Recent Posts by Psyclone

Topic: Open Discussion / Updates

Good to hear… can’t wait to see it. :)

Topic: Open Discussion / Updates

Same here.

Topic: Open Discussion / brainstorming

One of the top online TCG’s has a format similar to this… Urban Rivals.

I’m not opposed to this, but it doesn’t work well in Urban Rivals. People usually play non-rated/practice games to level their cards and it just becomes a boring grind.

If it was somehow implemented to FCRT, then I think you would need to come up with a format that wouldn’t alter game play. If you give a bonus to each card for killing or surviving a battle, then people who have a win locked up might not play for the early win and instead drag the game out to level up their cards.

I actually like the leveling system that Warstorm uses of a personal leveling and achievement system. Warstorm gives experience for games won. There are also many achievements for reaching certain plateaus, winning with certain types of decks, completing a daily achievement (win 3 games), etc. Both achievements and experience reward additional cards.

Topic: Ideas / Stone's Personality & Depletion Concept

Maybe Fireball should be “only unit”

It could be “any unit or building” and it would avoid targeting resources.

Topic: Ideas / Stone's Personality & Depletion Concept

it won’t if Iron Mine is just a resource instead of a building.

I think this would make sense for the lore and at the same time solve a lot of tagging issues.

You could still have a couple rare buildings produce resources, etc.

For example…

Woodcutter’s Hut/Lumber Mill
2 wood
0/0/20

Lumber – 48 sec: Produce 1 wood

When Woodcutter’s Hut/Lumber Mill is in play, all other wood resource production times are decreased by 3 seconds or 15%. (I realize this is not codeable yet)

So in the example above, if a player had a Forest, Ancient Woodlands and Woodcutter’s Hut/Lumber Mill in play, then the Forest’s and Ancient Woodlands’ wood production rate would decrease from 24 seconds to 21 seconds (3 second decrease) or 20.2 seconds (15% decrease).

Topic: Open Discussion / brainstorming

I think you might want to consider a way to display effects on cards. The top right corner might be a good place to do this. For example, a card with attack bonuses vs. buildings might have a symbol in the top right corner, etc.

In the same regards, a card that gets an artefact played on it should have some type of of notification. Warstorm uses a card underneath to display artifacts. Since the cards name is at the top of the card, this works well for Warstorm. The card names are not displayed in FCRT, so this method probably wouldn’t work, but maybe it could.

This is where you might be able to use symbols in the top right corner again to display effects whether it’s part of the card of boosted by an artefact or event.

For example, cards with…

• +4 attack bonus vs. buildings – a building symbol with a 4 in the middle of it
• +3 attack bonus vs. humanoids – a humanoid symbol with a 3 in the middle of it
• +2 attack bonus vs. undead – an undead symbol with a 2 in the middle of it
• fire resistance – a symbol denoting fire resistance
• fire immunity – a symbol denoting fire immunity

The symbols would be great for solving the problem of knowing when a card is modified by the artefact/event such as Dagger of the Spider Queen.

Topic: Open Discussion / brainstorming

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I was just replying to one part of your post about the named cards.

Warstorm uses different color fonts to differentiate the card tiers (rarity/strength). It uses frames to differentiate the factions.

If you are looking for a way to display the cards rarity, maybe you could use the top right corner of the card. You could put both the card rating and rarity in the top right corner. For example, using a square…

• A card with 1 rating and common would have a yellow square with a 4 on it.
• A card with 4 rating and rare would have a blue square with a 4 on it.

Topic: Open Discussion / brainstorming

I proposed something similar a few weeks ago about Unique Cards.

http://www.fantasy-cards.net/forums/3/topics/37…

Limit unique cards to 1 per deck. These could be cards with specific names as mentioned above.

I agree that Warstorm the game sucks. I think giving cards a stronger version of themselves is good. I wouldn’t give EVERY card multiple versions of itself, but maybe 50% -90%.

Topic: Open Discussion / Bad Cards

I don’t think the cost is that big of a deal either though because wood is a very easy resource to acquire. If his damage was 2, then he would be OP because he could quickly take out some exchange/resource units.

