War strategy question

General Discussion
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#1

Do war strategies really matter?

If, like titans or raids, you get matched based on your win-loss record, wins will increase your score, which will give you harder enemies, and facing harder enemies doesn’t count as any advantage, you don’t get better loot from beating a harder enemy, it just gets you another harder enemy, increasing your likelihood of losing. If you lose, your score goes down, you face an easier enemy, you win, increasing the difficulty of your next opponent. And either way, your alliance eventually balances out to a buoyancy point over a long pattern of wins and losses. Just like each alliance rather easily figures out what size titan they can repeatedly beat but can’t beat the next size up, so they find their buoyancy point. Same with raids, essentially, but that’s a bit more volatile, but you get the idea, your trophy count is roughly representative of your strength, and the higher you go the more likely it is you’ll lose and return to the same point, more or less.

So isn’t one war strategy as good as another? Having a good war strategy just means you have a higher buoyancy point, but you’ll still ultimately average out to 50/50 wins (yes, there will be streaks, but that’s more a probability thing, like flipping a coin). So might as well have no strategy, face less difficult opponents, still ultimately average out to 50/50 wins, but not be confined to a strategy.

Now all that makes sense, except, I have to admit, I’m assuming that war matchmaking is based, at least in large part, on the win-loss ratio. I know roster is part of the formula as well (which is fairly static with a little bit of fluctuation as players continue to improve their roster; but they’re really just very slightly improving the average of their top 30, as their new heroes get slightly better stats for the matchmaking formula than the hero that they knock out of the top-30 ranking for the formula, as I understand it to be).

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#2

I’ve wondered this question and here’s how I’ve answered for myself.

In the long run, for non top alliances it doesn’t matter because matchmaking equals out (assuming matchmaking equates to 50% chance of winning.

In the short run, going from no strategy to strategy increases your chances of winning. That increases materials to use to improve you in many aspects of the game. So that is the reason to adopt a strategy for me.

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#3

Currently your war score changes by just 1%+/- for a win or a loss which is the lowest it has ever been. Just saying. :wink:

#4

Right, but that’s the short run. You’ll get a better than 50/50 for a handful of wars as you climb to a new level. But you just move up to a new buoyancy point, and then you’re back to 50/50 over the long run (and now you’re stuck having to use the strategy that got you up there). But since beating a better opponent doesn’t give you better loot like beating a better titan does, you might as well just make it easy on yourselves, and fight without a strategy, just use all your flags. You may lose a bunch as you descend in buoyancy, but then you’ll be back to 50/50, with a lot less stress and yelling about everyone needing to follow the alliance war rules.

Again, just a theory, looking for thoughts.

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#5

War score is related to

  • win / loss history (i believe of the last 40 wars)
  • Roster power (30 strongest heroes of each opt- in member)

Your score can thus max out within a certain score bracket. When you reach this point your war score won’t increase anymore after a war win.

Assuming you get equally powerfull matches when you you are maxed out in war score than strategy will definetaly matter. By targetting high value teams in waves you can get more points for the same ammount of flags and oneshots.

Additionally good strategy distributes cleanups optimal over your alliance, making optimal use of strong and weak rosters.

There are plenty alliances out there that have a winrate of 60% tot 75% just because they are the best in their bracket.

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#6

I think a bit of strategy is ok without going crazy, such as who to attack or maybe tank color. In my alliance we are 55% winning rate but as you said, we won 3 wars on a row and then we got blasted on the last one

#7

I think it mostly depends on the alliance makeup. If you have a very wide range of team strengths across the alliance, using a war strategy is going to increase your odds of winning as you farm the lower teams in the opposition and they (hopefully) struggle against the better defense teams in your alliance. However, once you get to a certain alliance strength where everyone is within a few hundred tp of each other, the war strategy becomes secondary to how well everyone manages their roster. We went to FFA awhile ago, and our win rate is as good or better than it was when we did waves. The last war the opposition used waves and lost by 1500. That’s not because of their strategy, it’s because they attacked poorly.

