How to get Fair and Competitive Wars, and Avoid Engineered Clans

Printable View

Show 100 post(s) from this thread on one page

January 26th, 2017
MossackFonseca

Quote:

Originally Posted by CasimirEffect

1. All of our 11s in war are all mostly max (atleast 40/40/20 with appropriate troops and all TH11 structures upgraded). Sitting 11s is an easy fix which I have also stated as a solution. One of our sister clans cut the number of TH11 participants from 4 to 1 due to unforeseen events and a split in clan last month. The result since making the change is a record of 12-1... they struggled with the same issues I have outlined prior to the change, but they have 2-4 TH10s in the lineup with 11s.

Fixing a roster and exiling (near) max TH11 accounts from war lineup is one way to improve war record, but only serves to shield the clan temporarily from a design oversight and likely does more harm than good when these folks get bored and leave the clan benching them. As a TH11 with only walls left to upgrade, I can confirm that Clash of Clans without war is boring.

2. Under discussion over the last 2 weeks within clan. Our 9.5s have been semi-consistently 3 starring low 10s and are capable of 2 stars on 11s allowing our 11s to hit the top 10s. Our issue has not been competency in most cases. If our 9.5s pull in extra 10 that's fine and once it occurs often enough they will agree to drop infernos, but they are pairing with additional full 10s and 11s.

Neither tip addresses how additional TH11 offense and defense can end up at the top or bottom of the chain on either side. Hopefully, we agree that this needs to be fixed.

I wouldn't say that it "needs to be fixed" so much as "I'd really like for them to work on it". That's not a dodge, but rather a nod to reality. There are a crapload of clans searching for war at any given time, at 10v10 up to 50v50, and for most of them, most of the time, the MM does a pretty good job. It does especially well with mostly-balanced clans that have a reasonably tight th spread. It does especially poorly with clans with a very wide spread from top to bottom, and if you throw in a bunch of .5's into that mix on top of it, especially .5's that that have the troops to 3* low 10's and 2* max 11's, then it's just going to be tough to find a comparable clan to match up with in many cases. Additionally, you probably have gotten used to longer searches, but if you let the search run over more than 30-40 minutes then the search parameters get relaxed even further, which can often greatly increase your chance for a mismatch.

To be honest, I don't know that the devs are going to get the war mm search parameters "fixed" a whole lot better than they are, but I do think that they're good enough for now. And by that I mean that they're predictable enough that those who want to aim for balanced wars can pretty much always get them, those who aim for imbalanced wars can pretty much always get them, and those who just throw a group together to make a war party are more likely than not to get a reasonable matchup.

fyi: Max th11's just further skew your war lineup, but the example that I listed above still holds. If I were you then I would throw everybody into every war, but strongly encourage your 9.5's to slap down their infernos and put their bases in order. If they're good enough to 3* early 10's and regularly 2* 11's then you'll see a big drop in unfair wars, and you probably won't run into any more opponents with greater skill; ie, you'll get more "winnable" wars, and the boost to morale from knowing up front that you're going to have a fair and competitive war is hard to overstate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CasimirEffect

Understood. However, if MM cannot distinguish between TH11 offensive and defensive structures and treat the cases you outline similarly then current iteration of MM is broken and needs a separate case to handle swingy matchups created by TH11 specific structures and troops. Your example provides a perfect situation which might come up given current MM system but should never occur in a system designed to meet the statements provided by SC regarding MM.

You are talking around the main focus of everything I have written. My point (as an actual engineer irl) is this: If you develop a product and a portion of it breaks as a result of some modification intended to improve the product then you fix the piece that is broken. Specifically, introduction of TH11 has broken MM for over a year, so fix it.

We have already developed a work around solution, so tbh I don't care if they "fix" the mm or not. I know that as long as I upgrade my bases in a mostly common sense manner and don't put together unbalanced war rosters then I'll get reasonable war matchups, and if I hone my attacking skills and my clanmates do the same that we'll win a high % of those wars and have a lot of fun doing it.

