Dominion Strategy Forum
Miscellaneous => Other Games => Topic started by: amalloy on December 03, 2014, 02:18:54 am
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Prismata (http://bit.ly/ksprismata) is a really interesting game that appeared on the horizon recently, and just a couple weeks ago alpha access became available to the general public via a Kickstarter reward tier. I picked it up and have been having a great time. I don't imagine every Dominion player will love Prismata, but a lot of them seem to, and I was surprised to see nobody discussing it here.
I recommend watching the Kickstarter rules-intro video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D3unjDwV8I), which does a good job of explaining the mechanics, but I'll also make my own effort at summarizing the game. They used to call it MCDS, for Magic-Chess-Dominion-Starcraft, and you can really see the influence of all four of those games clearly.
- Like MtG, you're building up a board of attackers and defenders that you use to damage your opponent's board.
- But instead of constructed decks, the game starts Dominion-style, with similar starting boards and a "base set" of 11 standard units purchasable every game (analogous to Coppers, Silvers, and so on), and an additional random set of "kingdom cards" either player can buy this game.
- And there are no decks, indeed no randomness or hidden information at all: like chess, every turn can be planned ahead of time, if you can think fast enough (hint: you can't). I get the feeling that this is a turn-off for Dominion fans, which I totally get: removing the randomness is a definite trade-off that some people might not like. I wasn't sure at first, and of course I still appreciate randomness in card games, but it's also nice to have Prismata available as a choice where I am really in charge of my own destiny.
- Last, it's like Starcraft in that you're balancing economy, technology, attacking, and defending; and because you have to make tactical decisions about what units to trade for what, the timings to attack at, and stuff like that.
I'd say if you like at least two of those games, Prismata is worth at least checking out; there's a free single-player-only demo (http://play.prismata.net/?demo) you can try if any of this sounds interesting but you don't want to immediately buy it. If any of you do decide to try it, I'd be happy to play some games with you: I'm Mountebank in game.
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I've heard good things about Prismata. I remember reading a blog post a while back when they decided to start working on the game full time (I am a Facebook friend of a friend of the developers and it showed up on my News Feed.)
They claimed it was the best card game in existence, which I have trouble believing, but I'm sure it's still very good, since most math PhD pursuers I know play an oddly large number of board games, meaning the makers can at least recognize quality. I've yet to hear anyone say something bad about the balance of the game, so that's a plus too.
Anyways, I'm definitely interested in trying it out, but it probably won't be until after my finals in a couple of weeks.
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I know the devs and was involved in some very early play-testing (back before the client even existed), so it's cool to see this picking up buzz recently. In my view, the key idea of Prismata is bringing recent game design innovations to the non-random no-hidden-information genre of Chess and Go. For example, the random kingdom mechanic injects variety into the matches and reduces the importance of memorizing openings.
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Chess960 is worth mentioning as a chess variant that adds setup randomness for exactly that reason. It was invented by Bobby Fischer in 1996.
Prismata sounds interesting. I'll look into it more!
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First Google maps, and now you enticing indie game? Why is the internet suddenly telling me to upgrade my laptop?
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Well fuck, there goes the remainder of my free time.
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Holy shit.
I just... holy shit. Why is this not already funded? Why is this not on every gaming news site? Why isn't this bigger?
I haven't been this psyched for a game since I first touched Dominion.
Listen. Seriously, you guys have to try this. As soon as you have half an hour, you must go try this. Go click on the demo. Watch the video if you think you need to, but I think any Dominion or HS player can sit down at the screen and figure things out immediately. Go. Just... go do it.
Amalloy, I'm Kirian there... I can't figure out how to add friends yet though.
Edit: Figured it out. Friended!
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I've played the complete demo. Seems interesting but mmm I'm not as hyped as Kirian is (which is not saying much). It's kinda lacking the combo factor for me.
It wasn't entirely clear in the demo, how many "kingdom" cards are there? I get the first page is the common pool for all games, but do you "only" play with 5 extra cards in the full game? How many different cards are there?
Another question: the Kickstarter reward levels are super confusing. What exactly do you get for 1CAD (one Canadian Dollar)?
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Backed at the supporter level. The creators seem like gigantic douchebags (I have no idea if they actually are, but oh my god their bio page was nauseating) but the game was fun.
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I've played the complete demo. Seems interesting but mmm I'm not as hyped as Kirian is (which is not saying much). It's kinda lacking the combo factor for me.
It wasn't entirely clear in the demo, how many "kingdom" cards are there? I get the first page is the common pool for all games, but do you "only" play with 5 extra cards in the full game? How many different cards are there?
Another question: the Kickstarter reward levels are super confusing. What exactly do you get for 1CAD (one Canadian Dollar)?
In custom matches, you can play with Base+0 up to Base+11, your choice. In competitive play, you can choose Base+5 or Base+8. The total pool of kingdom cards is like 70 right now, and more are being designed: they've added three in the two weeks I've been playing.
For 1CAD I think you basically get a "thanks, mate". Supporter tier is the first tier where you get an alpha key.
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Also I'm worried about the comeback mechanics in this game, or rather, the lack thereof. It feels like a game where you build up, and one person breaches and wins, and then has a few turns of finishing up the game while the other person sobs. I don't know how you're supposed to come back from a setback.
There's also no apparent adjustment for p1 advantage.
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Yeah, it's the kind of game where if you're far behind, it's best to just resign and try again, kinda like Starcraft.
The adjustment for P1 advantage is that P2 starts with an extra Drone.
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Also I'm worried about the comeback mechanics in this game, or rather, the lack thereof. It feels like a game where you build up, and one person breaches and wins, and then has a few turns of finishing up the game while the other person sobs. I don't know how you're supposed to come back from a setback.
There's also no apparent adjustment for p1 advantage.
The lack of comeback in breach-vulnerable games is a big time savings: instead of "sobbing", you just resign because you've clearly lost. I wish this happened more in Dominion games, but instead games that are clearly over keep going on for another twenty minutes because "well if my opponent stalls three turns in a row and I get perfect draws...". You can also play a breach-ambivalent strategy, by getting a lot of resilient green units. See http://play.prismata.net/?r=VltKD-YhIxM, for example, where Temron threatens big breach potential with Frost Brooders: I elect to open the doors and just let him into my Drone line, basing my military might on sturdy Gauss Cannons so I can keep applying pressure while being breached.
P1 and P2 are well balanced, in an interesting way, because it's very symmetric. P2 starts with one extra Drone, so it's 6/7. If P1 doesn't like his position, he can opt to "become player 2" by buying two Drones (as happens almost every game) and starting 8/7 instead of 6/7. Usually at this point P2 buys two Drones and it's 8/9...at some point, someone decides it's more important to be aggressive than to build, which kinda makes them the effective player 1.
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I just played a game (vs AI) where we both breached each other at the same time, which creates a base-race situation, much like what happens in Starcraft when both players' economies drop to zero.
And hey, replays if you have access! kOaQi-ovGa5
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I just played a game (vs AI) where we both breached each other at the same time, which creates a base-race situation, much like what happens in Starcraft when both players' economies drop to zero.
And hey, replays if you have access! kOaQi-ovGa5
Anyone can watch a replay, without an alpha key. Here's yours: http://play.prismata.net/?r=kOaQi-ovGa5 - you can get this from the Replay tab: it's the "Get Link" button.
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Finally had a game against a human where I didn't embarrass myself!
http://play.prismata.net/?r=XC08U-jQPwa
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I do wish they had used something other than Flash, though. Flash is so... 2005?
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I don't know why I'm so bad. I feel like when I start off attacking, MasterBot just puts up a wall and then builds his own attack overrunning me. But when I try to do that, he overruns me and I'm just nonstop building walls and can't afford any offense.
Example: http://play.prismata.net/?r=o8pnF-zZY6U
I start off aggressive and he just puts up a wall and ignores me, eventually overrunning me.
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Does anyone know if they plan to go mobile? No way I'm buying a computer game when the only time I really sit at a computer any more is at work.
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I don't know why I'm so bad. I feel like when I start off attacking, MasterBot just puts up a wall and then builds his own attack overrunning me. But when I try to do that, he overruns me and I'm just nonstop building walls and can't afford any offense.
Example: http://play.prismata.net/?r=o8pnF-zZY6U
I start off aggressive and he just puts up a wall and ignores me, eventually overrunning me.
I'm no expert (you can find some on /r/prismata (http://reddit.com/r/prismata)), but Tesla aggression looked like a reasonable counter to his heavy-economy opening. The execution looked non-committal, though: you kept droning, when you already have enough to churn out Teslas and Engineers forever; and then you built an Animus: you don't really have the economy to support all that tech. All this diversification takes off the pressure of your Tesla rush, giving your more-economic opponent plenty of time to outpace you.
Suggested changes: on your turn 3, you built BDD, leaving you with 13 gold for turn 4. That means you won't be able to afford Tesla+Conduit, which is what you really need to be able to Tesla forever. I'd recommend cutting a Drone, just building BD, so that you can Tesla+Drone on turn 4, and then follow up with more Tesla+Engineers. This is enough aggression that your opponent really can't make use of all the tech he's built: he has to defend himself. He can maybe get out two Tarsiers, but those are slow enough that you can just build a Wall once you've got enough Tesla pressure.
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I don't know why I'm so bad. I feel like when I start off attacking, MasterBot just puts up a wall and then builds his own attack overrunning me. But when I try to do that, he overruns me and I'm just nonstop building walls and can't afford any offense.
Example: http://play.prismata.net/?r=o8pnF-zZY6U
I start off aggressive and he just puts up a wall and ignores me, eventually overrunning me.
I'm no expert (you can find some on /r/prismata (http://reddit.com/r/prismata)), but Tesla aggression looked like a reasonable counter to his heavy-economy opening. The execution looked non-committal, though: you kept droning, when you already have enough to churn out Teslas and Engineers forever; and then you built an Animus: you don't really have the economy to support all that tech. All this diversification takes off the pressure of your Tesla rush, giving your more-economic opponent plenty of time to outpace you.
Suggested changes: on your turn 3, you built BDD, leaving you with 13 gold for turn 4. That means you won't be able to afford Tesla+Conduit, which is what you really need to be able to Tesla forever. I'd recommend cutting a Drone, just building BD, so that you can Tesla+Drone on turn 4, and then follow up with more Tesla+Engineers. This is enough aggression that your opponent really can't make use of all the tech he's built: he has to defend himself. He can maybe get out two Tarsiers, but those are slow enough that you can just build a Wall once you've got enough Tesla pressure.
Some elaboration on this advice: somewhere in the tutorial or a new-player guide, it's recommended to, in most games, build like 10-15 Drones, and then stop droning: building up an "economy" of attackers can be much more efficient than a real economy of Drones, in that it forces your opponent to spend money every turn to defend.
For example, in this game, your first Tesla Coil isn't very effective: it costs you an Engineer per turn, and your opponent an Engineer per turn because he can absorb the rest on his Wall. But every Tesla Coil after that is very valuable: he has to build a Wall per turn to defend, while you just have to build an Engineer to keep it powered. So each Tesla Coil is, in a way, worth as much as three Drones and a Blastforge: it lets you spend 2 gold each turn in order to cost your opponent 5 and a blue, for a net gain of 3+B. Efficiency like this is how an aggressive strategy defeats heavy economy; trying to catch up on economy yourself is not nearly as effective, because you're not positioned to do so.
Once you get your third Tesla Coil up, your opponent probably has trouble even treading water, and then you can put off the fourth Tesla to diversify: build a Wall if he's gotten some attackers, or maybe drone up, or get that Animus you've been looking at, to add in Sentinels; or switch into Chieftains since you've already got the tech for it. The important thing is to do all this only after you've put some real pressure on your opponent: one Tesla Coil is no pressure at all, but three is a lot.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=ameSj-6LEjh
My first win against a real person! I actually used something much like what amalloy describes above, hitting the Tesla Coils really hard, getting my fourth one on T8 and just overrunning.
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The demo seems to like Ossified Drones. I don't know how to use them. But I like them anyway.
Some cards lead to excessively defensive setups. I just played a game with the Thermiticitiwhatever (the thing that makes Pixies/grenades) and the souped-up green energy field (the one that last one turn and has four defense). Man that game took forever.
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This is a cool game. Thanks for the point-out to it.
I love the symmetry of the opening. First turn, P1 is on the play, P2 has one more drone. If P1 buys 2 drones--now P2 is on the play and P1 has one more drone. Whoever chooses a tech color first has the initiative, but also telegraphs their options.
I can beat the Hard bot without much sweat; the Master bot is still beyond me.
However, a game with no luck is hard for me to play. It's difficult not to get emotionally attached to my play--to beat myself up if I lose, to go on tilt. So I don't know if I'll keep trying to play. We'll see whether or not I dream about it tonight. :)
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Since a bunch of folks here seem interested, I thought I'd stream some practice games with Temron on Skype. We're live now at www.twitch.tv/amalloy - feel free to stop in and ask questions, or just hang out and listen.
Edit: Stream over.
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Watching the stream is insightful and also slightly sad. It's so much mathing and chessing. It reminds me of a group of people trying to play Power Grid optimally.
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I haven't looked further into the game yet, but now I am intimidated.
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I got Google's new Flash working in Chromium, so have been able to give this a go. Does an alpha key just buy you PvP?
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Watching the stream is insightful and also slightly sad. It's so much mathing and chessing. It reminds me of a group of people trying to play Power Grid optimally.
I only watched the first hour or something, but it didn't seem all that mathy, and certainly not like chess (not 100% sure I know what 'chessy' means - having spent time analyzing with Grandmasters, I don't think the perception of the general public matches reality). Also, I don't mind calculation - I actually mind luck more.
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Watching the stream is insightful and also slightly sad. It's so much mathing and chessing. It reminds me of a group of people trying to play Power Grid optimally.
But... that's the beauty of it!
Also, saying all the mathing and chessing is sad after all the times you've walloped me at TTA... ;)
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A wild WanderingWinder appears!
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Watching the stream is insightful and also slightly sad. It's so much mathing and chessing. It reminds me of a group of people trying to play Power Grid optimally.
But... that's the beauty of it!
Also, saying all the mathing and chessing is sad after all the times you've walloped me at TTA... ;)
Ambassador 201 was my favorite dominion article I ever read. I think you'd like Prismata
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I seem to be able to hold my own against Master Bot, so I've now backed my first ever Kickstarter project. I should be qmech over there once the key comes through.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=283ho-otIUB
A very close game. Omega Splitter (3/6) vs Iso Kronus (2/0 but attacks every second round). I let him breach on Turn 10 (though he can't accept the breach because he wouldn't have enough defense the following round), but the next round he has 2 attack max.
He resigns on T12, probably because he was going to have to start sacrificing drones and green to build Forcefields, which would have killed his econ.
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Also, I think the reason I enjoy the game is the mathiness of it. Interestingly, of the "MCDS" name, I think it resembles Dominion the least. I've previously described Dominion as Starcraft without units--not on this forum--due to the economic development followed by engine development and then VP purchasing. Prismata carries only the random setup aspect of Dominion. So basically, it's:
The fighting and economy of Starcraft without the micro or the twitchiness (and I may not be that old, but I'm old enough that the twitchiness isn't there any more)
The luck of Chess (or SC, where there is no luck assuming percect play) without the openings and memorization (which as pointed out above is also found in Chess 960)
The unit generation of Magic (or HS) without the decks or the annoying separate attacks-separate blocks-instant buffs/kills-damage/trample... thing (or the pay-to-win problem)
The randomness of setup of Dominion, without the decks or luck
The open information of Zendo (one of my favorite games, which has perfectly complete information), Puerto Rico, Power Grid, crayon rail games, St. Petersburg, etc.
The only real problem with it is that I can't play it in person.
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I'm glad the people who have tried it are enjoying it. It has completely taken all of my dominion time. If anyone wants to play friendlies feel free to add me. I would also be happy to skype and walk newbies through the basics.
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I am MicQsenoch on there. So far, I am not really enjoying it that much. I miss the emotional roller coaster of shuffles. But I think it's mostly that I don't know what the heck I'm doing. So I will keep trying I guess.
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I've played it a lot over the weekend. It is quite addictive once you start seeing the quirky cards.
I had a funny game against the bot where I let him breach me three times in a row and still won. It involved Trinity Drones (for 2 coins and one conduit, a 5hp non-blocking drone that produces three coins per turn) and the Voidbringer (you can pay 8 conduit for 8 attack and 8 coins; takes 6 turns to build). Basically, because all my units had high health, I was quite impervious to breaches. Once the Voidbringer went online, my opponent had to start devoting most of his economy to defending himself, while I was earning far more money than him.
It probably wouldn't have worked against a human opponent though. The master bot prioritized my gauss cannons during the breaches, he should have gone for the blastforges and then the conduit instead, I think (with Voidbringer, every conduit is effectively a +1 attack, +1 coin unit, and they only have three health).
I am winning most of my games against the master bot now, it doesn't seem to understand some cards. I've easily won every game with scorchilla, for example. I don't really have that much free time, so I will have to pass on the alpha for now...
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Does anyone know if they plan to go mobile? No way I'm buying a computer game when the only time I really sit at a computer any more is at work.
In one of the Kickstarter or Reddit threads there was mention that they do intend to go mobile--that in fact the browser-based Flash app is very temporary, a port from their internal alpha executable, which will get ported to Android/iOS. The click-and-swipe thing (to use all of a particular type of unit) was created with mobile in mind.
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I've played it a lot over the weekend. It is quite addictive once you start seeing the quirky cards.
I had a funny game against the bot where I let him breach me three times in a row and still won. It involved Trinity Drones (for 2 coins and one conduit, a 5hp non-blocking drone that produces three coins per turn) and the Voidbringer (you can pay 8 conduit for 8 attack and 8 coins; takes 6 turns to build). Basically, because all my units had high health, I was quite impervious to breaches. Once the Voidbringer went online, my opponent had to start devoting most of his economy to defending himself, while I was earning far more money than him.
It probably wouldn't have worked against a human opponent though. The master bot prioritized my gauss cannons during the breaches, he should have gone for the blastforges and then the conduit instead, I think (with Voidbringer, every conduit is effectively a +1 attack, +1 coin unit, and they only have three health).
I am winning most of my games against the master bot now, it doesn't seem to understand some cards. I've easily won every game with scorchilla, for example. I don't really have that much free time, so I will have to pass on the alpha for now...
The resource you pay to build things is generally called "green": the conduit makes the resource, it isn't the resource itself. Mostly this doesn't matter, but I'm bringing it up because it can cause some confusion, especially if you start calling blue "blastforge": there are some cards that consume an actual blastforge unit, rather than just a blue resource. (The colors have actual names somewhere, but everyone just calls them red/blue/green).
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I've played it a lot over the weekend. It is quite addictive once you start seeing the quirky cards.
I had a funny game against the bot where I let him breach me three times in a row and still won. It involved Trinity Drones (for 2 coins and one conduit, a 5hp non-blocking drone that produces three coins per turn) and the Voidbringer (you can pay 8 conduit for 8 attack and 8 coins; takes 6 turns to build). Basically, because all my units had high health, I was quite impervious to breaches. Once the Voidbringer went online, my opponent had to start devoting most of his economy to defending himself, while I was earning far more money than him.
It probably wouldn't have worked against a human opponent though. The master bot prioritized my gauss cannons during the breaches, he should have gone for the blastforges and then the conduit instead, I think (with Voidbringer, every conduit is effectively a +1 attack, +1 coin unit, and they only have three health).
I am winning most of my games against the master bot now, it doesn't seem to understand some cards. I've easily won every game with scorchilla, for example. I don't really have that much free time, so I will have to pass on the alpha for now...
The resource you pay to build things is generally called "green": the conduit makes the resource, it isn't the resource itself. Mostly this doesn't matter, but I'm bringing it up because it can cause some confusion, especially if you start calling blue "blastforge": there are some cards that consume an actual blastforge unit, rather than just a blue resource. (The colors have actual names somewhere, but everyone just calls them red/blue/green).
I think one of the tutorials calls the green stuff conduit? "You can accumulate conduit" or whatever. Could be misremembering it.
Red/Blue/Green is kinda lame, when there's clear thematic union between the related units.
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This game is deep, but intuition will get you a long way.
Is there a better way of using a stack of freezing units than clicking each of them individually?
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This game is deep, but intuition will get you a long way.
Is there a better way of using a stack of freezing units than clicking each of them individually?
For most things you can do multiple times, holding shift does it as many times as possible. Clicking stacks, buying units...probably some other stuff I can't think of.
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Thank you, I'll give that a go next time I play.
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3) Do you know of any communities that should hear about Prismata? Tell us, and email me (elyot@lunarchstudios.com) if you'd like to do a key giveaway. It only takes one person to make a MASSIVE difference, like Celerity's teamliquid thread that led to over 200 comments.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarchstudios/prismata-a-new-hybrid-game-of-pure-strategy/posts/1077290
Somebody could probably get a bunch of free keys for f.DS users if they emailed the devs. We're in the name, right?
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I would be interested in kickstarting if I know mobile is on the way real soon now. If it is say, more than 3 months away, I'll probably just wait until I would actually be able to play it.
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3) Do you know of any communities that should hear about Prismata? Tell us, and email me (elyot@lunarchstudios.com) if you'd like to do a key giveaway. It only takes one person to make a MASSIVE difference, like Celerity's teamliquid thread that led to over 200 comments.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarchstudios/prismata-a-new-hybrid-game-of-pure-strategy/posts/1077290
Somebody could probably get a bunch of free keys for f.DS users if they emailed the devs. We're in the name, right?
Hello everyone! ;D My name is Rachel, and I work with Elyot and the Lunarch Studios team.
I'd be more than happy to give you guys some keys. After all, you are in the name. Not sure what the best way to go about this is. Maybe if you want a key you should PM me on here and I'll PM back with it? Or you can feel free to message me on reddit (u/eden000). If you already play Prismata, add me in the game! My username is phienn. I'm looking forward to playing with y'all soon!
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You could make a new topic to raise awareness about the key giveaway and answer questions about the game :)
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Yeah? Okay, I'll definitely do that. I wasn't sure if that would be considered spam, but if it's okay by you then I'll definitely do so.
EDIT: The new topic is here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=12194.0
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I went ahead and got myself a key. IGN is jonts.
I have no idea what I'm doing yet.
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Ichi and I just had a couple of games. Fun stuff.
Is there any... convenient... way to chat in friendly games, though?
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Yeah. The white text against the cards and background makes it difficult to see. I also noticed that I would hit enter and it would sometimes randomly give me a warning that all-chat was disabled. So then I had to re-click you in my friends list to chat with you again.
Edit: Also, the strategic action/reaction based on what your opponent is doing is amazing. I lost both games, but still had a ton of fun!
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You know what the game replay needs? Text-logs.
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Yeah. The white text against the cards and background makes it difficult to see. I also noticed that I would hit enter and it would sometimes randomly give me a warning that all-chat was disabled. So then I had to re-click you in my friends list to chat with you again.
Edit: Also, the strategic action/reaction based on what your opponent is doing is amazing. I lost both games, but still had a ton of fun!
To be fair, I ambushed you right after you finished the tutorial, and I had already played dozens of games against the bot ;)
I've only played 4 ranked games yet, but I agree with the action/reaction part Ichi mentioned. Like, I was planning to go scorchillas in one game, and then my opponent played a conduit the turn right before I was going to. So I was thinking shiiiiiiiiiiiiit, and had to buy a blastforge instead to survive the inevitable onslaught. Still lost that game anyway cos my opponent was a pro, but I could have lost quite a bit faster :P
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Well I just got me an alpha key, so I figure I'll toss my usename in: mpsprs
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just solved the puzzle from the tutorial.
it is interesting. maybe I'll get more invested in it.
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So I just got my alpha key today, and tried out a few games against the bots. I like what I've seen so far.
It's strange because it's a game of perfect information, but with the randomly chosen add-on units and the turn timer it doesn't play out that way, and it ends up feeling like Starcraft where you see what you're opponent is doing and you go for a counterbuild.
The tricky thing is figuring out how best to take advantage of the add-on units. Say, You see that you're opponent is being a bit passive at the start, so you try to breach early, only to see your opponent throw down some crazy defender that will take you 4 turns just to destroy. For example, that 6 health frontline defender. Against such strong defenders, you need to find a fast way to build attack power in order to breach.
It's also like Starcraft in that the play that costs you the game might have been made very early on. You only have an intuitive sense of this. Even so, using a fast timer like 5 seconds per turn gives the game a blitz chess sort of feel where players are pressured to play fast that might see your opponent make a big mistake later on the cancel out a mistake you made earlier.
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So I just got my alpha key today, and tried out a few games against the bots. I like what I've seen so far.
It's strange because it's a game of perfect information, but with the randomly chosen add-on units and the turn timer it doesn't play out that way, and it ends up feeling like Starcraft where you see what you're opponent is doing and you go for a counterbuild.
The tricky thing is figuring out how best to take advantage of the add-on units. Say, You see that you're opponent is being a bit passive at the start, so you try to breach early, only to see your opponent throw down some crazy defender that will take you 4 turns just to destroy. For example, that 6 health frontline defender. Against such strong defenders, you need to find a fast way to build attack power in order to breach.
It's also like Starcraft in that the play that costs you the game might have been made very early on. You only have an intuitive sense of this. Even so, using a fast timer like 5 seconds per turn gives the game a blitz chess sort of feel where players are pressured to play fast that might see your opponent make a big mistake later on the cancel out a mistake you made earlier.
Yes – I love blitz games. They also narrow the gap between players of very different ELO a little.
To your point about your opponent throwing down the crazy defender, I find that in a lot of games just the fact that a certain unit is in the set can completely change the outcome of the game. For example I just played a game where Apollo was in the set (expensive blue unit, can snipe any other unit with >=3 health). Neither of us got Apollos at all during the game, but the fact that it was there meant that both of us went a very heavy econ green-focused build, because those units have higher health. This kind of dynamic is what makes the game so fresh, since you'll never see the same set of units twice.
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Oh don't me wrong, I thought it was awesome that such defenders existed that can enable players to get an early economy boost. It makes those 1-time use attackers valuable. There are other games where the attackers are nuts and you have to find the best way to sustain them.
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This kind of dynamic is what makes the game so fresh, since you'll never see the same set of units twice.
As people who frequent a Dominion forum, you don't have to tell us that. ;)
Here's a serious question though (for everybody who's playing) -- I've never been big on RTS games. Never got into Starcraft. Right now, most comparisons suggest that Prismata is more like Starcraft than Dominion in terms of gameplay feel. How big a deterrent should this be for me? I know I should just try out the demo, but I haven't had/made time yet...
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This kind of dynamic is what makes the game so fresh, since you'll never see the same set of units twice.
As people who frequent a Dominion forum, you don't have to tell us that. ;)
Here's a serious question though (for everybody who's playing) -- I've never been big on RTS games. Never got into Starcraft. Right now, most comparisons suggest that Prismata is more like Starcraft than Dominion in terms of gameplay feel. How big a deterrent should this be for me? I know I should just try out the demo, but I haven't had/made time yet...
I don't get all of the talk about starcraft. I'd say prismata is 50% magic, 48% dominion, and 2% starcraft. it's a round based card game.
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I think the Starcraft analogy comes in the sense that you have the same dynamic between rush/boom/tech.
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it's so drastically different though, because you see everything your opponent does. in sc2, playing a rush basically comes down to your opponent making mistakes and an element of luck. the dynamic was supposed to be there, but I don't think it actually is.
though they never explicitly said that they mean sc2 when they say "starcraft". I'm sure it was not as bad in broodwar.
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I thought the similarity to Starcraft was in the building and use of units to create an army or sorts, but without the micromanagement. In Prismata, buying a drone feels more like buying a Starcraft worker than buying a Dominion Silver.
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I want to play Prismata but I want to play Hearthstone how do I do both simultaneously? :(
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I can't be doing with RTSes—there are too many options and I don't know what's good. I don't get the same feeling with Prismata. The part of Dominion that's here is that you need to read a board. There's then a lot more of reacting to what your opponent does that there is in Dominion.
Here's an example of what you might see reading when reading the board. There's a unit called Scorchzilla which is an incredibly aggressive rusher that costs 7GR. As second player you have the option of playing
DD (9 drones, 1 gold)
DDC(11 drones, 0 gold)
DA(12 drones, 2 gold)
2x Scorchzilla
That will give you an attack of 6 on your fifth turn, which is a huge amount to deal with. So the question becomes whether there's anything else you (or your opponent) can do, or whether you end up playing the mirror and taking it from there.
That's a very special case, the analogue of something like a Cultist rush. Normally, as in Dominion, you'll need to consider more complicated interactions between numerous units/cards.
Here's another particular opening for P1 that worries me quite a bit as P2.
DD (8 drones, 0 gold)
D Chrono Filter (9 Drones, 1 gold)
Hannibull
Hannibull is a front line unit with 6HP that attacks for 2. Since it's front line, the first player to get an attack for 6 can stop their opponent from doing the same by killing a Hannibull every turn.
These examples happen to show something else too: the second player gets an extra drone as compensation, but whether that's much help strongly depends on what price points you want to hit early on.
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I want to play Prismata but I want to play Hearthstone how do I do both simultaneously? :(
I, I just don't know. For now, I'm just playing against bots on Prismata, so it's a way to have quick fun.
