Warlords - nice little hex tactical

Hi folks!

I started with a new game a while ago: "Warlords", a nice little hex-field, turn-based, tactical fantasy game in the ever-fashionable "Orcs vs Humans" genre.

Forget about the minimal storyline. You're in control of a group of regiments, of five different classes (warriors, pikes, cavalry, archers and mages), each led by a different hero. Each class has different strengths and weaknesses, of the paper-rock-scissors - variety.

Heroes gain XP, level up, and can be equipped with personal and battalion-level upgrades. Battles usually involve between three and five of your own regiments, and three to seven enemy ones.

Battles are short, and the game is quite snappy, with relatively low battery impact. All in all, it's a fun, non-brain-dead way to spend some minutes.

Financial aspects

Warlords has the common system of dual currencies - gold and diamonds (which are rare, and can be bought for real world money). There are no ads, which is a nice touch for a free-to-play game.

The game also doesn't rub "SPEND $$$ NOW OR FACE MASSIVE PAIN" in your face. Cash is earned by winning battles, and used to buy upgrades.

The main "nagging" system is wait-based. When a battalion is damaged in battle, it takes some time for it to recover to full strength. This is actually a neat strategic aspect, and not annoying at all. Of course, you could spend diamonds to skip that wait.

The second wait aspect is upgrade time - the higher the upgrade level, the longer the wait. Again, you could use diamonds to skip that, but it's really not necessary.

Lastly, you can use diamonds to buy "regiment shards", either via the merchant or the premium crate system, to level-up for better weapons and armour.

Obtaining premium currency

The ingame store is rather pricey - you can't do much with the $8 minimum purchase. A better way is to get diamonds through the
game, and not waste them on impatience.

There's a chance for getting diamonds in the Raider missions, and you get some for ranking in the monthly leaderboard as well.

Of course, you get regimental shards (the only thing you'd really want to spend diamonds on) occasionally for winning battles, so it's really more of a booster effect to get ahead in the game quickly.

Conclusion

All in all, I really quite like the game. It's well-designed, the developers are responsive, it's easy on the battery and loading times, non-naggy in terms of real-world $$$ and ad-free. I can recommend anyone who's into fantasy / turn-based-tactical to give it a go.

CSR Classics - making money

Hi folks!

After spending a bit of time with CSR Classics, here are some tips on how to get a decent amount of fun out of it, while not spending much money.

As mentioned previously, the primary means of real-world monetary extraction is the "secondary currency" trope, here called "gold". But before we get to that, let's look into the primary currency, "cash".

Cash

With cash, we can buy a fairly large number of cars, we can fully restore them, and we can get some customisations as well. You get cash for winning drag races. The races themselves give some amount of reward, but the big item here are "decals".

Decals are more-or-less decorative stickers we can put on our cars, and for some reason, they trigger a bonus when winning the race, which can more than double the amount you make.

Now, there are decals you can get for cash, and then there are those you can get for gold. Obviously, the best ones cost gold.

Gold

Which brings us, really, to the one most legitimate use of the sparse "free gold" the game is giving you: get decent decals. The extra cash doesn't seem all that important at the beginning, but it is essential to get anywhere without spending gold on stuff (which the game obviously tries to make us do).

Cars are divided into five tiers, and there are five levels in the game, with their respective bosses along the storyline. Each level has a couple of story races, special races, and the most important one: "regulation" races, which are infinite, and that's where we do our farming.

Goals

Considering that the tier five cars can easily cost millions in total to upgrade, that extra cash is really essential. So here's what we want to do:

Get a tier five car with the best possible decal

That'll give you about 20k cash per regulation race. On a single tank load, that's 200k, which takes a couple of minutes to get. With that kind of income under our belt, we can unlock most of the cash-only contents in the lower tiers easily. 

Strategy 

The primary means of getting there as fast as possible is focus. The game tries its best to distract you, with seemingly "high prize money" special races, multiplayer races and so on. 

