No matches on starting board, automatically reshuffled

In 7 months, that had never happened. I was due for some good board karma. After shooting 3 times, it set me up with a diamond match in green in the current no red tournament on my first turn. I think I won in three turns.

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It’s a 1 in 5000 kind of occurrence, so not surprising you’ve not seen one before:

Good work on persevering, and congrats on your win!

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Seems like an accurate estimate of probability. I saw the board, didn’t think I touched it, and all of sudden I’m hitting the other team before the game even started. It was Christmas in August with the diamond green match. I forgot to add the team I beat in 3 turns was highly emblemed, but I guess so am I.

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I’ve seen this happen several times - frustrating when it’s on a titan!

I assume that the 1 in 5,000 is a ballpark figure, which I’m fine with. I’m more curious if anyone else has confirmed this - it seems like the starting board algorithm does not allow for a match to already be in place. Is that right? And then, once I have started making moves, if I put the board into a state with no matches, then that uses a different algorithm to “shuffle” the board that does allow for matches.

And then as a side note - how about the scroll of alteration - does that allow for a match to be generated, or does the algorithm ensure that no matches are made?

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Maybe slightly more common? Think I’ve seen it maybe 5-7 times. Hard to get the actual data on that but would be more like 1 in 2000 for me.

Felt even weirder to have a combo going and then no more moves. Reshuffle and the combo continued from where it was.

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1 in 5,000 is an average frequency, based on the underlying distribution. But the frequency of occurrence of events in a set of samples drawn from a distribution will only converge to that distribution after and infinite number of draws. In any finite sample set, the frequency you observe will likely differ from the underlying probability distribution.

So even if something is 1 in a million, you could still see it happen twice in a row, in the only two samples you’ve drawn. If you did 20 million samples, then it would be more likely to see 20 one-in-a-million occurrences than 5 or 40, but all of those outcomes could possibly happen.

The board does not allow initial matches. Boards which have initial matches get discarded, which is accounted for in the probabilities shown in the post I linked you.

Correct. The shuffle is just trying to fix the no matches problem. If it creates a match…perfectly fine.

I believe it can cause matches to happen, but I didn’t test it enough to figure that out for certain myself. I’m going off of my recall of what others have said–which could be wrong.

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I love having a mathematician on the forum. It warms my data loving, number crunching, spreadsheet making heart.

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I guess I was asking about the 1 in 5,000 odds more because the post you linked to was describing the case where the board was devoid of a single color, and this post is about a board that was devoid of a single move. It seemed unlikely to me that the probability would be the same for both events, but I was willing to accept that they were in the same neighborhood (or ballpark) of each other.

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Ah! I misread. Not sure how often that happens. That sounds like an interesting project.

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No matches on starting board? Still don’t understand how that happens but if it does, doesn’t the system automatically shuffles the board? Or does it mean no matches OF FAVORABLE TILES on starting board? If so, then I understand. We call that RNG.

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It happens to me once, no matches on starting board then shuffle then BOOOM, enemy tank killed without moves. Nice raid.

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I’ve had this happen to me several times. I don’t mind, I’d rather have the board reshuffle in the beginning vs. getting a mostly bad board and being stuck trying to force a reshuffle. :confused:

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You got it. No matches to start, reshuffle, multiple hits, and then my first actual move was a multidirectional green diamond match in a no red tournament. Destruction on a Wu Kong scale with no Wu.

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@jwberger, @Kruppato Are you saying that you started the fight, the board had no legal moves on it, the game shuffled the board, and the resulting board had a match already made? If so,

a) did it give mana to the heroes that were hit?
b) did it count as your turn (i.e. did the heroes turn counters go down by one before you made an actual move)?

I’m curious, because I’ve seen it happen in the middle of a fight (i.e. a shuffle that results in matches), but never at the very beginning. And even though it worked out very well for both of you, I could imagine it also really screwing things up.

Board types

Boards come in three types

Stuck board- Zero matches of any color.
Loaded board- at least one match is possible.
Matched board- at least one match is already made.

Initial board

As several people have said, Matched boards are discarded when the initial board is generated so the game does not automatically start.

The Devs remove an initial Matched board ( edit ) because they do not want the game automatically starting.

The Devs want you to select your first move from all possible matches. Not be forced to pick a single match.

This also prevents combos on the initial board.

Shuffling

If you make a match, and the result is a Stuck board, the game shuffles the board randomly until it finds a Loaded board and then changes the board to the that configuration.

When shuffling the game does not remove Matched boards, this allows a combo to temporarily stop at a Stuck board, then continue if the shuffle resulted in a Matched board.

The Devs have a statistic on your profile for highest combo. By allowing a shuffle to result in a Matched board, this allows longer combos.

Initial stuck board

As several people have said, I have also had an initial board be a stuck board. The game shuffled the board, and the resulting board was a Matched board that led to a combo.

So without touching my game, it displayed a Stuck board, Shuffled the Board, then did a Combo.

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This seems like a bug to me. As you said,

The Devs … do not want the game automatically starting.

And I would agree with that - I am the master of my fate! I want to be able to make the first move. To me, the right result on an Initial stuck board would be that the shuffle results in a loaded board, but not a matched board.

Bug or feature

If it is a bug, it is almost impossible to debug since initial stuck boards are insanely rare. I have been playing for 563 days and it has only happened once.

80%+ chance

@Little_Infinity, and others, have shown, with computer simulations, that initial matched boards are very common ( reportedly 80% ). So it is easy to bug test.

Shuffle code

The Shuffle code is also used for Tornadoes, and Hurricanes, so allowing Matched boards to result from a shuffle appears to be intended.

Notes

Click for notes

Quotes

Link

(Starting board - #24 by zephyr1)

FIN

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The opponents players did gain mana from the automatic matches. I destroyed their emblemed +19 tank with my first match, which was a multidirectional green diamond match in the current tournament with restricted red. Berden was fully charged and ready to strike before the opponent had a chance to go. It was pure carnage.

Benn

a) yes
b) my turn start after the shuffle, so i can move before the opponent.

Stuck boards are insanely rare? Curious. I’ve had it happen to me at least half a dozen times, and I’ve only been playing for 11 months. My RNG is pretty wacky overall though.