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I want to play Prismata but I want to play Hearthstone how do I do both simultaneously? :(
Create a clone of yourself and then merge back with it later so you have both sets if memories. This is also a good way to practice but I often find that my play style too closely matches my own to be as useful as playing multiple games against multiple opponents.
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well, forget about hearthstone and play prismata, obviously.
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What's the standard kingdom size for vs.? Base plus 5, plus 8, or grandmaster? I wanna practice vs. bots using the most relevant setting.
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What's the standard kingdom size for vs.? Base plus 5, plus 8, or grandmaster? I wanna practice vs. bots using the most relevant setting.
I was curious what grandmaster was and googled it. It's just one specific set, apparently they want to see what happens if they pick one set and let people play that a long. how long will they need to figure it out completely? at least I think that's the reason, it makes a lot of sense.
so, it can only be either +5 or +8. I'm strongly guessing it's +8. I only play that, because it's just more fun.
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What's the standard kingdom size for vs.? Base plus 5, plus 8, or grandmaster? I wanna practice vs. bots using the most relevant setting.
Seems like 8 is preferred once you are comfortable with all the units. I'm still playing 5-vs-bot at the moment because I don't know the units well yet.
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This kind of dynamic is what makes the game so fresh, since you'll never see the same set of units twice.
As people who frequent a Dominion forum, you don't have to tell us that. ;)
Here's a serious question though (for everybody who's playing) -- I've never been big on RTS games. Never got into Starcraft. Right now, most comparisons suggest that Prismata is more like Starcraft than Dominion in terms of gameplay feel. How big a deterrent should this be for me? I know I should just try out the demo, but I haven't had/made time yet...
I don't get all of the talk about starcraft. I'd say prismata is 50% magic, 48% dominion, and 2% starcraft. it's a round based card game.
So I think the problem with any comparison is that we're talking about comparisons across five different games, and the important mechanics are spread across multiple axes. It's not so much "Starcraft without X" or "Magic with Y," but a combination of a set of features.
Thankfully for everyone in the thread, I enjoy overanalyzing things! Let's consider the five games we're examining--Magic, Chess, Dominion, Starcraft, and Prismata--along a number of game mechanic/design axes. For the sake of "simplicity" I'm just going to look at the endpoints of the axes. Then we can consider similarities more in the mode of genetic similarity between species.
| Does the Game Have: | Yes | No |
| Strategy/Tactics | All | |
| Luck | DM | CPS |
| Economic Buildup | DPS | MC |
| Time/Twitch | S | CDMP |
| Unit-Based Combat | CMPS | D |
| Multiple Setups | DMP | CS* |
| Discrete Attacks | CDM | PS |
| Tricky Math | DMP | CS |
| Symmetry | CDP | MS |
| Perfect Information | CP | DMS |
I'm sure we can all argue for the inclusion of other axes, and that the axes shouldn't be equally weighted, but again for simplicity, let's consider them equally important. This means that:
| Games | Similarity |
| D - C | 40% |
| D - M | 70% |
| D - S | 30% |
| D - P | 60% |
| P - C | 60% |
| P - M | 50% |
| P - S | 50% |
| C - M | 50% |
| C - S | 50% |
| M - S | 40% |
So based on these, Prismata is more like Chess or Dominion than it is like Magic or Starcraft, though only by a little bit. Meanwhile, Dominion is a lot more like Prismata or Magic than it is like Chess or Starcraft.
(Yeah, yeah, I know, 5 slices of bacon are all similar to each other, doesn't mean any given one is 30/50/70% like the other, plus they're all delicious, but they all came from the same pork belly, or some other analogy? I dunno, it's far too late.)
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starcraft... has luck in it. a lot. trust me.
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I was also coming more talking about "what is the game made of" and less "how does it play out."
The combat mechanics and the way monsters work is extremely similar to magic. You got hp and attack on each, you got the defender deciding how he wants to block. you even got the vigilante and tapping (?) mechanics. And you have different colors of monsters that are differently themed.
The variety theme is very similar to dominion, as explained in the OP.
The economy is kind of like starcraft, though not really because there you just buy workers non stop with 2 of 3 races, making it less of a decision and more of a question of mechanics.
that's why I said it it's basically half dominion half magic and a little bit of SC, in terms of what it's made of.
In terms of how it plays out, I'd argue that it's Chess > Dominion/Magic >> SC. Although that's not really reflected in your analysis.
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Going beyond the standard numbers of drones is analogous to taking a fast expo in starcraft. Drones:Command posts, not Drones:Drones
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starcraft... has luck in it. a lot. trust me.
With absolutely perfect play, there is no luck in SC. Every unit can theoretically be microed to inflict maximum damage while taking minimal damage. Obviously this would only be achievable by an AI that can do 100k APM or more, but it would completely remove all luck.
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starcraft... has luck in it. a lot. trust me.
With absolutely perfect play, there is no luck in SC. Every unit can theoretically be microed to inflict maximum damage while taking minimal damage. Obviously this would only be achievable by an AI that can do 100k APM or more, but it would completely remove all luck.
no. if you have, for example, a big map in, say, a terran mirror, there are basically only three viable openings. CC first, A safe expand, and a double proxy rax.
Double proxy rax will win vs CC first. You can argue about perfect micro, but if you're gonna do that then both sides have to have perfect micro, and then it doesn't really change anything. A safe expansion will more or less auto win vs proxy raxes, although you can't immediately attack or anything, you're just miles ahead. And CC will have a significant although not game ending edge over a safe expand. this is slightly simplified, but not much. you can't talk yourself out of the fact that you have a rock paper scissors scenario, and you really get similar things all the time in sc2.
And aside from that, I also don't think you can just assume both people have perfect micro, because they don't. say you play a zerg mirror, your opponent has a crawler in his expansion. You can now try to sneak in 4 banelings in his eco line. If he doesn't look, you more or less won the game. If he does look, you wasted like 300 resources for almost nothing. There is of course a counter argument here: it's not really luck, and you can do similar things in chess, do a dangerous thing and hope your opponent doesn't notice; that's not luck, but it's his skill. But it's different, really, because for most players, looking or not looking at your eco line at a certain moment is really just luck. They maybe check there every 5 seconds, and that either happens to be the right moment or it doesn't.
And an even simpler example are the random spawning positions. Zerg larva spawns from the bottom of the hatchery; if the mineral patches are below the hatch, the distance for newly spawned drones is shorter. Also, if there are multiple spawning options for your opponent, it's also luck where you scout first.
so, tl;dr sc2 has a lot of luck. Broodwar has less, because it's a 10000 times better game, but it doesn't have zero. And broodwar actually does have some other luck elements based on the bugs that were allowed to be and were more or less integrated as strategies in the game. The reaver shots, for example, are bugged, and sometimes take way too long to do damage or just don't do damage if the targeted unit is running away or on a higher platform. And it has broken pathfinding that leads to units going in directions that might not be random in the most theoretical sense, but are totally random for the players.
so, starcraft has luck. that's completely out of question.
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It's a matter of semantics that most people don't refer to double blind rock paper scissors interactions as luck. It is a similar source in variance of outcome it's just not popular to use the word luck to refer to it no matter how similar the impact is to luck.
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Not really relevant, but Broodwar did have a random hit chance thing going on when attacking units on higher ground. SC2 removed that mechanic, and replaced it with ground units having no vision on higher ground.
But yeah the random spawn points for each player is a big source of luck in sc2. It affects how early you scout your opponent. Blizzard deliberately chose to always have 4 player maps used in 2 player ladder to nerf worker proxy strategies.
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I like the game, but it's super-mathy, which I think is a downside.
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I like the game, but it's super-mathy, which I think is a downside.
What do you mean by super mathy? All games are pure mathematics so that's not much of a statement at all.
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I like the game, but it's super-mathy, which I think is a downside.
What do you mean by super mathy? All games are pure mathematics so that's not much of a statement at all.
uhh that's not true. mafia e.g. is not maths. unless you say psychology ⊂ maths
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What's the standard kingdom size for vs.? Base plus 5, plus 8, or grandmaster? I wanna practice vs. bots using the most relevant setting.
I was curious what grandmaster was and googled it. It's just one specific set, apparently they want to see what happens if they pick one set and let people play that a long. how long will they need to figure it out completely? at least I think that's the reason, it makes a lot of sense.
so, it can only be either +5 or +8. I'm strongly guessing it's +8. I only play that, because it's just more fun.
The top players all seem to play both +5 and +8 competitively. My understanding of the way they play out is that +5 is actually more likely to be won by the most-skilled player, because there is usually a dominant strategy that's not hard to see, and then the stronger player's superior execution matters a lot. In +8, there are more viable strategies, which may have some rock/paper/scissors interactions or whatever, increasing the variance.
I heard a rumor that the grandmaster set was an experiment that failed, in that nobody is playing it at all, and will be removed in a future version.
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Doesn't fog of war add luck?
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It's easier to just say that Starcraft mostly doesn't have RNG, that is, random number generation by the computer, with the exceptions of starting positions and Brood War's high ground mechanic. The primary sources of luck come from hidden information, human limitations, and chaos.
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The loading animation is, by the way, pretty fascinating. It's impossible for me to see it for what it really is all the time, no matter how hard I try to.
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The loading animation is, by the way, pretty fascinating. It's impossible for me to see it for what it really is all the time, no matter how hard I try to.
It actually made the front page of /r/gifs last week, and Elyot gave away the source code for anyone who wants to play with it: http://np.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/2on8si/connecting_to_server_so_mesmerizing/cmow0sz
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The loading animation is, by the way, pretty fascinating. It's impossible for me to see it for what it really is all the time, no matter how hard I try to.
My experience with optical illusions makes me believe that the animation can be done with particles moving up and down in a very coordinated way.
I like the in-game music a lot actually.
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I have been playing all day, backed it, got the key, and am officially terrible. Haha.
I guess I was stuck in the 10s for a long time playing Dominion until I got good.
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Turns out I'm pretty terrible too. Played some humans for the first time today, hasn't been going great. Where do people go to learn strategy?
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also, username is the-number-e
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Turns out I'm pretty terrible too. Played some humans for the first time today, hasn't been going great. Where do people go to learn strategy?
Playing more.
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Where do people go to learn strategy?
prismatastrategy.com
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Where do people go to learn strategy?
prismatastrategy.com
Turns out I'm pretty terrible too. Played some humans for the first time today, hasn't been going great. Where do people go to learn strategy?
Playing more.
Do you all realize that it upon us to discover strategies for ourselves? It's like the start of Dominion all over again.
Then again, the leaderboard seems to be full of names I don't recognize. What if there's a secret f.PS where they scoff at us?
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Where do people go to learn strategy?
prismatastrategy.com
I totally checked to see if it was a real thing.
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Every game feels like rock, paper, scissors and I'm throwing first.
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Turns out I'm pretty terrible too. Played some humans for the first time today, hasn't been going great. Where do people go to learn strategy?
I'm a proud member of the "has yet to beat a human" club. But I beat the adept bot pretty consistently, and the master bot sometimes, so that's something.
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Every game feels like rock, paper, scissors and I'm throwing first.
I feel like the hybrid units that require more than one type of resource allow the players at least some opportunity to conceal their intentions.
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I'm hearing a lot of new players struggling in here. I'm no expert, but I've been playing for several weeks and winning more than I lose, with a rating in the low 1400s; I'd be happy to help out. Would anyone like a coaching session on Skype, streamed on twitch for anyone else who wants to ask questions or just listen in? If so, PM me your Skype name and we can set up a call. I'm available for the next several hours tonight, at least.
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I've played maybe 30-40 bot games so far--and beaten the 3s Masterbot a few times. There is definitely a ton to this game though. The devs are very high level players, but from the way they talk, there is still much about their gameplay they think they can improve on. I like games like this though, because there is something to work towards that is not easily achievable.
From the games I've played so far, I feel like getting some early aggro and forcing the opponent into a defensive position normally wins me the game. Most of these are somewhat low-level bot matches, so not sure if this translates as much into fighting a human opponent. It's more expensive to play defensively, and you will eventually run out of seeds and be overrun. I read that they specifically made things this way in order to avoid turtling as a viable strategy, because it's not that interesting. I feel like shifting the game state such that you are the aggressor and your opponent has to spend more of their resources to defend their economy instead of gaining attack power normally leads to a win. Of course, some units change this, but generally, the majority of my games have played out this way.
I've also played games where me (or the bot) plays more defensively while building up a superior economy before focusing on offense. I feel like this is a pretty good strategy if there's no way for your opponent to build up attack power quickly (Tia Thurnax, etc).
I don't know if this stuff is like super obvious to everyone else, but it took me a little to figure this out. I'm probably going to play a lot more matches against the AI before I start ranked play. This is one of those games where it's still very fun to play against bots, so that's a definite benefit. Prismata is so interesting with the similarities it shares with the games they credit (Chess, Dominion, Starcraft). I've never played Magic, but am familiar with the rules. It's very fun how Prismata forces you to think in different ways and consider strategies that are parallel to those in other games.
The Prismata subreddit is fairly active, but I'd rather discuss strategy here with people I know and trust ;). Its still a good resource for strategy though. Especially at this point, when there isn't a ginormous playerbase yet.
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I'm probably going to play a lot more matches against the AI before I start ranked play. This is one of those games where it's still very fun to play against bots, so that's a definite benefit.
I also played games against the bots until I was winning most of the time—one nice thing about the bots is that you haven't got the time pressure. But the experience of playing against other humans is different, and I lost a lot of games very quickly when I jumped on the ladder. I'm now bobbing around 1300 on the leaderboard.
Let's have some random strategy thoughts:
The official videos are pretty useful.
A lot of my games go like this: build two Drones a turn until your opponent builds a technology building, then build a Blastforge to drop a Wall next turn if they go on the attack.
The equivalent of Big Money (a baseline that uses only units from the base set) is to buy all the Tarsiers. I find it helpful to think in terms of whether anything forces me to deviate from this strategy.
The special Drones all have different uses. Vivid Drone is cheap but you can probably only buy one a turn. Trinity Drone greatly increases you resilience to breaching and is hardly more expensive than the normal Drones (G instead of 1 gold and an energy). Doomed Drone is really a cheap or free defender that you have to buy a couple of turns in advance of when you need it. Wild Drone is a much better opener than it looks—it isn't going to die much earlier than your first Wall would, and it gives you an economy boost. You can also buy it as cheap (but not prompt) defence later—if you're opponent kills it every turn then it's 3HPfor 3 gold, and if they don't then you have an economy boost. Ossified Drone I've never bought, and it doesn't excite me because you rarely have spare Red and if Drones are being attacked you're in a bad shape anyway. I'm sure it's useful occasionally though.
3 Engineers are arguably cheaper than a Wall.
Centrifuge, the resource pinata, is really good if you're not in danger of being rushed.
Gauss Cannon is almost too expensive to buy.
One Steelsplitter is nice to have over a Wall if you don't need to defend this turn as it gives you the option of attacking in the future whilst still being available to block (after your cheaper Walls) if necessary.
One big turn is much better than several smaller turns because breaching is so good. So the bombs (Gauss Charge/Pixie) and synchronised periodic attackers are very useful. The Red one-time freezers are great too because they disable Walls incredibly cheaply.
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The equivalent of Big Money (a baseline that uses only units from the base set) is to buy all the Tarsiers. I find it helpful to think in terms of whether anything forces me to deviate from this strategy.
Seems like a good thing to think about, but even in just base set, you can't "just" build all the Tarsiers: you need Walls or something to defend them.
Ossified Drone I've never bought, and it doesn't excite me because you rarely have spare Red and if Drones are being attacked you're in a bad shape anyway. I'm sure it's useful occasionally though.
Ossified is my favorite Drone. Vivid is "exciting" in that it enables other strategies well by accelerating your economy, but it's frankly boring: you just mindlessly open Vivids and then have more money than if you didn't. Ossified, on the other hand, keeps things interesting throughout a lot of the game by letting you juggle your leftover red, and defend efficiently with a giant pile of free red "Forcefields". http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2p1yyn/ossified_drone/ is a semi-recent reddit post asking what the heck Ossified is any good for, with a lot of good answers and a link to a recent Ossified game of my own.
Centrifuge, the resource pinata, is really good if you're not in danger of being rushed.
I'm not so sure about this. Building a Centrifuge takes a long time, and the amount of Drones+tech you have to cut in order to get it out means you often get the unit you were aiming for *later* than if you just teched and droned normally. It's most often useful if there's one or two big units that you really want, but don't want to commit to the tech for all game. For example, it's nice to Centrifuge into Defense Grid with just one Blastforge, rather than having to get three Blastforges and waste a bunch of blue for the rest of the game. But if there's something you want to use a lot of consistently, eg Drake spam, it's better to skip the Centrifuge even if you're not being rushed.
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Seems like a good thing to think about, but even in just base set, you can't "just" build all the Tarsiers: you need Walls or something to defend them.
Yes.
Ossified is my favorite Drone. Vivid is "exciting" in that it enables other strategies well by accelerating your economy, but it's frankly boring: you just mindlessly open Vivids and then have more money than if you didn't. Ossified, on the other hand, keeps things interesting throughout a lot of the game by letting you juggle your leftover red, and defend efficiently with a giant pile of free red "Forcefields". http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2p1yyn/ossified_drone/ is a semi-recent reddit post asking what the heck Ossified is any good for, with a lot of good answers and a link to a recent Ossified game of my own.
I'm quite sure that I'm underestimating it. For example, I see now that you don't need to click it for the gold. It's still not quite "free", as the upfront cost isn't negligible, but I will try to play it when I can. Thanks for the link.
I'm not so sure about this. Building a Centrifuge takes a long time, and the amount of Drones+tech you have to cut in order to get it out means you often get the unit you were aiming for *later* than if you just teched and droned normally. It's most often useful if there's one or two big units that you really want, but don't want to commit to the tech for all game. For example, it's nice to Centrifuge into Defense Grid with just one Blastforge, rather than having to get three Blastforges and waste a bunch of blue for the rest of the game. But if there's something you want to use a lot of consistently, eg Drake spam, it's better to skip the Centrifuge even if you're not being rushed.
Perhaps I mean that if there's nothing outstanding that you want to get then it's nice to get a huge selection of whatever in a few turns time rather than building up whatever slowly, as the first few whatevers are just going to run into walls anyway. I agree that it's much more useful if you want to spike something very expensive.
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Ossified Drone I've never bought, and it doesn't excite me because you rarely have spare Red and if Drones are being attacked you're in a bad shape anyway. I'm sure it's useful occasionally though.
What amalloy said. The problem with the ossified drone is to find the right moment to buy it, because you don't want to lose early tempo if you are going red.
Another thing: defending with drones can and will win you the game. You have to know when to do it though.
3 Engineers are arguably cheaper than a Wall.
Especially since you are somewhat unlikely to run out of Engineers, while running out of Walls is a somewhat common occurrence.
Centrifuge, the resource pinata, is really good if you're not in danger of being rushed.
Centrifuge is especially good to buy high tech legendaries, like the Centurion. You will get them roughly at the same time as if you had bought all the necessary tech, without actually wasting money on unnecessary blastforges or animus.
One big turn is much better than several smaller turns because breaching is so good. So the bombs (Gauss Charge/Pixie) and synchronised periodic attackers are very useful. The Red one-time freezers are great too because they disable Walls incredibly cheaply.
The other reason one big turn is better than many small turns is because you aren't wasting attack on walls. 0-0-9 attack means 7 attack will actually harm defenders. 3-3-3 means only 3 attack will harm defenders.
Personally, I tend to ignore basic units other than walls, unless I've got spare resources after buying whatever I wanted to buy. It's probably a mistake...
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The loading animation is, by the way, pretty fascinating. It's impossible for me to see it for what it really is all the time, no matter how hard I try to.
It is--in my opinion--much more fascinating when done using physical objects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMiuzyU1ag
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completely unrelated, I really want a custom avatar. looks like the only way to get it though is to back the kickstarter with 50$ or more. I might just do that...
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Am I the only one that thinks Auric impulse and Doomed Drone seem massively underpowered? Investing gold is important enough that banking gold to gain more gold later doesn't seem worth it.
I guess the clever thing to do with Doomed Drone is to get 2 gold out of it and then block with it the turn before it dies, though. Hm. Kinda better than Engineer that way I guess..
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Am I the only one that thinks Auric impulse and Doomed Drone seem massively underpowered? Investing gold is important enough that banking gold to gain more gold later doesn't seem worth it.
I guess the clever thing to do with Doomed Drone is to get 2 gold out of it and then block with it the turn before it dies, though. Hm. Kinda better than Engineer that way I guess..
I think what you mentioned is the primary use of doomed drone. It's a really cheap, delayed 1 defense blocker. Auric impulse is sort of like a drone that costs 5G instead of 3G1E that you can sell back on any turn by just not buying it again.
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Am I the only one that thinks Auric impulse and Doomed Drone seem massively underpowered? Investing gold is important enough that banking gold to gain more gold later doesn't seem worth it.
I guess the clever thing to do with Doomed Drone is to get 2 gold out of it and then block with it the turn before it dies, though. Hm. Kinda better than Engineer that way I guess..
the way I see it (I could be wrong), auric impulse is never really part of a strategy, unless you define it in a lot of detail, which will mostly not be possible, because you have to react to your opponent. It's just something you do whenever you have 5 gold that you aren't going to spend anyway, which does happen sometimes. But it's not an interesting unit, because it doesn't really change strategy very much.
Doomed drone has 3 uses
-> if you want a really cheap blocker and have time to build it early
-> if you have E2$ left and don't have anything else to buy
-> if you need all of your $ except 1 during your next turn
If you are going for serious income though, it's vastly inferior to a normal drone
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Auric impulse is sort of like a drone that costs 5G instead of 3G1E that you can sell back on any turn by just not buying it again.
That's a really cool way to think of Auric Impulse. I've been thinking of it as more like "a way to avoid committing to building a Drone", because you can buy it, then build a Drone, which has the same effect as just building a Drone to begin with, except that you can change your mind about droning if something else becomes more urgent.
the way I see it (I could be wrong), auric impulse is never really part of a strategy, unless you define it in a lot of detail, which will mostly not be possible, because you have to react to your opponent. It's just something you do whenever you have 5 gold that you aren't going to spend anyway, which does happen sometimes. But it's not an interesting unit, because it doesn't really change strategy very much.
You're mostly right that Auric is not much of a strategic unit, being rather more tactical in that you usually buy it opportunistically to increase short-term flexibility. But there are a couple units that synergize well with Auric Impulse, enough that its presence might sway your overall plan towards them: Antima Comet and Iso Kronus. Both of these units have the unusual property of encouraging you to save up money rather than droning: with Iso, you want as much gold as possible every other turn, so you can grow your Iso stack while keeping it in sync; and with Antima, you want to build as many Engineers as possible next turn, meaning you can afford to float ten or fifteen gold for one turn. In both cases, a Drone would be much worse than an Auric Impulse, because it costs you two gold for the critical turn, and the returns you get back on future turns may not be worth it.
9avQ6-Yds9Q (http://play.prismata.net/?r=9avQ6-Yds9Q) is the most recent game I played, in which I happened to use Auric Impulse effectively against Awaclus: I built two of them on the turn before my Antima hit, effectively gaining a free Engineer (and a free damage) that I couldn't have gotten without Auric Impule. I could even have gotten one more damage out if I'd build another Auric on turn 4 instead of Engineer+Drone. Maybe that's right, I dunno; it gains me an Engineer and a damage, at the expense of a Drone. Seems close, but in real life I didn't even think of it until I was writing up this post.
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completely unrelated, I really want a custom avatar. looks like the only way to get it though is to back the kickstarter with 50$ or more. I might just do that...
Just did this myself. I did the $56 pledge, which also comes with the Prismata soundtrack. Yeah, I liked the groove of the Prismata music.
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If anyone is interested I am going live @ twitch.tv/azizqistemron (http://twitch.tv/azizqistemron) to do a more beginner stream without music so that it can be viewed later. I should be starting in about 5 minutes.
Edit: Done streaming.
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Temron and I will be doing a stream tonight at 8:00 Pacific time (5 1/2 hours from the time of this post) intended to be accessible to Dominion folks. So if you're interested in the game but haven't tried it, or have played but are having trouble beating the bots or whatever, please stop by http://twitch.tv/amalloy and check it out. We'll be playing a slow-paced game with plenty of explanation and answering viewer questions.
Maybe we'll even commentate on some viewer games and/or coach if you want to join us on Skype? Who knows, sky's the limit! Let us know what you want to see.
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Temron and I will be doing a stream tonight at 8:00 Pacific time (5 1/2 hours from the time of this post) intended to be accessible to Dominion folks. So if you're interested in the game but haven't tried it, or have played but are having trouble beating the bots or whatever, please stop by http://twitch.tv/amalloy and check it out. We'll be playing a slow-paced game with plenty of explanation and answering viewer questions.
Maybe we'll even commentate on some viewer games and/or coach if you want to join us on Skype? Who knows, sky's the limit! Let us know what you want to see.
Due to some technical difficulties, we're at http://www.twitch.tv/azizqistemron instead. Starting now!
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Gave this a try today, and yeah, it's a little too much fun. I made it to tier II with 3 wins. Though, two of those wins were due to my opponent resigning when it wasn't clear at all to me that I was going to win.
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I just played a super epic game that I somehow managed to win, and I feel so stupidly proud of myself that I am going to share the replay (http://play.prismata.net/?r=cHtSu-GyzH0).
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I just played a super epic game that I somehow managed to win, and I feel so stupidly proud of myself that I am going to share the replay (http://play.prismata.net/?r=cHtSu-GyzH0).
Woah, that's a lot of conduits...
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I just played a super epic game that I somehow managed to win, and I feel so stupidly proud of myself that I am going to share the replay (http://play.prismata.net/?r=cHtSu-GyzH0).
Woah, that's a lot of conduits...
I heard that and loaded up the replay, expecting to say "Well that's a Zemora game for you...". But no, apparently it is a Chieftain/Venge Cannon game? I think this was a few too many Conduits.
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I just played a super epic game that I somehow managed to win, and I feel so stupidly proud of myself that I am going to share the replay (http://play.prismata.net/?r=cHtSu-GyzH0).
Woah, that's a lot of conduits...
Probably I overdid it slightly, but two of them were locked buying chieftains, and I wanted to be able to go heavy venge cannon at some point (3 green to buy, 3 green to activate), so I kinda needed lots, and there's just so much time to think what you are doing.
I'm pretty sure I would have lost this if my opponent had gone red instead of green after buying Odin. He spent half the game smashing himself against chieftains that were going to die anyway, had a large economic advantage, and I wasn't pressuring him that much, so he could have swarmed me with bloodragers long before I got to the venge cannons.
But hey, victory is mine!
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So I just played a really fun game. First time I won with Zemora, even though I'm sure I played suboptimally. Really close and it came down to some really tricky defensive tactics. Any thoughts on how to improve?
AvgIm-R9O5s
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So I just played a really fun game. First time I won with Zemora, even though I'm sure I played suboptimally. Really close and it came down to some really tricky defensive tactics. Any thoughts on how to improve?
AvgIm-R9O5s
The Blastforge into Flame Animus is a little questionable: you will want to build a lot of Tarsiers, and against an opponent who is trying to build this much economy, you'd like to apply pressure quickly, and a real Animus lets you get more Tarsiers sooner. You'd have to cut a drone, though, so the Flame Animus seems okay. The turn after that, though, I don't like building two drones or an Electrovore. I'd cut the drones for an Animus: three Tarsiers per turn is a lot of pressure for just a little money, and your economy is already pretty big; you just need to do short-term things now to help you survive until Zemora arrives, not invest in more gold income.
I'd also switch the Electrovore for a Tarsier: your opponent can get rid of all your Engineers in a big hurry if he wants to, and the Tarsier will deal damage. On the other hand, you did well to just accept this by defending with your Electrovore immediately, so maybe you got a great bargain by building a 4R Rhino.
On turn 9, I don't like the Forcefield. Just build a Barrier, and be prepared to sacrifice a Steelsplitter in the unlikely event your opponent attacks with everything. When you Forcefield, you commit to losing the Drone regardless, while your opponent gets to keep some units back on defense.
On turn 10, the second Animus is very bad: are you really hoping to spend over $20 on red in a single turn? There aren't even five Tarsiers left in the supply. Cut it for a Gauss Cannon or something, and put up a Barrier as well just to increase your defensive flexibility. As it happens, when he attacks for max the Barrier will go unused, but that's not a big deal: you will be wrecking him quite soon, and can afford an insurance policy as cheap as 1G.
On turn 11, you overdefended by one, because he can't possibly keep enough Engineers to fire all his Electrovores, even if he sacs the Wall instead of absorbing. Cut a Forcefield and replace it with Barrier.
None of these mistakes really cost you anything, because your opponent had a very bad plan: you can't just drone up against Zemora, you have to apply pressure to win before Zemora can save the day, or sometimes you can do okay getting your own Zemora. Overall I would say the mistake you made the most often was underutilizing Barrier: you have a giant pile of green available, which means that Barrier's cost is practically just a single gold. Often, you built a Forcefield when a Barrier would do; even two Barriers only costs one more gold than a Forcefield, while saving you a Drone and adding defensive flexibility.
