Discussion Tournament Changes (post-release)

[edeba]

There are facts, there are opinions and there are lies.

Agreed, catering costs are not reduced at all. What they did was reduce goods costs compared to other things and implied this was a reduction in what it would cost us in the tournament and that's a lie.

Catering Cost might start a lot lower on Beta but they increase very fast. I'm afraid that when I can compare 3 or more provinces catering cost will become higher then they are now on Live. So Inno's promise that catering cost will be about half of what they are now on Live won't hold up very long.

 

[spennyit]

It's not like loosing all 4 encounters in one province, but like loosing 4 encounters out of X provinces, and it should be almost the same in a long run.

@Karvest: please, explain this to me, because I don't agree Just imagine I lose in province 10: since the involved troops are 4 times than today (since they take into account that today we do 4 encounters) I lose as many troops as if today I lose all 4 encounters in province 10, but this will never happen (I may lose 1, but not all 4). I don't see why you say this is not true: to me this is a fact. Forthermore, as the Spire teach us, when more troops are involved, the encounters are more expensive since you have smaller chance to avoid any hit.

 

[DeletedUser1953]

On reflection, this is an impossible task, it's been too long time that the balancing is crazy and that there is no captain on the board.

Take the example of the last era, we gain 2 extensions, the efficiency of the houses is increased by 10% (this is less than before and it is not constant according to the eras!). A part goes to the upgrade of town hall (but which does not increase the efficiency, it's just for the score), a part will go to the upgrade of T2 but it's so bad balanced that the player produces less T2 than if he built another factory ! How with a mess like this, a normal person could calculate by how much the difficulty of the tournament (and the dungeon) should be increased!
To do the last era, you need an insame amount of armories (orc production) but do we take into account for the difficulty, it is a temporary production and after we can teleport the armories or not ?

To find the solution and the parameters, we need to solve an equation but there is no possible equation !

 

[Ashrem]

Suggestion: Either Reduce catering costs, or don't, but don't say you are reducing catering costs if you are really just shifting part of the cost from easier/cheaper to obtain goods to harder/more-expensive to obtain goods.

 

[ErestorX]

please, explain this to me, because I don't agree

It is the variance of lost troops that increases because of the reduction of the number of encounters. In a single tournament you might have higher losses because of bad luck with fewer encounters. But you also have a chance for less losses because of good luck. Therefore the expected number of lost troops remains the same in the long run.

 

[Yogi Dave]

I've pretty much missed this week due to personal problems, but have read (skimmed) through the post for this weeks tourney. I saw one post saying there were no changes from last week, that the squad sizes per prov/round are the same as last week. I thought that was the one change for this week, at least to the upper provs. Maybe I missed other comments about what changed. Maybe I totally misunderstood what was to change. So, did anything change from last week?

 

[Yogi Dave]

It is the variance of lost troops that increases because of the reduction of the number of encounters. In a single tournament you might have higher losses because of bad luck with fewer encounters. But you also have a chance for less losses because of good luck. Therefore the expected number of lost troops remains the same in the long run.

I've read this argument many times, not just in this thread but in others. What it doesn't address is mixing fighting and catering in a province. Anytime that gets mentioned, it seems to get swept under the rug. Also, 'in the long run' doesn't help when you needed to do well to get particular relics and you had bad luck that week. You saved a lot of goods and troops and lost them. Statistics of hitting the average amounts does not occur when there are only a few dozen battles. You need hundreds for the average to become fairly stable. The good weeks are great, but it's the bad ones that hurt when you are needing something specific that week.

However, this is more of an aside since the reality is it's now going to be 1 fight per prov, which I'm generally in favor of since I like to manual fight and can't as it was. I might be able to do more of that with the new setup, especially since it seems like I'll also be doing fewer provs than before. No more all 6 rounds in 64 provs (rare, but I've done a few times) or 64 provs to 2 stars with the lower 9 to 6 stars and the next 27 to 5 stars. Just not going to happen without a lot of unexpected changes to the difficulty going above 2.

 

[Dony]

I've pretty much missed this week due to personal problems, but have read (skimmed) through the post for this weeks tourney. I saw one post saying there were no changes from last week, that the squad sizes per prov/round are the same as last week. I thought that was the one change for this week, at least to the upper provs. Maybe I missed other comments about what changed. Maybe I totally misunderstood what was to change. So, did anything change from last week?

NO changes at all, all changes are work in progress
we have magic dust maps, and thats the only difference from last week elixir maps

 

[Ashrem]

I've read this argument many times, not just in this thread but in others. What it doesn't address is mixing fighting and catering in a province. Anytime that gets mentioned, it seems to get swept under the rug

I think it's addressed inherently. If 5% of the time you were catering an encounter, you'll still be catering 5% of encounters now. Larger caters, less often. 5/100 encounters (25 provinces) vs 5 out of 100 encounters (100 provinces, but four times as expensive to cater)

I'm not convinced they will have implemented it so smoothly, but if they have scaled properly it should work out to exactly the same across 100 provinces

 

[Karvest]

@Karvest: please, explain this to me, because I don't agree

The key words are "in a long run". That implies way more encounters to analyze. If you take not just one province into account, but the whole tourney (or even many tourneys) - numbers would be the same for x4 fights per province and for x4 troops single fight per province. If all other things leaved unchanged, of course. Which is far from current situation, when they changed almost everything.

