The Pantless Guide to Guerrilla War

Day 2,378, 20:30 • Published in Switzerland USA • by GoopyPants

So eRepublik introduced Guerilla War a while back....


Dancing Wonka is dancing
Bonus damage was originally based upon relative rank and strength, so Visa players had a distinct advantage with higher bonus damage (because moneys). But, losing a match didn’t matter, just hurt your pride and made you do less damage towards the overall battle.

Because a match didn’t really count for anything, folks would do silly things like dodge the whole time, go in with minimal equipment, play “naked hillbilly faceshooting with a shotgun”, or other zany shenanigans, and still get a reasonable damage output relative to the cost of equipment and time. Worked out OK.. everyone kinda went “Meh.” Except this guy:
Dance, Duane! Dance!
Maybe you tried it, probably you didn’t. Lots of folks played lots of rounds, not caring about their win/loss ratio.

Then (somewhat recently) the way bonus damage was calculated changed, and a whole bunch of new equipment was added. Now how much damage to the overall battle you cause is related to damage done during a match and “killing” the opponent became more important (for damage in the overall battle).

Bonus damage during a match is now completely unrelated to strength or rank, and is 0, 1, or 2 points per player (both can be at the same number, like 2 vs. 2 or 0 vs. 0 bonus damage).

Hold on there, tough guy… You mean a brand new day-one player (recruit with like 10 strength) with 3 wins and no losses does more bonus damage in a GW match than a titan 80k strength player with a 1000 wins and 750 losses?
Sarcastic Wonka is sarcastic

And with the new equipment you get to use seemly effective crossbows that go pew-pew (and with laser beams!) but are actually completely useless?!?!
Not an actual Platonic weapon, but should be
The real kicker is that the power-(steal)-spin now gives 12 items of guerrilla equipment. New hats, armor, a new rifle, and a crossbow. Play more, win more, get more guerrilla war stuff!

What could possibly go wrong?
So you probably tried guerrilla war after spending all your golds on power-spin, since you ended up with an entire closet full of all this new equipment. You fired up GW and after a few matches went “What the hell is this crap? Why do I always lose?”
Indeed... "What the fudge?"

Far too soon, you realize that by providing guerrilla equipment to lots of players, Plato is just feeding unknowing (but still twitching) meat to the neckbeards with 10k guerrilla matches. Seriously, there are guys with thousands and thousands of guerrilla matches. Like hours and hours and hours worth, if all you did was fight in GW. Like enough to have a job. Full time. And those guys need fresh opponents, because sometimes people give up after getting stabbed in the face a few times.
And the neckbeards hunger!
Wait, but why did you lose? Well, that’s because Guerrilla War isn't particularly well documented, has some "issues" with design and balance, and has so much counter-intuitive nonsense that a sane and rational person should react to it with outrage, anger, and shame. Mostly shame. So much shame.

(no animated gif of shame, as such a thing would be too shameful).

So it’s rigged. And broken. And poorly thought out. Just like [insert your country's leader's name here]'s foreign policy.
But yet it is still challenging in the way flappy bird is challenging: frustrating, pointless, but certain OCD mindsets insist on playing to try and “figure it out”. Must continue to level 679 of candy crush saga because the voices in my head demand it be so.

Not that anyone who plays eRepublik would be that crazy.
Or write an overly long series of articles about it...
I was at about 140 wins and 100 losses and decided that the next “thing that keeps me from quitting this game” would be to work up to 2 bonus damage, which you get when you have a win/loss ratio of better than 2:1. That and figure out why I was consistently getting a can of stale, slightly salty beat-down by apparently really stupid and/or chemically altered opponents. Or robots, could have been robots. Or aliens. Not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens.

A month or two later (maybe 3), now I’m at around 400 wins and 200 losses, which means I won about 2.6 matches for each loss, something I can put on my C.V. and get that job at No One Cares That You Did That.

N.B. Seriously, it isn’t an accomplishment and I’m not looking for praise. And I don’t care if your ratio is better, or worse, or that you beat me like a free arcade dance dance revolution floor mat every time we had a match, or you spent the money for a plane ticket to meet the guy who designed the system so you know the actual secrets. That isn’t the point of this article.

What is the point?

So in no particular order, some hints and tricks on at least not going insane while playing GW. Some things are kinda basic, some are kind of advanced, most are sort of “Oh, that’s nice”. Nothing that follows is anything more than my observations and pointers. YMMV, WYSISYG, and again, not here to argue. If the below is helpful, great. If it isn’t, write your own article.

N.B. Most of the numbers presented below are rounded a bit… I don’t really care that the hit percentage of a shotgun is 45% or 43% at 82m depending on equipment, the point is that it is around 40%ish.

This article is written with winning a fight as a goal, not minimizing cost or damage taken. Sure, there are other strategies, such as dodging every round or dancing around like someone who does a lot of dancing, but that would be a different article. One with more jazz hands.
Jazz hands
The beginning of the first part of the actual article
1. The displayed “To Hit” percentage before you hit “fire” is irrelevant… the actual hit percentage is calculated after both players select their actions. And can be wildly and catastrophically different than what you thought you might actually, you know, have a chance of doing or not doing.

So you’re at 80m, got your ninja crossbow primed and ready, you hit fire, and your opponent selects “run away like a frenchy”.