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I guess, it's really worth it to try this game yourself if you're just a little interested.
I've started yesterday, I quite enjoy it.
I played a couple of games against the weakest bots before noticing that after the first five tutorials, there's also a second page of tutorials.
Can anyone help me with this newbie question about "Defense training 3"? (not the advanced one, actually the "normal" third one?)
I'm pretty sure you want to keep those units with the largest hitpoints and you want to kill enemy attackers that deal the most damage compared to their hitpoints when breaching. That said, I'm killing enemy Tarsiers first. The AI attacks with Gauss Cannons and Tarsiers himself. I'm losing my Engineers first, keeping my walls. But in the end, my walls are gone and I can't kill his Gauss Cannons fast enough.
Is that actually winnable, or do I have to think outside the box somehow? I tried to do something different, like trying to save an Engineer early on instead of the second Wall, or to attack the enemy Gauss Cannons earlier, but the only thing I've noticed was that I'm losing faster.
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I guess, it's really worth it to try this game yourself if you're just a little interested.
I've started yesterday, I quite enjoy it.
I played a couple of games against the weakest bots before noticing that after the first five tutorials, there's also a second page of tutorials.
Can anyone help me with this newbie question about "Defense training 3"? (not the advanced one, actually the "normal" third one?)
I'm pretty sure you want to keep those units with the largest hitpoints and you want to kill enemy attackers that deal the most damage compared to their hitpoints when breaching. That said, I'm killing enemy Tarsiers first. The AI attacks with Gauss Cannons and Tarsiers himself. I'm losing my Engineers first, keeping my walls. But in the end, my walls are gone and I can't kill his Gauss Cannons fast enough.
Is that actually winnable, or do I have to think outside the box somehow? I tried to do something different, like trying to save an Engineer early on instead of the second Wall, or to attack the enemy Gauss Cannons earlier, but the only thing I've noticed was that I'm losing faster.
Hint: in a given turn, maximizing the amount of damage absorbed is important, but sometimes minimizing the number of units that you lose to an attack can be more important. If your opponent is consistently dealing, say, 3 damage, you are happier with a wall and two engineers than with two walls.
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I guess, it's really worth it to try this game yourself if you're just a little interested.
I've started yesterday, I quite enjoy it.
I played a couple of games against the weakest bots before noticing that after the first five tutorials, there's also a second page of tutorials.
Can anyone help me with this newbie question about "Defense training 3"? (not the advanced one, actually the "normal" third one?)
I'm pretty sure you want to keep those units with the largest hitpoints and you want to kill enemy attackers that deal the most damage compared to their hitpoints when breaching. So while I'm trying this, I'm killing enemy Tarsiers first. The AI attacks with Gauss Cannons and Tarsiers himself. I'm losing my Engineers first, keeping my walls. But in the end, my walls are gone and I can't kill his Gauss Cannons fast enough.
Is that actually winnable, or do I have to think outside the box somehow? I tried to do something different, like trying to save an Engineer early on instead of the second Wall, or to attack the enemy Gauss Cannons earlier, but the only thing I've noticed was that I'm losing faster.
A general tactic you can apply to these defense puzzles goes like this:
- First, figure out the right order to attack the enemy units. Here, it's easy: Tarsiers, then Tarsier+Gauss, then Gauss forever. Count up how many turns this will take to kill him. Here that's 9 turns.
- Next, list how much he is attacking for on those 9 turns. He'll attack for 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1.
- Finally, figure out how to budget your defense to survive the attacks he'll be making.
I don't want to spoil it with too much detail, but I think if you apply this plan and think about it, you can come up with the answer. And if you have trouble, here's a hint: the only interesting decision happens during your very first turn defending.
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Lost a game to the "stealth" update. Didn't notice that Deadeye costed more, and didn't notice that now it can attack.
You probably want to check the news for the other changes if you had started getting acquainted with the units.
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I finally beat a real person! (Mostly I've just been playing bots). We used Deadeye's to eliminate each others drone, but I got through his defense a turn earlier afterwards, and that meant a win for me (using deadeye's attack and a few tarsiers that I picked up).
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I really like defense grid :D
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Lost a game to the "stealth" update. Didn't notice that Deadeye costed more, and didn't notice that now it can attack.
You probably want to check the news for the other changes if you had started getting acquainted with the units.
It's only a stealth update if you don't read the subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/prismata), though, which I do recommend reading: there's interesting stuff there, from the devs and from everyone, and it's not so high-traffic that following it is a lot of work.
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Pretty proud of this one: http://play.prismata.net/?r=ivZnR-aAkrr
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Pretty proud of this one: http://play.prismata.net/?r=ivZnR-aAkrr
Bahahahaha those Cluster Bolts. Well played.
One note, though: you usually don't need/want to build the Engineers on the same turn as your built your Antima: you can just float the gold and buy them next turn. And once you've made that realization, you can cut two of your Engineers for Walls, one on each turn. Wall is $5 to get 3 hit points; if you have to defend with the Engineers it costs you $6 for the same amount of health, without actually adding any damage. The $2 you save there lets you squeak out one extra Engineer compared to your actual play.
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Pretty proud of this one: http://play.prismata.net/?r=ivZnR-aAkrr
Bahahahaha those Cluster Bolts. Well played.
One note, though: you usually don't need/want to build the Engineers on the same turn as your built your Antima: you can just float the gold and buy them next turn. And once you've made that realization, you can cut two of your Engineers for Walls, one on each turn. Wall is $5 to get 3 hit points; if you have to defend with the Engineers it costs you $6 for the same amount of health, without actually adding any damage. The $2 you save there lets you squeak out one extra Engineer compared to your actual play.
Yeah I realized I misplayed the engineers when he attacked, I thought I would have enough defense but I didn't.
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Alright, I'm hooked on this now... Played for a few hours then backed it. I'm still pretty crappy at it, but I'm getting better. I'm AHoppy over there, feel free to add me.
My biggest concern is I take a long time to think and I'm not sure how that's going to play out against real opponents...
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Alright, I'm hooked on this now... Played for a few hours then backed it. I'm still pretty crappy at it, but I'm getting better. I'm AHoppy over there, feel free to add me.
My biggest concern is I take a long time to think and I'm not sure how that's going to play out against real opponents...
Well, there's no real chat, so they won't harass you at least... if you're worried about the time control, you can set it to only match on the slowest time control, unless that's still too fast.
I got automatched with e today, had some fun games.
I really enjoyed the puzzles, especially the countdown one. However, I can't figure out how to beat the second boss... I feel like shadow fang has to be the way to go, but I can't find a build order that puts up enough defense while still building quickly.
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Yeah, I haven't managed to beat the second boss either.
Oh yeah, I go by Markusin on Prismata. Feel free to add me.
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I didn't beat it either.
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I managed to get to Tier IX! I'm not going to stay there very long! Who cares! Bragging rights! I cannot stop using exclamation marks, sorry!
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I thought once you hit a tier you cant be demoted?
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I managed to get to Tier IX! I'm not going to stay there very long! Who cares! Bragging rights! I cannot stop using exclamation marks, sorry!
I thought you can't go down tiers?
PPE: ninja'd...
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Oh, that's weird. Eventually everybody will be in tier X then! So cool... Meet you there! :P
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Oh, that's weird. Eventually everybody will be in tier X then! So cool... Meet you there! :P
Well, it's supposed to be pretty hard to progress in tiers unless you are actually improving; you can't just grind out wins like you can on the Hearthstone ladder, for example. It seems a lot easier to lose points than to win them, once you are near the top of a tier, because you are mostly being matched against people ranked lower than you, so you need quite a high win percentage to sustain your tier progress.
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Oh, that's weird. Eventually everybody will be in tier X then! So cool... Meet you there! :P
Well, it's supposed to be pretty hard to progress in tiers unless you are actually improving; you can't just grind out wins like you can on the Hearthstone ladder, for example. It seems a lot easier to lose points than to win them, once you are near the top of a tier, because you are mostly being matched against people ranked lower than you, so you need quite a high win percentage to sustain your tier progress.
Key word being eventually :P
When you can only cross a barrier in one direction, even if movement is random and weighted away from the barrier, statistically everyone ends up on the other side of the barrier after a certain amount of time (granted, it might tend to infinity). Especially in this case, since you can't get arbitrarily far away from the barrier.
As long as the rate of promotions is sustained by the arrival of new players, this shouldn't be a problem. But well, it depends on both rates...
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I hope they add more tiers above tier X as tier X gets full. But I'm still in tier IV so that's not a problem for me right now...
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I'm pretty proud of this game, it got pretty scary near the end
http://play.prismata.net/?r=Eo5Z3-pp1EF
I love Zemora Voidbringer
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if sharing games is a thing...
http://play.prismata.net/?r=RcsQ5-1nttD (http://play.prismata.net/?r=RcsQ5-1nttD)
though I think I should have bought Tia to hit with the comet
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Funded!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarchstudios/prismata-a-new-hybrid-game-of-pure-strategy
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Key word being eventually :P
When you can only cross a barrier in one direction, even if movement is random and weighted away from the barrier, statistically everyone ends up on the other side of the barrier after a certain amount of time (granted, it might tend to infinity). Especially in this case, since you can't get arbitrarily far away from the barrier.
As long as the rate of promotions is sustained by the arrival of new players, this shouldn't be a problem. But well, it depends on both rates...
that's actually not true. if you have 50% or more for a win you will reach it eventually, but if you have less than 50%, there is a real percentage chance that you will reach it, and likewise a chance that you won't.
unless there is a gap on how low you can drop (like 0% progress in this case), then you do have 100% with infinite amount of time.
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Funded!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarchstudios/prismata-a-new-hybrid-game-of-pure-strategy
Sweet! I backed it with as much as I can afford at the moment. Those stretch goals look pretty awesome though! I'll bet they'll reach at least 1-2 of them. The Dev's have talked a lot about how many kickstarters tend to explode at the end with additional backing.
edit: grammar
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Key word being eventually :P
When you can only cross a barrier in one direction, even if movement is random and weighted away from the barrier, statistically everyone ends up on the other side of the barrier after a certain amount of time (granted, it might tend to infinity). Especially in this case, since you can't get arbitrarily far away from the barrier.
As long as the rate of promotions is sustained by the arrival of new players, this shouldn't be a problem. But well, it depends on both rates...
that's actually not true. if you have 50% or more for a win you will reach it eventually, but if you have less than 50%, there is a real percentage chance that you will reach it, and likewise a chance that you won't.
unless there is a gap on how low you can drop (like 0% progress in this case), then you do have 100% with infinite amount of time.
If your odds of winning don't change based on your position (i.e. always 40%) then you are guaranteed to promote in the infinite time limit. This is like the Gambler's ruin only promotion is going "bankrupt". Here's a link about it: http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~james/Markov/s13.pdf (on pg. 3)
This does not require a cap on how low your position can drop (or on how much money the gambler can win). There will still be a sequence of events which you are guaranteed to encounter in the infinite time limit that will lead to promotion (or bankruptcy). edit: I can't read, what I said above is incorrect.
After they talk about the gambler's ruin there's an example where you aren't guaranteed to end up in the absorbing state (which for us is promotion), it requires the probabilities to change based on your position. I didn't look at it closely but I'm pretty sure it will require (at some positions) your odds of winning to decrease the further you go down in position which doesn't seem like a very good model.
My guess is that to escape the absorbing state you need to have accelerating probabilities away from that state. I can't imagine having "stable" regions away from the absorbing state will cut it as infinite time will get you there for sure. I don't really know anything about this stuff though.
edit: I have said some wrong things here so read ahead for me being corrected.
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Key word being eventually :P
When you can only cross a barrier in one direction, even if movement is random and weighted away from the barrier, statistically everyone ends up on the other side of the barrier after a certain amount of time (granted, it might tend to infinity). Especially in this case, since you can't get arbitrarily far away from the barrier.
As long as the rate of promotions is sustained by the arrival of new players, this shouldn't be a problem. But well, it depends on both rates...
that's actually not true. if you have 50% or more for a win you will reach it eventually, but if you have less than 50%, there is a real percentage chance that you will reach it, and likewise a chance that you won't.
unless there is a gap on how low you can drop (like 0% progress in this case), then you do have 100% with infinite amount of time.
I was waiting to see how long it would take for someone to correct me... yeah, you are right, I spoke too soon. To prove that it works in this specific case, you would need to modelize the exact win probability and related rating increase. Note that because rating doesn't change by discrete amounts (I mean, technically yes, the precision of their floats), we can't really talk about rating being bounded from below.
But still, given the way ratings seem to work, and that your win chance shouldn't ever be much lower than 0.5, I think this holds.
If your odds of winning don't change based on your position (i.e. always 40%) then you are guaranteed to promote in the infinite time limit. This is like the Gambler's ruin only promotion is going "bankrupt". Here's a link about it: http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~james/Markov/s13.pdf (on pg. 3)
This does not require a cap on how low your position can drop (or on how much money the gambler can win). There will still be a sequence of events which you are guaranteed to encounter in the infinite time limit that will lead to promotion (or bankruptcy).
After they talk about the gambler's ruin there's an example where you aren't guaranteed to end up in the absorbing state (which for us is promotion), it requires the probabilities to change based on your position. I didn't look at it closely but I'm pretty sure it will require (at some positions) your odds of winning to decrease the further you go down in position which doesn't seem like a very good model.
My guess is that to escape the absorbing state you need to have accelerating probabilities away from that state. I can't imagine having "stable" regions away from the absorbing state will cut it as infinite time will get you there for sure. I don't really know anything about this stuff though.
Your link does state that the odds of getting into the absorbing state are less than 1 if your odds of moving away from the absorbing state are strictly higher than 0.5. You don't need "stable" regions away from the absorbing state.
You can think of it this way: you start in some random position x>0. Because the chances of getting away from the absorbing state (+1) are higher than those of approaching it (-1), eventually all paths (ignoring the absorbing state 0 for the time being) will go to +infinity. So now you just have to "count" how many of them pass through zero, and how many don't. So you've got a non-zero chance to pick a path that will never cross zero.
On the other hand, if probabilities were the other way, then all paths would go to -infinity, which means all paths cross zero at some point.
If you've got a 50/50 chance to win (+1), it's a bit harder to conceptualize the maths...
Maybe blueblimp wants to start a new thread where he works through the maths of ELOs and tiers? :P
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Your link does state that the odds of getting into the absorbing state are less than 1 if your odds of moving away from the absorbing state are strictly higher than 0.5. You don't need "stable" regions away from the absorbing state.
Where does it say that?
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if you lose every match with a >50% chance, then your odds of promoting do decrease with every step. if, for example, you have 1% chance to win each individual match, start with 0 points, need 1 point to promote, and each win/loss equals +/-1 point, then you have 1% chance to promote instantly, but with each loss that chance decreases. after the first loss your chance for instant promotion is 0,01%. overall, you roughly get a chance of 1% + 0,01% + 0,0001% ... = 1,01010101...%. that's slightly simplified, because if you do get a win the chance does increase again, but that doesn't weigh in heavily, and it's useful to understand why your chance does stay low.
so much for my logical approach. if I read your article correctly, it just states that you lose eventually with a neutral or negative winrate (which is what pacofv just said)
thus, even if you find a fair casino, you're certain to end up broke
it does not state that you don't go broke with a positive winrate, but the fact that it also doesn't state that you do seems like a strong indication that you don't.
this is actually something I randomly started thinking about about a year ago, without ever having heard of gambler's ruin. I concluded that you always lose with <50% and =50%, and have a chance to lose with >50% for each individual match. I even came up with a formal proof that you always lose with exactly 50%.
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Your link does state that the odds of getting into the absorbing state are less than 1 if your odds of moving away from the absorbing state are strictly higher than 0.5. You don't need "stable" regions away from the absorbing state.
Where does it say that?
Can't copy text from a pdf...
P:4 "
If p>q, then since h0 = 1 we get a family of solutions hi = (q/p)^i + A*(1-(q/p)^i); for a non-negative solution we must have A>=0, so the minimal non-negative solution is hi = (q/p)^i
"
Ergo, hi < 1, so there's a chance you don't ever get into the absorbing state.
I also edited my previous post BTW.
EDIT: actually, if A = 1, hi = 1. Hrm let me see if they say anything else.
EDIT2: oh ok, they actually prove before that that the solution has to be minimal, so yeah.
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Sorry all, I need to work on my reading skills.
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So, uhh, that hard boss. I've managed to breach and kill the gunbots, but it's not enough! I run out of drones :(
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So, uhh, that hard boss. I've managed to breach and kill the gunbots, but it's not enough! I run out of drones :(
I've seen a video where a guy from the staff talked about this one. he said it was designed to be crazy difficult, and that a lot of players tried it for hours without making it. but it is possible to do it, and you can even do it without building engineers.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=xZVj7-nfWXK
My current project is to defend without Walls when possible. This game had Wild Drone, Chieftain, and Feral Warden, so it was a perfect opportunity. It also had (new-style) Apollo, which ruled out Feral Warden and most of the attackers. So I buy one Chieftain a turn when I can, and take Gauss Cannons for attack. My opponent defends with Walls, which I snipe with Apollo after dealing with their foray into Hellhounds, and when the Walls run out they burn all their drones into Forcefields. A breach takes out their Auride Cores, and then it's a case of making sure I don't defend stupidly.
I did make at least a couple of stupid mistakes in this game. I buy an Animus that I never use (everything Red is vulnerable to Apollo), but at least it soaks up an Apollo snipe. I also buy a Blastforge after my last one is destroyed when I already have two Synthesizers and a large stockpile of Green.
I'm not sure how important it is here, but I'm a fan of Wild Drone in general. It's either cheap defence or cheap economy, both of which are great. The main problem with it defensively is that your opponent can just ignore it if they want to, so you need to have something else too.
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So, I'm enjoying the game, but three times now while playing I've had Windows Blue Screen with an SQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error, or something very similar to that at least. Has this happened to anyone else? It's kinda hard to play the game when any longer game ends up crashing like this :(.
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I'm having no problem in Chromium on Ubuntu. It takes a while to load occasionally, but I'm prepared to put that down to server load. It's better than Goko at any rate. I tried to play Dominion this morning and every time it crashed after showing the loading screen for about 5 minutes.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=xZVj7-nfWXK
My current project is to defend without Walls when possible. This game had Wild Drone, Chieftain, and Feral Warden, so it was a perfect opportunity. It also had (new-style) Apollo, which ruled out Feral Warden and most of the attackers. So I buy one Chieftain a turn when I can, and take Gauss Cannons for attack. My opponent defends with Walls, which I snipe with Apollo after dealing with their foray into Hellhounds, and when the Walls run out they burn all their drones into Forcefields. A breach takes out their Auride Cores, and then it's a case of making sure I don't defend stupidly.
I did make at least a couple of stupid mistakes in this game. I buy an Animus that I never use (everything Red is vulnerable to Apollo), but at least it soaks up an Apollo snipe. I also buy a Blastforge after my last one is destroyed when I already have two Synthesizers and a large stockpile of Green.
I'm not sure how important it is here, but I'm a fan of Wild Drone in general. It's either cheap defence or cheap economy, both of which are great. The main problem with it defensively is that your opponent can just ignore it if they want to, so you need to have something else too.
you are way overestimating how good apollo is. don't build gauss canons over tarsiers just because he's there. the only reason why that didn't cost you the game was that both of you did it.
i think :)
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Thanks! I had forgotten that Apollo is now legendary when I started, so I was a bit worried about losing Tarsiers under a flood of Apollos. Is sniping of Animus not going to be a problem if I go heavy on Red?
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Apollo is going to be a problem, but skipping Tarsiers doesn't really make him that much less of a problem. If a finished tarsier is worth 6$, he's worth just as much as an Animus. Even if you skip red completely, he's worth just 1$ more than a blastforge (plus the production facilities are often better targets for Apollo anyway, because you can screw with your opponent's resource balance).
So, you probably do get a small advantage out of having Gauss Canons instead of Tarsiers, but I'm pretty sure it's not enough to justify the difference in cost. Gauss canon is just so weak.
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With 4 hours left I got myself a Christmas present and backed for $50.
I hope I don't hate myself since I am pretty terrible at it so far.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=BW3ZB-qfvaK
So here's a game in which I do ignore Apollo and lose. Is it because the game went on so long (30 turns, although I'd lost by 20ish) that Apollo was very efficient damage?
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So, uhh, that hard boss. I've managed to breach and kill the gunbots, but it's not enough! I run out of drones :(
I've seen a video where a guy from the staff talked about this one. he said it was designed to be crazy difficult, and that a lot of players tried it for hours without making it. but it is possible to do it, and you can even do it without building engineers.
I saw that video too. Have you beaten it? Here's the best I've been able to do:
DD/DD/DAA/Fang+Rhino/FangEE (leave drone back)/FangE(leave drone back)/Fang(leave 4 drones back)/Breach for 4/Breach for 5 and lose.
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Funded with $140 000 on the nose!
(People were switching to Paypal.)
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Have you beaten it?
no, I gave up after like 5 tries
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What determines whether things with one health have red or blue health? There's no difference, right? I just don't think it really makes sense for non-blocking 1-health things to have blue health. Thinking of Gauss charge in particular here.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=BW3ZB-qfvaK
So here's a game in which I do ignore Apollo and lose. Is it because the game went on so long (30 turns, although I'd lost by 20ish) that Apollo was very efficient damage?
I think you did two big mistakes this game.
The most important one was to buy multiple Xeno Guardians. Xeno is a good unit because he has vigilante. He can attack and block at the same time (and has 4 health). That's super good, and it's often a reason to get him as fast as possible, but you almost never want to buy multiple copies of him. Each one after the first one is just an overly expensive Tarsier. Think about it, aside from the first one, what does he do to make him more valuable than a Tarsier? If you block with more than one, you lose them, which you don't want to happen anyway. After the first one, buying multiple copies is actually even worse than buying Gauss Canons, as they cost 9$ and are basically equally strong.
The second mistake was not to get Apollo. Man, I never said not to get Apollo. What I said was, Apollo is not a reason for you to get Gauss Canons, because getting Gauss Canons doesn't protect you from him. Get Tarsiers over Gauss Canons, but then buy him anyway (if the game goes that long). Your opponent did have good targets, he had two Steelsplitters, which cost 7$.
Of course, in this game you do have to find a secondary damage source eventually, simply because there are just 10 Tarsiers in the supply. What I would have done is, get one Xeno ASAP and then look for the most efficient source of damage. Tarsier is one damage for 5$, that's the best. Get all 10 of them before you buy any other damage units. After that, the second best is one damage for $7 from either Steelsplitter or Gauss Canon, so start getting those. And add Apollo at some point during that.
By the way, if anyone disagrees with anything I say, please comment on it.
What determines whether things with one health have red or blue health? There's no difference, right? I just don't think it really makes sense for non-blocking 1-health things to have blue health. Thinking of Gauss charge in particular here.
I think blue is considered "normal", so for one health units, where it makes no difference, they just went with that.
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What determines whether things with one health have red or blue health? There's no difference, right? I just don't think it really makes sense for non-blocking 1-health things to have blue health. Thinking of Gauss charge in particular here.
They could introduce effects in the future that modify the health of units and then it will matter whether the thing is fragile or not.
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What determines whether things with one health have red or blue health? There's no difference, right? I just don't think it really makes sense for non-blocking 1-health things to have blue health. Thinking of Gauss charge in particular here.
It needs to be specifically fragile in order to have red health, so blue health is simpler.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=BW3ZB-qfvaK
So here's a game in which I do ignore Apollo and lose. Is it because the game went on so long (30 turns, although I'd lost by 20ish) that Apollo was very efficient damage?
I think you did two big mistakes this game.
The most important one was to buy multiple Xeno Guardians. Xeno is a good unit because he has vigilante. He can attack and block at the same time (and has 4 health). That's super good, and it's often a reason to get him as fast as possible, but you almost never want to buy multiple copies of him. Each one after the first one is just an overly expensive Tarsier. Think about it, aside from the first one, what does he do to make him more valuable than a Tarsier? If you block with more than one, you lose them, which you don't want to happen anyway. After the first one, buying multiple copies is actually even worse than buying Gauss Canons, as they cost 9$ and are basically equally strong.
The second mistake was not to get Apollo. Man, I never said not to get Apollo. What I said was, Apollo is not a reason for you to get Gauss Canons, because getting Gauss Canons doesn't protect you from him. Get Tarsiers over Gauss Canons, but then buy him anyway (if the game goes that long). Your opponent did have good targets, he had two Steelsplitters, which cost 7$.
Of course, in this game you do have to find a secondary damage source eventually, simply because there are just 10 Tarsiers in the supply. What I would have done is, get one Xeno ASAP and then look for the most efficient source of damage. Tarsier is one damage for 5$, that's the best. Get all 10 of them before you buy any other damage units. After that, the second best is one damage for $7 from either Steelsplitter or Gauss Canon, so start getting those. And add Apollo at some point during that.
By the way, if anyone disagrees with anything I say, please comment on it.
Your cost conversion is confusing me... You are converting every special resource into one coin. I think that is very misleading. One coin is not equal to any other resource. Heck, resources are very much not equal to each other. One spark, one green, one blue or one red are wildly different in "cost".
Anyway, Apollo is quite possibly the unit I understand the least (I think I've lost most games that involved him), so disclaimer.
I am still unsure whether tarsiers are a good target for Apollo, because they are cheap, and they make your opponent fear breaches. You can snipe your opponent tarsiers, sure, but he can flood you with them faster than you can take them out. And taking them all out actually removes a weakness from his strategy. I guess it depends on how long you think the game is going to be, and what your short term breaching perspectives look like.
That's a problem with all heavy-blue strategies though: if your opponent sees that you are going that way and goes heavy red, you are already heavily disadvantaged anyway. I think.
I disagree with your opinion that gauss cannons don't counter Apollo. The objective of going heavy green is to reduce possible Apollo targets to drones or conduits, while you keep hammering him with reliable attack. Even if he breaches, you don't really care that much, because green units have a lot of health (just don't let him destroy all your drones). Whether this strategy works depends on what else is in the board, of course. For example here, I think Xenoguardians are good. While they are expensive, costing 7 coins and extra blue (!), they are still immune to Apollo, and they defend you. It's hard to find something to defend yourself against Apollo, since they chew through most defenses (walls, rhinos, what have you) quite quickly.
You are right that gauss cannons are slow though, so if that's the only thing you can buy with green, it's probably better to go for Apollo yourself.
About Xenoguardians: you want to compare them to steelsplitters, not to tarsiers. If you want a tarsier, buy a tarsier. If you want a steelsplitter, see if you can buy a xenoguardian instead.
I don't know if it is that clear cut here whether you want to go Apollo or not. The Apollo player can use his extra blue for grenade mech and pixies (and xenoguardians). The green player can get xenoguardians to defend himself and keep the attack going... well that may be too slow now that I think about it. Meh. Ok yeah maybe you want to go Apollo here anyway.
One last thing, I notice that your opponent doesn't rush his Apollo, but instead builds up some Apollo-resistant attack first, which obviously delays his Apollo by 5 turns. It works out for him because qmech doesn't build any good Apollo target (walls, steelsplitters) until later. That's actually quite well done, I have to try to remember to do that.
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I think the comparison between Xeno Guardians and Steelsplitters is a good one, but you can spin the conclusion the other way: how often do you want to buy multiple Steelsplitters? silvespawn is suggesting viewing it as a mini Colossus, which makes some sense to me. There still seems to be some attraction to massing Xeno Guardians though, as they allow you to attack whilst building up defence for the future. But maybe they're so expensive that that's rarely a good idea.
http://play.prismata.net/?r=m8OEn-ocTSR
Here's a slightly less embarrassing Xeno Guardians game. Here I do buy a couple for defence as my opponent has two Frost Brooders. Is that a reasonable play? There are undoubtedly other problems with this game (I have far too much red, having some idea of buying Lucina Spinos, but deciding that it's far too breach vulnerable, although I do get a nice Tarsier burst on one turn), and I think I mostly won due to errors by my opponent (they allowed me to breach and kill 6 Tarsiers, and spent their Chill what felt to me like too soon).
I'm also not completely sold on projecting costs down to a single axis. It's a useful starting point, and something I do when comparing various units, but I don't think you want to take it too seriously.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=65RlR-I7Bsu
First time I've bought Blood Pact. I'm spinning my wheels with Zemora Voidbringer and have burnt through most of the Walls and Ferals when, under heavy time pressure, my opponent lets me kill his Centurion. I have to go all in with my Steelsplitters, so Blood Pact steps in to prevent a return breach.
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Your cost conversion is confusing me... You are converting every special resource into one coin. I think that is very misleading. One coin is not equal to any other resource. Heck, resources are very much not equal to each other. One spark, one green, one blue or one red are wildly different in "cost".
It is of course not correct, but it's a good enough metric for the point I was trying to make. a slightly better metric would be red = 1$, green = 4/3$, blue = 5/3$, but really, that doesn't hurt my point at all, because it just makes tarsier even cheaper.
I disagree with your opinion that gauss cannons don't counter Apollo. The objective of going heavy green is to reduce possible Apollo targets to drones or conduits, while you keep hammering him with reliable attack.
