Here's another forum thread about WZIB balance issues. As you can see from the picture below, in a game with only 12 active players, everyone else conquered everything while I was still being way behind everyone. You can also see that neutrals are ridiculously high in troops numbers so there's no coming back even with 100k army income.

Fizzer can again modify size of attacks, remove targeting based on army income (that might help in some way)...but in my opinion it's not a long term solution and the whole concept should be reworked in order to bring balance to the game for all players and make it more based on your actions in the battle.

Maybe someone can come up with some good idea regarding this issue in WZIB and maybe Fizzer will find it a good idea as well and as time goes he may implement it.

So come up with something and bring balance to the battle.

Given that every battle has 10+ players, it means that, on average, people should expect to win no more than 10% of the time.

I can see from your stats that you get the #1 rank in about 40% of the battles you've participated in. This doesn't surprise me at all that people are targeting you as they view you as the biggest threat.

This is working as intended. If anything, I don't think it should be possible for one person to get 1st 40% of the time, so I suspect that means the effect you mention isn't strong enough and the neutrals should be made even bigger to help keep things more fair.

Fizzer can again modify size of attacks, remove targeting based on army income (that might help in some way)

Targeting on income can be a major part of the strategy, especially now that the wastelands are less depended on the income of the player being hit. Therefore it should not be removed.

Given that every battle has 10+ players, it means that, on average, people should expect to win no more than 10% of the time.

I strongly disagree with that! If every player would have an equal chance, it would just be a lotto.
The point of a battle is that the strongest/best player wins. What defines best and how easy it should be for them to win is for you to figure out, but if you want it to be a lotto just remove the entire battle and pick some random winners.

Edited 1/7/2021 11:25:02

Fizzer: I don't mind being the target if I can influence it somehow in the battle (and I don't mean by reseting my ap advancements every time I go into WZIB considering it's not for free). Balance issue goes both ways (that's why I am saying in long term it needs some deeper change)..I can do nothing and win a 10 player small earth each time. On the other hand I have zero chance winning for example in above mentioned siege of feldmere. Of course you can make small adjustments like bigger attacks in small maps and smaller attacks in big maps, but it will never really work in my opinion.

But from your answer I guess you should first tell us what your long term goal with WZIB is. Do you want to leave it to chance or based it on skill? Right now both my wins and losses are definitely not based on skill and some slight change in size of attacks won't make a difference.

Maybe giving everyone the very same advancements no matter their advancements in classic idle..or some deeper change in battles mechanics..

Maybe giving everyone the very same advancements no matter their advancements in classic idle..or some deeper change in battles mechanics..

This is what it comes down to I think. Seems really hard to balance the AP / artifacts etc. that players have. One "fix" is to just make everyone have the same AP's and Artifacts for WZIB.

A fun idea might be to let all players start with say 2000 AP (or whatever depending on map size) and get to spend them as desired while waiting for the battle to start. But yeah, it comes down to what the long term goal of WZIB is.

The problem with WZIB (which I enjoy btw) is that it is hard to balance between the overpowered players (No.One as an example) and someone who just joined Idle.

On one hand, you make attacks too strong, and players who have invested a lot and are over powered get demolished. You basically punish players for doing well. I ran into that problem myself when I got Auto-Camp Upgrades.

On the flip side, if you make attacks too weak, then new players will never win and will be discouraged. While it makes sense that weak players shouldn’t win, they shouldn’t be blocked out entirely. There is a certain degree of randomness involved.

Having set AP for all players would again punish those who are doing well. Why try hard for AP and advancements if you can’t use them?

Eventually, there should be Tiers for WZIB. Put the high AP players together, and the low AP players together. But given that interest in battles only ever spike to 20 or so at the high end, and barely scrape 10 at the low end, it may be a while before that can happen.

I have considered a tier system for WZIB in the past, but given the # of players I doubt there would be enough players with aprox equal advancements to fill a battle, On top of that, the battles appear to require quite a lot of resources, so having multiple battles run at once might also lag out WZ in general.

I am not strong enough to join WZIB

Just having won a WZIB battle by keeping myself weak for 90% of the game then bull rushing the end made me think of an idea. First, I doubt that Fizzer intended it to be played in that manner. Second, the problem is the Attack mechanic.

Before, the Attack was based on the victims income. That’s like shooting a bullet that does more damage to a rhinoceros than a bunny. It made little sense, and it demolished strong players. Strong players had to keep themselves weak so as not to be targeted.

Next, it was changed to be based on the duration of time of the game. More balanced, but this favors strong players on small maps. Strong players can rush to the end and shrug off the weak early attacks. This is confirmed by No.One when he says he can win Small Earth no problem. This strategy falls through on large maps because he becomes everyone’s permanent target. Again, this can be countered by staying weak.

