I added the total accumulated Tribute to games about a week ago (you cant see it yet), so that we can integrate Tribute & Military scores soon.

So I was thinking something like...

Tribute x 2 + EXP Gained - (EXP Lost / 2)

Since tribute grows slower than combat experience it has a higher weighting.

Once you add that together you come to your new SCORE, and that is what players would be ranked by (instead of the current snap-shot Tribute)

What do you think?
How soon do we want it?

here's a recommendation I've seen before in another game where they wanted to significantly change the scoring style...

add in a new section that shows you what your score WOULD be under the newly-proposed system so people can get an idea of how they'd be scored with the change (and since you can't guaruntee that they'd be out of a given game before the change occurs, they can try to make sure to be ahead on that too in case it changes mid-game)

at the very least, I would like to collect data on this, seeing how the new scoring system would work under a variety of duel scenerios and better get an idea of how it affects games. having an additional column that displays what this new score would be would allow me to accomplish that task.

also, please don't rush for this change. I think it's something that needs some analysis before we can determine whether or not it's the best idea. you're essentially just plugging in random numbers right now and hoping they work. after putting it into practice, you can see if those numbers need to be tweaked some or not. it's better to tweak them BEFORE it actually gets implemented than hafta worry about that afterwards.

ok, you can now see your total Tribute accumulated in the game rankings.

Looking at some recently started games, where the accumulated Tribute included from the beginning, it looks like Double Tribute or more + EXP gained might work well as the total Score.

Destroying resource piles now gives Gold or Tribute.
Gold piles only give Gold, Gems = 30-60 Tribute, other resources = 20-40 Tribute.

Since Tribute is accumulative and counts towards your Total Score, collecting these resource piles would be more valuable again.

Killing troops does not give any Tribute at all. Only EXP & Gold.

sounds much better

Sounds good.

well, only a few posts here, so I'll assume that this change will go ahead.

question now is, when do I make the change?

I haven't even been able to play a full duel while the nscore has been visible to analyze how it affects the game, so not yet.

here's an interesting observation, though from my test duel with Mog:

Mog intentionally tried to play for the new system, grabbing resource buildings around his castle right away in hopes of beating me in long-term tribute. I played for the old system, ignoring those buildings and instead spreading out to capture stuff further from my castle. I can always get the closer stuff later and it's only the current score that matters.

well, Mog ended up eventually doing a better job of getting tribute buildings after the intitial clash, spreading out and taking the tribute lead so far... but despite that and the fact that he played for long term and I did not, I still have maintained the nscore lead throughout the duel. I can only imagine my slightly better military score is to thank for this, though I don't know how I possibly out-dueled Mog in the combat aspect, since I've never known myself to be able to fight him... but it's the only thing that makes sense, based upon the scoring...

I wonder how this will shape up further in.

People will moan if you change the way a game is scored half-way thru. Recommend scoring change is well publicized on General News page and only affects games started after the announcement.

We cant run 2 different system Hambone.
Once the change is done, it effects all games.

I dont know if grabing the outer or inner resource buldings first would make much difference since you'd get them all eventually anyway. what order isnt really that important.
whats more important is when you take resource buildings from your opponent so that each turn you are earning more than them by some margin.

and of course combat is important too.

grabbing the inner buildings first SHOULD give you a better long-term tribute score because you get tribute from turn 1, whereas if it takes me to turn 3 to get my 1st building, that's 3 turns of tribute I was behind... so it should make a difference under the new system.

still, I'd say that in the end you can overcome that if you out-play your opponent well enough. and I'm liking the fact that the new score would actually have me beating Mog for once in my WoL career :p

at the moment though, it seems a bit unbalanced in terms of EXP vs Tribute weighting.

You have over 14000 EXP, yet only 2800 Tribute.
The N.Score is 2x Tribute = 5600, which is still less than half the EXP.

So it doesnt really match up at the moment.

Of course in a Campaign, where there are more resource buildings, it might go the other way.

well, maybe we should wait a bit longer to observe some camps in that case.

here's one list of stats after a campaign that's been running for a while:

me:
exp: 38005
tribute: 4902
nscore: 47809
score: 502

2nd place person:
exp: 53119
trib: 3414
nscore: 59947
score: 240

are those the kinds of numbers you wanted? my trib x2 is still only 9804, which is less than half the exp. between the two of us, we probably have 90% of the buildings on the entire map, so there's not much more to claim.

this may suggest that you need to try different numbers before making a change if you really want tribute to hold a fair amount of weight in relation to exp. tribute x3 may do the trick, while leaving exp at half.

Can I just add here that I miss the Kills/Deaths information from the ranking page?