Don't fall for any of this. The brand-specific races, while giving relatively high cash rewards, actually require a far bigger investment into upgrading a particular car to the level required to win these. It's a net loss.

Multiplayer gives almost nothing in terms of cash rewards, compared to what you can make on regulation in stage 5, while trying hard to get you to spend gold.

So, here it is: Focus on the story mode races, maybe spend some of the gold from the initial level-ups on a good decal early on, but save as much gold as you can for the stage five car.

I've gone with the Ford GT 40, but just pick whatever you're most comfortable with.

Upgrades

There are six areas you can upgrade your car:

• body : this unlocks decals, get it up to stage 4 as a priority, otherwise you're just wasting money with each race
• wheels : better wheels stop spinning earlier, which means you can nitro earlier. This is the second upgrade, after body, that affects the looks
• engine : stage 4 is essential here, as it increases top speed
• gearbox : quicker shifts
• carburettor : more engine power (acceleration)
• exhaust : the same, really
• nitro : longer boost times

I'd recommend going with body upgrades first to get the decals in. Depending on the kind of car (there are lightweight ones which accelerate quickly, and heavyweight ones with higher top speed), I'd then focus on engine and nitro, with the rest to follow.

Sometimes cheaper upgrades give you better results, so it's always a good idea to see if you can throw in an exhaust upgrade or similar.

That's it, really. Once you've got the cash income, you can collect, start making a bit of gold in multiplayer, finish up the remaining race types and so on.

I honestly got a bit bored with the lack of gameplay in the end, but it's a fun and pretty little game to kill some time occasionally.

CSR Classics

Hi folks!

Today, I'm going to talk about a different game I've been spending some time on the past days - CSR Classics. Basically, after the somewhat exhausting NFS Lunar New Year event, I wanted have a bit of a break. So let's take a look around in this "free to play" game, and see how we can have fun with it without spending much real world money.

Gameplay

Even for a mobile game, the gameplay is dead simple. My kid is playing "Lego City", which has a section of motorbike drag racing. You press a button to start, and then again to "gear up" when a light goes on. Press the buttons at the right time wins you the game.

This, if we're honest, is exactly how CSR Classics work. Rev the engine so the light goes green. Press "gear up" when the light goes green. Press "nitro" at your leisure. Done. Toddler-grade.

So if it's not the challenging / skilful gameplay, what is interesting about this?

The Good Parts

First thing to note, the graphics. This is, hands down, one of the most beautiful mobile games I've seen. Consistent 50's styling, HD graphics, everything shines and blings. No blocky graphics like we're seeing in NFS these days. Everything is absolutely smooth. Did I mention that the theme is stunning?

The UI integrates well with Android, and doesn't feel like a generic port. Controls are working the usual ways, including the back button. This "native" feel also shows up in resource usage - even on extended play sessions, this game doesn't seem to stress hardware much at all, and in return, doesn't burn much battery or create "the hottest phone on the market", literally.

Loading times between main menu and race are minimal, which is refreshing, especially coming from NFS' minute-long loading screens. Given, the race is extremely simplistic, so there may not be that much to load, but it still feels very quick, compared. Races themselves are usually done in 15s once started, so you can do farming without losing too much time.

Cars

As the name suggests, this is about "classic" cars, and boy are there plenty of them! Collecting and "restoring" is actually the main pull in the game for me.

You can buy cars in two states - "unloved" (rusty and barebones) and "loved" (with nice paint job and some upgrades). Cars also come in different stages / levels, and there's a story mode with some boss characters and a thin narrative - standard stuff. Although I got to say, nicely done to add to the 50's atmosphere.

To give you a bit of an impression, here are the cars I've got so far, after about four days of playing (no real money spent so far). All bought "unloved" (rusty).

The first car, a Chevy Impala. Body fully restored, engine etc. enough to make it to tier 2.

Next up, an old Mercedes. You need a "tiered" car, so once you make it to the next tier, you start with a new one.

