Top 5 Features that would be pretty awesome

Although some might be under the impression that AWBW moves slowly or even stands still, truth is that new content does get added over time. Tag games, CO bar percentages, being able to see unstarted games on a map, old leagues, the global league etc. haven't been around forever, but have proven to be substantial additions. And I'm sure that everyone has already thought of a feature that he would like to see on AWBW. So without further ado, a list of ideas that sound pretty sweet to my ears. Feel free to agree or disagree to your heart's content.


5. Display Additional Information 

To be more exact, displaying unit count and unit value on the game page, in addition to the information you currently can find on it. Both these parameters, especially in conjunction, are useful tools to judge the state of a game. Furthermore, unit value would make it far easier to look at maps for possible FTA/STA advantages. At the moment the only option is counting, which is both tiresome and prone to errors. Without significant strain on the server, this minor feature would help gameplay development overall since it allows players to analyze games more easily, understanding when unit value or unit count are more important and to what extent you can afford to trade one for the other. The minor sideeffect of disenchanting complex looking games is unfortunate, but a sacrifice that is bound to come with more exact analysis, no matter whether the information is displayed or you have to count every turn.

- Original idea by ichbinsehselber (although it might have been suggested in the past already)


4. Days of Ruin Fog of War

Apart from the fact that FoW apparently still suffers from a few glitches, what lures people away from this gamemode in general is that the new element compared to vanilla AWBW, namely vision, is a mechanic that encourages defensive play and guessing. Especially forests are for the most part impossible to attack into, making gameplay unattractive on a lot of standard maps. 
The FoW in DoR at least partly offers a solution to this by making players keep vision of what they have seen in this turn even if it is not in vision range of their units right now, enabling them to do recon sweeps or checking forests with infantry. Not only does that lead to a less defensively orientated game, it also adds a new layer of complexity and skill. 

- Suggested several times already


3. Chess Clock

It has not been an issue for quite a while, but will surely be once major tournaments start again. The Boot/AET system, while fulfilling its purpose, is limited in functionality. Long AET intervals make overly long (in terms of real time) games possible, disrupting the flow of tournaments. On the other side, low Boot/AET punishes people who generally play fast, but regularly have extended periods of time where they can't access AWBW. A chess clock, used in a very popular game called chess, gives both player an absolute amount of time they have to play their turns, adding additional time everytime a turn is completed or when a certain part of the game (f.e. day 20) is reached. It would be a fair system that encourages people to play decently fast while still leaving enough room for possible absence. By setting the chess clock to very low values (like in chess) it would also enable players to play regulated real-time games.

- Original suggestion by Ploumeur (although it could have been me too, not too sure)


2. Replay Saver

Obvious what it does, and obvious why it would be great. A lot of great games have been lost forever because games get deleted some time after they finish. According to rumours and certain very credible persons, a script that saves replays externally would be rather easy to program, so there is some hope that it will happen eventually without people dying for it.

- Original suggestion by someone, I should have started to include these seeing that I actually don't remember them anyways


1. Deterministic mode

Last but not least, my personal pet peeve which is supposed to remove all sorts of luck from the game, instead replacing every instance of luck with it's average. Countless people have felt the frustration of doing only x damage with a x9% attack, and I would not be surprised if games have already been lost solely by luck (even without accounting for Nell, Jugger and Flak). Several key matchups in the game are only OHKOs/2HKOs/3HKOs with sufficient luck. Seeing that players generally do avoid walls that can be broken with enough luck, and don't attack into walls if luck can screw them over, it means that players who wall perfectly somehow play with a disadvantage against players who do not, which kind of defeats the purpose of playing well. 
Even simple tank-inf fights can be decided by luck, seeing that the most basic 55% matchup on roads varies between a 7-5 and 8-4 result, doubling the HP advantage you gain if you are lucky. As every HP and every shot counts in these tense scenarios, it can very well decide games. 

Apart from disabling certain COs (Nell, Jugger, Flak) and having to adjust others (Rachel, Sonja), there is little reason to not use deterministic mode for leagues and tournaments if it ever comes into existence, as it allows for fairer competition.

- Original suggestion by Ultra Storm

_________________________________


So much for that topic. 

As a short status update, the Global League has gone to the main site and as of now has nearly 150 people playing in it, more or less exceeding everybody's expectations.
The AWBW Cup is starting it's signups for October, so keep an eye open for that if you want to play. 

- Hellraider

AWBW Global League Top 10 Review

Last Friday marked the 1 month anniversary of the AWBW Global League on the forum. Doesn't feel like it's been that long, huh? As of then there were 51 players competing in the league with 101 current games running and 222 finished, which is quite a lot for just one month. Although the league standings have yet to stabilize entirely, we are beginning to see the best players rise to the top of the standings, as the newer and less experienced players slip towards the bottom. Overall, players who play games faster are rising or falling faster than slower players, meaning that many players have not yet reached their true rating due to a lack of game results.

