Update 3.11.0: 3v3 ladder, custom coin games

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.11.0! This blog post describes what’s changed. I hope you’ll also join me in my twitch.tv broadcast this Sunday at 11am where we’ll be talking through these changes in detail, and I’ll be answering your questions!

3v3 Ladder

WarLight now has a 3v3 ladder! WarLight now has five ladders: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, real-time, and the seasonal. This ladder takes place on the Europe map, has no cards, and 4 picks per player. You can see the full template here.

The 3v3 ladder works just like the 2v2 ladder in most ways: players form into a team, and join the ladder as a team. You have to complete 10 games to get a rank, and it’s ranked using the Bayeselo algorithm.

The ladder is available to all members and anyone over level 54. As part of adding this ladder, a few of the level rewards were shifted around to make room for it.

Custom Coin Games

It’s now possible to create 1v1 coin games with any pure-skill settings! No longer are players limited to our list of pre-defined coin templates. Just visit the new Create Custom Coin Game page and you can select any of your templates, as long as the template used is pure-skill (no luck involved, as luck cannot be used in coin games for legal reasons).

You can create a challenge against a specific player, or against an open seat in which case your game will be advertised in the Promoted Games section of the multi-player dashboard.

Note the following:

– Open Seat Prerequisites and your blacklist will not be honored as they would be in normal open games.
– As part of this change, we’ve further refined the definition of pure-skill. Games on certain maps, like the Duel map and lottery maps, will never be considered pure-skill. Also games with extreme overridden bonuses won’t be considered pure-skill.
– If your game doesn’t fill, you can delete it and get all your coins back.
– You can pick any entry fee of 50 coins or higher. The prize will be calculated based on this, just as in other coin games, as EntryFee times 1.8.
– The creator also pays a creation fee of 1% of the prize. For example, a game with a 100 coin prize would cost 1 coin to create in addition to the normal entry fee.

History UI Improvements

When browsing history, there is now a “game start” turn that shows the initial state of the game without orders displayed. This allows for viewing picks in a game, then using the “next turn” button to see the results of the picks, then “next turn” again to see the arrows appear on the first turn.

Similarly, there is also now a “Current” turn at the end that shows what you’d see if you exited history. When viewing a finished game, this means that you can see the final state of the game conveniently.

Further, the players summary section in the bottom right has been improved so that it always shows the player’s incomes, even when viewing the end of a game.

Setting Changes

After much deliberation, we’ve decided to change the default move order from No-Luck Cyclic to just plain Cyclic. No-luck cyclic is a necessary setting for coin games, but we feel it doesn’t make sense to be the default for all new games.

Strategic 1v1 and 2v2 templates have been changed to remove most luck from them. They now use 0% luck, straight round, cyclic move order. This is part of the trend of removing luck from WarLight. You can read more about the reasoning behind this here.

The map on the Strategic 1v1 template was also changed from Medium Earth to Modified Medium Earth. The only difference between these maps is that there is one fewer territory in Eastern Russia and Eastern United States. Even though there are two fewer territories on the map, the map actually ends up feeling bigger since it brings more use to areas of the map that were rarely used before.

Other Changes

– When switching perspective in history, it will no longer highlight the entire turn unless the turn was already highlighted.
– The map no longer moves when multiple orders are selected in the orders window. This prevents the map from zooming/panning around while using the “next-turn” button in history.
– Added a “Discard all” button that appears when you have at least 10 copies of the same card.
– When picking territories, players will never be required to pick more than 10 to commit. Previously the game required players to pick as many territories as they would receive when the game starts.
– In real-time games with banking boot time, the clock in the upper right now says “Turn” instead of “Base”
– The Open Games page now always pins the 1v1 auto games to the top.
– Added a “Next game” button to the lobby, much like the Next game button that appears after completing a turn if you have unplayed multi-day games.
– Fixed a bug that caused some coin tournament games to not be recognized as coin games when awarding points.
– Fixed a bug that caused an error in history if you switched perspective while animations were playing.
– Fixed a bug on the Past Games page that caused old games to sort incorrectly when using the “Date Ended” sort.
– Fixed a bug that caused single/double elimination tournaments to render incorrectly in Safari.
– Fixed some bugs in the experimental socket support.
– Fixed a bug when rendering double-elimination tournaments that caused the players in the first championship games to be displayed reversed.