In the last three months we have encountered a problem where in war we are always matched against a team which is considerably stronger than ours. I have read the information on how the warscore is calculated and I believe that there is a way to manipulate it. I do not know how, but I have no other explanation as we always come up against teams vastly stronger than ours.
In recent example, our team:
lvl 36, team strength 3614
lvl 34, team strength 3346
lvl 38, team strength 3241
lvl 34, team strength 3406
lvl 29, team strength 3032
lvl 24, team strength 2976
lvl 27, team strength 2800
lvl 27, team strength 2713
lvl 25, team strength 2689
lvl 23, team strength 2683
lvl 25, team strength 2665
lvl 24, team strength 2529
lvl 22, team strength 2438
lvl 20, team strength 2361
lvl 21, team strength 2350
lvl 25, team strength 2195
lvl 16, team strength 1849
versus
1.lvl 49, team strength 3616
2. lvl 46, team strength 3634
3. lvl 26, team strength 3515
4. lvl 31, team strength 3502
5. lvlv 40, team strength 3494
6. lvl 34, team strength 3487
7. lvl 33, team strength 3473
8. lvl 28, team strength 3416
9. lvl 29, team strength 3266
10. lvl 28, team strength 3117
11. lvl 24, team strength 2902
12. lvl 26, team strength 2726
13. lvl 23, team strength 2656
14. lvl 23, team strength 2455
15. lvl 22, team strength 2438
16. lvl 17, team strength 1878
Of course I am only showing here the teams that were present on the battlefield but I can assure you that our team placed the very best on the frontline defence.
As you can clearly see the opposite team was quite superior fielding 10 teams with 3000+ strength versus our 5 (some barely reaching 3000 strength). Needless to say we were annihilated without any chance to retaliate in kind. With coordinated teamwork we managed to clear the field but they did the same to us twice and still had 29 energy left in reserve. They could have kept going but just stopped because our defeat was quite clear. But when I looked at the warscore, it was the almost the same for our two alliances!
When I read on this forum it was said that the warscore is based on strength of the best 30 heroes not on the level of the players. I can see why we would be matched by level but by no means according to team strength!
My question is, how could we come up against an enemy that is clearly two times stronger than us but have the same warscore?
Especially considering the fact that we have been continuously loosing wars this way (so it’s not a modification due to our victories). We NEVER came up against an alliance which was half of our strength but are continuously faced with enemies that are much stronger than us?
Could this be because the opposite alliance has more players that donate? Which is clear from lvl=team strength ratio.
The most likely answer is that your alliance has deeper benches but weaker top-5 strength. All you can see of the other team is their defenses and level. What also matters is how strong their six attack teams are, and you can’t see that. Player level doesn’t matter except as the extra time in game has let them build up stronger bench strength. Because bench strength is easily measured (by the algorithm, not opponents), there’s no reason to include level in match-making.
You also can’t see who has opted out if the war; if some big hitters are away on vacation, for example, that could even things up. But if there are more participants, that would change the war scores—but that’s directly captured in the match-making.
You can see the war score directly from an alliances info page. Click the icon next to Score. In my alt’s alliance, which looks a lot like yours, our war score has been within a few hundred points (out of 300,000) of all our recent opponents.
I’m also pretty sure, that activity plays a role for matchmaking. We were mostly matched to alliances sitting on almost the same amount of unused flags when war is over.
Despite your lower average team power, you have an extra player which makes a very significant difference in score. Not only do you get 6 extra hits, but also each enemy team is worth 17/16 = 106.25% of your teams on average. These two factors give you an effective score boost of 13% over your opponents, which should go a long way to counteracting the difference in team power.
I am starting to strongly suspect that the algorithm uses team COST rather than team POWER to judge heroes. (This is based on watching our war score during periods of high summoning, and hearing delighted reports of HOTMs etc.
Since an unleveled 5* has a team cost of 20 and a fully leveled 3* a team cost of 8, and the difference between the team power between the two being very small, this is my best guess as to why mismatches are still happening in a system that should prevent them.
