TH #.5 issue. Fix it.

Hello, CoC community. There has been an issue arising that needs to be taken note of and corrected by SuperCell.

The issue is the TH #.5 manipulation for favorable war matchups.
- For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, it has become popular for players to rush a TH (except for troop levels) to an extreme level to gain a favorable matchup during war. For example: Last war, we had a TH7 match up against an extremely rushed TH10. The TH10 only built about half his walls, 1 air def, and a few other defenses, but had near Max Troops. The idea behind this is to manipulate matchmaking so that you can have higher level attacks to use against the other clan. They were willing to concede the 3 star against that base (just like a max TH7), however he was able to use his attacks on our TH10-9s.

I'm sure that most of you would agree this type of game manipulation is unfair and totally against the spirit of clan wars. I guess I could create a 2nd account and do the same, however, I'd just prefer that SC correct the problem and we can all move on.

In response to someone else giving me the much needed name of this... issue

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Originally Posted by WarrenJames

[rant]
OK, so there is a name for this min-maxed @#$%# @# $%@# Clan War @#$%#$% joykill we ran into awhile back. Thanks. Are those bases reportable? (anyone answering, just say yes or no, and maybe give the logic behind it if you feel like your head won't get bitten off) Because it is @#$%@%$ @#$%@#$ stupid to stoop that low to exploit the clan matching system like that. :mad: Would be more than happy to give Supercell data on how this happens so they can fix it. Or at the very least, ways to handle such @#$% bases.

There are few things I get ticked off about, and this is one of them. This is on the level of enragement most farming base users get when someone suggests an idea that would make thier shield generating base useless. Speaking of useless, don't argue with me on this issue. It will likely not get you anywhere anyway, besides hurt feelings, and no progress. People do have biases after all, and this is one I admit I have, and saying so as a fair warning.
[/rant]

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I'll... just lurk here and try to stay quite. I could be unbiased and more logical about it, but... would rather play it safe for everyone and not add to the drama.

Good luck on the discussion. Will be silently rooting for the obvious side I'm with on this issue. :smirk:

What the OP described is far more sinister than the .5 fad. A TH10 with a TH9.5 base would almost never get matched against a TH8, let alone a TH7. This could only happen if both clans had a bunch of TH10's, a bunch of TH6's, and a handful of bases in between. Even then, the clan war search engine would probably hate both clans and secretly plan to disconnect their clan leaders during war attacks in retaliation. :saywhat:

Anyway, I don't have a huge issue with the .5 phenomenon, as long as it's not an entire clan full of .5's.

However, really badly rushed bases (like a mild version of defenseless bases) do seem counter to the spirit of the game.

Perhaps a simple fix is an alternative way of adding up someone's attack and defense strength. For example, if you have TH10 attack strength, but TH1 defenses, the game seems to rank you as something in between, maybe a TH5 or TH6? Without insight into the war search algorithm, we can't know for sure. But maybe if the algorithm averaged 10 and 1 and came up with like 8? So averaging 9 and 10 would still be about 9.5, but averaging 10 and 7 might be 9, and averaging 10 and 4 might be 8, or whatever.

The simplest analogy I could think of, is to do a root-mean-square (RMS) computation. For example, the RMS of 10 and 9 is 9.513..., so that seems right. The RMS of 10 and 7 is 8.63, so still pretty close to the straight average (a.k.a. arithmetic mean) of 8.5.

However, the RMS of 10 and 5 is 7.9, and the RMS of 10 and 1 is 7.1.

If the RMS doesn't sufficiently prevent gaming the system, try a RMC (root-mean-cube, as in, the cube root of the mean of the cubed values). For a TH10 with TH9 defenses, this would be 9.526. For a TH10 with TH7 defenses, the RMC would be 8.757, so tilting close to being rated as a TH9. A TH10 with TH5 defenses would get a rating of 8.255, slightly more than a maxed TH8, like an early TH9. And a "defenseless" TH10 with effectively TH1 defenses would get rated as a 7.94, effectively a maxed TH8.

But this is a gross oversimplification, and anyway, we have no idea how Supercell does the war matching.

I see this more of strategy honestly and I don't believe this is a #.5 issue it's more of a someone found an easy way to win wars.

My clan is mostly TH7's and TH8's, so we haven't run into this fad yet. There's no point neglecting defenses at TH7 or TH8, because you can already 3-star your opponents with a non-rushed base. If you need easier opponents (especially at TH7), you're doing it wrong. Towards the end of TH8, taking on a maxed TH8 with dragons is risky. I've gotten 1-2 stars as often as I've gotten 3 stars, against strong TH8's, and I've only 3-starred one maxed TH8 ever.

