Tournament Dialog persistence

[Sir Derf]

When participating in a Tournament, there are two ways to start a province encounter - by clicking on the province on the World Map or by using the Tournament Dialog to pick from the list.

I'm sure that most people use the dialog, and that most people intend to work their way through multiple provinces per round.

So why, when we finish an encounter, success or fail, are we always sent back to the World Map? Why not provide two buttons after an encounter, one to go to the World Map, and one to go to the Tournament Dialog?

 

[Gargon667]

I would really rather just get sent forward to the next encounter. It´s fine to have the other ways of getting there, but as a standard autoforward to the next would mean fewest clicks.

 

[Alcaro]

I would really rather just get sent forward to the next encounter. It´s fine to have the other ways of getting there, but as a standard autoforward to the next would mean fewest clicks.

nope nope nope! I play the tourny from 1st province to 20th (let's assume that, lol) only in the first round. Starting with the 2nd round I always start with the last province and moving towards the first province. The reason is, if I don't have enough troops and I am forced to cater, at least to cater the cheaper ones.
About the OP - I always use the Tournament dialog "box". Don't want to search the Tournament provinces around the map

 

[Gargon667]

nope nope nope! I play the tourny from 1st province to 20th (let's assume that, lol) only in the first round. Starting with the 2nd round I always start with the last province and moving towards the first province. The reason is, if I don't have enough troops and I am forced to cater, at least to cater the cheaper ones.
About the OP - I always use the Tournament dialog "box". Don't want to search the Tournament provinces around the map

I don´t follow the logic there. Doesn´t matter which way you go the ones with cheap catering are also the ones with cheap fighting. This would only make (still very little) sense if you never played any round 3 at all and went down to absolutely 0 troops. Even then just go ahead and fight all from 1 to the second to last and do 1 single catering in the end and the problem is solved (assuming you can cater 1 big encounter).

But anyway anyone can choose to play the provinces in any order they want to through the dialog box, the point being that auto forward moves you through the normal progression in the tourneys, if you want something different, use the convenient dialog box.

 

[Sir Derf]

I was going to make a quick reply flippantly supporting Alcaro, but now I'm not sure... I don't know if it really works out as well as he thinks.

Typing while I think...

Suppose it''s would cost 30,000 troops to fight or 30,000 coins to cater all 20 province (you don't know this ahead of time) and you only have 20,000 troops.

Suppose you fight until 0. You will lose all 20,000 troops. You will have won n provinces, lost x troops in province (n+1), and then catered (20-n) provinces (including province (n+1)). In total, you will have spent (30,000+x) in troops and coins. You will have lost 20,000 troops, (20,000-x) in won provinces and x troops in the lost province. You will have catered (10,000+x) coins. The best strategy is to minimize x. And the best way to minimize x is to lose the battle in the province where x will be smallest.

If you are very weak (less than 15,000 troops in my above example), it's better to start small and lose early. If you are very strong (more than 15,000), it's better to start large and lose late. Also, this transition point is not between the 10th and 11th province, but somewhere higher, as province costs increase.

At this point, the stumbling block is that, strictly speaking, you don't know how you stand at the start. You don't know if you have enough and it doesn't matter which end to start from, or if you are short but strong and should start at province 20, or if you are short and weak and should start at province 1. Ultimately, one has to make a guess, educated or otherwise, at what you think your initial situation is. The better your guess is to the underlying reality, the more likely you are to optimize your strategy.

Bottom line, there is no universal strategy. The stronger your initial troop strength, the better the odds that going with a top-down vs. bottom up strategy is the optimal fighting strategy, but you don't know where that transition point is.

 

[BlueBlou]

App does standard auto forward. Handy, unless you want to be picky with what you do not want to do.

 

[Lelanya]

Nope I hear what Alcaro is saying. You start from the hardest and work backwards, so it gets easier as you go along. Later when you are more tired it's the easiest ones that are left, and yep, just cater them.

 

[RainbowElvira]

The mobile version centers the next province on the map. I think this is a reasonable behavior and better than what the browser version offers. Moreover, harmonizing both versions should be a goal anyway in my opinion.

I would be fine with the two button option of the opening post too, if the second button sent me to the next encounter instead of the tournament menu.

 

[Pauly7]

I've thought about it a lot over the years, whether it's beneficial to cater cheaper or more expensive provinces, in this given scenario where troops are limited. As already mentioned the provinces that are cheaper to cater are also cheaper to fight and I think any difference between the two strategies is quite negligible. I'm always interested to know a scientific analysis of this though. Are the catering costs completely comparable to fighting costs?

There's also another variable here - If you always fight the cheapest provinces then often you can come away with zero losses. There isn't ever a way for catering losses to be zero.

 

[Alcaro]

Today the 20th province on 2nd round was asking among other goods, also 96k mana. I think now you understand why I try to fight first the hardest provinces and then (if necessary) to cater the cheaper ones.

 

[Gargon667]

Isn´t it obvious? big or small has nothing to do with catering vs. fighting. The question is difficulty. Fight the easy and cater the difficult. And easy has 2 factors: Enemy unit composition AND SS difference.

So for example in the beginning when I have 5 times the opponents SS I use 5 Rangers and hit autofight with 0 losses (unless the terrain is horrible).
If the enemy has double your squad size and a mix of Mist Walkers, Steinlings and Priests you cater.

And if you are in between the 2 choices you look at the catering costs, do they appeal to you, you cater, are they things you rather not loose, you fight.

I am of course talking in theory, I suck at remembering that catering is an option (old habits), just went 40+ provinces autofighting and remembered to cater once lol.... had some painful encounters with above mentioned Mist Walkers and friends, which I really should have catered...