When lower and higher divs collide
Redi Jodikku
Good evening, night, morning or whatever depending on when and where are you reading it. Today I wanted to talk about something different. Those who know me know that I tend to over rationalize most part of the things I say and do, but hey, that’s the way I am and I think it works in this case.
You all know that during this competition the big guys could go to lower divs and try to fight there, it also worked the other way around, lower divs could come and visit us. So we’ve seen some problems and people complaining about BH fighting. I would like to share what I’ve learnt and have in my mind with all of you and maybe help one or two of you to have things more clear, who knows.
Imagine a guy with 100,000 str. in D1. It can be applied to any lower div if you are interested enough to change some numbers. In D1 a BH costs about 4M (yeah, i’ve asked around to some D1 guys). Then, someone with 100,000k max-hit and no packs at all (I’m trying to benefit the lower guy to make it even more clear, actually it’s very likely that he has at least the IK if he is hunting BHs). Having 700 max energy stored twice and using a 50% booster he has about 21M available, which is about 5 BHs or what’s the same, 10 golds minus the cost of the damage in weapons and food. Weapons will cost him 210cc (14 at 15cc each one) and the food about 60cc. That gives us a positive profit of more than 9 golds as it only costs him 0.675 golds to fill the bar.
The exact numbers are not that important, so you could use the concept and apply to your personal specifications.
Now let’s see the world from a D4 point of view. A weak and poor (yeah that’s how i’ve been called lately, I would rather call me pragmatic. To maintain the hype, you know.). That average D4 can’t afford a BH medal with his 25, 30 or even 40M most part of the times. So maybe he might be interested to try it in a lower div.
To make it even easier to understand, imagine I got two offers, one is to get nothing and the other one is to take part in a raffle where i have a 1% chance of getting a prize of 1 dollar. If those are the only conditions, I would take the ticket without even thinking, it’s a low chance and a low prize, but it’s still more than 0, or in a worse scenario (like a 0.000001% chance and 0.0000001 dollars of prize) I’m completely indifferent.
Now let’s draw a game in its tree-form to see what would we expect to happen and what should people do (if they were profit maximizers, if they are driven by other feelings you should use a different tree with different payoffs and different reasoning).
Notice that it’s not a simultaneous game because the lower div can see what the D4 is doing (if someone tries to fight the medal in the last second it’s a complete different story where we would need to know the chances of this happening and I’m not going to compute them).
Let’s explain it a bit for those who are not used to these kind of drawings. The D4 player moves first, and therefore the first number represents his payoff (gold in this case). Then the D1 can react and therefore the second number is his payoff. We see that the D4 player can decide either to drop his damage in D4 and get nothing or move to a lower div and see if he has luck there. Then the D1 can choose if he wants to retaliate and use all his damage in that battle (here I assumed that he won, but maybe he didn’t) or diversify his damage into other battles where there are not D4 players. I hope the payoffs are clear, if I see many people complaining about them I will add the explanation.
Some things to add. There are not EBs involved as I’m assuming we are talking about profit maximizers, as said before this is not applied to people driven by other emotions. If there were EBs involved we would use a “chicken game” which is a bad game to play to be honest, you can google it and see that not many good things can come out of them.
Second thing I’ve seen lately is people claiming “I will teach those D4 not to mess with lower divs and stay in their divs”. Well, I’m afraid that this can not be applied here. Why does the retaliation strategy does not work here? Remember that the retaliation strategy is a non rational path in the short run or in a single “transaction” but that could work in the long run or in a society in form of reputation and really change some people’s behaviour patterns. Well, I state that it does not work for two reasons, because it’s not a credible threat (meaning that I would expect a profit maximizer to diversify because it’s the best option for him, so I’m not trusting what he is saying) and secondly because I’m completely indifferent, I was going to drop my ffs and get 0 as return in D4, and we have already seen that the expected payoff is slightly higher in the other scenario (remember the raffle example? ), so in the worst case I’m indifferent.
Also notice that this is a simplified model with simplified calculation, but in my opinion it’s not oversimplified and works enough for a browser game, we are not in a Maths convention.
Feel free to argue and show your disagreement or opinions in the comments section, I would really love it.
Before you say it, yes, I was bored this afternoon because I’m stuck at home for personal issues and I had anything better to do here.
Comments
votado.
but also tl;dr 😛
Lo he intentado leer, de verdad
Puedes leerte del primer al tercer separador y te quedaras con la idea principal
You forgot about the most important variable out there.
That D1 with 100k strength ruins the game for the newbies with 3-5k strength out there way more than a D4 could ruin the game for him by switching divs and taking his gold.
I agree with you and see it as a bigger problem then accidental D4 hunters wondering around. In Serbia the things are even worse: Group of thugs are financing "elite" D2 and D3 fighters' packs with ourTAX money so newbies have no chances at all.
So, since last change was applied, my personal hobby is chasing those bastards no matter I'll steal their BH or not (by using own FF only) and as a result I am expecting them to have much less energy remained for harassing newbies. I even started own tournament offering some rewards for most successful hunter of hunters: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/turnir-1250-q7-tenkova-2598484/1/20
P.S. 2 lazy 2 translate, if really interested, use google 😛
Your point of view in does help me a lot :3
d1 and d2 are farmville.
and love to complain
d2 has whatsapp group so that you can tell where will you go for bh so nobody goes after it
LOL the highest example of cartelization. This game has lost it's essence.