For tier 3, which I just started, I chose to go with "The King" - a Plymouth Superbird. It's still pretty rusty, although some body work has been done already.

I got sidetracked by a special event - pickups - so the cash went there for now.

Money Traps

Given the theme of this blog, and the fact that we're talking about free-to-play games here, of course there's the "meta-game" of the developers trying everything in their might to part us from some real-world cash.

For the basics, we've got the "dual currency" trope - we've got cash, which you earn by racing or buy directly, and we've got "gold", which is much harder to come by "naturally". As usual, there are many silly ways how you can spend gold, and only very few that make sense.

There's quite a range of cars that can only be bought with gold. All "loved" cars require gold expense. But there's a decent range of cars through all tiers that can be bought for cash - and we're not talking "two-weeks-of-severe-farming" kind of cash, but very reasonable.

On the high-pressure / psy-ops front, there is a whole range of things I've seen so far.

• "once-in-a-lifetime-offer" : the "agent" character (who we appear to be romantically involved with) regularly pops up with these, giving gold discounts of about 75% on certain cars
• "miss-out" button : The cancel button on all special offers is lovingly called "miss out". Hint, hint.
• "you-need-superpowers-to-get-the-prize" : after you've made it through a free section of a certain race type, you need to start investing gold towards an often vaguely-defined "big prize". Or "miss out".
• "wait-time corruption" : you can speed up delivery of stuff by paying gold.

And a range more. All in all, it's pretty unsubtle, in-your-face-give-me-money. But somehow endearing in its directness, and fair in its limitations so far.

Conclusion

It's a fun little game, with not much of a skill challenge, but very beautiful retro style. Doesn't take much of your time, and has a nice collector trigger. I'll be playing this one for a bit more, and add some strategies etc.

Lunar New Year Event - Aftermath

Hi folks!

The Lunar New Year event has ended. I've been playing quite diligently, making as much use as possible of the free tickets, just to see how far that would get me, and what would be required to complete it.

In the end, I made it quite far, but didn't complete the final run. Here's where I left off.

The Car

From all "red envelopes", I ended up getting blueprints once (that's where the 2 extra come from). Still, I'm 8 short of six stars, and probably another 25 short of a full upgrade.

Since they sell in packs of five, I'd need 35 or seven packs, at a price of 250 gold each, leading to an all-in-all investment of 1750 gold for the blueprints alone (that's more than a monthly gold card would yield).

The remaining races

I actually came pretty close, but would have needed 11 PR points more to even fulfill the requirements for the final race. That's probably 15 tickets worth of farm racing, at 80 gold per 5, adding another 240 gold to the tally of almost 2000 gold. 

The more expensive option would have been to buy out the remaining races, which would have probably cost more than 500 gold in total (guessing here).

All that for a car that is probably at par with the Mercedes AMG, I don't think that's worth it for me at this stage. Note that they're selling the themed AMG for 50 USD real world money at the store, which I think is absolutely outlandish - you can buy whole games for that price.

Anyway, it was a fun event, with challenging races (bloody aura gates, I'm telling ya), but in the end, not worth investing huge amounts of gold in.

I'm back to maxing out my in-game Mercedes AMG, then aiming for the hyper cars in story mode next.

Lunar New Year Event

Hi folks!

A new event started yesterday, in time for the Chinese / Lunar New Year (of the Monkey). I can't quite make out what it's called, but here's what I've seen so far on the event structure.

Prize

The event car we're racing for here is a Jaguar F-Type. It started out as a three-star with uncommon parts and a PR of around 570, if I remember correctly. I'd say that classifies it as a "sports class", around the BMW M4, but below the Nissan GT-R, for example.

Event currencies

Usually, events have their own special currency and "prototype" parts, which convert into regular items afterwards. In this one, the system is a bit more complicated.

While we have an event currency, you don't actually earn it directly from racing. Instead, racing yields "aura", which can be traded for a "red pack" at the price of 60000 aura points. The red pack contains materials, event cash, and (allegedly) blueprints.

