Stones' colour distribution is NOT random - MASTER Board Conspiracy

There are a lot of boards that start off bad when I double up on the tank and I have to spend a few turns clearing out the garbage gems before I can really make progress. Yeah double stacking is a risk that doesn’t always pay off. If you feel the boards are constantly rigged against you then simply stop double stacking. No one says you have to double stack a color to beat the opponents tank.

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It seems so.

The boards are fine, though. I’ve kept counting them like in my previous post. Stopped about a week ago and I’m not going to continue. Here’s what I have:

Average number of tiles for 254 boards where I attacked with 5-colors:
7.08 R
6.92 G
7.14 B
7.02 P
6.84 Y

Average number of tiles for 179 boards where I attacked with 3 Purple and 2 Blue:
7.13 R
6.84 G
6.88 B
6.99 P
7.15 Y

Unlike you, though, I’ve made screenshots of every board, not just of those I didn’t like.

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Very nice work. Doesn’t prove anything, but certainly doesn’t show any suspicious skew away from strong colours.

Occam’s razor does apply in this case.

I run pretty much always without some color in my teams, and even if sometimes this occurence show off much more then others (expecially right after you specifically switch your double composition) in the long run i don’t see a huge prevalence.

What’s more, now i’m going to say some really harsh words:

Good players can turn to good bad boards much more then bad players.

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The match board is completely random.

We have addressed the question here:

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I think in the interests of transparency, it should probably be clarified whether the match boards are completely random with the exception of the opening board ?
Refer to my post:

With an 80%+ chance of a truly random initial board yielding at least 1 existing match, there has to be some form of logic when generating the opening board to prevent it starting with a match already in place…

Now if there is logic to generate an opening board without a match, then there is a possibility that such logic may cause a skew in normal tile distribution. (A possibility… but I personally doubt if such is actually occurring. Pretty sure the opening board still adopts some form of pseudo-random approach in tile replacements to eliminate matches… much easier to code this than trying to code in some form of bias. :slight_smile: )

Maybe worth mentioning this in the Wiki article, otherwise would invite the inevitable question of “If it’s truly random then why don’t we see immediate matches in place on the opening board?”

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What is interesting is that there can be a match in the opening board, but they are extremely rare

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I’ve seen that once, and also had a couple of times when the initial board had to scramble itself because there was no possible move.

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Guess there’s an algorithm that avoid on the starting board to have some match (and sometimes it just fail) but still the color and distribution of the gems are random.

I don’t think that the “don’t start with a match” command is connected with the heroes you choose to fight anyway. (And thats what we are discussing here)

In the end, i read this thing something like “generate a random board like every other board but without tiles”

A +1 condition.

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I think the easiest way to code avoiding matches in opening boards would be:

  1. Assign gems randomly.
  2. If there are no matches, great.
  3. If there are matches, throw the board away and start again.

This doesn’t explain why in some rare cases opening boards do have matches. Perhaps there’s a glitch somewhere.

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The easiest and probably best way to do it would just be your step 1, and then process the board in the same way as a moved tile and let it run through whatever cascades until it stops and then present to the player.

It likely is a glitch or maybe a timeout value being reached while it’s processing the board with some monster cascade. Super rare regardless and didn’t affect my playing at all other than a “hey look at that!” moment.

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Yup, your way is better. And hitting a timeout would explain why in rare instances boards do open with a match.

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hello to everyone, and for a month playing and I’m at 23 level, not I never bought gems. I can say that in my opinion, that in the missions, in the clashes, and even when we have a free hero there is nothing casual or random, but it is all piloted by server, anything is already decided before the game begins. I have analyzed well the Apk file and the contents xml file inside them and I can say that if you do not spend money, it takes over a year of play to have 5-star heroes (maybe) …

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And in that case I am here without studying any apk file but I know for a fact that your observation is wrong.

Source: F2p, have several 5*s - 5 of them in final tier (not all maxed yet). I’ve gotten my first within the first 4 months or so of playing, got some more via tokens (even HOTMs) and now that I have TC20 I’ve gotten several more for free. (EDIT: i’m still under a year of playing, even though it is starting to get close :rofl: )

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I am F2P (well, not quite: I spent £2.99 once). I have been playing for 11 months. I have four fully ascended and levelled 5* heroes.

Edit: and another eight 5* heroes that I have not fully ascended and levelled.

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Ah… @Brobb and @Revelate talking algorithms. This is my THANG. :upside_down_face:

The algorithm I was thinking was:
. Place tiles with randomly chosen colour in order left to right, top to bottom.
. Do…

  • In latest new position, check if the tile you have just placed causes a match of 3 to the left or above.
  • If it does, choose another random colour tile from a set that excludes the one(s) already placed

…Loop until the latest did not cause a match.
. Continue in this way until the board is full

The loop will terminate after at most 2 replacements.

The problem with re-doing layouts whenever there is a match is that you’ll have a 80%+ chance of needing to redo the layout, so you may have potentially long runs of redoing them. Computationally expensive with lack of certainty on your termination time. It’s also computationally expensive to check the entire board as a whole for matches after each new one is generated.

Rev’s suggestion (while I like it) suffers a similar (although far milder) problem in that there may be a potentially large (and variable) number of cascades to have to ‘play out’, so again not computationally ideal, although better than the 1st. Also requires them to check a potentially large number of tiles (or all) for any matches after each virtual ‘play’ has been done and filled.

Who knows what algorithm they did use in the end, but I came up with a couple (including Brobb’s, but not including Rev’s).

@Talisax I believe the reports that there may have been a rare board with an incidental starting match, but I attribute this more to an edge-case/flaw in their algorithm than any form of evidence that they do not try prevent matches. To me this indicates that it’s likely they are employing some other algorithm because I don’t see how the 3 mentioned would accidentally produce a match (except maybe if it’s similar to Brobb’s suggestion they may have a ‘give up after x tries’ clause… but I really doubt it).

@Paulon A starting board that auto-shuffles is just a case of their check to see if any matches are possible at all being satisfied after initial layout. Quite possible that an opening layout fails this check. I expect it’s pretty rare, so they probably don’t have to code to avoid it, whereas the chances of opening board with a match (80%+) means they do need to explicitly code to prevent that.

Interesting stuff!

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@Forest, I believe in the randomness of the game. I know players who have drawn a 5* hero plus the HOTM with one epic coin. Granted, it may take a year to completely level them, but that’s just part of the game. I happen to enjoy that this game progresses at the speed of life, instead of the artificial frenzy of the digital world. My apologies if my age is showing. :yum:

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So… I collected as may screenshots as it was reasonable. I am able to provide a lot more. In the last days it has become even worse. Winning a raid with going in with 2 strong colors against the tank has become nearly impossible. Which is ridicoulus especially against Ares or Guinevere…

Empires_2018-02-12-22-40-27

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Some had less of the missing color than doubled color. I breezed thrpugh after a few.

I wonder if anyone would care to count up color distribution on these and reference nissing and doubled colors

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