I wasn't saying that it does nothing to defend, I was saying that it is not worth it, because the disadvantage of buying Gauss Canons over Tarsiers is way too big.
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How do you play Antima Comet?
http://play.prismata.net/?r=MfdGM-VNbzf
The game might is mostly just something to hang the question off. I've learnt through experience that playing Antima half a turn after your opponent is a losing move as all your Engineers die to their comet and then your comet does nothing at all. So here I decided to just hold off the comet any way I could and then fire my own off later. Is this the right sort of approach? I could also probably have been first to the comet if I'd wanted to (skipping the Frost Brooder). How fast do you want the comet in general?
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How do you play Antima Comet?
Before the latest patch, Comet was a pretty strong rush card for P2, with DD DDC DDB Comet WEEEEEEEEEE being at least halfway viable on almost any board. Now that it costs 3RGB, it's more of a tactical mid-game unit, because the investment to rush it is much larger, so you're usually right to put it off. And indeed, as you say, countering Comet with Comet is pretty dreadful.
The thing about Comet is it's a big tempo play: you buy yourself a turn or two to work on whatever is important while your opponent defends. Maybe that's droning, or maybe it's getting out four Tarsiers and an Amporilla behind your big pile of Engineers. But you rarely break your opponent with a Comet, just slow him down, so you need a follow-up plan. In your game, it looks like that plan was an Asteri, which seems fine.
The counter-play to Comet is often to defend efficiently, with Walls or other blue super-walls, while not getting too far behind in economy. Building attack is usually not a huge priority, because your opponent can defend it comfortably for a long time. Once you've gotten your economy established, and whittled down your opponent's Engineers, then you can consider a counter-Comet, to let you catch up on whatever it is you need tempo for.
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If we are talking specific units, there's some that still confuse me:
-Odin: what are you supposed to do with this guy? I used to click on it all the time, but after some games that slowly turned sour for me, I am starting to think that it might be better to defend with it, especially if it is the highest health unit in the set. Thoughts?
-Cauterizer: he's freakishly expensive for two attack (the similarly priced Cynestra has three attack). When is it good? I am "translating" the cumbersome way it works as "At the beginning of your turn, gain 2 attack. You can sacrifice this for 7 health. While this is in play, engineers gain prompt.", which basically makes this a very defensive attacker. It seems kind of awkward to place in your build queue.
-Hannibull: cheaper than Cauterizers but more expensive than Iceblade Golems. There's only 4 of them, and has the huge disadvantage of being frontline. I have absolutely no idea what to do with them. They are very strong on paper, but when my opponent knows what she's doing, they always fizzle for me.
-Hellhound: anyone ever bought one?
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The first three I rarely get, they seem weak to me. However, I get hellhound quite commonly.
I've been losing a lot of games by miscounting things in some way or another. I've had 7 green for Zemora way to many times...
Meanwhile, if anyone has any advice on the hard boss puzzle I'd appreciate it. It's really bugging me.
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But you rarely break your opponent with a Comet, just slow him down, so you need a follow-up plan. In your game, it looks like that plan was an Asteri, which seems fine.
Yes ... plan ...
-Odin
-Cauterizer
-Hannibull
-Hellhound
Odin I think is a big fat wall with the option of burst damage that can force your opponent to overdefend. Cauterizer I've no idea. I thought Hannibull should be for rushing, but by the time you have enough of them to kill things they tend to die on the front line. Hellhound is a faster Tarsier with a nice bonus.
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Meanwhile, if anyone has any advice on the hard boss puzzle I'd appreciate it. It's really bugging me.
Hint: Fast Aggression.
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Meanwhile, if anyone has any advice on the hard boss puzzle I'd appreciate it. It's really bugging me.
Hint: Fast Aggression.
Yep, that's what I've been doing. I even managed to breach and kill the gunbots, but I get breached afterwards because I run out of drones. And I feel I have optimized the build order/engineers.
Here's the best I've been able to do:
DD/DD/DAA/Fang+Rhino/FangEE (leave drone back)/FangE(leave drone back)/Fang(leave 4 drones back)/Breach for 4/Breach for 5 and lose.
EDIT: I did it! Thanks for the help Rabid! (He sent me a PM with another hint)
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Cauterizer sorta combo's with Antima comet for an extra 2 attack when the comet hits. It comes with engineer defenders, but then it can't attech when the engineers are go so meh.
Hellhound does the extra engineers for utility thing better. I don't understand the effect thematically though. Are they saying engineers are devilish?
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-Odin: what are you supposed to do with this guy? I used to click on it all the time, but after some games that slowly turned sour for me, I am starting to think that it might be better to defend with it, especially if it is the highest health unit in the set. Thoughts?
Clicking Odin is something you should generally do only if you're desperate, or you get a great opportunity. It gains you 4 attack this turn, and costs you 1 attack every turn for the rest of the game; it's kinda the inverse of Blood Pact, in a weird way. Odin is usually best treated as a 3/5 with extra breach pressure, where you never click on him but do click his Steelsplitters. In 9avQ6-Yds9Q (http://play.prismata.net/?r=9avQ6-Yds9Q) I had probably won the game already after my Antima Comet hit, but Odin was able to lock things down by soaking 4 damage per turn, with his extra 4-damage breach threat forcing Awaclus to defend for more than I could sustainably attack for.
-Cauterizer: he's freakishly expensive for two attack (the similarly priced Cynestra has three attack). When is it good? I am "translating" the cumbersome way it works as "At the beginning of your turn, gain 2 attack. You can sacrifice this for 7 health. While this is in play, engineers gain prompt.", which basically makes this a very defensive attacker. It seems kind of awkward to place in your build queue.
$11 for 7 health is a pretty decent defensive deal already, and you get to deal 2 damage for a turn or two as well. In 8wCZu-d9ews (http://play.prismata.net/?r=8wCZu-d9ews), my opponent manages his Engineers very carefully to keep his Cauterizers firing as long as possible, and uses the giant HP buffer to get up a ton of Tarsiers that I can't really threaten to breach even with a Frost Brooder.
-Hannibull: cheaper than Cauterizers but more expensive than Iceblade Golems. There's only 4 of them, and has the huge disadvantage of being frontline. I have absolutely no idea what to do with them. They are very strong on paper, but when my opponent knows what she's doing, they always fizzle for me.
I have trouble playing with Hannibulls too. They are a decent rusher, if you can put enough pressure on to stop your opponent ever getting 6 attack, but if you can't manage that you are in a lot of trouble. As a frontline unit, it combos well with other frontline units, for example Wild Drone. If you can rely on your beefy frontline units to be hard to kill, you can completely ignore building defense. Hannibull can also be decent in the mid- to late-game where your opponent is getting close to breaching you: he either lets you get away with 2 attack fairly cheaply, or he spends 6 precious damage killing just $9 worth of stuff, which can give your defense a break. In c9aId-zELyn (http://play.prismata.net/?r=c9aId-zELyn), I get the dream combo of Wild Drone + Hannibull, and just let him chew through my regular Drones, ignoring his Wild Drones to bull-rush (har har) his defenders, preventing him getting any attack up.
-Hellhound: anyone ever bought one?
Hellhounds are amazing. They only cost a tiny bit more than Tarsiers, and don't have to wait a turn to attack. The extra Engineer is also a huge help in defending these breach-vulnerable units. Really, $5 is the cheapest you can get a unit that attacks for 1 every turn without some disadvantage (eg, Tarsiers don't attack next turn, Rhinos only attack twice, Shredders are frontline...). Hellhounds even come with an advantage! As long as R/B isn't a bad tech choice in the set, Hellhound is a great way to make use of your tech investment when there's nothing else urgent to do. In 9gmQa-sHeFl (http://play.prismata.net/?r=9gmQa-sHeFl), for example, I get a second Blastforge early so I can double-Hellhound instead of double-Tarsier; the initial investment of $5 is a bit steep, but pays for itself with the attack efficiency, and helps out later when I need to start getting a lot of Walls.
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Meanwhile, if anyone has any advice on the hard boss puzzle I'd appreciate it. It's really bugging me.
Hint: Fast Aggression.
Yep, that's what I've been doing. I even managed to breach and kill the gunbots, but I get breached afterwards because I run out of drones. And I feel I have optimized the build order/engineers.
Here's the best I've been able to do:
DD/DD/DAA/Fang+Rhino/FangEE (leave drone back)/FangE(leave drone back)/Fang(leave 4 drones back)/Breach for 4/Breach for 5 and lose.
EDIT: I did it! Thanks for the help Rabid! (He sent me a PM with another hint)
Thanks for the hint guys. I managed to beat it too. I don't quite remember what I did, but I'm sure I think I started with DD/DD/DAA/Fang+Rhino.
I won while preventing the boss from ever building an Eviscerator
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Rabid's hint was actually to start differently - I'm impressed you managed to do it that way, I couldn't stop him from building eviscerator that way.
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$11 for 7 health is a pretty decent defensive deal already, and you get to deal 2 damage for a turn or two as well.
You realize that you are describing chieftains, right? And that chieftains cost $7? Sure, cauterizers are more flexible (don't have lifespan, etc.), but still...
Hellhounds are amazing. They only cost a tiny bit more than Tarsiers, and don't have to wait a turn to attack. The extra Engineer is also a huge help in defending these breach-vulnerable units. Really, $5 is the cheapest you can get a unit that attacks for 1 every turn without some disadvantage (eg, Tarsiers don't attack next turn, Rhinos only attack twice, Shredders are frontline...). Hellhounds even come with an advantage! As long as R/B isn't a bad tech choice in the set, Hellhound is a great way to make use of your tech investment when there's nothing else urgent to do. In 9gmQa-sHeFl (http://play.prismata.net/?r=9gmQa-sHeFl), for example, I get a second Blastforge early so I can double-Hellhound instead of double-Tarsier; the initial investment of $5 is a bit steep, but pays for itself with the attack efficiency, and helps out later when I need to start getting a lot of Walls.
I am not arguing about the coin cost, which is awesome. I am arguing about the tech cost. Early in the game, if you are buying both an animus and a blastforge, it better be for a very good reason, and hellhounds just don't cut it IMHO. Later in the game, no way you are spending your blue resources into non-prompt two health units. That doesn't leave that many occasions to buy hellhounds.
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$11 for 7 health is a pretty decent defensive deal already, and you get to deal 2 damage for a turn or two as well.
You realize that you are describing chieftains, right? And that chieftains cost $7? Sure, cauterizers are more flexible (don't have lifespan, etc.), but still...
Cauterizers are a lot easier to defend with, because they're not a single 7-health unit. If your opponent attacks for 3, you can lose one Engineer into your Wall, while still attacking with your Cauterizer. But a Chieftain you have to hold back in order to defend with, and then you have to either lose it or not get any absorb at all. Plus if you buy a Chieftain you lose that green you've been storing up, whereas the resources for Cauterizer were disappearing anyway.
Hellhounds are amazing. They only cost a tiny bit more than Tarsiers, and don't have to wait a turn to attack. The extra Engineer is also a huge help in defending these breach-vulnerable units. Really, $5 is the cheapest you can get a unit that attacks for 1 every turn without some disadvantage (eg, Tarsiers don't attack next turn, Rhinos only attack twice, Shredders are frontline...). Hellhounds even come with an advantage! As long as R/B isn't a bad tech choice in the set, Hellhound is a great way to make use of your tech investment when there's nothing else urgent to do. In 9gmQa-sHeFl (http://play.prismata.net/?r=9gmQa-sHeFl), for example, I get a second Blastforge early so I can double-Hellhound instead of double-Tarsier; the initial investment of $5 is a bit steep, but pays for itself with the attack efficiency, and helps out later when I need to start getting a lot of Walls.
I am not arguing about the coin cost, which is awesome. I am arguing about the tech cost. Early in the game, if you are buying both an animus and a blastforge, it better be for a very good reason, and hellhounds just don't cut it IMHO. Later in the game, no way you are spending your blue resources into non-prompt two health units. That doesn't leave that many occasions to buy hellhounds.
I dunno, red+blue is a pretty reasonable tech choice anyway a lot of the time. Tarsiers behind Walls is like the most standard thing there is.
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Rabid's hint was actually to start differently - I'm impressed you managed to do it that way, I couldn't stop him from building eviscerator that way.
Yeah I haven't been able to recreate what I did. I might have started a bit different, but not by much. Still went heavy Shadowfangs at the start or something, but transitioned to walls somehow.
I ended up finding solution online afterwards. It actually had a very different start. like, Animus opening into Tarsiers.
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Cauterizers are a lot easier to defend with, because they're not a single 7-health unit. If your opponent attacks for 3, you can lose one Engineer into your Wall, while still attacking with your Cauterizer. But a Chieftain you have to hold back in order to defend with, and then you have to either lose it or not get any absorb at all. Plus if you buy a Chieftain you lose that green you've been storing up, whereas the resources for Cauterizer were disappearing anyway.
Yeah, I kinda got that, I think we are mostly agreeing. Basically, Cauterizers are defensive units disguised as offensive ones (sorta). Still, the problem remains that they are very hard to place in your build queue... I guess I'll have to think about this one harder.
I dunno, red+blue is a pretty reasonable tech choice anyway a lot of the time. Tarsiers behind Walls is like the most standard thing there is.
Sorry, I didn't explain myself properly. Say you are going red+blue, then you need to spend all your blue on defensive units (read: walls), because red units tend to be mmm "fragile". Hellhound doesn't help with that. Sure, if your opponent randomly gives you a turn where you don't need to build defenses, then go ahead and buy yourself a Hellhound and be happy, but how often does that happen?
As an aside, from personal experience, building more than one blastforge with the plan to buy more than one wall per turn is a recipe for disaster. It's expensive, and you better win right there somehow despite spending $10 on defense per turn, or else you'll have a very bad surprise when you run out of walls (which will happen in 5 turns tops).
PS: in case my somewhat argumentative tone would hide it, I really appreciate your pieces of wisdom!
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Cauterizers are a lot easier to defend with, because they're not a single 7-health unit. If your opponent attacks for 3, you can lose one Engineer into your Wall, while still attacking with your Cauterizer. But a Chieftain you have to hold back in order to defend with, and then you have to either lose it or not get any absorb at all. Plus if you buy a Chieftain you lose that green you've been storing up, whereas the resources for Cauterizer were disappearing anyway.
Yeah, I kinda got that, I think we are mostly agreeing. Basically, Cauterizers are defensive units disguised as offensive ones (sorta). Still, the problem remains that they are very hard to place in your build queue... I guess I'll have to think about this one harder.
I dunno, red+blue is a pretty reasonable tech choice anyway a lot of the time. Tarsiers behind Walls is like the most standard thing there is.
Sorry, I didn't explain myself properly. Say you are going red+blue, then you need to spend all your blue on defensive units (read: walls), because red units tend to be mmm "fragile". Hellhound doesn't help with that. Sure, if your opponent randomly gives you a turn where you don't need to build defenses, then go ahead and buy yourself a Hellhound and be happy, but how often does that happen?
As an aside, from personal experience, building more than one blastforge with the plan to buy more than one wall per turn is a recipe for disaster. It's expensive, and you better win right there somehow despite spending $10 on defense per turn, or else you'll have a very bad surprise when you run out of walls (which will happen in 5 turns tops).
PS: in case my somewhat argumentative tone would hide it, I really appreciate your pieces of wisdom!
I have a lot of trouble using Cauterizers effectively myself too; I'm describing mostly how I see better players use them. re: Hellhounds being tough because you can't afford to spend the tech on them, I feel like you often get a turn to breathe after building the first Wall, and don't need a second right away. Hellhound can make this effect snowball, by giving you an Engineer and increasing your own attack quickly. Then you'll need to defend a little bit less next turn, because of the Engineer, and can maybe sneak out another Hellhound, et cetera. And I think being able to build two Walls per turn is pretty valuable, as long as you don't have to actually do it right away, because in the endgame you'll actually want to do so. Maybe I'm wrong, though: the $5 for a second Blastforge just to get more efficient Tarsiers might not be worth it early on in most games.
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Rabid's hint was actually to start differently - I'm impressed you managed to do it that way, I couldn't stop him from building eviscerator that way.
Yeah I haven't been able to recreate what I did. I might have started a bit different, but not by much. Still went heavy Shadowfangs at the start or something, but transitioned to walls somehow.
I ended up finding solution online afterwards. It actually had a very different start. like, Animus opening into Tarsiers.
Interesting, Rabid's hint was to open animus, but I did not get tarsiers - just rhino and shadowfang
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Rabid's hint was actually to start differently - I'm impressed you managed to do it that way, I couldn't stop him from building eviscerator that way.
Yeah I haven't been able to recreate what I did. I might have started a bit different, but not by much. Still went heavy Shadowfangs at the start or something, but transitioned to walls somehow.
I ended up finding solution online afterwards. It actually had a very different start. like, Animus opening into Tarsiers.
Okay, I beat it again with same strategy, and wrote down the log of the first 12 or so turns. It actually was a slightly different opening then what you described first.
Instead of DD/DD/DAA/Fang+Rhino, I used DD/AD/A+Rhino/Fang/Rhino+Fang. I follow up with Fang/Blastforge+Eng/Wall, and I keep the wall alive for the rest of the fight.
Edit: Oh and Rhino's are always clicked early on clicked whenever they'd destroy an additional wall, the ones alive before Turn 12 at least. Even if the extra attack just destroys a light wall, you need as few walls standing as possible to have max breach on the critical turn right before Eviscerator would pop up.
Edit 2: Fixed error/inaccuracy in the edit spoiler.
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I couldn't get your strategy to work markusin. I never had the time to buy blastforge. But I managed to stabilize at 5 drones, buying a rhino a turn, doing 10 damage and slowly destroying Vel'kar's forces. Never bought anything except drones, fangs (4), and rhinos
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I couldn't get your strategy to work markusin. I never had the time to buy blastforge. But I managed to stabilize at 5 drones, buying a rhino a turn, doing 10 damage and slowly destroying Vel'kar's forces. Never bought anything except drones, fangs (4), and rhinos
Okay, so I had bought the blastforge on turn 7 , and with 6 drones. I tried it again and it turns out not to be optimal. You can just buy a Shadowfang on turn 7 instead and defend with a single depleted Rhino. So, you'd be buying blastforge instead of a Shadowfang, but buying the Shadowfang lets you win faster. I just beat it in 15 turns instead of over 20 with the blastforge. At some point you can buy an engineer to produce a 7th drone and build Shadowfang every turn.
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So I beat the hard boss, and I think I used a different strategy than has been mentioned.
I used vivid drones to get to 12$/turn and 2 animusses so I could buy Rhino/Shadowfang every turn. I've now repeated it three times in 15 turns, so I think it's pretty robust.
1st 3 turns:E/D,V/A,V/A and then Fang/Rhino from there on out. Kill shards just to keep it under 6. There's always one turn where I can't quite defend and lose a fang. I think if the AI took out a vivid drone it would actually be worse, since I'd have to switch to rhino/rhino or get rhino/engi/engi and then build back drones or something. Bad news
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Ok, could someone point me in the right direction for the advanced defense tactics 5 puzzle? Here are my thoughts so far:
First general premises I'm working with:
1. Other than your big absorber, everything else can just be treated as some number of health to be burned through
2. Therefore, for every defense, I want to use units to get the attack down to 4 and then absorb on a matrix
3. When just losing a unit, it is always better to lose one big unit than two smaller units whose health add up to the same (this does not include the big absorber). So losing a wall is better than losing forcefield/engi
So if one of those is incorrect, that's probably the issue.
For this puzzle in particular:
I just don't see how to do it. I've tried various combinations of defenses. Tried popping or not popping the gauss charges before he can use them. Tried going after some number of venge cannons before finishing of the gauss. I even built a partial decision tree of options that all seem to end in my losing.
Help! What am I missing.
On another note:
Also, I've now gotten to the point that I can beat the 7s master AI with 60s time control, so I'm interested in playing some humans now. If f.ds people want to add me, I'm GeoLib. Would love to play matches against people I know first.
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I started recently, name is Titandrake
I did all the campaign puzzles except for the hard boss, I haven't tried anything else yet. For the defense puzzles in particular, I feel like I got through them by guess-and-checking a lot of it, rather than actually learning how to defend optimally. Ah well...
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I started recently, name is Titandrake
I did all the campaign puzzles except for the hard boss, I haven't tried anything else yet. For the defense puzzles in particular, I feel like I got through them by guess-and-checking a lot of it, rather than actually learning how to defend optimally. Ah well...
I haven't done the campaign. "Practical" defense is normally pretty easy: just absorb as much damage as you can. You're unlikely to get into any complicated endgames where defence is tricky for a long time—most games are decided by a decisive and unavoidable breach at some point that kills a bunch of Tarsiers or something.
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How can I beat Scorchilla games? It looks like whoever gets 2 of them first just basically wins the game because there rarely is a way to absorb 6, and somehow it's always my opponent.
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How can I beat Scorchilla games? It looks like whoever gets 2 of them first just basically wins the game because there rarely is a way to absorb 6, and somehow it's always my opponent.
I'm no expert, but 6 attack only kills engineer and wall, if you have 2 walls. And then you have 2 turns off before they hit again (for 9 probably).
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How can I beat Scorchilla games? It looks like whoever gets 2 of them first just basically wins the game because there rarely is a way to absorb 6, and somehow it's always my opponent.
I'm no expert, but 6 attack only kills engineer and wall, if you have 2 walls. And then you have 2 turns off before they hit again (for 9 probably).
Yeah, and I need those 2 Walls while my opponent doesn't need any defenses and can build more Scorchillas because I was busy building Walls instead of Scorchillas.
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Well, surely you built something while he was building scorchzillas. :p
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Ok, could someone point me in the right direction for the advanced defense tactics 5 puzzle? Here are my thoughts so far:
First general premises I'm working with:
1. Other than your big absorber, everything else can just be treated as some number of health to be burned through
2. Therefore, for every defense, I want to use units to get the attack down to 4 and then absorb on a matrix
3. When just losing a unit, it is always better to lose one big unit than two smaller units whose health add up to the same (this does not include the big absorber). So losing a wall is better than losing forcefield/engi
So if one of those is incorrect, that's probably the issue.
Not quite true. The future value of EE can occasionally be greater than W.
If you are attacked for 3 then 3 over two turns, WW is a fail, WEE is OK
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Ok, could someone point me in the right direction for the advanced defense tactics 5 puzzle? Here are my thoughts so far:
First general premises I'm working with:
1. Other than your big absorber, everything else can just be treated as some number of health to be burned through
2. Therefore, for every defense, I want to use units to get the attack down to 4 and then absorb on a matrix
3. When just losing a unit, it is always better to lose one big unit than two smaller units whose health add up to the same (this does not include the big absorber). So losing a wall is better than losing forcefield/engi
So if one of those is incorrect, that's probably the issue.
Not quite true. The future value of EE can occasionally be greater than W.
If you are attacked for 3 then 3 over two turns, WW is a fail, WEE is OK
I don't think that was one of my assumptions, but thanks for the hint!
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For this puzzle in particular:
I just don't see how to do it. I've tried various combinations of defenses. Tried popping or not popping the gauss charges before he can use them. Tried going after some number of venge cannons before finishing of the gauss. I even built a partial decision tree of options that all seem to end in my losing.
You absolutely must absorb the maximum amount of damage each turn to win. As for the Gauss Charges, you should leave them. In the final solution you should just be able to get everything under control in time, in that the math accounts for you breaching attackers the turn before you wouldn't have been able to hold on.
PPE: As for Rabid's point, if EE can be better than W later, then EEE can also be better than W later, and so can Forcefield + Eng since both of those are strictly better than EE
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For this puzzle in particular:
I just don't see how to do it. I've tried various combinations of defenses. Tried popping or not popping the gauss charges before he can use them. Tried going after some number of venge cannons before finishing of the gauss. I even built a partial decision tree of options that all seem to end in my losing.
You absolutely must absorb the maximum amount of damage each turn to win. As for the Gauss Charges, you should leave them. In the final solution you should just be able to get everything under control in time, in that the math accounts for you breaching attackers the turn before you wouldn't have been able to hold on.
PPE: As for Rabid's point, if EE can be better than W later, then EEE can also be better than W later, and so can Forcefield + Eng since both of those are strictly better than EE
Thanks!
The second point is what I was trying to say in my general premise 3
Edit: Got it!
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For this puzzle in particular:
I just don't see how to do it. I've tried various combinations of defenses. Tried popping or not popping the gauss charges before he can use them. Tried going after some number of venge cannons before finishing of the gauss. I even built a partial decision tree of options that all seem to end in my losing.
You absolutely must absorb the maximum amount of damage each turn to win. As for the Gauss Charges, you should leave them. In the final solution you should just be able to get everything under control in time, in that the math accounts for you breaching attackers the turn before you wouldn't have been able to hold on.
PPE: As for Rabid's point, if EE can be better than W later, then EEE can also be better than W later, and so can Forcefield + Eng since both of those are strictly better than EE
Gauss charges? Isn't that defense puzzle 6?
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For this puzzle in particular:
I just don't see how to do it. I've tried various combinations of defenses. Tried popping or not popping the gauss charges before he can use them. Tried going after some number of venge cannons before finishing of the gauss. I even built a partial decision tree of options that all seem to end in my losing.
You absolutely must absorb the maximum amount of damage each turn to win. As for the Gauss Charges, you should leave them. In the final solution you should just be able to get everything under control in time, in that the math accounts for you breaching attackers the turn before you wouldn't have been able to hold on.
PPE: As for Rabid's point, if EE can be better than W later, then EEE can also be better than W later, and so can Forcefield + Eng since both of those are strictly better than EE
Gauss charges? Isn't that defense puzzle 6?
It's both. I actually found 6 much easier. I got that one first try. The critical hint was to leave the gauss charges. I'd tried it before but obviously not hard enough before concluding it wasn't as good.
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For this puzzle in particular:
I just don't see how to do it. I've tried various combinations of defenses. Tried popping or not popping the gauss charges before he can use them. Tried going after some number of venge cannons before finishing of the gauss. I even built a partial decision tree of options that all seem to end in my losing.
You absolutely must absorb the maximum amount of damage each turn to win. As for the Gauss Charges, you should leave them. In the final solution you should just be able to get everything under control in time, in that the math accounts for you breaching attackers the turn before you wouldn't have been able to hold on.
PPE: As for Rabid's point, if EE can be better than W later, then EEE can also be better than W later, and so can Forcefield + Eng since both of those are strictly better than EE
Gauss charges? Isn't that defense puzzle 6?
It's both. I actually found 6 much easier. I got that one first try. The critical hint was to leave the gauss charges. I'd tried it before but obviously not hard enough before concluding it wasn't as good.
Yeah the puzzles were set up in a way that the key defending concept in one puzzle doesn't necessarily work in the later ones. Like, in puzzle 6 you kill some of the gauss charges to absorb the incoming damage with the best efficiency.
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Stock up on defense between the big hits. Don't wait until the turn before.
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So I beat the hard boss, and I think I used a different strategy than has been mentioned.
I used vivid drones to get to 12$/turn and 2 animusses so I could buy Rhino/Shadowfang every turn. I've now repeated it three times in 15 turns, so I think it's pretty robust.
1st 3 turns:E/D,V/A,V/A and then Fang/Rhino from there on out. Kill shards just to keep it under 6. There's always one turn where I can't quite defend and lose a fang. I think if the AI took out a vivid drone it would actually be worse, since I'd have to switch to rhino/rhino or get rhino/engi/engi and then build back drones or something. Bad news
Ok, so I improved it to win in 14 turns. Buy R/R/E instead of S/R on the turn where I would otherwise lose a fang (because obviously that's better) and then target things based on how much health they produce per turn (while still keeping damage potential down). So hit the endo and exostructures sooner. Get the barrier forges before the gunbot forges since both produce 1 health/turn but the former have less health.
Has anyone got a faster solution?
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How can I beat Scorchilla games? It looks like whoever gets 2 of them first just basically wins the game because there rarely is a way to absorb 6, and somehow it's always my opponent.
If you are player 2 (black), then you are the player doing the scorchilla rush.
If you are player 1 (white), then you are in for a rough time. I don't know if it is possible to beat a scorchilla rush with the base units, so you have to look into the advanced units for a way out of this.
Things to remember are that the scorchilla rush is trying to breach you hard and early. So either you use cheap high health units, or you follow a strategy that is breach-resistant (i.e., avoid tarsiers). You don't need prompt units for defense, because you know exactly when your opponent is going to attack; just build your defenses one turn earlier, non-prompt units are usually more cost efficient. High absorb is also less important than in a normal game, because your opponent is only attacking one turn out of three (so your total absorb is divided by three).
Another thing to remember is that the scorchilla player is doing a rush. She will probably stay at 12 drones for most of the game. Build some relatively early aggression so that she needs to devote money to defense, and her attack will never increase too much. Scorchillas are dangerous, but they are still quite expensive in the long run, costing 7RG for one attack per turn. Build more efficient attackers and she will fall.
EDIT: if you are looking into ways of defending from the initial 6 attack, an initial idea would be to open T1:DD T2:DD, and if your opponent buys a conduit on her second turn, go T3:DDBlastforge T4:DDSteelsplitter T5:DWallAnimus or T5:DDWallConduit, depending on what is available. If better defenders are available, use your better judgement. This leaves you with a slightly better economic position than your opponent, that you can hopefully transform into a win.
