-
Good day, Stranger! — Are you new to our forums?
Have I seen you here before? To participate in or to create forum discussions, you will need your own forum account. Register your account here!
Imbalance in Tournaments
- Thread starter forictori
- Start date
Killiak
Artisan
Indeed, that's the military issue. As he says though, and as Mykan did, that can be "solved" by means of AW's.
However, the catering costs rise considerably with the elementals mandatory SS tech. I believe Soggy posted that one tech increased the costs by 16%.
Solving that would require a lot of extra buildings (pop, culture, production), whilst short on space and pop/culture.
So, we come back to the main problem; not taking all the SS tech upgrades is a huge advantage, which causes imbalances between players across chapters. The simple fix being that tournaments should have costs/difficulty based on chapter, rather than SS tech. Huzzah.
However, the catering costs rise considerably with the elementals mandatory SS tech. I believe Soggy posted that one tech increased the costs by 16%.
Solving that would require a lot of extra buildings (pop, culture, production), whilst short on space and pop/culture.
So, we come back to the main problem; not taking all the SS tech upgrades is a huge advantage, which causes imbalances between players across chapters. The simple fix being that tournaments should have costs/difficulty based on chapter, rather than SS tech. Huzzah.
Pauly7
Magus
Somewhere there's a complex calculation which would show the balance of fighting difficulty and catering costs at different chapters, squad size upgrades and everything else that affects it. Inno are the only ones that can really do such a calculation as they are the only ones that know all those numbers precisely.... but I don't think that they have done that calculation so all the way along the road there are imbalances between when tournament encounters get harder and then easier again. It would be nice if they looked at it deeply enough to make it balanced for everyone, but sadly that isn't likely to happen.
cwgiii
Shaman
Disclosure: I am not a battle person (I cater exclusively, mainly because of the difficulty I experienced in chapter 1 years back). There are many "puzzles" that players discover how to navigate during the course of this game: layouts of cities, reorganizing as structures upgrade and change shape, building a fellowship (or going on your own), trading with other players, etc. I have heard many players advocating "the right way to play". I do not know if Inno ascribes to a "right way to play" or not. I try to look at the game as a set of choices that I can prioritize. Sometimes I choose the obvious path, other times I choose to play from a challenge point of view. This, to me, is all part of the fun in the game. I agree that Inno has made some choices that I do not agree with (making changes after the fact like the Crystal Lighthouse to "re-balance" the game). I also believe Inno has built in certain choices based on information that we simply do not have (business decisions or trade secrets for example). We as players will never know about many of these situations. I think that each individual player makes choices throughout the game that either gives them an advantage or disadvantage with certain aspects in the game. I choose to build my city for negotiating rather than fighting, and I accept the fact that I will never be able to do well in battles going forward. I also choose to scout continuously. I hit the "orc wall" and paid the price for this, and there may be a future wall that I will hit later (have not found it yet). There may be players that have an advantage with battles, but have a disadvantage with something else, that may not even be revealed until a later chapter. I am not saying that this is right or wrong. just that it could be the case. This imbalance between those that choose to skip vs complete the optional squad sizes in itself may be one of those puzzles that we, as players, are challenged to solve by rearranging our mode of play during the course of growing our cities. There may be times that battles are optimal to fight. Then there may be times that catering is "the right way to play", for optimal advancement. Inno obviously wanted us to make a choice with the optional squad size items in the knowledge tree, otherwise they would not be optional. AND, they have even become mandatory after the fact (again, not a choice I was happy with). I had to go back and complete many of them when Inno changed their minds at some point and re-arranged the tree to force reverse research.
Bottom line: we make choices and take our licks. If we want to play, we play. If we want to quit, we quit. If we want to start over, we can build a new city with different choices. If we want to build multiple cities (for what ever reason), we will do that. If we want to buy diamonds to "catch up" or "fix" or simply advance quicker, then we buy diamonds. If not, no big woop. It is just a game folks.
DeletedUser6458
Guest
The fact that you take that as an insult is telling. You are obviously not on here to discuss anything but would rather post pixels of a big picture and assume you are right. All I am saying is that you cannot take only your own experience as the end all be all of balance in the game. There are hundreds of thousands of players and I see the same names on here day in day out complaining about things that are not actually problems.