Isn't that enough? You talked about having a bunch of .5's in your clan, that's engineering. My clan was like that for a long time, so I'm not being judgmental about it or anything, but the war mm is much more harsh on .5's these days. Or, perhaps to put it another way, the war mm is much quicker to classify a clan as imbalanced today than it was previously, and I have zero problem with that at all. My clan recognized that early on and started throwing down infernos and xbows like crazy to even us out. If your clan evens out its roster and has a few max 11's, a cluster of 10's with infernos, and a bunch of full 9's, then you'll probably match up pretty well with a lot of balanced clans. Heck, that sort of roster is what you see in CWL, right?
January 26th, 2017
daddylindo

Why dont a big group of say, twenty 10.5's get together, start a war and see what kind of matchup they get? See what the mm spits out
January 26th, 2017
MossackFonseca

Quote:

Originally Posted by daddylindo

Why dont a big group of say, twenty 10.5's get together, start a war and see what kind of matchup they get? See what the mm spits out

Too much of any one th, or especially too tight of a war weight spread, can often be just as hard to match as too wide of a spread. How many times have you matched with a clan composed of just 1 th? One time in goat herd we matched with a clan that had 50 th9's. FIFTY!! We had 5-6 th11's, 7-8 th10's, about 20 th9's, with the bottom mostly 8's with a few 7's. Opponents tried their best and got 122 stars, but it was a ridiculous mismatch in our favor. And that is the only time out of hundreds of wars that I've ever seen a clan like that.

Not to mention that you would need dozens of wars, with different search times, with exactly the same clan war roster, to start to see a reliable picture emerge. Not to mention big win streaks, big losing streaks, etc etc etc. Also, how developed are these .5's? 90k? 100k? Max offense? Brand new th11 with lvl 2 warden? etc etc etc. The only info we'd get from making a war roster like that would be limited, and it would have nothing to compare it with.

Then look at the war info that we've compiled here as a comparison. Numerous balanced clans get almost-exclusively balanced competition. Numerous clans with various levels of engineering regularly run into unfair matchups, with a fair % of those unfair in opponents favor. Several of us here have hundreds of data points to compare, across numerous war mm updates, and that data has been remarkably consistent. The only difference is the threshold that moves clans from "balanced" to "unbalanced" has changed over time.

Really, when we think about it, we are going to have to remain vigilant as the war mm evolves over time. The things that lead to unbalanced wars today may or may not cause them tomorrow, and things that don't cause them today could start doing so in the future.
January 26th, 2017
daddylindo

Quote:

Originally Posted by MossackFonseca

Too much of any one th, or especially too tight of a war weight spread, can often be just as hard to match as too wide of a spread. How many times have you matched with a clan composed of just 1 th? One time in goat herd we matched with a clan that had 50 th9's. FIFTY!! We had 5-6 th11's, 7-8 th10's, about 20 th9's, with the bottom mostly 8's with a few 7's. Opponents tried their best and got 122 stars, but it was a ridiculous mismatch in our favor. And that is the only time out of hundreds of wars that I've ever seen a clan like that.

Not to mention that you would need dozens of wars, with different search times, with exactly the same clan war roster, to start to see a reliable picture emerge. Not to mention big win streaks, big losing streaks, etc etc etc. Also, how developed are these .5's? 90k? 100k? Max offense? Brand new th11 with lvl 2 warden? etc etc etc. The only info we'd get from making a war roster like that would be limited, and it would have nothing to compare it with.

Then look at the war info that we've compiled here as a comparison. Numerous balanced clans get almost-exclusively balanced competition. Numerous clans with various levels of engineering regularly run into unfair matchups, with a fair % of those unfair in opponents favor. Several of us here have hundreds of data points to compare, across numerous war mm updates, and that data has been remarkably consistent. The only difference is the threshold that moves clans from "balanced" to "unbalanced" has changed over time.

Well eventually a large group of players will be th11 so it'll come to that at some point. I just wanna test these .5 theories that people are saying on here
January 26th, 2017
MossackFonseca

Quote:

Originally Posted by daddylindo

Well eventually a large group of players will be th11 so it'll come to that at some point. I just wanna test these .5 theories that people are saying on here

I don't think so. Too many people get frustrated, or bored, or burned out, or fearful of upgrading since they can never go back and have heard about recent difficulties in th11 attacking, etc etc etc. Making a clan of all 8.5 or 9.5 would be far easier I'd think.
January 26th, 2017
CasimirEffect

Quote:

Originally Posted by MossackFonseca

We have already developed a work around solution, so tbh I don't care if they "fix" the mm or not. I know that as long as I upgrade my bases in a mostly common sense manner and don't put together unbalanced war rosters then I'll get reasonable war matchups, and if I hone my attacking skills and my clanmates do the same that we'll win a high % of those wars and have a lot of fun doing it.