You could also try scaring the second player out of the scorchilla rush by overrushing, but I doubt that is a good idea. T1:DD T2:Conduit T3:Animus T4: Scorchilla*2 is technically possible, but it leaves you with only 8 drones. You can follow this until your opponent abandons the scorchilla rush, and then you switch to something less suicidal.
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Played my first game against a human and won! Sure I misplayed horribly. Time pressure really got to me and I kept overdefending, forgetting that I need to account for the fact that they'll lose some attacker/defenders before their turn.
I went green/red with gauss cannons, gauss fabricator, feral warden, rhino. I ended up buying a blastforge late though because it seemed like I really needed walls. In general, how do you avoid blastforges? It seems like the high absorb on walls is not really replaceable with anything else.
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Played my first game against a human and won! Sure I misplayed horribly. Time pressure really got to me and I kept overdefending, forgetting that I need to account for the fact that they'll lose some attacker/defenders before their turn.
I went green/red with gauss cannons, gauss fabricator, feral warden, rhino. I ended up buying a blastforge late though because it seemed like I really needed walls. In general, how do you avoid blastforges? It seems like the high absorb on walls is not really replaceable with anything else.
I'm not the best player ever, but I think you can ignore Blastforges when there are very aggressive green and/or red kingdom cards and you're the player who gets them first. Sometimes, your opponent will have to defend against your attacks, and then he doesn't have enough resources to build a lot of attack himself and you can get away with just Rhinos and Engineers and possibly some kingdom cards for defense. It's not very common, but it happens. Also if your opponent is heavily committing to a blue strategy that isn't very aggressive (Deadeye Operative or something like that), it's more likely that ignoring Blastforge will work because then you can almost count on not needing lots of absorb, at least not in the early game.
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My advise concerning bastforge: get it. There are times where you don't, but in most cases you really want to have it. Defending with Rhinos is a losing strategy, you should only do it if it's absolutely necessary.
More importantly though, don't buy Gauss Canons. Gauss Canon is the Scout of Prismata (which also means that there are exceptions, but start with not buying them).
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Defending with Rhinos is a losing strategy, you should only do it if it's absolutely necessary.
Not if it means that your opponent is under so much pressure that he has to chump block with Walls more than you have to chump block with Rhinos.
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Tier VI!
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My advise concerning bastforge: get it. There are times where you don't, but in most cases you really want to have it. Defending with Rhinos is a losing strategy, you should only do it if it's absolutely necessary.
More importantly though, don't buy Gauss Canons. Gauss Canon is the Scout of Prismata (which also means that there are exceptions, but start with not buying them).
To expand a bit on the Gauss Cannon statement, getting lots of Gauss Cannons is not really a viable strategy in itself. They are just too expensive, and unlike Steelsplitters they can't function as a non-prompt defender that puts pressure or anything. In theory they could be part of some counterbuilds, but the randomized "kingdom" makes those situations unlikely. This is my understanding of the cannons.
They can be good if you have the spare resources for them and you want to increase the power of your big burst next turn, say with Zemora Voidbringer or just lots of Gauss Charges or Frostbites.
If you want to slowly build up a solid attack army, Tarsiers are the way to go, but you'll probably need blue tech to defend them.
Now Forcefields, those are useful and are a reason to want a spare Conduit at some point.
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I kinda dislike that Gauss cannon is so weak. Green is more dependent on something being provided by the +5 or +8 than any other color
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I kinda dislike that Gauss cannon is so weak. Green is more dependent on something being provided by the +5 or +8 than any other color
I think it's fine, considering how strong the green resource is (the building is the cheapest and the resource works like coin tokens).
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It's 1 gold cheaper than blastforge and 1 gold more expensive than animus compared to how much juice it pumps out.
Storing isn't that useful. It's cool but doesn't make up for it at all.
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It's 1 gold cheaper than blastforge and 1 gold more expensive than animus compared to how much juice it pumps out.
Storing isn't that useful. It's cool but doesn't make up for it at all.
I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that green is underpowered? That's not really true. The base units are certainly less useful than the blue and red ones, but there are plenty of strong green units that aren't in the base set.
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My advise concerning bastforge: get it. There are times where you don't, but in most cases you really want to have it. Defending with Rhinos is a losing strategy, you should only do it if it's absolutely necessary.
More importantly though, don't buy Gauss Canons. Gauss Canon is the Scout of Prismata (which also means that there are exceptions, but start with not buying them).
Yeah, that's kind of the conclusion I've been coming to. It just seemed like you should be able to skip it sometimes.
Re: Gauss Canons. I usually skip them entirely because they're expensive and it seems like getting breached just sucks regardless of how much health they have. I went for them this set because there was gauss fabricator and I decided to try out these "breach resistant" builds I'd heard about and skip Blastforge. I'm not too impressed. It does seem like Gauss Canon is just way worse than steelsplitter and rhino.
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It's 1 gold cheaper than blastforge and 1 gold more expensive than animus compared to how much juice it pumps out.
Storing isn't that useful. It's cool but doesn't make up for it at all.
I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that green is underpowered? That's not really true. The base units are certainly less useful than the blue and red ones, but there are plenty of strong green units that aren't in the base set.
Green isn't underpowered, it's just more kingdom reliant than the other two. I think it'd make the game more skill intensive if all three colors had similar amounts of kingdom dependency.
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It's 1 gold cheaper than blastforge and 1 gold more expensive than animus compared to how much juice it pumps out.
Storing isn't that useful. It's cool but doesn't make up for it at all.
I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that green is underpowered? That's not really true. The base units are certainly less useful than the blue and red ones, but there are plenty of strong green units that aren't in the base set.
Green isn't underpowered, it's just more kingdom reliant than the other two. I think it'd make the game more skill intensive if all three colors had similar amounts of kingdom dependency.
I think I agree here. I'll probably wait until I've played some more and am more confident in my skill, but it might make sense to suggest buffing Gauss Cannon in the "balancing suggestion" place. Would it be overpowered if it could block? Probably. Cheaper? I actually just think making Iso Kronus the green base unit would work... It's basically a cheaper, better Gauss Cannon already.
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It's 1 gold cheaper than blastforge and 1 gold more expensive than animus compared to how much juice it pumps out.
Storing isn't that useful. It's cool but doesn't make up for it at all.
I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that green is underpowered? That's not really true. The base units are certainly less useful than the blue and red ones, but there are plenty of strong green units that aren't in the base set.
Green isn't underpowered, it's just more kingdom reliant than the other two. I think it'd make the game more skill intensive if all three colors had similar amounts of kingdom dependency.
I think I agree here. I'll probably wait until I've played some more and am more confident in my skill, but it might make sense to suggest buffing Gauss Cannon in the "balancing suggestion" place. Would it be overpowered if it could block? Probably. Cheaper? I actually just think making Iso Kronus the green base unit would work... It's basically a cheaper, better Gauss Cannon already.
I feel like Iso Cronus is already too close to Tarsier though.
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It's 1 gold cheaper than blastforge and 1 gold more expensive than animus compared to how much juice it pumps out.
Storing isn't that useful. It's cool but doesn't make up for it at all.
I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that green is underpowered? That's not really true. The base units are certainly less useful than the blue and red ones, but there are plenty of strong green units that aren't in the base set.
Green isn't underpowered, it's just more kingdom reliant than the other two. I think it'd make the game more skill intensive if all three colors had similar amounts of kingdom dependency.
I think I agree here. I'll probably wait until I've played some more and am more confident in my skill, but it might make sense to suggest buffing Gauss Cannon in the "balancing suggestion" place. Would it be overpowered if it could block? Probably. Cheaper? I actually just think making Iso Kronus the green base unit would work... It's basically a cheaper, better Gauss Cannon already.
well, Gauss Canon could afford to be 1$ cheaper without breaking the game (which is something that's absolutely not true of most cheap units). I'm not sure that Gauss Canon hurts the game as is though. It seems kind of neat that Tarsier is the only okay damage source in the base set.
I don't like making Kronos a base unit, because Kronos is really, really strong. It shouldn't be available all the time.
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Gauss Cannon could be just renamed "Goko Kronus" — more expensive and still worse than Iso Kronus #isowasbetter #gokoisworse
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Just solved the hard boss puzzle, without looking at any spoilers. Looking at them now, I think I got a new solution
get shadowfang as fast as humanly possible, D/AA/S/S, then defend with rhinos. no blue or engineers, and only buy one drone the entire game
It wasn't very fast though, but it works
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It's 1 gold cheaper than blastforge and 1 gold more expensive than animus compared to how much juice it pumps out.
Storing isn't that useful. It's cool but doesn't make up for it at all.
I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that green is underpowered? That's not really true. The base units are certainly less useful than the blue and red ones, but there are plenty of strong green units that aren't in the base set.
Green isn't underpowered, it's just more kingdom reliant than the other two. I think it'd make the game more skill intensive if all three colors had similar amounts of kingdom dependency.
I think I agree here. I'll probably wait until I've played some more and am more confident in my skill, but it might make sense to suggest buffing Gauss Cannon in the "balancing suggestion" place. Would it be overpowered if it could block? Probably. Cheaper? I actually just think making Iso Kronus the green base unit would work... It's basically a cheaper, better Gauss Cannon already.
well, Gauss Canon could afford to be 1$ cheaper without breaking the game (which is something that's absolutely not true of most cheap units). I'm not sure that Gauss Canon hurts the game as is though. It seems kind of neat that Tarsier is the only okay damage source in the base set.
I don't like making Kronos a base unit, because Kronos is really, really strong. It shouldn't be available all the time.
I see a little of the appeal to Tarsier being that way. Maybe they could add a green base unit that adds some value to green that's not primarily an attacker
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Is there ever any reason to not sync your Iso Kronuses? I just lost against someone who didn't, and I'm wondering if I lost because of that, or despite that.
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Is there ever any reason to not sync your Iso Kronuses? I just lost against someone who didn't, and I'm wondering if I lost because of that, or despite that.
if you don't sync even a single one, you lose the whole advantage of only attacking every second turn. it's usually an awful idea.
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If you have enough attack from non-iso sources that they are getting their maximum absorb every turn anyway, I don't see any reason to synch them, so building some on off turns is good because they come into play a turn earlier. But usually you should avoid getting attack from other sources.
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Is it just me or is there some pretty serious first player advantage going on? Seems worse than chess.
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Is it just me or is there some pretty serious first player advantage going on? Seems worse than chess.
I think it definitely makes a difference which player you are, but which player has the advantage depends on the units available (the Scorchilla rush is only available to P2, for example). The last statistics I saw had P2 with a slight advantage overall (something like 53% win rate).
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Is it just me or is there some pretty serious first player advantage going on? Seems worse than chess.
It's just you. As mentioned earlier in this thread, the extra Drone p2 gets is a pretty strong compensation for going second. Currently p2 wins 52% of all games, according to the developers.
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Yeah, there is player advantage. Generally, green openings are good for P2, blue openings are good for P1. Red depends. Vivid drone is super good for P2. Wild drone is pretty good for P2. The red unit that makes green stuff is very good for P2. Odin is extremely good for P1 (if you want him right away).
Overall, my feeling says that P2 is a fair bit better on average (which seems to be backed up by stats, although I hadn't heard of them before).
Somewhat unrelated, I think the "first" and "second" terms are confusing. You could just as well make the first player have second turn but let him start with 8 drones. It's not that one goes first and the other one second, it's just that you play... offset?
Generally, you should have the better position at the board whenever you finished a turn, and the worse position whenever you start a turn. P1, you start with 6 vs 7 drones, you end with 8 vs 7. The farther the game goes, the bigger this gap gets. If, say, your opponent has an even position with you at the end of his turn, that means you're pretty far ahead.
By the way, Doomed Drone makes everything better. If I could decide, I'd make it a base unit.
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Yeah, there is player advantage. Generally, green openings are good for P2, blue openings are good for P1. Red depends. Vivid drone is super good for P2. Wild drone is pretty good for P2. The red unit that makes green stuff is very good for P2. Odin is extremely good for P1 (if you want him right away).
Overall, my feeling says that P2 is a fair bit better on average (which seems to be backed up by stats, although I hadn't heard of them before).
Somewhat unrelated, I think the "first" and "second" terms are confusing. You could just as well make the first player have second turn but let him start with 8 drones. It's not that one goes first and the other one second, it's just that you play... offset?
Generally, you should have the better position at the board whenever you finished a turn, and the worse position whenever you start a turn. P1, you start with 6 vs 7 drones, you end with 8 vs 7. The farther the game goes, the bigger this gap gets. If, say, your opponent has an even position with you at the end of his turn, that means you're pretty far ahead.
By the way, Doomed Drone makes everything better. If I could decide, I'd make it a base unit.
But the player with 6 drones has the option to have an extra drone with 8 drones and 10 drones, but not 7 and 9. I haven't played enough to know specific build orders, but I imagine turn order has subtle differences depending on the specific build order. You mentioned Scorchilla rush as viable for P2 for example.
Doomed Drone sounds good on paper, but again I haven't played enough to know what kind of builds benefit the most from the extra early income (and the extra defender since you can sack doomed drone instead of say an engineer on its last turn).
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Doomed Drone is really skill intensive
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But the player with 6 drones has the option to have an extra drone with 8 drones and 10 drones, but not 7 and 9
I... don't understand what you mean.
Doomed Drone sounds good on paper, but again I haven't played enough to know what kind of builds benefit the most from the extra early income (and the extra defender since you can sack doomed drone instead of say an engineer on its last turn).
I think the blocking is pretty unrelated. What I like about it is just that it makes the unfair scenarios less unfair. For example, if you want to open blue as P2 without it, you either have to wait until turn 3, or just buy drone/bastforge on T2 with 2$ left, which is horrible. With doomed drone, you can build drone/DD/blastforge, which is still not great because doomed drone is far inferior to the normal drone as a source of income, but it's still better. Seems like a really elegant way to reduce this problem.
And it's a cool unit anyway.
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I'm not sure a 52% winrate means that everything is ok. I feel like specific units swing strong p1 or p2 advantage so that games are a little bit deterministic. It'd be like renaming white black and renaming black to white in half your games to show that chess has no p1 issue at all.
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But the player with 6 drones has the option to have an extra drone with 8 drones and 10 drones, but not 7 and 9
I... don't understand what you mean.
I mean to say that starting from 6/7 drone split can play out differently than starting from a 7/8 drone split, or an 8/9 drone split. That's not even taking into account the spare gold.
Technically, the first turn player has the option of doing a 6 drone build and the player starting with 7 drones doesn't. It's just that not buying drones with a 6 drone start is usually not a great play.
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I'm not sure a 52% winrate means that everything is ok. I feel like specific units swing strong p1 or p2 advantage so that games are a little bit deterministic. It'd be like renaming white black and renaming black to white in half your games to show that chess has no p1 issue at all.
I don't understand your meaning. What does 'everything is ok' mean? And the games are ENTIRELY deterministic, of course - there's no randomness at all after the board is made (unless you include 'how my opponent plays' as a random factor). I also don't understand how chess has a 'p1 issue' - sure, it's not balanced, white is more advantageous, very slightly - what's your point? That's really not a problem.
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I'm not sure a 52% winrate means that everything is ok. I feel like specific units swing strong p1 or p2 advantage so that games are a little bit deterministic. It'd be like renaming white black and renaming black to white in half your games to show that chess has no p1 issue at all.
I don't understand your meaning. What does 'everything is ok' mean? And the games are ENTIRELY deterministic, of course - there's no randomness at all after the board is made (unless you include 'how my opponent plays' as a random factor). I also don't understand how chess has a 'p1 issue' - sure, it's not balanced, white is more advantageous, very slightly - what's your point? That's really not a problem.
White's advantage is very small, so it's a problem of negligible magnitude. If white had a huge advantage, people would be a good bit less inclined to play.
Deterministic isn't a good word I guess. But I feel like it seems like a lot of times there's a strong unit that stands out a lot on the board, but either p1 or p2 can get at it better the way the gold split rolls out, and both my opponent and I go for it, but either I win because I'm p1 or he wins because I'm p2. I feel less able to point at mistakes dictating the win or loss of the game in those situations.
I speculate that when someone sits down on one side of a randomly generated set, based on what side they sit on their odds of winning is a lot worse or better than 52%. Maybe not far enough from 52% that it's a problem.
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As an example, in Hearthstone they measured player 1 and player 2's chance of winning across different class matchups and across different deck types. They found that unusual matchups alleviated p1 advantage instead of aggravating it. If their findings were that certain class matchups aggravated p1 advantage they were ready to make changes to keep p1 advantage consistently small for subsets of games, not just the overall winrate of all games played.
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Well, in Prismata, the game is going to be 100% a forced win for one player or the other every single time. This isn't true in chess (probably anyway, chess seems to be a draw with perfect play), and it certainly isn't true in a game with randomness like HS. HS has enough inherent randomness to stop a lot of big swings anyway.
I think what you are talking about is, if it's a problem if there's a way to force a win that's too obvious, too easy to figure out.
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But I feel like it seems like a lot of times there's a strong unit that stands out a lot on the board, but either p1 or p2 can get at it better the way the gold split rolls out, and both my opponent and I go for it, but either I win because I'm p1 or he wins because I'm p2.
While what you say can happen, I don't think it happens that often. I usually play 8 units games (I guess that's what people prefer), and the better players usually crush me because they don't go straight for the strongest unit while I do. Sometimes you have to build up a lot (economically and offensively) before buying that unit (something I suck really hard at doing), sometimes you have to wait for your opponent to reach a particular stage before buying that unit, sometimes there is a weaker unit that counters the strongest one, sometimes there is a colour (or two) that is overall stronger despite having weaker units.
For the record, I managed to get to Tier IX just by having a basic understanding of what each unit is good at and their respective powerlevels, learning to recognize the most common openings, and realizing that sometimes a tarsier rush is the best strategy. I'm just starting to notice that the game goes deeper than that.
Games with only 5 extra units can get a bit degenerate though, I agree with that.
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Well, in Prismata, the game is going to be 100% a forced win for one player or the other every single time. This isn't true in chess (probably anyway, chess seems to be a draw with perfect play), and it certainly isn't true in a game with randomness like HS. HS has enough inherent randomness to stop a lot of big swings anyway.
I think what you are talking about is, if it's a problem if there's a way to force a win that's too obvious, too easy to figure out.
You might be right about the presence of stalemate softening the impact of advantages.
Prismata has stalemates, actually, though. They're rare.
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Well, in Prismata, the game is going to be 100% a forced win for one player or the other every single time. This isn't true in chess (probably anyway, chess seems to be a draw with perfect play), and it certainly isn't true in a game with randomness like HS. HS has enough inherent randomness to stop a lot of big swings anyway.
I think what you are talking about is, if it's a problem if there's a way to force a win that's too obvious, too easy to figure out.
I don't see why draws are impossible in Prismata. If I destroy your final Tarsier with my Pixie, and then both of us are left with no gold income, no attackers and no attackers that cost only G/R/B, the match is going to be a draw. It's definitely a rare example, but it's not impossible.
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You can also end up with two Tarsiers and a Wall each.
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
I think the most common draw hinges around Blastforge, actually, not Wall: you've breached me and killed off most of my Tarsiers, but I get one last attack with them to reduce you to 2 or fewer damage yourself; eventually, you can kill everything but my Blastforge.
As an example of how a game can end in a draw, see Rrkgn-aQJpa (http://play.prismata.net/?r=Rrkgn-aQJpa). This one was actually a win (I don't recall ever getting an actual draw, and it's impossible to search for one to see if I'm wrong), but if I'd made one more health worth of mistakes, my opponent's last Grimbotch would have killed my Cynestra and then timed out, leaving neither of us any attackers or income at all.
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Well, in Prismata, the game is going to be 100% a forced win for one player or the other every single time. This isn't true in chess (probably anyway, chess seems to be a draw with perfect play), and it certainly isn't true in a game with randomness like HS. HS has enough inherent randomness to stop a lot of big swings anyway.
I think what you are talking about is, if it's a problem if there's a way to force a win that's too obvious, too easy to figure out.
I don't see why draws are impossible in Prismata. If I destroy your final Tarsier with my Pixie, and then both of us are left with no gold income, no attackers and no attackers that cost only G/R/B, the match is going to be a draw. It's definitely a rare example, but it's not impossible.
Sure, you're right.
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yeah, I think draws are extremely uncommon. I never had one.
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yeah, I think draws are extremely uncommon. I never had one.
I haven't either. I think when it happens, there is usually still one player with attack, but the other player has a unit (e.g., blastforge) which the attacker can never destroy. And of course neither has any drones.
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yeah, I think draws are extremely uncommon. I never had one.
I haven't either. I think when it happens, there is usually still one player with attack, but the other player has a unit (e.g., blastforge) which the attacker can never destroy. And of course neither has any drones.
It seems like it'd be most frequent in green breach resilient mirrors where things break down into constantly breaching eachother, then someone wins the gauss cannon trading by only 2 gauss cannons and there's a blastforge on the other side.
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It seems like it'd be most frequent [...] gauss cannons
No.
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In perfect play, I don't know how often draws happen.
As a noob, I just had a draw against Master Bot. After lots of silly turns, I got to the point where the bot had no drones to buy more economy because of the "use attack to kill a Drone" unit, but the bot had enough Tarsiers/Rhinos to overpower the amount of defense I could buy each turn. After some defense decisions I ended with 1 attack vs 0 attack, which wasn't enough to kill the bot's Animus.
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
My personal feeling is the odds would be lower than that. Like probably somewhere around 0.1-0.5% of games. If you think about how uncommon draws are in Dominion (about 5% of the time) and consider that it's a lot easier to tie here than in Prismata due to needing numbers to fall pretty much perfectly. But really it'd just be a case of finding the data and looking at it once the sample size is large enough. I doubt there's been enough games yet to get a good estimate of the draw rate.
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
My personal feeling is the odds would be lower than that. Like probably somewhere around 0.1-0.5% of games. If you think about how uncommon draws are in Dominion (about 5% of the time) and consider that it's a lot easier to tie here than in Prismata due to needing numbers to fall pretty much perfectly. But really it'd just be a case of finding the data and looking at it once the sample size is large enough. I doubt there's been enough games yet to get a good estimate of the draw rate.
In chess, the losing player can play to the draw better than the winning player can play away from it, at least sometimes. In Dominion, the winning player has tremendous ability to play away from the draw, it seems to me.
In Prismata, I think everyone's still at a novice level and stuff but I could forsee maybe really masterful players being able to play towards a draw. Especially with some specific card out there, maybe cluster bolt
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
My personal feeling is the odds would be lower than that. Like probably somewhere around 0.1-0.5% of games. If you think about how uncommon draws are in Dominion (about 5% of the time) and consider that it's a lot easier to tie here than in Prismata due to needing numbers to fall pretty much perfectly. But really it'd just be a case of finding the data and looking at it once the sample size is large enough. I doubt there's been enough games yet to get a good estimate of the draw rate.
In chess, the losing player can play to the draw better than the winning player can play away from it, at least sometimes. In Dominion, the winning player has tremendous ability to play away from the draw, it seems to me.
In Prismata, I think everyone's still at a novice level and stuff but I could forsee maybe really masterful players being able to play towards a draw. Especially with some specific card out there, maybe cluster bolt
To some extent, I agree. The game is still in it's infancy. The current top level players would likely be novices by this time next year, if players keep improving. But I think the issue is that draws are an extremely fine line in Prismata - often just the difference of one attack, perhaps even one attack for one turn can swing a draw to a win or loss. And sometimes, that line just isn't there at all - one extra attack would mean killing their last attackers instead of the other way around, and you can sweep from there. I feel like draws will be more common in high level play, eventually, but nowhere near the level of chess. Perhaps mid single digit percentages, at best.
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
My personal feeling is the odds would be lower than that. Like probably somewhere around 0.1-0.5% of games. If you think about how uncommon draws are in Dominion (about 5% of the time) and consider that it's a lot easier to tie here than in Prismata due to needing numbers to fall pretty much perfectly. But really it'd just be a case of finding the data and looking at it once the sample size is large enough. I doubt there's been enough games yet to get a good estimate of the draw rate.
In chess, the losing player can play to the draw better than the winning player can play away from it, at least sometimes. In Dominion, the winning player has tremendous ability to play away from the draw, it seems to me.
In Prismata, I think everyone's still at a novice level and stuff but I could forsee maybe really masterful players being able to play towards a draw. Especially with some specific card out there, maybe cluster bolt
To some extent, I agree. The game is still in it's infancy. The current top level players would likely be novices by this time next year, if players keep improving. But I think the issue is that draws are an extremely fine line in Prismata - often just the difference of one attack, perhaps even one attack for one turn can swing a draw to a win or loss. And sometimes, that line just isn't there at all - one extra attack would mean killing their last attackers instead of the other way around, and you can sweep from there. I feel like draws will be more common in high level play, eventually, but nowhere near the level of chess. Perhaps mid single digit percentages, at best.
It seems like you're taking Tarsier as a given, but in certain sets it definitely seems to me that Tarsier is not a given. If temporary breach pressure tools outweigh the strength of the walls the right way both players may be well served by avoiding Tarsier entirely. So the attacker will be Gauss Cannon
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
My personal feeling is the odds would be lower than that. Like probably somewhere around 0.1-0.5% of games. If you think about how uncommon draws are in Dominion (about 5% of the time) and consider that it's a lot easier to tie here than in Prismata due to needing numbers to fall pretty much perfectly. But really it'd just be a case of finding the data and looking at it once the sample size is large enough. I doubt there's been enough games yet to get a good estimate of the draw rate.
In chess, the losing player can play to the draw better than the winning player can play away from it, at least sometimes. In Dominion, the winning player has tremendous ability to play away from the draw, it seems to me.
In Prismata, I think everyone's still at a novice level and stuff but I could forsee maybe really masterful players being able to play towards a draw. Especially with some specific card out there, maybe cluster bolt
To some extent, I agree. The game is still in it's infancy. The current top level players would likely be novices by this time next year, if players keep improving. But I think the issue is that draws are an extremely fine line in Prismata - often just the difference of one attack, perhaps even one attack for one turn can swing a draw to a win or loss. And sometimes, that line just isn't there at all - one extra attack would mean killing their last attackers instead of the other way around, and you can sweep from there. I feel like draws will be more common in high level play, eventually, but nowhere near the level of chess. Perhaps mid single digit percentages, at best.
It seems like you're taking Tarsier as a given, but in certain sets it definitely seems to me that Tarsier is not a given. If temporary breach pressure tools outweigh the strength of the walls the right way both players may be well served by avoiding Tarsier entirely. So the attacker will be Gauss Cannon
It's true that sometimes you can ignore Tarsier, but even then, Gauss Cannon doesn't really enter the picture.
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
My personal feeling is the odds would be lower than that. Like probably somewhere around 0.1-0.5% of games. If you think about how uncommon draws are in Dominion (about 5% of the time) and consider that it's a lot easier to tie here than in Prismata due to needing numbers to fall pretty much perfectly. But really it'd just be a case of finding the data and looking at it once the sample size is large enough. I doubt there's been enough games yet to get a good estimate of the draw rate.
In chess, the losing player can play to the draw better than the winning player can play away from it, at least sometimes. In Dominion, the winning player has tremendous ability to play away from the draw, it seems to me.
In Prismata, I think everyone's still at a novice level and stuff but I could forsee maybe really masterful players being able to play towards a draw. Especially with some specific card out there, maybe cluster bolt
To some extent, I agree. The game is still in it's infancy. The current top level players would likely be novices by this time next year, if players keep improving. But I think the issue is that draws are an extremely fine line in Prismata - often just the difference of one attack, perhaps even one attack for one turn can swing a draw to a win or loss. And sometimes, that line just isn't there at all - one extra attack would mean killing their last attackers instead of the other way around, and you can sweep from there. I feel like draws will be more common in high level play, eventually, but nowhere near the level of chess. Perhaps mid single digit percentages, at best.
It seems like you're taking Tarsier as a given, but in certain sets it definitely seems to me that Tarsier is not a given. If temporary breach pressure tools outweigh the strength of the walls the right way both players may be well served by avoiding Tarsier entirely. So the attacker will be Gauss Cannon
I never mentioned Tarsiers at all. Heck I wasn't even thinking of anything in particular, just the nature of how the game ends. You've set up a strawman argument for what I said. Games which just come down to players shooting each others last Gauss Canons might end up a draw because 1 attack doesn't break Animus, it's a possibility. It seems fairly rare though.
Anyway, I asked and got numbers from the dev. Around 0.2% of games end in draws currently, and at top level play it's around 1.2%. http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2re7to/any_data_on_draw_rate/cnfh1r7?context=3
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
My personal feeling is the odds would be lower than that. Like probably somewhere around 0.1-0.5% of games. If you think about how uncommon draws are in Dominion (about 5% of the time) and consider that it's a lot easier to tie here than in Prismata due to needing numbers to fall pretty much perfectly. But really it'd just be a case of finding the data and looking at it once the sample size is large enough. I doubt there's been enough games yet to get a good estimate of the draw rate.
In chess, the losing player can play to the draw better than the winning player can play away from it, at least sometimes. In Dominion, the winning player has tremendous ability to play away from the draw, it seems to me.