I'm curious how much offense is taken into consideration, because people make it sounds like it's very little. For example, if you had a clan with 20 TH8.5's, how would they get matched up? That is, 20 bases, all with maxed TH8 defenses. I don't mean 4 level 6 wizard towers and 4 level 6 AD's, etc. I don't just mean the levels of the defenses, but the number of defenses as well. I'm talking about a TH8 that upgraded to TH9, and never touched their base layout. They just upgraded army camps, spell factory, lab, dark barracks, and did all the research.

Let's say they get matched against a clan that only has maxed TH8's and maxed TH9's. How many of each would there be? Would it be pretty even? Say, for example, 10 maxed TH8's and 10 maxed TH9's? Would it be heavily skewed towards TH8's, like maybe 16 TH8's and only 4 TH9's? Would it be all TH8's? If it's 10 and 10, then I'd say there's no problem here. If it's 16 and 4, or heaven forbid 20 and 0, then there's a huge problem.

Just going to support the op here. He's got a point. It's not just towmhall 5's it's all of them.

Their 4 VS our 4 (certainly worked out for the best for us but imagine if he had gone to 10 with Max drags.)

Their 4-
http://i.imgur.com/Svaleha.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/v8JxQu8.jpg

Our 4-
http://i.imgur.com/vaJ9NoN.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/gX5Ybxo.jpg

Post reserved for my photos

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Originally Posted by GanjaSandwich

Just going to support the op here. He's got a point. It's not just towmhall 5's it's all of them.

Their 4 VS our 4 (certainly worked out for the best for us but imagine if he had gone to 10 with Max drags.)

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That TH9 is rushed and his troops are SUPER WEAK for a TH9.

AND your TH8 is WAAAAAAY behind in troops upgrades! How can your guy not have L3 dragons yet?!?!

I see no problem here.

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Originally Posted by JohnnyPC

That TH9 is rushed and his troops are SUPER WEAK for a TH9.

AND your TH8 is WAAAAAAY behind in troops upgrades! How can your guy not have L3 dragons yet?!?!

I see no problem here.

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If I had to guess, I would say he's a brand new TH8. Those troops are maxed for TH7. based on their defenses, they probably haven't been at TH8 for very long. I'm rusty on identifying AD's on site, but those are either level 4 or 5. If they're level 4, that means he's been at TH8 for least 10 days or so.

As for L3 dragons, it would take someone at least 24 days to get them, assuming they spend 4 days upgrading the lab, 10 days doing barch troops first for farming, then 10 days for dragons. And personally, I would do balloons before dragons. It's only a 5 day delay, and I think L2 dragons with L5 balloons is better than L3 dragons, unless you have someone in your clan who can donate L6 CC balloons.

Edit: regarding the troop levels, the only weird thing is the level 3 healer. Who does the healer as their first TH8 research?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JohnnyPC

That TH9 is rushed and his troops are SUPER WEAK for a TH9.

AND your TH8 is WAAAAAAY behind in troops upgrades! How can your guy not have L3 dragons yet?!?!

I see no problem here.

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Considering he just got to 8; How is he behind on anything? He's doing what he's doing and we don't usually war. Drags are quite a bit of time into 8. (I started mine after I maxed my barch back to back and started he drags so that 30 days.)

And yeah he's rushed but has 4 seaking air mines and managed to get his air defense up before war.

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Originally Posted by Xitra

If I had to guess, I would say he's a brand new TH8. Those troops are maxed for TH7. based on their defenses, they probably haven't been at TH8 for very long. I'm rusty on identifying AD's on site, but those are either level 4 or 5. If they're level 4, that means he's been at TH8 for least 10 days or so.

As for L3 dragons, it would take someone at least 24 days to get them, assuming they spend 4 days upgrading the lab, 10 days doing barch troops first for farming, then 10 days for dragons. And personally, I would do balloons before dragons. It's only a 5 day delay, and I think L2 dragons with L5 balloons is better than L3 dragons, unless you have someone in your clan who can donate L6 CC balloons.

Edit: regarding the troop levels, the only weird thing is the level 3 healer. Who does the healer as their first TH8 research?

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I questioned the healer as well lol. Not sure why he did that. But he did go afk so he might of just dumped elixer.

He got his new stuff up to townhall 7 so you're looking at level 5 air defense.