Ratropolis (Slay the Spire mixed with Kingdom)

I started this game and got wrecked in the tutorial. Several times.

Dom said:

I had the same experience. I was doing fine and then some huge waves came with new enemies and just steamrolled me. I thought it was just teaching me how to repair or whatever, but then it was game over.

I halfway wonder if it isn't an anti-piracy measure or something.

Click to expand...

I didn't pirate the game.

Finally beat wave 30 yesterday, which means I beat the normal game-mode.

Besides normal there is also a nightmare mode, it doesn't stop at 30, I've seen at least one person that made it to wave 155, so this game certainly offers a good amount of challenge for its price.

The 5th commander was spoiled, it should be released soon.

The gameplay has a much higher pace then slay the spire, this doesn't affect each commander / build equally, but I've often found myself pressured into making less then optimal choices.

Really recommend this for anyone looking for a challenging indie game.

Dom said:

I had the same experience. I was doing fine and then some huge waves came with new enemies and just steamrolled me. I thought it was just teaching me how to repair or whatever, but then it was game over.

I halfway wonder if it isn't an anti-piracy measure or something.

Click to expand...

Waves 10, 20 and 30 have boss mobs. Wave 20 can have a boss that 1-shots the first wooden wall it encounters, so if you have a wooden wall when it is incoming, withdraw your army to the next inner wall.

Waves 6, 16 and 26 are stronger then regular waves also.

I beat it on the general commander. Early game I grabbed all the houses and defensive walls I could, along with a pikerat and the "training" card. I thinned out my deck, removing the grain, militia and the 3 starter cheese, and picked up a guardian, medic, and longbowrat.

Having both a bunch of military cards (on general) and high amount of houses gives a lot of population, due to a relatively small deck I could repeatedly cast "training" in between using commander ability, each cast of training adds +1 to the commander ability for its next use, so I was regularly using it at +15.

Waves 11-20 have a lot of ranged-resistant mobs, but having about 30 mobs on each wall (8ish pike, 15ish guards, rest should be boosted medics and a guardian or two) gives enough DPS to clear through them. Once past 20 this setup becomes stronger since mobs no longer have shields against the guard spear spam, which is very strong with the pikemen keeping mobs in place. Longbowrats can attack from 1 wall behind the one where your army is fighting, so they are free dps, though they can't match the dps 2 guards do, doubt I'll pick them again.

Waves 1-10 have mobs that can jump over walls. While its theoretically possible to only have ranged units from wave 11 on, I find the waves will wreck my walls too fast unless I use melee mobs.

Medics are an absolute necessity, waves 20-30 have quite a bit of AE mobs that will destroy your frontline troops if you don't have them.

OP buildings:
- tavern: lets you copy a card every 120 seconds
- baracks: lets you +2/8 a military card every 120 seconds

There is a card that reduces these timers by 2 seconds for every mob you kill, this makes these buildings broken. Using a tavern to copy barracks is similarly broken.

- barn: gives you 8 gold whenever you discard a card. Getting this very early, while rerolling is only 20-40 gold, lets you spam the reroll button for free gold. Multiple (upgraded) barns make this viable later in game
- tannery: while +4 bounty / kill doesn't seem like much, the building is only 40 gold, so it earns itself back in 1 wave, later in the game when waves increase in size and frequency, a few tanneries provide loads of gold

Will give it a try on another leader soon and report back.