I keep losing because of points

[Zorglub]

As title say. The computer is never anywhere close to beat me by filling up the screen and I know I can drop more lines but no matter what I do, no matter how long my combos are, I keep losing because, somehow, the computer reaches 0 before me.

Even on easy mode, I only get victory with very little margin despite clearing my screen twice as fast as the AI.

What's wrong with this game ? How are the points calculated ?

I used to beat Magical Drop II and III on the hardest settings and never encountered such issue.

It doesn't help that the starting character is absolute trash.

[Note]

Hmmmm, you mentioned having experience with Magical Drop 2 & 3 but just in case, are you aware that the counter only counts down the orbs you've cleared when you're not chaining? I'm wondering if there are moments where you would've won, but kept chaining so the counter didn't go down at a crucial time, then the AI caught up.

Also, it's generally true that longer chains lead to sending ice and trickier patterns to the opponent, but it also ends up sending lots of lines of orbs to the opponent (compared to if you made shorter chains). Sometimes this is negligible as you'll be able to just pressure the opponent enough to the point where they lose, but this could be something that might be occurring too. Perhaps you're sending your opponent lots of lines but they're not sending you as many in return, so they get ahead on the Quota Of course, one could just manually feed in more lines, but attack lines come in quicker (if I understand correctly).

That's all I've got in terms of what I think might be happening (and I assume there's no trickery behind the scenes), hope this helps!

[MukiEX]

Originally posted by Zorglub:

What's wrong with this game?

So, a couple things are:

1. Screen doesn't auto-replenish. So you have to actually manually pull down the well with a third face button. And you have to do it often.
2. Any chain beyond 2 is now worthless. In Magical Drop III, an 8-chain could just about end the match in the early CPU stages. In Magical Drop VI, an 8-chain will maybe get you an extra row sent to the CPU. So basically, a set of 4 2-chains is worth FAR more than a single 8-chain, which admittedly is a really poor decision on the devs' part.

Spam 2-chains and manually replenish the well and you'll do a lot better, even on Normal.

[Zorglub]

Originally posted by Note:

Hmmmm, you mentioned having experience with Magical Drop 2 & 3 but just in case, are you aware that the counter only counts down the orbs you've cleared when you're not chaining?

In fact, no, I never noticed that !
Probably because winning/losing on points was unusual in 2 and 3. It does explain a lot.

Originally posted by MukiEX:

Originally posted by Zorglub:

What's wrong with this game?

So, a couple things are:

1. Screen doesn't auto-replenish. So you have to actually manually pull down the well with a third face button. And you have to do it often.
2. Any chain beyond 2 is now worthless. In Magical Drop III, an 8-chain could just about end the match in the early CPU stages. In Magical Drop VI, an 8-chain will maybe get you an extra row sent to the CPU. So basically, a set of 4 2-chains is worth FAR more than a single 8-chain, which admittedly is a really poor decision on the devs' part.

Spam 2-chains and manually replenish the well and you'll do a lot better, even on Normal.

I see. So the strategy is not to make long chains. It's a weird choice, to say the least.

Thank you both for the advices.