Either I'm missing something, or Archway has got to be freakin' tough by nature.  And the instructions are pretty clear, so I don't think it's the former.  Anyone else have trouble with or have completed a game of Archway?

So far, I'm enjoying the title, online and offline.  Definitely worth the 800 points to even a casual player.  My two cents.

Yep, it sure is, Archways win rate % is pretty low.

Factors that come in to play with difficulty are Luck and skill.   You can have some games that are down right just a factor of the luck of the draw  and some that are nearly always solveable but skill is the main factor of it it will get solved.  Most like someware inbewteen.

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Jonas Stewart
Silver Creek Entertainment
www.silvercrk.com

Definitely one of the tougher games.

Havent won a single game yet in the 10 or so I have played.

And yes, dont know why people are complaining about the 800 point pricetag. This game is a GREAT value for me. Will easily spend many, many hours on this game. Tons of replay value here.

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Bears, Bulls and Cubs through thick and thin.

I wish Solitaire games could determine solveability (yeah, for some of the games it's not computationally feasible).  That's one aspect of the game I never liked a whole lot, not knowing if it's even solveable. 

Hmmm to solve the computation of solveability it would be neat if the game, being Live-enabled, would track those that have been won and publish the seeds such that when a person plays they can specify they only want to play hands that have been won by someone.

But then again, that *is* part of the game -- but for the long drawn-out games it's frustrating to think "wow, I just wasted that much time on something that wasn't solveable".

 BigWeather wrote:

I wish Solitaire games could determine solveability (yeah, for some of the games it's not computationally feasible).  That's one aspect of the game I never liked a whole lot, not knowing if it's even solveable. 

Hmmm to solve the computation of solveability it would be neat if the game, being Live-enabled, would track those that have been won and publish the seeds such that when a person plays they can specify they only want to play hands that have been won by someone.

But then again, that *is* part of the game -- but for the long drawn-out games it's frustrating to think "wow, I just wasted that much time on something that wasn't solveable".

That really is a great idea.

You should send that suggestion along to the developers. I would love to see this in the game.

Would be extra nice to beat the lowest win percentage game.

I seriously see games like Archway and Forty Thieves being in the low single digit percentages for wins.

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Bears, Bulls and Cubs through thick and thin.

Just finished a game of Archway and was 10 cards short of completing it.

Funny thing is, that score was good enough for EIGHTH on the leaderboards.

So guess this game is REALLY tough.

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Bears, Bulls and Cubs through thick and thin.

I wrote an Archway-solving program.  It looks like, without powerups, about 1 in 300 random deals is solvable AT ALL.  And that's if you find the correct path to solve it. :-/

At least you can quickly redeal until you get a setup with no low Aces or Kings.

I have probably played 30 archway games and can't win.  I am also having trouble with Matrimony.  I get pretty close but can't win a game yet.

 SnapDragon wrote:

I wrote an Archway-solving program.  It looks like, without powerups, about 1 in 300 random deals is solvable AT ALL.  And that's if you find the correct path to solve it. :-/

At least you can quickly redeal until you get a setup with no low Aces or Kings.

Thats probably the most important part of winning this game.

So for those looking for advice on this game....just keep redealing until you have no low Aces or Kings. Think I had redealt at least 40 times before I finally won this game.

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Bears, Bulls and Cubs through thick and thin.

Is anyone using the technique of shuffling between foundation piles when they are one rank apart?

For example:

4d
3d    could shuffle up to

Qd
Jd    if you were trying to get rid of another Qd

This does seem to help further the cause, though I've yet to win one after maybe only 20 deals.

Yes, I included shuffling between foundation piles in my program. :)

I'm actually not convinced the Soltrio deals are "random", at least not in the same way my program's deals are.  I first put the 8 A/Ks on the foundations, then deal 48 random cards to the tableau.  But I notice that in Soltrio, there tend to be far fewer A/Ks on the tableau than you'd expect randomly.  (I often see deals with NO A/Ks there, which should be about a 1/256 chance...)  Perhaps they deal the 48 cards first, then move any needed As/Ks from the tableau to the foundation and redeal into those spots?  That would actually improve the win percentage by a bit.

You mean the remaining 44 cards?  54 cards are in a deck, 52 after discarding jokers, 4 As and 4 Ks...  Or have I been staring at tiny 17" monitor cards too long?  Not trying to be jerky, just thought if it was an oversight here, you might double check your program values.

Meanwhile, I took a break and did about a half dozen Klondike Easy games.  I had to feel like I was accomplishing something, lol, back to Archway tomorrow maybe.

Two decks have 104 cards between them.  Removing 4 Aces and 4 Kings for the foundations leaves you with 96.  The tableau is dealt, consisting of 48 cards.  That leaves 48 cards for the reserve.

Some more statistics to help people trying for this horrific achievement:

If you restrict yourself to games with at most one column containing A/Ks (and only in the top half of it), then your odds of having a solvable board go up to about 1.25%.

HOWEVER... if you don't use the trick where you bring the up and down foundations together then move them up/down to a desired card (at most once per suit), your odds of being able to solve it are under 1 in 1000!  And that's on boards satisfying the 1.25% criterion!  So, you'd better understand this trick.

