Anyone else's combats take a really long time? While a few are short and sweet and some are a nice middle ground of 15 to 20 rounds, a good number of the combats take upwards of 20 or 30 rounds. Which can be fun sometimes, but other times it turns into a slog where I know I can win, but I have to wait it out, using a cheesy strategy of keeping hidden, healing up, getting a hit in and then going back to hiding. And if the opponents have the ability to slow down your movement and you have any dwarves then it really slows down. And god forbid you are defeated and have to do all that over again! For a while now I have the feeling that too much of Cardhunter is based on luck. Get a bad draw in the first round or two when the opponents get a good draw and you are quickly defeated regardless of your strategy or relative level. If your party and its opponents get bad draws then it can really draw out a combat. This is especially the case when you are fighting right at the adventure level (most adventures seem too hard for their assigned level - I usually either have to do them when my folks are 1 to 2 levels higher or with maximized equipment passed down from higher level characters, already knowing exactly what the challenge will be). Anyway, just curious about other people's experiences. While overall I love the game and am having fun, if a combat takes too long (and it can't be saved) I end up having to turn it off and come back later, which is frustrating. I have included a piece of a screenshot to show the length of my most recent combat:
I don't think i generally come close to 20 rounds at one or two times i have been at 30 ish but that's about it.
Interesting. I've often WANTED to do a strategy of "keeping hidden, healing up, getting a hit in and then going back to hiding." However, it sounds like there's a contradiction: when "the opponents have the ability to slow down your movement and you have any dwarves," doesn't it make it HARDER to hide? Either you can't get into hiding in the first place, or the enemies can position themselves near your hiding place and shoot your characters like fish in a barrel. Either way you'd start running into how damage-dealing is many times easier than damage-healing, and then you'd die. After all, the designers specifically want you to be unable to drag out a battle for ages by healing too much. If that's NOT happening, then you may have found the single strategy that defeats the designers' intent. So what is it? Do you have masses of Armor? Blocks? An all-Priest party full of Heals? You speak of Dwarf characters; you ALSO speak of coming back at higher levels with more hit points; so I'd have to guess that you are minimizing enemy damage to a level that you can successfully Heal.
Well, I found this to be the case with both of the parties I have been running, but right now I am back to my original party: human wizard, human priest, dwarf warrior. I do maximize armor b/c I find that anything less leads to quick death. If a board allows for it, when facing enemies that attack at range, I hide behind a wall with an opening at either end and don't come out until everyone is fully healed (well, not everyone - I am usually down to two folks before I even get that far - wizard is always the first to go), run out take a couple of swings and damage and then more back - it is only the aggressive melee opponents that come after you and if you can set it up so the warrior is the blockade while a wizard blasts it and a priest heals and/or uses an attack with reach, you can really last a long time. In a recent adventure vs. zombies, I was again lasting 30+ rounds, usually with one character left who could avoid melee attacks for the most part, carefully moving around the board until I was lucky enough to kill them all - or I lost. Basically, what I am saying is that I am typically running into one of two scenarios, either quick death for the whole party (or 2 of 3 and the last one lasting a handful of more rounds) or long drawn out fights that might still end up in defeat.
I remember playing longer games towards the start of the beta, but only a few instances stand out in my mind recently; occasionally I'll get a situation where a wizard has Resistant Hide and I'm using it to whittle down a few enemies that can't really damage him. I've also had the occasional situation where a priest will be left against a melee opponent and I'll kite until healed, strike a few times, then kite some more. On more recent plays through the game, starting from level one, it doesn't seem to have happened as often, potentially due to the increased item choice; I should probably delete all my items and start again, but I'll wait until the reset =D Edit: In summary, for me, combat doesn't seem to last as long. I also find that a bad draws tend to get evened out by good draws.
Had a few go that long when I was re-enacting Benny Hill skits with one surviving character early on, but I'm pretty sure that was me not the balance. The Dev's have expressed a desire for this to be constantly challenging too, try taking a quick look at the tips thread if you haven't already. When you say maximise armour, how much do you have out of how many cards currently? Because too many can be a surprisingly small number, also remember blocks stop everything the damage in it's entirety and any effects that might be applied (burning, slide back, etc) a couple of things that really helped me when I realised them was that minion groups draw less cards the less of them there are and movement is terribly terribly important. Not in the take heaps of it sense, more in the, every move card you play or hold is the most important decision you will make, way
The only time I find combat tedious is when I'm clunking along in a mazy map with my two dwarves after a groups of teleporting sprites, etc.