Topic: Open Discussion / Bad Cards

do you think that a range of 7 would be OP?(overpowered)?
the elven archer has a range of 7 (i think that this is ok) so maybe the trebuchet should be range 7,too.

I think a range of more than 2 for any of these units would be OP. The elven sniper isn’t bad because it only has a damage of 1.

These ranged units are going to be very strong because the map is so small. Midfield is only 1 rank wide, so I can activate a ranged unit in rank 3 of my kingdom and hit a unit in your kingdom still.

Imagine a unit with a range of 3 that I put in rank 2 behind my wall. This unit will be extremely hard to deal with when it has a 0/3/40 blocker in front of it, not to mention other units protecting it. This will be the strategy for these type of units.

Topic: Ideas / Stone's Personality & Depletion Concept

I think this change would change the game play quite a bit. I think I would give resources diminishing returns instead of stone an increasing return. I actually like the idea of all resources having some kind of depletion or diminishing returns. Without some kind of change, there aren’t many options for new resource cards. For example…

Iron Mine 0/1/12
36 sec, gain 1 iron

There’s not a lot more that you can do here except change the production time and stats (x/x/x) unless you start creating resource cards with abilities.

Diminishing Returns

With diminishing returns, production time increases by 1 or 2 seconds and stone could have very low or no diminishing returns. Here’s a few examples…

Forest
0/0/16
Lumber – 24 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Depletion – 1 sec.
Depletion times – 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, etc.

Ancient Woodland
0/0/8
Lumber – 20 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Depletion – 2 sec.
Depletion times – 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, etc.

Copius Thicket 3 wood
Lumber – 12 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Depletion – 1 sec.
Depletion times – 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, etc.

I made a slight change to the basic stats of Ancient Woodland for this example.

You could also include depletion. Depletion doesn’t have to lead to the extinction of the resource supply, it could be a depletion to the production rate instead. While this might sound complicated in comparison to the current resource system, it is actually a very simple concept that I don’t think anyone would have trouble picking up. Each resource has a starting amount and once you use the resources starting supply, depletion begins and you start to see diminishing returns. This actually makes sense in real life too. Imaging iron mining, at first iron is easy to find, but after depleting the mine for a while, it becomes tougher to find or takes longer because you have to dig deeper.

Here’s an example of what I mean…

Forest
0/0/16
Lumber – 24 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Starting quantity – 5
Depletion – 3 sec.
Production times – 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, etc.

Ancient Woodland
0/0/8
Lumber – 24 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Starting quantity – 3
Depletion – 2 sec.
Depletion times – 24, 24, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, etc.

New Wood Resource
0/0/6
Lumber – 18 sec: Gain 1 wood.
Starting quantity – 2
Depletion – 3 sec.
Depletion times – 18, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, 42, etc.

Players would choose different resources depending on their deck and timing of their demand. If you find that you don’t need a lot of wood up front, but will use a lot in the long run, you might choose Ancient Woodland over Forest.

If you want more wood up front for a woodlands rush deck, you might go with New Wood Resource. Also, if you need just a little bit of wood to get started, this might be the way to go too.

You could then give each stone resource the characteristic of higher starting quantities and/or slower depletion times. For example…

Stone Quarry
0/0/24
Quarry – 24 sec: Gain 1 stone.
Starting quantity – 4
Depletion – 1 sec.
Depletion times – 24, 24, 24, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, etc.

New Stone Resource
0/0/18
Quarry – 24 sec: Gain 1 stone.
Starting quantity – 8
Depletion – 3 sec.
Depletion times – 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 27, 30 etc.

Topic: News / Many new things before xmas

You could also add a different AoE attack for different dragons and give the ability some different type of effect. I’m not saying every dragon gets a unique breath, but maybe a 2 or 3 different types. For example…

Poison Breath
Only damages organics units.

Lightning Breath
Jumps to all nearby units.

Acid Breath
???

Topic: Guestbook / Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

Topic: Ideas / Stone's Personality & Depletion Concept

I don’t know weather stone needs this kind of personality or not- being the “only default” is a unique characteristic too.

