Announcing WarLight 1.1: 2 v 2 Ladder

WarLight will be going down on Friday, March 11th at 1am PST (9am GMT) for up to 1 hour. Please plan accordingly for any fast games or single player games that may get interrupted during this 1-hour window.

During this time, WarLight will be upgraded to v1.01.0.

2 v 2 Ladder

WarLight 1.1 will bring us the 2 v 2 ladder! This ladder uses the “Strategic 2 v 2” settings, just like how the 1 v 1 ladder uses the “Strategic 1 v 1” settings.

Unlike the 1 v 1 ladder, however, you enter the 2 v 2 ladder along with a partner. The two of you will be placed together on the ladder and receive a single rating as a team.

Like the 1 v 1 ladder, all players joining the ladder must be WarLight members. Further, each player can only be on the ladder once. In other words, you can’t pick two partners and join the ladder on two different teams at the same time.

However, you’re not locked with your partner for all eternity. You may leave the 2 v 2 ladder and then re-join the ladder with a different partner. Doing this will create a new team whose rating will start over from scratch. Ratings cannot be transferred from old teams to new teams – so it’s not a decision to be made lightly! However, you can always change your mind and go back to the first partner, as re-joining the ladder with a partner you had previously played games with will assume your previous rating with that partner and place you back on the ladder as if you had never left. This is similar to how re-joining the 1 v 1 ladder works.

Move Order is now Team-Aware

Today, when WarLight sets out to determine who gets first pick during territory selection or who gets first move on each turn, it randomizes the list of every player in the game. This is perfectly fair in free-for-all games, however in team games it’s possible that multiple players on one team will get priority over others.

Let’s look at an example.

Assume we have a game with players 1 and 2 on team A, and players 3 and 4 on team B. Let’s say that all four players pick Mexico as their #1 pick and Norway as their #2 pick.

Prior to 1.1, WarLight would simply randomize the list of players (1, 2, 3 and 4) into any order. Let’s say the order comes out 3421. In this example, this would award both Mexico and Norway to team B. Team A would need to resort to their 3rd picks.

WarLight 1.1 makes this scenario more fair. After 1.1, WarLight ensures that the ordering switches between teams so that, in this example, one team would get Mexico and the other would get Norway – it’s impossible for one team to get both.

WarLight will switch between teams in the same way that it switches between players now – by reversing the order after each iteration. For example, teams will alternate ABC CBA ABC CBA.

Improved Ladder Matchmaking Algorithm

The algorithm that matches players up in the ladder will receive a bunch of improvements.

The biggest change is that it will only match you with players near you in the ladder, instead of before where it preferred near players but could have matched against anyone. The ladder will only create games with people who are within 20% of the ladder from you. For example, if there are 50 players participating in the ladder, it will only look at the 10 players above and 10 players below you.

The algorithm is also receiving improvements that makes it work better for players in the provisional period, as it now ignores rank and creates games solely based on rating. Previously, it preferred to match provisional players against other provisional players which made it too easy to get onto the ladder with a high win ratio (10-0 or 9-1, for example). Now, it will match you to people rated near your rating, regardless of whether you’re provisional or not.

The full algorithm will be documented on the Help tab once 1.1 is live.

Hotkeys for Navigating History

1.1 will allow you to use the arrow keys as hotkeys to navigate around history of a game. The left and right arrow keys go forward and backward one turn, while the up/down arrow keys go forward and backward one order.

Additionally, while not in history the left arrow key takes you to the first turn of a game. Combined with the existing escape hotkey, which closes all windows, this makes it easier to quickly refer to the distribution state of a a game by simply pressing left and then escape.

Misc Changes

– Players can now hold down Shift when clicking on a territory to insert the territoriy’s name into public chat, and hold Control when clicking on a territory to insert it’s name into team chat.
– Increased the invite limit for single-elim and double-elim tournaments. You can now invite up to three times the start size of the tournament.
– A player’s ladder games now sort by last turn instead of game age.
– A player’s ladder games now highlight based on win/loss. This makes it easier to tell how much a player has been winning.
– Fixed a bug in the “Cumulative Defensive Luck” and “Cumulative Luck” graph.
– Fixed a bug that prevented players from moving a template between single-player and multi-player.
– Fixed the appearance of the member icon on the lobby screen.
– Fixed a bug that was showing the “this player is in their provisional period” message on players who had left the ladder.
– Fixed a bug that caused an error if you clicked history buttons on a game where someone got booted during territory distribution.