Nb4powerup
Community Manager
- Joined
- May 16, 2016
- Messages
- 741
World War Leaderboards, Glory, changes to the leaderboards!
Hi everyone, I’m Mike Engle, a Senior Game Designer here at Big Huge Games! I’ve worked on most of the games BHG has released over the years, starting way back on 2003’s Rise of Nations as part of the balance team. On DomiNations I work on combat, game balance, and planning new features. Today I get to tell you all about an exciting new feature we’re adding to Alliances and World Wars.
At its core, DomiNations is a game about competition. You begin with a small tribe in the Dawn Age, and in the course of advancing through history you end up attacking and being attacked. You’re constantly competing for the resources you need.
In these individual attacks you also earn Medals, which rank you against all other players individually. World Wars represent our first step in expanding these individual battles into team play, where your Alliance fights an enemy Alliance for even more resources. However, there has not been a system to rank Alliances’ performance in World Wars, similar to ranking individual players with Medals.
The Glory System
Glory is a new system that ranks your Alliance’s skill at winning World Wars against other Alliances. Your Alliance’s Glory increases when you win a World War, and decreases when you lose one. Several things affect how much Glory you’re fighting for in each World War:
If you want to gain Glory, keep winning Wars with your Alliance. Even if you’re in a small Alliance, you’re going to steadily gain Glory if you just keep winning. If you’re in a larger Alliance, you can advance considerably faster up the leaderboard by fighting bigger Wars (a 50v50 War has 2.5x as much Glory at stake as a 10v10 War.) Lastly, you can advance faster by going to War with members who have advanced to later Ages, like the Industrial or Global Ages.
Keep in mind that the players you go to war with with determine who you’re matched against in World War, so you’re always better off bringing your most skilled, most active players. Those players will help you win the War and bring Glory to your Alliance!
Also remember that those increased stakes go both ways: in a 50v50 war you’ll gain 2.5x more Glory if you win the War, but you’ll lose 2.5x more Glory if you lose it. The fastest way to the top of the leaderboard is to fight in the largest wars possible!
We’ve been thrilled that players have embraced War competition, even going so far as to organize their own tournaments! (Until Glory launches you might want to check them out for yourself.) Even while working on the launch for World War we knew we wanted a feature that ranked Alliances against each other. It was great to see players taking initiative to fill in the gap while we worked on the feature.
When Glory goes live, all Alliances will start on even footing with 12,000 Glory, which is also the lowest Glory an Alliance can have. Any Wars started after that point will award Glory to the winning Alliance, so if you want the best chance to be on the top of the leaderboard, you should make sure that you are not in a war when this change goes live!
The Alliance leaderboard will switch to ranking Alliances by Glory, since it will be a more accurate measure of an Alliance’s ability to fight together as a team. An Alliance’s Medal score will still be displayed and is the tie-breaker on the leaderboard when two Alliances have the same Glory.
So far we’ve covered the basics, which should be enough to get you started. Stick around if you want the fine details on how Glory works.
The Nitty Gritty
Glory is based on the Elo rating system, which was originally created to rank chess players. Here’s how we use it to determine how much your Alliance’s Glory changes after a War ends.
First, we take the standard Elo change, which is based on the relative Glory levels of each Alliance (you win a lot more for beating a higher-ranked Alliance than a lower-ranked one). Then we apply a multiplier based on the number of participating Alliance members per side:
Player Rating is the sum total of a hidden value assigned to every combat-related upgrade (buildings, techs, unit upgrades, everything.)
The final multiplier we apply to Elo is based on the average player rating of your Alliance’s War participants. The table below shows the multipliers we would apply based on expected player ratings in each Age:
It’s worth pointing out that your Age doesn’t directly affect your player rating. This table is just based on what we would expect for an average player in that Age. This means even if all your players are the same age, you might qualify for a higher or lower multiplier depending on how many upgrades each individual player had.
As a side note, we also use player ratings in World War matchmaking. We sum up the player ratings of your Alliance’s warring members to get your alliance rating, and we match you up with another Alliance that has a similar alliance rating.
That brings our latest Design Spotlight to a close. Hope to see you all in-game in the next World War!