I agree. I think it is acceptable to not have a personality if someone can’t think of a good personality. Maybe extra health is enough.

Topic: Ideas / Stone's Personality & Depletion Concept

And about loosing hitpoints- that seems to make some cards useless, e.g. ancient woodlands or Arina, the psychik.

Or the units don’t lose health, just the buildings. The units are already much easier to kill. This could be a benefit to playing a unit, most of which have very low health.

Topic: Ideas / Resource Limits

I agree. Gold is much harder to acquire than the other resources and is a good way to keep some of the more powerful cards from appearing too early in the game.

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

Saved for future use

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

OK, now it’s time you build and try out your new deck. Try out several different types of decks and keep your deck evolving as new cards become available to you.

GOOD LUCK!

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

Tip #6 – Tweeking

Don’t be afraid to experiment. No deck will ever be perfect and will probably have some weaknesses against certain decks and strategies. The trick is to find counters and minimize these weaknesses as much as possible.

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

Tip #5 – Starting Hand

Once you have built your deck, you can select up to 7 cards to begin the game with in your starting hand. At the bottom of the Deck Editor, you will find a option (button) to Save & Edit Hand. This will bring up the following screen that will allow you to add up to 7 cards to your starting hand.

The cards you choose to put in your starting hand will vary based on your deck and general strategy. It is a very good idea to always put 7 cards in your starting hand. You aren’t required to put 7 cards (or any) in your starting hand, but you will usually be much better off in the long run rather then letting the computer randomly choose them for you.

You should probably include about 4 or 5 cards that will get your economy growing, such as resource production, resource storage, trader and/or exchanger cards.

Also, consider including a way to stop early attacks by your opponent. Since you have no control over the order your cards are drawn beyond your starting hand, it may take a few draws to get some defensive help. Don’t leave it entirely up to luck of the draw.

Try testing out your starting hand in Training Mode to make sure you have the resources and timing optimized to get your deck rolling as fast as possible. It will only take a minute, but will pay dividends.

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

Tip #4 – Distribution

In addition to resources, you will also want to make sure that your deck is balanced in other areas as well.

• Early defense – Make sure you have a way slow down your opponent early in the game (first 2 minutes). This can be achieved in many different ways, such as walls, towers, cheap combat units, defensive spells, etc. It’s a good idea to put at least one or two of these in your starting hand. Remember to make sure that you will be able to afford them as well.

• Cost – Try to avoid putting too many expensive cards in your deck. While they are generally more powerful, you can also easily run into problems if your opponent is able to take out some of your resource supply. Consider a balance of low, medium and high resource cost cards.

• Frequency – If a card is important to your deck but you can’t fit it into your starting hand, consider adding multiple copies of it, even if you only plan to use one of them. Adding more copies of a card will increase its frequency, thereby increasing your chances of drawing the desired card earlier.

For example, if you are running a 31-card deck with Golden Dragon but can’t fit it into your starting hand, there’s a reasonable chance that it maybe be one of the last few cards that you draw. Putting a 2nd or 3rd copy of this card in the deck greatly increases your chances of drawing it early.

Here is a list of the probability of drawing at least one of a specific card, based on a 31-card deck and no copies in your starting hand:

Draw…….1 copy……..2 copies……..3 copies……..4 copies
…1………..…4.2%………….8.3%………….12.5%…………16.7%
…2………..…8.3%…………16.3%…………23.9%…………31.2%
…3…………12.5%…………23.9%…………34.3%…………43.7%
…4…………16.7%…………31.2%…………43.7%…………54.4%
…5…………20.8%…………38.0%…………52.1%…………63.5%
..10………..41.7%…………67.0%…………82.0%…………90.6%
..15………..62.5%…………87.0%…………95.8%…………98.8%
..20………..83.3%…………97.8%…………99.8%…………99.9%
..24…………100%………….100%………….100%………….100%

This doesn’t mean that you should always include 4x of each of your most important cards. If you only plan on playing 1 copy at a time, e.g. – Market, then after you draw the first one you will essentially have 3 dead (unwanted) cards in your deck.

