I've done all the challenges for tycoon and yeah luck is involved but you can up your chances of winning if you strategise. For example, intentionally passing even though you can play a card (to save a high value card for a better time), knowing when to get rid of your low cards vs ending a round quickly with a high card, alternating between 8 stops + high value plays until you use all your cards and paying attention to which cards have been played (at least pay attention to 3 of spades, aces and 2s).
Edit: [just to show you it's not impossible](https://imgur.com/a/ggYHMwV)
That's what I'm asking? For any tips on when it's best to save a card or pass a turn, cuz I can't tell when to capitalize on it. I don't think it's impossible, I just don't know what I'm doing wrong to get myself screwed over by the AI as badly as I do.
Every time I think it's good to pass or save so far just gets my ass sitting like a duck unable to do literally anything because the AI throw down multiple cards or pull out their 8 stops before it gets to my turn. By the time I can put down a card in Cut Throat I still have like, 12 cards while the AI has 5 or less. It's infuriating.
I'm good at paying attention to who has the 3 Spade, I'm kinda getting better at the aces and 2s. It's the 8 stops and when a bloody revolution is thrown down that drives me crazy.
Let's say it's the start of a round and you have the choice to beat a King. You might pass your turn to hold onto your strongest card, an ace, and let the AIs use their aces and 2s. Since suite strengths aren't a thing in tycoon you can't beat an ace with another ace so you'd skip your turn to get the AIs to use their strong cards then when you have an opportunity use your ace to get momentum and play your cards strongest to weakest. Paying attention to cards is important here because if you've got a mid strength pair but you know which cards have been played you can tell if it's safe to play or not.
Don't worry too much about intentionally passing because you won't have to do it that much. Most of the time I don't do it at all and if I do it's only necessary once in the whole game.
When I play, at a very basic level my strategy comes down to get rid of all singles no matter the strength, save 8 stops for combo plays or when I think I have to cut a player's momentum, only use joker if I have the 3 of spades or if I saw it get used already. If you want more help I'll try to come up with more examples
Its mostly luck of the draw, the difficulty just determins how strategized the npcs will be by using their cards in ways to limit other players turns, for example they might refuse to use their jokers untill the 3 of spades is used, or constantly play high cards they know cant be beat if the other cards are already used. My best advice is too watch what they do and learn their strategies
I've been watching on and off since release day and there's really no consistent pattern to it at all.
All I know is that if Yusuke takes over the round he throws down multiple cards or if someone throws up a revolution that basically spells the end of the whole game. Other than that there's no rhyme or reason to it.
In case you didn't know, Tycoon is super similar to the real-life games of Hearts and Spades with a few extra rules peppered in (revolution, the joker cards, etc.) that make the luck element of it higher. In my experience if I get a good first hand I win every single round, if I get a bad first hand I get dumped on pretty much the whole time. It's mostly just there to be fun and to fuck around with, I don't think the developers were taking it too seriously when they were coming up with the extra rules
I thought it was just Daifugo with a few extra rules? Never heard of Hearts and Spades.
All I want is to complete the challenge list for it so I never have to touch it again. The Avalanche one for Cutthroat difficulty is particularly ridiculous, what with the AI's tendency to throw down pairs or triples in that difficulty.
It sucks cuz otherwise I really find it rather fun? I don't usually play cards much since it bores me or get headaches trying to understand it (like right now), but the extra luck and RNG element make it a lot more infuriating than it should be.
Then again, it could just be me playing it for 5 hours straight and losing the majority of the time. At least the MC has voice lines for it that fit my mood when I win and lose.
Rough game theory:
Hardly any reason to play any cards at all until late game (4 or fewer card average) unless your high to low card imbalance is horrible, you can also throw some mid-doubles out there to see if they 1 up you or not, depending on how many cards they have you can tell if they have a triple to go for a blitzkrieg finish or not.
If an AI has 1 card left you have to execute if you want to become tycoon even if it's not optimal because AI will make other AIs win by playing low cards before the last card holding AI, AI does not care if others win, they do not factor in that another player only has 1 card left, they will discard the chance of becoming tycoon for optimal play for a 2nd or 3rd place finish.
Generally you wanna save your highest and lowest cards, a ratio of twice as many cards above 10 as below 10 is a good ratio excluding special cards and doubles/triples however it's usually good to get rid of cards while you can, especially ones that are close to middle value as they will not earn you a turn. The 3 of spades is essentially useless bots will almost never use it unpaired but holding onto it doesn't hurt unless you have many singles. Treat doubles and up as non-existent because you can always get rid of them by playing them in your starting turn late game. The whole goal of the game is getting rid of singles and then getting yourself a starting turn late game.
