Well if you have not yet beat it and you are to then your story is not yet over. And as stories go they tend to be longer once they are finished.

That is quite the epic story Doushibag.

I mentioned in another thread that the lower limit of challenge 2 might be 28 turns. I was wrong about this. The lower limit is at least 26 turns, as I have just achieved a victory of 27 turns while making some absent minded mistakes, and having AI3 amazingly anticipate and block my expansion on three occasions. Also, AI4 did not attack an abandon I set for him; thanks for making the AI at least somewhat unpredictable Randy. That said, I also enjoyed some good fortune in the game with a cumulative luck of ~+20.

Since Ruthless did start this thread looking for strategies for obtaining a victory on challenge 2, I will give you this hint.
In my most recent game the last time AI1 played a card was turn 18.

that is quite amazing mor.

And thanks for that hint.

The lower limit of challenge 1 is at least 22, as that is my current score.

actually, the lowest so far is 20 which was accomplished by Mor. But 22 is really good! I can't imagine beating that fast. I beat it in 33 and haven't tried since.

I would like to apologize for my previous post in this thread, I just went back and read it, and it is a bit more than pretentious.

Elucidar, I do not know if you are still trying to decrease your turn number on challenge 2, but based on your current turn number I would say you are only two operational level moves away from a victory in the upper 20s.

Randy, I am sure you were going to continue to do this, but please post whenever a new player achieves victory on challenge 2.

hey hey, just beat challenge 2. about time. that thing is a beast. 40 turns. strategy is all about timing your confrontation with AI in certain choke points when abandon cards are up.

Nicely done, The Man! You're the 8th person to beat it.

Ashmizen holds the record for beating it in the fewest turns. Challenge 2 is the only level that mor doesn't hold the record on!

26 ashmizen
27 mor
33 Doushibag
36 Elucidar
44 Dr. Kabamf
44 The Man
47 Devil's Crank
63 General Sticky Pants

Don't lie Randy. He doesn't hold the record on Level 4. Also technically I haven't beaten the current challenge 2.

Yes, I grudge you long time. Thanks for the list though.

A next/prev button at the top of the page instead of just below all the posts might be nice.

Speaking of Level4, why doesnt it show up in Silverlight version?

I think its a little gem for Flash and is an incentive for us to move to the other side

Yes, the forum sucks for threads that go beyond one page currently. I have an item on my list to fix it, it just got put as a lower priority than the Flash client. Rest assured, it's coming!

Finally beat challenge 2!!! It took me 41 turns, which isn't awesome, but I'll take it!

Nice work, protagoras007!

Nice! First post to have a Jump to last page link. Go me!

actually...i think it's any thread that has more than 20 posts :(

but still, nice tweak!

Well out of curiosity, with the changes in AI card use that phase 14 brought I decided to beat challenge 2 again. So on Sunday I sat down to play it. I was wondering how much harder/easier it would be now that things would be a bit different. I didn't have a lot of time so I didn't watch any turns play out (skip to end on all turns), but I did manage to beat it in 39 turns (had I had more time and watched turns I probably could have trimmed a couple turns off atleast). This seems not that much different from how it was before since I beat the previous version once, although didn't get to finish it due to time constraint, and I'd wager it was going to take about the same amount of turns that time I beat it.

I was thinking since one AI wasn't using all the cards abandons might not be as effective and predicting the AI might be harder. That they might also have more attacking power on the areas you don't block off, but it didn't seem too bad. Maybe slightly harder. Still quite beatable though, incase anyone was wondering. I'm not sure what it takes to get a score as low as ~26 turns though as I've never beat it that quickly.

The challenge is pretty time consuming and a way to save and resume play on it would be nice. As it seems to take ~2 hours to play it in a rush.

Are we ever going to see a challenge 3 or perhaps you're waiting to see what people come up with on that offer to make your own you tossed out at some point?

Good information! Even though I keep hoping this thread will die. :)

Saving single player games is a commonly requested feature. Unfortunately I didn't think of it when I first started writing the single-player portion so I didn't plan ahead, and now it will take some extra effort to implement. Some day, though!

If there was a challenge 3, I would expect it to be another big set up in difficulty over challenge 2. I'm not sure that is possible, since challenge 2 is pretty much as hard as it can be. Balancing single player levels in general is pretty time consuming. I don't currently have any plans for any more from me since I'd rather spend my time on adding new features (there's a new card type in phase 15!), but I'd love to see some user-created ones.

I don't think a challenge 3 would have to necessarily be a big step up in difficulty, perhaps just a difficulty that is different enough such that it doesn't feel like you're using the same basic strategy to beat 2 and 3. So tough, but tough in a different way if that's possible which I think it is.

What does it take to create and test a single player level? If there was a way to do it that could be done solely in the browser, without having to go through you, and could be highly reiterative then I'd probably be inclined to take a stab at making one and see what I could come up with.

As for this thread dying, you just guaranteed it will live longer than it would have if you hadn't said that! :P

I will take the duty of reviving this one from time to time

Muahahah!