The "aura" points accumulate a lot faster than regular cash rewards (I'd say at a 10x rate), so this isn't actually bad value.

There is, of course, the regular event market, where items can be bought for event cash and gold.

Races

The races are surprisingly difficult - I had to re-run some on the first day. This is mainly due to the colour scheme - we've got night races with a dark-red scheme overlayed, so visibility is absolutely minimal. 

In addition to that, there's a new special "obstacle" element - "aura gates". A small section of the track is "open" (about one third), the rest is blocked by a red screen. Hitting the gate gives a nitro refill, hitting the red block screen causes car damage and significant slowdown (similar to a collision).

This makes drifting almost impossible when it occurs, since the gates are on the "ideal" track, so the inner lines in curves, and drifting doesn't give you enough control to keep it tight.

Also, the AI players are obviously on that lane as well, so it gets very crowded very quickly, even on tracks that would normally classify as easy.

Money traps

Here we've got the usual suspects. Car parts and blueprints in the market cost gold, with blueprints trading at a fair 50G per piece (250G for 5). Race skip prices are fair as well so far, but expect them to increase sharply in later levels.

You can get the "red packs" for gold, if you're lacking the aura points, as well.

Strategy

All in all, I'm not overly excited about the Jaguar. There are better cars in the regular game that can be built up without too much effort, like the BMW M4. 

The difficulty seems steep, encouraging buy-outs. As for blueprints, the race series yield 10 (15 for the last). With a requirement of 15 to get to stage 4, I think we'll be ending up at stage 6, short 25 for the full upgrade. I haven't seen any so far in the "red packs", so I wouldn't bet on gold-buying those. If you're after this car, and have the gold stashed, best value is going to be buying in the event market.

Repeat races can give event cash directly, which is valuable, and the aura points add up quickly, so I can definitely recommend doing as many repeats as you can. Tickets have a 30m refill rate, so there should be a fair bit of space, especially in the beginning.

Tournaments

Hi folks!

The tournament races is one area of "Need For Speed" that we haven't taken a closer look at yet, so let's see what we can gain, and where the "traps" are - the hooks to get us to pay real-world money.

Structure

Tournaments are time-limited events that have their own "fuel" - race tickets. The standard amount is five tickets, recharging slowly (about 1h each), although I've seen sudden full recharges occasionally.

Usually, the range of cars is tightly restricted - from "all street cars" to "only Ford Mustangs". There is a single track that's being raced.

Winning a race gives you points, losing a race removes points (usually about 1/4 of the potentially won points).

Ranking

There are 15 ranks or levels. By gaining points, you can rank up to the next level, which gives you an increasingly valuable prize. The higher level you get, the more difficult opponents become, and the more points you need to get to the next level.

Independent of levels there's a "global rank" of all players participating in the tournament. When it ends, you'll get a prize depending on your rank in the global highscore.

Multiplayer

Tournaments are set up as a kind of multiplayer experience - you compete against other players, real people, mixed with the regular AI opponents. But don't be fooled, you're not actually racing live against other people. If you observe the driving behaviour of your opponent, you'll quickly realise that you're racing against the usual AI player, using a real player's car.

To repeat, you're not racing against other people - you're racing against other people's cars, driven by the computer player.

Tournament credit

Usual prizes include cash, visual points, gold for the top ranks and tournament credit. This is a special kind of currency that you can use to shop in the tournament market.

This market is somewhat unique, in that you can't convert gold - you really need the tournament credits to do anything here.

The market contains similar items to the black market - materials, parts, blueprints. With one exception: There are two "tournament cars" in the game, which you can only get by buying the respective blueprints in the tournament market.

Tournament Cars

These cars are the "Toyota Supra" and the "Ferrari F40". The Toyota is especially important since the Tuner Trials change, because you need this car to race for rare (blue) conversion kits, which you need in turn to upgrade rare (5-star) to epic (6-star) parts.