Very specific to your clan and not the problem overall. The definition of narrow thinking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MossackFonseca

Isn't that enough? You talked about having a bunch of .5's in your clan, that's engineering.

You must have missed the bit about clan history where I point out that our roster was full of max TH9s and made adjustments to try and fix MM issues. We were not using this "engineered" upgrade path prior to October update and our 9s felt that they had to switch to it to compete in our matchups... This is very different from the "reality" you are painting, so please remember that our "realities" are subjective and every clan has a different one with MANY MANY complaints from the community. So yes, MM can be better: everything man-made can be better with adequate time and resources.

Having all max 9s participate in a mad rush to TH10 to compete in mixed clan wars where TH10s are in demand is a convenient way to increased revenue stream for SC by sucking in a new group of committed players. Seeing this play out deeply bother me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MossackFonseca

My clan recognized that early on and started throwing down infernos and xbows like crazy to even us out. If your clan evens out its roster and has a few max 11's, a cluster of 10's with infernos, and a bunch of full 9's, then you'll probably match up pretty well with a lot of balanced clans.

Very clever, I'm starting to question my competency as a writer to convey a point, or the reader's attention to detail. I've typed quite a bit so at some point TLDR has to factor in. :/ We recognized this too but did not have the luxury of a traditional engineered roster with max 9.5s prior to the October update. How much money did your group drop to even things out quickly? There is certainly significant cost associated with turning a max TH9 into a full TH10 over the course of a few months.

The more I discuss this, the more I understand the driving forces behind the October update. 2+2=5 and we believe it. We even see it... for a moment.

Either way, I'm done. I've said my part and there is no point in repeating myself at this point. I would like to see the changes I've outlined, but I also don't mind switching games when the pay-to-win model becomes even more apparent in subsequent updates.

Thanks everyone for feedback whether good or bad. Enjoy the continued psuedo-intellectual banter ;).
January 27th, 2017
ryryshouse

Quote:

Originally Posted by MossackFonseca

I'll repost some info from the OP:

1. Keep a tight spread of th's - The tighter the better. I generally recommend no more than 3 total th levels, preferably with a relatively even mix of them all, though 4 th levels with all evenly built bases is usually pretty safe, too.

blah blah blah

nope to all of it bro. anecdotal for OP perhaps. If you cant find my posts with my rosters, im not finding them for you.

I think that advice is exactly what draws you engineered clans, tbh.
January 27th, 2017
MossackFonseca

Quote:

Originally Posted by CasimirEffect

Very specific to your clan and not the problem overall. The definition of narrow thinking.

You must have missed the bit about clan history where I point out that our roster was full of max TH9s and made adjustments to try and fix MM issues. We were not using this "engineered" upgrade path prior to October update and our 9s felt that they had to switch to it to compete in our matchups... This is very different from the "reality" you are painting, so please remember that our "realities" are subjective and every clan has a different one with MANY MANY complaints from the community. So yes, MM can be better: everything man-made can be better with adequate time and resources.

Having all max 9s participate in a mad rush to TH10 to compete in mixed clan wars where TH10s are in demand is a convenient way to increased revenue stream for SC by sucking in a new group of committed players. Seeing this play out deeply bother me.

Very clever, I'm starting to question my competency as a writer to convey a point, or the reader's attention to detail. I've typed quite a bit so at some point TLDR has to factor in. :/ We recognized this too but did not have the luxury of a traditional engineered roster with max 9.5s prior to the October update. How much money did your group drop to even things out quickly? There is certainly significant cost associated with turning a max TH9 into a full TH10 over the course of a few months.

The more I discuss this, the more I understand the driving forces behind the October update. 2+2=5 and we believe it. We even see it... for a moment.

Either way, I'm done. I've said my part and there is no point in repeating myself at this point. I would like to see the changes I've outlined, but I also don't mind switching games when the pay-to-win model becomes even more apparent in subsequent updates.

