Bug, feature or manipulation

Day 2,264, 04:05 • Published in Bulgaria Bulgaria • by Stolch

Now looking at one of the screenshots of the Sofia battle, where Bulgarian players are not getting the NE bonus against Romania, one of a number of "bugs" that always seem to be going one way in the last 6-7 months, it would be easy to assume that it is the admins attempting to manipulate the battle. After all all but one until very recently had their top campaign damage for Romania against Bulgaria, one even has 2.8 billion, so their bias is evident for everyone to see. (you can see who they're in the forum).

However as much as some would love this to be the case, this is not entirely true. In reality the damage dealt by others is not what it should be and seems to be a different "bug" for everyone.

This is one of many pics of the Sofia battle:



As everyone can see, there is the damage being added in the bar, there is the "my damage" that is being shown above the fight button and there is the rank being added in the rank bar.

Bulgaria has an activated NE against Romania, so all players holding a Bulgarian CS should be getting a 10% bonus to their damage but not to their rank as NE bonus only applies to damage in the bar.

So far so good, rank points gained +9665, my damage shows as + 106315 or 10%. However the battle has a determination bonus as well for the defender which in this case is Bulgaria as Romania is attacking the region. The determination bonus is 1.08 or 8%.

So there should be another 8% bonus to the damage generated on the wall. Determination bonus like NE bonus does not generate rank points and is only shown in the bar at the top and not in the "my damage" part. Here comes the problem, the damage added at the top is 104 382, which is less then the 106 315 that is being generated due to the NE bonus.

Incidentally 104 382 is 8% more then the basic damage with no bonuses represented by the 9665 rank points. So the determination bonus is there, however the NE bonus is not. So basically Bulgarian side in that battle has it's damage reduced by 10% in all rounds and all divisions. This is most probably true when using boosters as well.

To get an idea of how much damage we're talking about, the top 5 in round 2 of the battle on Bulgaria side did together 1.798 billion damage, so Bulgarian damage was reduced based on the top 5 only by 180 million in D4 and one round alone.

So it was time to check other battles with NE and determination bonus to see if this was a bug or a manipulation.

Here comes the next screenshot, it is of the India vs Croatia battle in West Bengal. Again it's just one of many:



So again India has an activated NE against Croatia and an active determination bonus in the battle.

So we look at the 3 numbers again and to our surprise, there is no difference between the rank points and the "my damage" shown. Rank points which are 10% of the basic damage are in this case 16 254 and the "my damage" is 162 544, so no NE bonus there.


*EDIT*, thanks to some comments below I checked the actual damage of the player and it turns out that his damage without the NE bonus would be 147 767 and the reason why the rank points are with 10% more could be an active war stash. However the NE bonus is still missing from the damage being added to the bar. So this is the same as the Bulgarian battle bug. At least we know the bug is uniform. *EDIT*


When we look at the determination bonus at the top bar however there is another surprise, the damage there is shown as 180 277, so there is a determination bonus being added however when we calculate the difference it comes out to be only 11% more then without the determination bonus while the battle says there should be a 22% (1.22) determination bonus.

So not only is there no NE bonus in the battle, there is only half of the determination bonus that should be there.

So in one battle we have no NE bonus, in the other we have no NE and half of the determination. The question that logically arises is, what is happening in all the other battles for other sides and so on.

The good news is, that since it seems to be everywhere, well in those two sides in those two battles anyway, it is unlikely to be a direct manipulation, the alternative of incompetence however is not much better for the players, especially considering the "buy a battle" options that have been added "for the tournament only".

The only thing that becomes clear of this is that until the player community of the game recognizes that despite our in-game wars and fights we're all playing the same game and we don't bind together to demand better quality and less bias by the administration of the game we will continuously have this occur and it will occur at the expense of each and everyone at one time or another.

If you're a player holding the CS of a country that has a battle that should have both NE and determination bonus, make a screenshot and post it in the comments so we can see how random the damage generation in battles truly is.


PS this is a screenshot from Italian battle, with Italian NE active against Serbia and determination bonus of 24%:



Same thing as with Indian battle, no NE bonus at all and determination bonus is 12% instead of 24%.