Obviously we can't yet draw any meaningful conclusions from the rankings, but nevertheless I'm going to take a shot at it. Here are the current (as of while I'm typing this) top 10 players.

1) Kamuscha - 1095.82, 35-4-4
Representing the USA, Kamuscha is the current league leader by a large margin, although he also had the benefit of a 1004, 22-3-3 record coming into the league from prior official events. However, his 13-1-1 record since then shows that he certainly deserves his place at the top, and I expect Kam to remain at or near the top for the foreseeable future. Games to watch: vs. the Weakest Xiaoniao.

2) The Weakest Xiaoniao - 997.73, 20-6-2
Hailing from China, Xiaoniao is certainly not living up to the "Weakest" part of his name, as evidenced by his #2 position in the league. Although his rating is inflated a bit due to his fast game-playing (with 28 games finished), he is undoubtably a dangerous opponent. Easily his biggest recent win took place against fdkanns, one of the elite players on the site. However, he has otherwise struggled against top players, and looks to be in trouble against walkerboh01 and also against Hellraider.

3) Hellraider - 946.15, 5-1-0
Like Ultra Storm and Kamuscha, Hellraider's rating is slightly inflated from a pre-league official record of 2-1. However, the Austrian powerhouse was the best player on the site before a prolonged absence, and is 3-0-0 in the league so far. One of those two wins was enough to hand Kamuscha his only league loss though, showing that he hasn't lost his touch. I expect Hellraider to continue to rise up the standings and challenge for the top league ranking. As noted earlier, he currently is playing the Weakest Xiaoniao.

4) tale - 945.78, 16-7-2
Another Chinese player, tale is seen as somewhat of a surprise at the #4 position. While he has been a solid player for some amount of time, his play in the league suggests that he is ready to start making a name for himself as one of the top players on the site. However, with few results against some of the current top players, I would not be surprised to see tale start to slip down the rankings as time goes on. A recent loss vs. Hellraider supports this. Games to keep an eye on: vs Black Mont-Blanc.

5) Ultra Storm - 941.12, 8-2-0
Breaking the Chinese trend at the top of the standings, US is currently representing Finland in 5th place. Although his rating says 8-2-0, he was 5-2-0 from former official results, making him 3-0-0 in the AWBW Global League. In fact, it has been a long time since the current #1 player on AWBW has lost a game. I expect him to be challenging for the #1 rank in the league as he finishes more games. However, he might be in trouble here, and against the 1-26 OA_Stupid at that.

6) Im_Pro_You_Blow - 941.04, 11-3-1
Mere percentage points behind Ultra Storm, IPYB is the first entry on here whose nationality I don't know. Similar to tale, IPYB has benefited a bit from his faster playing rate and will likely be hard-pressed to maintain a top 5 ranking in the future. Although he doesn't have many results against top players, he did score a draw with Kamuscha in a very crazy game. Other games to watch: vs. ramdalucksta7 and vs. tale twice.

7) frostylight - 896.21, 5-2-0
Frostylight is a one-time veteran of AWBW who has recently returned to the site after a prolonged absence. With a previous rating of 1-1-0, frostylight is 4-1-0 so far in the AWBW Global League, and has clearly not lost the touch at the game. With one loss to tale and one win against the Weakest Xiaoniao, frostylight looks to be deserving of his current standing, and will likely continue to hang around in the top 10 for a while. Games to watch: vs. centerc and vs. 77salamence.

8) Sheryl Nome - 887.06, 4-0-0
A very new player, Sheryl Nome has only played 66 games overall, but is undefeated so far in the league. None of the wins have been against particularly impressive competition, so it is hard to define exactly how much of Sheryl Nome's rating is due to his/her own skill or just favorable opponents or both. We will find out soon enough, as he/she has a couple of tougher games against IPYB and against black_wave.

9) greed is good - 879.66, 12-11-0
Although his record doesn't really indicate that he is deserving of a top 10 spot, "greed is good" has apparently done well enough in his wins to earn the #9 ranking. He has lost to most of the better players he has faced, including the Weakest Xiaoniao, tale, IPYB, and others, but has taken care of business against weaker opponents and has been the beneficiary of multiple boot-wins. I don't expect "greed is good" to remain in the top 10 for long, as his inability to get past tougher foes will consistently keep him from climbing too high.

10) vunguyenquang90 - 875.97, 6-2-1
The relatively new vunguyenquang has made an immediate impact on the new league, jumping all the way up to the #10 spot in a short time. However, he has yet to meet any of the current top players, with his best winning coming in a 31-day epic against tale, and a loss to Roswell the Black Rose. Games to watch: vs. walkerboh01 and vs. dorian5.

Outside of our top 10 players, there are a few players who have the skill but not yet the game results to crack the top 10. Here are some well-established players I expect to rise into the top 10 in the future.

