Update war scoring / fight discord "cheating"

I don’t know how deep this rabbit hole goes, but my alliance has noticed an issue during wars. I’m a member of a top 10 alliance and we’ve noticed some other alliances trying to gain an edge over a stronger opponent in wars.

It’s painfully obvious when the other alliance only attacks 1 team at a time (several others offline on a discord call with the attacker). These hits typically take very long (typically 4 to 10 minutes) as they are discussing which move to make next. When every hit becomes collaborative effort, poor team selection and poor moves become very unlikely, and maximum efficiency results in much better scores.

I don’t know what SG’s policy on this is… but I call it cheating and in my opinion, goes against the spirit of the game. It’s become more common since the release of the aethers since only the winning team gets them. There’s really nothing that the game can do to stop this since it’s a commonly used app that runs separately from Empires & Puzzles. My idea goes to compensate people who aren’t doing this.

The idea is simple. Give a point bonus for any kill that takes less than 3 minutes. A fixed number wouldn’t be useful for alliances with fewer members so a percentage would be the most effective. The amount should be significant enough to warrant fair game play but not so much as to alter the game mechanics… I’m thinking 20% would be a good number.

Rewarding people the play their own war battles in such a manner would outweigh any advantage gained from discord cheating, and if both alliances are playing fairly (which most do), the bonus would be gained on both sides.

Another bonus is that effective tile manipulators that play well and with pace can earn additional points for their team. Thank you for your consideration.

CrypticWriter78
Last Regiment

If I understand you:

You are alleging that other teams are cheating by multiple players helping one player win a war fight.


I have no idea how you would determine this, let alone prove it.

When I fight a difficult battle, I might take a long time, and there is no one in my ear suggesting moves. Just sayin.

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Even if you tried to prove it, the supposed cheaters are just going to claim they were helping an alliance mate learn to play better, how to read the board and how to get the best synergy with their heroes, which is half the reason for being in an alliance…

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It’s just really easy to call “ghost cheater!” And not have to prove it. Occam’s razor here…

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It seems to be a common thing because this isn’t the first time it’s come up

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Yep, come up already.

Generally speaking most people didn’t see an issue with it. Wars are a team sport after all and in team sports you can communicate with each other to be stronger as a whole

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I would hate to play this way…29 other people second guessing every move for an entire fight? Ugh.

Let them have it, if they do it.

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People live streaming their war hits can be a useful tool indeed, but the viewers can only post comments and it would be impossible to have a live discussion. With discord, it’s a live and immediate group call where they can all view one person’s live hit.

It likely isn’t one person telling the person hitting what to move. We’re talking several people actively discussing which move would be best. This is painfully obvious when for 4 straight hours an alliance uses 50 flags 1 by 1 by 1 by 1… rarely EVER 2 players hitting at the same time. I’ve played this game for years and until recently, you always see several players attacking at the same time… especially when new flags come in or after a cleared board.

To someone’s point… it is impossible to definitively prove that anyone is doing this… but it is most definitely occurring in some alliances. It’s group cheating and it’s truly pathetic.

Implementing a time bonus negates the advantage of a collaborative war hit. They could still do it, but would gain less points because their hits take to long.

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Well the first thing to do is get a ruling on whether it’s considered cheating or not…

Once you have that, then back to voting here.

For now, I’ll bow out. Good luck!

P.S. I like time bonuses. :wink:

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Not a fan of this idea. I like the fact that raids and wars don’t have a time component like Titans, or challenge events. I take my time and there are certain situations where it just takes a long time due to tiles. Also, that’s penalizing players who use a passive approach (like stacking with healers and riposte heroes).

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I’m not sure about all this really. I know @Uclapack addressed it partially in her recent war hits vid.

To me it’d be too hard for SG to do any about if it is happening, without proof as punishing teams etc would be very unfair without it and I’m not sure if it’s really cheating if it is either.

Also if it is happening, especially at the top level of alliances, that you have players that are incapable of making sensible moves so much that they need talked through each individual move why would you keep them in the alliance? The effort and time needed to micromanage that doesn’t seem worth it to me.

