It was fun. I’m still stumbling around. Trying to make the leap from just doing stuff to having a strategy to win each particular game. Not there yet…
I resigned my game vs @Otthegreat, as my clown parade of noob mistakes had made it too painful - even for me.
Started a new one. I do hope that the devs at some point put in the ability to accept or reject challenges, as opposed to just starting the game right up.
Accepted! Well, I guess I just took my turn. I don’t think you were doing too badly, but then I’m having a lot of trouble remembering what exactly happened in which game now that I have like 6 going at once.
Okay, so I think the danger with this strategy is that you’re opening your gang up to the Sisters. A gang can only do one thing per turn but also works as a ‘mobile thug’ so if you’re clever you can work around them until you can snuff them out. Thugging up a gang’s HP is a good idea but once it’s assassinated in one move that’s a lot of resources gone in the blink of an eye! In fact, a daggered up master thief is a good deterrent because it gets costly to keep hiring thugs. Combined with a gang you can make a good dent on your opponent’s dominant gang strategy. What’s more, the dagger upgrades get you close to a second gang which is really handy but trickier to reach than anything else. I love the Safe Cracker upgrade though!
I’ve found with this game that a good strategy (thugging master thieves in, cheap mass urchin evictions, gang stomping) can look unbeatable but I think there are definitely ways around most of them.
Indeed. In my case, my focus on thugs is usually to counter my adversaries focus on gangs. Gangs are very rewarding (and intimidating), but very brittle and risky, and the time your adversary focus on babysitting them (using your master thief actions uncovering fodder, especially early on) or, God forbid, healing them up, is a lot of ressources taken out of the main goal of the game. This game reminds me of Star Realms in that, it is tempting to build up a very lovely control machine, but if you don’t move in early enough for the kill, you might lose. Although the reverse is also true, from what I’ve played so far.
Now, people mastering the art of bullying with their gangs, and protecting them with other items, such as fodder thugs, are another matter. (@Mysterio -ooooooo!!)
What’d I do!? What’d I do!?
Can we see if the other player has accumulated masks?
Not that I’ve seen.
Always! What is your in game name?
Gruntled - I’m the guy who just bum-rushed you. Sorry about that, but belouski keeps doing it to me :)
YOU!!! Its ok @belouski is not a sir or gentleman. ;)
I couldn’t do squat, heh, is there even a counter to such brutal rush?
I guess you just have to watch. If your opponent gets an early gang, then you’d better have an early gang, probably with the thief helping to take down their gang.
While I understand it being the case on the Masquerade - I just avoid grabbing masks altogether once the first ‘2-masks’ ball is gone - I am really surprised that is the case about the wharf! Securing its access is one of the first thing I do, as I like to rush that map and get those not too expensive victory points with the associated little reward. Actually, I felt this map might be unbalanced, giving the first player too big of an advantage because of that. Maybe that’s not the case actually, though?
I am switching to this thread, in an attempt to avoid @Dave_Perkins management issues on his tournament one!
Cool, I’m happy to move game balancing discussions to the main Antihero thread.
A big part of the game’s strategy is deciding when to grab a victory point - a decision that’s made more interesting by having the costs of each victory point increase over the course of the game. But in my observations, the best players rarely grab their first VP until like turn 8 (because getting a VP almost always slows down your economy – the exception being an assassination contract that you’re able to one-shot with your gang).
So I’d like to attach a bit more economic incentive to the steps required to get the special Wharf and Masquerade VPs, to make them more enticing earlier in the game.
The turn before this screenshot where I got the final kill, the AI did something dumb where I had the 3 thugs blocking his base. So Lygrave attacks the left thug for 2 damage and then decided to use an assassin against the damaged thug to get out and do some stealing.
Again at this point the game was lost for the AI, but it should realize to use the assassin before using its main character.
I may not be able to beat people, but I wreck the AI!
Thanks for the screenshot! This is useful for testing.
I’ve been making improvements to the AI recently (my primary focus is the single-player stuff at the moment). The AI is particularly bad at the Wharf and the Masquerade. An upcoming update will include changes to make it better - as well as user-selectable difficulty levels for the campaign and AI Skirmishes.
My current plan re: difficulty is that “Hard” will be sort of the reference version of the AI, and everything else will be tuned around Hard. To be more specific, Hard is the AI making the best decisions that it knows how (with a very small amount of randomness thrown in there). Normal and Easy are “hard but makes sub-optimal decisions more often”. (The way the AI works is that it examines the board, looks at all the possible moves it could make, and then ranks them based on a ton of heuristics. Harder difficulties will choose from the top of the ‘moves-i-could-make-right-now’ rankings more frequently; easier difficulties will be much looser.)
Finally, I’m planning on a Very Easy that’s Easy + currency handicaps (free gold/lanterns each turn) in the player’s favor; and Very Hard that’s Hard + currency handicaps for the AI.
(All that said, I’m no AI wizard, so there will probably continue to be silly scenarios like the one you saw above - but it’ll definitely get better!)
Have you considered any late game option where perhaps the players main character if max upgraded could steal from the opposing players base?
But doing so he would lose all his moves that turn, but get the option to take half the enemy gold or lanterns?
In my recent S1 league game vs @Thraeg , I noticed in the last 3 or so moves he was hoarding lanterns , I think he had 14 on the final round, at which time he bought the final bribe. It was a brilliant tactic, but he must have neglected a ton of upgrades to do so.
But being able to steal what is horded would negate a strategy that already has the high cost of losing upgrades for several turns.
I suppose there can be an expansion that could add some new powers maybe for larger maps. Or maybe setup choice for different types of games.
One thing I am running into is that when you are playing a lot of games I am getting mixed up between red and blue. I sometimes am looking at the wrong amount of coin/lanterns especially when I am playing a bunch of games in a row. I would like to select which color I am on my own screen. So I could always be blue and the enemy red and they could do the same.
There are only a few avatars right now, and everybody I’ve played against has the default, except geggis. So, I picked a different one from him, and now mine is unique. It’s helped me differentiate, so don’t pick mine.