I've had a couple of really long fights where the last survivor flees from the remaining enemy for 4-8 rounds but those are rather rare. Then again I pretty much stopped using heal cards altogether after the beginning so it does make retreating less of an option in any case. True, getting a bad draw in the beginning rounds of a fight can be nasty. In most fights you can nevertheless use bad rounds to retreat and then fight back when you get better cards again. I know I've had a lot of fights where at some point I was drawing nothing but useless cards but still then ended up winning the fight anyway, if only barely.
Then this is very interesting indeed. I think it impacts our discussion of "difficulty." People come by and say they just can't get past a particular adventure (because it's killing them), and conclude the game is too hard. Then they change strategy to accommodate and win. Here, I think we've found a new way to "lose": not so much losing the fight as being bored because it takes too long. "Losing" any enjoyment. See, I've often wanted to raise the amount of Armor I take on adventures, but I find it difficult because I "need that Frenzy Aura" or whatever. (Yes, I know it includes Armor, but you don't want to be hit while using it.) Now put this together: if you weren't sitting around absorbing damage, but were instead dealing +3 damage (or whatever) to those stupid enemies, how much would it change the gaming experience? Those moments of "quick, run out and deal a few more points of damage before running back" sound like they're terribly inefficient in a world where you could replace your healing cards with Unholy Frenzy. You do have Frenzy cards, right? And if you feel like you can't even build up a good attack because you need to keep two (or three) Armor cards in hand . . . then that's probably the source of the problem. Tell me this: are you willing to discard your Armor at the end of a round so that you can build off of the awesome All Out Attack (or whatever) you just drew for the next round? Are you currently discarding perfectly good Attacks because you "need to" stand still and heal for a few more rounds?
If you're going for a "turtling" strategy, the two cleric / one warrior strategy is a good one. One Cleric heals, the other adds damage. The warrior loads up on armour / blocks / parries. You can grind through a lot of maps that way, but is it enjoyable? I dunno, frankly.
That's something I have planned for after the reset, but I don't intend to hide behind terrain with such a party setup: it sounds very front-rank to me. Get in there and be invulnerable. Then, thanks to the boosts, the enemies all die, and the fight doesn't drag on. I've played three Priests in multiplayer for some time now using a similar strategy. My record against humans isn't so hot, but it wins against the AI, and that's the most comparable to the single-player setup.
From my experience longer rounds were the result of really bad luck regarding loot and stores. I had very few if any cards which could deal out a lot of damage. This often required recycling decks to put out enough damage. After hitting a wall around adventures 6 or 7 I went back through the lower content to get cards. After doing that, and later access to the Goblin Bazaar, really helped reduce my round lengths. Store changes with the 100 items, and recent store changes, helped as well. [Edit] I'm interested in a reset to see how the newly balanced adventures work with no card base to work from.
Personally only a few maps in the entire Beta should lead to battles anywhere near that long. :/ I'm usually in and out before I cycle through my decks once. As for difficulty, ever since the recent massive nerf I'm easily completing adventures above the level of my characters using only the equipment I've found with that party; not using previously found equipment or the stores at all. Are you fretting too much over losing any character? It might sound callous, but unless you're doing the No Death challenges, or just allowing the computer to sit on Victory Squares, you really don't need to worry too much about keeping all of your characters alive.
Oh, I'd forgotten that. Yes, personally, I find it normal to sacrifice one character so that the other two may live. Again, looking at the Armor issue: it sounds as though you (OOO) may be reacting strongly to the high-damage Attacks the enemy has, and treating damage-reduction as necessary to make them "on-level" with your own "weaker" characters. However, it is clear that you ALSO know how to use maneuverability to your advantage, and so it should be possible to just avoid injury where possible (and force the enemy to discard Attacks, not yourself). When I personally mess up in such a strategy, or otherwise need to work my plans within uncomfortable range of the enemy, I certainly lose a character to the "overpowered" enemy Attacks. But I can keep rambling like this for a long time: it's still just based on assumptions of what you experience. It would be helpful if you could answer the questions I asked above (post #10 in the thread.)
It is rare that I go through any combat without losing at least one person and the longer combats usually end up with me having one person left for the last 10 to 15 rounds. As for equipment, armor and damage deal is my focus - with maneuverability next. I almost never take items with any disadvantages - at most one per character, but usually one per group.
