LordGek: No tracking of Career Statistics as far as I can see after two games with the AI. I like the game a lot. I'm afraid that the AI isn't THAT tough. For reference until today I've only played one or two try-out games with my girlfriend and read the rules. I've played two solo games this morning and was surprised to beat the AI 107 to 104 and 111 to 86 (and I'm no board game geek!) In regard to the AI: so far it seems to me that after the AI puts a race into decline it simply chooses the topmost offering in the list of race/power combos rather than weighing the advantages of making another choice with the corresponding victory point cost... OTOH it may simply be choosing the top option as the best choice... I don't know and would like to hear if anyone else sees it doing something different. Good game nevertheless! If you have been on the fence because there was no solo mode there is no reason now not to pick it up.
I'd assume with all of those combos there are a zillion combos possible with the AI able to take advantage of some much better than others (just from my own experience with CCG AIs, some abilities are hard to program in such a way so as to fully take advantage of these combos that work best with a little finesse). If the programmers will make a pledge to keep hammering at this AI and not just some, "Look, we've added AI, we're done." than you'll surely have a sale from me even at $6.99.
My very first game I had the AI skip the top most race and go to the 2nd one down, which was the better choice.
I have seen the AI pick races other than the top most after putting a race into decline. In my most recent game the AI picked the third option, the Ratmen with a power I can't remember.
Having only the roughest concept of the rules so far as an outsider to the game, anybody want to explain just this "Race in Decline" aspect of the game? Something like a limited second chance once your first foray has petered out? Somewhat unrelated, I watched kidster's video review but was not clear on WHEN the dice factor into combat. It looked like a lot of automatic victories as long as a certain number of troops were deployed depending on the situation until he got to a point that he didn't have enough troops for an automatic victory in a region and rolled a die. This game intrigues me as some sort of indirect offspring of Risk and Cosmic Encounters (complete with the random pairing of races and abilities that you as a player will have to figure out how best to make due from). Flying Skeletons and Commando Wizards!?
It's a great game. I bought it awhile ago, but only recently started playing it with my wife. I'm really looking forward to having the AI to play against now as well. I'm a noob still, but this is how I understand it. I think the main point of going into decline is because you're given a limited number of Race Tokens at the start of the game. As you use your Race Tokens to conquer new lands, you have less and less tokens to use for future turns. So, going into decline allows you to continue to earn victory points on lands that you've conquered (until they are taken by the enemy), while restarting with a new Race and Special Power combo. When you restart, you're given more Race Tokens to use. The key is knowing when you've extended yourself as far as you can with your current Race and when to go into decline to get a new Race and more tokens to continue your conquest. There are only 10 turns in a game, so knowing when to go into decline is a big part of the game and learned with experience. I'm still not there yet. The die roll is a factor when you don't have enough Race Tokens in a given turn to complete a conquest. It takes a certain number of tokens to conquer a given land. Factors such as land type, Special Power, and whether your opponent already has tokens on the land determines how many of your own Race Tokens are needed. If you don't have enough tokens to take the land outright, then you roll the die. You gain as many tokens for temporary use as there are pips on the die (0, 1, 2, or 3). So, you could technically attempt to overtake a land where you are 3 Race Tokens short, but you'd need a really lucky roll to win. If you do win, you get the land. If you don't win, then the attacking phase of your turn ends. You are then given the opportunity to rearrange your tokens on the board to fortify your lands. You want to put extra tokens onto land areas that earn you bonuses, or may earn the opponent bonuses to keep the opponent off the land. Your comparison to Risk is fair. You need to use the numbers to your adantage. Obviously higher numbers (in this case Race Tokens) means you're given the opportunity to take a land. The die roll helps add a little bit of luck. The strategy comes in deciding what lands to take (given your current number of available Race Tokens) and when to go into decline (to get a new Race and more Race Tokens to continue your conquest). It's a fun game. You should just buy it already.
I never caught the hard 10 turn limit aspect before but like it! There can't be any dilly-dallying or stalling as it sounds like as you're pushed to make every turn count! I also tip my hat to that die roll mechanic. If I understand it correctly, I could intentionally, even if I have the men, go in short shifted and as long as I still end up winning the battles with the temporary troop, keep on going? So, those who have played the AI now, have you spotted any particular races or abilities the AI just doesn't seem to understand? Hard to think of examples not having played the game but, maybe the AI's race has Flight and the AI just seems to use it as an excuse to attack a completely random plots of land with no real rhyme or reason, but just because with Flight it can? Falling back to weak early Yu-Gi-Oh GBA game's AI logic, "Here is the phase one could play a magic card, I have a magic card in my hand so lets just play it even though it won't actually help me in any way at this point but just because I can".
Correct! It also is nice because you can count on a game lasting only so long. It's not like a 3-4+ hour game of Risk or Monopoly. You've got 10 turns, so make them count. I'm not sure I have enough experience with the game to answer this question. As I understand it, you only use the die roll for your last conquest of your turn. So, if you have 10 Race Tokens to start a turn, then you overtake 3 lands that cost 3 tokens each, you're left with one Race Token. On that last conquest, you would likely be using the die roll, since 1 Race Token is not going to enough to take a land. I don't believe that you can short yourself on every attempt. Bascially, it's one die roll per turn. If you roll high enough, you get the land. If you don't roll enough, then your turn ends and you move the the fortification step. However, I may be wrong, as I've played less than a handful of games at this point, and it simply might have been a mechanic that I overlooked. I haven't played the against the AI yet, but from reading here it seems as if the CPU makes logical choices. I'm sure there will be situations where the computer makes a decision that doesn't make complete sense, but there's got to be some fallability, otherwise we small minded humans would never be able to win, right?
