seem like they might also contribute to a high scoring game. On the other hand if there are tons of non-terminal action cards and Vinyards that could lead to some pretty ridiculous scores as well.
I am starting to do some analysis of games on the online dominion server at http://dominion.isotropic.org. The top 5 scoring games there all involve a combination of Goons and King's Court. These are all solo games where people are trying to run up the score, so they aren't representative. But from my experience, Colony, Goons, Vineyard, Bishop, Duke, and Gardens all contribute to really high scores in real games.
2941 Alchemist, City, Colony, Gardens, Goons, Grand Market, King's Court, Platinum, Potion, Steward, Throne Room, Vineyard, and Watchtower
2760 Ambassador, Bridge, Chapel, City, Council Room, Goons, King's Court, Throne Room, Watchtower, and Worker's Village
2722 Bishop, Bridge, City, Colony, Council Room, Fishing Village, Goons, King's Court, Monument, Platinum, Wharf, and Worker's Village
2681 Bazaar, Bishop, Chapel, Colony, Council Room, Goons, Grand Market, King's Court, Market, Platinum, Throne Room, and Wharf
2625 Bishop, Black Market, Bridge, Caravan, City, Colony, Goons, King's Court, Monument, Platinum, Throne Room, and Wharf
Even if you stipulate that a player must buy a card when he can, a two-player game with Monuments and Ambassadors could go on indefinitely.
I know this is an old board, but highest score I've ever got on the online game is 14,461 VP against 4 bots:
The playset was:
There were also Adventures events, and Platinum and Colony cards.
Any sort of pin with monument would get an unlimited score. 5 Card deck, King's Court, King's Court, Monument, Monument, Masquerade would see your opponent (in a 2-player game), only have two cards to play with, and eventually only have one (assuming coppers haven't run out). As they can only buy out 2 piles (excluding ruins), the game will never end, and you will get 6 points every turn and never need to buy anything else. Any variation of a pin (where your opponent can only buy copper or curses each turn) + VP tokens will see a potentially unlimited score.
Other 5 card hand variations: The addition of Prince (new card, cost 8), would also make for potentially higher scores per turn if monument was set aside, or bishop with fortress in hand.
King's court, King's court, Bishop, Fortress, Masquerade (9 points per turn)
King's court, King's court, Monument, Cutpurse, Masquerade (3 points per turn, stronger pin, opponent will have 0 card hand's sooner, more effective in 3 and 4 player games)
I'm sure there are many more variations but these are all very strong.
I've played hundreds of games on the dominon android app -- which randomly selects card sets. The highest scoring (single turn) hand ever was 38 victory points. The deck needed to have these cards to make the combo work:
city, platinum, cultist, Goons, Bishop, caravan, counterfeit, and Colony
So this is something of a 7 card combo.
Early game: other players need to buy the bishop and use it. This lets you thin our your estates and coppers. Meanwhile, you buy silver (3) and caravans (4), then cultists (5) and goons (6). Having 2 caravans and 3 cultists and 1 goon will ensure you can fill the other players up with ruins AND draw your entire deck, which you will use exclusively to buy gold and platinum, 1 counterfeit and 3 city cards for the mid-game.
End game: If you have at some point a deck with 3 cultists, 2 goons, 1 counterfeit, 2-4 caravans, and at least 3 platinum and several more gold and silver pieces, you will eventually manage to pull off the 38 point combo turn.
Combo: play your caravans and city cards first, then your cultists, which are useful as a "draw 2" card that keeps playing more cultists as a free action. This can usually get you enough cards in hand to have 20+ gold. Also, because you've used the cultists to load everybody else up with ruins they will probably be buying up all the duchies. But in order to seal the deal the counterfeit card is absolutely essential, as are drawing 2 goons cards. Goons and counterfeits give you extra buys, and each colony is essentially worth 12 victory points if you buy it after playing Goons twice.
On my magic turn I played 2 City, 1 counterfeit, 2 caravans, 3 platinum, 2 gold, 1 silver, 3 cultist cards. This gave me 4 buys and 33 coins. I purchased 3 colonies and 1 copper for a whopping 38 points!
Here is a realistic game where everyone may have an arbitrary high score: The newest expansion, Dominion: Empires, has added a new Landmark, Tomb; whenever you trash a card during the game, you gain 1 Victory Point token. With Rats and Fortress in the game, a player may start accumulating infinite Victory Point tokens without advancing the game state, i.e., buying cards. If no cards are ever bought then the game can last until one player dies of starvation.
It is quite probably that one player may just start playing as many Rats as he can, trashing the same Fortress. Eventually, the Rats pile will be of course depleted, but this player could just stale the game until he can gain +20 Victory Point tokens every turn (for playing 20 Rats). If both players start doing the same, eventually the game may end up at a stalemate.
As already mentioned, without Landmarks, an infinite score may be achieved with Monument, being the only card that can give you Victory Points without advancing the game state (removing cards from the supply). Nevertheless, this is not realistic, as Monument is a rather weak card. I can however envision a real game where the Rats-Fortress-Tomb combo might come up and a player just decides to prolong the game as long as possible.
For what is worth, this is found in a proposed set with the appropriate name: Tomb of the Rat King
Playing Androminion on my phone my highest score is 920. I haven't been able to beat this yet but one day I'm sure to get lucky and do it. Here is the setup:
Cards in play:
Vineyard (0p)
University (2p) +2 Actions
Bridge (4) +1 Buy, +1 Gold
Silk Road (4)
Gardens (4)
Duke (5)
Wharf (5) +1 Buy, +2 Cards (+1 Buy, +2 Cards next turn)
Council Room (5) +1 Buy, +4 Cards (...)
