Guest posts by Ashebrethafe

1

Buff This Card! / Re: Shards (unupgraded), Relic | Relic (combined topic)

« on: August 25, 2011, 05:13:30 pm »

Is it possible to get an upgraded Relic other than by upgrading it yourself? If not, it definitely needs a buff -- since it can't be played and sells for less than the 1500 spent to upgrade it, its existence serves only to trick some players into losing 540.

I remember when unupped Relics used to sell for 101 instead of 65. Maybe the upped Relics could sell for 1601 -- it's still a square plus the quanta cost of 1, and would allow players to decide whether they want 65 per Relic now or 101 per Relic once they can upgrade a card (or if they're close to 1500 , how many Relics to sell unupped in order to collect the bonus on the rest).

2

Aether / Re: fractalspider

« on: August 18, 2011, 07:33:17 pm »

Fail deck,sorry,you can't fractal phase spiders.

You're wrong.

Either less fractals, less spiders, or both to make room for more quanta generation. You may be able to drop the shields down to 5 because you can kill with fractal spiders.
Split the quanta generators to half-and-half pillars-and-pendulums.

This -- you have a QI of 8.77 (http://www.quantum-index.com/qi.php?deckCode=61o+61o+61o+61o+61o+61o+61o+61o+61o+61o+61o+61o+61t+61t+61t+61t+61t+61t+620+620+620+620+620+620+622+622+622+622+622+622+8pu&showImage=1), so you definitely need more quanta generation. For example, adding another 10 copies of Aether Pillar or Aether Pendulum, and one Short Sword, would bring your QI to exactly 5.

In fact, this deck plus 6 pillars, 4 pends, and a Short Sword is the aether deck I have right now -- and I'm planning to take out some of the shields, along with enough pillars to keep the quanta generation as close to the cost as possible. On the other hand, if you want to keep approximately equal numbers of shields, spiders, and fractals, then I'd suggest substituting pends for 1 shield, 1 spider, 2 fractals, and 2-4 pillars (depending on how much electrum you have -- assuming you sell the cards you take out, it'll cost 5 if you replace 3 pillars and 23 if you replace 4).

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Buff This Card! / Re: Parasite

« on: August 15, 2011, 03:13:16 am »

Out of the thirteen common cards (other than pillars and pends), I decided this one was the sixth-worst/eighth-best. I voted to increase its defense.

4

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Upgrading Cards

« on: August 15, 2011, 02:45:09 am »

Costx100? So you want dragons to cost >10000 to upgrade?

Although a more sophisticated formula could work quite well.

Er...good point. I had towers in mind when I said x100. But yes a better formula could make it work.

Or, have different costs for upgrades that merely give quanta advantage (Towers, Explosion), damage advantage (Elite Graboid, Flesh Recluse), and those that change all aspects of the card (Dragons, Puffer Fish, Elite Immortal).

Good variation idea. Regardless, this idea really makes sense to me, I should not pay the same to upgrade otyugh as I should for a tower and neither of those as much as Pulverizer.

Maybe it could be based on the price "rank" of the card, since the prices seem to be organized that way -- for example, 300*(sqrt(sell price - quanta cost)/2+1):

• 600 if the card sells for (4 + its quanta cost) (pillars, marks, shards, Skeleton)
• 900 if the card sells for 16 + quanta cost (pendula, Soul Catcher, Dagger, weaker creatures/spells -- for , these are nightmare and gargoyle)
• 1200 if the card sells for 36 + quanta cost (most common cards)
• 1500 if the card sells for 64 + quanta cost (spell-reflecting shields, Sundial, Rain of Fire, dragons and other high-level common creatures)
• 1800 if the card sells for 100 + quanta cost (are there any cards at this rank? Relic used to be one -- not that it ever makes sense to upgrade a Relic!)
  
• 2100 if the card sells for 144 + quanta cost (rare weapons, Miracle)
• 2700 if the card sells for 256 + quanta cost (Arctic Squid, Pharaoh)
• 4800 if the card sells for 900 + quanta cost (nymphs)

5

Buff This Card! / Re: Catapult|Trebuchet

« on: August 06, 2011, 06:17:08 pm »

P.S.  Guys, there is a poll...

