The Castle Doctrine Forums

I fleshed out colorfusion's proposed combo lock, like this: http://castledraft.com/editor/Zg4ajL, and realized that, while it may be impossible to solve at a glance, it can easily be broken. Laddering over the first trapdoor gives access to the wiring, which, with the dog drugged, can be simply set to the now visible solution.

Regrettably, this is not true currently. Using complex electronics, two states that look identical, with the same buttons pressed, can be very different. Also, when it comes to the scent values idea, it could be shown by mousing over the tile. The problem I see is that it would be very complex and make very little sense to newer players.

I'm starting work on a set of tutorials tomorrow, when I'm home from vacation. I'm planning three videos: Basics, Advanced, and Electronics. Each would be aimed at a different segment of the player base, with the mission of expanding general knowledge about the game, and helping players not feel trapped by their lack of understanding of the very devious traps that are installed in the neighborhood. Here are some proposals; feel free to make any pointers or correct any inaccuracies I claim to be true, as I want these videos to be as correct as possible.

The Basics video would discuss the construction of traps, starting with the basics of walls and pit bulls, then moving on to simple power and the three trap devices. Pressure plates would be introduced, along with the idea of using them with animals to create dance traps. VTSs and VTiSs would be explained, with examples for usage (not including looping electronics). The mechanics for death in self-test would segway into robbery itself, and strategies for avoiding death and scouting houses.

The Electronics video would cover looping electronics, including bits, counters, and adders. Various devices would be constructed, probably ending with a discussion of the CDHDD, the nonrewritable bit storage method I developed here. I might bring up some of my currently secret work on rewritable storage, which seems to have massive trap potential.

The Advanced section is troubling me the most. I have most of the trivia down (using a Chihuahua at your feet to avoid pit bulls, the switch-electricfloor-pit combination to make somebody commit to a path while chased, etc...) but I need a bigger swath of overall strategies to bring up other than mine. I'd love to hear some of yours -- do you rob first, then build? Or build, then rob slowly (or go for a big target right away)? I think that giving newer players examples of the strategies of those more experienced would do much to help them get better, and help the game get better with them.

I agree. Here's my biggest problem with TCD as it stands now: brute-force profit. This is my term for when a house gains enough money that simply cutting through all the walls, or tooling through all the traps, results in a net profit for the robber. When a house costs $10,000 or more to brute-force, that's not a worry, but, to the poorer players, whose class I joined recently , it makes building a house difficult if you can't log on every hour or two to use up the money you earned. With a house like the example bey bey showed, that could mean a brute-force profit margin of $1820 at its least efficient. At its most, only $200! That means that any player can log in and net a profit off your house 90 minutes after logging out with 0$ with a wife, or 260 minutes (4 hours 20 minutes) with no wife, even while brute-forcing in the least efficient manner.

This point has been driven home to me by what happened to two of my houses, about a week apart. One contained a well-built trap, which I began with the starting money and added more to as I earned, via salary or robbery. The other contained a worse trap, but one that was positioned such that my only option was to fortify it. House #1 was somehow spared on the first night, with nobody reaching my vault, but somebody getting to my wife; House #2 had a similar fate. However, I used my money in House #1 to built a foolproof trap: easy to die in, impossible to escape from without breaking the trap that activated the pits leading to the vault - 6 of them, preventing anybody from getting at my money. In House #2, I spent my money from that night exclusively on fortifications - 21 pits, winding around concrete. I managed to get some good steals as well, and added a small magic dance to those many pits, requiring the robber to turn back a certain number of steps or the pits would kill them.

Both of these houses stood up for a couple days, but House #1 had the shorter run. Despite having a superior trap, it had a lower brute-force profit margin; somebody simply laddered over my pits once I had over $3600 in salary, from 9 hours away from the game, or from tools from kills. House #2 stood strong for longer as it had a whopping $12,600 brute-force profit margin. The robber who finally took me down did so through a series of scouting missions, dying once or twice, and eventually finding out enough to get though a clean run of my house. This is what, ideally, all robberies should be - using intelligence to get through the traps, and not just brute-forcing over a profit margin, because, frankly, its more fun for both players. I was impressed by the guy who robbed me, and I bet he felt good too. Anybody would agree that it's more fun to have a robbery where you either figure out somebody's house, or find a crack in their defenses where you can break through with only one or two tools and your wits. As a homeowner, it's more interesting to see these tapes than those of somebody with 20 ladders.

