This week’s “Black Ice” World Event has been kind of interesting – because it’s kind of hard! (And can take ages.)
There’s lots of factors to this, including the level of Guild participation (my alt’s Guild is somewhat dead), the fact there’s no troops that directly support the Event medals, etc. But the thing I think is most interesting is the randomness of the battles.
TL;DR - The Hyndla Frostcrown battle increased in power twice as fast as any other in this event, making it especially difficult for even end-game players.
Analysis
Because the board is reset after every battle, always picking the optimal battle can quickly push any further progress out of our reach.
In the lesser round, two battles are equivalent, so the level of the battles advances at half the speed of the second round.
In the second round, Hyndla Frostcrown is clearly the optimal choice. The chances of Hyndla not appearing are 2/3 * 2/3 * 2/3 = 8/27 = 29.6%. So an optimal run will involve fighting Hyndla 70.4% of the time, every other battle.
But Hyndla also increases in level faster than the other battles: 20 levels per fight!
So, after using 40 Sigils (all wins), your Hyndla fight is likely to be at level 290.
That’s the point I stopped fighting Hyndla. At the same time, my other battles were as follows:
Berserker (U) – 34
Ice Witch (E) – 136
Ice Golem (E) – 136
Frostfeather (L) – 42
Mistralus (M) – 100
Hyndla (L) – 290
That’s a pretty unbalanced event!
Ideas for the Future
I think it would be pretty easy to simulate the optimal battle choices in these World Events for people buying up to each Tier in the Shop. Run the simulation 1000 times and see what the average level of every battle is. Then see if that makes sense.
When a situation like this one is detected, reduce the level advance of the problem battle. In this case, if Hyndla only went up 10 levels each win, she’d only reach level 150 after 40 Sigils – much better!
Beware of blocking an event for less active Guilds. My alt had to do what she could with only 2 Tokens from Guild Rewards. That makes a huge difference compared to a Guild that finishes all Rewards, that a weaker player cannot afford to compensate with Gems.
@Starlite… Well put! I’ve been noticing this in most, if not all of the world events. It’s just that depending on the restrictions and medals, it doesn’t always end up being a big deal.
But yes, there is a definite balance issue in terms of scaling battles, scoring and available battles. I’m not as good at analysis as you are, so my thought is always simply that the best battle (score-wise) is usually too frequently available. So my initial thought is always to make that rarer and adjust the reward thresholds. But I have a strong feeling I’m over simplifying it, and that won’t work out. Haha
It depends a bit on their intentions, as to what will work.
Personally, I just want them to be crystal clear, in the own minds, how the event is likely to play out, before releasing it. Modelling the optimal path is a good way to do this. And after all, they have experienced programmers that could knock that out in a couple of hours!
A strategy I’ve mentioned before, for events that don’t reset the board, is to try and get as many of the same battle on the board at once, since they’ll all be the same level, while giving increasing rewards. The real trick with this is probably to pick your moment. It would be interesting to model this approach, as well.
I’ve went up to lvl 590 or 610… where i’ve lost my 1st battle (some crazy skull skyfall killed titan before he could get barrier from brown, and my hyndla wasn’t summoning fast enough to replace front line). 2nd attempt wasn’t cursed by RNG so made it… but those were some final sigils… (cared to go ~1067 pts, with t3 shop)
Depending what tier are you trying to do, @cyberkiwi can tell you what is the most possible number of battles you’ll take.
I’d suggest, start hoarding “top battles” probably somewhere between 20-30 battles before finishing. (so a tier 0, who usually reached 60 battles, should start hoarding after doing 30-40 battles).
i didn’t find it that hard. I bought 1 tier just to guarantee fair contribution, and faced Hyndla up to level 430 (or more) I believe. Just kept using Ice Aegis, Jarl, Hyndla, Mistralus. Stealing top attack is always good (comes with barrier, Sentinel helps too), never cast Jarl if Raven is on board unless you want to lose it. Mistralus could have been a non-Mythic, didn’t really cast her much and I put her there for trait 3, but other troops can easily slot in.