Hi everyone, I’m Mike Engle, a Senior Game Designer here at Big Huge Games! I’ve worked on most of the games BHG has released over the years, starting way back on 2003’s Rise of Nations as part of the balance team. On DomiNations I work on combat, game balance, and planning new features. Today I get to tell you all about an exciting new feature we’re adding to Alliances and World Wars.
At its core, DomiNations is a game about competition. You begin with a small tribe in the Dawn Age, and in the course of advancing through history you end up attacking and being attacked. You’re constantly competing for the resources you need.
In these individual attacks you also earn Medals, which rank you against all other players individually. World Wars represent our first step in expanding these individual battles into team play, where your Alliance fights an enemy Alliance for even more resources. However, there has not been a system to rank Alliances’ performance in World Wars, similar to ranking individual players with Medals.
The Glory System
Glory is a new system that ranks your Alliance’s skill at winning World Wars against other Alliances. Your Alliance’s Glory increases when you win a World War, and decreases when you lose one. Several things affect how much Glory you’re fighting for in each World War:
- Glory of Opposing Alliance: You’ll gain more Glory winning against an Alliance that has higher Glory than yours (and lose less from defeat)
- Number of Combatants: Up to 2.5x more Glory is at stake depending on the number of combatants in the War. More combatants, more Glory.
- Alliance Average Rating: Up to 2.7x more Glory is at stake based on all combat-related upgrades its members have made. More details later.
If you want to gain Glory, keep winning Wars with your Alliance. Even if you’re in a small Alliance, you’re going to steadily gain Glory if you just keep winning. If you’re in a larger Alliance, you can advance considerably faster up the leaderboard by fighting bigger Wars (a 50v50 War has 2.5x as much Glory at stake as a 10v10 War.) Lastly, you can advance faster by going to War with members who have advanced to later Ages, like the Industrial or Global Ages.
Keep in mind that the players you go to war with with determine who you’re matched against in World War, so you’re always better off bringing your most skilled, most active players. Those players will help you win the War and bring Glory to your Alliance!
Also remember that those increased stakes go both ways: in a 50v50 war you’ll gain 2.5x more Glory if you win the War, but you’ll lose 2.5x more Glory if you lose it. The fastest way to the top of the leaderboard is to fight in the largest wars possible!
We’ve been thrilled that players have embraced War competition, even going so far as to organize their own tournaments! (Until Glory launches you might want to check them out for yourself.) Even while working on the launch for World War we knew we wanted a feature that ranked Alliances against each other. It was great to see players taking initiative to fill in the gap while we worked on the feature.
When Glory goes live, all Alliances will start on even footing with 12,000 Glory, which is also the lowest Glory an Alliance can have. Any Wars started after that point will award Glory to the winning Alliance, so if you want the best chance to be on the top of the leaderboard, you should make sure that you are not in a war when this change goes live!
The Alliance leaderboard will switch to ranking Alliances by Glory, since it will be a more accurate measure of an Alliance’s ability to fight together as a team. An Alliance’s Medal score will still be displayed and is the tie-breaker on the leaderboard when two Alliances have the same Glory.
So far we’ve covered the basics, which should be enough to get you started. Stick around if you want the fine details on how Glory works.
The Nitty Gritty
Glory is based on the Elo rating system, which was originally created to rank chess players. Here’s how we use it to determine how much your Alliance’s Glory changes after a War ends.
First, we take the standard Elo change, which is based on the relative Glory levels of each Alliance (you win a lot more for beating a higher-ranked Alliance than a lower-ranked one). Then we apply a multiplier based on the number of participating Alliance members per side:
Player Rating is the sum total of a hidden value assigned to every combat-related upgrade (buildings, techs, unit upgrades, everything.)
The final multiplier we apply to Elo is based on the average player rating of your Alliance’s War participants. The table below shows the multipliers we would apply based on expected player ratings in each Age:
It’s worth pointing out that your Age doesn’t directly affect your player rating. This table is just based on what we would expect for an average player in that Age. This means even if all your players are the same age, you might qualify for a higher or lower multiplier depending on how many upgrades each individual player had.
As a side note, we also use player ratings in World War matchmaking. We sum up the player ratings of your Alliance’s warring members to get your alliance rating, and we match you up with another Alliance that has a similar alliance rating.
That brings our latest Design Spotlight to a close. Hope to see you all in-game in the next World War!