Well then for the sake of the AI I'm hoping most of these abilities are fairly straight forward and passive (just sort of always in effect) and not any of those "Once per game you can call upon the Great Methusula" as this usually ends up being a case of the human player quickly figuring out what is required to get the AI player to trigger this power pre-maturely and then proceed to mow them over.
mrbass' post (#4) in this thread is a good summary of the Races and Special Powers. Separately, each of the abilities isn't huge. Usually it's bonus tokens or ability to capture the water tiles or something fairly straightforward. However, there are a couple of really powerful Race/Special Ability combos that you need to look out for. I don't know them all yet. That's part of the learning process, but also the fun of the game. Whether those combos come together in any given game is pretty much random, so you won't encounter them every time. And, none of the combos is so powerful it's game changing. You've always got a chance.
It sure does look like some of these abilities are better than others or do some of the weaker abilities have something to compensate for their weaker effects? Like wouldn't the "Merchant" ability beat the "Forest" ability every time when having ot choose between the two?
The beauty of this game is that, yeah, Merchant is typically better than Forest, but what if Forest is part of the top race pick, and Merchant is 5th in line? Is it worth giving up 4 points to get to it? What race is paired with either one? Merchant Ratmen kick ass due to shear numbers, but a race that has limited tokens might not be as good. The way the powers/races are mixed makes this game a fresh experience every time you play. Probably the best game on my iPad (although, I am a board game junkie )
Hell it is the closest I'll ever get to playing Cosmo (Cosmic Encounters) again, I'm sold. Thanks for all of the info, guys.
Game Impressions Got it and am liking it but am clearly no match for its newly added AI (only a good thing as I masochistically love it when an AI kicks my ass without cheating). Here is my attempt to give the game a real rough overview for those not familiar with the real boardgame it is based on: -As far as I can tell this is strictly a 2 player game (either player can be a human or a bot, but there will always be two). -The first player, with 5 coins in hand, chooses his Ability and Race Combo. This is to me one of the funnest aspects of the game, picking just the right combo to dominate your opponent. How this works is that you are presented with a stack of I think 5 possible combos of abilities and races. How these two aspects are paired are totally random and often comedic like Commando Wizards or Merchant Trolls. You can simply take the top Ability and Race Combo for free or, at the cost of a coin (these are simply your victory points, never used to purchase anything) per step down the list. Each ability and race has an associated number of troops with it creating a bit of a balancing effect since the lesser abilities and races will allow more troops whereas some really great ability, like Merchant that give you a bonus coin for every region you're holding, only allows 3 troops whereas the Ratmen race, with no special racial characteristics, is worth 11 troops making this combo worth 14 troops to start your world wide domination. -Once your Ability and Race Combo has been settled on, it is time to start taking over regions. You can start off on any region bordering the edge of the map and simply claim territories as long as you have sufficient troops. If the region is already occupied you simply need to use more troops (and again this is handled all automatically with the game automatically drawing from your reserve just the needed amount to take the area. Your conquest continues as long as adjacent to another owned territory (again, like any rule in this game, there are special ability/race exceptions). If feeling frisky, for your final attack, you can try to take over an area you're a few troops short of the required amount. What happens here is the special die is rolled giving you a result of 0-3 of temporary troops. If your remaining troops and this die roll are enough the area is taken and if short, the area isn't taken and you'll lose one of your troops. Each time a region of yours is taken over by an opponent you receive those troops back in your hand to redeploy next turn MINUS ONE (so basically each lost region will result in the permanent attrition of 1 troop meaning that as you continue on with this given race your numbers will be continuously dwindling). -Once done conquering you can move the troops in the owned territories (guys already deployed and those not deployed yet) with the only role being you must leave at least one troop in each territory to keep it. -Lastly you receive victory coins (points) equal to your currently owned territories plus and special ability or racial bonuses (like the Forest ability that gives you a bonus coin for each forest currently occupied). -The last trick to consider is that you can up and bring on a new Ability and Race Combo into the game, just like you did at the start of the game if you're first willing to skip a turn (the process of going into "Decline"). A race in decline can no longer (with exceptions, of course) conquer new territories and all of their occupied regions are now just held by a single trooper but, as long as these feeble remains continue to hold the region you'll still receive coins for these territories. -That is the game in a nutshell. The two players slug it out back and forth like this for 10 turns and then the guy with the most victory coins at the end is declared KING OF THE WORLD (and a bounty is put upon the head of the loser).
Yep, you pretty much got it. The iPad version is 2 player only, however, the "real" game can play 2-5. It comes with two different two sided boards, depending on number of players.
So as the AI kicks my ass every time so far, I can't complain about it...YET, but I still have some wishes for the future. 1) Ability to do more than 2 players. 2) Some basic stat tracking for Player vs. AI games (Win/Loss ratio for player vs. AI, and maybe the Average Point Differential per game. With the tracking of this Average Point Differential we can know, sure, he won most of his games but on the whole is he smashing the opposition or barely squeaking by? Inversely even if losing most games, this average point differential shows how close these losses tended to be). I'm assuming they've INTENTIONALLY left out the Diplomat ability since it really would make no sense in a 2 player game...but does this mean they then had to leave out a race to keep stuff even? Oh, my last question for the pros here, if I pay to get a Ability and Race Combo further down the stack, is this money going to the bank or my opponent?
I haven't verified it, but I am 99% certain all races from the main set are here. The diplomate ability was most likely left out intentionally as it can break the 2 player game easily. If you pay for a combo down the stack, the money (points) are left on the above races, and they go to whoever picks that race.
