So how do you start ?

super_maçon · 2014-02-13 05:08:53

So I've been playing since the steam release. And i can't find a way to start that i'm happy with.

I see two way of starting a new game.

1) You start a house with your 2000$ budget.
Here you need to let some money in your safe ( for robbing or attract people ). I'd say that 600$ to 1000$ is a good number, you can do some basic trap, it's let you scout safely and will attract people ( hopefully kill some ) so you can upgrade your house or get some tools.

The thing is you need to be online until you collect a minimum amount to upgrade it enough, when nobody's playing it can take quite some time but if you need to log off on the evening you're pretty much sure your house won't last more that 5/6h00 max if you don't upgrade it before.
I did get to some "middle house value" ( +/- 15 000 $ ) while i had the time for that play and it felt like i was finally able to enjoy the potentiality of the game ( getting some fund to be able to invest into scouting, rob/upgrade etc... )

But as i can't watch my house regularly like that on working days i did try the second option :

2) Take your 5 min to scout what you can and take a shoot at what you could find with a more or less random 2000$ back pack.

What i do love when robbing is taking time to do a good scouting, taking notes about the name and the shape of the house etc... The goal is to understand the logic and successfully rob the house with a minimum amount of tool. I do love that aspect.

But the issue here is that it takes usually more than 5 min to do so ( scouting/notes etc... ). So i need to rush, hoping to get a good intel grab a 2000$ backpack and hope for the best. I don't feel any pressure dying and i loose interest in robbing. There's imo too much luck involved here and pretty much nothing to loose ( i wish a house with the starting placement and 2000$ or less in the vault wouldn't show on the list ).

So my question is how do you guys start a new game ?
Do you spend some time just waiting to have enough fund with your starting design ? Do you rush with a 2000$ backpack hoping to succeed ? Or is there something I'm missing here ?

comg · 2014-02-13 05:26:25

Hey!

I'm usually start a ~1000$ house, fairly intimidating/dangerous (Can't stand for a night, but work OK when I update a bit during the day with misleading clues).

Then I go scouting 9000$ houses (I take every note on CastleDraft and leave as soon as I reach a no-return point). I usually do that 2-3 times, with good tools for going a bit further everytime, if the design interest me.
Until I get to the vault.

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-13 07:36:02

If you want to build something that will survive the night with $2000 try leaving only a small amount in the vault, say $200. It will take a long time before money starts rolling in and so hopefully by the time you wake up it won't have inflated too much. I'm still experimenting with this as I tend to get a robbery out of the way first up but I'm giving it a try today and in about 5 hours I've gone from $200 to $400, which is a pretty good rate if you plan to leave the game for a while. We'll see how I am doing in the morning...

redxaxder · 2014-02-13 07:46:27

Since I've died and had to start over three times this week (this may seem low until you consider I haven't been robbing), I've gotten a restart routine going. First, I build my starter house, which costs about $1400. I camp it for about 30 minutes while doing other things and reset the kill count to zero after every death. Once I have about $500 in bounties I add in a backup dog and some luxury walls and leave the house alone to do other things for ~8 hours. It accumulated $10k while I slept last night. It was at $30k yesterday after I got home from work (this must be a fluke; the design isn't that robust), but I lost the money to a testing death.

While I won't share the design I'm using, I will tell you the principles I follow when designing a house for this purpose.

- I use one dog for the family, placed so that they have to shoot it to pass.

- I only use one trap, but I make it as opaque as possible. I don't want any visitors to learn how the trap works, even if they die to it. My current one revolves around manipulating off screen cat movement.

- Expect people who figure out your traps to visit again. Every time someone figures out a way to pass my trap without tools, I change my starter house design.

- I try to make the house resistant to $2k of tools as soon as possible. For reference, with $2k a robber might have 5 saws, 20 dog treats, 20 water, 5 wire cutters, 13 bricks, 1 gun, 10 clubs, 10 doorstops, 1 ladder. The tools they are most likely to bring are dog treats, water, saws, and bricks.

- Until I can afford to make my walls saw resistant, I bluff. I make every accessible wall at least 2 thick so that they know there's more wood behind it.

Also, based on how confident you are in the design, you can deliberately make the house grow in value slower or faster. If you want the value to grow slower, put an intimidating commit gate right at the entrance. This will scare away the more cautious high bounties looking for an easy score, and keep the value growth slow until you start attracting suicide robbers. If you want the value to grow faster, make the starting screen as inviting as possible; make everything appear safe and predictable to lure people to their death.

Americans17 · 2014-02-13 09:46:30

What i do is make 1600-1800 house, and then rob some easy houses(800-1200 value) First i scout them, then i comeback with some tool (1 drug meat for example) so i can keep scouting intuil i reach the vault

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-13 16:31:53

Well, my experiment was successful - left my house with $400 last night and this morning found my house with $7000 - mostly from a $4100 bounty though so i guess that skews things. Anyway, as long as you are happy to grow slowly it seems leaving a small amount of money in your house overnight is a good strategy.

