How to survive on top?

MMaster · 2014-02-12 09:21:51

Hi there everyone,

I'm playing this game for like 2 weeks and after losing some houses I just hit 1st place with my house value as Roger John Alston (the guy that was on first place until then) tried to brute force it 2 times in a row and died on 2nd try. I'm an electrical engineer and computer software/network systems architect IRL. I really like this game and making unique traps is just so much fun, but I see that brute forcing is quite strong when you are at top 8 places as I discovered. I tried to protect my house from brute forcing as much as I can, but I can see that it's only matter of time until someone obliterates everything I have.
What would you pros suggest to survive on top places? I know I can start brute forcing houses that are lower value and prolong my time on top places using this technique, but I don't want to do that (yet ;-) ).

What I'm more interested in is if you can share what are the techniques that you use to discourage brute forcing?

Edit: I tried to use some paradox circuits to discourage wall braking (it's working really well I must say :-) ) and circuit where when you break the wall it will turn on the traps, but that is still not enough as people just brute force the traps that went off.

Last edited by MMaster (2014-02-12 09:25:57)

jere · 2014-02-12 09:32:44

I'm an electrical engineer and computer software/network systems architect IRL

You're in good company. The game tends to draw in that type of person. I'm a developer with an EE/CPE degree by the way.

I agree with you on the bruteforcing and I have given my opinion here: http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … php?id=723

I tried to use some paradox circuits to discourage wall braking (it's working really well I must say :-) ) and circuit where when you break the wall it will turn on the traps, but that is still not enough as people just brute force the traps that went off.

Yea I spent some time yesterday thinking about having an entire house that is one circuit and if you cut a single wall, all the hallways (trapdoors) in the house become unsafe. It sounds good, but the reality is it's beaten with one ladder and ~100 saws, so... still about $20k will knock out anyone using that kind of defense.

Ultimately, you're going to have to build a house that isn't highly dependent on wired wooden walls.

but I can see that it's only matter of time until someone obliterates everything I have.

I don't think brute forcing will actually be addressed for the simple reason that this is a feature working as intended. Everyone is supposed to fall eventually.

Last edited by jere (2014-02-12 09:34:47)

setz · 2014-02-12 09:48:20

I agree with you on this but it is just the way that the game has evolved over the last year. Early on in game development you COULD NOT stack tools. You could ONLY carry 8 tools, which made brute forcing IMPOSSIBLE. But it also lead to EVERY house having 9-think walls. Stackable tools were implemented for this reason.

At this point spending 2000 on tools and then chain robbing until you get enough to Brute Force a high value house seems the best way to play. That being said, I just had a house in the top 3 pages yesterday by finally robbing a house worth $55,000 and then only to be brute-forced myself later in the evening. There is a problem with the current state of the game as well as all the influx of new players being polarized but we'll see. The game has constantly evolved over the last year and its at a pretty good, well rounded state right now.

MMaster · 2014-02-12 10:43:35

Hi jere, thanks for your reply.

I understand that brute forcing is part of the game as are the combination locks. Both of which are quite questionable from the gameplay point of view IMHO. But on the other side you are right that it makes the game more fun when the people on the top places are changing. But I think the time will come when there will be someone with loads of time like Mr Price that will destroy everyone being even remotely close to having enough money to brute force his house.

I have to say that the only thing that saved me from Roger was combination lock which is impossible to make more than 1 guess which I'm planning to remove soon as I don't like the idea of it being basically unsolvable, but it helped me to survive some brute forcing attempts. Nobody from hundreds of people that died in my house solved even 1 of my traps yet, even Roger that broke into all the electronics from the first 2 traps was not able to solve (AFAIK) them second time he came in, which is kind of sad as I can see most of the people just brute force not even trying to solve the problems (which is why my house was so successful from the beginning as when you did wrong move all traps in the house were turned on with no way to disable them again).

EDIT: just after I wrote this there was one man that went through my traps like a boss without tools I'm really sorry 'Dennis' (if you're reading this) for the combo lock And thanks for finding hole in my design

I already built 6 button combo lock where each button has 4 states which I think gives 4096 combinations and is really hard to guess when you don't know there are counters behind the buttons and as much fun as it was to design it there is no fun in solving it so I just threw it away.
I know there is no way to remove the combination locks from the game as simple crossing where you can choose path to go is basically one bit combination lock and when you stack multiple crossings you have multiple bit combination lock so theoretically combination lock is just series of traps put into small area making one large trap that is really hard to guess. Anyway it helped me survive, but I don't like it. Maybe I will not remove the lock, but instead show people the right combination (using lights or so) if they successfully solve my traps.

One way I was thinking about solving brute forcing problems was to force robber to have 9-10 different tools in order to brute force the house (as he can have only 8), but I didn't find a way to do so yet. The wired wooden walls are always the weak point as there is nothing else with similar function (blocking view and conducting electricity).

It was easy to lure people into my house and kill them from the start, but now I'm facing problem where I need to scare them to go away and leave me my money That's also why I changed my very inviting house to be much more scary from the beginning. Funny thing is that now ~10% of the kills are just people that come and jump to the regular pit after 2 moves

Last edited by MMaster (2014-02-12 11:29:25)

MMaster · 2014-02-12 10:50:09

setz wrote:

I agree with you on this but it is just the way that the game has evolved over the last year. Early on in game development you COULD NOT stack tools. You could ONLY carry 8 tools, which made brute forcing IMPOSSIBLE. But it also lead to EVERY house having 9-think walls. Stackable tools were implemented for this reason.