I beat em all except this one. The sad thing is that it is not even fun. Matrimony and 40 theives were at least fun, but this flat out sucks.

At last!!! I solved 1 single game of Archway by sheer luck. After 5 games out of 20-30 redeals I finally got a setup with only 2 aces, no kings and starting of with queen/jack and some low cards. From there it's choosing the cards carefully but at least it's you can now apply some strategy.
I thought this was my final game for the Challenger achievemnt but I didn't get it, so now I have to redo some games. I know I've solved Matrimony too. Is there anyway I can check which games I've missed?

I agree with Old School Prik.. This is game not funny and I'm not going to this one ever again (I think........)

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>I've done questionable things.... Nothing the god of bio-mechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for.

I FINALLY got it.  Bleah.  I had to input over 160 "good" deals into my program before I found a solvable one.  Bad luck, since 1 in 80 should have been winnable. :-/

Looks like I'm 2nd in the world with this damn achievement.  And looks like you won't be far behind, Replicant!  Congrats...

 SnapDragon wrote:

I FINALLY got it.  Bleah.  I had to input over 160 "good" deals into my program before I found a solvable one.  Bad luck, since 1 in 80 should have been winnable. :-/

Looks like I'm 2nd in the world with this damn achievement.  And looks like you won't be far behind, Replicant!  Congrats...

Wow, grats on the achievement SnapDragon!

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Bears, Bulls and Cubs through thick and thin.

 SnapDragon wrote:

I FINALLY got it.  Bleah.  I had to input over 160 "good" deals into my program before I found a solvable one.  Bad luck, since 1 in 80 should have been winnable. :-/

Looks like I'm 2nd in the world with this damn achievement.  And looks like you won't be far behind, Replicant!  Congrats...

Congrats! Putting the deal data into the program 160 times must have been a MAJOR drag. In what did you code the program? Is there any chance you might post it somewhere?

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This reply was likely intended for a different thread.

 SnapDragon wrote:

I FINALLY got it.  Bleah.  I had to input over 160 "good" deals into my program before I found a solvable one.  Bad luck, since 1 in 80 should have been winnable. :-/

Looks like I'm 2nd in the world with this damn achievement.  And looks like you won't be far behind, Replicant!  Congrats...

I've ran into a snag somewhere. I'm on every single leaderboard and in my opinion that can only be done when you won every game, am I right? I've replyed a couple of games and still NO Challenger Achievement!!! grrr......

That freaks me out.

 

But I must admit I'm pretty happy being the number two in the world on the Archway leaderboard (big grin)

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>I've done questionable things.... Nothing the god of bio-mechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for.

im in the same boat as you buddy ive now finished every gametype and sstill no achivement getting a bit worried here!

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Teamsaxo's Video Gallery

RETIRED

Did you guys complete all the games in Classic mode only?

Games completed in Voyage mode dont count towards that achievement.

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Bears, Bulls and Cubs through thick and thin.

Yep, only classic mode.

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>I've done questionable things.... Nothing the god of bio-mechanics wouldn't let you in heaven for.

Last game for me to beat too, but i think it is gonna take some time at those odds. I got in at 7th on the leaderboards last night, with about 8 cards left, damn line of diamonds stopped me, even though i had a free space to use on one column at the top. Oh well keep trying, with the reshuffles and high Aces/Kings. Also, i have never seen more than 2 aces or kings in a shuffle on the Tableau, they definateley must keep back two of each.

 

Ahhh, 3 kings on the tableau, my mistake. :D

I wrote the program in C++.  I might post it in a little while, since I've had a number of requests.  Mind you, it doesn't make Archway easy, by any stretch.  Just a little more possible. :)

 SnapDragon wrote:

I wrote the program in C++.  I might post it in a little while, since I've had a number of requests.  Mind you, it doesn't make Archway easy, by any stretch.  Just a little more possible. :)

Thanks in advance for your program. Might use it to determine the solvability of the archway decks, rather than finding out at the end, its unsolvable! Congrats on getting 200 points though, you really deserve the achievements for your huge efforts.

 Xaegoth wrote:

Did you guys complete all the games in Classic mode only?

Games completed in Voyage mode dont count towards that achievement.

Bah, didn't know that.  Thanks.

 SnapDragon wrote:

I wrote the program in C++.  I might post it in a little while, since I've had a number of requests.  Mind you, it doesn't make Archway easy, by any stretch.  Just a little more possible. :)

Well, if you read my PM, as it probably was one in dozens of requests, I was more interested in it from a coding standpoint, but that is an impressive piece of work, and I can understand not sharing it.

Anyway, I'll be on and off these forums, so no need for special email service to me or anything.

After many, many hours I finally beat this game on Voyage mode.

Then of course, I find out that beating games on Voyage mode do NOT count towards the "beat all games" achievement.

So here I am back playing this game. And let me tell you, without power-ups, this game is incredibly difficult! I am on about my 5th hour of playing this game and have yet to even place HALF the cards in any single game.

Much respect to those that have the "beat all games" achievement. Now THAT is an achievement worth bragging about.

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Bears, Bulls and Cubs through thick and thin.