Comprehensive AI Rework
All two-player modes have been reworked. The AI enemy is now always drawn from a set of 120 pre-built decks. Each deck also has a new difficulty scaling on top consisting of a flat Arete advantage and a fixed number of additional blessings the AI receives throughout the game.
Through simulated self-play all the decks and their difficulty levels have been assigned a rating. In versus AI the player now also gets one rating per Olympian with an associated leaderboard (tracking rating, not levels)
Hero's Journey no longer has a raw bonus scaling for its opponents, rather the rating of the opponents simply rises throughout the run. This will require a lot of difficulty tuning, but to me this is already MUCH more fun than before.
Patch Notes
Areteion v1.0.15
AI Changes
Improved raw playing strength slightly.
Versus AI ratings: Versus AI no longer has levels or strikes. Each Olympian carries a rating instead, starting at 1200 and moving with every game you play with a deck of that Olympian. Beating a higher rated opponent gains you more rating, losing to a lower rated one costs you more, and ratings swing hard until you have played enough games with that Olympian, then settle.
Versus AI rewards: Winning a game that pushes your rating past the next milestone awards cards, at most one milestone per game. Milestones start 50 rating apart and narrow toward 25: 1250, 1298, 1344, 1388, 1430 and so on.
Versus AI leaderboards: Every Olympian has its own Versus AI leaderboard. The old single Versus AI leaderboard stays visible as Versus AI (Retired) and no longer receives scores.
Enemy decks: Versus AI and Hero's Journey both draw from the same roster of 120 built enemy decks, one per Epic and Mythological character and led by that character. Only decks whose Olympians you have discovered appear, and each deck always fields the cards it was built with.
AI opponents: Every AI opponent starts with +1 Might and 2 extra cards in hand, in every mode it plays, at every AI level (was 1 extra card and no Might).
AI opponents: An AI level grants its opponent +20 starting Arete and one bonus blessing per level, so an AI level 20 opponent starts with +400 Arete and receives 20 blessings over the game. The blessings are marked AI Bonus Blessing, each at severity 3, drawn from every Olympian you have discovered, and spread evenly from round 5 to the last round with a slight lean toward the later ones, each resolving just before that round's own blessing or curse. AI level no longer grants random starting cards, Might or Favor.
Hero's Journey: Each challenge offers its opponents at a difficulty, shown on the panel. An Even opponent is always offered, alongside up to two of: an easier opponent (Very Easy or Easy), a harder one (Hard or Very Hard), or a Solo Round. Opponents get stronger with every challenge of a run. Easier opponents give smaller reward packages, harder ones give more cards and better rarities.
Hero's Journey: Bonus rewards for beating the opponent's Arete by a ratio depend on the difficulty.
Hero's Journey: Opponent strength comes from its own deck and AI level. Beyond the AI bonuses above it gets no extra Might or Favor, and its deck leader no longer costs less, though it is still drawn early.
Hero's Journey: The opponent's starting Arete scales with the length of the challenge: 40% of its level's Arete at 8 rounds, 50% at 9, 60% at 10, 80% at 11, 100% at 12. The Bonus row on challenge selection shows the scaled amount.
Hero's Journey: Auto Draft bonus: 100 → 500 Points.
Hero's Journey Difficulty: Each point makes every opponent of the run stronger and adds 1000 to your final score. It no longer raises Arete thresholds and no longer grants the AI's Domus bonus Attack, Health and Arete.
Hero's Journey: Battle maps start the two Domus at least 8 moves apart, up to 12, with starting positions drawn from 44 tiles instead of 16, so layouts vary more. They also hold about 35 sea tiles regardless of how the land is drawn (was about 30, and falling as the starts moved apart).
UI Changes
Board cards: Card tiles redrawn. Attack, Health and Movement sit together in the bottom-right panel, Might shares the top-right panel with the card's function cost. Attack shows 0 instead of disappearing, Movement stays hidden on cards without one. Stat numbers stand on their own behind a divider; hovering a card reveals the stat icons and its current/full Health.
Board cards: Health reddens as a card takes damage, scaled to how much of its full Health is left. Arete is drawn larger at 10, 25, 50 and 100, the thresholds where a Structure's or Farmland's influence range grows, and is shown in red when negative.
Board cards: Panels restyled. The owner's colour thins toward the top of each panel so the card art reads through, plus rounder corners, dimmed stat icons and fixed-width numerals. Applies to stats, terrain type, ability cost, charges, keywords, card name and tags.
Board cards: New setting under Board, Stat Size on Cards, scales every stat and label on a board card from 80% to 160%.
Versus screen: Two player games load into a versus screen before the match, both sides facing off with their Olympian portraits, deck name and opponent name over the mode you are about to play. Applies to Versus AI, Hero's Journey battles, Quick Match and friend challenges. Ratings are shown in Versus AI only, since no other mode moves them.
History panel: Arete Change, Card Drawn and Placed entry types now default to off. "Ability Used" renamed to "Function Used".
General
Solo and Random Deck Challenge: Challenge Level can be set up to 2 levels above your own. Winning claims every level up to the one you beat, with the card rewards for each. Losing costs one strike per level reached for, and strikes past a downrank carry over to the next one.
Dolphin (Poseidon): Added: "They can attack (again)." to its when played effect. Refreshes attack and removes summoning sickness from all adjacent or diagonally adjacent targets.
Midas, the Cursed King (Dionysus): No longer transforms adjacent Gold into Gold. Added: "Each Gold keeps the owner of the card it replaced."
Bug Fixes
Cards swapping positions no longer jump sideways at the start of the animation; both cards now travel straight between the two tiles.
Invocations played from hand now set off "whenever you play a card" effects: Kapelon gains Arete from Fine Wine, Clio's quest counter updates, Ceryneian Hind moves.