Antihero - Qt3 League

Single player, especially with a robust Campaign, can be so good, but this is suited for tournament play, which would give your game legs. Rooting for you!

In every game where opponent got his gang to a quick 5 health, I’ve lost badly. Is it that OP or am I just missing other ways around that?

I am currently suffering from an OP gang, 5 turns in. Trying to counter it is causing me to fall behind on map control. So its not just you ;)

I thought you didn’t need map control :)

In a few turns you will unlock the assassin, and the gang will go poof.

Well, if we can both agree that a gang can be OP, that may be a balance issue that needs to be addressed. Not sure, but it seems to happen a lot.

Its possible to get around it with enough stabbing.

Brutal though if they somehow take out all your lantern production though, and you have to take charity lanterns for a few rounds.

I don’t have anywhere near enough experience yet to start making recommendations about balance changes.
There are several things that I see as going into the effects of gangs so far. The big question is what does the gang do to me and/or for my opponent? In some games, the gang is not that big a deal. In others, I might have to adjust my progression to make a beeline for the assassin. You’re going to need an assassin to win a lot of the time anyway, so it isn’t that much of a hardship.

Also the (very risky and volatile) investment into one’s gang equals that many resources not spent on actually pursuing the goal of scoring points. The only mean for the gang to score those is by eliminating targets, which is easily done only for the first couple of them. As a money source I think they can be great, although they canabalize much of what they may yield if your opponent is poking at them.

Gangs can be major bullies in the mid-game if your opponent leaves them unchecked - but it costs time and resources to get them there, and there are pretty clear counters for it.

Gangs are most powerful, IMO, as money-generators - especially in the early game, and then again in the late game after most of the burglaries are gone. If they are overpowered - I’m not sure if they are or not - this feels like the first place to apply tweaks. One suggestion that’s come up is to prevent getting a 2nd-level-upgrade for a Gang until all first-level-upgrades have been taken. That is: if you take +Gold/kill, you need to take +Damage and +Evict before taking another +Gold/kill.

(Curious to hear others’ thoughts on that proposal.)

I don’t know if I’d like being forced to upgrade a gang across the board , to get to the next level. :|

What I would like is when 2 gangs engage each other there is some form of damage penalty for the attacking gang. Like a real gang fight would have both sides get hurt but there would be a victor. The risk/reward for attacking would be that yes he can get the enemy gang kill, but now his gang takes damage and if he has coin, which he should, he re-enforce his gang to survive the next turn.

In my current game with my online friend / gaming enemy @gruntled , in turn 5 he has once again wiped out my gang. I have 2 buildings under my control , he has 2 buildings under his control, BUT his gang now has 4 health and can do 4 damage. My thief doesn’t even have a dagger yet, and if I buy another gang to try and level them up, they will just feed his gang. I lose 3 coins, he gains at least a few coins and levels up more. Now he has the ability to level that gang up by attacking urchins, and I have to wait at least 3 turns to gain enough lanterns to get to the assassin. So at this point I already consider the game lost.

What counters do I have at turn 6 vs a gang with 4 damage and 4 health? I am earning 2 lanterns per turn, I have Urchin , Scout 1, Gangs and Saboteur unlocked. Even if I take charity for 2 and earn 2 lanterns from my trading house, it still takes 3 turns to be able to kill that gang with the assassin. 3 turns is a lifetime in this game when you only have the thief on the map to earn money. And if he is smart, he is using that gang to wipe out my urchins generating lanterns in my trading house, thus delaying my assassin even more.

He has a fantastic strategy , I’ve encountered it at least twice now, and I can’t figure out a counter that still allows me to win. ;) I have used it against others and I have also won with it. The benefit goes to the person who gets the first move and goes the gang route on the first turn.

Without being able to see the board, I can’t say for sure, but in theory, the counter to his gang is the fact that’s he’s a bit behind economically because he pumped a bunch of thugs into that gang, and you can press your economic advantage.

(Obviously this may not actually apply to your current game - maybe you don’t have that economic advantage.)

It’s definitely true that losing a gang early can be a huge blow. More experienced players will play around this - you can intuit where your opponent’s gang is likely hiding by watching which silhouetted characters die during their turn, and then you can try to keep an eye on their gang’s power relative to yours, and keep your guy out of his vision until you have the advantage. But sometimes this just isn’t possible.

Coming back from a situation like this involves, in my experience, building up a gang in secret (usually with a lot of +Gold/kill bonuses so that you can be farming the board for gold without your opponent knowing) and then swooping in with that gang (or an assassin) for the payback. I don’t see a lot of games - at least the ones I play - lost as a result of an early gang death. But it’s something to keep an eye on.

(Incidentally, the proposed change would make it impossible for your opponent to waltz in with a 4-damage gang on turn 5.)

Part of what makes it a “strategy” is that I prioritized scouting a beeline all the way to your base. That has a definite cost to the economy, because my thief is scouting and not burgling. This particular game I went first and got a lantern from the Trading House instead of gold, so cooking + a gang on turn 1 was possible and pretty much necessary. I find the early gang attack normally works better when I go 2nd. It is also much harder on Big City, because there is nothing for a gang to do on turn 1. That might be a simple tweak for the other two maps, though maybe you have good reasons for having the pre-placed cannon fodder on those maps.

The design reason for the henchmen in your starting area is to have all 3 level-1 upgrades be viable choices on turn 1. (This is one thing that bothers me about Big City, I just haven’t gotten around to correcting it yet. Also, in Big City, placing a henchman near your starting area has a big impact on where you can explore on turn 1.)

If you get to that point, you should pretty much be toast, no? Three-four turns of charity Lanterns means losing a lot of tempo.

This is why balancing is never easy. If you go that way, it makes the assassinations more difficult.

Anyway…I got my very first Sisters (probably my 10th game) and yeah, they made quick work of the gang that was holding me back. But…it’s a huge investment.

It’s five lanterns and you get a free assassin with it so I think it’s a very reasonable investment to dispatch a bully gang which will have had a lot of turns and coin poured into it. Yeah, you probably sacrifice an assassination contract but gangs can totally lock your infrastructure down if left unchecked. When a gang gets so big you need to bring in the big guns! Or the little knives. Lots of little knives.

What I like about the assassin and truancy officer is how they can totally undermine your enemy in some way if successful. I just cut up @lordkosc’s lantern generation in our current game which has hobbled him for a few turns but I fear it’s a bit too late (the spread of buildings has been a nightmare for me though – will post a screenshot when we’re done!).

@geggis, I will make sure there are a thousand cuts upon you before our game is over, in retribution for all my lost urchins. ;)

This is weird. A Gang evicts my Urchin. The Gang should be in front of that building when my turn begins, no? Or does he get to go back inside the Guild? He can’t move after killing a Thug. Why would he get to move after an eviction?

Also, seems like Sisters cost 8??? Doesn’t that seem very expensive?

The Sisters are very powerful, as their main use is to take out the high-health targets and generate an instant victory point.