v1.7.5: HELP I'M TRAPPED

I have this problem.

I'm pretty tired from working on aether, so I want to just sit back and enjoy the latest patch.

But this game is hard, so I'm only winning half my games against visionary, and stuck at platinum rank.

The only solution is to go to the deckbuilder and find a broken deck to help me ascend.

The issue, is that I'm also the game designer, so if there's a broken deck, I have to balance my game.

The broken deck of last patch was running four runes of aether with Triangle Rejuvenate, Rank 9. Congratulations to anyone who found that.

Balance Changes

Rune of Aether has been misbalanced. The bot has balanced it for the random deck use case, but the correct use case is with something synergistic. I used Bribe Master as my benchmark. [-7] -> [-8]

Now, this change to Rune of Aether makes Channel look quite overpowered. (Also, I've been feeling it was overpowered, seeing as most of the time when building my deck I've been choosing Channel as my core.) I've rebalanced it using Bribe Master as the benchmark. [44] -> [44] (no change to starting life), and in addition, the starting conversion ratio is 9:1 (from 8:1).

In addition to these two obvious ones, there's a third card that essentially gives you more aether access in exchange for lower starting hp: the fairly recently introduced core, Alchemize. I've test that one too. It didn't need an adjustment.

(I also used Bribe Master alone in a benchmark, to ensure that card wasn't overpowered, and it was the mana sources that were breaking it.)

It's occurred to be that given that the meta has slowed down enough for Ritual of Fibonacci to need a nerf, Approach of the Second Sun, which has a very similar play pattern, might need one too. Because icely has been clowning on me for it, I did both a human test and a bot test, and it's not overpowered. It's quite hard to do the defense.

And then it occurred to me, part of the reason Ritual of Fibonacci was nerfed last patch was because it was balanced for 4 Runes of Aether. And if I give it 4hp back and add a rune of aether, we get exactly where it was before. As such, the nerf for Ritual of Fibonacci from last patch has been reverted.

As for Triangle Rejuvenate itself, due to the 1-log curve I was using, any life above 52 was considered to be worth at most 2 credits, which led to the bot not using the card when it should have, because it didn't see the value of having 150 life. I've adjusted the curve to use a x^0.6 formula at high numbers (chosen via playtesting as it seemed to lead to reasonable decisions.)

With the ai fixed, I ran Triangle Rejuvenate through balance again. So is it overpowered? Survey says yes, even without the runes of aether.

As such, its power has been reduced from 0+/1+/2+/4+/6+ to 0+/1+/2+/3+/4+.

That wasn't enough. Rejuvenate//Triangle Rejuvenate now has the following power from rank 0 to 9:

5/4+/3++/2+++/1++++/0+++++//0+/1+/2+/3+

Finally, icely brought up the topic of wargames with Triangle Rejuvenate. From my testing, Wargames doesn't actually make a difference, if Triangle Rejuvenate is able to get going, it can hit the hp target on its own. That said, I tested Wargames anyways, and it's been overperforming slightly. As such, the late war restriction now requires turn 27, up from 23.

Finally, to simplify things, and also help address the p1/p2 imbalance I'm seeing in prod, p2's F3 start has been nerfed. From now on, p2 uses p1's start, -1 of each basic, +3 random. This new symmetrical arrangement is v14 of managen. In summary, the rules of managen v14:

P1: 3 of each basic, 2 aether, skip start turn step, plus the table below

P2: 2 of each basic, 2 aether, 3 random, plus the table below

New Card

This patch's new card is brought to you by Punf:

INGSOC Vitality (2)

! You always had +1 regeneration.

Dev Comment: It gives you +1 regeneration, and heals you an amount equal to half the turn number, rounded up.

Bugfix: Fixed a bug where Tricky would kill themselves as soon as possible, provided that they lose the game on their own turn. (very noticable with Fearless)