In Prismata, I think everyone's still at a novice level and stuff but I could forsee maybe really masterful players being able to play towards a draw. Especially with some specific card out there, maybe cluster bolt
To some extent, I agree. The game is still in it's infancy. The current top level players would likely be novices by this time next year, if players keep improving. But I think the issue is that draws are an extremely fine line in Prismata - often just the difference of one attack, perhaps even one attack for one turn can swing a draw to a win or loss. And sometimes, that line just isn't there at all - one extra attack would mean killing their last attackers instead of the other way around, and you can sweep from there. I feel like draws will be more common in high level play, eventually, but nowhere near the level of chess. Perhaps mid single digit percentages, at best.
It seems like you're taking Tarsier as a given, but in certain sets it definitely seems to me that Tarsier is not a given. If temporary breach pressure tools outweigh the strength of the walls the right way both players may be well served by avoiding Tarsier entirely. So the attacker will be Gauss Cannon
I never mentioned Tarsiers at all. Heck I wasn't even thinking of anything in particular, just the nature of how the game ends. You've set up a strawman argument for what I said. Games which just come down to players shooting each others last Gauss Canons might end up a draw because 1 attack doesn't break Animus, it's a possibility. It seems fairly rare though.
Anyway, I asked and got numbers from the dev. Around 0.2% of games end in draws currently, and at top level play it's around 1.2%. http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2re7to/any_data_on_draw_rate/cnfh1r7?context=3
Blastforge has 3 hp, so why isn't it the bigger deal than animus?
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Yeah, but how many of those scenarios result from perfect play on both sides?
Well, nobody can say about perfect play, of course: we aren't close to that level. In practice draws are quite rare, perhaps in the neighborhood of 1% of games.
My personal feeling is the odds would be lower than that. Like probably somewhere around 0.1-0.5% of games. If you think about how uncommon draws are in Dominion (about 5% of the time) and consider that it's a lot easier to tie here than in Prismata due to needing numbers to fall pretty much perfectly. But really it'd just be a case of finding the data and looking at it once the sample size is large enough. I doubt there's been enough games yet to get a good estimate of the draw rate.
In chess, the losing player can play to the draw better than the winning player can play away from it, at least sometimes. In Dominion, the winning player has tremendous ability to play away from the draw, it seems to me.
In Prismata, I think everyone's still at a novice level and stuff but I could forsee maybe really masterful players being able to play towards a draw. Especially with some specific card out there, maybe cluster bolt
To some extent, I agree. The game is still in it's infancy. The current top level players would likely be novices by this time next year, if players keep improving. But I think the issue is that draws are an extremely fine line in Prismata - often just the difference of one attack, perhaps even one attack for one turn can swing a draw to a win or loss. And sometimes, that line just isn't there at all - one extra attack would mean killing their last attackers instead of the other way around, and you can sweep from there. I feel like draws will be more common in high level play, eventually, but nowhere near the level of chess. Perhaps mid single digit percentages, at best.
It seems like you're taking Tarsier as a given, but in certain sets it definitely seems to me that Tarsier is not a given. If temporary breach pressure tools outweigh the strength of the walls the right way both players may be well served by avoiding Tarsier entirely. So the attacker will be Gauss Cannon
I never mentioned Tarsiers at all. Heck I wasn't even thinking of anything in particular, just the nature of how the game ends. You've set up a strawman argument for what I said. Games which just come down to players shooting each others last Gauss Canons might end up a draw because 1 attack doesn't break Animus, it's a possibility. It seems fairly rare though.
Anyway, I asked and got numbers from the dev. Around 0.2% of games end in draws currently, and at top level play it's around 1.2%. http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2re7to/any_data_on_draw_rate/cnfh1r7?context=3
Blastforge has 3 hp, so why isn't it the bigger deal than animus?
Because it's fragile?
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Because it's fragile?
Blastforge isn't fragile. Just Conduit is.
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Because it's fragile?
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/6495a3805fbc53bf7de7439f1074ab1b/tumblr_mwh5mfoSY51qdrsl2o1_500.jpg)
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Because it's fragile?
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/6495a3805fbc53bf7de7439f1074ab1b/tumblr_mwh5mfoSY51qdrsl2o1_500.jpg)
That's not an opinion, actually. Didn't realise Blastforge wasn't fragile (I haven't played that many games). Thought the were 2 HP, 2 HP fragile and 3 HP fragile. Guess that does actually make draws somewhat more likely.
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Because it's fragile?
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/6495a3805fbc53bf7de7439f1074ab1b/tumblr_mwh5mfoSY51qdrsl2o1_500.jpg)
That's not an opinion, actually. Didn't realise Blastforge wasn't fragile (I haven't played that many games). Thought the were 2 HP, 2 HP fragile and 3 HP fragile. Guess that does actually make draws somewhat more likely.
Only green stuff is fragile.
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Because it's fragile?
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/6495a3805fbc53bf7de7439f1074ab1b/tumblr_mwh5mfoSY51qdrsl2o1_500.jpg)
That's not an opinion, actually. Didn't realise Blastforge wasn't fragile (I haven't played that many games). Thought the were 2 HP, 2 HP fragile and 3 HP fragile. Guess that does actually make draws somewhat more likely.
Only green stuff is fragile.
But not all green stuff is fragile.
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Just some patterns I've noticed with the colors:
-Green things are almost always fragile, often high-health (breach resistant). They also are the only ones that sacrifice Drones.
-Blue things are expensive, not fragile, high health blockers. Weak attackers generally. Favors big econ/long games.
-Red things are animals. Not fragile, low health, strong attackers, favor rushes/low econ
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But not all green stuff is fragile.
Everything pure-green is, though. Unless you count Gauss Charge, with one non-fragile health.
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Just some patterns I've noticed with the colors:
-Green things are almost always fragile, often high-health (breach resistant). They also are the only ones that sacrifice Drones.
-Blue things are expensive, not fragile, high health blockers. Weak attackers generally. Favors big econ/long games.
-Red things are animals. Not fragile, low health, strong attackers, favor rushes/low econ
There's more to it than this, really. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lunarchstudios/prismata-a-new-hybrid-game-of-pure-strategy/posts/1077818 is a kickstarter post about the flavor bits that go into the three different colors. For example, you missed that only red units have stamina (because only biological things get tired).
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Just some patterns I've noticed with the colors:
-Green things are almost always fragile, often high-health (breach resistant). They also are the only ones that sacrifice Drones.
You mean, aside from Lucina Spinos, Ossified Drone (Red) and Steelforge (Colourless, kinda blue). EDGECASED!
Lorewise, blue units are mechs built from a super strong alloy, and green units are basically energy based or something.
PPE: it would be nice if people stopped ninja'ing me so much. Jeez.
EDIT:
But not all green stuff is fragile.
Everything pure-green is, though. Unless you count Gauss Charge, with one non-fragile health.
And barrier, plexo cell, and fission turret :P
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The only unit that is green and not fragile where it makes a difference is centurion, and he is less than half green.
By the way, have you noticed that the walls all consist of as many pieces as they have defense?
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The only unit that is green and not fragile where it makes a difference is centurion, and he is less than half green.
And xenoguardian, which is exactly half green!
By the way, have you noticed that the walls all consist of as many pieces as they have defense?
Yes! I thought it was a nice touch when I first noticed.
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The only unit that is green and not fragile where it makes a difference is centurion, and he is less than half green.
And xenoguardian, which is exactly half green!
oh, right.
hey, these are also the only two units with vigilance
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And barrier, plexo cell, and fission turret :P
Ha, I never noticed plexo isn't fragile. That's cute.
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well they have to put thematic aspects behind mechanic aspects, so units that have one health or die after one turn can't be fragile, even if it feels wrong.
another little thing - every unit which can cause you to construct another unit is limited in some way, probably because they want to have a finite amount of possible cards. gauss fabricator has lifespawn, sentinel has stamina, frost brooder has lifespawn, Asteri canon loses health, etc. Even thermite core has a lifespawn that never matters.
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Changes and two new units! (http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2rnhqg/live_in_225_hours_balance_changes_and_new_units/)
I like the changes on the special drones, and don't mind the change on cryo ray (a huge nerf, but then again it is super cheap).
Don't know what to think of the two new units yet, other than the new wall variant keeping hex:health = 1.
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Changes and two new units! (http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2rnhqg/live_in_225_hours_balance_changes_and_new_units/)
I like the changes on the special drones, and don't mind the change on cryo ray (a huge nerf, but then again it is super cheap).
Don't know what to think of the two new units yet, other than the new wall variant keeping hex:health = 1.
The new wall looks very strong: it seems like it would be great even costing 6B. I love the change to Vivid Drones: should lead to much more interesting Vivid games instead of it being near-mandatory to build all four Vivids. The change to Doomed Drones is interesting - it doesn't sound right to me now, since Doomed is already so good, but I imagine they've thought about this and it won't totally ruin the game's balance.
As for freeze: I find freeze still gives me a headache, so I'm in favor of the Cryo nerf, and not looking forward to the Endotherm Kit, but that's just a selfish preference thing rather than a balanced analysis.
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Doomed drone is actually a slightly better resource producer than normal drone now (if you have unlimited energy), I just did the maths. The change to cyro ray is good, I think it's still really strong. Vivid drone change is good too I think, though I'm less sure.
I don't know about the wall, I liked shredder as a 4hp wall. I think this will make shredder much less useful if both are in the game, at least I mostly bought him for that. No opinion about the frost package.
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Doomed drone is actually a slightly better resource producer than normal drone now (if you have unlimited energy), I just did the maths.
Huh? It depends on how long the game goes.
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Doomed drone is actually a slightly better resource producer than normal drone now (if you have unlimited energy), I just did the maths.
Huh? It depends on how long the game goes.
I don't think it does. Well, if the game ends while your drone is still alive, it changes things. But if not, one will gain you more resources than the other.
There is probably a more elegant way to calculate this, but I think what I did works. I just assumed P1 starts with X $ in drones, P2 starts with X $ in Doomed drones, both use their new money to buy normal drones, and then whoever has more after 4 turns uses the better unit. You get mistakes if you have money left that's not enough for a new drone (1 or 2), so I used big numbers
18D -> 24D -> 32D -> 42D2$ -> 56D2$
27X -> 9D27X -> 21D27X -> 37D27X -> 58D1$
X is doomed drone. So, I think that shows that doomed drone is better... right?
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Obviously, drone is still better if you consider energy.
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Hopefully the buff to doomed drone is posturing for before they make 3 turn doomed drone a standard unit :P
I like the new frost kit more than the new wall. Primata seems like it's lacking in interesting strategy selection questions compared to dominion, but not lacking at all in strategy optimization questions. Offering 3 damage reduction from the same first blast forge that usually gets you 2 damage reduction seems like enough of a no-brainer that it won't make strategy selection more interesting than before, more simple than before if anything.
Using red to get some granularity is a cool optimization question but not helping on the front I think the game is weakest. It makes you question whether to do BR or BG a little bit on the selection front though, so that's ok.
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My advise concerning bastforge: get it. There are times where you don't, but in most cases you really want to have it. Defending with Rhinos is a losing strategy, you should only do it if it's absolutely necessary.
More importantly though, don't buy Gauss Canons. Gauss Canon is the Scout of Prismata (which also means that there are exceptions, but start with not buying them).
To expand a bit on the Gauss Cannon statement, getting lots of Gauss Cannons is not really a viable strategy in itself. They are just too expensive, and unlike Steelsplitters they can't function as a non-prompt defender that puts pressure or anything. In theory they could be part of some counterbuilds, but the randomized "kingdom" makes those situations unlikely. This is my understanding of the cannons.
They can be good if you have the spare resources for them and you want to increase the power of your big burst next turn, say with Zemora Voidbringer or just lots of Gauss Charges or Frostbites.
If you want to slowly build up a solid attack army, Tarsiers are the way to go, but you'll probably need blue tech to defend them.
Now Forcefields, those are useful and are a reason to want a spare Conduit at some point.
I just won a game with Apollo where I built up an army of Gauss Cannons with Synthesizer. Synthesizer was the only tech building that wasn't vulnerable to Apollo, so Gauss cannons were my only real option to punch through my opponent's defenses. I was behind on drones due to opposing Deadeye Operatives earlier on, so I had to put pressure.
Just throwing that out there.
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It's not a big deal if Apollo shoots a tech building. You can just rebuild it.
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It's not a big deal if Apollo shoots a tech building. You can just rebuild it.
Well, Gauss Cannons are cheaper than Tarsiers when you have to construct a new Animus for every 2 Tarsiers you construct.
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I just made it to tier 8!
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I just made it to tier 8!
And you beat at least one tier X player: Eiko was in the top 100 earlier tonight. Congratulations on both achievements.
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In case anyone is interested, I did a little calculating where I compared and ranked all existing defenders with prompt by their efficiency. From what I can see, a lot of players make pretty suboptimal choices here.
I have $ = red = 3, green = 4, blue = 5, energy = 0 for the prices
| rank | name | cost per defense |
| 1 | Plexo Cell | 5,75 |
| 2 | Polywall | 5,83 |
| 3 | Aegis | 6,0 |
| 4 | Energy Matrix* | 6,16 |
| 5 | Doomed Wall | 6,5 |
| 6 | Wall | 6,6 |
| 7 | Barrier | 7,0 |
| 8 | Force Field | 8,0 |
| 9 | Drone** | 12,0 |
* treated as 6 defense because of the pixie
** treated as if it costs 4$ because you lose 1$ by not clicking
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* treated as 6 defense because of the pixie
The quoted part... is not very useful. The pixie cannot block. You buy prompt defenders so that the attacker doesn't reach your whatever. The pixie isn't accomplishing that.
The rest you probably know already, but I'll write it down anyway:
It would also be useful to note that some of the prompt defenders have lifespan. Lifespan 1 in particular is countered hard by chill, and soft countered by the attacker being able to transform attack into other ressources (usually defense/absorb or delayed attack).
Saying energy = 0 is a good approximation... until it isn't. Of course, it is usually a good idea to always keep at least one engineer alive to have more granularity in your defense. But personally I don't replace them if it allows me to squeeze an extra attacker. I'm not entirely sure I am right on that account though, it would probably help if I was better able to predict how much attack I would have to defend against two turns later.
And the strength of forcefield and plexocell is that their full cost is delayed: you don't need to replace drones as you consume them. If the game is about to end, Forcefied and Plexo cell are by far the most efficient defenders. And even if that is not the case, not replacing the drone saves you 3 coins, which might very well be enough to build an extra attacker, and 1 attack >>> 1 gold, etc.
Special note on Polywall: because it is frontline, if the opponent works around it, you are nullifying your absorb. So polywall's defense might be as low as 6-(absorb/n_polywalls). For example, if you have one wall and one polywall, and your opponent attacks with 6, the polywall only granted you 4 extra defense.
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I don't get your numbers though. How are you calculating them? It's definitely not converted_cost/health.
[ 3($ in cost) + 3(red in cost) + 4(green in cost) + 5(blue in cost)] / health
example: plexo cell costs 2$ + 2 green + 3$(drone). that is 6 + 8 + 9 = 23. plexo cell has 4 health so 23 / 4 = 5.75
The quoted part... is not very useful. The pixie cannot block. You buy prompt defenders so that the attacker doesn't reach your whatever. The pixie isn't accomplishing that.
The idea is not that you need every bit of defense to defend, the idea is that you can defend in several ways and have freedom to chose the best one, which means it's really bad to treat matrix as 5 defense because that makes it look far worse than it is
the rest is true. I wasn't making any statements, obviously other factors are way more important -if- they are there.
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I don't get your numbers though. How are you calculating them? It's definitely not converted_cost/health.
[ 3($ in cost) + 3(red in cost) + 4(green in cost) + 5(blue in cost)] / health
example: plexo cell costs 2$ + 2 green + 3$(drone). that is 6 + 8 + 9 = 23. plexo cell has 4 health so 23 / 4 = 5.75
Yeah, sorry, I didn't read your post correctly at first, but you saw my post before I took that line out. Basically you are doing cost_to_be_able_to_buy_one_every_turn / defense.
The quoted part... is not very useful. The pixie cannot block. You buy prompt defenders so that the attacker doesn't reach your whatever. The pixie isn't accomplishing that.
The idea is not that you need every bit of defense to defend, the idea is that you can defend in several ways and have freedom to chose the best one, which means it's really bad to treat matrix as 5 defense because that makes it look far worse than it is.
I still don't get this. I get that if you treat energy matrix as being solely a 5 defense blocker, it is not very good for its cost*. I don't get why you are equating a pixie with one defense.
* Except the first one, but there you are buying it for its absorb, not its health, if the difference makes any sense.
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I still don't get this. I get that if you treat energy matrix as being solely a 5 defense blocker, it is not very good for its cost*. I don't get why you are equating a pixie with one defense.
* Except the first one, but there you are buying it for its absorb, not its health, if the difference makes any sense.
Well, a pixie is worth about as much as one damage which is worth about as much as one defense. see thermite core, barrier, gauss charge.
of course one damage can be better for you than it is for your opponent (or worse), in which case energy matrix is better (or worse) than it is in the table, but 6 health is certainly a more accurate estimation of how good it is on average than 5 health
unrelated, I just had my first ever draw (http://play.prismata.net/?r=Rs9oz-r@J@2)
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I don't get why you are equating a pixie with one defense.
Well, on average it's a bit better than one defense since you can use your Pixie when it's the most beneficial for you, while your opponent can destroy your defenses when it's the most beneficial for him, but there's a significant gap between Energy Matrix and Doomed Wall in the ranking so that's probably not enough to make up for the difference.
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So engineer is a flat 6 by these calculations, right?
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So engineer is a flat 6 by these calculations, right?
If you just look at the price, yes. But that's misleading, because engineer doesn't have prompt. Money increases each turn, so buying engineers to defend is not actually efficient.
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Note to self: C is not the keyboard shortcut for Chrono Filter.
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So engineer is a flat 6 by these calculations, right?
If you just look at the price, yes. But that's misleading, because engineer doesn't have prompt. Money increases each turn, so buying engineers to defend is not actually efficient.
Even at tier 5-6, I see players sometimes buy Engineers even when they don't need the energy or Tesla Coil fodder. It's not prompt, so in those cases you only want to buy Engineer if you expect it to block the turn it can do so. My habit is to never buy a third Engineer early unless I'm going to use the energy.
So anyway, what are your favourite units guys? Mine is the Trinity Drone. It goes such a long way to making breach-tolerant strategies viable. It's also a nice way to use spare green. The runner up for me seems to be Plasmafier. I don't know what it is about this unit that draws me to it so much. Maybe it's the fact that you can transition to it through blue tech, or maybe it's the raw power of the unit. It seems to me like you really don't want to play passively when it means your opponent can produce these without worrying too much about defense.
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So anyway, what are your favourite units guys?
top 3 are doomed drone (decreases first/second player advantage in almost every game and opens up new builds without being overly powerful), ossified drone (requires planing ahead and feels great if it makes you win), and feral warden (underrated, super strong, and I miss it in every game where I go red and he's not there)
there are so many great units in this game though.
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So anyway, what are your favourite units guys?
top 3 are doomed drone (decreases first/second player advantage in almost every game and opens up new builds without being overly powerful), ossified drone (requires planing ahead and feels great if it makes you win), and feral warden (underrated, super strong, and I miss it in every game where I go red and he's not there)
there are so many great units in this game though.
Yes, there are so many great units in the game. I like all the units you mentioned too, though I could use more experience with Doomed Drone.
I guess in general I like the green tech the most. Cluster Bomb is neat and the green prompt defenders let you do more exotic things.
I'm steadily progressing up the tiers, but it's a slow process because I don't have time to play too many games in one sitting.
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My favourite unit are drones. I could always have more drones. So round and shiny...
Other than that, I like Zemora Voidbringer when only one player buys it, because it leads to very asymmetric games. Other than that, Tia Thurnax is cool in those games when it isn't an autobuy; knowing when is the right time to pull the trigger is tricky. And I think my best "win rate with" is with Centurion. I don't remember losing a game in which I bought it.
My favourite unit used to be scorchilla. Haha, that has changed.
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where do you see your "best winrate with"?
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where do you see your "best winrate with"?
I don't.
And I think my best "win rate with" is with Centurion. I don't remember losing a game in which I bought it.
It would definitely be a nice feature though.
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Doomed Drone, Militia, Bloodrager, Antima Comet, Asteri Cannon, Plexo Cell.
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I... just realized that Tesla Coil kills your own engineers. wtf?
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A Tesla Coil that is dangerous enough to do 3 damage is also dangerous enough to kill the units that manage it. I don't see the problem here?
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I just played a neat game starring a couple of my favorite units: IT9sm-86Mfv (http://play.prismata.net/?r=IT9sm-86Mfv). I was quite unsure how to open: I didn't want too many Wild Drones since they don't work well with Defense Grid, but I really wanted an early Conduit to get a Xeno Guardian and eventually a Gauss Fabricator, so I ponied up for two Wild Drones. Then my opponent's extremely passive opening (he also missed a free Engineer kill) meant I didn't really need the Xeno in a hurry after all, so I got Tarsiers instead.
But okay, once the opening had sorta played itself out, my opponent committed very heavily to freeze, spending all his red on Frostbites. I had just started ossifying, and had actually already bought a second Xeno Guardian, thinking "well the first one is about to die, so this is like a Steelsplitter with a Gauss Charge and a Barrier (http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2q5t1o/when_is_it_right_to_stack_xeno_guardian/)". But once he started getting Frostbites, my plan just got even better: I'll mass Xeno Guardians and Ossified Drones! As long as I only use Doomed Wall for defense, never Wall, his Frostbites can only freeze for 2, which decreases their value a lot; and Xeno/Ossified are both very freeze-resistant, because they can still do their stuff while defending.
In the end I actually piled out Xeno Guardians, which may be a first for me; my Ossified Drones made a mockery of his freeze; I hit what may be a personal record of 51 health in blockers after committing my attackers (ie, none); and I built a Gauss Fabricator without instantly losing, which is what usually happens when I build one.
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That is the worst set for freeze that I have ever seen.
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Kyfcb-pvTb5
This is the first time I've beaten the DD/DDC/DA/SS Scorchzilla rush as White. I soak the first hit with 3 Engineers and a Protoplasm, then pick up my own Scorchzillas two turns behind; my first hit goes into 2 Forcefields and 2 Rhinos. On my next turn I have to build 4 Forcefields, but rebuild 3 Drones; they lose 2 Forcefields and 4 Rhinos on my next strike, at which point I have 13 Drones against their 9. They start on Tarsiers, which are not a problem for me at first as they just run into a Protoplasm, but become a serious threat towards the end of the game when I need my in between turns to prepare for Scorchzilla. I catch up to the third Scorchzilla and they soon run out of economy.
Protoplasm is probably one of the best counters to Scorchzilla, as it's cost-effective defense followed by burst damage, and you have to punish the rusher by threatening to breach. It also doesn't require a diversion from red/green, so you can combine it with your own Scorchzillas a turn or two behind with a better developed economy.
During the game I thought that my DD/DC/DDC opening was probably pretty silly, despite dropping to 0 green at least once. But perhaps it's a small amount of misdirection, as it looks like a (possibly badly executed) White Scorchzilla rush. In any case, the extra Conduit was an important part of my economic advantage.
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protoplasm is always good if no-one has blue, but it's actually not unusual that you can beat scorchilla by doing something completely different. it feels like 9 out of 10 people go for the rush if they're second player, but it's really overrated.
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I think this is a semi-official sketch of a new unit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2ulwv3/qafeedback_feb_115/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2ulwv3/qafeedback_feb_115/)
(http://i.imgur.com/SCmB59B.png)
it looks... like a protoss unit
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New Patch: (http://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/2vuoic/balance_survey_responses_plus_buffs_nerfs_and/)
Ossified Drone: cost changed from 5RE to 2R + Consume a Drone. Not a buff in "power", but a buff to make Ossified Drone easier to fit into your openings.
Grenademech now has a click ability: Consume a Blastforge, Construct 2 Pixies. It needed a buff, but decreasing the cost to 9BB was not an option because player 2 would then gain access to a very oppressive DD/BB/Grenademech rush (which, while counterable with base set only, led to pretty unfun games). Instead, we added an on-flavour click ability that might remind you a bit of Drake's (note that the damage comes one turn later, but in Pixie form, so it's neither strictly better nor strictly worse).
Asteri Cannon - cost increased by G to 16GGGG, HP increased to 11, ability cost increased to 5HP. Asteri was OP to the point that players who didn't get it often lost. The change to its HP is mostly to make it a more reasonable purchase in situations where players would prefer NOT to use its click ability.
Steelforge - cost decreased from 3 to 2. Steelforge is one of the first units ever added to Prismata (after Drone, Steelsplitter, and Blastforge) and has been changed dozens of times. It used to be far more expensive but had a 1 gold activation cost and produced Steelsplitters that could attack right away, leading to some pretty cool (and often OP) rushes. Changing its cost to involve "Consume a Blastforge" helped deal with the rushes, but we think it can handle a little buff now.
Lucina Spinos - cost decreased from 18RRRR to 17RRRR. We nerfed Lucina really hard recently; she seems OK at 18RRRR but a tiny buff won't hurt. 16RRRR was ruled out for allowing a really scary player 2 rush with Wild Drones (though you can still try it with Doomed Drones!)
Frost Brooder - lifespan reduced from 9 to 7. We wanted to (slightly) nerf strategies involving stockpiling a ton of Frostbites. You can still go double Frost Brooder if you want.
Deadeye Operative - cost increased to 11BB, attack increased to 2, cost to snipe a Drone increased to "pay 2 attack". This was a hard decision. The original 7BB Deadeye was a unit that I initially hated, but I grew to love the unique and interesting board states it led to. Unfortunately, it was oppressive and drawish, and the recent change to 8BB with one attack didn't seem to help much. So we're trying something rather different.
Tia Thurnax - cost increased by 2 to 6GGGR + sac 7 Drones. A pretty small nerf, but it should weaken Tia Thurnax rushes a bit. We thought about reducing its HP instead, but that would do nothing to help strategies that aimed to "weather the storm" by defending against Tia's 21 damage over 3 turns.
Scorchilla: cost reduced from 7RG to 5RG. Build time increased from 1 to 2. Many people complained that Scorchilla was oppressive because it forced players to guard against Scorchilla rushes like player 2's DD/DDC/DA into double Scorchilla, which placed strong constraints on player 1's choice of openings. In ladder games, we saw a 56% win rate with player 2 when Scorchilla was in the set (though it was close to 50-50 between 1600+ players). In any case, we're gonna try a new version. We'll do another survey later to see whether you guys want the old one back.
Endotherm Kit - Replaced by a new unit that does the following:
Cost 5RRGG
Build time 4
Supply 1
Spell: Construct 4 Frostbites and 4 Cryo Rays
Survey's in, players don't enjoy games with a lot of cheap, strong freeze units. The old Endotherm is cut. The replacement is a variation of a unit we were planning on releasing later this year (which originally spawned a stash of another freeze unit that currently isn't included in Prismata). We reworked it slightly to fit into Endotherm's slot and use its art. The long construction time means you'll have a lot of time to prepare for its arrival.
Auric Impulse: Cost changed from 5 to 4E. It now gives 5E instead of 6. We really wanted to buff the 5->6 version of Auric Impulse to 4->5, but doing so gave a huge advantage to player 2. The cost of 4E makes it work, and the fact that it also produces an energy when purchased means that you can cycle them a ton (and then buy a lot of drones all at once, if you want). It feels a bit different, but I think it's more interesting now.
Doomed Drone and Vivid Drone: we're keeping the current versions of both! You guys liked the changes, and we did too.
Apollo and Cluster Bolt: no changes. But we're keeping an eye on these two.
I think this is pretty good, overall. I'm between like and null on all of them
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I'm not a fan of the Deadeye Operative change, I liked the current version. And I wonder if Grenade Mech could have had a simpler buff, this one is a bit complicated when combined with everything else the card already has. The other changes look pretty good.
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I don't really like the Auric Impulse change, in particular the energy part. It's basically a drone, now. It allowed for some tricks when you didn't have enough engineers before, and not anymore...
I never felt like Asteri cannon was all that powerful, compared to the other 3 attack units. Oh well.
The ossified drone should make it much easier to fit in your build order. That's cool.
Grenade Mech change could be interesting. We'll see.
I think the Deadeye change might kill it. It's certainly going to kill DO rushes. That might not be bad, though.
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Opponent opens two Drones. I open Drone, Doomed Drone, Engineer. Opponent resigns.
What was up with that?
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Opponent opens two Drones. I open Drone, Doomed Drone, Engineer. Opponent resigns.
What was up with that?
I would guess, external factor. Called in to work/oven on fire/baby woke up/etc.
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Opponent opens two Drones. I open Drone, Doomed Drone, Engineer. Opponent resigns.
What was up with that?
I would guess, external factor. Called in to work/oven on fire/baby woke up/etc.
I knew they buffed Doomed Drone, but I didn't realize it could do that.
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I decided that I don't like the new auric impulse. It's different now, you rarely net +1 anymore, you just buy it instead of a drone. Also, it's never worse than a drone if you wouldn't use the extra coin, so you can do silly auric + drone openings as P2 for no reason.
that's still the only change I don't like though.