We do 😃 ? Damn didnt know it 😁 anyway i dont have time to be in groups 😃
well done jordic,,VOTED
No one will take my dragons! Dracarys! https://i.imgur.com/yCT9tq3.jpg
Eixe arbre de decisions a lo teoría de juegos mole 🙂
Conclusion?
Lower divs can cry as much as they want and try to "punish" D4s as much as they want that we are still gonna be going to lower divs.
If lower divs are clever enough they will follow the path that is best for them 😛
well, best is to oppose D4 or fight in other battles with a chance D4 baring in there too? 😃
Have you read it? Best is to diversify, I'm not gonna calculate the exact chances of a D4 messing in your divs but I would not say it's more than a 82% (the point where it would be more profitable to fight for your BH in this example)
Está claro que el hecho de poder cambiar de división para obtener medallas puede venir bien a los d4, otra cosa es que les salga rentable, para bajar de división hay que gastar mucho paneo y eso si no se hace en batallas con cos, puede hacer que la posible bh que obtenga en d1 le salga en perdidas.
Por otro lados, pocos jugadores son los que atienden a su máximo beneficio.
Yo suelo ir a D2 o D3.
Some cry , others fight , others do nothing , its all about with who you mess 🙂
Now i dont see why lower div's should fight if higher div's mess with their battles.
Its like Aragorn said, "its all about with who you mess"
im not against d4 going for bhs in lower divisions as long they dont steal them, and if they do if well if you really wanted that BH you should fight for it, not cry about it 🙂
The idea is that if I were you, I would not fight for it
why dafuq not?
and sorry i didnt got time to read the whole article
I get your point Jordic , problem is 90% of the lower divs fighters have packs, most of us with full ff's have arround 160-180M with 50%.
The other thing is since we are holders and we dont like xp we are fighters all the way , born to fight 😃
@Aragorn: If you like to fight cause it's fun for you it's fine, this is just a game and the ultimate goal of it is to enjoy your time. If you have more FFs and packs the difference is even bigger.
@Ste3: Cause the point of punishing someone is trying to change his future behaviour (creating a threat) but when you are doing this to a D4 you are not really changing his behaviour, as he will still be indiferent between making 0 profits in D4 or having an extremely low chance of making some profits in D2 or D3.
No offence but D4 is the only real division where you have competition.
I have switched to a lower division nd after using ff to enter the lower division I'v used my remaining ff to deal damage.Had no idea how !uch damage was needed for bh but when i've started to look around i've noticed that my damage was muuuuuuch to muuch.
With the same ff the chanxes are that in D4 I wouldn't had the bh but in a lower diision I think I had the most damage done for a bh in that div.
That's the idea, we know we are gonna lose in the D4 anyway, so why not trying to exploit our chances in a lower div? It can't be worse.
Great article and I like your rational approach. Here are some comments I would like to make:
1) The chicken game is a game where both parties lose but it is a good way to create a precedent for future reference that whoever is up against you has a lot to lose. No rational player walks voluntarily into a later chicken game with the same player (unless they want to set an even bigger precedent).
2) The other side of the coin is that if the lowdiv player decides to diversify without a fight, then the D4 player (and everyone else) can assume that he has a better than average chance of encountering no competition the next time around if he fights in another battle with the same guy. A diversifying player is thereby effectively setting a negative precedent about himself, and attracts the D4 players like blood attracts sharks or how dogs turn on when they smell fear.
3) Diversifying is less and less of an option as the event winds down and more people are freed from the burden/objective of helping their country. Not to mention that even under ideal circumstances, diversifying somewhere else does not give 100% payout as visible on the chart, since there is a D4 risk in the other battles as well.
1) I talked about that in the article, I don't think creating a reputational threat on the D4 will work. He should not have entered the chicken game to begin with (he has nothing to win out of it, even though the lower could have it), so we're not talking about a purely profit maximizer agent. With so few interaction in this game the reputational factor is less and less important, it might be effective for you and some other guys who interact with the community and his name is known, but I don't think most part of the players will take advantatge of a reputational act (in terms of society, I think that the direct relationship between the lower and D4 is not gonna be affected, I myself don't remember against whom I did win or lost my BHs these days).
2) What said before, the reputational factor could work to an extend among the guys in your division, but I don't think it goes across division. If you have spend 200 EBs you are probably remembering him, but you (as D4) should not have done it, so I don't think this D4 is a profit maximizer either.
3) I know that problem, but as stated in the article, computing the chances of a D4 entering your battles is just too much work for a browser game. What I would do is the other way around, see what are the chances that make you indifferent (your maxhit, division, rewards and payoffs are different, but the idea is the same), and see if it's a rationalizable startegy. In this case you will be indifferent with a chance of 82% of a D4 entering this battles, I don't have the numbers, but I think the real chance is not that high.
In a sense I see it as the "Dollar auction" without the D4 having to pay if he loses as he does not have opportunity cost in the cases where he does not use EBs. So, if i were the lower div I would only fight him if I know the opportunity cost is low and I can win him without EBs.
Hello my love 😉