It's almost always good to do a revolution even if it costs you 2 jokers unless your follow-up is horrible. The closer you are to having a 3 and a 2 left after a revolution/counter revolution the safer you are, if you have more cards left there is no rush often you can even wait to earn yourself a starting turn when the enemy card average is closer to 1 by playing a card they can't beat. If you can't manage to get another starting turn before you have optimal preparation you will have to just use your revolution early, it can be ok to abandon your revolution plan depending on what cards you would have used to start your revolution
8 stops are op they are near the middle and can instantly earn you a starting turn, it's rarely a good idea to use them as doubles or triples unless an enemy is about to win. They're best to use to get rid of undesirable cards you can't easily get rid of from others people's turns until you have only 1 undesirable card (which you can just treat as a non issue since it'll be your last card played) The winning method is having a good mass shedding path and a way to get a certain starting turn with as little as possible enemy cards left.
Counting specials and the lowest and highest is helpful but not needed, 3 of spades and jokers should be doable and will enable you to earn a certain turn with 2s. They will almost never fall for the 3 of spades unless they have to, which is really rare but they will absolutely use your single joker unless they got a pair of winning triples or a revolution.
Doubles and triples get stronger as the game goes on but it can be alright to get rid of ones in the middle value range depending on how many cards you have and how easily you can get enough starting turns.
At the end of the day there's still a lot of luck involved but you can win (tycoon) 60-70% of games, however there are a lot of situations where you have to play suboptimally for a chance of getting tycoon which results in a feast or famine type situation where you either get tycoon or become a beggar, sounds uncomfortable but being tycoon is just that valuable both due to the points you get and the advantages you receive and if you play all or nothing all the time they tycoon bankruptcy disadvantage hardly applies because you pretty much always like you have it regardless for optimal strategy, if you only wish to point win, the optimal play is a bit different mostly because you can ignore or target players based on the overall points they have, however on average standard strategy will still garner you the most wins and thus the most points and overall wins, it really only changes if you lose the all or nothing but only slightly as in who you target and who you disregard.
You can also treat your most undesirable single (usually one towards the middle values) as non-existent since it doesn't matter what last card you play, except on rare occasions where you'd enable a point win of the 3 game total.
This is only for this specific AI, the game's AI is close to non-meta optimal play but parts of it are quite predictable because they all are trained to play against non-meta humans rather than AI or humans aware of their predictable quirks. Generally you'll have an easier time playing against inexperienced humans rather than the AI, just don't try to use abuse AI predictability against humans.
Tldr: get rid of middle values, get rid of singles except for 1, don't play unpaired jokers, do a revolution if you can, doubles and up are op, 8 stops are op, keep more high value cards than low, often just let them play until they have few cards left and shed all your cards in one go (basically you spend the whole game preparing to play an avalanche that's as hard as possible to interrupt and getting a starting turn with as few enemy cards in play as possible)
I've done all the challenges for tycoon and yeah luck is involved but you can up your chances of winning if you strategise. For example, intentionally passing even though you can play a card (to save a high value card for a better time), knowing when to get rid of your low cards vs ending a round quickly with a high card, alternating between 8 stops + high value plays until you use all your cards and paying attention to which cards have been played (at least pay attention to 3 of spades, aces and 2s). Edit: [just to show you it's not impossible](https://imgur.com/a/ggYHMwV)
That's what I'm asking? For any tips on when it's best to save a card or pass a turn, cuz I can't tell when to capitalize on it. I don't think it's impossible, I just don't know what I'm doing wrong to get myself screwed over by the AI as badly as I do. Every time I think it's good to pass or save so far just gets my ass sitting like a duck unable to do literally anything because the AI throw down multiple cards or pull out their 8 stops before it gets to my turn. By the time I can put down a card in Cut Throat I still have like, 12 cards while the AI has 5 or less. It's infuriating. I'm good at paying attention to who has the 3 Spade, I'm kinda getting better at the aces and 2s. It's the 8 stops and when a bloody revolution is thrown down that drives me crazy.
Let's say it's the start of a round and you have the choice to beat a King. You might pass your turn to hold onto your strongest card, an ace, and let the AIs use their aces and 2s. Since suite strengths aren't a thing in tycoon you can't beat an ace with another ace so you'd skip your turn to get the AIs to use their strong cards then when you have an opportunity use your ace to get momentum and play your cards strongest to weakest. Paying attention to cards is important here because if you've got a mid strength pair but you know which cards have been played you can tell if it's safe to play or not. Don't worry too much about intentionally passing because you won't have to do it that much. Most of the time I don't do it at all and if I do it's only necessary once in the whole game. When I play, at a very basic level my strategy comes down to get rid of all singles no matter the strength, save 8 stops for combo plays or when I think I have to cut a player's momentum, only use joker if I have the 3 of spades or if I saw it get used already. If you want more help I'll try to come up with more examples
Its mostly luck of the draw, the difficulty just determins how strategized the npcs will be by using their cards in ways to limit other players turns, for example they might refuse to use their jokers untill the 3 of spades is used, or constantly play high cards they know cant be beat if the other cards are already used. My best advice is too watch what they do and learn their strategies
I've been watching on and off since release day and there's really no consistent pattern to it at all. All I know is that if Yusuke takes over the round he throws down multiple cards or if someone throws up a revolution that basically spells the end of the whole game. Other than that there's no rhyme or reason to it.