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I decided that I don't like the new auric impulse. It's different now, you rarely net +1 anymore, you just buy it instead of a drone. Also, it's never worse than a drone if you wouldn't use the extra coin, so you can do silly auric + drone openings as P2 for no reason.
that's still the only change I don't like though.
Lots of people seem to agree that this change was problematic. I'm uncertain where the happy medium is though.
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I decided that I don't like the new auric impulse. It's different now, you rarely net +1 anymore, you just buy it instead of a drone. Also, it's never worse than a drone if you wouldn't use the extra coin, so you can do silly auric + drone openings as P2 for no reason.
that's still the only change I don't like though.
It's pretty cool with Vivid Drone, though.
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I'm not a fan of the Deadeye Operative change, I liked the current version.
I take this back, the new version is even more fun.
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New units:
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/blogmedia.lunarchstudios.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Arka-Sodara.png)
(supply 1)
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/blogmedia.lunarchstudios.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Redeemer.png)
(supply 4)
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/blogmedia.lunarchstudios.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Mahar-Rectifier.png)
(supply 10)
I love the art of these, especially the rectifier.
Arka Sodara seems like it's going to lead to very difficult decisions. The other two seem tricky too.
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Fragile: Does not heal
At the start of your turn, heal 2
Riiiiiight.
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"Fragile (does not heal)
At the start of your turn, heal <3 2"
Lol. Ninja'd though.
I like how Redeemer uses the Cluster Bolt drawback without being as instantly massable as Bolt.
Mahar is supply 10, and I'm thinking they'll become really good in multiples, where they swap between which one blocks. Otherwise, you can skip a wall or something every few turns at the cost of attack. Interesting.
Arka Sodara, wow needing 7 attack to buy it is a huge offensive slowdown. It has 7 toughness, so hey it should be worth it sometimes.
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I'm slightly confused about the healing mechanic. Do you only heal up to the original hp? Or can you go above 5?
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I doubt it can go above 5. If it could, this wouldn't be "get two Rectifiers and get 4 absorb", it would be "get N rectifiers and get 2N absorb", which is absolutely ridiculous.
Compare to sentinel; sentinel is an effective 1 attack per turn and 1 absorb per turn, but you can only do that 4 times; rectifier would be 2 attack per turn (ok, for all rectifiers but one) and 2 absorb per turn, forever, as long as you cycle the rectifier that defends.
A unit that can increase its health total above its starting health could be interesting, but this is not that unit.
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I really like both Rectifier and Redeemer. Arka Sodara didn't get bought in the one game I played with it, so I don't know about it yet, but it seems pretty cool too.
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silverspawn is in the top 10.
EDIT: looks like it was a temporary ranking bug. So, "only" top 50. Still,
(http://38.media.tumblr.com/16516b3a3681587817bc6b816dbd1b9e/tumblr_n5xu4qZljZ1skh0gdo1_400.gif)
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silverspawn is in the top 10.
EDIT: looks like it was a temporary ranking bug. So, "only" top 50.
As in, the same Silverspawn who insisted on Lookout being one of the best cards when he first joined here? That's... quite impressive to say the least. I have to wonder if he's better at Dominion as well than I anticipated then.
Edit: Okay so Silverspawn is 31st on the Isotropish leaderboard. When did this guy get so good at Dominion?
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silverspawn is in the top 10.
EDIT: looks like it was a temporary ranking bug. So, "only" top 50.
As in, the same Silverspawn who insisted on Lookout being one of the best cards when he first joined here? That's... quite impressive to say the least. I have to wonder if he's better at Dominion as well than I anticipated then.
Edit: Okay so Silverspawn is 31st on the Isotropish leaderboard. When did this guy get so good at Dominion?
He was in A division in the league. Then he quit because preferred prismata to dominion.
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silverspawn is in the top 10.
EDIT: looks like it was a temporary ranking bug. So, "only" top 50.
As in, the same Silverspawn who insisted on Lookout being one of the best cards when he first joined here? That's... quite impressive to say the least. I have to wonder if he's better at Dominion as well than I anticipated then.
Edit: Okay so Silverspawn is 31st on the Isotropish leaderboard. When did this guy get so good at Dominion?
Presumably after a ton of practice, and actually reading advice rather than ignoring advice/evidence. He's changed quite a bit since that Lookout thing.
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silverspawn is in the top 10.
EDIT: looks like it was a temporary ranking bug. So, "only" top 50.
As in, the same Silverspawn who insisted on Lookout being one of the best cards when he first joined here? That's... quite impressive to say the least. I have to wonder if he's better at Dominion as well than I anticipated then.
Edit: Okay so Silverspawn is 31st on the Isotropish leaderboard. When did this guy get so good at Dominion?
Presumably after a ton of practice, and actually reading advice rather than ignoring advice/evidence. He's changed quite a bit since that Lookout thing.
thanks! although, to say the truth, I almost never took in any advice from other players, neither in dominion nor in prismata. it's just not my style of learning. but I do think about the games constantly. and yeah, lots of practice.
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Edit: Okay so Silverspawn is 31st on the Isotropish leaderboard. When did this guy get so good at Dominion?
He's been good at Dominion for quite a while already.
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Apparently so.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=KqjJP-P6+vv
How did I lose this game? Do you not have to destroy frontline units to win?
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=KqjJP-P6+vv
How did I lose this game? Do you not have to destroy frontline units to win?
Iceblades are really bad against mass green, because their main draw is the massive freeze: $7BR for one damage is not efficient at all. If your opponent's damage has 5HP, they can afford to allow breaches. Especially with Gauss Fabricator, they can keep building damage even if you breach their Drones.
The other draw of mass Iceblades is that they have a ton of health, so it takes a lot of investment from your opponent to kill any of your damage. Mixing in a Militia and a couple Tarsiers weakens the Iceblade all-in, because now you have to defend these squishy units as well, instead of relying on the sturdy Iceblades to fend for themselves.
Of course, there are other ways to play Iceblade than to just rush for a million of them, but in this game it looked like your plan was to rush for a million of them, so I think the Tarsier/Militia were wrong, and your opponent's commitment to green should tell you that Iceblades won't work anyway. On turn 5, when he buys conduits 2 and 3, I would give up on the Iceblade plan and just try to push through with Tarsiers, which is generally enough pressure to demolish a Gauss Fabricator rush. Certainly every Iceblade after the first should have been something else (Tarsier+Drone? Shredder+whatever?), because your opponent is clearly never building any more defense, so you are getting terrible value for your money.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=KqjJP-P6+vv
How did I lose this game? Do you not have to destroy frontline units to win?
Iceblades are really bad against mass green, because their main draw is the massive freeze: $7BR for one damage is not efficient at all. If your opponent's damage has 5HP, they can afford to allow breaches. Especially with Gauss Fabricator, they can keep building damage even if you breach their Drones.
The other draw of mass Iceblades is that they have a ton of health, so it takes a lot of investment from your opponent to kill any of your damage. Mixing in a Militia and a couple Tarsiers weakens the Iceblade all-in, because now you have to defend these squishy units as well, instead of relying on the sturdy Iceblades to fend for themselves.
Of course, there are other ways to play Iceblade than to just rush for a million of them, but in this game it looked like your plan was to rush for a million of them, so I think the Tarsier/Militia were wrong, and your opponent's commitment to green should tell you that Iceblades won't work anyway. On turn 5, when he buys conduits 2 and 3, I would give up on the Iceblade plan and just try to push through with Tarsiers, which is generally enough pressure to demolish a Gauss Fabricator rush. Certainly every Iceblade after the first should have been something else (Tarsier+Drone? Shredder+whatever?), because your opponent is clearly never building any more defense, so you are getting terrible value for your money.
I appreciate the feedback, but he only had 5 Gauss Cannons at the end and that's not enough to kill an Iceblade. I don't understand how it wasn't literally impossible for me to lose at that point, and how I ended up losing anyway.
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well, the replay doesn't show who won. Based on the last scene, you should have won for sure. If you lost, it's a bug.
You could post it on reddit
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=KqjJP-P6+vv
How did I lose this game? Do you not have to destroy frontline units to win?
Iceblades are really bad against mass green, because their main draw is the massive freeze: $7BR for one damage is not efficient at all. If your opponent's damage has 5HP, they can afford to allow breaches. Especially with Gauss Fabricator, they can keep building damage even if you breach their Drones.
The other draw of mass Iceblades is that they have a ton of health, so it takes a lot of investment from your opponent to kill any of your damage. Mixing in a Militia and a couple Tarsiers weakens the Iceblade all-in, because now you have to defend these squishy units as well, instead of relying on the sturdy Iceblades to fend for themselves.
Of course, there are other ways to play Iceblade than to just rush for a million of them, but in this game it looked like your plan was to rush for a million of them, so I think the Tarsier/Militia were wrong, and your opponent's commitment to green should tell you that Iceblades won't work anyway. On turn 5, when he buys conduits 2 and 3, I would give up on the Iceblade plan and just try to push through with Tarsiers, which is generally enough pressure to demolish a Gauss Fabricator rush. Certainly every Iceblade after the first should have been something else (Tarsier+Drone? Shredder+whatever?), because your opponent is clearly never building any more defense, so you are getting terrible value for your money.
I appreciate the feedback, but he only had 5 Gauss Cannons at the end and that's not enough to kill an Iceblade. I don't understand how it wasn't literally impossible for me to lose at that point, and how I ended up losing anyway.
Oh yeah, indeed at the end there you have a win locked in. I didn't watch to the end because you said you lost, and I stopped when things seemed to be going downhill. If it's a loss in your gamelog I imagine it's because you got disconnected and your opponent claimed victory.
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I have trouble gauging when Redeemer is a good choice. Here's the thing, the 4 extra attack for your opponent from the gauss charges mean that you will have to buy extra defense one turn earlier. That defense is not only expensive, which means building up little or no pressure on the turn you build the defense, but it's also a huge warning sign for your opponent, who can react accordingly (eg., profit from the temporary reprieve to build up a lot of pressure, and deny your redeemer build, putting you severely behind).
If you build engineers to counter the gauss charges, the total cost of your Redeemer is 16GGB. It doesn't compare very favourably to the other 3 attack units in the game (Asteri cannon, Drake, Omega Splitter, Cynestra)
So, redeemer seems sort of a tough sell without good support (mainly Chieftains and Antima Comet, I think, or as a counter to periodic attackers). Anyone else with a differing opinion?
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I think Redeemer is really weak for pretty much the same reasons. If your absorb is 2+ higher than your opponents damage I think it's good, but only then. Like, if you buy xeno and your opponent reacts with xeno & and no other damage. Chieftains or doomed mechs could also work. I probably wouldn't try to combine it with Antima.
If both players play ideal, you probably never buy it.
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I have trouble gauging when Redeemer is a good choice. Here's the thing, the 4 extra attack for your opponent from the gauss charges mean that you will have to buy extra defense one turn earlier. That defense is not only expensive, which means building up little or no pressure on the turn you build the defense, but it's also a huge warning sign for your opponent, who can react accordingly (eg., profit from the temporary reprieve to build up a lot of pressure, and deny your redeemer build, putting you severely behind).
If you build engineers to counter the gauss charges, the total cost of your Redeemer is 16GGB. It doesn't compare very favourably to the other 3 attack units in the game (Asteri cannon, Drake, Omega Splitter, Cynestra)
So, redeemer seems sort of a tough sell without good support (mainly Chieftains and Antima Comet, I think, or as a counter to periodic attackers). Anyone else with a differing opinion?
Redeemer is the flip side of Bloodrager: you buy it when the Gauss Charges mostly don't matter anyway, e.g. when your opponent has 0 attack and you have a Wall up or similar. If the 4 Gauss Charge are actually dealing 4 damage to you it's pretty poor value.
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Of course. It's just much rarer than the bloodrager case. You can't really rush redeemers, because there's no time to get the tech and the absorb before the opponent gets attack.
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yeah. and its non-fragileness bugs me.
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Of course. It's just much rarer than the bloodrager case. You can't really rush redeemers, because there's no time to get the tech and the absorb before the opponent gets attack.
I haven't been playing much the last few weeks, but my one game with Redeemer (http://play.prismata.net/?r=zKM12-vlHmI) I was able to get value out of Redeemer: I bought it when Crash's only attackers were two Deadeyes, and I had an Infusion Grid to absorb. So if he actually clicked his Deadeyes (as he wanted to) I'd get to absorb three of the Gauss Charges. Instead, he attacked with them. In a sense, of course, this was me buying Redeemer when my opponent had four damage, and therefore "bad value", but it was four damage he didn't want to use: it sorta turned my WE into DD, while also getting me 3 attack.
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yeah. and its non-fragileness bugs me.
Maybe the green is just used to power production, but the excess/waste gets turned into Gauss Charges...for your opponent. Hm okay I think the dev team just wanted to break the theme barriers to increase their design space in the future.
Like many green units, I'm guessing Redeemer becomes better with heavy green starts (high health). But those kinds of starts are typically tough to pull of without Trinity Drone unless it's an all in. Redeemer + 4 defense still looks relatively inefficient. And just using it for 4 toughness is even more inefficient (see Infusion Grid).
I want to like it though.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=0bXHM-FjbDG
Here's one for those who like to see lots of units on the board.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=0bXHM-FjbDG
Here's one for those who like to see lots of units on the board.
Dat Comet Tho.
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The closest game I ever played. (http://play.prismata.net/?r=C04YG-qWm3T) 31 turns.
whew.
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new unit!
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAfYTcfUUAA44eM.png)
It produces energy, so it's like 2 drones if you rebuy the drone you consume (although I think you'll deplete the pile pretty quickly), which isn't great, so it's supposedly meant for when you don't want to buy drones anymore.
If using it allows you to buy defense rather than leave drones to block in the end game, it's most likely worth it.
(there'll be 3 other units released next weekend)
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new unit!
(Image)
It produces energy, so it's like 2 drones if you rebuy the drone you consume (although I think you'll deplete the pile pretty quickly), which isn't great, so it's supposedly meant for when you don't want to buy drones anymore.
If using it allows you to buy defense rather than leave drones to block in the end game, it's most likely worth it.
(there'll be 3 other units released next weekend)
Strictly looking at gold, Ebb turbine takes 2 turns to yield a profit if you don't replace the drones, and continues to do so until the 5th consecutive click, at which point you earn 9 gold more than you'd have if you bought another non-economy unit (say, steelsplitter). The gold you earn across the turns is -6+5+4+3+2+1+0+(-1)+(-2)+... (You have 1 less drone each time you click the turbine, so the revenue each turn decreases.
So yeah it generates gold profit from turns 2 to 5 after buying it, then you start losing profit at turn 7 and end up with a gold defecit by turn 10.
This turbine looks good to get when you're approaching the critical game-deciding turn, but the main cost is the initial investment of 6EB and the loss of blockers in the form of drones.
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It also lets you reach the expensive Blues earlier (mainly Odin). Or transform a drone into a wall when you are cash-strapped.
Note that you can always use it as a double drone (it has the same gold cost), as long as you can keep replacing those drones, so if you have the spare blue, an early Ebb turbine is not going to slow down your economy.
EDIT: oh I am mostly restating what silver said, nevermind.
EDIT2: oh hey another new unit!
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAkPzDxUwAA7oPD.png)
So a fission turret that lasts two more turns for one more coin, and that lets you pay on its last turn to destroy one enemy tech. Not sure how good its dying ability is, 4 coin is pretty expensive.
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4 coins for the tech snipe ability is expensive, but so is replacing the lost tech building. The disruptive power of stalling a three blue unit or a 4 red unit can be huge. And like, preventing a player from buying a Cynestra or something right before an Iso Cronus burst is powerful too.
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4 coins for the tech snipe ability is expensive, but so is replacing the lost tech building.
Sure, but you are paying first, your opponent is paying second. By the time you get to use the ability, spending 4 coins on this might mean getting breached this turn.
The disruptive power of stalling a three blue unit or a 4 red unit can be huge. And like, preventing a player from buying a Cynestra or something right before an Iso Cronus burst is powerful too.
Yeah, but again, you have to see it coming 4-6 turns in advance, because otherwise it's more like paying 9G for it. It depends on how much it is going to hurt your opponent. Not sure it is going to be the right thing to do in most games.
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4 coins for the tech snipe ability is expensive, but so is replacing the lost tech building.
Sure, but you are paying first, your opponent is paying second. By the time you get to use the ability, spending 4 coins on this might mean getting breached this turn.
The disruptive power of stalling a three blue unit or a 4 red unit can be huge. And like, preventing a player from buying a Cynestra or something right before an Iso Cronus burst is powerful too.
Yeah, but again, you have to see it coming 4-6 turns in advance, because otherwise it's more like paying 9G for it. It depends on how much it is going to hurt your opponent. Not sure it is going to be the right thing to do in most games.
The kinetic drive is doing good work for you by providing attack on Green tech more efficiently than Gauss Cannon. Then again, Fission turret isn't really OP. Still 4 gold could also just be one less tarsier, and that can be worth it if you prevent your opponent from fielding a unit that causes a breach against you next turn.
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I think the main thing about Kinetic Driver is that it can reduce the amount of defense your opponent can build for next turn by sniping Blastforges. From that perspective it's like sacrificing it to construct Gauss Charges (G. Symbiote), only the amount of attack depends on how much your opponent relies on walls, and which walls are in the supply. If your opponent defends with Polywalls, this can be pretty brutal, and if he doesn't buy a "reserve" Blastforge until your Driver is about to time out, it can totally be worth it to sac it one turn early. In games with super breach vulnerable units, getting a bunch of drivers might be interesting/force your opponent to overdefend.
Other than that, blocking core units seems like it can be good, especially the ones which are important to get in specific turns, like Antima, Centurion, Defense Grid, or Arka Sodara.
But even if you don't have any plans for it, simply building a Gauss Canon for 5$, attacking 6 times and then sacrificing it to snipe an Animus for 4$ seems like decent value.
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So... Wincer (https://twitter.com/lunarchstudios/status/579335500223418368/photo/1). Yeah, 15 attack on a single unit, sounds interesting. And you only need one of each tech for it.
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So... Wincer (https://twitter.com/lunarchstudios/status/579335500223418368/photo/1). Yeah, 15 attack on a single unit, sounds interesting. And you only need one of each tech for it.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAo2kTjUYAAyGqk.png)
...ouch. It looks like it is going to be hard to place in your build order, though. Requiring all three techs is tough. The other two units get away with it because Antima forces your opponent to go on the defensive right after, and Centurion gives you 6 defense and 2 attack right away. This does neither. It is very scary though.
Oh and last new unit:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAmU-9NWQAA-y2a.png)
2G is cheap, but you can't always use all 5 chill. At least you can't mass them. I think it will be fine, green means that a player going red-rush can't exploit them as easily as frostbite.
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So... Wincer (https://twitter.com/lunarchstudios/status/579335500223418368/photo/1). Yeah, 15 attack on a single unit, sounds interesting. And you only need one of each tech for it.
I think the word I'm looking for is "yikes". Feels like a super Scorchilla in that you can choose not to click it if your opponent stacks Plexo Cells or something.
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About Nivo charge, what's scary about it is that you can store up green and then buy a bunch of these for a big chill turn. Of course, Granular defense deals with a Nivo mass as effectively as it does against Frostbite. It's up to the player to anticipate Nivo Charges and build defense accordingly. It still seems pretty harsh against Energy matrix and non-prompt big blockers like Xeno Guardian.
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Nivo charge could be pretty effective against things like Doomed Wall and Doomed Mech, for denying their defence on their last turn. Other freeze does this already of course but not as efficiently in general (e.g. Cryo Ray you need a bunch of to freeze one, Frostbite you need two of, Tatsu is effective at this but much more expensive to have one of)
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Wincer is going to be nerfed right? I have never beat it and not gone for it. Has anyone had a game where they ignored it and beat it?
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Wincer is going to be nerfed right? I have never beat it and not gone for it. Has anyone had a game where they ignored it and beat it?
no, but I had a game where my opponent ignored it and I lost. There are definite counters in the game, like Tia or venge canon. The problem is just that they don't appear in most games.
Temron and me tried to find a way to beat it with base set only (to be precise, P2 would play the DD/DD/BA/W rush and P1 would try to beat it). We didn't manage to do it, but we came kinda close and I still think it might be possible. I'm probably going to try some more before next wednesday.
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Man, the Wincer is stupid. Every time it's been on the board, I've been the second player and the first time it was pretty fun but after that it has gotten super boring, because it's just DD, DDC, BA, Wincer, WDT, maximize your damage for the next turn, opponent resigns every single time. Maybe if my opponents knew how to beat it it wouldn't be as boring, but it's starting to look like nobody in IX does.
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here (https://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/30nkyi/wincer_7_loser_0_e/) are some pretty elaborate statements from a developer about it
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here (https://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/30nkyi/wincer_7_loser_0_e/) are some pretty elaborate statements from a developer about it
The conclusion seems to be that the P2 rush is beatable, but it's very difficult to do so. P1 has to play almost perfectly to beat it.
It wouldn't be the first time a unit was nerfed because the counter to the rush was really tricky. Shadowfang rushes were barely beatable in the base set when it was 6RRR, but it was very noob unfriendly to have to counter it in that form so they nerfed it.
I think they should make a campaign puzzle where the bot performs a P2 Wincer rush and you have to beat it.
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here (https://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/30nkyi/wincer_7_loser_0_e/) are some pretty elaborate statements from a developer about it
The conclusion seems to be that the P2 rush is beatable, but it's very difficult to do so. P1 has to play almost perfectly to beat it.
I don't think that's the conclusion. Elyot said "they never thought it was very good" - so it shouldn't even be hard to beat it. which is kind of contradicting with how the playerbase is reacting, but that's what he said.
The biggest thing I'm taking away from this post is that you should react with your own wincer; I had so far only tried to beat it without buying wincer entirely.
It wouldn't be the first time a unit was nerfed because the counter to the rush was really tricky. Shadowfang rushes were barely beatable in the base set when it was 6RRR, but it was very noob unfriendly to have to counter it in that form so they nerfed it.
wow, I can't believe shadowfang used to cost 6RRR. that's insane.
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here (https://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/30nkyi/wincer_7_loser_0_e/) are some pretty elaborate statements from a developer about it
The conclusion seems to be that the P2 rush is beatable, but it's very difficult to do so. P1 has to play almost perfectly to beat it.
I don't think that's the conclusion. Elyot said "they never thought it was very good" - so it shouldn't even be hard to beat it. which is kind of contradicting with how the playerbase is reacting, but that's what he said.
The biggest thing I'm taking away from this post is that you should react with your own wincer; I had so far only tried to beat it without buying wincer entirely.
I was basing this on these comments from the Reddit page.
"Base Set + Wincer is insta-win for Player 2: Definitely no.
Base Set + Wincer + Frostbite is insta-win for Player 2: Definitely no.
P2's Wincer rush (DD/DDC/AB/D1) is often playable/strong: Agreed.
P2's Wincer Opening threat forces P1 to DDE on turn 2: In some sets, yes.
P2's Wincer Opening is very very punishing (p1 insta-loses if a mistake is made): In many sets, yes."
There's also a whole video where they explain why they nerfed Shadowfang:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=puZ7kcMDZYA (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=puZ7kcMDZYA)
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So, I think this build from Arkanishu is solid: http://play.prismata.net/?r=lcVnv-qxlg7 (http://play.prismata.net/?r=lcVnv-qxlg7)
That should reliably beat Wincer with no support - though, I also agree with the concede that custom units often help the rush rather than countering it.
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(http://i.imgur.com/9OKdU7j.png)
looks like the dev's released 10 units as an april's joke. However, one of them is actually legit and will stay after today -the question is just which
I'm pretty sure it's not that one
click here (http://imgur.com/Xyiwjml,LKaphxC,9OKdU7j,mZnjGsb,5HyxuPy,qzHNCjh,PB5hY7C,nPztels,AQ5rZ2W,xBFgs29) to view them all
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(http://i.imgur.com/9OKdU7j.png)
looks like the dev's released 10 units as an april's joke. However, one of them is actually legit and will stay after today -the question is just which
I'm pretty sure it's not that one
click here (http://imgur.com/Xyiwjml,LKaphxC,9OKdU7j,mZnjGsb,5HyxuPy,qzHNCjh,PB5hY7C,nPztels,AQ5rZ2W,xBFgs29) to view them all
I hope it's The Gift, it's super fun.
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Guessing which card is real is hard. There's a non-zero chance it's *shutter* Glaciator.
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Probably won't get much if any chance to play today. I'm going to guess Overwork for the real unit.
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Probably won't get much if any chance to play today. I'm going to guess Overwork for the real unit.
I agree. Most of the others are too outlandish or just uninteresting, but Overwork would make for an interesting choice of when to use them (and whether to use them instead of FF).
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I think it's like
Overwork 60%
Deep Impact 25%
Immaculon 10%
Rest 5%
I'm giving less than 1% to The Gift... mostly because +1$ seems like a clear P2 advantage. P1 usually can't use it until turn 3, P2 can use it to DDE on turn 1.
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Someone just used Overwork in order to have enough coins for a Wild Drone.
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Also: Is anyone else semi-annoyed at the lack of a real forum for Prismata? The subreddit is certainly *there*, but it's just... not nearly as useful as a real, threaded forum like this one.
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Also: Is anyone else semi-annoyed at the lack of a real forum for Prismata? The subreddit is certainly *there*, but it's just... not nearly as useful as a real, threaded forum like this one.
Yes.
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Also: Is anyone else semi-annoyed at the lack of a real forum for Prismata? The subreddit is certainly *there*, but it's just... not nearly as useful as a real, threaded forum like this one.
Yes.
Yeah, and we only got 1 thread of it over here. I figured keeping the subreddit the main location for discussion is an homage to Reddit being critical to Prismata's success. I don't know how large their player base is right now, and it might not have a large enough vocal community to justify the work for making a forum for it, at least not yet. Like, I always see the same names on the Prismata subreddit.
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argh... it really is Resophore. Counting force fields for attack.
Though, the art looks really nice.
(http://fs2.directupload.net/images/150402/p9ovsghq.png)
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argh... it really is Resophore. Counting force fields for attack.
Though, the art looks really nice.
(http://fs2.directupload.net/images/150402/p9ovsghq.png)
I was hoping Overwork was made to look like the most legit unit to throw people off. The realistic cost of this card made me suspicious of Resophore when I first saw it, but it seemed like it would be very difficult to use effectively.
This is like a suped-up green Cauterizer that wrecks your economy. At first glance, it doesn't seem to compare all that favourably to Plasmafier.
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Prismata doesn't run on the computers at my school (which is technically not my school anymore, but occasionally I go there anyway). Not even with the low graphics setting. :'(
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(which is technically not my school anymore, but occasionally I go there anyway)
Is this like the dream where there's one of your exams that you forgot to take but they've managed to arrange a sitting for tomorrow?
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(which is technically not my school anymore, but occasionally I go there anyway)
Is this like the dream where there's one of your exams that you forgot to take but they've managed to arrange a sitting for tomorrow?
Today, my band was performing at the school's annual music festival because the other members are still students at the school. The last time we were performing at the light music concert. The time before that I just went to see my friend's music diploma concert.
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There might be game very close games taking 30 turns or so, with a certain definition of the word close, this game is as close as a game can get: http://play.prismata.net/?r=f1In@-WXIIS
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I have played few games against bot, boring game and feel like two nerds busying to solve maths equation.
Perfect information, fully symmetric and lack of execution kill the fun. Comeback is hardly possible. I will still with Hearthstone although it is too random, the fun still there. Prismata is choice for maths nerdy.
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I have played few games against bot, boring game and feel like two nerds busying to solve maths equation.
Perfect information, fully symmetric and lack of execution kill the fun. Comeback is hardly possible. I will still with Hearthstone although it is too random, the fun still there. Prismata is choice for maths nerdy.
absolutely.
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Prismata is choice for maths nerdy.
I'm proud to be a maths nerdy.
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I should have known that there was a prismata forum here. I just found the game a week ago and have gotten addicted. I'm slowly getting the hang of this game but there is still so much I don't know.
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Just played a ridiculously interesting game. I'm certain the actual top-notch players here can tell me why I ought to have lost this one.
There was a lot of defending with Q in order to have enough time to think about moves at the end.
Actually linking the replay might help: http://play.prismata.net/?r=f3bvB-Nsfz3
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bwahaha that was definitely an interesting game.
I think you cut drones much to soon. If anything I might have even tried an eco droning set. where you open
1. DD
2. DDE
3. DDD(or in this set vivid drones because they are so good.)
I'm not sure though. They might of had enough pressure to punish that heavy of droning but really only if they went red. Since you saw they didn't have red right away I think you were fine to keep droning.
But I'm not really a top player so someone like Silverspawn would probably disagree with me.
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Yeah, you cut drones a little bit too early, and also the choices for economy and damage were odd. If you don't use the extra HP, trinity drone is a drone which costs G instead of 1 (slightly more expensive) and prevents you from using force fields later, whereas vivid is just straight up better value.
As for damage, hellhound is fantastic but Feral is only good if you utilize the prompt aspect. Odin, in the other hand, is just extremely efficient. I think this set should be vivid into odin into hellhounds, the only other thing which looks similarly strong is tatsu + bloodpact.
