Is It Worth Having A High Medal Count?

[Loonies]

It’s rare but it happens. Just like you can get the rare GA card at 2400 medals :/

I’ll post the next EA I get.

 

[Quovatis]

I'm assuming EA = elephant archer and not enlightenment age? Perhaps I'm confused. I only get foot soldier and motorcycle cards. Never got elephant archer cards for free from victory chest or boat.

 

[Loonies]

Yeah EA is Elephant Archer. They’re rare but do exist ... I got one within the past week. I have a CWA EA in my GP stronghold that I could show but I’m not setup to post video to show me delving to it.

 

[War crusher]

https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexo...lliance-recruiting-“usa-war-crusher”-alliance

 

[Funken_A]

If you are farming resources I don't even bother moving out of Silver 2.I'm a close to max Enlightment age. The moment I move into silver 1 I get attacked by much higher bases

SO I sit low and farm where its easy... They really need to make it easier and more profitable to move upwards. I have no inspriation to move up. Just not worth the rewards and waiting time it takes to build armies strong enough.

 

[sileepuppee]

The rewards at higher medal ranges are definitely better but no matter what the medal count, it's not guaranteed you get something good (Good meaning something useful at that moment to that specific player) every victory chest or league boat. I tried it for a short while and there were some good troop cards and getting oil was nice but I didn't need the food/gold/ntg that normally came about. If the reward were 2.5 million food for example and I had no need for food I would purposely waste it just to have one less reason for someone to attack me. It seems wasteful but when I have no research spots and no citizens free for a week or so, no reason to simply hold food. I went a few days without getting troop cards and that annoyed me the most so I dropped to and stay at 1k-1.5k medals. At that range you can hope for maybe 1 ntg and i.a. lvl troop cards but I find it better overall just because I can farm ntg and rss much easier than being at a much higher medal count. I also get attacked much, much less. Oddly what I've found being at 800-999 medals is that I see many more cold war bases than at a slightly higher medal count. While people with high medal counts still raid me for minor rss, I found a lot of them simply attacked me just to keep their medals high. I know it's all a case by case basis also factoring in whatever age your base is at. If you get attacked all the time sure you get the peace treaties but when I get peace treaties I tend to be more passive and not attack people because I want to keep it. That slows down the pace a bit for me which I don't like.

The only reason I went to a high medal count was to finish the achievements to get the crowns. For sampling purpose, I'm 213 atomic.

 

[Loonies]

I've always been over 2000 medals and NEVER got EA cards from boat or victory chest.

I got this at 5k medals, but I have gotten them as low as 1800.

 

[Kaiser Shag]

How did you manage to climb up to 4983 medals while being lvl 113 gunpowder age ??

 

[Loonies]

https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexo...aa/485076-bye-bye-loonies?p=616095#post616095

 

[AlexTheGreat]

I went up to 2800 medals, it took way too much time to stay there, you win only 1 medal per battle but you loose up to 30 being attacked one time ...

Not true. Made up numbers.
You win a few medals (not ONE) - unless you destroy the enemy, which gives you 20-something medals, and you do NOT lose 30 for a defeat.
Plus, you win 20-something when you successfully defend.

 

[AlexTheGreat]

Pretty much what the title says. Are there any SERIOUS benefits of having a high medal count? Also (kinda off topic) what's a good troop combination for gunpowder age that will continuously get you 4-5 star victories?
(Sorry kind of a noob)
-Cheers, Jack

There’s not one answer only, because this is not about worthiness: it’s a personal choice.
Some players fight for medals, some only care about looting resources and developing their base. Other players may focus mostly on world wars.

To me - but this is just my opinion - disregarding the medal count is like playing tennis and only worrying about improving the style, without ever measuring your skills vs anybody else.

 

[yemen]

MP is like tennis practice. The goal is to get what you need out of it without anyone getting hurt. War is the real measurement of skill - something is on the line, you plan and prepare and go all out.

