Capital Armies

TL;DR: Dark army wastes time in the back or north (2 red things on the map), while light army ignores the same type of regions on their south and goes straight to the frontline. It's unfair to the darks.

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Well, after the map reset.. horses have been earning 7k'ish CPs per run, which equals about 44 suicides... multiple times a day. Pretty cool. It could even help an outnumbered faction if its rules were different, in theory I mean.

Devs have been asked multiple times about the way horses pick the targets. I guess the only reference is from Joyce's post (which wasn't denied by devs at least)..

http://www.battleconforum.com/t1349-what-are-the-rules-for-the-dark-light-army#9281

Joyce wrote:

Based on my observation of the dark army, I believe the rule is close to this:
Attack the lowest numbered region the light faction holds;
UNLESS the region is under 50% or so, in which case attack the next lowest one.

Now what do we have...
From the past few days.. the rule might be this:
dark horse attacks the neutral/light region with the lowest number
light horse attacks a neutral/dark region with the lowest number.

Seems fair? Yes, if you forget that regions are numbered from the dark capital to the light one, so darkside will always have lower numbers.


I'm not gonna link all pics here in order to keep it reasonable length.. just this to help prove a point.
Anyway...

There were 3 neutral areas (marked in red).. darks had the 29-30-31-39 zone, then a bunch of northern regions near frontlines... lights had the southern equivalent near frontlines.
Now, the horse behaviour..
Dark claims 29.. light goes to attack 113. (that's what made me suspicious)
Dark claims 30.. light keeps at 113.
Dark claims 31.. light is still at 113 (pic above, full size) http://prntscr.com/3zt677
Dark claims 39 (woohoo, moving right).. light hits 114 for a change http://prntscr.com/3zxftl

Light target is easy - hit 114 some more. Dark runs out of those back regions and goes where..?  why 69 of course.. the next neutral region which borders dark hexes.. http://prntscr.com/404jua

Ok, first part was kiiinda logical.. get neutral regions if darks are too lazy. The funny part is - why doesn't the light horse think the same?
Both dark and light factions have a bunch of neutral regions... Dark horse wastes cps on them, and light just ignores the whole southern (mirror!) part of the map and hits a frontline region.

In the past horses did max 1-2k cps, so it's not such an annoyance. Now however...
I mentioned 5 times, so that means 5x7k cps... 35k cps, in 2 days (=219 suicides or 350 coops) that lights just got for free on the frontlines, AND that dark horse dumped elsewhere. I guess it negated a few of our best hitters. And we don't have many of them anyway.

So the situation is this:
Lights have more players and more cp generation power. More lights have access to suicides (so even if we take noobs out of the equation, lights have it easier).

Light solos are easy when you bring cannons (especially humans) or archers (elves), easily completed in 2 minutes. Darks can't use range but have to use heavies, if they want to win that is. Cannons are out of the question, solos take longer and have lower winrate, higher casualties and gear repair (cannons don't use gear, heavies do). So the whole CP generation is heavily biased towards lights.

But surely lights need more help.  

Lights suffered from AI mercs doing damage to the frontline, something like 10% per run, so it was quickly removed.
Now darks face a greater danger which can't be fought, and totally unfair target system which also favors lights. Why do we have to waste cps to claim all neutral regions when lights can allow themselves to not care about cleaning up? And even then.. won't dark horse think to fortify some unimportant region out of the way even when it's done claiming neutral regions just because that hex has a cool low number?

Does anyone care to fix this?  

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Further cycles.. as a point of reference..
Dark again hits 69 for some reason, light hits 115. http://prntscr.com/40825r

Fyrr wrote:

Lights suffered from AI mercs doing damage to the frontline, something like 10% per run, so it was quickly removed.

Do not even talk about it .. We lost a lot of players to that
23 effing days it took , 23 days to remove the Grey goblin. Now who is talking elven time???

Pulkit wrote:

Fyrr wrote:

Lights suffered from AI mercs doing damage to the frontline, something like 10% per run, so it was quickly removed.

Do not even talk about it .. We lost a lot of players to that
23 effing days it took , 23 days to remove the Grey goblin. Now who is talking elven time???

Yes, but it was removed. And Fyrr has a very valid point here.

Fyrr wrote:

TL;DR: Dark army wastes time in the back or north (2 red things on the map), while light army ignores the same type of regions on their south and goes straight to the frontline. It's unfair to the darks.

---

Well, after the map reset.. horses have been earning 7k'ish CPs per run, which equals about 44 suicides... multiple times a day. Pretty cool. It could even help an outnumbered faction if its rules were different, in theory I mean.

Devs have been asked multiple times about the way horses pick the targets. I guess the only reference is from Joyce's post (which wasn't denied by devs at least)..

http://www.battleconforum.com/t1349-what-are-the-rules-for-the-dark-light-army#9281

Joyce wrote:

Based on my observation of the dark army, I believe the rule is close to this:
Attack the lowest numbered region the light faction holds;
UNLESS the region is under 50% or so, in which case attack the next lowest one.

Now what do we have...
From the past few days.. the rule might be this:
dark horse attacks the neutral/light region with the lowest number
light horse attacks a neutral/dark region with the lowest number.

Seems fair? Yes, if you forget that regions are numbered from the dark capital to the light one, so darkside will always have lower numbers.


