Stones' colour distribution is NOT random - MASTER Board Conspiracy

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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Wow, that is a lot of screen shots…so here are some thoughts just glancing through them.

  1. Several of those screens, while not having a predominance of the doubles color, did have a diamond just waiting to be made…not a bad start

  2. So since you decided to post all your “bad” starting boards, where are all the boards that weee heavy in the doubles colored which as basically gimme wins. I guarantee you there were plenty of rose as well.

  3. How many of these raids did you actually lose?? A board can start off badly but within a couple of moves your lucky color can be moved in or a seemingly ordinary move can trigger a cascade which changes the tide of the entire raid.

  4. Just cause you don’t see the board heavy in your color to start doesn’t mean the raid is lost, just have to work a bit harder to try to win.

We al go through bad raiding streaks and I know I have had the thoughts of “the game is rigged against me” plenty of time but when I calm down and think logically and remember all the time I have bulldozed through 4000-4100 team power opponents because of phenomenal boards I realize in the end it al averages out.

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Just looking through those boards, many seem to be rather good. They make my eyes hurt, though, and I wonder if maybe you’ve missed the point.

The object here is not to cherry pick and post bad boards, it’s to collect a representative sample of boards then determine whether that sample indicates an imbalance away from the attack team’s strong colour. With apologies to @Talisax, I’m not inclined to do the counting for you.

Still, I’m happy that you’re making an effort and would be happy to help crunch data.

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iagree with chuck and brobb. some of those “bad boards” were not bad at all. diamonds, matches of double hero color within a move, etc. ares firing early isn’t game over unless he has multi target hitters next to him (think musa and hel). i’ve totally won a ton of raids even when ares fires 3plus times. and you have albi.

my guess is you are just looking for someone to come in and agree with your preconceived theory of road boards being biased. i don’t think youre actually interested in data analysis of any kind.

You’ve convinced yourself of something that isn’t there and have gone looking and carefully selected data that matches your theory. most of us can see past that.

i had 8 raids in a row today where within 3 moves i had at least two matches of the color I tripled up heroes on. 8 in a row!! totally unfair for defense! fake RNG, totally biased. :/. sarcasm off.

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All in my alliances agree to that fact that if you have more than 1 hero of the same color the stones in that color are really rare . I lost of all that battles and this is just an excerpt. I could have postetd hundreds of shots more here. I am a high frequent player and I know what I experience.
Currently i am winning 1 out of 5 battles in avg. As you have Hel, Ares or Gunivere in the middle there is NO chance to win. If e.g. Ares fires his special I get a normal hit on pretty higl lvled 5* heroes with about 500/600!!! And I am not talking about their special. How should you win here without taken the tank out?!
It happens very often that you get diamonds in the color you dont have in the team. And that is pretty bad because you fire them and only load the enemies’ heroes. so lose lose situation
I simply cannot believe that you guys do not have similar experiences.
Just do like I did and tell me you get the same distribution of stones as without 2+ heroes of the same color

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I am not saying that I haven’t had bad boards…I have had plenty of boards that start off lousy with little to no doubles color to them but still win the raid. I double color against the tank unless it is a revenge I am overpowered against them I just use my strongest rainbow team and yes, you are right…some boards suck. You also cannot deny unless you are just having tunnel vision that you haven’t had boards that are heavy in your needed color, that you haven’t had boards with diamonds ready to be made, that you haven’t had raids where you get huge cascades out of nowhere and mop up the competition or that you have had boards where lots of your needed color hit the board after a few early matches. I’m sorry but to me posting the beginning screenshot of a raid and saying it is unwinninable cause it doesn’t have 25 blue tiles to hit ares with is just not a point that I am willing to buy.

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The fact that all in your alliance believe what you believe proves precisely nothing. Behavioural psychology teaches us that people frequently see patterns that are not really there, then reinforce their beliefs to each other.

The fact that you find yourself losing a lot also proves nothing. You might be a bad player: not everyone can be good.

The fact that you tell us that the screenshots you have posted are “just an excerpt” does prove something. It proves that you have failed to provide an unbiased sample, which is the only use your screenshots could be. (We could kinda see that anyway from the time stamps on the images, but you’ve confirmed it for us.)

If you’re serious, not just here to rant in a paranoid fashion, please do what we have repeatedly suggested: collect an unbiased sample of opening screenshots. That means taking a shot of every opening board you get, not just the ones where you get a rush of blood to your head and suddenly think that the game hates you.

A sample of 100 boards would be pretty small, but it would be a good start. If you’re raiding ten times a day you should be able to do that in ten days. Then count the colours in each board, and for each board summarise them thus:

Strong colour: x
Missing colours: y
Normal colours: z

Then sum the Strong, Missing and Weak numbers for all 100 of your boards. We can run some stats for you to see whether what you’ve experienced indicates a lack of randomness in any way.

(And of course, my experience is not even remotely like yours. When I double up on colours, sometimes I get favourable boards and sometimes I get unfavourable boards, just like in every other facet of the game.)

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Just a small and innocent consideration.
Colors are five, so even if you double up some color you have to expect having only 1 run out of five with a favorable board :slightly_smiling_face:

And i tell you a little secret: i do think too that sometimes the board give you plenty of missing color, but i take advantage of that to create some explosive gems.

Explosive gems are almost always great, so even if i don’t have many of my strong color it may be good the same, and i find rather easier to create them missing a color :wink:

It’s often possible to set off a cascade from diamonds of the missing color. By avoiding using them against the opponent, they build up, then with a gem you can clear the board, and with any luck set off a cascade run of colors you do have.
Edit: Fixed spelling error.

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The definitive answer would be the default answer that is always given whenever someone pics out something fishy is going on.
And that default answer is “oh it’s all random”.

It’s the kind of answer you give when you don’t really want to answer the question.

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Staff as affirmatively stated that tiles are random. I’ve seen no evidence to disprove them.

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