[cyrialize]

Slay the Spire is my favorite video game of all time. I have 400+ hours on my Switch, 100+ hours on my phone, and 100+ hours on my PC. I'm obsessed.

I think creating an AI for this game is quite difficult, but I'd love a chat bot to discuss decisions with - especially a bot that could take in the current state.

It isn't enough to just take in the cards, but you should also take in relics, the counters on the relics, the potions, and what ascension you are at.

For example, you may have the cards to kill an enemy now - but it may be more beneficial to wait - either to increment the counter on a relic, or to draw a card that does an effect on a fatal hit.

[barbariangrunge]

The main thing that’s fun about these games is figuring out how to gain insights about how to play better. I think offloading the theorizing and problem solving in any way would make the game less fun. See also: most (not all) use of strategy guides and walkthroughs

[cyrialize]

I 100% agree. At A20 I constantly find myself in situations where I have to pick a card I'd never pick because it is my best option at that time. This leads to me learning more strategies and insights.

For example, in a previous A20 run I had I took Metallicize as Ironclad late in Act 1 because I was facing the Guardian and I didn't encounter other good block plans. Prior to that, I tended to avoid Metallicize to save spots for other block cards instead as it was too slow. This situation made me realize that having a Metallicize in your deck isn't that bad, especially if you need block NOW and you can counteract having it in your deck later on with draw/exhaust.

[lanternfish]

Metallicize is also strong because Ironclad has many powerful strategies that want a very thin deck - two dropkicks go infinite if you can get your deck small enough. Metallicize adds a solid block strategy to any deck and doesn't increase the effective deck size because powers don't really take a spot.

[Chabsff]

> For example, you may have the cards to kill an enemy now - but it may be more beneficial to wait - either to increment the counter on a relic, or to draw a card that does an effect on a fatal hit.

How is this any different than chess?

Solving this using a LLM is novel and interesting, but I'd feel confident in claiming that writing an AI bot for STS using "classic" AI methods would be pretty easy, actually.

[aeturnum]

I believe chess evaluation functions are always the difference between your opponent and you - i.e. it's "the same" to take a piece or avoid them taking yours. You must simply find any path to check.

STS, on the other hand, is about accumulating some resources while spending others. Which resources you want to spend and which you want to accumulate depend a great deal on your character and build. Skillful play often involves recognizing which resources you would benefit from losing at the current stage of the game. Training is also made much more difficult by how long you need to go to determine if you are on a winnable path. Power spikes are non-linear and many deck compositions would optimally play in a 'losing' way for a certain period of time before getting the pieces they need.

[theptip]

The game tree is both broader and deeper in Slay, so much harder to do tree search. Also very irregular; in chess you have very few situational decisions (eg en passant, castling) whereas many decisions in Slay are one-off (events) that are quite hard to weigh the EV. Finally you don’t have perfect information in Slay, which makes things WAY harder.

You’d probably want to look at Go AI instead of Chess, but better would be the Dota / StarCraft AIs. Very different architecture.

[airstrike]

There's just a lot more variability due to the sheer number of "pieces" and the fact that you can combo moves... but maybe it's just a matter of scaling

[SAI_Peregrinus]

Much, much bigger decision tree than Chess or Go.

[z0r]

There are more possible moves to consider in STS than Go? I've dumped a hundred hours into the former and thousands into the latter and I wouldn't agree.

[raincole]

Almost all the games you play on PCs have much bigger state spaces than Go.

To give an intuitve example on why StS's state space is large, imaging these two situations: In both case you have the exact same map, same deck, same HP, same potions and same relics. The only difference is in one case you have 100 gold and in the other you have 101 gold.

They're still two different states. And all the following states are different.

The size of space state doesn't necessarily translate to how difficult the game feels. Foundamentally Go has zero randomness while StS is full of randomness, so it's a little apple to orange.

[lanternfish]

Absolutely. Assuming you don't crack the deck prng, you have to furcate the decision tree for every possible order of cards whenever you shuffle the deck - that quickly gets to a number of states larger than atoms in the observable universe.

This also actually modifies strategy - top player Jorbs notoriously builds massive spreadsheets to crack tough decisions on important runs and deck order is huge for that.

[cyrialize]

To echo the other commenters - yup, there are so many possible moves in the game.

For example, there is a relic that gives you the status "Intangible" every 6 turns, and then it resets. "Intangible" makes it so that every incoming damage is only 1 damage point. This relic has a counter and the number of turns it counts exists out of individual fights. So for example, you could be on your 1st turn in a fight, but to the relic it could be your 3rd.

