I second the plea of not making the it No luck cyclic move order. That who can pick first get an advantage gives a disadvantage to people playing ladder games from their phones or who have a slow internetconnection.
Also in the 2v2 there would be an advantage in getting your teammate to take a screen shot of the map and give you, so that you decide on the picks before loading the map. I don't think there should be advantages given on the basis of going though hoops like that.

So in sum; I think it would be sweet with 0% SR, but would prefer that it didn't come with No Luck Cyclic.

if it was up to me i'd have everything 0% SR.

Make 2v2 4picks and 0% WR aswell, that's all we need.

Risk-management could also be classified as "skill"

I agree with Bjarke. If it were just changed to 0% SR, I would find that better. However, I prefer the 1v1 ladder to stay as it is. The 2v2 ladder requires more change, and a good first step would be to change it to 0% SR.

I'd personally like to see more 0% WR in rt ladder and seasonal templates

I prefer the 0% WR for the 1v1 ladder. It makes the ladder much more strategic.

+1 Timinator. I want to see Fizzer's reply to this.

I don't play the ladders so often, you could even say never. But lately I was considering trying them again. While pure-skill seems perfect for RT games; I have a huge problem with the pure-skill system applied to Multi day games. This is not logic, a nonsense IMHO, it's a Multi-day game!!! Why would you have to be fast, especially in team games? But in 1vs1 as well. The picking stage is so important, that ruins the game. But wait, I'm sorry, I think I'm off topic and fighting a yesterday's war.

" Please don't make the ladders the so called "pure skill" settings. I would really dislike that cause in fact it requires less skill to play a template like this. "

+1

" Risk-management could also be classified as "skill" "

+1


I'm maybe not in phase with the trends, but whatever, trying to eliminate any luck factor is a bit of a witch hunt. If you generalize pure-skill to the whole WL "offer". I would bet that soon or later, we will come back to something close to what we know today.

0% WR or SR could be needed though. I guess the random move order should be the only "luck" factor admitted. it has a certain charm.

" Also in the 2v2 there would be an advantage in getting your teammate to take a screen shot of the map and give you, so that you decide on the picks before loading the map. I don't think there should be advantages given on the basis of going though hoops like that. "

Forgot to give +2 to this one...

Please no "no luck cycle." I like to take the time to think my picks through. As far as the 16% luck, I am leaning to keeping it, but I don't have a strong opinion.

Edited 8/11/2015 00:34:37

Please keep strategic 1v1 as it is.

I feel like, as mentioned earlier by master of desaster, risk management is an extremely important part of the template, and is one of the things which makes it so "strategic". Being able to balance the risk of 3vs2s with the safety of 4vs2s, or going for 6vs4s instead of 7vs4s is one of the things that makes it more interesting to play than 0%, even though it does give you some frustrating situations (e.g. a game last week all 4 3vs2 attacks in one of my turns failed, missed a card and all expansion) most of the times it gives you better situations imo.

I am always for removing luck. But, i also am not a fan of the speed of picking factoring in. I will live with that if it gets us less luck though for sure

Can we have no luck minus picking?

Edited 8/11/2015 03:09:36

The 1v1 ladder is perfect as it is.

The 2v2 ladder would be fine with either 0% WR or 0% SR, but it would be better with 4 picks per player.

I completely agree that no-luck cycle would be bad for the ladders.

Don't play the 1v1 ladder so I have no comment on that aspect, but I have plenty of comments for the 2v2 ladder.

I like risk management and find it a crucial aspect for high-level games, and not even just WarLight but lots of other games as well. Optimizing your moves and attacks is easy to do compared to risk vs reward and whether the pot odds are favorable enough.

It's similar to many card games such as poker. There's a randomness aspect of it, obviously, and yet it's still a game of immense skill and the best players will stand out compared to average ones. Poker is a game of complete risk management. This is true of WarLight as well, and is part of the reason the game is as fun as it is, to me at least. WarLight was inspired by RISK, which as the name implies was a boardgame entirely based around risk management.

If everything was pre-determined it just becomes a game of realizing start locations of your opponents and then you can know the exact state of the entire board. In real-time games it's harder to count income and backtrack through the turns to realize the entire board state, but for multi-day games it's easy. This makes things way to predictable and removes any sense of tension.