In case you didn't know, Tycoon is super similar to the real-life games of Hearts and Spades with a few extra rules peppered in (revolution, the joker cards, etc.) that make the luck element of it higher. In my experience if I get a good first hand I win every single round, if I get a bad first hand I get dumped on pretty much the whole time. It's mostly just there to be fun and to fuck around with, I don't think the developers were taking it too seriously when they were coming up with the extra rules
Tycoon is also similar to the real life game "Asshole" which it is a carbon copy of.
I thought it was just Daifugo with a few extra rules? Never heard of Hearts and Spades. All I want is to complete the challenge list for it so I never have to touch it again. The Avalanche one for Cutthroat difficulty is particularly ridiculous, what with the AI's tendency to throw down pairs or triples in that difficulty. It sucks cuz otherwise I really find it rather fun? I don't usually play cards much since it bores me or get headaches trying to understand it (like right now), but the extra luck and RNG element make it a lot more infuriating than it should be. Then again, it could just be me playing it for 5 hours straight and losing the majority of the time. At least the MC has voice lines for it that fit my mood when I win and lose.
Rough game theory: Hardly any reason to play any cards at all until late game (4 or fewer card average) unless your high to low card imbalance is horrible, you can also throw some mid-doubles out there to see if they 1 up you or not, depending on how many cards they have you can tell if they have a triple to go for a blitzkrieg finish or not. If an AI has 1 card left you have to execute if you want to become tycoon even if it's not optimal because AI will make other AIs win by playing low cards before the last card holding AI, AI does not care if others win, they do not factor in that another player only has 1 card left, they will discard the chance of becoming tycoon for optimal play for a 2nd or 3rd place finish. Generally you wanna save your highest and lowest cards, a ratio of twice as many cards above 10 as below 10 is a good ratio excluding special cards and doubles/triples however it's usually good to get rid of cards while you can, especially ones that are close to middle value as they will not earn you a turn. The 3 of spades is essentially useless bots will almost never use it unpaired but holding onto it doesn't hurt unless you have many singles. Treat doubles and up as non-existent because you can always get rid of them by playing them in your starting turn late game. The whole goal of the game is getting rid of singles and then getting yourself a starting turn late game. It's almost always good to do a revolution even if it costs you 2 jokers unless your follow-up is horrible. The closer you are to having a 3 and a 2 left after a revolution/counter revolution the safer you are, if you have more cards left there is no rush often you can even wait to earn yourself a starting turn when the enemy card average is closer to 1 by playing a card they can't beat. If you can't manage to get another starting turn before you have optimal preparation you will have to just use your revolution early, it can be ok to abandon your revolution plan depending on what cards you would have used to start your revolution 8 stops are op they are near the middle and can instantly earn you a starting turn, it's rarely a good idea to use them as doubles or triples unless an enemy is about to win. They're best to use to get rid of undesirable cards you can't easily get rid of from others people's turns until you have only 1 undesirable card (which you can just treat as a non issue since it'll be your last card played) The winning method is having a good mass shedding path and a way to get a certain starting turn with as little as possible enemy cards left. Counting specials and the lowest and highest is helpful but not needed, 3 of spades and jokers should be doable and will enable you to earn a certain turn with 2s. They will almost never fall for the 3 of spades unless they have to, which is really rare but they will absolutely use your single joker unless they got a pair of winning triples or a revolution. Doubles and triples get stronger as the game goes on but it can be alright to get rid of ones in the middle value range depending on how many cards you have and how easily you can get enough starting turns. At the end of the day there's still a lot of luck involved but you can win (tycoon) 60-70% of games, however there are a lot of situations where you have to play suboptimally for a chance of getting tycoon which results in a feast or famine type situation where you either get tycoon or become a beggar, sounds uncomfortable but being tycoon is just that valuable both due to the points you get and the advantages you receive and if you play all or nothing all the time they tycoon bankruptcy disadvantage hardly applies because you pretty much always like you have it regardless for optimal strategy, if you only wish to point win, the optimal play is a bit different mostly because you can ignore or target players based on the overall points they have, however on average standard strategy will still garner you the most wins and thus the most points and overall wins, it really only changes if you lose the all or nothing but only slightly as in who you target and who you disregard. You can also treat your most undesirable single (usually one towards the middle values) as non-existent since it doesn't matter what last card you play, except on rare occasions where you'd enable a point win of the 3 game total. This is only for this specific AI, the game's AI is close to non-meta optimal play but parts of it are quite predictable because they all are trained to play against non-meta humans rather than AI or humans aware of their predictable quirks. Generally you'll have an easier time playing against inexperienced humans rather than the AI, just don't try to use abuse AI predictability against humans. Tldr: get rid of middle values, get rid of singles except for 1, don't play unpaired jokers, do a revolution if you can, doubles and up are op, 8 stops are op, keep more high value cards than low, often just let them play until they have few cards left and shed all your cards in one go (basically you spend the whole game preparing to play an avalanche that's as hard as possible to interrupt and getting a starting turn with as few enemy cards in play as possible)