I propose a third option, have the Attacks be based on... the Attackers income! For starters, it makes more sense for your attacks to be based on your attack, but it also throws a wrench into the stay weak to avoid attacks strategy. If you want stronger attacks, you have to be strong. Strong players will still have to contend with being the target of everyone, but someone with an income of 1k shouldn’t be crippling someone with an income of 14k. Have you ever seen a toddler break a leg of a pro-wrestler? Yes, it’ll put weak players at a bit of a disadvantage, but they are almost never the target of attacks.

Obviously, there would have to be a scaled multiplier to keep some balance. Give a slight boost to the weaker attacks, and a penalty to the stronger attacks, but overall, strong players should have strong attacks.

Just my thoughts.

Thats is actually a very good idea Z.

+1

Battles are still being tuned, so I appreciate the feedback.

If attacks are too powerful, then the game becomes a lottery (or even having high advancements might hurt you). If attacks are too weak, then the people with high AP win every time and it ceases to be fun. What we want to aim for is the middle ground, where AP increases the odds that you win, but doesn't guarantee it.

Consider if you played out a thousand battles all with 20 players. Over the course of those, ideally the highest AP players would win 10-20% of the time. This would be considered a very good win rate as it's up from the 5% win rate they'd have if it was a lottery.

I can plot the final rank of each battle on a graph with that player's AP value and see how this data correlates. If win rates for high AP players are above 20%, it likely means attacks aren't strong enough. If it's lower than that, or if it's just random or if AP is negatively correlated with win rate it likely means attacks are too strong.

I've already tweaked this a few times over the past month and I plan to continue doing so to see how it affects things.

Edited 1/7/2021 13:48:54

Those arty strikes are a problem, I was ones very close to finishing in the top 5, but then I got nuked back into the stone age and there was no way of coming back. Add insult to injury when you are getting arty striked by players who aren't focusing the player with the most territory or the highest income, but just on random players.

I think I finished 1 time on the 5th place and the rest of the times I finished below that. Never being able to conquer all the territories, just because those neutral territories are getting way too expensive ones they become neutral

Battles just seem totally random now. I play approximately the same strategy each time and often against many of the same opponents - and there are times I finish last and do not even finish the level and there are times I come in top 3. I have no idea what I'm doing differently in each game. The issue is not that I get attacked more (though there are times where that happens and I drop from 1st to middle of the pack).

One opportunity is to give everyone equal access to pick 3 from any Artifacts & a set # of AP points to spend on advancements just for Idle Battle. This would give new players a chance to learn about the different advantages, and will probably motivate them to earn those advantages in the main Idle games.

During the few minutes before each game while the room fills and the 1 minute pre-game countdown, players are able to pick/choose/finalize what they want to play with..and it would keep their settings from their previous game if they played before..

This would make the game more fair, while also letting all players be more creative.

Just a few thoughts..

Random is a good word for it, and honestly I think that's the at least partially the intent. There is still a strategy to it ... until there isn't.

For example if it's late game and you've emptied all your Merc Camps and are about to win, but then get hit by a couple attacks that cause (this happened to me recently, btw) (1) a huge bunch of 25M territories to appear, and (2) a 300M territory to appear. At this point, there's really no chance of winning anymore, strategy is out the window.

Yeah, the attacks are just too strong. I'm not an especially high-level player, but I still get wrecked near the end of every game. It's like the deciding factor in how well you do is whether the attack hits right before or after you can click your last territory. I love the idea, but it's so luck-based that it's kind of frustrating.

And by the same token, I never actually want to attack - using them early is pointless, because it means someone else will just come up the middle, so I wait until as late as I can. I don't think I've clicked an attack yet, I just let them auto-fire.

I recently finally played a battle again, to check up on the balance of them

I'm sad to say that I could jump from 8th to 1st place in less then a second multiple times during the battle, which caused me to get nuked over and over without being able to stop it. I ended up 12th.

Unfortunately with my 20% auto conquer and 15% auto upgrade, the only way to not lose is to still manually upgrade mines :{

Yeah, you should avoid having most armies/sec, as it is the default attack setting.

I just came across an issue that may be a bug or may just be dumb, but if you have an army camp on a bonus (instead of a territory), and it gets hit by an attack, the attack takes out every single territory in that bonus.

When I saw that happen, I basically quit on the spot, and I don't intend to play again for a while. It's just not fun to play when that can happen - the battle game is laggy and chaotic at the best of times, and losing 20 territories at once (and knowing it'll happen again and again throughout the battle) just makes it unplayable. At that point I'm just watching the game play itself with no real ability to do anything of value, and might as well go back to Challenge mode.

If you have passive upgrades you might as well quit the pvp as it is. The attacks will hit you 10-20x as much as people without even if you do literally nothing. You will lose.

God help you if you ever get near the top 5 spots. Your whole screen will turn neutral and the neutrals will get bombed up higher and youre looking at a board that would take a hundred times anyone elses. Just skip battle arena.