Elements - The Card Game

[sidereal]

Either go with Grav/Fire and mix otyughs and fire eaters (the two strategies don't particularly combine, but it's nice that if one fails you can move to the other.  This is the combo that got me up to beating up false gods) or Grav/Death with Otyughs, Boneyards, and Vultures.  This is doubling down on the creature burn strategy but when it works it works.

[Musashi]

What happens when you get to the end of a deck?  I think it's happened to me a couple times.  I think somebody loses.  But when you lose it just goes to the YOU LOSE screen, and I can never remember to look how many cards I have.  So I don't know if it's me running out of cards that made me lose, or the other guy.

[Tebonas]

I tried that with a misguided "burn through your own library" deck. When you have to draw a card and can't, you instantly lose.

[gryeyes]

Ive entered several "stalemates" between elder gods and players that result in me losing. How it instantly cuts away left me confused as to the reason at first.

[Samwise]

What happens when you get to the end of a deck?  I think it's happened to me a couple times.  I think somebody loses.  But when you lose it just goes to the YOU LOSE screen, and I can never remember to look how many cards I have.  So I don't know if it's me running out of cards that made me lose, or the other guy.

Yes.  I've hit this a few times with my Time deck, since I make heavy use of the hourglass (lets you draw a card instantly).  Really cool for burning through a deck quick to find the good shit, but if you run out of cards you're dead.

[Threash]

Upgraded quantum pillars are just pure cheese.  The weakness of a rainbow deck is supposed to be its slow start, 3-4 of the quantum towers though and you can have several uber creatures out on the first turn.  I'm having some luck with the rainbow deck from the thread someone posted earlier, but without upgraded quantum towers its really a crap shoot and mostly depends on what elder god i get (chaos, fire queen, incarnate, miracle = insta win, the others = fast loss) and i luckily managed to grab an upgraded miracle from one of my wins.

[01101010]

What's annoying is that whenever I try to emulate the bullshit I see in some of the AI decks (like the abilities that let them kill all my dudes as soon as I put them up) it never seems to work out for me.  My latest experiment was with scarabs, but the problem with them seems to be getting enough of them on the table at once that they can start eating things.  I might try a gravity deck with otyughs next.

See...i been having a better time with Aether/Time deck with scarabs. The trick is to get two scarabs and two parallel dimensions with enough to bring out the set of four. of course my back up are a full set of four immortals or a couple of Anubis and immaterial everything on my side. meh... dark/death works as well since my friend uses that and already hit the 500points part. something about 3-4 devourers burrowed with 2-3 darkfalls and random other crap. I am hating myself for getting sucked into this...along with draeg.

[gryeyes]

Stacking my rainbow deck with draw cards has completely broken the game. A limit on how many of those cards you can active at one time seems almost mandatory.

[Threash]

Stacking my rainbow deck with draw cards has completely broken the game. A limit on how many of those cards you can active at one time seems almost mandatory.

The AI really sucks at playing those decks, most of the top 50 use them and every time i play them i just gotta turtle up and they run out of cards.  Even with sundials and electrum hour glasses some of the false gods are incredibly hard unless you also have a shit ton of upgraded quantum towers.

[Tebonas]

I had fun with an Otyugh/Armagio deck. I deck them out with Plate Mail and Momentum and munch away on the enemies and my own stragglers. Almost at 500, if I get the Otyugh soon enough or once the Enchanted Gravity shield comes out, only Poison or Eternity can consistently stop me. I'm looking forward to Upgraded cards to fix those holes without going full Rainbow.

[sidereal]

So I dumped the HTTP packets from the game with a plan to cobble together some kind of AI to play my deck for me since most moves are automatic and it gets tedious.  It turns out that absolutely none of the game is server-side.  The client just updates the server every once in a while telling it how much gold you have now, what your score is, and what cards you have.  Nice work.  It would be about half an hour's labor to write a script to just update the server every once in a while telling it you won a bunch of games and have a bunch more money.  It's probably even possible to just pick the cards you want and have them, depending on how eagle-eyed the developers is/are about looking at improbable deltas.  And I'm pretty sure a good chunk of the leaderboard is already doing it, given some of the astronomical stats they show when I decide to play a top 50.

Certainly kills my enthusiasm.

[Samwise]

Eh, that's about par for most web games.

On the topic of automation, it occurred to me that building a deck could be a good task for a genetic algorithm.  Have a bunch of AIs with a bunch of different decks play each other, duplicate the winning decks plus or minus a card, repeat.

For bonus points, add a neural net to each player that lets it pick its opponents (based on deck contents) so that the AIs can exploit (and try to overcome) rock/paper/scissors effects.

[gryeyes]

The AI really sucks at playing those decks, most of the top 50 use them and every time i play them i just gotta turtle up and they run out of cards.  Even with sundials and electrum hour glasses some of the false gods are incredibly hard unless you also have a shit ton of upgraded quantum towers.

Even with a fully upgraded rainbow deck the initial hand will determine if you have a chance or not. Crap out on mana/draw cards and you are almost assuredly fucked. But they are cheating whores so that does not really count as a good comparison. I did manage to defeat the extremely lame poison god a few times. Believe i had 30 something poison on me after cleansing twice.

[sidereal]

Eh, that's about par for most web games.

On the topic of automation, it occurred to me that building a deck could be a good task for a genetic algorithm.  Have a bunch of AIs with a bunch of different decks play each other, duplicate the winning decks plus or minus a card, repeat.