Thanks everyone for feedback whether good or bad. Enjoy the continued psuedo-intellectual banter ;).

I gave you the benefit of the doubt when you attacked tanksinatra, but it's clear that you just want to argue and insult others who don't immediately jump to your point of view. However, as I don't want to completely derail my own thread, I'll try to stick to facts here without insulting you.

1. I am an officer in 3 different clans. One of them I built up from th5 max wars to mixed th7-9 wars over an 8 month period, one of them is Forum Goat Herd and is open to anybody who has a forums account, and one of them is Folkvangr. My home clan never got more than a 7 match win streak, but we had a lot of fun and learned a lot. During that process I was able to learn a lot about the particulars of the war mm algorithm. Those have just been reinforced in my time with Goat Herd and Folkvangr. I'm constantly at war with 4 accounts in those 2 clans, and have been for 5 or 6 months. Additionally, I regularly discuss these topics in the forums with others, some engineers, some maxers, some who do both, some who just want to play, some Gasps, some mods...about as broad of a range of players as you'll find in these forums. So, the things that I talk about are not just gleaned from a few wars in one clan and some sort of perceived unfairness that I've witnessed, but rather from a whole lot of experience and thought going into them.

Your experience, based upon what you have told us, is much, MUCH more limited than mine. Perhaps you could see that if you weren't being so narrow in your own thinking.

As I have stated at least once in our discussions, an extreme outlier situation on top or bottom is viewed as imbalanced by the war mm algorithm. You can insult me or others in this thread all you want, but that won't change how the mm views your clan. You're imbalanced. Not necessarily because you have some .5's, though that doesn't help, but rather because you're jumping 35k or more from your bottom th11 to your top th10/9.5. Even though those might look to the casual observer to be "only 1 th apart", to the war mm that is an enormous chasm that makes it a lot harder for it to find a good match for you.

Whether you wish to believe it or not, your clan sounds pretty close in composition to Folkvangr. I'd invite you to come visit us to see just how similar we are, but we don't let people like you into our clan. Build up your 9.5s. Even them out. Drop infernos. Based upon your claims, they're all stud attackers. If that's true, then you'll win more wars, and you'll get a lot more fair competition.

It took us a couple of months to even out our 9's and 10's, it didn't happen overnight. Not sure why you asked how much money people paid to even their bases out, unless that was also a veiled insult. I know that at least a few people buy gems in my clan b/c they openly talk about it (and 2 of them bought gems as gifts for entire clan yesterday), but the majority just play a lot. It's not that hard to go from 70k to 85k war weight in 2 months, you could drop and max out both infernos, and max out many of your other defenses, too. Heck, if you were farming a lot you would also do some serious work on your heroes, walls, and lab while you were at it.

But you know all of that I'm sure. It's become clear now that you came here to complain rather than looking for ways to get more fair and competitive wars.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryryshouse

nope to all of it bro. anecdotal for OP perhaps. If you cant find my posts with my rosters, im not finding them for you.

I think that advice is exactly what draws you engineered clans, tbh.

You've posted a couple of rosters, I've lived and breathed it for 6 months. Invite me to come do a war with your clan and I'll be able to tell you why we did (or did not) get a fair and balanced opponent.
January 27th, 2017
CasimirEffect

Mossack,

I did not set out to insult anyone. I am trying to point to the forest that lies past a few trees, and each time someone feels that it is necessary to qualify my experience, which is fine but baseless. Please accept my apologies for tone issues in my writing, I'm sure many comments do not land as intended given my affinity for dry humor and references that might miss their mark.

Comments regarding money spent are not an underhanded insult to anyone, rather I am shining the spotlight on game design choices specifically built to serve as a new means of revenue from a committed player base which probably has not began to spend significant amounts of money on the game over the last 3+ years. I've spent a great deal of money on this game because I enjoy it, have the resources available, and wish to support the hobbies I spend a great deal of time with. I am simply pointing out that since October, our max TH9s and the max TH9s of 4 other clans have been incentivized to upgrade to TH10 in an attempt to fix matchup issues. With this comes a significant pinch on resources and an interest by the player to spend money so that the clan is not negatively impacted while these individuals are in what I'll call the danger zone of imbalance: what our clan was slammed for by tanksinatra. This happens all the time on forums and it isn't very helpful, I was pointing this out in my counter-"attack".