You miss.

WTF? 90% and missed? And I have to move forward, reload, probably move forward again, all to get back to 80m and ready to fire?

Lemme try that again.

Same thing happens again.

And again.

And your opponent taunts you again on IRC, “Uhh huuuh huuuh! Mah runninge awah strataghey zeems to hav werked so whell! Ahh wheel wheen becauze you canno cactch mah wheet yur steenky leetel crawssbau!”
And you start to think that maybe 90% isn’t 90%, but something more like orange%, or that you’ve gone insane and math (or maths depending on your loucale) doesn’t work like it is supposed to, like the guy in the brochure said that one time.

Maybe you go to an odds calculator and find out that missing a 90% success rate trial five times in a row has odds worse than spontaneously combusting while playing eRepublik.

What is actually happening (other than the reality of spending money to play a browser game) is that your chance of hitting is only 90% if the opponent doesn’t dodge OR move.

Moving or dodging affects your hit rate, and since your opponent moved away, the crossbow hit percent was based on 280m (or so, depending on their equipment which determines how far they move), and as everyone learns in grade-school (but maybe you missed that day), a crossbow don’t work too good at 280m, I reckon.
Finish him!

A strategy related to displayed hit percentage vs. actual hit percentage: Say you start 250m apart and both of you have storm assault rifles armed… a noob opponent will move away, thinking they can’t hit you well so has to move, and if you shoot (rather than moving) you probably have a 90% hit chance on the round they move, which is nice, to you know, to capitalize on their ignorance. Because that’s game.

A related issue is that:
2. Moving may be more effective than dodging.

Dodging lowers your opponents hit chance by 1/3. No, it isn’t -30% or some logical “lower it to a flat rate”, but a relative 1/3 subtraction to their percentage.

So their 90% hit chance becomes 60% (for example) when you dodge, which is still a reasonable hit chance. But what about if you moved one “step” away? Depending on their weapon and the direction you go, their hit chance may be lowered by a significant amount, lower than the 60% to hit of a dodge.

Example:

Your opponent is using a shotgun at 175M (which never really happens… see next article). His hit chance is 90%. You dodge, and it becomes 60% (the -1/3 dodge factor). But if you moved to 80m, it becomes 40%; if you moved to 375m, it also becomes around 40%. Because you are now outside the ideal range of a shotgun, and the shotgun is a pretty narrow ideal range weapon.
Wait, why is the shotgun red and blue?

And 40% for you is better than a dodge. Sure, a dodge does damage from your grenade (if you have one), but the opponent might move, making the grenade do less damage and losing your ability to lower the opponent hit percentage and still do damage. And by moving you hopefully lower your opponents damage output and raise yours by moving to your weapon’s ideal range and out of your opponent’s.

Note that the graphs and such will be in the next article

But which weapon should you be using?
3. All weapons are not created equal. And most of them are terrible.

In a well-designed game (of a certain kind), you have to choose between rock, paper, and scissors (and possibly lizard or Spock), each choice having a defined role. Or maybe it is a game with weighted choices: you can pick something that does more damage but is less accurate, or maybe it slows you down but has lots of ammo. You know, a tradeoff based on skill and strategy, something that you can’t min/max or just look up on an internetz “WHAT BEST 2 MINE 4 FISH” list.

Or you could just play a game like GW where certain things are better than other things, and only people who don’t know use the crap things. Because the best games are based not on skill, but by beating up noobs armed with crap.

Example: cheap grenades vs. expensive grenades. Cheap grenades are cheaper. But do half-ish as much damage and hit your agility worse. Why would you use cheap grenades? Seriously, why? No rational person would choose the cheaper grenades. So why are they an option? Just to confuse noobs. Or for the “value conscious guerrilla fighter” who never wants to do bonus damage.

Similarly, there are two types of rifles. One is better. Don’t choose the one that does less damage.

Or the pistol. No point to it. Any weapon is better.
Maybe not this one...

Or how the powerspin armor and helmet is better than the stock equipment. So don’t use the stock equipment. Stockpile that powerspin stuff.

You probably want a loadout of the Type X armor, helmet, grenades, two type X sniper rifles, the storm assault rifle, and a shotgun.

The type x armor is better than the normal versions, as are the grenades. You want to start with the storm assault rifle equipped (see next article) as your main weapon. The two sniper rifles are for long range fights, and the shotgun is for if you have an idiot opponent who insists on using the crossbow.
4. The crossbow is garbage, don’t use it.

You’d think a premium (buy with gold) weapon that makes you look like mr. stealthy McNinja would be pure win. Pew-pew LAZER BEAMZ! Awesome.

And you’d be wrong. And lose the fight.
Why the John Wayne accent... really?

Only one shot, only effective at 80m, the crossbow is a waste of time. If someone is using a crossbow against you, don’t even dodge, just move one space away and then shoot them in the face with a shotgun. Shoot them again when they reload. Then move a space away. For extra lutz, use your grenade to dodge while they reload.

Why is the shotgun more damagy than the crossbow? The shotgun has more shots per reload, does a reasonable amount of damage, and doesn’t make you look like Legolas. And with the hit percentage being calculated after movement, the crossbow shooter isn’t shooting at 80m, but at 280m, and again, crossbows don’t work at that kind of range. And they have to reload after every shot.
To be continued…