How is the matching of world wars determined

[sevenjapan]

How is the matching of world wars determined

 

[King Crimson]

Figure that out and you get 100,000 crowns!

 

[Spaceboy]

BhG knows but they don’t want to tell us…it is a balance to give a descent fight in a descent time of search, to win or loose some descent glory…this resumes it quite well I think

 

[IDaedalusI]

Hey @sevenjapan,

I've answered questions around this in a few other posts on the forums, but I'll take your post as an opportunity to collate a bunch of it in one place. While I can't share every detail of our algorithm (people might take advantage of it then!). I can share some of the basics!

Step 1: When an alliance enters matchmaking the leader had to say who was joining them in war. We take this list of players and then look through their main bases. On those bases we look at things like buildings, troop tactics, munitions, etc. and their levels. We use this to assign a "war weight" to each player. I'll also note here that if a player somehow manages to not have all of their buildings on their war base, that just puts them at a disadvantage because we counted everything on their main base. War bases are just for you guys to reorganize things as you wish

Step 2: We do some math. We combine all of the war weights of each player in the alliance into a total "alliance war weight" We don't do a simple summation here because we don't want to heavily disincentivize alliances from bringing along a couple weaker players to show them the ropes.

Step 3: We do some more math. We also figure out an alliance's power spread. This is our attempt to handle the scenarios where 1 alliance may have 10 drone age players, and another alliance may have 1 player in each age (I do not recommend doing this by the way ). The first alliance will have a tight spread, while the second will have a very broad spread. I will also make a note here that while I use age in my example, we take in a multitude of variables into account here, and age is not one of them. The reason for not using age is that the combination of our other values shows us a more accurate power level than something on the integer scale of 1-16. We use this power spread to try to match alliances to similar power spreads so everyone in the war is more likely to have someone else they can be on even footing with. But, the longer you're waiting in matchmaking the less we require the power spreads to match so you can get into War in a decent time.

Step 4: We toss the alliance into matchmaking! This is where all of the alliances have their values compared and we attempt to find the best match we can in the least amount of time we can. Something you may realize though is that those are two goals that contradict each other. If we have you wait longer, then the chances of you finding a better match increase as you see more opportunities, but that leads to longer matchmaking times. While if we reduce matchmaking times then you guys get to War faster, but the overall quality of everyone's matches will go down. Its a tough balancing act!

Step 5: War!

I've simplified things down here, and maybe have shared a bit more than I have in other places but I hope this gives everyone an idea of how we go about matching two alliances. In short: glory (which I didn't mention but I believe everyone knows about by now), alliance war weight, and alliance power spread are what we look at when deciding who should War against each other.

EDIT: We look at your tactics, not your troop tactics, my b!

 

[Spaceboy]

@daedalus: much thanks for the long writeup. It was good to resume it again after all that time.

Any recommendation for us to find a fair match? Have a mixed board of all levels? A strong top ? Restart the search after 30-60 min? I am not asking how to get easy opponents, but what is the best strategy to have the best match where each team has a chance to win.
Any advice?

 

[IDaedalusI]

Hey @Spaceboy,

I have to be careful when giving out any tips or recommendations because even something that might be innocent could be read by everyone and change the statistics of the system because people are now changing their behaviors when interacting with it

Here is an example: The larger power spread your alliance has, the harder it will be to find another alliance of similar power spread, so the higher likelihood of a bad match (this is currently true). If everyone started going into matchmaking with a mixed board of all levels though, then the matchmaking system would have an easier time finding matches for larger power spreads. So I could advise "Yes! More alliances should have a mixed board of all levels!", but then it becomes harder to find matches for smaller power spreads, as few alliances are now attempting to enter matchmaking with a small spread. Now my job of analyzing matchmaking has become even harder because I accidentally influenced the results

So, I recommend that everyone plays in the way they want. There are some styles of play that will be harder for the matchmaking system to work with, but that is why we keep an eye on it, so that we can come up with new ideas (like Custom War Matches) that can start to address these different play styles and make matchmaking's job easier.