In summary:

Actually solving a house is more fun than brute forcing it, for both the robber and the homeowner, but many houses are simply getting cracked because of their brute-force profit margin. Frankly, it's no fun to find your house simply laddered over or cut through, but that's what seems to be happening, and we need to find a solution to make robbing about overcoming traps on the fly, using only your wit and as few tools as you can, not about just loading up on ladders and walking to somebody's vault.

I'm surprised that you died while fixing your house, dalleck, as I've had my internet drop out entirely while in build mode and still not died. However, that may have been in the initial build mode, before I had a house. Could that make a difference?

Returning to the original purpose of this thread: The design I'm about to show was by far my most successful since v9. I had over $10,000 and many paintings before I was robbed the first time (not including the guy who killed my wife ), days after I first built the house. It evolved from a simple design I made quite cheaply, but then I added more and more, trying to make a more difficult trap. This is what ultimately killed me; I died while trying to add a cat-based magic dance to the later part of the house, which already had a cat. However, I took one too many steps in a certain direction, killing the cat and trapping me in my own house: a childless widower, dying alone in the midst of his own traps.

Here's the staring design: http://castlefortify.com/c/6a84121
And here's what I ended up with: http://castlefortify.com/c/e4c1653

Nice update. Definitely helps lower houses protect their wives, leaving more houses on the list... effectively fixing one problem while helping fix another. Do the new rules apply only to pit bulls, only to dogs, or to all animals? Because if the same applied to cats, it might make for some interesting designs...

I think I found a bug. In my tapes, somebody robs me, resulting in an empty vault. Somebody then dies in my house. The next tape has the money re-split between my vault and wife, despite me not logging in between (the death counter didn't reset, so I know I didn't.) What happened? Does death reset the vault money?

Last man standing on permaperma seems reasonable. Something cooler might be in the works, though. A competition, with real money tied to each player account, distributed between wife and vault normally. If you're robbed, that money is taken, and when you die, you get to keep the money you had at that point (or it goes to your killer!).

However, I agree with Matrix that this would only appeal to the hardcore players; what the game needs, instead, are new players. Looking back to when I started playing, I would have been out of a permaperma competition before I even tried to rob a house.

Great update. Just one question: can an animal see you from across the map, or do you need to be a certain proximity from them for them to start following you? Because if they can see you from across the map, there will just be a 30-long line of pits before a window for a magic dance.

Good point, bey bey. Often, my v9 and v10 traps feature multiple routes, some simply being "kill routes" and some being survivable. My better houses, however, are usually well-designed death traps; Traps like the one I posted earlier (http://castlefortify.com/c/648d5e2) function well because of psychology. Players will often go down and to the right, dooming themselves to the hungry maw of the pit bull above them. The first person who successfully robbed me did so by luck, because they went upwards instead of down-right and happened to trigger the trap properly.

My next house, the second incarnation of which fell recently, fixed this problem by killing any way the player goes. It got over 30 kills total in the first day, and a few more the next morning before I died stupidly after a successful robbery of my house. I rebuilt, and got a bunch more kills before my cat killed me my jumping on the keyboard, hurling the poor little collection of pixels that was me into one of my own dogs: http://castlefortify.com/c/3e1031e

The point I'm getting at is that a house that turns non-committment moves (like checking the bottom-right corridor on my first house, or going either way too early on my second) into commitment moves without the robber knowing until it's too late is a viable strategy. A house like this is also very hard to scout without bringing expensive tools, like a gun, to get your way out alive. My second house finally got cracked over a long period of time by some player cutting walls, scouting, and dying, before coming back later to make similar cuts.

I'm also trying to work on some new house designs to kill smarter players. These would use electronics to turn things on that logically shouldn't be able to without v8-style complexities in the wiring. A good example would be 4 doors, all off, with a rotary switch in the middle. Hitting the rotary switch causes all the doors to close, trapping the player; most players, however, wouldn't expect this to happen, and it would hopefully get some kills that way. Another idea I have involves an important mechanic that differentiates powered doors from pits and zap-floors. I won't say what it is yet, as I might use it in an upcoming house.

My favorite thing about the chills mechanic is how it balances lower value houses. A viable strategy that I've been utilizing is building a house that tricks people down certain routes and kills them with pit bulls. People will often come in, seeing that my house is only worth a few hundred bucks, with few or even no tools, and get killed while trying to scout it out. This gives the house protection from that person for an hour, allowing it to get some more money. It results in many lower houses getting kills, but then not instantly being cut through by the next life of the robber who died. However, magic dances for trapdoor paths, a popular strategy among the rich, don't get kills, and therefore can be tried repeatedly by a robber.

Time to build a death trap! My next house might be awfully...chilly.