On the Rise
Black Mont-Blanc - 867.92, 6-2-0, current rank: #12
walkerboh01 - 848.20, 2-0-0, current rank: #16
dorian5 - 872.64, 3-0-0, current rank: #11
blanci1 - 825.00, 1-1-0, current rank: #23
excrimophalus - 821.11, 1-0-0, current rank: #25

Over the next month, I'm sure we'll see the league ratings settle down even more, and we'll begin to get a better idea of where players fit in skill-wise.

Until next time,
Walker

High Funds Metagame

High Funds Metagame

As the more active part of the forum may have noticed, there have been efforts made in order to research the effect that high funds has on general AW gameplay. Basic information as well as a list of testgames can be found in this thread. What I am going to do is to look at a few of these games and try to theorycraft together unit roles and their respective strength with high funds.

Let us start with this game.

A game with 2k income per property, and the first thing that jumps into the eyes is how surprisingly [i]normal[/i] it looks. Apart from a few singular higher tech units, you see the same units you'd see in a 1k game. Tanks, copters, arties, AA. A bit less infantry than normal for the CO that is not Sensei, but that is to be expected. With only 36k income per turn on the split map, there seems little incentive to tech beyond the normal units, apart from spending the slight excess money you'd accumulate from only building 3 tanks + 1 copter per turn. The biggest change is that the airport seems to be a fully fledged production facility now, as using it every turn will be good for your unit count.

The next point of interest is how surprisingly alive Rachel still is. If we ignore the fact that she has 12k income less, she seems to be in a pretty good shape. And considering that Sensei is more or less a direct counter to Rachel (as his spawned infantry can divert missiles easily), it emphasizes the fact that COs with long, powerful SCOPs have a huge advantage over COs with short bars or useless powers. The bar charges up so fast that any form of power usage means that you "waste" the immense amount of charge you'd have gotten from whatever battle is going on. Clearly, high funds makes the game a lot more powerbased due to this, as well as due to the fact that inf on inf and tank on tank brawls are much less common. Minor boosts seem to be far less useful than normally, shifting the CO tier list by quite a bit.

But for now, let us look at the next game.

With 3k income per turn, it is fairly noticeable that high tier units are a lot more prevalent. Most important, I want to highlight three things. First off, the power of bombers. To give a small taste of its power to those of you who aren't familiar with its damage values. A bomber with one tower OHKOs every single ground unit on roads apart from the megatank (off which it still takes 35%). It cripples Bships and cruisers beyond usefulness. That much focused firepower coupled with the fact that is unhindered by terrain, has 7 movement and can't be shot at by the vast majority of units makes the bomber probably the strongest unit available in the high funds metagame (assuming that Stealths are banned). An important question will be the balance between building bombers and fighters from the airport(s) you have. At any rate, I predict high funds to be very air-centered.

The next point I wanted to mention is the megatank. Yes, it is slow, and also expensive, but it offers something invaluable. Seeing that it is near impossible to get rid of megatanks without some of your own, it is an incredibly reliable wall which makes it easy to gain position. It has to be noted though, that the probable dominance of bombers as well as their fabulous movement, crippling them on bigger maps, might make life hard for this unit.

And finally, the last highlight is the apparent total uselessness of sea units, as long as air is around. This won't surprise anyone since it was the same with normal income, but it at least can be seen as finally confirmed.


For the end of this post, I'll list the various units and the roles that they will have in the 3k high funds metagame. Everything only my opinion, of course.

Infantry: Capture stuff, wall stuff. You don't have as many of them anymore, but they'll still do the same.
Mech: Useless.
Recon: Useless.
Tanks: Essential to have a few around to kill AA and attack indirects, but far less dominant than in vanilla.
Anti-Air: Incredibly necessary, it wouldn't surprise me if people will build more AAs than tanks at some point.

Artillery: Still great and cheap support.
Rocket: Everything depends on how fast they can reach the front and on how good you can shield them. If fast and easily protected, they'll be a staple. If too slow, pointless and if too hard to protect, the abundance of air will rip them apart.

Md Tank: Useful defensive unit, but seeing that the only unit that they are good against are tanks, I don't think they'll be too essential.
Neotank: Same as above, although higher offensive capabilites. But why build these if you can have bombers instead?
Megatanks Great defensive unit, although as map dependant as rockets.

Bcopter: Useless, because the airport will be occupied by other units and the abundance of AA makes them suffer.
Bomber: Staple unit, no doubt about that.
Fighter: Even if the only thing they do is killing bombers, they do it pretty damn well.

Sea units: Useless, apart from transports dependant on map design.
Piperunners: Err, ok.
Stealths: Banned. Invisible walls are pretty stupid.
Black Bomb: Also banned because even more stupid.

So that's it for now, my next blog post concerning this topic will probably cover the CO tier list after more data has been gathered.

Yours truly, Hellraider