I for one would really like the algorithm to use team power as a guide instead (if my assumption that it is using team cost is correct)
There’s no way that team cost would add up to the war scores you see across an alliance.
20 * 30 * 30=18,000
War scores are way, way higher than this.
A 5* hero has a base 90 card power at 0 stats, while a 3* is a base of 30 card power at 0 stats.
Add in any kind of stats at all, and an unleveled 5* will often jump to the #1 spot in a given color on someone’s roster if they don’t have any leveled 4* heroes in that color.
As part of the algorithm they explain most of the mismatches I have seen. I was not saying that it was as simple as just a straight number (can’t be since the top 5 weigh more heavily than the next 25)
And I was comparing a fully leveled 3* to an unleved 5* because in context it is a more relevant comparison.
The war score makes sense numerically as an amalgamation of card power and troop power. But it would take a deliberate act by the devs to use cost and then scale it up to the numbers we’re seeing for war score. You couldn’t get that by accident.
They would have to be intentionally misleading us about how war score is calculated, and I can’t see why they would do that.
I just want to comment that if there is an on-going problem for some alliances with the match making, I really hope it gets fixed.
Before the war scores were figured in (and after the updates in-between), our alliance had 25 LOSSES in a row. I completely understand and commiserate with any alliances experiencing this scenario.
Since the war score has been factored in, our matches have been very fair (touch wood). We win about 60% of our wars, which we are fine with. We enjoy them all, even the challenging ones.
Our alliance always fields 29 - 30 teams and it’s my understanding that it’s alliances with fewer teams who are having an issue?
Hopefully there will be a solution soon so every player has the opportunity to enjoy this part of the game!
I am not accusing the devs of misleading anyone. It says in game that it is based on “the most powerful” heroes and troops. I am simply stating that I have come to suspect that how powerful a hero is deemed to be is based on team cost rather than team power. But I am not claiming that I am right, just that based on my observations I suspect that it is relevant.
They did a big rejigger of the Hero Power scoring system as part of fixing war mismatches, so I have to believe that that is the statistic they are using.
Sorry if I seemed to be suggesting you were saying that. I assumed you WEREN’T saying that the devs would be intentionally misleading us, which was why I saw a contradiction.
I totally understand your thoughts about looking for a mathematical explanation for some of the mismatches. I just think the evidence is against this being the particular explanation.
But please keep digging and thinking! You’re doing exactly the right thing by trying to understand what’s going on.
If my dodgy memory is correct the recalculation of 5* team power occured before war scores were introduced? (At least before war scores were made visable)
Sorry. But like I said, I’m really appreciative that you’re thinking hard about this and digging into it. I very much have valued your commentary and insight on other topics, and it would be really sweet if we could get to the bottom of some of the squirreliness in war maching.
The most obvious basis for assuming it is power if that they adjusted the 5 star power ratings specifically to provide a better war score. There are other reasons, but clearly based on that change power represents a large portion of the war score.
this can’t be true… the defenses of the alliance with a higher player count are worth more points (to compensate for that alliance having flag advantage)
Both alliances are worth, in total, 1500 points each (plus a few extra points for rounding to whole numbers) no matter how many players they have on the field.
1 player alliance? That player is worth 1500 points.
10 player alliance? The average player is worth 150 points.
So when an alliance has 1 fewer member, each other member is worth a little extra points so the sum reaches 1500 still.
Is this confirmed? My alli and our little sister alli both had mismatches Mar. 30 and we tried counting available points in an attempt to figure out if there were added points and how much. This is what we came up with:
Perhaps defensive heroes were being fed whilst we were adding, changing point values per player? I don’t know how else to explain this…
So does the matchmaking process only account for uneven teams by deflating the lower player count alliance’s warscore in order to match with a “weaker” team? I guess assuming that a weaker opponent will not necessarily be able to capitalize on their completely unfair advantage of having more flags and higher points per flag opportunity?
icon next to Score. In my alt’s alliance, which looks a lot like yours, our war score has been within a few hundred points (out of 300,000) of all our recent opponents.
Guess I am back to the drawing board 