what is the current “draw” condition about ? I mean, I get it when no one can win, it has to be detected in some way, but why limit duels to 20 turns, thus getting rid of many valid conservative strategies based on maximizing chance of cast on every spells ?
It has happens to me 2 duels in a row (duels vs A.I. since there is not many people left), when the game was clearly won at 90% for me. This 20 turn limit seems really like a random choice (“people generally dont like too long games, lets force them to be shorter”), and it will only maximize risk taking and the wins based on pure luck which is not what you want I guess.
Depending on the match type, you can set the number of turns in the game options between 15, 20, 30, 35 or unlimited. The reason the game is normally limited to 20 turns is based around deck size. Assuming you attempt to cast a spell once per turn, and potentially burn a few cards along the way for mana, you will usually be out of cards around turn 20. It becomes quite boring just chasing each other around the map trying to hit each other with your staff once you’ve nothing left to cast.
You can also change the victory condition from Survivors Draw to Victory Points. In the event of a draw, the winner will be the one with the most VP. VP is gained from successfully killing creatures (the tougher the creature, the more VP) and from successfully casting spells.
Ok, thanks for your quick answer, I will check the settings for duels.
It didn’t come to me it could be an individual setting, because what would happen if people had different settings about victory/draw condition ? You can be matched only with people having the exact same victory/draw condition ?
Imo, there should be only one common draw/stalemate rule based on a certain number of turns (probably 3, maybe up to 5) with only movement action (no spell, no attack).
I agree that 20 turns is too low of a default. This is especially true when fighting the computer, which is particularly good at prolonging a fight and retreating. Often you get into a situation where the computer is out of cards, starts disbelieving your creatures as a default, but has some armies that need to be mopped up before you can get his wizard. This takes several turns past 20 to do though. Instead, you have to go in with a riskier attack, placing your wizard in danger, and possibly losing.
Yes, and you can also yourself play a very conservative strategy, casting every spells you want to succeed only with high winrate(>90%) which requires to play some low winrate cards to get the 10 mana bonus, and it’s not like a burn : it takes you 1 turn to do this.
Draws are fine IMHO, and from my experience the AI is consistently beatable in < 20 turns.
What I’ve always thought that I would have liked to have seen is the option for a randomised turn count that sits between say 18-23 turns and is blind to the player. There’d be a lot more tension to the last few turns of the game if you didn’t know exactly when that game was going to end.
I’m pretty sure you are right about this, but it doesnt mean this 20 turns limit is necessary : it restricts the many ways of playing. You could also stay AI is consistently beatable in 10 turns too (with some speed staff), it doesn’t imply it would be a good thing to limit turns to 10.
The turn limit is necessary only when you are in “survival” mode like in some tutorial missions or “into the breach”.
Here, there should just be a way to avoid stalling games (like a fixed number of turns of no casting/no agression would end the game in “draw”).
Technically it could, but currently we’re not actively working on Chaos Reborn. Such a change would also require inhouse testing and balancing being being rolled out too.
I guess there are not enough players left to invest time in the game.
“Chaos reborn” had the potential to get the popularity of “Slay the spire” or “Into the breach”, though, it desserved really more, maybe the multiplayer part was too ambitious.
I think it all comes down to personal preference in regard to draws. In PvP I really love the possibility that a game can end in a draw. Combined with a turn limit, I think that draws add urgency and tension to a ‘survivors win’ match which can be lacking in games that use the VP system. Some of the best matches that I’ve played ended in a hard won draw for one player/team or another. In essence the possibility of a draw does turn certain matches into a mini ‘survival’ mode. You know that you can’t win, but you’re just trying to hang on by the skin of your teeth for the last x number of turns. Conversely your opponent is racing to vanquish you in that time limit because they know that there’s a chance that you might wriggle out of it.
(With VPs there’s a tendency for a player to get ahead and then withdraw and turtle up for the remaining few turns of a match. Player’s even ‘dispel’ their own creatures in order to avoid gifting their opponents VPs - Whilst I’m sitting safely with parenthesis I’ll add that this is one of the major flaws in the ‘dispel’ mechanic, imho dispelling shouldn’t be allowed in VP matches).
I do think there’s a general difference in perception between gamers over whether a draw is a positive result or not. I’m generalising, I’ve always enjoyed them in games, I suspect that this maybe stems from growing up with a love of football (soccer), where a draw is a valid and frequent result. I’m generalising, but it feels as if people perceive draws as being more or less positive as an outcome based on their prior interest in games/sports and how draws have been treated within them.
I also think the perception of whether or not a draw is a good result changes, in general, based on whether you’re playing a human or AI opponent. Against a fellow human you can congratulate them and respect the hard work that they’ve put into surviving for a draw. Against the AI, and especially in realms, you’re back to square one because a draw counts the same as a loss. (IIRC the current iteration of the AI is actually designed to play defensively in order to make use of that draw option - If you play offline/custom matches and pick the lowest level of AI opponent it uses an earlier behaviour model which plays a far more aggressive game)
I think this is its own topic, it’s essentially the ‘stalemate’ option if we compare to chess. I’ve very rarely come across games where there is a genuine stalemate situation in Chaos. This is in part due to the sheer variety of attacking possibilities as compared to chess. But there’s also the fact that a player’s entire army is never guaranteed to be on the board.
It’s really hard to define a point in Chaos where someone has stopped casting/being aggressive. Some spells are situational by nature and it can often be that a spell isn’t being cast through choice/timing on the a player’s part rather than them being out of spells. Subvert is a good example, or Teleport, even Magic Bolt can be something that a player that a player intends to use but is waiting for the right shot.
There’s also a tactic where a player might ‘act’ as if they are out of spells in order to draw in an unwary opponent. - I’m not saying that I ever do this of course
The time where a stalemate becomes obvious is when players are too far away from each other on the map in order to be able to bring a game to a conclusion within the remaining number of turns. This can happen, especially on the bigger 5-6 player maps.
There’s also some odd occasions where a bottleneck on a map makes it obviously a poor move for either player to be the aggressor. Usually in these situations one spell, or the immanence of the turn time limit will trigger an avalanche of attacks.
In contrast to the above discussion on draws, I don’t think CR needs an automatic stalemate rule, but a mutual ‘all players agree to a draw’ button in multiplayer matches could be handy.
I do think that there is an element of this within the design of CR as a whole. One of the last changes which snapshot made to CR before moving to development of PP was to reduce the size of most, if not all 2 player maps. (I think it came in combination with Dual Mode which also introduced a reduced turn time for live games). This did work in terms of shortening games on those maps, but as far as I’m aware the majority of the player base wasn’t of the opinion that they were too long to begin with. The change wasn’t received well, players felt that they lost the room to manoeuvre on 2 player maps which had existed previously. - But development moved on, it’s one of a few things within the game that have never been ‘fixed’.
I’ve personally always thought that CR is a game that needs to be played slowly and with thought, it’s a really deep game when you have time to think about it.
Whether the AI is beatable in 20 turns or not is really not the issue in my opinion. It makes more sense to me to look at it from this perspective, there is certainly a much higher percentage of draws at 20 turns than 30, so what is the advantage to having the default set at 20?
And yes, conversations like this are purely hypothetical, as development has stopped.
Yes, and human players may throw everything they have when this 20 turn limit is approaching, so much higher percentage of random victories/defeats too.
I don’t think such a small setting change should be called a “dev”, it’s like a balance update in SC2 when they don’t add any visual, sound or bug fix, just a number in a setting file.