The poll doesn't seem to be working. I see the choices, but no way to select one -- nor do I see any indication that I've already voted.

6

Buff This Card! / Re: Fate Egg | Fate Egg

« on: August 06, 2011, 02:12:12 am »

Fate Egg was the eighth card I decided to remove from my time deck (in other words, I thought it was the fifth-best card, other than pillars/pendulums), and the resulting deck completed the quests with 7 fewer losses than my light deck. It also reached a higher place on the ladder that I use to test my decks: once it reached a score of 350, it could have lost the next five fights and still had a win rate above 75%, while the light deck never could have lost more than the next three fights.

7

The Arena / Re: Would it be too much to ask?

« on: July 18, 2011, 07:47:38 pm »

Would it be possible to replace the set of decks that the RNG picks from with a dense bag? (That's not an insult, as my Computer Science 102 professor explained -- it's a type of data structure where a number is associated with each member of the set, indicating that there are that many copies of that member. For example, the bag of words in "this the cat to the dog to the this the cat the cat" could be represented as {"cat"->3, "dog"->1, "the"->5, "this"->2, "to"->2}. If the RNG picked a word from this bag, it would have a 3/13 chance of picking "cat," a 1/13 chance of picking "dog," etc.)

If this can be done, I'd suggest having the bag:

start with one copy of each deck;whenever a deck gets played, lose one copy of that deck -- or if there is only one copy, gain one copy of each of the other 499 decks;whenever a player submits a new deck, replace each copy of the player's old deck with a copy of the new one -- or if the player doesn't have a deck in the Arena, replace each copy of the 500th place deck (which they're knocking out) with a copy of the new deck.

8

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: A Topic to suggest little card changes.

« on: July 18, 2011, 06:29:10 pm »

Congeal is just the card name, its text uses "freeze target creature for 4 turns". Its already freeze with a number, lol. I think the card name is ok to be different, dont you?

It's not just the card name -- Arctic Octopus's ability is listed as "Congeal the target creature," and a player wouldn't necessarily see a Congeal card before they saw an Arctic Octopus card. There's enough room to write "Freeze the target creature for 3 turns" on the Squid and "Freeze the target creature for 4 turns" on the Octopus.

9

Patch Notes and Development News / Re: AI improvements

« on: July 17, 2011, 12:48:41 am »

I had two Otyughs in play, a 2/7 and a 1/6, and the AI cast Rewind targeting the 1/6 one.  All other things being equal, the bigger otyugh is obviously the smarter target to rewind.

The AI also makes the wrong decision with buffing abilities. It had two pegasi in play -- a 3|2 and a 6|5 -- and one air quantum, and dived the 3|2 one.

10

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Sanctuary/Dissipation Field cancel.

« on: July 15, 2011, 10:56:47 pm »

Sanctuary also prevents Solar Shield from giving me  quanta -- so it's not just dissipation shield/field that it interferes with, but any card (friendly or enemy) that affects your quantum pools on your opponent's turn.

On the other hand, the enemy's dissipation field using your quanta does sound like a bug. Do you know if it happens when the player does the same thing to the AI?

11

Random, Normal and Elder / Re: Does anyone actually play AI1 or 2 after the tutorial?

« on: July 08, 2011, 04:10:11 am »

I changed my system when version 1.28 came out. I'm now planning to beat eight AI2s before I start on AI3s, and each loss will cancel out three of those wins. (Previously, each loss would cancel one win, plus one win for each previous loss since the last time I went up a rank -- although dropping out of a rank and then returning to it would count.)

This change has made it easier for me to determine how much electrum I need to keep on hand in order to avoid having to drop down to AI1 prematurely -- in fact, it's a simple function of my "position" in the level, so I've put it into the chart I've been using to keep track of that position. It also seems like it'll practically eliminate the chance of dropping back to AI0: this will now require a win-rate of less than 75% against AI1, plus two more losses. (And it was already pretty low -- it's only happened twice so far, both times after fewer than three AI1 losses.) 

12

Patch Notes and Development News / Re: AI improvements

« on: July 08, 2011, 01:24:01 am »

AI used Parallel Universe on a 7|7 (from two Blessings) Photon instead of a 10|10 Golden Dragon. Neither creature had any other effects on it.