City (5) +2 Actions, +1 Card (...)
Kings Court (7) Play an action card three times
My ending hand:
920 VPs
Estate x14: 14 VPs
Duchy x10: 30 VPs
Province x10: 60 VPs
Colony x6: 60 VPs
Duke x12: 120 VPs
Vineyard x12: 192 VPs
Gardens x12: 180 VPs
SilkRoad x12: 264 VPs
Curse x0: 0 VPs
Victory Tokens: 0
Goons + Ambassador allows for potentially infinite scores (VP chips from Goons purchases and Ambassadors to return cards to the supply so the game never ends on piles). Obviously some serious support would be necessary in terms of drawing, +actions to play all the Goons, and likely KC to return cards to the supply fast enough with Ambassador.
One of the highest scoring games I saw recently involved King's Court, Bridge, and Chapel.
While it may not seem that important, Chapel is a key cornerstone to a high-scoring game. It allows you to get rid of your lower value cards, such as Coppers and Estates.
King's Court and Bridge is obscenely powerful. Together, they give you +3 Coin, +3 Buy, and every card costs 3 less.
What this means is that Colony costs 8 to buy, Province costs 5 to buy, Duchy costs 2 to buy... and you have at least 4 buys. Along with high-value coins, this has great benefits.
Some cards that can help you start this process earlier are Quarry, Contraband (until your opponents figure out what you're doing), and Tactician. These cards can be trashed later with the Chapel.
Village, Fishing Village, Mining Village, Worker Village, Fesitval, or Bazaar can all be useful as well, due to their +2 Actions.
Anything that gives you extra cards is a necessity for this strategy... Council Room or Library in particular. Minion can work, but at the expense of having to discard your other cards.
Other misc cards that can help include: Royal Seal, Watchtower, Bank... basically anything that gives you lots of money.
Keep in mind that you'd need 30 or more actions for each Vineyard to be equal in value to a Colony, so you may want to skip it.
Consider this a specialized house rules set of cards because normally with two players you would not use 12 of every card, and I don't think Colony and Platinum are meant to be used this way... but we had fun!
We played a two player game where we decided to not end the game until the very last moment possible. We just wanted to see how high we could get our scores and how long the game would last (about 1-1.5 hrs). We played until two of the supply stacks ran out then it was a race to get whatever other supply cards we wanted until there was 1 left at which point we were no longer allowed to buy from that stack because it would end the game. We just kept buying from other supply stacks until nothing was left and we ended the game buying either the last Province or Colony.
The final score was 223 to 205. We each had between 102-109 cards in our decks so Gardens were worth 10 each. I think only 3 Colonies were sold throughout the game. The score could have been higher if more Colony cards had been purchased before the game ended with the last Province sold or if more cards were in our decks causing the Gardens to be worth more. These are the cards we used:
12 x Great Hall
12 x Islands
12 x Gardens
12 x Dukes
12 x Nobles
12 x Harem
10 x Baron
10 x Scout
10 x Haven
10 x Adventurer *
12 x Estate
12 x Duchy
12 x Province
12 x Colony (as Kingdom not Supply)
12 x Platinum (as Kingdom not Supply)
* We figured Adventurer was kind of a "wild card" that could be replaced with a number of different options. We chose Adventurer to keep the game simple but you could use anything here.
Er... The highest scoring game is a game where, in additions to buying all the provinces or colonies, there are way to get a lot of VP. I had games with over 100 vp and I knew I could do better in perfect scenario. For example, king's court king's court fully activated cities then play 6 goons at once will get you infinite buys (like 42 buys) and each buy is 6 VP in addition to whatever victory point it gives you. With watch tower you can trash all the coppers right away and repeat this again. You should be able to do this twice. So I think you can theoritically get more than 500 points. I just played a game that had something similar happened. If I had more goons and if there was a watchtower then I would be able to do it.
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/12/game-20120712-013703-e0bead10.html
You can reach infinite VP with; Donate, Pirate Ship, Fortress, and Tomb. Use the pirate ship to take away all purchasing power from the opponent first, buy all 10 fortress cards, after the opponent has no purchasing power left, use the pirate ship for profit to pay for donate and trash all the fortress cards. With Tomb; every turn will yield 10 VP from trashing the fortress cards (which are then put back in your hand to do it all again) and the game could go on indefinitely racking up VP.
I exploited an AI bug in Androminion to rack up 563 VP with only card points (so no Bishop, Goons or Monument). The kingdom was as follows:
Crossroads
Bridge
Gardens
Rats
Silk Road
Duke
Tactician
Wharf
Nobles
King's Court
The AI bug in question is that one of the AI opponents will buy and play exclusively Rats, thinning their deck down to the 20 Rats in the supply and cycling through them indefinitely. This left me free to purchase every other card on the board (Final deck size of 248). The final VP breakdown:
Estate - 11 VP (1x11)
Duchy - 24 VP (8x3)
Province - 48 VP (8x6)
Colony - 80 VP (8x10)
Duke - 64 VP (8x8)
Gardens - 192 VP (8x24)
Nobles - 16 VP (8x2)
Silk Road - 128 VP (8x16)