No analogy is perfect, but I think you got this one backwards.

 

[AlexTheGreat]

Why, do do get hurt in WW?

War is the measurement of skills for an Alliance.
MP is for an individual player.

And yes, no analogy is perfect.

 

[yemen]

World war is a competitive public setting - anyone in your or your opponents alliance can see your attacks and defenses, every time. The results matter to your team, both time and total star count. You have a chance to prepare and choose a target, within the context of team strategy, and the opponent is prepared with traps, TC loaded, best generals up, and often SH troops and coalitions.

In MP, only you and your opponent can see your battles unless you share replays. For high medals, getting at least one star is the only thing that counts. And a number of players at the very top regularly do things like town center sniping with tanks, just to get medals and victory rewards. That is a skill, but I wouldn't consider it a comparable measure of a player's skill to their ability to get 5 stars fast in war.

To top it off, high medal count often measures time / money invested in building a strong defensive base. That is a grind, but not especially skill based.

 

[AlexTheGreat]

World war is a competitive public setting - anyone in your or your opponents alliance can see your attacks and defenses, every time. The results matter to your team, both time and total star count.

Yes.
Nothing new here.

You have a chance to prepare and choose a target, within the context of team strategy, and the opponent is prepared with traps, TC loaded, best generals up, and often SH troops and coalitions.

Certainly.

In MP, only you and your opponent can see your battles unless you share replays.

That doesn’t make MP less competitive per se. It makes it competitive in a different way. That’s why there’s an individual medal ranking, an individual star ranking and an Alliance glory ranking.

You can put a similar amount of resources, personal skills and concentration in a MP battle - the difference is, you only have roughly 3 minutes to do all of that, attack planning included.

For high medals, getting at least one star is the only thing that counts.

For “high medals”, as well as for anybody at any level who CARES about medals, getting *medals* (not “one star”) is the thing that counts.

You get one star, for sure you don’t lose 20-something medals. Cool. You get 5 stars, you win 20-something medals instead of 5 or 8. Good.
You successfully *defend*, you win 20-something medals without wasting an army. Very good!

It takes skills to do all of that. In War AND in MP mode.

And a number of players at the very top regularly do things like town center sniping with tanks, just to get medals and victory rewards.

I don’t know that, sorry. How do you know that? You just said that MP battles aren’t public unless shared.

Common sense is that a top medal player would prefer to get 24 medals rather than 4, in a given attack.
And probably those folks up there have some skills that in one way or another have allowed them to climb that ranking.
Which means they may be able to win quite a number of medals when they attack, and to do the same in defense.
How often and how many medals? I DON’T know, but OVERALL they are able to win attacks and defend from attacks much better then the players who are ranked below them.

That is a skill, but I wouldn't consider it a comparable measure of a player's skill to their ability to get 5 stars fast in war.

Again, there are different rankings for individuals and alliances.

You cannot rank individual players worldwide by their war contribution to their alliance any better than you would do ranking them by medals.

To top it off, high medal count often measures time / money invested in building a strong defensive base.

Same, identical consideration works for WW, too.

 

[yemen]

AlexTheGreat alliance members have done the march to dynasty for "fun" and the crowns. Some are real life friends, and I have seen their attack logs. I've medal climbed myself, and the changes are pretty dramatic between 2400 and 2800.

MP matchmaking is based on medals - up to 1000 below or above you. The medals you can earn are based on differential - you can gain / lose 20 for someone with similar numbers, or gain 1 / lose 39 for someone far below you, similar ratio when defending. The distribution of medals is a bell curve of some sort, tapering off rapidly at the top. Once you are over 2800 a large majority of people you can match are well below you, and it gets worse as you move up. I just looked this up, and ZG Chen (Highest medal player in the game) has 6 players he can attack, and those are 500-1000 medals below him, so he is definitely getting one medal at a time no matter how many stars he gets.