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

Tip #3 – Resources: Supply & Demand

Make sure that you have enough resources to support your deck.

It is probably a good idea to start with the basic cards you want to build your deck around and then determine which types (wood, iron, stone, mana, gold, population) and the amount of resources (supply & storage) that your deck will require.

Your Castle can be used to increase the storage of each resource by up to a maximum of 2. Hence, if you plan on playing cards that require more than 3 of a specific resource, you will have to provide another way to increase storage.

Regardless of whether you need more than 3 of a specific resource, keep in mind that using your Castle to Expand is a long process (60 seconds) that keeps you from using your Castle to draw cards (20 seconds). For this reason alone you will probably want to find alternative ways to increase your storage.

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

Tip #2 – Deck Size

There are a lot of appealing cards and it is oftentimes tempting to cram as many of them as you can into your deck. Keep in mind, however, that as you deck size increases, your chances of drawing any one particular card from your deck into your hand are decreased.

If you find that your games are usually over relatively quickly and you aren’t drawing very deep into your deck, then having 35+ cards in your deck probably isn’t going to help much.

Then again, if you frequently find yourself in long battles where both sides are losing a lot of combat, a few extra cards in your deck could make all the difference.

Either way, it is probably best to keep your deck size somewhere in the 30-36 range, and probably never more than 40 for the most part.

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

BUILDING YOUR DECK

Tip #1 – Strategy or Theme

Before you start building your deck, you may want to consider what your general strategy or theme will be.

A general strategy is how you plan to win the game. A few examples are…

• Rush – Rushing and overwhelming your opponent with early and fast moving combat units. The goal is to apply as much pressure as possible by striking early and often before he can get set up to defend against it or mount an attack of his own.

• Victory Points – Winning by achieving 5 victory points instead of destroying your opponents population.

• Defensive (Last Man Standing) – Play to outlast your opponent by being the last man standing.

You may also choose to build your deck around a theme or specific card(s). Such as…

• Elven – A deck loaded with elven units, of course. :)

• Sinister – A deck filled with undead, demons and spells that use your own population as a resource!

Topic: Questions & Answers / Deck Building 101

BASIC RULES

There are a few basic rules or parameters that you must follow when building your deck.

1) Each deck must contain at least 30 cards.

2) You can place up to 4 copies of each card in your deck.

3) A player may choose up to 7 cards to begin the game with in their starting hand. Any starting hand with less than 7 cards will be filled with random cards from the deck.

Topic: Ideas / Let's discuss vampires

I like the idea of vampires getting a buff from killing blows. I actually like the concept of the ability Vampirism even moreso. A card could have this ability to start or a spell could be cast on an undead unit giving it this ability.

I think it should be limited to getting the killing blow on a human, humanoid, or organic at the very least though. This could bring a lot of strategy into the game too. Attacking with multiple units, it could be beneficial to have the unit with vampirism delay its attack to get the killing blow.

I also think the buff should probably be a fixed gain to keep it from becoming overpowered and/or exploited. As the vampire/vampiric unit kills, it becomes stronger, gaining attack and/or health. For example…

• +1 attack, +1 health
• +1 attack, +2 health
• +1 attack, +3 health
• +2 attack, +2 health
• +3 health
• +4 health

If the ability Vampirism was +1 attack, +2 health, then a card with “Vampirism 2” would get +2 attack, +4 health for delivering the killing blow. “Vampirism 2” would only appear on the more powerful vampires of course.

Topic: Ideas / Displaying special effects

Something you might want to consider while developing the frames for the cards is a way to display special effects.

For example, if I play the artefact Dagger of the Spider Queen (+8 attack vs. organics) on my Elven Blade Dancer, the unit will still display +4 attack in the top left corner and the card description will show +8 attack vs. organics. Even if my opponent were originally notified of this by some sort of announcement when I played the card, it still may be easy to forget… especially if I have more than 1 Elven Blade Dancer in play.

A possible solution to this is some sort of icon/symbol near the outside border of the card that notifies someone that the card has been altered. Maybe something like a sword icon somewhere along the top of the card, possible as part of an outer frame that notifies players that the card is under the effect of an artefact(s).