In camps I used to be able to guess what a player was up to (i.e. taking out an unoccupied castle) or his/ her relative strength against mine by this metric. Now I cant.

yes, it looks like Tribute would need to be worth 3x or 4x to match up to EXP.

of course some of the older campaigns arent a good judge as accumulated tribute has only been running for the past 2 or 3 weeks. So many turns of tribute income wasnt logged.


My plans for WoK are a bit different anyway.
I plan on using a RANK for each category.
Military (EXP), Economy (Tribute), Size (Land).
Players get a rank for each, and the total rank decides the winner (possibly joint winners).

Much like the Overall Rankings page.

This way, there is no need to try to match up 2 completely different things like EXP and Tribute/resources.

Good thinking there, Req.

I like it.

Part cumulative and part earned through fighting. Nice balance over purely one or the other.

I can't say much about the ratios, guess its too early to tell with ongoing camps. A fresh camp would bare it out i suppose.

Not sure I like the military scoring system as proposed.

If you only subtract half experience lost from the experience gained (exp killed - 1/2exp lost), you are effectively rewarding players that engage in bloody battles from the word go, rather than those that are effective in their fighting (exp killed / exp lost).

Ask yourself this question:
Who should win the combat portion of the rankings out of these 3 players?
Player 1: Exp killed 140,000, exp lost 200,000
Player 2: Exp killed 80,000, exp lost 100,000
Player 3: Exp killed 40,000, exp lost 25,000

Score (in 3 different systems):
(kill - 1/2 lost):
Player 1: 40k
Player 2: 30k
Player 3: 27.5k

(kill - lost):
Player 1: -60k
Player 2: -20k
Player 3: 15k

(kill / lost):
Player 1: 0.7 (killed 30% less troops than he lost)
Player 2: 0.8 (killed 20% less troops than he lost)
Player 3: 1.6 (killed 60% more troops than he lost)

Personally I think the ranking system should reward skill, not aggressiveness (or having an aggressive neighbour that you spend the whole game defending against).

The question is, how to determine skill?

If player 3 got most of his kills by killing inactive and barbarian troops, then system then (kills-lost) and (kills/lost) systems reward him unfairly. A solution to this would be to reduce (or eliminate) the exp rewarded for killing inactive troops.

The trouble with that is players that quit as soon as they realize they are ultimately going to lose will deny you combat points, so you must penalize quitters just as much as inactives.

How about exp_killed / ((exp_lost+1000)^0.9)?

The +1000 avoids division by zero and effectively sets a minimum threshold of losses for your score to count (you should never be able to win the military rankings by agreeing NAPs with all the active players and only killing barbarians and inactives with your archers to get an excellent kill/death ratio)

The ^0.9 is a "bloody battle" weighting factor (actually a power not a factor, for any pedantic mathematicians out there).
0.9 weights it slightly toward more bloody battles
0.5 (square root) would heavily reward bloody battles (to the extent that Player 1 would win and Players 2 & 3 have the same score)
1.0 would reward careful, exp-efficient battles (almost the same as exp_killed / exp_lost)

With a 0.9 weighting, our players' scores would be:
Player 1: 2.36
Player 2: 2.51
Player 3: 4.25

The following players would have more or less the same score:
Killed - - - Lost
186k - - - - 200k
100k - - - - 100k
29k - - - - 25k

im not a fan of including EXP lost anymore.
it basically means those that get ganged up on will always rank lower than players who had 1 small skirmish and won.

i think if a player earned 200,000EXP but lost 250,000EXP should still be above a player who earned only 20,000EXP and lost only 5,000EXP.

Unfortunately, any equation including EXP lost would favor the 2nd player who was barely involved in the game simply because they earned more EXP than they lost. It certainly doesnt show they are better.

Plus, you can lose more EXP than you gain, or even break even, yet still win the war.

Yet including losses, someone who was lucky to fight a couple of noobs and barbs could easily out-ratio you and win.

In your example, Player3 should not be winning IMO.
He's hardly been involved in the game and probably been lucky to not be in any combat while all the other players are fighting. Does that make him better? I dont think so.

Even if you want to reward aggressive play, there should still be a significant nod towards skill in the military ranking.

But I suppose if you keep your forces alive, they have time to gain experience and kill more forces...

Off topic, but how about improving the level system so weaker units need less experience to level up? This would help reduce the disparity between spearmen/pikemen/macemen etc. (It's easy to get a level 10 Maceman but almost impossible to get a level 10 spearman). Keeping them alive would then enable them to kill more units and thus garner more experience.

I guess I'm just going to have play more aggressive if you change the scoring system to this.. But I think everyone would like to know what the scoring system will be before they start the game as it affects how you decide to play.