If you really want to know how to find a more fair match, then I recommend talking to your fellow players. How are they matchmaking? What kind of success do they have? What are the possible reasons for their successes or failures? Then, start to do what they do! It may not work all of the time, like if your power levels are drastically different, or your alliance's composition makes it hard to keep the kind of power spread that you want. But, by mimicking the alliances you enjoy warring against, you're more likely to war against them or someone like them.

Most importantly, just play around with it and have fun!

 

[King Crimson]

@IDaedalusI
With all the 'matchmaking' that you have to do, maybe the game should have a pool where you add all available alliances and alliance leaders log into and select their own matchup - like tinder.

They can swipe left or right until they find an alliance that matches their weight and power spread, within a few basis point each way. (to prevent selecting easy wins)

 

[oddin]

Step 4: We toss the alliance into matchmaking! This is where all of the alliances have their values compared and we attempt to find the best match we can in the least amount of time we can. Something you may realize though is that those are two goals that contradict each other. If we have you wait longer, then the chances of you finding a better match increase as you see more opportunities, but that leads to longer matchmaking times. While if we reduce matchmaking times then you guys get to War faster, but the overall quality of everyone's matches will go down. Its a tough balancing act!

I remember that the matchmaking algorithm was expanding the limits of finding a match by 3.5% every 30mins. Is that still in effect?

 

[IDaedalusI]

I remember that the matchmaking algorithm was expanding the limits of finding a match by 3.5% every 30mins. Is that still in effect?

In the sense that we do expand the limits by certain amounts after certain amounts of time, yes

 

[iain816]

On those bases we look at things like buildings, troop tactics, munitions, etc. and their levels.

appreciate the detailed response, this part was a surprise to me - could you explain how troop tactics impact war weight? thank you

 

[IDaedalusI]

appreciate the detailed response, this part was a surprise to me - could you explain how troop tactics impact war weight? thank you

We take a look at what troop tactics you have access to and factor those in to your war weight. Afterall, they can be quite powerful in a battle! I'm afraid I can't really be more specific than that

EDIT: We look at tactics, not troop tactics, my b

 

[oddin]

What???? I was certain you wanted to type tactics and got mixed up and wrote troop tactics.

This is a global first time everybody hears that our stronghold TTs are affecting war weight !!!!

Needless to say that It leaves me speechless....

 

[SirBiggun]

Hey @Spaceboy,

I have to be careful when giving out any tips or recommendations because even something that might be innocent could be read by everyone and change the statistics of the system because people are now changing their behaviors when interacting with it

Here is an example: The larger power spread your alliance has, the harder it will be to find another alliance of similar power spread, so the higher likelihood of a bad match (this is currently true). If everyone started going into matchmaking with a mixed board of all levels though, then the matchmaking system would have an easier time finding matches for larger power spreads. So I could advise "Yes! More alliances should have a mixed board of all levels!", but then it becomes harder to find matches for smaller power spreads, as few alliances are now attempting to enter matchmaking with a small spread. Now my job of analyzing matchmaking has become even harder because I accidentally influenced the results

So, I recommend that everyone plays in the way they want. There are some styles of play that will be harder for the matchmaking system to work with, but that is why we keep an eye on it, so that we can come up with new ideas (like Custom War Matches) that can start to address these different play styles and make matchmaking's job easier.

If you really want to know how to find a more fair match, then I recommend talking to your fellow players. How are they matchmaking? What kind of success do they have? What are the possible reasons for their successes or failures? Then, start to do what they do! It may not work all of the time, like if your power levels are drastically different, or your alliance's composition makes it hard to keep the kind of power spread that you want. But, by mimicking the alliances you enjoy warring against, you're more likely to war against them or someone like them.

Most importantly, just play around with it and have fun!

One thing I would add is try to prevent teams from matching back to back wars…no one wants this to,happen.

 

[Lezley]

Hey @Spaceboy,

I have to be careful when giving out any tips or recommendations because even something that might be innocent could be read by everyone and change the statistics of the system because people are now changing their behaviors when interacting with it

Here is an example: The larger power spread your alliance has, the harder it will be to find another alliance of similar power spread, so the higher likelihood of a bad match (this is currently true). If everyone started going into matchmaking with a mixed board of all levels though, then the matchmaking system would have an easier time finding matches for larger power spreads. So I could advise "Yes! More alliances should have a mixed board of all levels!", but then it becomes harder to find matches for smaller power spreads, as few alliances are now attempting to enter matchmaking with a small spread. Now my job of analyzing matchmaking has become even harder because I accidentally influenced the results

So, I recommend that everyone plays in the way they want. There are some styles of play that will be harder for the matchmaking system to work with, but that is why we keep an eye on it, so that we can come up with new ideas (like Custom War Matches) that can start to address these different play styles and make matchmaking's job easier.