I did something like this with Magic.  The problem is that there are so many card interactions that the playing AI is very hard to get right.  Card timing that seems pretty obvious to even a novice player is rocket science to an algorithm.  Most developers in this situation cop out and tune a custom AI for preset decks.  I forget the MTGO AI situation.  I seem to remember there being preset decks you played against long ago.  But if they actually have a running generic AI that can handle any set of random cards into a reasonable deck and play it, then I guarantee it takes up 80% of their developer resources and still sucks.  (Aside: I wonder if it would work better to alternately evolve the deck and the AI.  Basically, start with a hardcoded deck and then evolve the AI genetically until it's pretty good.  Then freeze the AI and evolve the deck.  Etc.)

Elements is obviously much simpler than MTG, but the AI is still hard, as evidenced by the fact that the AI pretty much plays like an idiot (happily summoning Fireflies and Sparks while you have an otyugh out, for example). 

So a genetic deck algorithm would produce the best deck that could be played by a very naive AI, which in the Magic environment would probably come up with a pretty well-tuned creature and direct-damage deck without too many card interactions.

Still a fun project, though.

When are we going to do an f13 CCG?  Schild, you know you want it.

[schild]

When are we going to do an f13 CCG?  Schild, you know you want it.

Of course I do.

[gryeyes]

Anyone play against players with over 100 life? Encountered several with 120 and above.

[Threash]

Theres a card that makes your life 120, i don't think above that is possible.

[Draegan]

So I dumped the HTTP packets from the game with a plan to cobble together some kind of AI to play my deck for me since most moves are automatic and it gets tedious.  It turns out that absolutely none of the game is server-side.  The client just updates the server every once in a while telling it how much gold you have now, what your score is, and what cards you have.  Nice work.  It would be about half an hour's labor to write a script to just update the server every once in a while telling it you won a bunch of games and have a bunch more money.  It's probably even possible to just pick the cards you want and have them, depending on how eagle-eyed the developers is/are about looking at improbable deltas.  And I'm pretty sure a good chunk of the leaderboard is already doing it, given some of the astronomical stats they show when I decide to play a top 50.

Certainly kills my enthusiasm.

http://forum.cheatengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=445781&sid=616bb166e63e17020a593b121c57ebea

[sidereal]

Writing a flash 'trainer' is overkill, but maybe an interesting exercise.  Like I said, there's no point in actually playing the games, just don't play at all and tell the server about all of your victories and how much money you're 'earning'.

Unless, of course, people are just trying to be dicks in PvP.

[Hoax]

I feel retarded, I don't see anything that says false god anywhere, what is it people are talking about when they say that?

[gryeyes]

After you get a score of 500, its in the "quest" tab.

[Hoax]

This game's grind mechanic + upgrade cards is so fucking fail I have no words.

[Samwise]

Yes, the upgrade card thing is 100% failriffic.  In theory you can get them for free by beating top 50 decks and spinning for them, but I haven't gotten any that way.

I have had good results with packing a deck with Steals so I can grab rare weapons as soon as they're played, though.   

[gryeyes]

You cant receive the upgraded versions from PVP or false god slot machines?

[Samwise]

In theory you can get them for free by beating top 50 decks and spinning for them, but I haven't gotten any that way.

I assume you could just as well get them from PvP/gods, but top 50 decks are usually easier to beat, and they frequently have upgraded cards.

[Mosesandstick]

I don't think you do receive upgraded cards. The one time I remember getting a card (this was on trainer mode) I got the normal un-upgraded version. Which blows serious chunks.

[Draegan]

You cant receive the upgraded versions from PVP or false god slot machines?

You can, actually every False God roll has them.  If you get one you don't want/need you can sell it for 1100+ coins.  I've won 3 off one game before.  It's still an insane grind though.  I wish there were more rares rather than "upgraded" cards.  I also wish you could buy "packs" of cards for 1000 coins or something.

[Threash]

Yeah beating false gods and winning rolls is the best way to get upgraded cards, but they are not easy.  There's decks that can easily beat lvl 3 without putting any thought into it at all if you rather go the grind way.

[Draegan]

Just build the deck I posted back a few pages.

[Mosesandstick]

I don't get how y'all can stand doing this.

As soon as I saw how you gained/upgraded cards and that at a high level rainbow beats everything I couldn't be bothered to play anymore  .

[Aez]

I don't get how y'all can stand doing this.

As soon as I saw how you gained/upgraded cards and that at a high level rainbow beats everything I couldn't be bothered to play anymore  .

This.

[ezrast]

I have somehow managed to build an earthquake/darkness denial deck that beats top 50 rainbows but loses to level 1's and 2's. 

[Aez]

[gryeyes]

I don't get how y'all can stand doing this.

As soon as I saw how you gained/upgraded cards and that at a high level rainbow beats everything I couldn't be bothered to play anymore  .

You can tell that a rainbow deck will be the superior choice just by looking at the cards and how the bazaar operates. But its still beatable by other decks, you will just be at a disadvantage most of the time. Im not really into TCG's how do other games limit the advantage of rainbow decks? Not have rainbow mana generators or gimp their output?

[Threash]

I don't see how the rainbow deck is good for anything other than beating the AI.  I beat it regularly in pvp and vs the top50 decks with a mono deck.  Its good for god grinding because of the massive defenses it has, thats all.