Pandamonium · 2014-02-13 16:38:41

Americans17 wrote:

What i do is make 1600-1800 house, and then rob some easy houses(800-1200 value) First i scout them, then i comeback with some tool (1 drug meat for example) so i can keep scouting intuil i reach the vault

I haven't been robbing much, do we still get "the chills" after leaving a scouting mission that used tools?

TheRealCheese · 2014-02-13 16:51:56

You only get chills for dying in a house.

Americans17 · 2014-02-13 17:28:43

Pandamonium wrote:

Americans17 wrote:
What i do is make 1600-1800 house, and then rob some easy houses(800-1200 value) First i scout them, then i comeback with some tool (1 drug meat for example) so i can keep scouting intuil i reach the vault
I haven't been robbing much, do we still get "the chills" after leaving a scouting mission that used tools?

No, it only give chills if u die or if you scouted that house and then die(no matter where)

joshwithguitar · 2014-02-13 18:30:17

The whole story is that you get chills on a house:
a) - if you die in it.
b) - if you enter the house with tools and then die later.

Pandamonium · 2014-02-13 18:41:03

joshwithguitar wrote:

The whole story is that you get chills on a house:
a) - if you die in it.
b) - if you enter the house with tools and then die later.

Ah... Thanks!

iceman · 2014-02-13 20:57:13

Also, if you enter a house with tools, and then you die, say 14 hours later, you'd only have 10 hours of chills after you die for the first house, not 24. (Basically, the chills are 24 hours from when you entered the house, not when you died)

super_maçon · 2014-02-14 13:12:49

Hey !

Thank you all for your welcome advices !

I spent time drawing a new design that cost 1340 $. I think it should work well for start.

I can't stay tonight so i have very few hope, but i spent some much time thinking of it that i can do it pretty fast now, so i'll try that on a more free evening and watch the tapes as i scout and take note on my neighborhood, it should work.

This game make me paranoiac, i think i may commit suicide to avoid people scouting it.

Last edited by super_maçon (2014-02-14 13:15:18)

super_maçon · 2014-02-15 02:32:20

Sorry for the double post but i have an other question related to how do you guys begin.
What about the family ?

Sure the mother keep half of the value and you may want to imagine some design with that in mind, but the children ?

I can't see them other than a weakness that allow players to save the damage for only 200$.

As for my little story, no surprise, the house value bump to high and it was destroyed this morning. So second try today, i choose to sacrifice my family, i'm a monster.

Last edited by super_maçon (2014-02-15 02:34:45)

Pandamonium · 2014-02-15 02:46:47

There are some strategies that involve the children.

either stopping the movement of other family members in a specific spot, or relying on them to trigger the alarm.

Then there is the role play objectives as well, protect your family.

it all depends on what you want.

There are strategies that rely on them dying, but... like it said, it depends on what you want to do...

super_maçon · 2014-02-15 03:37:17

Yeah i know they can be used, i did use them with my first set up actually.

But then even more if your design depends on them being alive, you pretty much screw yourself up once they're dead. On the other side you can do pretty much the same ( or even more as you can influence the movement while it's started ) with dog or cats instead, they are way easier to use as they can go over power sources wire etc... And you can replace them if you need to.

And the role play aspect... I'm not convinced.

Kimenzar · 2014-02-15 04:03:00

http://castledraft.com/editor/L0DlQS

That's pretty much my start build, after that i go to scout some 1k houses. And working further and further and after a success i get more pit bulls or make my safe 2k dollar safe with simple traps. Then i build up a safety zone for my family. If i get tools i try to decrease my worth to ~ 1k so i have enough to flexible buy tools or have tools from robberies to use them on the next.

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-02-13 05:08:53

So how do you start ?

#2 2014-02-13 05:26:25

Re: So how do you start ?

#3 2014-02-13 07:36:02

Re: So how do you start ?

#4 2014-02-13 07:46:27

Re: So how do you start ?

#5 2014-02-13 09:46:30

Re: So how do you start ?

#6 2014-02-13 16:31:53

Re: So how do you start ?

#7 2014-02-13 16:38:41

Re: So how do you start ?

#8 2014-02-13 16:51:56

Re: So how do you start ?

#9 2014-02-13 17:28:43

Re: So how do you start ?

#10 2014-02-13 18:30:17

Re: So how do you start ?

#11 2014-02-13 18:41:03

Re: So how do you start ?

#12 2014-02-13 20:57:13

Re: So how do you start ?

#13 2014-02-14 13:12:49

Re: So how do you start ?

#14 2014-02-15 02:32:20

Re: So how do you start ?

#15 2014-02-15 02:46:47

Re: So how do you start ?

#16 2014-02-15 03:37:17

Re: So how do you start ?

#17 2014-02-15 04:03:00

Re: So how do you start ?

Board footer