History of War Matchmaking
Their are several obstacles in your way ( I should probably write a history of war matchmaking post ).
Many many many many players complained due to broken war matching so lot of debris from previous attempted fixes making search unusable ( nature of a forum).
People hated war so they set messed up defense teams, deliberately spent zero war energy, and in hundreds of ways broke matchmaking. So Devs had to fix that and “Cheating in war” rants ( more like “Shooting self in foot with a Nuclear missile” ) are liberally salted throughout the matchmaking topics. This lead to Tourneys but that is another discussion.
The Devs had a .
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Vision about war matching ( that I very strongly disagree with ).
But a legitimate concern that starting from scratch would consume resources and not actually be any better. Each tiny fix was, is this a fast emergency tourniquet? Has the bleeding stopped? This took time, which increased the forum debris a huge amount.
They jerry rigged the matching until is works poorly but eliminates the problem on 104 losses per year.
So by a realistic, observable, quantitative, visible measure they actually succeeded. But neither the Devs nor the players are happy with it.
War matching simplified
Your attacking teams and defense are measured- this is complicated. There is really no realistic reason to explain more details - the Devs have moved on a long time ago.
Alliances are compared with a steap penalty for miss matched number of players that have participated in the last 2 wars.
A fudge factor is applied based on winning too many in a row or losing too many in a row.
Laws of War
Nope. Laws of War prevent this:
( Tips & Strategies for Alliance Wars (AW) - #22 by Gryphonknight )
Points not adding up
It can usually be traced to rounding war points.
Frankenstein’s Monster Matchmaking versus Elo’s Math
Remember our reroll conversation?
Smaller alliances bork the matchmaking because they are less flexible:
Synergy Imbalances
Imbalances in hero synergy are magnified with fewer total heroes ( smaller membership and smaller rosters each ) and minimized with more total heroes ( larger membership and larger rosters ). This is seen in newbie alliances versus elder alliances but evens out once an alliance has a decent number of 4* 3.60 heroes.
This effect is the basis for matching war center colors. Example all blue centers.
If all you have is a hammer you will have trouble tightening bolts. If you have a hammer and your teammate has a wrench your team can tighten bolts and hammer nails but not glue wood. By settings all their centers to the equivalent of hex screws, alliances hope you will run out of rosters with Allen wrenches.
This is exacerbated by the existence of three War Rules ( Attack Boost, Arrow Barrage, Field Aid ) each which prioritize a different roster for war defense and war attack.
Unlike Elo’s math, the current system assumes a 100% synergy.
Targets
Small alliances get matched with small alliances. This gives them fewer targets. If the only remaining target for them is an attack team with center Kasshrek, but all they have is blue heroes left, this will go poorly for them.
Just like with Synergy imbalances, small alliances are not as flexible in wars.
Unlike Elo’s math, the current system assumes a 100% appropriate targets.
Revive
The less hitters you have, the more enemy team revive depresses you score. You just do not have the flexibility of a large number of potential attacks to that fit your schedule.
Unlike Elo’s math, the current system assumes a 100% availability when a potential target is available.
Schedule
A real life emergency, a work shift, seeing friends, all impact your war success rate, but unlike Elo’s math, the current system assumes a 100% participation and a 100% war energy spent.
If you have 30 members, this has a smaller impact than if you have 5 and three go to the bar to watch Game of Thrones.
Knowledge base
Smaller alliances, especially non- English speakers and unaware of the forum, have a smaller Knowledge base. They do not know as much about synergy, color stacking, over writing buffs, etc.
Larger alliances can discover something by accident, on the forum, or from a merc, and spread that knowledge to the rest of the alliance.
Unlike Elo’s math, the current system assumes a 100% game knowledge.
Lack of rewards
The war chest is awesome, but war loot, not so much.
Sometimes players will skip war. This has less an impact in a large alliance than a small.
Unlike Elo’s math, the current system assumes a 100% participation.
Peer pressure
Large alliances can excert more peer pressure to participate in war.
Unlike Elo’s math, the current system assumes a 100% participation.
Replaceable
Small alliances either have a hard time recruiting, or are deliberately not merging with other small alliances. So if they remove a teammate for not participating in wars, they may permanently lose a member hitting titans. While the matchmaking auto opts out after 2 consecutive war skips, it does not deal with players who only hit only on Saturdays or who constantly use less than 6 war energy.
Unlike Elo’s math, the current system assumes a zero participation or a 100% participation.
The perfect is the enemy of the good
But due to sunk costs, development cycles needed elsewhere, and diminishing returns the current war matchmaking system is unlikely to change.
I had hoped they were rebuilding matchmaking from the ground up for Tourneys, and could then apply it to wars. But it looks like they took the sensible business approach of applying the war matchmaking to the Tourneys to conserve development cycles.
Some are impossible to measure i. e. player skill and board luck. If anyone can find a precise way to measure that I want to know!
But I have yet to see a war where any obvious imbalance was weighted in our favour. But logic dictates that some alliances must get easy matches (or there can be no imbalance)
