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Jewel Poker Defense A-Series
Based on Xenoth's Jewel Poker Defense 1.0
A-Series by azala

The following gameplay changes are based on about 10 full v1.0 games, and 20 full A-Series games of testing data, an Excel sheet for combo box splits, as well as years of background experience balancing games and designing intelligent gameplay systems.

MAJOR CHANGE:
- completely different combo box system. The old combo-box heroes were extremely variable, from instant death to total annihilator, and if you memorized the combos, it was trivially easy to beat the game. I decided to replace it with a sensible, predictable, but somewhat random system that rewards maximizing input levels.
-- you get a random ace-combo group, based on the multiple of the ranks of the two input units (not the level in its name, but the Prize Hand rank, from 1-8)
-- for example a ghost (7) and a defiler (6) will give a base rating of 42.
-- two coin flips are rolled, each increasing one of the two base ranks by 2
-- in the above example, ghost + defiler will either give 7-6 (42), 9-6 (54), 7-8 (56), or 9-8 (72), each with 1/4 probability
-- there are 11 different combos, "Nothing", "High Card", "Pair", ... , "Five of a Kind (Gauntlet)". The minimum ratings for them, in order, are: 1, 2, 5, 10, 16, 23, 32, 42, 53, 66, 80.
-- in the above example, that means 1/4 of the time you'll get Full House ace-combo (42-52), 1/2 of the time you'll get Four-of-a-Kind ace-combo (53-65), and 1/4 of the time you'll get a Straight Flush ace-combo
-- also, you can now see the Prize Hands that give Combo Box units and their 1-8 ranks in the bottom left info box.

GAMEPLAY CHANGES:
- changed ore prizes to be a gradual arithmetic progression for each hand type - in v1.0 the values varied widely and without a consistent pattern.
- removed A789T straight/straight-flush - I can see how A2345 would make sense considering Ace is considered Highest as well as One, but in this case with a 789TJQKA deck, it's rather confusing regarding wraparounds, best to remove them entirely.
- dropped defense timer by 20 sec. - difficulty increase
- upgrades from 150+45 to 85+85 - you actually have to think about upgrading certain groups of units that you might ignore under the old system. should break the pattern of stocking up only on one or two groups.
- hydralisk base & increment damage +50% - straights occur rather infrequently and needed to be improved to better represent the hand strength.
- corsair damage reduced from 54+22 to 20+8 - you get a scout+corsair for ace-high, and it used to be a viable strategy, given enough anti-ground defense, that you could shoot for ace-high hands in order to dominate enemy air.

OTHER CHANGES:
- victory condition change (multiplayer only) - victory will also happen if you are the last player alive, but you still get to keep going. if multiple players beat all levels, they still all win.
- observer mode - when you die, you are not instantly kicked, and get to watch the rest of the game.
- removed most of the opening cinematic - most players did not appreciate the long wait.
- fixed the "player leaves = game frozen" bug from v1.0
- fixed the "invisible infobox carrier & lurker" bug from v1.0
- expanded infobox area and spread out the players' templars
- several minor terrain/display/color changes