Also can’t agree with the idea of giving extra points for quicker kills. Time to kill depends on a lot of other factors already and there is a timeout loss if it takes too long.

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I watched her video as well and laughed about the discord comments as we were currently being attacked by an alliance doing this.

Our alliance records all of our war hits and post in Line chat so we can check for good things and bad things we did to hopefully do better next time. This is a good thing, but the analysis happens after the fight.

We all miss moves, some more than others… it’s a basic fact. If you have 4 or 5 other people watching and discussing, the best moves should be found almost all of the time. It goes against the spirit of the game at the very least.

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Not wrong in my opinion, just incredible coordinated.

There’s no way I would want to do it it sounds awful personally but if some alliance wants to then let them if they have the perseverance and determination to do it, then they deserve the benefits.

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How can a mobile game stop discord usage? Complain all you want but there is literally nothing a game can do about it.

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I won’t touch the topic of whether discord/stream/giving phone to someone else to hit etc. etc. is “cheating” or not. These have been brought up privately and publicly to SG several times and it’s up to them on their policy.

Regarding the solution though. I’ll be honest, I hate it. Incentivizing quick hits is throwing more rng into an already heavily rng focused game. You cannot simply assume long hits are facilitated hits. Some teams are built to grind a defense down (Skadi) and some formats just need the grind (very fast). I mean why give more points to someone who literally got lucky, got the tiles he needed and rofl stomped his opponent and penalize the person who didn’t get the tiles they needed and had to really grind it out. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Slowing down and thinking through your moves is also a thing, why would you want to disincentivize that?

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Going through every single war hit is ridiculous, the time that will take for an alliance of 30 to watch 180 hits, I do not have the time or patience for it. it will take all the fun from wars. In the other hand doing it with one player to train/ teach them how to play better, I understand. Cheating!? No, just a big waste of time and a huge issue with micromanaging.

I do not agree with penalizing or changing the scoring base on how long took to finished it, as @Quinn3 said it depends of many factors. I have been on attacks that took seconds and others that I was down to the wire because the other team killed all my hitters and the only thing left was my healer to finish the battle and why should I get penalized or not rewarded the same for winning that battle?

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Whether this is happening or not, I don’t know. If it is happening, it is against the spirit of the play & should be avoided.

However, any extra - points given on the basis of time / speed of completion of the war hit has its error because anyone who has played this game clearly knows, that speed & duration of the hit depends on many factors like:

  1. Type of Board
  2. Play style & speed of decision making
  3. Type of heroes
  4. Team composition : multi healer approach is slowly chipping away = more time / mono is over faster many times - win or lose / 3-2 goes into clock starting… so it is never the same
  5. There are many more factors

Hence the hit cannot be rewarded extra for speedy completion, which would unnecessary create urgency = panic : like the events timer… Hence a BiG = NO !

I feel, it is important for team leaders to communicate with each other pre-war & some thing can be initiated by SG & thru the Allianc board to create a ethical play possible.

UCLAPACK has spoken about this aspect in her last war hit video, where I became aware about this issue.

Happy (Honest) Playing !

The whole point of being in an Alliance is working together against Titans, regular and Mythic and Wars. The fact of the matter is they are not hacking the game itself to gain an advantage they have simply found a better way to work as one, if this allegation is true.

Therefore not cheating in any way, shape or form; PERIOD!

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@Kilted I suspect an alliance would keep a poor player if a whale with an incredible roster. Btw alliances can do what they want outside of game app. It’s only cheating if Small Giant says it is like in tabard gate.

Who cares if the whole alliance helps with war hits? I’d prefer to do them myself or just give someone my account if it comes to the point of someone else doing. Takes the fun out of the game and is just ridiculous. There not 1 way to play any board. While some moves are better than others, ultimately its how you play the board which makes the game fun. Let the cheaters cheat because 30 people or 1 person looking at the same board does not make any difference.

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