Fortunately, you only need 15 blueprints for the basic Supra, and it's just about enough to race for kits, with a bit of skill. Before the Tuner Trials, the price was at 300 credits per blueprint, which has since been reduced to 166 (500 for 3). So make sure you save up some for this car, as you need it for progressing through the game.

That aside, the parts are usually hugely overpriced (ranking in the thousands), while you can often grab a bargain material for 10 or 20 credits.

Highscore

But let's get back to the highscore list. If I'm diligently racing (making use of most of the free race tickets), and provided that I have a car to get me through to racing till the end, I can normally make it into the top 200.

This is a far cry from the top 25, which is where you usually start getting gold prizes. So we'd have to spend a fair amount of gold on ticket refills (90G for another 5), or real-world money on the game's VIP system, giving us more tickets at some points.

This is obviously the hook to get us to pay up - competitiveness, and once we start spending gold in larger quantities, we're pressured to make it to the top to "recover our losses". As usual, it helps to be aware of how these things work, in order not to get pulled into them.

Given that the game is keeping a lot of state offline, I wouldn't be too surprised if the top people were using cracked versions to provide enough gold for tickets. Can't prove that, of course - at some point, I'm going to run a trial to see if it's actually possible to make a "net profit" out of buying tickets.

Strategies

So, now that we understand how the system works, what's the best way of getting some fun out of it, without unnecessarily reaching into our wallet?

First up, compete, but don't gamble. Use your free tickets to get as much as you can out of the tournament. You'll find that there's actually quite some fun in seeing how far you can push.

Racing

Since you drive the same track over and over, you can try to optimise your time. In the beginning, you'll often have a more powerful car than your opponent, so take note of the time you're making at the end of the race, and the difference towards the opponent's time.

Over the course of the tournament, you should be able to get 500ms to a second better than your initial time, by timing nitro boosts correctly, driving tight corners and whatever other tricks you have.

Once the opponent's car gets close to yours in terms of PR, your best bet is to start driving dirty. You can predict the AI player's position, since they drive "shortest distance / no drift". Push them into the track side, close their corners, have them rear-end you - lots of fun ways to keep them from winning, even if their car is equal or better than yours.

Choice of opponent

You have three choices - an opponent from your level, from one level up, or two levels up - someone from two levels ahead gives over twice as much points as someone from your current level.

Here, keeping an eye on the opponent's time pays off - you'll know if you can still keep racing for maximum points, or if you're no longer standing a chance.

In the end, like all other features, this is supposed to be fun - so treat it as such. Happy racing!

Blackridge Spirit - End Result

Hi folks!

After a month of furious racing, the Blackridge Spirit event has ended. For me, it has been such a close call! In the end, I didn't have the power on the BMW M4 to make it through:

My BMW had a final PR of 675 - in the end, I've been lagging too far behind with upgrades. I had to buy out the second-last block (again, very close, just 10 behind the required PR), which got my stash down to 500 gold.

I've been racing to the last one - made it through race 12, even against a PR difference of close to 100, with all tricks I could come up with. But in the end, buying out the last race for 15 blueprints would have cost 750 gold.

That's a fair price in my book, and I would have paid, if I had the stash. But I wasn't going to pay real-world money - $15 to get enough gold isn't worth a single star on an event car for me.

It's these kind of situations where the game can exert maximum pressure on you, and it's important to take a step back, analyse the situation objectively, and judge if it's worth the price. For me, I could imagine some way more interesting things I could buy for $15.

What's next

All in all, this was a fun event, but quite exhausting, especially that it hit my weaker, secondary cars. So for now, I'm left with a three-star LaFerrari, and will continue where I left off - upgrading my Mercedes AMG all the way, to see if it gets me into levels 15 and 16 of the story mode.

I'll need the Viper as well soon, to farm the Tuner Trials for legendary materials, and I'll need to grow my gold stash back, so I'll be having a break from the high-intensity events for a bit.

Congratulations to everyone who made it through to the final stage, and to completion!