#8

This is the first I’ve heard of score brackets. I figured that yes, once you get to a point where your score can’t go up anymore (the top of the leaderboards), then your strategy is important because you’re up against all the other teams whose score can’t go up anymore (or at least there’s no one above you to knock you back down), and you can actually have a 100% win rate even in the long term if you have the best strategy/execution/strength of all the teams topped out together.

But there are lower brackets where this same thing occurs, that you don’t get matched against successively more difficult opponents, but you “top out”?

I didn’t consider this a war strategy, in the same manner of say, a 2 or 3 wave strategy vs. 24hr free for all… You’re not wrong, of course, but basic universal war principles such as stronger teams hit who you can and weaker teams clean up apply regardless. I was speaking more about wave strategy vs. ffa.

#9

This is correct. Allthough you will encouter the occasional slaughter when I much stronger alliance has had a few losses and tumbled down into your bracket.

When you max out on war score it will only further increase with roster development (stronger 80s, emblems, limit breaking, maxing a rainbow set of 4* troops), but no longer due to war wins.

#10

so, how do we know in which bracket we fall and if we are on the top end of it?

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#11

Check war score before war ends and after war ends (takes two hours to settle). If it increases less than 1,5% than it’s maxed out.

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#12

Even the exact size of the waves is strategy. If you know more or less the points you could hit, than you can size the waves in such a way that in the finale you’ll be left with a fresh board and thus easiest targets to finish up on.

A wave size of 5, 10, 15 or 20 directly influences the targets let in the endgame. Ever been stuck at the end of war not being able to flip? This is what you gotta change.

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#13

It’s shameful that one of the best aspects of this game, and definitely the best collective aspect of it, is also one of the most disappointing activities of this game.

You participate in this activity twice a week, against tough defenses relative to your heroes, after grinding and spending to improve your roster and you get cr@p when you lose and rarely get anything good if you win. You also get a bonus chest but it takes a month on average to be filled and requires full participation for a chance at some good stuff every other time you open it.

On average, in a month, war will result in 4-5 crappy loot rewards from losses, 4-5 decent loot rewards from wins, and 1 good to very good chest. That’s about 10 chests total.

You can get 30 loot rewards from titans with 2-3 rare ones sprinkled in between, and another 6 titan chests,; you can get 30+ hero chests, 60+ monster chests, 2+ elemental chest, and more rewards.

War rewards, by comparison, are a joke when you consider your ROI.

So the better question IMO, is: is war worthy of your focus and max effort?

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#14

I agree wtih everything you have said. But even then, war is my favourite aspect of the game. It is the game mode that I use to test how effectively I pull together my hero acquisition, my levelling and embleming choices, my team and opponent team selections and my actual gameplay - basically a holistic look at how I believe I have progressed in the game. It is always challenging to get 6 O/S and rewarding when I can do so. And the involvement and engagement of your whole alliance in a close war is an unmatched experience in the game.

If only the war chest could be filled quicker - say 15 points - and the individual win rewards improved slightly - I think the reward would match the effort involved.

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#15

I asked a similar question about a year ago! LOL

The two main points I took away from the conversation then were:

  1. Coordinated War alliances are more likely to be doing better on Titans (kill rate and star level).
  2. Coordinated War alliances are more likely to not tolerate missed war flags so they are often better for players bothered by the actions, or lack thereof, of other players.

It’s interesting to read the responses to your post this time around. Glad you asked!

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#16

Well the percentage adjustment has been lowered to just 1%+/- for a win or loss compared to the older 2.67%. War dropping is no longer an effective strategy as you have to lose consistently for weeks to make a meaningful difference.

EDIT: March 2022. 1.9% increase for a win, 1.7% decrease for a loss.

#17

Honestly I love wars! I mean where else can you showcase your heroes you worked hard on building and showing your alliance that you’re a valuable member?

idk, I guess I’m lucky to be part of an alliance that’s relatively chill; we don’t have hard rules on playing, just that we use all our flags once our war defense team is at 2500 power or up.

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