Has anyone figured out what determines the grouping of attacks & transfers when you play a turn? E.g., when you click Play with fog on, some moves show simultaneously, and then some others show.

(I feel like I might've made a thread about this before but I can't find it.)

edit: Oh, is it just that attacks only get grouped with attacks & transfers only with transfers?

Edited 11/21/2024 04:20:35

Yeah I think thats just it, but don't quote me on that.

I think it's slightly more complicated than that, though.

Moves that interact tend not to be grouped. Say territory A attacks territory B (held by a different player), and then territory B attacks territory A. Even if those moves are consecutive, they don't get grouped. It can be less direct, too - attacks can happen sequentially if A attacks B and then B attacks C. Multi-attack chains (A -> B -> C) aren't grouped, and there a few more things like an order delay card that can break up groupings too (which makes sense).

So I think the groups are all attacks or all transfers, but not all attacks/transfers will be grouped together. Experimenting a little, there are definitely some non-groupings that I don't understand.

I'm going to go into more detail here since I think l4v.r0v likes this sort of thing and I do too. Text wall incoming.

Here's an example game to try to understand: https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=39210971
It's a 2v2 multi-attack game, so some weird stuff can happen. It's certainly true that groupings are broken whenever a multi-attack chain happens. For instance:

Player 1: A attacks B
Player 2: C attacks D
Player 2: E attacks F
Player 1: B attacks Z
Player 1: G attacks H

will definitely not be one grouping because of Player 1's A -> B -> Z multi-attack. I think the groupings are "greedy" with respect to this rule: I'd guess that the first three attacks would be grouped, and then the last two would come after because the 4th attack (B -> Z) is the first one that can't be grouped with another attack, namely the 1st (A -> B).

Here are some of the breakings I don't understand:

Turn 1:
Sea green: Chios -> Lesbos
Teal: Cynuria -> Laconia

These two attacks are each in their own grouping. I thought failed attacks might be separated from successful ones, but a counterexample can be found in turn 3 when gray captures Gomphoi -> Delopians and sea green fails Ionia -> Lesbos. Maybe groups are always broken after failed attacks? EDIT: Nope, the turn 7 example below breaks that theory.

Turn 4, first 2 moves:
Gray: Lykentis -> Larisso-Cynoscephelae
Sea green: Ionia -> Magnesia-Miletos

These two attacks are each in their own grouping. I thought it might be that attacks with different targets get separated, but a counterexample can be found in turn 7 when sea green captures Chalcis-Eretrea-Cyme -> Hidaeo-Euboea (target: gray) and gray captures Lykentis -> Amphipolis (target: neutral).

Turn 4, near the end:
Green: Sykros -> Chalcis-Eretrea-Cyme (capture, target: sea green)
Gray: Aenis-Lamia -> Hidaeo-Euboea (capture, target: sea green)
Gray: Larisso-Cynoscephelae -> Methone-Pydna (capture, target: teal)

The first two attacks are grouped together, and then the third is by itself. This also looks like different targets get separated, but this one can't explained by my theory below the next example.

Turn 7, near the end:
Gray: Malis -> Dolopians (failed attack, target: neutral)
Teal: Mylos -> Cythera (capture, target: neutral)
Green: Ikaria -> Samos (capture, target: sea green)
Green: Sykros -> Chalcis-Eretrea-Cyme (failed attack, target: sea green)

These attacks are grouped two and two. It might be that attacks made against your team are separated from your team's attacks? That would explain the beginning of turn 4 as well. However, there is a counterexample in turn 6, when Gray: Amphipolis -> Philipi-Abdera (target: neutral) is grouped with Sea green: Hidaeo-Euboea -> Aenis-Lamia (target: gray).

Maybe it's poor form to look at a complicated example, so here's a more minimal game with some breaks I don't understand. One is near the end of the last turn.
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=39248019

Why are my three attacks from Omsk grouped separately from my attack Argentina -> Siple? Maybe because they're in different areas of the board? All of turn 1 of this game being grouped seems to contradict this, but maybe attacks against neutrals don't count?

My meta-question here, just to be explicit, is whether this grouping leaks any intel (even redundantly with other intel you should've already deduced).

That's an interesting question - I like the way you think.

As a preliminary test, I set up this game to see whether the grouping would be the same from both players' perspectives: https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=39633863

The plan was to use turn 3 to check whether a hidden transfer by purple (Papua New Guinea -> Borneo) would break up what looks like a series of all attacks from teal's perspective. You can use the perspective feature in the history to see the move from one side or the other.

As expected, from purple's perspective, there was teal's attack, then purple's hidden transfer, and then the other attacks - 3 groupings.

From teal's perspective, we get a surprise. Yes, there is a break between teal's first attack and purple's first attack. But there's also now a break between purple's first attack and teal's later attacks, and then again between teal's later attacks and purple's final attack - a total of 4 groupings, not including the transfer that teal can't even see! The obvious theory is that teal's hidden attack (Mexico -> Baja) is somehow causing the extra break, but what makes this really weird is that from Perspective:All, the groupings behave like they did from purple's perspective: the first attack, then the transfer, and then all subsequent attacks together.

I'm even more confused now than I was before, but I can draw two conclusions.

1) Attacks can be grouped differently from one player's perspective than another. In particular, purple saw Brazil -> Bolivia and Svalbard -> Norway in the same grouping, while teal saw them in two different groupings. This suggests to me that it's unlikely you can make deductions about your opponent's hidden moves.

2) It looks like adding more visible moves can actually result in fewer groupings, comparing teal's perspective to full visibility. This is surprising to me. EDIT: Actually, upon second thought, the fewer breaks from full visibility might have less to do with seeing more attacks, and more to do with being able to see all the territories. In particular, is the fact that some of purple's attack destinations are unseen to teal causing breaks in the groupings?

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EDIT2: Compare with https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=39634032. This game has exactly the same moves (although the distribution is different since I wanted to recreate the previous game), but replacing the hidden transfer Papua New Guinea -> Borneo with a hidden attack Papua New Guinea -> Solomon Islands. (And unfortunately, the colors are switched now.)

From the perspective of the player with Mexico, everything looks exactly the same. If it didn't, we would have found a way to extract intel from the groupings of moves.

From the perspective of the player with Argentina, there are now 2 groupings instead of 3, with the new attack grouped with attacks coming after it.

From Perspective:All, all moves in turn 3 are now in the same grouping.

Edited 11/22/2024 06:06:34

I’ve tried to see if there is any meta long time ago. There is none, because all of the moves are just animations from your perspective.

It may look complicated at first but what’s really happening is just the game puts accents on important moves that you shouldn’t miss like your opponent changing its visibility from a known state or separating transfers from attacks.

is whether this grouping leaks any intel

Nope. The grouping is done entirely client side, and the server has already filtered out intel you shouldn't have.

It will always group together consecutive transfers.

It will always group together consecutive attacks of exactly 1 army (since those are usually delays or pings).

It will also group together consecutive attacks against neutrals, except in the case where two players are attacking the same neutral territory since then the sequence is more important to view.

It then tries to group up consecutive attacks that aren't related to you, such as opponents attacking other opponents. This is important for no-fog or light-fog games where there's lots of activity happening around the world that you don't care about.

Multi-attack has exceptions to all the above rules since attacks need to be played in logical order when a stack goes multiple steps otherwise you could see a later multi-attack step start to execute before the earlier step which would look really weird.