What I have seen, and Kaiser Shag said the same in this thread, is that after 2800 medals you can only gain a few medals per battle, and you can still lose a lot on defense. There is no opportunity to gain 20+. So tank and raider attacks are common and make sense - any star gets you a medal and the league loot bonus, which is substantial (200k food/gold and 200 oil at dynasty).

BTW, this isn't a new thing; there is a note on it in the wiki league entry, from 2015. http://dominations.wikia.com/wiki/Leagues#General_Information. See the last entry there. And victory chests can be a major source of resource income in dynasty, worth 6-7million+, or 30k+ oil.

 

[AlexTheGreat]

MP matchmaking is based on medals - up to 1000 below or above you. The medals you can earn are based on differential - you can gain / lose 20 for someone with similar numbers, or gain 1 / lose 39 for someone far below you, similar ratio when defending.

Can you please tell me where you get your numbers from?
See below, these are two defenses that gave me 21 and 25 medals. So 20 as an upper limit is already wrong.

The distribution of medals is a bell curve of some sort, tapering off rapidly at the top.

It’s called Gauss curve and even though I don’t think Nexon has ever published it (correct me if I’m wrong) I have no doubt that what you wrote is true here, since that’s how a population large enough distributes itself under certain conditions.

ZG Chen (Highest medal player in the game) has 6 players he can attack, and those are 500-1000 medals below him, so he is definitely getting one medal at a time no matter how many stars he gets.

Excuse me, do you know that for a fact?
Are you saying that if ZGC attacks the world number 2 and gets 5 stars, he would get 1 medal only?
Or, are you trying to say that ZGC would have no interest in getting 5 stars when attacking and therefore he cannot be considered the best player in the world?

after 2800 medals you can only gain a few medals per battle, and you can still lose a lot on defense. There is no opportunity to gain 20+.
So tank and raider attacks are common and make sense - any star gets you a medal and the league loot bonus, which is substantial (200k food/gold and 200 oil at dynasty).

After 2,800? Why 2,800? At that level there’s no opponent of the same level or above? I have a hard time to believe it.

Anyway, the discussion here is if the medal ranking makes sense or, as the OP wrote, if it’s worth to have high medals.

Some folks say it means “nothing”. That is certainly not true. It is not true to many, many players and it’s certainly not true for those at the top of the medal ranking, who, in one way or another, have managed to get and stay up there.
You may like the star ranking better or you may prefer to dedicate all of yourself in raising the glory of your alliance, but we cannot disregard the medal ranking as a objective way to assess who the strongest players worldwide are - on an individual level.

Have a great day.

 

[Loonies]

Opponents with 500 medals less than you are worth only one medal no matter how many stars you achieve in battle. There are no players that ZG Chen can battle to get more than one medal per battle. There are seven players from whom s/he can get one medal per battle. But s/he seems to gain 5 or more medals daily. Quite mysterious.

 

[yemen]

An opponent far enough above you would be worth +39 medals, or -1 in a loss. The range is symmetrical, I didn't call it out because it isn't relevant at the top end.

As far as ZG Chen, that is exactly what I am saying. His opponent 500 medals below him would be worth 1 medal, whether the victory is 1 star or 5 star. And Loonies actually has a gunpowder account at that medal level, and is saying the same.

Medals isn't nothing. High medal counts are just a completely different game to what most of us play, and the skills on display aren't always the same.

 

[Donato]

I guess it would depend on your style of play. Resources are scarce at the higher medal counts and if you like to play back-to-back and upgrade your base you will get a lot less game play and it will take you longer to acquire resources to upgrade. I like to medal drop to 200 and medal climb a bit passed 2000 and medal drop again. After my walls maxed to level 13 at IA my coffers were full of gold and food with nothing to spend it on for weeks so I moved up to GA. Now I’m working on level 14 walls with the same strategy. I’ve been as high as 2600 and got the empire league 1000 crown bonus but other than that I’ve found little to no advantage other than the ego thing of being at the top of my alliance.