Ten days of mayhem, explained

Day 3,607, 12:35 • Published in Finland Finland • by TheJuliusCaesar
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender”
- Winston Churchill

Greetings,


Yes, it's me again. Did you think I have a life?

We have a new update, specifically an event starting in a bit over seven days, lasting 10 days. The changes described in this article are for the time being only for the duration of the event, per the update link. But what does it include then? A swift 10 points long TL😉R is in order for our readers in biggest hurry before we dig a bit deeper to the specific consequences and mechanisms.

Too Long; Didn't Read version
1. The event introduces 14 terrain types for the duration of the event to battlefield for ground battles. Air battles won't be affected.
2. These terrain types can be decided for every battle by military leaders, meaning again CP's, dictators, MoD's and MoFA's of each nation, as in the Deployment update.
3. Players can (and need to) distribute their strength over the terrain categories. (This is the beef)
4. There is a limit how much strength can be distributed per terrain type, which can be seen from below table:

So effectively 20k in D1, 25k in D2, 30k in D3 and 40k in D4 available per terrain type

5. You can distribute all of your strength or part of it, however you feel good. For example, I, as a D4 player with 162k strength, could distribute 40k strength for four different terrain types. Or 20k strength for eight terrain types. And so on.
6. Once your strength has been distributed, it can be changed only with Skill Reset Tokens, which are gained as rewards (or can be, in "limited amounts", bought from "battlefield shop" so visa spenders can change it more often. How much often? I don't know).
7. Division change with Maverick pack will cause the division you're changing in to be your new strength cap regardless if you have more strength distributed to the terrain type, see Q&A section for more.
8. Rank points gain is calculated from the total strength of the citizen, in my case from 162k and not the 40k I have assigned to a terrain in which I'm fighting. Further, during the event, you get 100% bonus for your rank point gain.
9. During the event, a battle will become epic once the total damage of the round you're fighting in surpasses the biggest battle by damage for your division during the past 72 hours.
10. You get 3x more cc from True Patriot medals during the event (but you hit with a maximum strength of 40k, so the effective total TP gain will be smaller).

Wew, that's a lot to unpack and dig deeper into.

Some considerations
First, it is a bit ambiguous how exactly the military leaders are able to selectt the terrains for battles, as the exact mechanism is not described. Basing on how it was done in deployment update, I am somewhat confident that a "default" terrain type can be selected from a similar menu as deployment so that it becomes active for the next starting round.

Strength distribution is another key aspect in the event, then. In my opinion, most efficient would be to distribute the strength by maxing out as many terrain types as possible, resulting in 3-5 types maxed for most citizens.


Choose wisely.

But it is not only that considers citizens: nations as a whole, even alliances should try to agree to concentrate on few decided terrain types to maximize its output in the battlefield. It is way more efficient for citizens to max out Jungle terrain type and a country to pick important battles to happen on Jungle terrain type, as it gives more damage for the players, more damage for the nation compared to other options. The more efficiently concentrated nation is on few terrain types, the bigger advantage it has against its rivals.

On the other hand, as Andre3567. well pointed out in the comment section, such organization as above would leave the nation way too vulnerable for attackers employing different terrain. Therefore it would probably make sense for nations and alliances to distribute the strength more evenly across the terrain types, as it makes the system more stable. I'm definitely interested to see how that plays out during the event.

Something to consider is that, while the amount of Citizenship Currency received from TP's during the event is nominally triple, it is effectively usually lower in total because of the maximum of 40k strength used on battlefield.


Probable effects and personal analysis
I have an overall gut feeling that the whole event is something to first temporarily test out a change that might be planned. To see how it behaves on mass testing with a large amount of users. The new mechanic in the event effectively aims to level the playing field to some extent so that strong players, especially in low divisions, are not as dominant as before. It is diminishes the strength gap between the oldest and not-so-old players and even erases it for some like me, who has played since 2011 and is roughly 40k behind the biggest hitters.


Just theorizing, man..

But at the same time it does not completely erase the advantage the ones with bigger strength have, as a bigger strength enables one to fill out more terrain types. So in essence bigger tanks can fight in 4-5 different terrains efficiently, whereas weaker players can only do so in 1 or 2 terrains. Of course it remains to be seen how leniently the Skill Reset Tokens are handed out, and hence how much the strength distribution can be changed.

I feel it is a step to right direction, again, but we need to probably see how it plays out during the event. Of course, we have (or at least I have) already witnessed how some strong players were not happy with the event, as it hinders their TP gains and diminishes the amount of BH medals they can get. Take one for the team, I'd say.

Questions & Answers
Q: What about air battles?
A: From the update: "During the event all the ground battles will require specific skills in order to maximize the damage of the soldiers, depending on the terrain the battle is fought on." So it looks like air battles won't be affected.

Q: How will the terrain be decided in RWs?
A: The specific mechanism hasn't been published, but it probably works the same way as deployment. As in, when the RW starts, the game checks which terrain type is currently selected as default. I'll update here when more specific info will be available.

Q: Is this an update or only an event?
A: From the update: "For 10 days, wise individual ...", so it looks like it is temporary at the current stage and only for the duration of the event.

Q: What about Maverick pack, how does it behave?
A: When it comes to moving between divisions with Maverick packs, it only means you will be hitting accordingly with the strength cap of the division in question, but you can fill your terrains freely per the limit of your original division.

So, for instance, if you have 200k strength in division 4, you can split it to five terrains and max them out (40k str x 5 terrains), but if you change to division 2 for a battle, it will only count as hitting with a 25k strength (if the terrain is right, of course). So the cap just moves with the division.

Feel free to ask questions and I'll answer if I can. General comments are always welcome.

Cheers,
- Caesar