At first, you might think to yourself that you should stall each fight long enough where you can end the fight on the relic counter being 5 - so that any next encounter you start will be your 6th turn to the relic - meaning you'll be intangible at the beginning of the fight.

But - there are situations where you might want the counter to be at 4, so that you will be intangible not on the 1st turn of a fight but the 2nd. For example, there are some enemies that don't do damage on turn 1, or do more damage on turn 2. There are situations where you want the counter to be at 3, 2, etc.

To add onto this - it can be VERY difficult to stall a fight such that you get the relic to the number you want and you kill the enemy you are facing on that turn.

There are so many decisions to be made surrounding this one relic. What I've described here doesn't really cover all the theory surrounding it.

You can find similar decision paths and theory around every card, relic, potion, enemy, boss, etc. in the game.

It's one of the many reasons why I love this game so, so much.

[mangosteenjuice]

I have 5000+ hours on DOTA 2 despite not having played since 2017, and I wish I could get those hours back.

The people I used to play with are hitting 10,000+.

I now only play deckbuilders, citybuilders, and roguelikes. I'm very excited about STS 2.

[Quarrel]

I have up Dota 2 the day my son was born. Probably one of the best decisions of my life .. ! I probably have more hours in Dota 1 than 2, but these thoughts could drive me crazy.

(more for practical reasons at the time, suddenly I just couldn't devote 30-60+ minutes at a time to a game, because babies scream at all the hours and anything I could do to help my wife out was the least I could do!)

> I'm very excited about STS 2.

citybuilder folk are meant to be all about Manor Lords this week! :)

[anonyfox]

At some point I stopped playing it (after, well, 100s of hours), because somehow I felt that its only getting harder without me getting any reward outside of the raw challenge itself - which then feels just like working.

Is there anything I didn't really notice that feels rewarding on higher levels?

[reidjs]

I like that it requires a small amount of mental energy to perform the 'optimal' play in every situation. The obvious example is doing basic arithmetic to calculate whether you should block more or attack.

At first, the game feels like it's deterministic with sprinkles of randomness, however, at high ascension levels it is the opposite - random chance until you get a broken deck that makes winning trivial. It's a slot machine.

[cyrialize]

As the other commenter said, it actually isn't like a slot machine.

I recommend watching runs from players that are going for win streaks. Many of the runs in win streaks are not slot machine decks. Going for a win streak forces you to take cards that you otherwise wouldn't have.

Watching runs in general will also show you that players win without broken decks. It's just that videos with the highest views tend to have broken decks because those are the most entertaining.

[chessgecko]

jorbs manages to get 15 win streaks on a20 beating the heart. I wouldn’t call it a slot machine

[cyrialize]

I absolutely adore playing at A20.

For me, the reward is having a deck that works well enough to tackle anything thrown at you.

This means many different things, but basically amounts to having the right amount of cards or relics that give you scalability for your attacks, a plan to mitigate attacks (with statuses or blocks), and a plan to handle beating the heart.

After a certain point, grabbing cards to beat the heart leads to beating other things easily - including Sword and Shield and the double Act 3 boss.

Funnily enough, I have the opposite problem. I'm often building decks that can beat everything easily except for the heart.

[msp26]

> Is there anything I didn't really notice that feels rewarding on higher levels?

The thought that you put into strategy matters more when the game is harder. Personally, I don't find it fun past ascension 17 but if I play at a0 it's a bit mindless which is not as fun anymore.

[NineStarPoint]

No, the point of the ascension mechanic is that it gets harder and harder so that you need to play more and more optimally to have a chance at winning, there aren’t any benefits past ascension 1. If you aren’t the sort of person who wants a harder challenge just for the sake of challenging yourself, then there’s no point yeah.

[cyrialize]

The game is actually balanced at A5, so I usually recommend people to play there.

[suzzer99]

I'm currently trying to beat A20+heart with the four characters, then I will lose interest. I've only beat it with Watcher so far. Working on Defect now, then Ironclad, then Silent (ugh). Watching Baalord's videos on youtube really helped.

[nottorp]

> without me getting any reward outside of the raw challenge itself - which then feels just like working

Do you prefer being spoon fed rewards for grinding endlessly, like in your average free game?

[airstrike]

At some point you don't even see the cards... All you see is blonde, brunette, redhead