War change - empty defense before start no longer option?

I swear I’m not going nuts in that you used to be able to empty a war defense once matched BUT war hadn’t started. I just tried it now, long story, and it no longer allows you to do this - have to have 5 heroes.

I checked the release notes for the last couple of releases and didn’t see where this changed. When did this go into effect??

**We have someone who left after being matched. Came back to clear his defense out but can’t. Not a great situation all around…

I think it used to be that if you set fewer than 5 heroes, when War started you’d end up in Spectator Mode, since War Defense teams are required to have 5 heroes.

So maybe that changed so it’s just impossible to set fewer than 5 to begin with?


I’m confused about why you’d want them to clear their Defense out.

That’ll just give your opponent one fewer teams to kill to get a clear, and they still get the advantage of 6 more flags than you anyway.

Is this player’s Defense unusually weak relative to the rest of your Defenses, so you’d prefer to have your opponent get more points per kill on your other teams than to have this Defense left on?

No this past summer you could have someone leave the battlefield after matching and before war started so that if we needed someone to exit they could - be it real life or whatever.

In this instance this player clearly does not want to be in the alliance so we’d like him/her to clear defense and be gone. Since they can’t they’re stuck on the field. While agreeing to use flags, there’s 0 guarantee they’ll actually be honorable and do so.

So…back to my question…when did SG sneak this one in as it isn’t in any of the version change notes I read???

Why would you want the def team gone after you already matched though? If you had 10 people in your alliance when you matched, your war would just end up being 9 against 10 defense teams. It’s better to just have the person sitting in the field even if they don’t use the flags then right?

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But up until now a player could edit their defense to have 5 or fewer heroes and once the battle actually started, their team would be cleared from the field.

The OP is saying they no longer have the option to remove a hero during the editing phase.

@Tygrant can the player (or another brave soul) try to edit it that way and then get us a screenshot to see what it’s saying?

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Whichever lol

Honestly this is dumb and a waste of time

Not really. We’ve had players use that function when they’d fully planned on participating in war during the prep stage and then had an emergency come up where they knew they couldn’t fight when the battle started.

They edited out a hero and their team disappeared just as the battle began.

It doesn’t affect the matchmaking, just that they don’t have their team on the field, and them not using their flags.

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Also, if you didn’t have 5 heroes already in your defense team during preparation phase, it gives you a different pop up warning telling you need to have 5 or you can’t participate.

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I’ll see what others say but I’m pretty sure this is a change.

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Yes it’s new

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I guess i could see it being abused by alliances wanting to “cup drop” their war score … why can’t we ever get matched with those alliances?

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War score isn’t affected with cup score.

It was explained by staff member in another thread.

Its a mix of top 5 heroes every player has, troops, and win loss ratio of previous wars.

It doesn’t take into account players that are opted out before matchmaking began

I’m aware of that, that’s why I used quotation marks :grin:

It’s been said that some alliances are “throwing” their battles in order to lower their war score. It’s way too complicated for me to explain or even understand, but it’s been compared to cup dropping to lower your trophies to get a weaker opponent.

Anyway - i think I’m veering off topic here.

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I could not see any answer about that change. Why/when was it changed.

This is a very important question and the thread deserves an answer.

I understood that some brilliant minds cannot perceive the use of such strategy, but some dumb people like me use it. While there’re mixtures of players with different levels, the more difficulty the opponents may have to score, the better.

The developers should connect this change to a possible change in PLAY GAMES. Some beginners, who reach level 12, cannot opt out, because they could not have completed the tutorial on Android. They don’t have heroes enough for 6 flags, and their defense teams offer no difficulties to the opponents. They could have the option of set up the defense with less than 5 heroes, and get wiped out by the system, before the battle time starts.

In such case, it’s important to redistribute the points among strong teams. This way, the opponents need to fight stronger teams to get those points.

In an alliance under construction, I already used the same strategy, keeping the team on field. However, that player with a weak defense needed to replace the team with other even weaker heroes. What happens is that the opponents must use one more flag on that weak team to reset the boards.

The redistribution of points is part of war strategy whether experts want it or not. The alliances cannot control Google Game Play, but can manage the resources available. The way it’s going now is arbitrary. There’s no apparent reason for that, nor explanation for the community.

I though this was changed back in V18 to prevent alliances from having a weaker player putting in one hero on their War d.

I don’t know exactly which update it was in, but it came several versions ago.

The Change Log is here:

https://support.smallgiantgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001566714-Alliance-Wars-Change-Log

It’s a shame that there’s nothing concerning the possibility of having less than 5 heroes during preparation phase.

15 May 2018

The wars are back!

1.12 Alliance Wars improvements and changes:

All defending teams must have 5 heroes.

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It seems to me it would be less of a disadvantage to have the [Ex-Member] team present than to have one less team. That would require at least one more flag for your opponent to flip you.

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It would if the whole team is at balance. When there’s a weak team it’s a disadvantage.