WarLight has just been upgraded to version 2.04.0! This update improves the way cyclic move order works, and brings a few other enhancements/fixes to the site.
Cyclic Move Order
The way that cyclic move order works has changed with this update. Cyclic move order is a setting that can be enabled for games that determines the order in which orders are carried out (most notably, who gets the first attack on each turn).
Prior to this update, cyclic move order worked by taking the person who got first move on the previous turn and giving them last move on the next turn. For example, if you had four players named A, B, C and D, the order would work like this:
ABCD -> BCDA -> CDAB -> DABC -> ABCD
After this update, the order simply swaps:
ABCD -> DCBA -> ABCD -> DCBA -> ABCD
It’s worth noting that in a 1v1 game, these two methods are identical — the players simply take turns getting first move. However, in games with more than two players, the new method is actually more fair.
Say, for example, say you’re playing in a 4-player FFA, and you’re in a battle with one enemy player. You’re player B fighting mostly against player A. Now look at the four possible move orders in the old method: ABCD -> BCDA -> CDAB -> DABC. In three of the four, A gets a move before B — that isn’t fair! By using the new method, it ensures that first-moves will swap back and forth between any two players.
Hide Lottery Games
The Open Games and Open Tournament pages now have a check-box that will allow hiding any games/tournaments that have the word “lottery” in them.
Lottery games are typically games that have no skill involved where the winner is determined randomly. If you don’t like these kind of games, this check-box can be used to hide them so they don’t need to clutter up your page.
The state of this check-box will be saved to your local device so the next time you load the page it will be checked or unchecked as you left it.
Please be sure that when creating lottery games, you include the word “lottery” somewhere in the title. Also be sure that if your game isn’t a lottery game, don’t put “lottery” in the title.
Also, as a reminder: Stacking lottery games so you always win is against the rules. The games must be random, that’s why it’s a lottery. If you see someone stacking a lottery game, please report them using the in-game report system. If you see someone not using the word “lottery” in their game, please kindly ask them to do so next time.
Other Changes
– The number of simultaneous open games that a player can have at a time has been raised by one.
– Made the lobby page wider so more of player’s name can be displayed.
– Modified kill rates no longer reduce that game’s point multiplier. If you’re modifying kill rates to make a game that’s purely luck based, please be sure the game has the word “lottery” in the game name.
– Fixed a bug when using the Enter key to send an in-game message that contained territory or bonus links.
– Fixed a bug that caused some numbers on the in-game graph’s vertical axis to be wrong. The data displayed was never wrong, just the axis along the left.
– Fixed a bug that occurred if you opened history to the distribution state, opened the view picks drop down, but then used a hotkey to exit history without closing the drop down.
– Fixed a bug that let you open multiple private chat windows to the same player.
– Fixed a bug that let you open multiple vote-to-end windows.
– Fixed a bug that prevented Facebook users from getting the multi-platform achievements. They will be awarded the next time you sign into the website with your Facebook account.
– When making maps, the length of territory names, distribution names, and bonus names is now limited to 50 characters.
– When adding a scenario distribution to a map, it now links to the wiki for those who don’t know how scenario distributions work.
– Improved the website so it now gives a message when the server is under heavy load instead of just a generic error.
– iOS/Android: The menu button is now disabled while playing cards (cards that require interacting with the map, like recon, abandon, blockade, etc.). Most of the menu options would cause errors or cause the game to crash, so it makes sense to disable it.
– Android: Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the screen to be half black after the software keyboard was closed.
– Android: Fixed layout issues that caused some pages to not be centered.
How about games with cyclic move order that began before update? Will move order work old way or new way?
Note that the new way of working of cyclic move order is very unfair in games 2v2 – one of teams will get first move all the time!
I think cyclic move order should not change and this new method should appear as “alternating move order” or something like that.
All games with cyclic move order will immediately switch to the new format. I did take care to ensure that 1v1 games will stay on the same schedule they were on before.
I considered for a long time adding the new method as a third mode and letting people choose it. But really, I can’t think of a single reason that I’d ever want to recommend the old cycling mode. It seems worse in every way, so I don’t think it makes sense to keep as an option.
You’re right about the 2v2 issue — if you can think up a way to cycle the orders that fixes both this problem and the old problem, I’m all ears!
ABCD -> DCBA -> CDAB -> BADC -> ABCD
Might this fix the 2v2 ‘issue’? (Basically added in a pair swap between each full swap (as in the two consecutive letters on each end swap (so ABCD -> BADC); a full swap being ABCD -> DCBA).
I think this might work, though as I’m posting at half past midnight – I could well be wrong.
How about this: cycle separately inside of teams and outside of teams. That’s what I originally thought happend before I ran a test since that’s what happens with Random.
My first few tries didn’t work very well, but here’s a scheme that I think works great for 2v2 (teams A and B, players A1, A2, B1, B2):
A1, B1, B2, A2 -> B1, A2, A1, B2 -> A2, B2, B1, A1 -> B2, A1, A2, B1 -> repeat
(Each turn, swap which team goes first. Each turn, reverse the order of the team that went first the previous turn.)