I'd be fine with 0% WR, since it doesn't seem plausible to oppose it, but SR completely removes risk management as a concept that players need to focus on. As Timinator said, Risk-management could also be classified as "skill"



On a side note, directed to the prospect of adding 4 picks per player: I think this gives people too much coverage on the map. As I play the template more and more the limitation of only having 2 picks per player has been growing on me, and I think that the added layer of metagaming by viewing the opponent's previous games for picking habits and the psychological layer of predicting their picks from insufficient information should also be considered an aspect of skill.

The ladder is supposed to be a persistent thing where players are constantly fighting for the next rung above them, and information gathering on the habits of your opponent is important. Having enough picks to cover the entire board diminishes this greatly and gives players not only a lot of information on the board state but also potential early-game counters to nearly any possibilities. Working from 80% knowledge requires much less skill than working from 40% knowledge; I consider this identical to risk management.

The better the players are, the more they can do with little knowledge. It's not like your opponents are in random locations on the board (I've yet to face opponents who commit with 0 picks, at least). If the prevailing trend is that most people think there's "not quite enough knowledge" or something, then 3 picks should be plenty. 4 picks is overkill, though, IMO.


TL;DR: Risk management is important. Working from little knowledge is important. 2v2 ladder is fine as is, but if change must be made, 0% WR 3picks should be more than enough change.

I've always been pro-slight luck.. because warlight is meant to simulate war, not chess.
chess is deliberate calculated moves that work exactly as expected...
war is not.. war has variables that are impossible to know the outcome of until they occur..
I felt the original strat 1v1 settings put the variables of war quite nicely into a strategic simulation.

but again, I'm sure I'm in the minority of this...
min/maxers always want to be able to min/max, and would rather not have to compensate for probabilities and indefinite variables.

+1 Mythonia

With 16% luck you need to THINK "should i attack the 30blockade with 48armies(38% chance of taking the terretory) or should i use 52armies (100% chance of taking the terretory)" --> so, luck makes the game more difficult.

i have mixed feelings about 0% WR
i understand that in ladders we can allow single games to be decided by luck. In long run luck should be equal for everybody, and (as many mentioned earlier) risk management is also a skill.
But: one game can easily be the difference between #1 and #2 - one can win because he managed to take single-picked greenland in 2 turns (~20% chance) while his opponents failed to take FTB with 80% chance. You can't name it 'risk-management',it's just luck. I can live with it. In 1v1 and 2v2 ladders you can just play more games. I would stick with 0% SR in seasonals though - just to reduce such situations.

and on the side note:

having 2 picks per player has been growing on me, and I think that the added layer of metagaming by viewing the opponent's previous games for picking habits and the psychological layer of predicting their picks from insufficient information should also be considered an aspect of skill.

Cannot disagree more. What you have written is simple description of bad template. We shouldn't be playing paper-rock-scissors game where the main point is to guess your opponent picks. Best case scenario is template where you can focus only on finding optimal picks and strategy that always win, no matter what your opponents do. I'm aware there is probably not way to create settings that always work this way, but we should get something as close as possible.

Edited 8/11/2015 06:19:36

I like the 1v1 Ladder the way it is, but would appreciate two more picks on the 2v2 ladder.

I also think that "risk management" is a valid point. This game is strategic because it has luck and we need to make decisions that best manage around it. Otherwise it's not as much of a test of your ability to make quick probabilistic calculations beyond adjusting for different predicted opponent behaviors.

Krzychu is right about the game being most worthwhile when there's actually a decidedly "better" strategy beyond just RPS. That said, RPS isn't incompatible with strategy- in fact, RPS is in itself a strategy game as long as there is Kore than one round.

Edited 8/11/2015 06:55:11

Would it really be that bad to have two equally prestigious ladders running simultaneously.. one 16% the other pure skill?
People could choose to enter one or both.
Perhaps even have a play off system for the winners of both ladders over both templates if a number one is needed

If you are gonna change it I think cyclic move order is more important than 0% SR when it comes to reducing the luck in ladders