I'm not gonna link all pics here in order to keep it reasonable length.. just this to help prove a point.
Anyway...

There were 3 neutral areas (marked in red).. darks had the 29-30-31-39 zone, then a bunch of northern regions near frontlines... lights had the southern equivalent near frontlines.
Now, the horse behaviour..
Dark claims 29.. light goes to attack 113. (that's what made me suspicious)
Dark claims 30.. light keeps at 113.
Dark claims 31.. light is still at 113 (pic above, full size) http://prntscr.com/3zt677
Dark claims 39 (woohoo, moving right).. light hits 114 for a change http://prntscr.com/3zxftl

Light target is easy - hit 114 some more. Dark runs out of those back regions and goes where..?  why 69 of course.. the next neutral region which borders dark hexes.. http://prntscr.com/404jua

Ok, first part was kiiinda logical.. get neutral regions if darks are too lazy. The funny part is - why doesn't the light horse think the same?
Both dark and light factions have a bunch of neutral regions... Dark horse wastes cps on them, and light just ignores the whole southern (mirror!) part of the map and hits a frontline region.

In the past horses did max 1-2k cps, so it's not such an annoyance. Now however...
I mentioned 5 times, so that means 5x7k cps... 35k cps, in 2 days (=219 suicides or 350 coops) that lights just got for free on the frontlines, AND that dark horse dumped elsewhere. I guess it negated a few of our best hitters. And we don't have many of them anyway.

So the situation is this:
Lights have more players and more cp generation power. More lights have access to suicides (so even if we take noobs out of the equation, lights have it easier).

Light solos are easy when you bring cannons (especially humans) or archers (elves), easily completed in 2 minutes. Darks can't use range but have to use heavies, if they want to win that is. Cannons are out of the question, solos take longer and have lower winrate, higher casualties and gear repair (cannons don't use gear, heavies do). So the whole CP generation is heavily biased towards lights.

But surely lights need more help.  

Lights suffered from AI mercs doing damage to the frontline, something like 10% per run, so it was quickly removed.
Now darks face a greater danger which can't be fought, and totally unfair target system which also favors lights. Why do we have to waste cps to claim all neutral regions when lights can allow themselves to not care about cleaning up? And even then.. won't dark horse think to fortify some unimportant region out of the way even when it's done claiming neutral regions just because that hex has a cool low number?

Does anyone care to fix this?  

Another nail in the coffin for the Dark Faction! Thanks for posting this Fyrr.

krawehl wrote:

Pulkit wrote:

Fyrr wrote:

Lights suffered from AI mercs doing damage to the frontline, something like 10% per run, so it was quickly removed.

Do not even talk about it .. We lost a lot of players to that
23 effing days it took , 23 days to remove the Grey goblin. Now who is talking elven time???

Yes, but it was removed. And Fyrr has a very valid point here.

Hey, I agree Fyrr has a valid point and I support this . But saying that the devs are waiting hand and foot on the lighties .. I must say that i disagree

The Light and Dark armies just attacked at the same time..or within 20 minutes.

They both did an incredible 40%+ influence on the regions that they attacked.

Let me first say, that shouldn't happen.

Worse though is that the Dark Army is attacking an idiotic region. It had 12% Dark influence, 0 Light, and the rest neutral....why would it ever target that region?

http://prntscr.com/41s2d2
http://prntscr.com/41s2h6
http://prntscr.com/41s2o8
http://prntscr.com/41s2qy

The algorithm is much, much worse than it was previously. Before it attacked neutral regions, but then attacked worthwhile ones once they were gone. Now it attacks regions that have no business being targeted at all, ones that aren't even on the frontlines.

Before the printscreen below, it attacked a region (84) at 76% Dark influence and under Dark control.

http://prntscr.com/42gefe

no printscreen unfortunately, but, region 96, -behind- the frontline??? O_o
with the light AI hitting 104, ON the frontline...

1 more valid reason to fix AI and use it better being a powerful instrument for balancing.

Fyrr wrote:

TL;DR: Dark army wastes time in the back or north (2 red things on the map), while light army ignores the same type of regions on their south and goes straight to the frontline. It's unfair to the darks.

This post was made last Monday. Are you still seeing an incorrect behavior by the Capital Armies after the patch last Thursday?

well, if you count dark AI working behind the frontline as incorrect: yes. see my reply from earlier today in this thread.

klaas wrote:

well, if you count dark AI working behind the frontline as incorrect: yes. see my reply from earlier today in this thread.

On it.

Rune, as u said earlier in other threads the risk of the balancing is the stalemate.
I got it, right point, but in a balanced war the map can be smaller (and can be changed more often) =)

http://prntscr.com/46p1w7

That is gonna be a large waste. The stronger the AI capital armies get, the more an issue like this gets magnified.

ysosad wrote:

http://prntscr.com/46p1w7

That is gonna be a large waste. The stronger the AI capital armies get, the more an issue like this gets magnified.

Get rid of them all together....they're not strategic and only frustrate people.


Dren

O_o
dark horse attacking a hex that is already 98% red...(region 45, 29 july, 0800 servertime)

klaas wrote:

O_o
dark horse attacking a hex that is already 98% red...(region 45, 29 july, 0800 servertime)

   

And this is not an isolated action. Dark horse has been choosing some strange targets recently... maybe 20-25% of the time.