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World War Pairings

M4X__

Approved user
Joined
Jul 11, 2017
Messages
3
Recently, the world war pairings system was updated. We were promised that the new pairing system would be much improved. Unfortunately, it is much worse.

I can explain exactly what has occurred in this new pairing system, and why it is completely screwed up. There are various ways to pair teams. The best way would be to analyze every component of every player - defensive tower level, offensive troop level, university research, activity level, war experience, etc. But this would require a complex algorithm and a lot of time and effort. We can't expect that. So there are four "easy" factors that could be considered by the developers in war pairings:
1. Level
2. Age
3. Past success rate of the alliance.
4. Team composition

I believe that the developers have considered these three factors in their new pairing method, but they have severely misunderstood the importance of the four factors. I will explain:

1. Level. A player advances in level by upgrading buildings and troops, and completing library and university research. If all of these things were done by everyone in the same order, or all of these things were done completely at random, then level would be the best factor to consider in making war pairings. However, players have differing strategies in advancing through Dominations. Some players upgrade farms, caravans and roads first, and do economic research first, to give them easy income to upgrade everything else. Others upgrade defensive towers and troops first, as well as military research, as they expect to win resources, rather than produce them. In a war, these example players, if of the same age, would not be evenly matched. So although level should be a factor in war matchups, it is not the most important factor.

2. Age. This factor appears to be completely disregarded in war pairings. However, I consider it the most important. I will use an example. There are two players, both level 180. The first is in industrial age. He has upgraded most of his buildings - economic and military, and has done most of his library and university research. The second player, also age 180, is in the atomic age. He has not upgraded his farms, caravans or roads, and has done little economic university research; however, he has built all available buildings and has upgraded his defensive buildings and barracks. What happens when the two are paired in war? The industrial age player has 4 anti-tank guns, 3 machine guns, three tank depots, three AA and a sniper tower. The atomic age player has 6 anti-tank guns, 5 machine guns, 4 tank depots, 4 AA and 3 sniper towers. Just in these categories alone, the atomic age player has 8 more defensive structures. On top of this, each of the atomic age structures does, on average, 40% more damage and has 42% more hitpoints. All other factors being equal, the industrial age player is seriously outmatched. But the other factors are not equal. The industrial age player has barracks capacity of 140, while the atomic age player has capacity of 155, meaning that the latter can send 10% more troops in an attack - plus an extra air unit. Once you consider that the ground troops of the atomic age player are 30% stronger, and their air units do 50% more damage and have more than 100% more health, the battle is not fair at all. Even if the industrial age player is a brilliant strategist, and is ahead in university research, the timer will keep him from destroying all of the structures of the atomic age player, who not only has more defensive structures, he also has more than a dozen more other structures than the industrial age player - structures that must be destroyed in a world war. So the most important factor in pairings should be the age of the players involved.

3. Past success rate. I believe that this is where the developers devoted the most attention in their recent "adjustments" to the pairing procedure - erroneously, in my opinion. Again I will give an example. Let's say you have two identically matched teams, by level and age. One of the teams takes world war very seriously - everyone donates troops, activates coalitions and plans their attack. The second team does none of the foregoing and, typically, only half of their members show up to make their attacks. Who will win? Who should win? The well-prepared team deserves its victory. When it comes to the next war, they deserve a victory again, and again, until, at random, they are matched against another well-prepared team. They should not be penalized for winning. Without getting off-topic, that is what is wrong with many public school systems - they try to penalize the best students and boost the worst so that everyone is an equal. That is not the way it should work. If and when Dominations has a "world war tournament", there should then be pairings of the winners against each other until a victor is declared. Until then, past victories should be disregarded in pairings. The well-prepared teams should win the vast majority of their battles, against evenly matched opponents on paper.

4. Team composition. This is another factor apparently completely disregarded by the developers. Let's say that there are two teams of ten. The first team has ten industrial age players. The second team has five atomic age players and five gunpowder age players. They should balance out, right? Not at all. It should not be forgotten that all participants get two attacks. The five atomic age players on the second team should each win two five-star victories, giving their team a perfect score. The five gunpowder age members need not attack. On the industrial age team, half of them will have an easy time attacking the gunpowder age opponents. But in the other half of the attacks, they will get nowhere against their atomic opponents. Then there is the matter of troop donations. The industrial age team can only donate industrial age troops to other members, both for defense and offense. The other team will have atomic age troops donated to defend all ten of the town centers, and to be used in attacks.

The current pairing system is bad to the point of being unfair. I will give examples. In a war started tonight, our alliance posted a team of ten. Five of the ten are industrial age, Two are global, two are enlightenment and one is gunpowder. Our opponent team has two global age - just like us. However, they have zero industrial age. Instead of having five industrial age, like us, they have five atomic age. We have one member over level 180 (at 194). They have four members over level 200. They have six players more advanced than our #2. The previous war, three days ago, was not much better, as we faced three in atomic age and four in global.

I urge the developers to rethink their war pairing system. Please place more emphasis on the factors that matter in practice - the advancement age of the war team members and the composition of the team, and focus less on "average level" and past war success.
 
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