I read about that and I completely agree with the change, but IMHO 8 kinds of tools is too much (at least with current set of house assets). It should be possible to stack tools, but I think there should be less tool slots. That way when you make even 10-think walls people can take 10 saws, or explosives or whatever, but they will not have all kinds of tools that are needed to break every trap in the house, but they will only be able to take the tools so they can return home and not get locked out at the beginning or break a few traps that they really don't know how to solve, but not all of them without even seeing them before.

arakira · 2014-02-12 11:24:32

Welcome MMaster! You can have a look at this interesting thread about the numbers of different tools you could practically force the robber to use here: http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … php?id=576

Last edited by arakira (2014-02-12 11:25:18)

MMaster · 2014-02-12 13:05:45

arakira wrote:

Welcome MMaster! You can have a look at this interesting thread about the numbers of different tools you could practically force the robber to use here: http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … php?id=576

Hello Arakira. Thanks for that link. That's what I thought - it is practically impossible to build house that cannot be brute forced without even seeing it by rich robber that takes lots of tools, if he knows what he is doing (he probably wouldn't be rich by jumping to regular pits )

I understand both sides - the ones that are mainly building houses are pissed about brute forcing and the ones that are robbing them are pissed about the traps that are virtually impossible to solve without seeing behind walls.

Unfortunately that leads to the state where robbers are just trying to get enough money to brute force house and house builders trying to build houses that are impossible to solve without knowing internals of the house. However it's hard to say whether it can be any better as house builders will always try to build impossible to solve houses and robbers will always try to circumvent traps without spending days figuring it out. So maybe this is how it is supposed to be

Another solution to this that I was thinking of is to have some kind of rewards for building entertaining house so house builders would try to build houses that would get them some 'impressions' from robbers or something like that. Maybe the 'impressions' could be permanent = some kind of stat/attribute of the account (not the game character) so people would try to get impressions and not be so sad after being robbed (therefore not trying to build impossible houses with lots of combination locks that are not fun to solve).

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-12 17:49:54

Hey MMaster - I was Mr Alston and was a bit silly not leaving an exit path for myself. And I was all set to begin another stint at the top...

Anyway, in terms of staying at the top yours was a pretty good design - certainly as my time as Mr Price I didn't come across many houses that were that hard to brute force. I can see that your combo lock was probably your biggest weakness - If I'd had a chance to come back I would have just dug into it to figure out the combination, so a more clever design would make sure that breaking through the house will make sure the combination won't work.

Still, if you want to stay at the top creating a house that is solvable without brute forcing is not an option. There is still a lot of skill in creating a good design that is not easy to peak through and solve though. So, the game at the top is definitely not about creating clever puzzles - if you want to do that it is better to keep your house no higher than the $30k mark. It is more a tactical game about trying to build the house that is hardest to break through - trying to build a house that will withstand chain robbers that have $120k of tools and come into your house blind (this is possible) and also robbers that take there time to scout and figure out the layout.

I'm not going to give away all of the ways to do this - that is something you can figure out yourself - but the main thing is to force them to use a variety of uncommon tools. Saws are extremely common, as Price I had over 1000 of the things, and so any house that can be broken through with mostly just saws is quite vulnerable. So you have to find ways to force the player to use explosives, ladders, crowbars, torches and/or wire cutters to solve your house as these tools are much less common and less likely to be in abundance on a chain robbing roll.

Perhaps someday someone will put up a blue-print server and those players interested can try to come up with the most crazy electronics we can think of. Until then though, I think staying at the top is an interesting challenge as it is.

MMaster · 2014-02-13 06:15:05

joshwithguitar wrote:

Hey MMaster - I was Mr Alston and was a bit silly not leaving an exit path for myself. And I was all set to begin another stint at the top...
Anyway, in terms of staying at the top yours was a pretty good design - certainly as my time as Mr Price I didn't come across many houses that were that hard to brute force.

Hey! It's an honor to read those lines from you I was really afraid when I saw you came second time - I was sure that I'm done after your second run. I was sure that my house is not ready for such "big game", but the safe was protected quite well against brute forcing (unfortunately I didn't have time to separate second line of trapdoors from combo lock which would make brute forcing much harder. Fortunately you didn't see all the trap doors on the first run so you were not fully prepared. Btw. the door that stopped you from getting out were not supposed to do that

joshwithguitar wrote:

I can see that your combo lock was probably your biggest weakness - If I'd had a chance to come back I would have just dug into it to figure out the combination, so a more clever design would make sure that breaking through the house will make sure the combination won't work.

You are actually right. I was planning to separate second line of trap doors from the combo lock and put some kind of clock there instead as I saw the vulnerability there, but I didn't have time to do that yet (it's really time consuming to spend all the money when you gain several thousand an hour). Powering the combo lock from the previous traps is actually really good idea - thanks!

joshwithguitar wrote:

Still, if you want to stay at the top creating a house that is solvable without brute forcing is not an option.

I was thinking the same way as I can see that any trap is cheaper to circumvent in areas where you can freely walk than it is to dig through whole map of walls/doors/trapdoors, because you didn't do some magic dance where you were supposed to. So the first part of the house was to get money and second part was to protect the safe from bruteforcers.

Thanks a lot for your insights

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-02-12 09:21:51

How to survive on top?

#2 2014-02-12 09:32:44

Re: How to survive on top?

#3 2014-02-12 09:48:20

Re: How to survive on top?

#4 2014-02-12 10:43:35

Re: How to survive on top?

#5 2014-02-12 10:50:09

Re: How to survive on top?

#6 2014-02-12 11:24:32

Re: How to survive on top?

#7 2014-02-12 13:05:45

Re: How to survive on top?

#8 2014-02-12 17:49:54

Re: How to survive on top?

#9 2014-02-13 06:15:05

Re: How to survive on top?

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