“The Road to Better World War Matchmaking” aka Sandbagging!

[poop_]

Another pointless post. Why fill the forums with this stuff?

 

[Tenacious D]

Name one good alliance that uses sandbagging to win wars. Elite Generals has always used mixed alliance sandbagging to win wars. Humble Emperors got to #7 with mixed alliance sandbagging. The competent alliances have to sandbag so all of their matches are not stalemates. Did you wonder why all these mediocre alliances populated the top 100 when glory was introduced and 1st Dynasty wasn't ranked? Stalemates. Notice that most of the top 15-20 belong there.

 

[JNation]

Right, so you’re saying that all the alliances in the top that have iron ages members in their alliance that have been inactive for 3 months doesn’t spark a red flag?? Or how about the alliances that say only AA of GA members yet they have iron ages?? Yet all these alliances have 46-47 members so if they had kick those inactive iron they would have 40 which you can still war with. The red flag goes up when you see a sudden drop of half way down their list 153 then 45.. umm… I don’t think you are really paying attention to what your saying either. “The competent alliance have to sandbag so all their matches aren’t stalemates” You have just admitted to sandbagging along with support not just mine but numerous other that have pointed this out too. Lastly you said “most” of the top 15-20, so are you saying that there are some that don’t belong there? And if so is that because they sandbag to win?

So recap, the only way those alliance can win wars is to sandbag so they don't run into their equals and get stalemates... you just proved the point we are trying to make.

 

[S_How]

To be fair, iron age takes one day to get out of. It takes maybe a week to be medieval and at the point where they'd fit in an emerging alliance I would guess. What kind of lineup do you usually bring to war?

 

[dolphin225]

S_How, Vixen, poop_ - Even I have already eliminated Iron & Classical from wars because our matchups were just too bizarre. So we're talking 1 low level GA (166 XP) through MA. I have been telling them only takes 1 week to get through Iron & Classical Ages. But yes, I agree with poop that ultimately ALL ages should be allowed in wars with no issues being presented because of it. If we're really going to say no Iron & Classical in wars (and on up as new ages are introduced), then they shouldn't be allowed to join an Alliance until then, because the vast majority want to be in wars right away once they join. In keeping with S_How's statement about "in all fairness", the ones who become inactive because they aren't allowed in wars is about the same number who become inactive after their first war because they got wiped out before they knew what hit them. Lol...

 

[Sevans89]

Poop, I was nice and welcoming and honestly the most active person in the alliance as far as gameplay and chat goes. But I left to be in an alliance that doesn't puts wars on hold, tells their members to sit in a corner and think about how they treat people. As far as leaving mid war if you weren't going to find it that important I wasn't going to take you seriously. Not gonna say more because I don't want you crying and getting me banned so how about this, you just leave my name out of anything you have to say.

 

[Player Killer]

Separate league leaderboard with restriction on age of players who can play. Alliance leader choose which league they want to play. Everyone gets a chance to be on top. League leaderboard reset every season.

 

[Bowmore]

Probably already been suggested, given that there's 20 pages of posts here, but what about a simple war search filter? When I go search for a war opponent, let me choose the minimum Age allowed on the opponent's roster. If I don't care, then nothing is different from today. And my choice can't be higher than my lowest age, so if I have Iron Agers in my war lineup then I'm open to any opponents. For example, my roster stops at Gunpowder, so maybe I choose "Medieval" as the minimum for the opponent. If that makes it harder for me to find a war, so be it - its my choice. If it takes way too long, I can bail on that search and try something else. But this gives those of us seeking fair play an easy way to screen out sandbaggers, without really affecting the less experienced Alliances who want to fight wars with legit lower level accounts.

 

[benjieland]

all teams do not have the same fair play

 

[S_How]

Sandbagging is alive and well. It is the most important strategy in war, and aside from most of the top 10 teams who would be there with or without it, it is without question the most strategically sound way to climb the glory leaderboard. This is our last war, a horrible mismatch, where we lost almost 750 glory (there was zero glory punishment in the awards for this sandbag). A differential of 30 levels+ with the uneven jump in defensive strength from global to atomic, is nearly insurmountable.

Atomic offenses: PT: 6, Opponent(I think it is great wall, but cant translate): 23
Atomic defenses: PT: 0, Opponent: 12
Average level: PT: ~160, Opponent: ~163
Average level without sandbags: PT: ~160, Opponent: ~190
StDev: PT: 30, Opponent: 68

This is why people are quitting every day. It was only a 17% (6/35) sandbag with 3 undeveloped irons and classicals that exist only to manipulate matchups, and completely destroyed matchmaking calculations.