If you really want to know how to find a more fair match, then I recommend talking to your fellow players. How are they matchmaking? What kind of success do they have? What are the possible reasons for their successes or failures? Then, start to do what they do! It may not work all of the time, like if your power levels are drastically different, or your alliance's composition makes it hard to keep the kind of power spread that you want. But, by mimicking the alliances you enjoy warring against, you're more likely to war against them or someone like them.

Most importantly, just play around with it and have fun!

Is there a direct correlation between world war match ups and recommended targets, or is the recommended targeting done afterwards?

I often look at my recommended target and go, what, really, u overestimate me a bit

 

[IDaedalusI]

What???? I was certain you wanted to type tactics and got mixed up and wrote troop tactics.

This is a global first time everybody hears that our stronghold TTs are affecting war weight !!!!

Needless to say that It leaves me speechless....

My bad! You're definitely right @oddin. I have the bad habit of always auto-correcting "tactics" to "troop tactics" in my head because the alliteration sounds nice

I'll make an edit to the posts accordingly

 

[IDaedalusI]

One thing I would add is try to prevent teams from matching back to back wars…no one wants this to,happen.

We actually do have a system in place for this that tracks you last war opponent. However, it makes sure that both alliances didn't just war each other. In code it would be something like:

alliance1.lastWarOpponent != alliance2 AND alliance2.lastWarOpponent != alliance1

As some of you may have experienced though, it can look like you're warring the same alliance again in the following scenario:

1. Alliance A wars Alliance B
2. Alliance B wars Alliance C
3. Alliance A wars Alliance B

Even though B didn't war A back-to-back, A did war B back-to-back.

While it may seem like a simple code fix, we have to be sure that we don't negatively impact the matchmaking system by effectively taking more "potential wars" out of its pool of possibilities. It is a tradeoff that we are still weighing at this time, but we haven't forgotten about it!

 

[IDaedalusI]

Is there a direct correlation between world war match ups and recommended targets, or is the recommended targeting done afterwards?

I often look at my recommended target and go, what, really, u overestimate me a bit

We believe in you!

The recommended targeting is done after the match has been chosen. So if you're feeling over-, or under-estimated, that would be why. The recommendation is doing its best based on matchmaking's best. So, if matchmaking couldn't get you a great match, the recommender might not be able to give you a great recommendation

 

[Lezley]

We believe in you!

The recommended targeting is done after the match has been chosen. So if you're feeling over-, or under-estimated, that would be why. The recommendation is doing its best based on matchmaking's best. So, if matchmaking couldn't get you a great match, the recommender might not be able to give you a great recommendation

I think that's possibly exactly it, in our current war for example it had a choice of over or under estimating, nothing that was a good match for me really.

 

[Romeo Jellybean]

I've been playing roughly for 4 yrs and I have to say (in my first post!) this is a very informative thread. This puts a lot of ideas & impressions into perspective. Thanks @IDaedalusI

 

[oddin]

We actually do have a system in place for this that tracks you last war opponent. However, it makes sure that both alliances didn't just war each other. In code it would be something like:

alliance1.lastWarOpponent != alliance2 AND alliance2.lastWarOpponent != alliance1

As some of you may have experienced though, it can look like you're warring the same alliance again in the following scenario:

1. Alliance A wars Alliance B
2. Alliance B wars Alliance C
3. Alliance A wars Alliance B

Even though B didn't war A back-to-back, A did war B back-to-back.

While it may seem like a simple code fix, we have to be sure that we don't negatively impact the matchmaking system by effectively taking more "potential wars" out of its pool of possibilities. It is a tradeoff that we are still weighing at this time, but we haven't forgotten about it!

At some point we even played against the same team 3 times in a row. It was a korean alliance.