For a 2v2 match, each player will go before each other player exactly half the time, and each player will get equal chances going first.
Now I’m curious to investigate good ways to generalize that to more than 2 teams or more than 2 players per team while maintaining as many good properties as possible!
Thanks for giving back adjusted kill rates. More of a moral victory than anything else.
Also, concerning the long territory names. Was there any problem beyond running off the screen? Personally, most long-named territories of mine are solely for humor’s sake and could be shortened if need be.
Having a limit is necessary to prevent abuse. Before, there was really no limit, so someone could have set a territory to billions of characters long. This would have created big problems for the server trying to process it as well as anybody’s computer trying to play the map (it probably would have run them out of memory).
The only other problem that long territory names create is in the orders list. For insanely long names, the attack order prints out the entire name which can make browsing orders unwieldy (imagine if a single attack order is taller than the entire orders list. it can’t even be displayed all at once)
Personally, I don’t like the new cycling mode. It allows only two players to get a first order.
A few months ago I created a tournament 2v2 with cycle move order because I wanted to minimize the luck factor. Now it’s more like a lottery tournament, because first move in every turn gives huge advantage.
I propose following modification of the old cycling mode: Let n be number of players in a game. Let m be the biggest integer relatively prime to n less than n/2. Randomly determine the order of players in first turn. In every next turn move cycle by m.
Example. Game with 7 players. n=7. m=3. The order changes like that:
1234567 –> 4567123 –> 7123456 –> 3456712 –> 6712345 –> 2345671 –> 5671234 –> 1234567 and so on.
Since gcd(m,n)=1, every player will get first order in some turn. Since m is close to n/2, it is not the case that player X gets move before player Y in n-1 of n consecutive turns (unless n=3,4,6, then unfortunately m=1).
sorry, I replied to wrong post
You’re right that the same team can always have first move in a 2v2. However, I still think this new mode is better than the old one, even in a 2v2, for one big reason: In the old mode, the same team would often get TWO first moves in a turn. This happens even during territory selection. There were games where one team would get both of their #1 picks and the other team would get neither of their #1 picks — this is really bad. In the new method, this can’t happen. Each team is guaranteed to get at least one of their #1 picks.
Thanks for the suggestion on the new formula. I will have to examine this in more detail before I can comment on it.
The team can get first two moves in one turn, but two turns later the other team gets that. It is really fair. If territory distribution and move order in first turn were independent, then it would be perfect!
Yeah, but if two people are just fighting each other, then one gets first move on the other 3/4ths of the time. I wouldn’t call it perfect 🙂
This n/2 prime solution still has all of the same problems as the old cyclic method. Imagine that 1 and 2 are fighting each other. 2 only gets a chance to move before 1 once every 7 turns.
You’re right, this is just permuted old cyclic order, so the problem could not be solved this way.
The only “problem” with the new method is that only 2 people can get first turn.
This can be solved easily by cycling 2 positions every 2 turns:
so: ABCDEFG -> GFEDCBA -> CDEFGAB -> BAGFEDC -> EFGABCD -> DCBAGFE -> GABCDEF -> FEDCBAG -> BCDEFGA -> AGFEDCB -> DEFGABC -> CBAGFED -> FGABCDE -> EDCBAGF -> ABCDEFG
This solutions is also the same for two players since cycling over 2 positions is exactly returning to the same positions.
The 3 (tiny) problems with this solution:
* not that intuitive
* when there are an odd number of players, exactly one player will get first move twice the turn before exactly one other player gets his first move the first time.
* the cycle resets differently for an odd number of players (2n) than it does for an even number (n)
Can you explain move order for 2v2?
Does Team 1 have Players A & C, and Team 2 have B & D?
Or, are players assigned randomly to the letter slots?
i would say Team 1- A+B, Team2 – C+D
oh, my comment above is stupid:P
The new cyclic order seems good, even for team games.
1. With A1 and A2 in team A, and B1 and B2 in team B, you will have :
turn 2n : A1 – B1 – A2 – B2 (team A begins)
turn 2n+1 : B2 – A2 – B1 – A1 (team B begins)
And for more teams, you will have :
turn 2n : A1 – B1 – C1 – A2 – B2 – C2 – A3 – B3 – C3
turn 2n+1 : C3 – B3 – A3 – C2 – B2 – A2 – C1 – B1 – A1
So if a team play before yours at any turn, your team will play before at next turn.
And, of course, if a players plays before you, you also will play before him at next turn.
is there somthing new in this update about ad’s? because i use ad block (don’t want to but do) so when it should display a ad it pops up the thing saying warlight failed to display a ad it says close in …6 but instead of counting down like it should it goes directly to close. so i am cheating the system… which i am not complaining about not having to wait 6 seconds but i should be punished for not viewing ads
Thanks for the mobile fixes and the lottery game hide button!
> After this update, the order simply swaps:
> ABCD -> DCBA -> ABCD -> DCBA -> ABCD
Am I reading correctly that with this new order B and C never get to move first? That doesn’t seem better or more fair, especially if A or D get in a fight with B or C. I don’t have a better solution at the moment, but handling it as above doesn’t seem right.