Cheating alliance: Scotland (lvl 8). BLATANT SANDBAGGING

[Zornosaur]

Currently my alliance Resurgent is in a war with an alliance called Scotland. I know that sandbagging has been a generally hot topic lately, but this is such a blatant example that I wanted to share. in their alliance description they specifically say that "if u opt in WW play or be kicked," yet their 5 lowest ranked players in their war lineup have all been inactive for more than 100 days. 3 are iron age (2 are level 8) and out of the other two one is medieval age and one is classical age. Even worse, two of them have names that signify that these accounts were created explicitly for this purpose "warbot4sair" (SAIR is the alliance leader, Sottie is another player) and ScottieWarBot
.

It's ridiculous that this alliance still exists and has been able to reach level 8. The war bots should be banned from the game as well as the alliance leadership.

 

[mkm1g15]

Completely agree, this is basically exploiting matchmaking. This makes it hard for actual lower level players to ever war.

 

[Quovatis]

This is not cheating.

 

[shukra]

it's not an exploit, in the sense of violating intent of design.
the complaint is about matchmaking, which NXN knows we want fixed; but this is a hard question.

i want to see more experimentation with different algorithms.

 

[TheOneLeggedOne]

I & most of my alliance have Quit Wars because there is No Point anymore, all we get are Unwinnable wars against massive base stackers/Hackers etc...

 

[Lancelot]

This is Bug Using... it's a matchfinding bug.

 

[Kaiser Shag]

I think that the 3 or 4 weakest participants shouldn't be taken into account for matchmaking. That would solve all this sandbagging bullsh*t.

 

[Zornosaur]

This is not cheating.

What makes you say that? I feel like they are gaining an unfair advantage that ruins the game. In my mind the cheating is defined as having an unfair advantage.

 

[Zornosaur]

I think that the 3 or 4 weakest participants shouldn't be taken into account for matchmaking. That would solve all this sandbagging bullsh*t.

I think something like this would work, or at least giving them more weight. Or maybe not counting players into the match that have been inactive for > 7 days or something similar.

 

[Flash's Mob]

I have another alternative, which is to use a standard deviation as part of the calculation. It's obvious that the war matching is made up of a comparison of the overall total of offensive and defensive capabilities of each side, which is how we end up with these mismatches. However, if a standard deviation calculation was also applied, it would put the sandbaggers in wars with sandbaggers, and the rest of us fighting each other.
Let's take a simple example. 5 players on each side, capabilities of 10, 10, 10, 1, 1 (total of 32) and 7, 7, 7, 6, 5 (also total of 32). However the standard deviation for each (using stdev.s in excel) is 4.929 and 0.894.
TinSoldier - please put this in front of the developers and let's see what they can do!!!!

 

[Quovatis]

What makes you say that? I feel like they are gaining an unfair advantage that ruins the game. In my mind the cheating is defined as having an unfair advantage.

They don't have an unfair advantage. Anyone can do the same thing. They are using the game rules to their advantage. That's far different from cheating, where they make their own rules.

 

[Necksahn]

Devs already have a post recognizing the problem and will be implementing a series of fixes over the coming months.

 

[Javahart]

We do this - its not cheating, simply using the rules to our advantage. Our lowest ranked players are active but rarely take part in war. Just use them to make matchmaking a bit easier.

 

[Master Contrail Program]

Hahahahaha! I hope you weren't serious. That post is nearly a year and a half old and they've done nothing. Nor will they. The people on top like the status quo and they're the ones who spend the most. It's not a lack of ideas or ability on the devs' part, it's a lack of desire. Pretending otherwise at this point is delusional.