What do you do vs Basilica if you draw all your military buildings early?

[PizzaSHARK]

It takes several turns to stack up enough terrain to block out the charging stations, so it feels like this boss is just blind RNG. Had a good run? Screw you, you'll draw all your military stations and use them to reinforce the boss!

It's a brutally unfair double dip where you not only lose the ability to increase your own forces, but also reinforce the boss that already has an absolute ton of fighting strength.

Are you just supposed to waste your time doing several runs in a row before you get the combination of unlocked cards and good RNG before you're allowed to win? I've seen that before in poorly designed roguelites but this game seemed pretty well designed up to this point.

[ulia]

The mechanic converts buildings with garrison equal to or below the conversion meter value when the building is placed. The described scenario can definitely occur, but is contingent on having a build with low starting garrison buildings and drawing pretty much all of them in a row very early on. Some builds go entirely unaffected by this as the conversion meter will typically cap at around 30-40 around the time you've covered all seals, while a few other builds may have a little bit of a harder time with it.

It is not really an RNG check as you had the option to check what boss you're up against at the very beginning of the act and could have built your deck to counter it. Taking your time to neatly stack your tetrominoes is not always the strategy, especially when you get to the Nightmare difficulty where you will commonly have to sacrifice resource gained from clearing lines so you can focus on the boss mechanics instead. In the case of the Basilica, covering seals with as few moves as possible while leaving just enough space to place your buildings.

And if you're not opposed to save-scumming then you could reload the save and try again with a new draw order.

[PizzaSHARK]

That's the problem. I don't have a lot of unlocks. The highest garrison I have is 20, while everything else has 0 garrison and relies on stacking tiles, such as watchtowers, training camps, strategic pavilions and so on. These have minimal strength without tile stacking, but the priority has to be to pile terrain up to block the charging stations so if you're forced to play these tiles then they're basically guaranteed to get stolen. And now you have to ensure you don't place any tiles that amp them.

150 strength on a map that already deliberately denies you the ability to arrange good terrain adjacency is a pretty high ask to begin with, let alone with it stealing your strength. Doable but it seems overly reliant on RNG. My first run failed by 4 strength. Bad resource management meant I went in with less than the full 60 defense and it cost me. Second run got there with full 60 defense and all used cards upgraded to at least rank 2 (and not too many resources leftover, so much more effective use of them) and I was over 90 strength short.

Just feels way too reliant on RNG. What are some things I can do to mitigate it? Are there any cards or mechanics I should focus on getting in the tech tree? I've just been going straight up the tree and not exploring the branches.

[jafferduo]

Now you already know there may be a boss like that, you can rethinking what cards are better for them.
I don't know which faction you pick in the beginning, but if you still haven't unlocked all 12 missions for them, you should just play normal or lower difficulty.
(Well, expert players will beat Normal difficulty with no problem even if they don't unlock anything.)

Well, about the tech tree, if you don't know what stuffs are better, just go straight up for Blacksmith.

[ulia]

Originally posted by PizzaSHARK:

Just feels way too reliant on RNG. What are some things I can do to mitigate it? Are there any cards or mechanics I should focus on getting in the tech tree? I've just been going straight up the tree and not exploring the branches.

Military Hospital and Prison are both pivotal early game cards, the hospital being notably better due to how cheap it is to upgrade. They're both incredibly common in the draft pool and the hospital synergizes with using your defense pool as a resource, taking the 15 damage at resource depots to activate it's effect. 300 food / 200 gold gets you a 50 light units building before you've even fought your second hostile region in act 1. Defense points don't matter when you overkill the enemies, use them as a tactical resource.

You can also gain a lot of units at once from scaling buildings by not placing them until there's enough activation adjacencies on the field. A T3 Rally Point placed in a slot that fits it gets to 55 units immediately, and a T3 Watchtower can get much more than that.

With all of that said, the strategy against the Basilica is not to try and cheese the meter, but not allowing the meter to exceed 30-40. Adjacency reliant builds will have a harder time against it (which again is not an RNG check, but using a suboptimal build against the bosses mechanics) but the strategy against it doesn't really change.

Due to the way the seals are positioned you will need to forego using the left or right pocket entirely as it is much quicker to climb to the uppermost seals from the central building than the bottom. You're not gathering resources or optimizing your tetromino regions, but using the least amount of moves possible to reach the top most seals. Long pieces are no longer for scoring a tetris, but to reach the top most seals.

To reduce the verbosity I will write this as though I've decided on tackling the right hand side first, but you can start with either side to preference or to the situation.

- Your first 2 moves will block the bottom left and bottom right seals. You can do this with most buildings too as the meter will not have grown enough to claim them.
- Your following 2 moves build up from the upper right corner of the Basilica building, ideally covering the third seal in 2 moves (4 total).
- Next you tackle the upper right seal, again in 2 two moves if you can. If you get a long piece then that may be better spent to start the climb on the left side.

You're now at 2 seals remaining in 6 moves and most probably have not had any buildings, maybe one throwaway building claimed. You can now begin the climb towards the two seals on the left while considering your adjacencies and positioning. Most adjacencies don't need an intricate setup. Buildings like the Watchtower happens to be one of the worse buildings against the Basilica, but something like a Rally Point only cares about what's directly next to it and as such is not too difficult to both climb and get a good amount of units with.

And if your build has high default garrison or end of turn garrison buildings (Military Hospital, Prison, Castle, Commandery, Raider Colony e.t.c) then you can remove that from your mind entirely. All you need to do from here on out is rush towards the remaining two seals like you did with the initial four while leaving just enough space for your military buildings.

The Basilica is for sure arguably the more difficult of the bosses, but it is solvable every time if you build your deck against it, and play to counter it's mechanics. You'll soon learn that the real RNG check final boss is actually The Gate in act 1 on Nightmare difficulty

[PizzaSHARK]

Originally posted by jafferduo:

Now you already know there may be a boss like that, you can rethinking what cards are better for them.
I don't know which faction you pick in the beginning, but if you still haven't unlocked all 12 missions for them, you should just play normal or lower difficulty.
(Well, expert players will beat Normal difficulty with no problem even if they don't unlock anything.)

Well, about the tech tree, if you don't know what stuffs are better, just go straight up for Blacksmith.

I'm only 2 runs in so it's Duchy. With a pretty serious lack of buildings with decent garrison values, I think the best option might be to just sell everything but the wooded forts (which have a decent 20 garrison at rank 3) and buy mercs instead, since they're 25 apiece and have no adjacency mechanics. Round out remaining spaces with training camps I guess, since they can't be stolen.

[jafferduo]

Originally posted by PizzaSHARK:

I'm only 2 runs in so it's Duchy. With a pretty serious lack of buildings with decent garrison values, I think the best option might be to just sell everything but the wooded forts (which have a decent 20 garrison at rank 3) and buy mercs instead, since they're 25 apiece and have no adjacency mechanics. Round out remaining spaces with training camps I guess, since they can't be stolen.

Well, at the beginning that you have very few unlocks, I'll recommend you to go Mountains.
Because mountain terrain won't be transferred, it can handle easy and normal difficulty nicely, I prefer Old Tower and Stone Fortress for military.
You can always play Easy difficulty until all 12 faction missions unlocked, though.