 

[Yogi Dave]

I'm not convinced they will have implemented it so smoothly, but if they have scaled properly it should work out to exactly the same across 100 provinces

Statistics in small sample spaces are lumpy. You can extrapolate to larger spaces (i.e. in the long run), but each tourney for one person is a small sample space, and appears to be smaller that it would have been with these changes.

 

[Ashrem]

Statistics in small sample spaces are lumpy. You can extrapolate to larger spaces (i.e. in the long run), but each tourney for one person is a small sample space, and appears to be smaller that it would have been with these changes.

Which is why I've said elsewhere that I think it's going to feel worse regardless of whether it is or not. Nevertheless, the answer to your question remains, statistically, your catering ratio should end up at approximately the same result*.

* In the absence of other changes. In point of fact, they are claiming that catering costs are reduced, so we should be able to cater a little more (statistically) for the same cost. Observationally, there is no appreciable reduction in cost, saving perhaps people who do a very small number of provinces.

 

[ErestorX]

I've read this argument many times, not just in this thread but in others. What it doesn't address is mixing fighting and catering in a province.

I have difficulty to understand the relevance of a province. For me a tournament consists of roughly 1500-2300 encounters. You can still mix fighting and catering in a tournament even if it will be less than 1/4 of that number in the future. The only thing that is special for fights in the same province in the same round is the identical troop size. But I do not see how the absence of these identical troop sizes should impact expected losses in the long run.

 

[spennyit]

It is the variance of lost troops that increases because of the reduction of the number of encounters. In a single tournament you might have higher losses because of bad luck with fewer encounters. But you also have a chance for less losses because of good luck. Therefore the expected number of lost troops remains the same in the long run.

@ErestorX, this is not what they are saying :-( The encounters will be more difficult (this is said by them) and will involve more troops (this is said by them). This will mean that you will lose more troops also if you win (because of the new unfavorable percetage) and you will lose more troops if you lose (both because you have a higher chance to lose because of the new unfavorable percetage and because more troops are involved). I can understand wishful thinking, but not in this case. They want to make the tournaments more difficult by letting us lose more troops :-( 1 encouner instead of 4 does not influence positively since instead of 1000 * 4 troops you will "bet" 4000 troops in one shot and, as said before, you will have higher chance to lose encounter and/or troops :-(

 

[Ashrem]

@ErestorX, this is not what they are saying :-( The encounters will be more difficult (this is said by them) and will involve more troops (this is said by them). This will mean that you will lose more troops also if you win (because of the new unfavorable percetage) and you will lose more troops if you lose (both because you have a higher chance to lose because of the new unfavorable percetage and because more troops are involved). I can understand wishful thinking, but not in this case. They want to make the tournaments more difficult by letting us lose more troops :-( 1 encouner instead of 4 does not influence positively since instead of 1000 * 4 troops you will "bet" 4000 troops in one shot and, as said before, you will have higher chance to lose encounter and/or troops :-(

I think maybe you are conflating two changes. They are also making encounters more difficult in later provinces. That is a separate change from swapping four encounters for one. Yes. overall the tournament will be harder and there will be more losses for the people who used to do a lot of provinces, but that is not because of the change from four encounters to one, it's in addition.

 

[Dony]

In point of fact, they are claiming that catering costs are reduced, so we should be able to cater a little more (statistically) for the same cost

for later provinces they are more then 4x cheaper (T1-T3) for me then on live server

 

[Deleted User - 81190]

1 encouner instead of 4 does not influence positively since instead of 1000 * 4 troops you will "bet" 4000 troops in one shot and, as said before, you will have higher chance to lose encounter and/or troops

This has been discussed before, several times. The expected losses are exactly the same if you do 1/4 of encounters of 4x size. The variance is higher - meaning more results further away from the mean, but it works both in positive and negative direction. The expected values are exactly the same if all other things are the same and we're talking about compression 4:1 only.

 

[maxiqbert]

for later provinces they are more then 4x cheaper (T1-T3) for me then on live server

few AWs and expansions, i guess?

 

[spennyit]

The expected values are exactly the same if all other things are the same and we're talking about compression 4:1 only.

Mmm ... I have no numbers to say that you are not right So I ask you have evidence that my 5 squads of 1000 troops against 5 enemy squads of 3000 troops have the same chances of 250 troops squads against 750 troops squads:
- to kill 1 squad in 1 hit if they have the initiative
- to survive in the same proportion if they don't have the initiative?
This is not my impression, expecially for what I get in the Spire :-(

Furthermore, I have the impression that the troop distribution in 4 encounter can be more favorable to us (than in 1 encounter) since we can chose the formation to win limiting losses.

Finally, all should take into consideration that manual fighting is out of scope since a lot of players cannot do it (because they play on app or have not the time/will to do it)

 

[Lovec Krys]

for later provinces they are more then 4x cheaper (T1-T3) for me then on live server

Cheaper T1-3 doesn't matter if decaying and limited goods are newly involved. If I get low of T1-3 goods, I can always build additional T1-3 factory (provided I have extra space for it and infrastructure for it), but I cannot increase capacity of the main hall(or build a second one) if it's already upgraded to its maximum.

And this:

is simply crazy coin demand for province 11! And that's my beta city with low expansions & AW levels (98 only).
If I start negotiating, I'll simply run out of coins long before I run out of T1-3 goods.