Your opponent also messed up by buying gauss canons instead of hellhounds.
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Hmm I'm not sure how many strong players still play prismata here but I'm wondering if anyone knows what to focus on to make the last couple jumps to like 1900/2000 elo.
game is hard :/
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Hmm I'm not sure how many strong players still play prismata here but I'm wondering if anyone knows what to focus on to make the last couple jumps to like 1900/2000 elo.
game is hard :/
I binged on it during the breach party. I'm only at Tier 8 though, so I'm still at the point where you can do well just through intuition alone. I hope to at least get to Tier 10 someday.
It's a crazy game because it's currently at a point where the majority of the player base consists of serious gamers that belong in the Tier 9-10 range. There's still so much to learn about the game, and you have to be playing at the top to really start seeing the nuances of the game.
I've tried to introduce people to the game, but it's currently so daunting to new players with the lack of new player friendly content. I like how they're keeping the game in Alpha while they still haven't nailed the new player experience down yet. I'm excited for the campaign even though it may be a year or two down the road.
Man, I feel some anxiety in this game when playing against humans even when I win. It's that intense. The AI is good enough for me to want to log in and play a few rounds though.
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I reached 9.5 a long time ago, and haven't really played other than an occasional game against the AI since then. I'd get back into it, but right now playing against humans feels pretty daunting.
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ya I know the anxiety feeling.
I actually tried streaming it a day ago and actually found out that my anxiety is completely gone for some reason when streaming and I enjoy the game more. Not really sure why.
If any of you guys want to play friendlies though as that is sometimes easier then playing in the arena just add me and ask. I'm pretty willing to play.
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I've been playing mostly against the ai a bunch. Mostly because I'm playing in short periods of time where I might need to leave, so playing against people isn't a good option. Also because I'm only level 5 or 6, and there aren't a ton down at that level. But I'd be happy to play friendly matches.
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Hmm I'm not sure how many strong players still play prismata here but I'm wondering if anyone knows what to focus on to make the last couple jumps to like 1900/2000 elo.
game is hard :/
silverspawn is 4th in the world.....I think that is our silverspawn at least
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Hmm I'm not sure how many strong players still play prismata here but I'm wondering if anyone knows what to focus on to make the last couple jumps to like 1900/2000 elo.
game is hard :/
silverspawn is 4th in the world.....I think that is our silverspawn at least
It's supposed to be. He put aside being serious about Dominion to focus on Prismata. The results speak for themselves.
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I've been playing mostly against the ai a bunch. Mostly because I'm playing in short periods of time where I might need to leave, so playing against people isn't a good option. Also because I'm only level 5 or 6, and there aren't a ton down at that level. But I'd be happy to play friendly matches.
Same here. It helps that the AI is much better than any Dominion AI we've seen. I'm mostly good against the 3-second Master bot. Being in Tier 5, though, makes it hard to move up because it's hard to find matches.
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Hmm I'm not sure how many strong players still play prismata here but I'm wondering if anyone knows what to focus on to make the last couple jumps to like 1900/2000 elo.
game is hard :/
It's hard to give useful advice in a vacuum, because there are so many things you might be doing wrong - or not be doing wrong. You could post replays where you thought you played really well but still lost, that might help.
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Hmm I'm not sure how many strong players still play prismata here but I'm wondering if anyone knows what to focus on to make the last couple jumps to like 1900/2000 elo.
game is hard :/
silverspawn is 4th in the world.....I think that is our silverspawn at least
It's supposed to be. He put aside being serious about Dominion to focus on Prismata. The results speak for themselves.
I'm not sure if I'm really 4th skill wise, but yeah, it's me. Thanks for the kind words! :)
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Hmm I'm not sure how many strong players still play prismata here but I'm wondering if anyone knows what to focus on to make the last couple jumps to like 1900/2000 elo.
game is hard :/
It's hard to give useful advice in a vacuum, because there are so many things you might be doing wrong - or not be doing wrong. You could post replays where you thought you played really well but still lost, that might help.
I do think that despite the idea that Prismata doesn't have an opening book the way chess does, that studying common openings can be helpful, in particular the "naturals" like P2 DD/DDC and P1 DD/DD/DD[A/B].
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jnot6-3LKhz
Here I felt pretty good for almost all of it. Until the turn I couldn't defend I thought I was winning.
GC2eA-E8qbz
Here I felt ahead and I'm not really sure where but I just slowly felt like I lost control of the game. Maybe i was never winning though
gBkJ4-K@30J
I tried to pressure but that was probably dumb with poly in the set. I feel like I know why I lost this one but am wondering if my idea was any good.
vkRkQ-E704t
It felt even to me and then suddenly i couldn't hold anymore.
These are some of my recent losses. I've never analyzed my own replays so I'm not really sure what to say about them or how to tell where I went wrong. Thats probably something I should get better at also.
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jnot6-3LKhz
Here I felt pretty good for almost all of it. Until the turn I couldn't defend I thought I was winning.
Well, this is fairly easy. For one you shouldn't have gone third engineer in this set - only get the third engineer when there's a reason for it the set (usually a 3+ absorber) which wasn't the case here - so that's a pretty general mistake. You also focused too much on building trinities to counter the deadeyes. That used to be good against the old deadeyes, but with the new ones, the click ability isn't really stronger than attacking anymore (unless you deny absorb), so building trinities to counter them is not really a thing. You can still do it if it comes naturally and you only have a few drones anyway, but investing in it is not worth it. You also bought more conduits than you can support.
GC2eA-E8qbz
Here I felt ahead and I'm not really sure where but I just slowly felt like I lost control of the game. Maybe i was never winning though
I think you lost on turn 4 when you cut a drone to get a third conduit. That's bad for 2 reasons: a) rushing damage in an energy matrix set is almost always bad (this ended up not being the case here because he made the mistake of building frontline units, but hadn't he done that it would've been over much more quickly) and b) because you can't support triple conduit for long. That might not seem like much but it's actually game-losingly big, because it happened so early in the game. It matters more than big strategical decisions later.
gBkJ4-K@30J
I tried to pressure but that was probably dumb with poly in the set. I feel like I know why I lost this one but am wondering if my idea was any good.
I actually think you played really well that game, the problem was just that your opponent did too, and flame animus, especially in combination with a core, is pretty p1 favored. I do think getting your own flame animus was wrong, just because you were overteched and you had to cut a drone for it, but it's a really minor mistake compared to the stuff in the other games.
vkRkQ-E704t
It felt even to me and then suddenly i couldn't hold anymore.
Okay that was a weird game. What I can say is that getting gauss fab when you already have other damage is almost always wrong, and so is getting it against wild drones, unless you want to go breach proof. I also think the WD / WD EE / WD WD / ... build is generally much stronger than what you did here.
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oh boy sounds like i still have a bunch to learn.
thanks for the tips silver!
I guess I try to go 3rd engi if I want to build expensive units like asteri or things like that. But I never considered that it won't be worth it if I don't have good defense to go along with it. I'll keep that in mind.
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I guess I try to go 3rd engi if I want to build expensive units like asteri or things like that. But I never considered that it won't be worth it if I don't have good defense to go along with it. I'll keep that in mind.
I mean, the reason why absorb changes how many drones you want is that big absorb decreases the utility of early damage. If there was no absorb, there wouldn't really be a reason to not get tech buildings on turn 1, since damage is generally more efficient than economy. But because there's wall, you have that certain time frame in which your damage won't produce any value, which is important enough to make early tech buildings lose. If that hurdle is 3 instead of 2 (in case of infusion grid), that can be enough to justify a little bit more economy before the first damage, hence the third engineer.
What you said is unrelated and does matter sometimes, but not for asteri canons. The better way to think about it is that you want more drones when you need them to spend your tech. If you go for green, that's never a problem, because you can just adjust the amount of tech you get (you can still get asteris with fewer droes and conduits). But if you want something like Lucina for which you need at least double animus and a blastforge, having too few drones can cause you to waste red, so that might be a reason to get more drones even if there's no good absorber.
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Oh boy. I don't know what happened but I've lost like 200 points in the last 2 days. I seem to be losing about 80% of my games suddenly. Hopefully I'll bounce back.
(I've finished 4 arena runs and only gotten enough green for 1 unlock...)
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Does anyone know if they have done any performance updates in recent patches? I had to quit this game merely because my computer couldn't handle it, presumably due to poorly optimized beta code.
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Does anyone know if they have done any performance updates in recent patches? I had to quit this game merely because my computer couldn't handle it, presumably due to poorly optimized beta code.
I don't know if there have been specific performance upgrades that would affect you, but it's certainly running faster for me lately; certainly loading time is much better.
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I tried it yesterday, it seemed better. But I couldn't figure out the new interface for playing multiplayer. The only thing that looked like old multiplayer matchmaking was "arena", and there was like normal, deluxe, and super deluxe or something, and it sounded like normal would expire after a while, but i picked normal, and the queue just search and searched and searched and searched forever. Maybe I was on hiatus so long my skill level decayed to less than brand new account levels and it finds me unsuitable to face anyone, idk
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I tried it yesterday, it seemed better. But I couldn't figure out the new interface for playing multiplayer. The only thing that looked like old multiplayer matchmaking was "arena", and there was like normal, deluxe, and super deluxe or something, and it sounded like normal would expire after a while, but i picked normal, and the queue just search and searched and searched and searched forever. Maybe I was on hiatus so long my skill level decayed to less than brand new account levels and it finds me unsuitable to face anyone, idk
Well, your tier never drops, but one of the main troubles with Prismata is there are so few players, total.
The Arena is the "new" matchmaking. The normal "Carbon" arena never expires, for anyone ever. Higher-level tickets can expire, but it depends on whether you've purchased them or won them, I think. And of course some supporter levels have permanant Gold arenas. Like Hearthstone, your current Arena run never expires.
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Does anyone know if they have done any performance updates in recent patches? I had to quit this game merely because my computer couldn't handle it, presumably due to poorly optimized beta code.
One thing that really helped me was going into the settings and making my FPS to like 15 instead of 60. I don't notice it really at all in a game like this and it seemed to make my laptops fan stop going insane whenever i would tab to it. Hopefully that helps!
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I tried it yesterday, it seemed better. But I couldn't figure out the new interface for playing multiplayer. The only thing that looked like old multiplayer matchmaking was "arena", and there was like normal, deluxe, and super deluxe or something, and it sounded like normal would expire after a while, but i picked normal, and the queue just search and searched and searched and searched forever. Maybe I was on hiatus so long my skill level decayed to less than brand new account levels and it finds me unsuitable to face anyone, idk
and ya... this is the biggest issue I think right now if your elo is a bit lower. unless you queue at a time with other players that are newish it can take forever to match you. One thing you can try is enabling more timecontrols to queue for. So if right now your only queuing for 90s base+5 it might take a while even if new players are on since they might not be queuing it. But if you go for like 90-45 second as base+5 and 8 you have a much better chance of finding a game at least.
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My "tier " is the same as when I left. Is there an elo hidden beneath that? Or are you matched based on tier?
Does the elo hidden beneath it decay? I wasn't the best prismata player ever but I wasn't awful
The fps tip is super helpful
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My "tier " is the same as when I left. Is there an elo hidden beneath that? Or are you matched based on tier?
Does the elo hidden beneath it decay? I wasn't the best prismata player ever but I wasn't awful
The fps tip is super helpful
Yes, yes but the search widens pretty quickly, no, in that order.
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The tiers are like Hearthstone ranks: a cosmetic layer sitting on top of a more nuanced matchmaking system that provides players with a sense of progress.
I haven't played Prismata for a while, but the difficulty in finding matches sounds like it could be a problem. I also worry that when they finally launch it might be very difficult for new players to get into the game. They've put a lot of effort into continued unit development, which means on launch there'll be something like a base game and 3 expansions worth of content, which could be a lot to take in for a new players unless they're very careful how they handle it.
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My "tier " is the same as when I left. Is there an elo hidden beneath that? Or are you matched based on tier?
Does the elo hidden beneath it decay? I wasn't the best prismata player ever but I wasn't awful
The fps tip is super helpful
If your wondering what your actual elo is you can use this
http://prismata.thedanives.com/#
Just put in one of your replay codes in there and it will say the elo of the 2 people in the game.
This is the same number used for the leaderboards of the top 200 players.
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Does anyone know if they have done any performance updates in recent patches? I had to quit this game merely because my computer couldn't handle it, presumably due to poorly optimized beta code.
They have! (https://www.reddit.com/r/Prismata/comments/37nwu1/my_first_week_at_lunarch_how_i_got_prismata_to/)
There have also been great balance changes.
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The tiers are like Hearthstone ranks: a cosmetic layer sitting on top of a more nuanced matchmaking system that provides players with a sense of progress.
I haven't played Prismata for a while, but the difficulty in finding matches sounds like it could be a problem. I also worry that when they finally launch it might be very difficult for new players to get into the game. They've put a lot of effort into continued unit development, which means on launch there'll be something like a base game and 3 expansions worth of content, which could be a lot to take in for a new players unless they're very careful how they handle it.
Well, the reason why it hasn't been released yet is that the devs want it to be as accessible as possible before doing so, which has the downside of a small player base at the moment. They want an amazing tutorial and a lot of other stuff first.
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Apparently a bug made me show up as number two on the leaderboard today.
(http://i.imgur.com/9vviqeo.png?1)
I'm so skilled, I'm under -9000.
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Congrats on being amongst the worst Prismata players ever!
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Congrats on being amongst the worst Prismata players ever!
That was true before the bug. :o
I started playing again fairly recently, after having gotten access when someone passes out keys here a while back. The game is fun, but the options of playing bots for little reward, or waiting half an hour to lose a match against silverspawn or someone, aren't ideal.
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Congrats on being amongst the worst Prismata players ever!
That was true before the bug. :o
I started playing again fairly recently, after having gotten access when someone passes out keys here a while back. The game is fun, but the options of playing bots for little reward, or waiting half an hour to lose a match against silverspawn or someone, aren't ideal.
This has been my experience as well. Someday they will try to build a player base bigger than about 200... but for now my gaming attention is elsewhere, because I can findo and play a Hearthstone match in the time it takes just to find a Prismata match.
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IMO, the games take too long, and the board gets "too busy" to appeal to a wide audience. It's also very inelegant that the line of drone takes up so much of the play area. It would serve them well to tweak the UI: maybe have stacked 1-hp units reside on top of each other and merely display a count, rather than splay across the board.
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IMO, the games take too long, and the board gets "too busy" to appeal to a wide audience. It's also very inelegant that the line of drone takes up so much of the play area. It would serve them well to tweak the UI: maybe have stacked 1-hp units reside on top of each other and merely display a count, rather than splay across the board.
Games taking too long, time-wise, can be addressed by playing with shorter turn timers, but that's obviously much more difficult for inexperienced players.
Re:stacking like units, they can't stack all units of the same name, because they may have differences of status (current hp, stamina, exhaust, etc). Even drones are either clicked or Unclicked. They could have two stacks, I guess, for clicked and Unclicked drones, but then you lose some "at a glance-ability" (which is totally a word).
Unrelatedly, I finally made it to tier X last night, after bouncing around tier IX 90%s for a dozen games. My next to last game left me at IX 100.0%, which was ... disheartening.
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http://play.prismata.net/?r=fZLLe-zV7vb
This was probably the most epic game of Prismata I've ever played.
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So... has matchmaking gotten any better lately?
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I haven't played Prismata in forever.
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I tried a couple of months back but it seems to still not be open to the general public?
Unless I just clicked the wrong thing. Got put on an alpha waiting list.
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There's an Alpha Waiting list.
I think I
l'll give the game another go. I'm probably super behind the meta though.
You basically play here: https://play.prismata.net/
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Oh, except it's not working for me. Fantastic.
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...Now it works. Weird. 8 times in a row, nothing worked and it went black after the loading screen. And then magically on the 9th time, it worked somehow.
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somehow the skype chat of my team went into inactivity shortly after I left and I never quite found out why. from what I hear at least the master league still seems to be a thing, though.
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It has now launched on Steam Early Access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/490220/Prismata/
Also, if there are people around who don't yet have an alpha key, you can go ask for one in discord.gg/prismata (http://discord.gg/prismata) and they should give you one for free.
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Yeah I fully intend to play through the campaign. Playing against bots in Prismata is oddly soothing, even when it involves stomping on easy puzzles.
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It has now launched on Steam Early Access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/490220/Prismata/
Also, if there are people around who don't yet have an alpha key, you can go ask for one in discord.gg/prismata (http://discord.gg/prismata) and they should give you one for free.
But have they fixed matchmaking?
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It has now launched on Steam Early Access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/490220/Prismata/
Also, if there are people around who don't yet have an alpha key, you can go ask for one in discord.gg/prismata (http://discord.gg/prismata) and they should give you one for free.
But have they fixed matchmaking?
What do you mean?
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It has now launched on Steam Early Access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/490220/Prismata/
Also, if there are people around who don't yet have an alpha key, you can go ask for one in discord.gg/prismata (http://discord.gg/prismata) and they should give you one for free.
But have they fixed matchmaking?
What do you mean?
Used to be you'd try to match with someone and, if you were lucky, you waited half an hour.
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Also I logged on and played a couple of the campaign games... and then realized literally all of the skins and stuff I had are gone.
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Used to be you'd try to match with someone and, if you were lucky, you waited half an hour.
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Also I logged on and played a couple of the campaign games... and then realized literally all of the skins and stuff I had are gone.
There are a lot more people online now than there used to be during the closed alpha so it's a lot easier to find a match.
Yeah, there was a rewards reset where people got back all the shards and power cores they spent and lost all the skins, because they were adjusting the prices of things so this was the fairest way to do it.
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Used to be you'd try to match with someone and, if you were lucky, you waited half an hour.
----
Also I logged on and played a couple of the campaign games... and then realized literally all of the skins and stuff I had are gone.
There are a lot more people online now than there used to be during the closed alpha so it's a lot easier to find a match.
Yeah, there was a rewards reset where people got back all the shards and power cores they spent and lost all the skins, because they were adjusting the prices of things so this was the fairest way to do it.
Hrm. I don't think I got all my shards back. But it would be difficult or impossible for me to determine that. Anyway, I think they did a pretty good job with the campaign, and good to hear there are more people playing, maybe I'll try my hand at it again. Any obvious way to link my previous account to Steam?
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Hrm. I don't think I got all my shards back. But it would be difficult or impossible for me to determine that. Anyway, I think they did a pretty good job with the campaign, and good to hear there are more people playing, maybe I'll try my hand at it again. Any obvious way to link my previous account to Steam?
There should be a way to do it, but for me, I just bought it on Steam and it automatically linked the accounts as soon as I booted it and I don't know why it did that so I'm not sure what that way is.
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Looking back at the email they sent me, it seems I was able to link my old account with steam through some Humble Bundle promotion. You linked the accounts through Humble Bundle somehow.
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Anyway, I think they did a pretty good job with the campaign
You really think so? The story is nothing.
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Anyway, I think they did a pretty good job with the campaign
You really think so? The story is nothing.
The story is mildly amusing I guess? I wouldn't say it's hit its stride yet, but hey it was cool to see the in-universe justification for Animus units.
The campaign throws lots of nice puzzles at you, at least in expert mode for the missions. I haven't got very far in terms of completing the missions on expert mode. I got stuck at the 4th expert mode mission (the one with Omega Splitters), even though they can be done in any order.
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Anyway, I think they did a pretty good job with the campaign
You really think so? The story is nothing.
The story is mildly amusing I guess? I wouldn't say it's hit its stride yet, but hey it was cool to see the in-universe justification for Animus units.
The campaign throws lots of nice puzzles at you, at least in expert mode for the missions. I haven't got very far in terms of completing the missions on expert mode. I got stuck at the 4th expert mode mission (the one with Omega Splitters), even though they can be done in any order.
I feel like the 4th one was the most difficult. That and the bonus mission's expert mode are significantly more difficult than the rest.
I don't think the story is amazing but it doesn't suck either, and it serves its purpose. Mostly it's just cool to find out about the lore.
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Anyway, I think they did a pretty good job with the campaign
You really think so? The story is nothing.
The story is mildly amusing I guess? I wouldn't say it's hit its stride yet, but hey it was cool to see the in-universe justification for Animus units.
The campaign throws lots of nice puzzles at you, at least in expert mode for the missions. I haven't got very far in terms of completing the missions on expert mode. I got stuck at the 4th expert mode mission (the one with Omega Splitters), even though they can be done in any order.
I feel like the 4th one was the most difficult. That and the bonus mission's expert mode are significantly more difficult than the rest.
I don't think the story is amazing but it doesn't suck either, and it serves its purpose. Mostly it's just cool to find out about the lore.
Yeah having an interesting lore matters. I was surprised by how much more interested I got in Magic: The Gathering after I learned about some of its lore from the later sets.
I haven't tried the other expert puzzles yet to make a judgement on which puzzles were the most difficult. I think what makes the 4th puzzle much harder that the preceding ones is that it's a puzzle that challenges both your army buildup strategy and your attack/defense strategy, whereas the others focus on more specific aspects of the game. It's also not obvious when you reached a dead end like 5 turns ago, which is true for a lot of the harder puzzles I guess.
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Anyway, I think they did a pretty good job with the campaign
You really think so? The story is nothing.
The story is mildly amusing I guess? I wouldn't say it's hit its stride yet, but hey it was cool to see the in-universe justification for Animus units.
The campaign throws lots of nice puzzles at you, at least in expert mode for the missions. I haven't got very far in terms of completing the missions on expert mode. I got stuck at the 4th expert mode mission (the one with Omega Splitters), even though they can be done in any order.
The puzzles are nice. In terms of mechanics, the campaign does a good job.
Maybe the campaign gets better, but I kind of doubt it. I find it odd that there are no voice actors.
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Anyway, I think they did a pretty good job with the campaign
You really think so? The story is nothing.
The story is mildly amusing I guess? I wouldn't say it's hit its stride yet, but hey it was cool to see the in-universe justification for Animus units.
The campaign throws lots of nice puzzles at you, at least in expert mode for the missions. I haven't got very far in terms of completing the missions on expert mode. I got stuck at the 4th expert mode mission (the one with Omega Splitters), even though they can be done in any order.
The puzzles are nice. In terms of mechanics, the campaign does a good job.
Maybe the campaign gets better, but I kind of doubt it. I find it odd that there are no voice actors.
Yeah I think at best you get some sound bytes when people start talking sometimes. It would be cool if those were more consistent. Getting good voice actors is a whole other issue to tackle though. You don't want some random friends of the developers doing all the voice acting I don't think.
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There's now a free weekend on Steam. AFAIK you get to keep the Prismata account that you make, which means you can still play using the standalone client or the web client after the free weekend is over, so it's a great idea to get it now.
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There's now a free weekend on Steam. AFAIK you get to keep the Prismata account that you make, which means you can still play using the standalone client or the web client after the free weekend is over, so it's a great idea to get it now.
Did they get rid of their F2P model? Shouldn't it... always be free?
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There's now a free weekend on Steam. AFAIK you get to keep the Prismata account that you make, which means you can still play using the standalone client or the web client after the free weekend is over, so it's a great idea to get it now.
Did they get rid of their F2P model? Shouldn't it... always be free?
It appears there is a non-zero download price for it on the Steam store. Their Steam page says there will be a cheaper version of the game that comes with less single player content.
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There's now a free weekend on Steam. AFAIK you get to keep the Prismata account that you make, which means you can still play using the standalone client or the web client after the free weekend is over, so it's a great idea to get it now.
Did they get rid of their F2P model? Shouldn't it... always be free?
No and no. They are going to release it for free later, but during early access, you normally have to ask for a free key or buy at least Engineer tier ($25) because they don't want to present an unfinished product to random people who aren't committed enough to ask for a key.
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There's now a free weekend on Steam. AFAIK you get to keep the Prismata account that you make, which means you can still play using the standalone client or the web client after the free weekend is over, so it's a great idea to get it now.
Did they get rid of their F2P model? Shouldn't it... always be free?
No and no. They are going to release it for free later, but during early access, you normally have to ask for a free key or buy at least Engineer tier ($25) because they don't want to present an unfinished product to random people who aren't committed enough to ask for a key.
Yeah I was thinking maybe there is a charge for early access, but I am unfamiliar with how monetization for early access games works and haven't been keeping up with too much Prismata news.
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I was looking at Prismata on Steam for a while, and I finally got it while it was free. So far, I've only played the episode 1 campaign, and some of the other single-player content. I'm not sure I'm really interested in playing against randos, but I told a couple friends to get it too, so maybe I'll play with them at some point. Here are some impressions so far.
Compared to Dominion, this seems far more optimized for digital/online play. It's relatively easy to visually parse. There aren't any mechanics like shuffling, which I think is far easier to track and understand when you're doing the shuffling physically. It's designed for timed play, which solves the slow-rolling problem. And it seems much more amenable to AI.
I couple things I'm less fond of: It's very math-y. And I tend to prefer games that are about parallel building up, rather than direct confrontation.
I don't have a great understanding of the strategy, but this morning I had the realization that it's sort of like Temporum, where everything has a "par" value. In Temporum the expected value of a turn is $8, with cards = crowns = $4, but you might make more or less depending on tactics. In Prismata, there's a "par" interest rate of 33% a turn, so that 3 of anything this turn is worth 4 next turn. We also have Gaussite ~ Replicase ~ $1, Behemium ~ $2, and a single point of damage/defense is worth a bit more than $2. I tried calculating the values of a few basic units, and it seems that Gauss Cannons are about par, Tarsiers are above par, Walls are only better than par if they absorb damage. Rhinos just seem weak...
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Rhinos just seem weak...
It's not weak, but it can be difficult to use efficiently when you're inexperienced at the game. At best, Rhino can absorb for 1 the turn it comes into play, attack for 1 on the following two turns, and absorb for 1 for the rest of the game. That's way better than Tarsier. Even a Rhino that just absorbs 1, attacks for 1 twice, and soaks for 2 is better than par. If you don't absorb on the Rhino or if it dies before you get full value out of it, then it's weak.
It's also worth noting that red is actually worth less than $1, because it disappears at the end of your turn if you didn't spend it and Animus gives you two of them, which means that you pretty often have an extra red that you don't necessarily need for anything per se. Buying a Rhino in this case essentially only costs $5, because the red was "free" anyway.
Also real games are way less mathy than the single-player content. There's still math involved, but mostly it just gets so complex that you don't have enough time to do it so you just rely on your intuition.
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It's not weak, but it can be difficult to use efficiently when you're inexperienced at the game. At best, Rhino can absorb for 1 the turn it comes into play, attack for 1 on the following two turns, and absorb for 1 for the rest of the game. That's way better than Tarsier. Even a Rhino that just absorbs 1, attacks for 1 twice, and soaks for 2 is better than par. If you don't absorb on the Rhino or if it dies before you get full value out of it, then it's weak.
I see. I wasn't counting the absorption value, but if you get the absorption on the turn it comes out, it seems decent.
I think the training content might encourage over-reliance on walls, which makes the absorption value of Rhinos a bit useless.
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It's not weak, but it can be difficult to use efficiently when you're inexperienced at the game. At best, Rhino can absorb for 1 the turn it comes into play, attack for 1 on the following two turns, and absorb for 1 for the rest of the game. That's way better than Tarsier. Even a Rhino that just absorbs 1, attacks for 1 twice, and soaks for 2 is better than par. If you don't absorb on the Rhino or if it dies before you get full value out of it, then it's weak.
I see. I wasn't counting the absorption value, but if you get the absorption on the turn it comes out, it seems decent.
I think the training content might encourage over-reliance on walls, which makes the absorption value of Rhinos a bit useless.
One of the puzzles outside the campaign, I think it's called "Countdown (1)", does a good job of highlighting the absord + attack efficiency of Rhinos.
Man, the expert campaign puzzles can get daunting. They get challenging when you have no idea if you are on the right track in terms of strategy or if you have to completely flip your thinking.
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It's not weak, but it can be difficult to use efficiently when you're inexperienced at the game. At best, Rhino can absorb for 1 the turn it comes into play, attack for 1 on the following two turns, and absorb for 1 for the rest of the game. That's way better than Tarsier. Even a Rhino that just absorbs 1, attacks for 1 twice, and soaks for 2 is better than par. If you don't absorb on the Rhino or if it dies before you get full value out of it, then it's weak.
I see. I wasn't counting the absorption value, but if you get the absorption on the turn it comes out, it seems decent.
I think the training content might encourage over-reliance on walls, which makes the absorption value of Rhinos a bit useless.
Well, Wall is good. The problem is that Steelsplitter is bad, which means you might want to use Rhino as an absorber in games where the random set doesn't have good blue units.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TVbkD7Ci-I
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It's finally "launched"? It's been considered in beta longer than any game I've ever known.
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It's finally "launched"? It's been considered in beta longer than any game I've ever known.
It's still in Early Access, but it's now free to play on Steam (without having to go to the Discord and asking for a key).
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Well, Wall is good.
Not if you have too many cards, it isn't.
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The new balance patch is pretty cool. I haven't had a chance to play with the new Wild Drone yet, but all the other units that were changed are significantly more fun than they used to be.