Battleground mechanics -- An update
Dear all,
the discussion on the battleground mechanics is split over many threads, which all have a variety of outdated information due to game updates. I wanted to summarize below what I have understood from my many hours of reading the forum and to list few questions that some experienced players may be willing to answer. Just to say, I'm not a coiner player, so strategies like "revive your units spending saphires to send them again in the BGs" are not what I am looking for
The reward system is based on a bank. This bank is filled when units are killed in the BGs and is emptied when rewards are given. The filling and emptying are based on the ressource costs of units, not on their off/def power. When a reward is given the bank is emptied by the amount of ressources given increased by a small tax, so that there cannot be a net gain of ressources.
I would like to know a few facts. Please do not give your "I think that" but rather only your "I know that because I am in this big league which has done all the maths and we are nice guys so that we are happy to share our knowledge".
1/ Are all ressources counted in the bank or only gold & iron? Many people have told me only gold and iron, but then units like chimera would be useless. Plus, this thread
https://plarium.com/en/ask-a-developer/plarium-game-algo/
points to all ressources counting. (This is for another plarium's game, though...)
2/ Is there a bonus when you kill a BGs with a higher level. Again, I've been told that the higher the BGs, the better the reward ,in the sense the larger the ratio
(ressources gotten in reward)/(ressources spent in the BGs to get the reward)
So that there would not only be a tax (that would cost you ressources) but also some gains that would be larger for larger BGs. Have some people evidence for that ?
3/ People often say that you have to repay your debt to the bank once you have gotten a reward. At the same time, they say that you have to first bank N(X) ressources to get a reward from a BG of level X to get a big payout where N(X) is tabulated somewhere in one of the long thread:
But that does not make sense. Indeed, If the first part of the sentence were true, I would start with a zero bank, get a payout of N ressources for some BG and then get a reward as soon as I have paid the N ressources plus tax back. This cannot depend on the level of the nest I kill. Alternatively, the mechanism could be the opposite: you first bank N ressources, then if you kill a BG of level X and N>N(X), you get a payout and your bank becomes N - payout + (units lost in the BG). Is this right?
4/ Note that this leaves one question left: are the units used to kill the BG counted in the bank ? I.e. is it:
if N + (units lost in the BG of level X) > N(X), then you get a big payout after killing the BG of level X ?
5/ Smart players had found a way to get huge armies by using the `minimal payback system'. You yellow bar a very large number of BGs, then get the huge reward from top-level BG and your bank comes back to zero. But then you kill all the other BG's, which are yellowed, and get the 'minimal reward' for each of them. Your bank become very negative, you will never get a reward again, but you have a huge army. Plarium has tried to put a stop to that. Some people said that the change plarium implemented was that your bank is only filled with the ressources used to yellow-bar a BG once it's killed. That cannot be true because plarium has said that yellow-baring the BG only slow down the rate at which large payout is obtained. This implies that yellow-barring BG's still give large payout, which would not be the case if ressources were not added to the bank. Can someone confirm this ?
6/ An alternative to what people suggested would be that when you attack a BG, its reward (or minimal reward) is already in the system and you only increase your bank by (the unit you lose) minus (the reward you will get) or (the minimal reward you will get). This could prevent the aforementionned strategy to work (completely in the first case, only 'severely in the second). Then, yellow-barring BG would be neither useless nor harmless. Has someone tested this hypothesis? (Which can be done yellow-barring BG's, checking when a reward is given, and then getting all the minimal rewards to check if that's what's need to bring back the bank close to zero).
7/ People have complained that the change implemented in 5/ makes it impossible to know when a reward will happen. I kind of disagree if one uses a uphill/downhill strategy. If your bank is close to empty, you first kill BG of increasing levels. You cannot get huge reward since large payout of the next level BG is obtained for an amount of ressource you cannot have lost in lower level BG's. Then, you revert the order and go down in levels. This way your bank keeps increasing while the threshold for reward N(X) decreases as the level of BG you kill decreases. They will cross and you will then get a reward. This is the strategy I am using these days, though deciding when switching from going uphill to downhill is always a bit random and has to be adapted to tournament's rewards :-)
Anyway, thanks for your input !
Alb