This wouldn’t be necessary for all cards. For example, playing Sword of Power on my Elven Blade Dancer is already shown by boosting the attack power. The card will display an attack power of 7.

Although, if the artefact stays attached to the card, you could then either place a limit on the number of artefacts allowed per card or allow them to be destroyed.

OK, I got a little deeper into the example than I intended. Adding a frame that has the capability of displaying a few special effects could be beneficial for later on down the road as the game continues to develop.

For example, if you wanted to add resistances, spell effects, immunities, etc. to cards… the frame would be a logical place to display it.

Just wanted to make this suggestion while you’re still looking into implementing a card frame.

Topic: Ideas / ideas for 1 storage units

For stone, Gargoyle was one of the first ones that came to mind for me as well, but it would have to fly which might not justify only 1 resource.

Stone Guardian (unit, weapon wielder)
1 stone

3 attack
6 health

+3 armor vs. weapon wielders*

Very slow, slow attack, can’t attack population

Similar to the Armored Guard.

* I’m not sure whether it is currently possible to code units this way.

Light Chariot (unit, mechanical)
1 stone, 1 wood

2 attack
7 health

Charge 2 (gains +1 attack bonus for each movement, up to 2)

Fast

I know you didn’t want any rush units. However, since this is a mechanical and not a weapon wielder, it won’t be able to get it’s attack boosted by artefacts and won’t do much damage against a population. It would be useful in dealing with enemy units though.

Goblin (unit, goblin, humanoid, male, organic, weapon wielder)
1 stone, 1 iron

3 attack
1 armor
5 health

Not sure if this unit should be humanoid or not. Goblin Intruder (unit, male, organic, weapon wielder) is not, but it seems like it should be.

This could also be part of a race, similar to the elven units.

Elven Ranger (unit, elf, human, male/female, organic)
1 iron, 1 wood

2 attack
3 health

Ranged Shot – 24 sec, 1 wood: inflict 2 damage to target unit within a range of 2 in any direction

Here’s the archer unit you were talking about. With low health, this is a unit you will always want to keep at range, if possible. Could be very useful either taking out opponents towers, targets behind walls or buildings, getting in a quick strike from range or kept back on defense behind your own buildings and walls.

I think keeping this unit with an attack range of 2 will keep it from being too strong.

Soldier (unit, human, male, organic, weapon wielder)
1 iron

2 attack
2 armor
5 health

Slow

This unit might seem weak at first, but iron has a few artefacts and support units which can boost the attack of weapon wielders.

I made it similar, but ever so slightly weaker than the Goblin since it only requires 1 total resource.

Topic: Questions & Answers / Speeds

Here is a post from DarkRune from another forum that I’ve referenced several times. I’m copying it here for easy reference.

Here is the speeds table (in seconds)…

Attack
12 very fast attack
18 fast attack
24 (normal attack)
36 slow attack
48 very slow attack

Movement
3 very fast
6 fast
12 (normal)
24 slow
48 very slow

Construction (play on buildings)
3 very short build time
6 short build time
12 (normal)
24 long build time
48 very long build time

Arrival (play on Units)
0 instant arrival
3 early arrival
9 (normal)
18 late arrival
36 very late arrival

Artefact Play: 5

Spells Play: 0

Production: 12, 18, 24, 36, 48

Production Speed is not explicitly named on the card, and there are exceptions.

Topic: News / Three new cards & a sort option

I’m not having any problems stopping rush decks. My non-rush decks are killing people with only 2 or 3 combat units getting out.

I’m just saying that I’m only using about 12-14 cards per game or so when I win. 7 of these are from my starting hand, plus a few more random draws. I rarely get into the heart of my deck. When the game ends, I still 15-20 cards left in my deck. I usually run between 30-32 cards per deck, rarely more. I don’t even think some of the decks I’m building are that strong. Some of my weakest combat units are enough.

Maybe the attack power on some of the lower resource cards (or maybe all cards) might be a little high… I’m not sure. But the games don’t seem to be going deep enough into decks on average in my opinion.

The best game experiences I have had are the games which last a little longer.