Next on to your suggestions, all of which are fine, logical, and provide a more lengthy explanation of the one or more of the 3 roster engineering options I outlined prior to your suggestions. In fact, our TH9.5s have agreed today to drop infernos in part based on your input. So thank you for providing additional information and performance based feedback. But the fact remains, the TH11 is not handled properly by MM currently and the fix to this issue needs to be placed on the developer. This is where we disagree, which is fine if you ignore the gross revenue generated by Clash of Clans each quarter. I argue that any company that makes as much money as SC does from a software product is obligated to provide timely corrections for pieces which are broken by updates. The resources are clearly available to make MM better so why should it not be? We all pay for this! Aside from this one point, we have said the same thing and are choosing to argue essentially over word choice(s).

I have outlined a solution where SC adds a case to MM which counts TH10/11 specific structures like ITs, EA, GW, and perhaps additional defensive levels to control for this. In this case, lopsided bases can easily receive a penalty to avoid undoing the most recent improvements to matchmaking intended to meet demand from the community to reduce advantages gained by engineering. I agree with you that these changes are good for the game, but we disagree that implementation has come with (un)intended drawback do not adequately account for TH11s specifically. Sharky, added that TH11 offense is also an issue and I agree that this could be controlled better.

Lastly, any conversation that does not address new technology and/or improvements to greater humanity is inherently psuedo-intellectual. I part-take in this as much as anyone else, after all we are discussing the nonsense we choose to invest significant time into, so if you are offended by this please know that I am not offended by the same comment from someone else.

I'll end responses with this post. Hopefully it is clear enough that I'm adding content for the right reasons for anyone who goes back through this mess.
January 27th, 2017
MossackFonseca

Quote:

Originally Posted by CasimirEffect

Next on to your suggestions, all of which are fine, logical, and provide a more lengthy explanation of the one or more of the 3 roster engineering options I outlined prior to your suggestions. In fact, our TH9.5s have agreed today to drop infernos in part based on your input. So thank you for providing additional information and performance based feedback. But the fact remains, the TH11 is not handled properly by MM currently and the fix to this issue needs to be placed on the developer. This is where we disagree, which is fine if you ignore the gross revenue generated by Clash of Clans each quarter. I argue that any company that makes as much money as SC does from a software product is obligated to provide timely corrections for pieces which are broken by updates. The resources are clearly available to make MM better so why should it not be? We all pay for this! Aside from this one point, we have said the same thing and are choosing to argue essentially over word choice(s).

I have outlined a solution where SC adds a case to MM which counts TH10/11 specific structures like ITs, EA, GW, and perhaps additional defensive levels to control for this. In this case, lopsided bases can easily receive a penalty to avoid undoing the most recent improvements to matchmaking intended to meet demand from the community to reduce advantages gained by engineering. I agree with you that these changes are good for the game, but we disagree that implementation has come with (un)intended drawback do not adequately account for TH11s specifically. Sharky, added that TH11 offense is also an issue and I agree that this could be controlled better.

Lastly, any conversation that does not address new technology and/or improvements to greater humanity is inherently psuedo-intellectual. I part-take in this as much as anyone else, after all we are discussing the nonsense we choose to invest significant time into, so if you are offended by this please know that I am not offended by the same comment from someone else.

I'll end responses with this post. Hopefully it is clear enough that I'm adding content for the right reasons for anyone who goes back through this mess.

I would say that they're not "obligated" to fix the high end war scene issues (Deckard has some legitimate issues that I'm not completely sure of how to fix for example), but I would say that they have a huge financial incentive to get it right. If they can keep gem-buyers happier, longer, then the game can continue indefinitely. And th11's, at least in my experience, buy a whole lot more gems than th8's. So, while I do agree with you that there are clearly some areas where the mm could use improvement, I am also optimistic that they will continue working to improve things.

As far as the constant changes, which inevitably seem to spur more gem-purchases, I would say that I have a different reaction to most on that. I understand that they need to sell gems to keep the game going, and I like seeing changes that keep the game fresh come out every few months, so I'm not bothered by the changes even though I see them for what they are.

Show 100 post(s) from this thread on one page