Believe me, If I saw the top ten in tournament on my server being dominated by small players every week I would be looking at this differently but that is not what I see at all. In fact it is quite the opposite... The stats LazyTony put up tell me a whole different story than you are seeing, it shows roughly a 50/50 avg which means balanced
Killiak
Artisan
It's not my opinion, assumptions or personal experience, it's the actual math that is out there. It's not about the names on the top 10 or whatever, it's about the actual FACTS which are showing us that skipping optional SS upgrades are creating an imbalance in tournament costs.
You are using words like "narrow minded" and "complaining", but these are not arguments, nor is selective interpretation of statistics. The only telling thing here is your choice of words.
Do bring some actual objective arguments and calculations to this forum, those might actually be convincing.
Last edited:
Lelanya
Mentor
Right. If you cater level your Mtn Halls to compensate.
Chuck this is why I started my 2nd city. I discovered I ought to have been fighting. Lol I thought the fight meant I would be stealing relics from the Trader person on the map! So I opened my human city in Winyandor. Never looked back. My Elven one might be prettier and I lead the way there in research but my human one is better set up. I have skipped the optional SS ups as I could . There is a point that can't work and another where it is mandatory. Around orc chapter is my informed opinion. You need some optionals for provinces but not after. Hope this helps others
Chuck this is why I started my 2nd city. I discovered I ought to have been fighting. Lol I thought the fight meant I would be stealing relics from the Trader person on the map! So I opened my human city in Winyandor. Never looked back. My Elven one might be prettier and I lead the way there in research but my human one is better set up. I have skipped the optional SS ups as I could . There is a point that can't work and another where it is mandatory. Around orc chapter is my informed opinion. You need some optionals for provinces but not after. Hope this helps others
Lelanya
Mentor
Interesting!!
DeletedUser6458
Guest
We all have the option to skip the optional SS upgrades, how could that possibly create an imbalance??
Everything I have seen so far is "very selective" interpretation of statistics that I have seen from any of these arguments, hence the 'show a pixel of a big picture' analogy. All of the math arguments only present one square of a rubix cube. No one is taking into account using all of these wonders, and if Inno did their balancing this way it would be taken advantage of. If someone were to present us with the real math we would not understand it anyway as you would need a doctorate to understand it. If you want to be more effective in the tournaments Inno has supplied tools to do so, use them and play the game. If you chose to not use them how is that Inno's fault??
The results we actually see are very important as that is the only real measure of balance we can get. In my world I am seeing a measured bias for certain players not certain levels. All that means is that some people are figuring out how to use the system and getting good at it which is hallmark for such a game.
I agree that solely catering is not an option for high level tourneys for higher ranked players but I don't see that as a problem. If you can't figure out how to match troops and click autofight perhaps you are just not meant to be a high level tourney player?
Killiak
Artisan
Back when I started, and many others as well, the tournament was not a thing. Nobody knew that the optional tech was going to be a hindrance in some future part of the game. So no, not everybody looked at skipping SS upgrades as optional and the imbalance is there right now.
It's very nice (for you) that you have so many higher level AW's and that you have enough disposable income to pay your way into having enough space/pop/culture, however this is not the case for everybody. The imbalance in costs for tournaments is real, wether or not YOU understand that it is.
The only thing people are figuring out is how to use this imbalance in their favor. We are playing with a skewed system and some people are using it to their advantage. I won't blame those people, they are playing with the game as it is; I, however, WILL ask Inno to look into and fix it.
DeletedUser6458
Guest
For the optional SS upgrades in beginning of the game the balance will be in how hard that makes it for lower levels players to keep up with their scouted provinces. That is also big part of tourney, how many provs you have available can change how you play it. By the time you get to optional techs where it won't be hindering you heavily in that department we all knew the deal by that point. I have opted to still take every research offered and hold to my view that the tournament is not way out of whack. Sure they could find some other way to do it but I don't think it would really change anything if they did because there is no imbalance. Currently in my world only 2 players under 100k are in top 10, and one of them is barely under that mark. So where is all this imbalance? Where are all these 50k players supposedly doing 6000 pts every week? If anyone is seeing that chime in...