 

[Radzeer]

Tough luck, S_How and greetings to BDS (Brian) - the author of the February edition of the State of the Nations

 

[Tenacious D]

We have trouble matching teams, but the top Korean alliances have to heavily sandbag just to match us. I can promise you that they aren't sandbagging to get easy matchups. They are sandbagging to get any matchup.

 

[S_How]

That excuse is limited to about 10 teams in the game. The other 98% who sandbag use it to get easy matches, or avoid hard ones. There is zero incentive for any team to go in at full weight, even if there were no matchmaking problems.

And, no matter what the cause, if a game delivers matches that are so obscenely lopsided, it will fail.

 

[Equal]

But they said, that they penalized alliances that are using low level accounts... lol. Tenacious D , but then those top heavy teams are just getting rid of the problem instead of forcing a change, and average alliances must suffer. bu*** s*** ))

 

[Radzeer]

Just to make it more laughable: We are facing a sandbagging alliance. 2 sandbags only in a 25vs25 war. Median member is Lvl 153 on our side 173 on their side. 12 Atomic Age members against 5 on our side. BUT they can win 870 Glory points... we 7.

 

[benjieland]

Sandbagging

 

[o0zuel0o]

Even for casuals you can see here in this video what i believe is a sandbagging sandbagging.

My I add, Sandbagging could be deterministic by war results as apposed to makup. The video below could potentially be a valid alliance trying to keep an alliance active. So how do you tell? I don't know if I have the answer, but activity in the war could be a solution, if activity is heavily weighted to the top tier this could indicate sandbagging. Well then they just get their lower tier to do something right? so then I guess it's star count as well, where an evenly distributed star count = 1, weighted to the top < 1 and weighted to the bottom > 1. Where this value then becomes the multiplier for loot and glory.

 

[Thevinegru]

Please just match alliances based on age. It would be far more fair, far more clear, and far more in keeping with the spirit of the game. In regular gameplay, a person has an advantage when they have a highly developed base for their age. That is how it should work in the game. Right now, a high level EA player could sit opposite a low level Global Age player. Sorry, but that is just totally wrong.

 

[Bowmore]

Its been over 5 months since this thread was started. What has BHG/Nexon actually done about the problem? Basically nothing, and no explanations are offered for any of the evidence posted in this lengthy thread. Further, in the February State of the Nations thread we get some nonsense from the new exec that proclaims they have addressed the sandbagging problem. Amazing. The bottom line is that the company is clearly lacking in the resources and intellect required to solve this problem. We've tried to open their eyes to the issue - heck there's 20 pages of material here, and other lengthy threads as well. Plus, the war system that they obviously emulated (CoC) overhauled their matchups a year ago and for some reason DN hasn't followed suit. The apparent plan for Dominations is to just milk this sick cow for whatever can be squeezed out of it.

 

[Master Contrail Program]

40/30/20/10 weighting would solve a large part of the sandbagging issue and could be implemented tomorrow. While by no means perfect, it would make iron age stacking largely pointless. As it stands now we have a system where a lvl 200 base and a level 10 base average out to 105. With two attacks per base it makes the bottom half of the bracket completely unnecessary except as number stuffers which further compounds the issue. With weighting, the calculation would be 200+200+200+200+10÷5 =162. That's a 57 level difference in average. Sure, 38 levels are no small thing, particularly in higher ages, but let's not have perfect be the enemy of good. It certainly beats the 95 level drop of the current system.

Now the weird calculation of war rank is another matter entirely. I think defense is weighted far too heavily, since you can gain 10 stars but only give up 5. I assume Nexon/BHG sees it like a good defensive base can theoretically be attacked a nearly limitless amount of times as long as it isn't beaten. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle. I would assume if a base can't be cracked after a few tries most alliances will just concentrate on the ones they can beat. Besides, despite recent strides on defense, there comes a point where offense is just too powerful for 90% of bases most players will see, and it comes relatively early. Assuming the matchups are even halfway fair anyway.

I still would like to see war rank expressed as a number, or better yet, three numbers: Offense, defense, miscellaneous. Rather than just where our bases end up when the war starts. Going by pure levels is largely meaningless due to various factors. Some of the strongest alliances I've encountered are the ones who basically ignore their economy and sink a lot into university. Sometimes a level 138 is much stronger than a level 176.