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CARDS
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CARDS OBS
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Cards is a 1v1 micro scenario that focuses on the best bits of AOE3, intensive fights and shipments.
The game plays out over 5 rounds. Each round you start on a fresh blank map with nothing except a town center. Your goal is to destroy the enemy town center using only homecity shipments. Shipments arrive instantly and you begin the game with 21 immediately available, once they run out - that's it, you won't get anymore! The player with the most points at the end wins.
However, one final mechanic that makes this format so much fun for me is the 'timer'. Each shipment you send will begin a 120 second countdown, if it hits 0 - YOU lose the round. The timer can only be stopped by forcing your opponent to send one of their shipments! Then the timer will start ticking for them (meaning it won't be counting you out) and it might be advantageous to keep it that way (by not sending anymore of your shipments - at least until you absolutely have too!)
The timer is designed to keep the game moving, discourage passive play and add a layer of depth to picking cards (or perhaps... not picking). Basically, it acts as a kind of resource. If the timer is in your favor but you lose a fight horribly (or you see your opponent over commit way to many shipments to a round) it might be best to just micro your remaining units the best you can to buy as much time as possible. The more time you buy, the longer it will take for them to siege down your TC meaning the closer the timer will be to running out (and if that timers in your favor they'll have to commit more shipments to kill it faster - less they'll have for later rounds!)
The last couple of weeks I've been having a ton of fun prototyping and playtesting this with @WickedCossack & others. This version isn't yet finished but it is playable in scenario form with static premade decks. At the moment, this really is a kind of a proof of concept, I wanted to make sure it worked/was possible, was actually fun to play, was fun to watch, etc before even beginning to think about writing it in XML as an actual map (which would enable custom decks & make it compatible with Aiz's UI... and basically make it tournament ready
). That's the dream though. Well... actually the dream would be to have my own patch specifically for this game mode where we can think up awesome new shipments & repurpose old existing ones. But that's a way off yet.TL;DR
I made a scenario that I think's super fun. It takes the best bits from AOE3 (shipments & micro intensive battles) and turns them into a fast paced exciting 1v1 strategy format. For some reason this has sparked a huge interest in me and I'm playing the game a lot recently (it's also really helping with my micro)! I'll totally be streaming it soon so be sure to check out my YouTube and Twitch channels.
https://www.twitch.tv/interjectionVideos
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If you have any thoughts, suggestions, ideas, questions, whatever it is, please do comment! I'll be watching this thread very closely for the next few weeks!
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Patch Notes V2.2
DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE AT THE TOP OF THE FIRST POST OF THIS THREAD.
-The LOSER of the previous round will now go first in the next (instead of the winner). This is because 'passing' felt too strong and 'overcommiting' was too easy to punish. This change makes wining a round more advantages, it felt odd to punish players who committed to winning a round.
-When the game is started with the difficulty set to 'expert', each player will spawn 8 hussars for a cav fight (up from 5). The loser of the fight determines who goes first in round 1. More hussars results in a longer fight with more room for skilled micro to pay off. With a smaller number of units the outcome was often simply determined by who got the first hit.
-Victory condition triggers have been updated (fixed). At the start of each round there is now a shipment check, if both players have 0 left - the player with the most points wins the game. If players have equal points the result is a draw and the game will end (without a winner). HOWEVER, if the game was set to 'expert difficultly' a tie is NOT possible! To resolve the draw, there will be a final deciding 'SUDDEN DEATH' round where players get 10 more shipments and can resend all their cards. This change makes the scenario tournament ready (competitive games MUST be set to expert difficult).
-Added 'Cards OBS' which has 6 fully functioning observer slots. Removed the observer slot from ordinary 'Cards'
Previous patch notes are available throughout this thread.
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