Killiak
Artisan
This is like trying to explain to a colourblind person that the majority of the world sees something as blue, due to how light is reflected and how our eyes/brains perceive this specific lightwave, only to have that person say "Nuh-uh, this is magenta and that's the truth for everybody, science be damned!".
Go to the Beta forum and ask SoggyShorts to explain this to you. He is way smarter than I am, so maybe he can find a way to get the numbers across to you.
Go to the Beta forum and ask SoggyShorts to explain this to you. He is way smarter than I am, so maybe he can find a way to get the numbers across to you.
DeletedUser6458
Guest
where is the beta forum? you haven't even tried getting any numbers across to me so I better go to the source.
Lelanya
Mentor
Mickey you need a Beta account first and then can contact players from there
DeletedUser5976
Guest
But you can read the Beta forum without being a member.
https://beta.forum.elvenar.com/index.php#headquarters.3
https://beta.forum.elvenar.com/index.php#headquarters.3
DeletedUser6458
Guest
Thanks guys, trying to search through but so far finding nothing on this topic. Sort of related is old posts about when they first started changing the tourneys to four battles there was alot of discussion on beta about how it was impossible for players in chapters 3 and 4 to do much. Wonder if some changes were implemented to make it easier for those chapters following all those comments....
DeletedUser6458
Guest
Leylana is going to try and help me out with getting some data from SoggyShorts. I have done a bit of data mining on my own in meantime...
The catering costs are rising faster than production. SoggyShorts had calculated a total increase in catering of roughly 7mill% throughout the game. While that sounds ridiculous to begin with it actually is not ridiculous. The production increase from min 1 to level 23 factories is about 1.5mill% accounting for about 21% of the increase. What about the difference you say? Well, that totally makes sense when you think about it because all of the troop upgrades and wonders need to be accounted for. It makes sense for tournaments to be a catering game in the beginning because you simply don't have troop options. That is slowly phased out through the squad upgrade increases and forces you to start using troops. There is a slight hitch that I don't think can be avoided through any system though. Players who stop progressing and maintain a low level can attain a much higher production boost than they are supposed to have. I play a couple of small cities that I do tournaments with though and have noticed that while I do not do any SS upgrades the costs still seem to slowly rise. I think they have also put a time factor into this equation that, while small, ensures that players cannot simply abuse this problem forever.
Quite frankly I was disappointed to see catering as an option in tournaments. It really ruins the effect in my opinion. Imagine knights in a tournament saying "nope, don't want to fight that guy, I will just pay to win" and you roughly get what I am saying there. So I think Inno has come up with a decent system for appeasing those who don't want to fight at all and still make tournaments about fighting, the way they should be
DeletedUser6458
Guest
You know Killiak, I just realized today that we may have been arguing two very different subjects. Perhaps defining what imbalance should have been the start of the conversation. The imbalance I am talking about is how much of a chance any player in the game has to rank well in tournaments. The imbalance you are talking about is strictly about the costs. Whether the imbalance you are talking about should exist or not would be another debate but I think from what you have said it would result in the same difference of opinion. The imbalance in catering does exist and needs to be there for a balance to happen between tournament rankings and player rankings. If you put a linear same cost / production model in the lower ranked players would have trouble making it into top 100 at all and then what incentive would that give smaller players? If you don't have that cost rising in a significant way players like myself would make dog's breakfast of tourneys and there would be no room for other players. As it is in a more balanced world (from my point of view) I have figured out now how to make top 10 on a regular basis. Forictori and Lazytony can do top 5 at will, so it is still has a imbalance in my opinion(still heavily favoring higher ranked players to do well). Hard to judge that though as experience and tricks of the game are also a factor....
Timneh
Artisan
Guys, as interesting as it is to hear different views and opinions of things, do you not think it might be better if one of you started a new thread about imbalances in the game as you are taking this thread off topic. This is supposed to be a thread about things happening on beta and although your debate might have started about a change that happened in beta it has now moved on to a subject that is game wide. I am a little surprised that the powers that be have not said anything yet. I mean no offence guys i just wanted to mention it.
Last edited: