GA, banners showing is a disadvantage!
I got my attacks in and cleaned my opponent 30 mins into the attack phase. Now I am waiting for his response but the thing is he knows how many banners I collected from my attacks. As a result he has a clear advantage because he can calculate exactly how many banners he needs and that means he can adjust his squads to earn a few extra banners from undersized wins. This takes alot of pressure off of him.
This is true for any players who clear they opponents first. Their opponents will have an unfair advantage in banner knowledge. This encourages players to hold their attempts and wait for the last minute to get their attacks in after they have that info. If I have things to do during that time, or maybe my payouts, I cannot wait until 3 o'clock to get my attacks in.
My recommendation is to change GA so that your opponent's banners aren't showing. You will still be able to see their progress and how many of your squads they defeated, you just won't be able to see the exact amount of banners and play your squads accordingly.
This is true for any players who clear they opponents first. Their opponents will have an unfair advantage in banner knowledge. This encourages players to hold their attempts and wait for the last minute to get their attacks in after they have that info. If I have things to do during that time, or maybe my payouts, I cannot wait until 3 o'clock to get my attacks in.
My recommendation is to change GA so that your opponent's banners aren't showing. You will still be able to see their progress and how many of your squads they defeated, you just won't be able to see the exact amount of banners and play your squads accordingly.
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If you do well enough it puts your opponent at a disadvantage. If they think/know they need to be perfect they could make unforced mistakes. I think the pros and cons are about even and it comes down to personal preference.
So i agree with op, not showing banners/attepts against ur squad until revision time (it last 24h after 3rd round) would be much more fair to the playerbase.
I disagree. Those mistakes wouldn’t be unforced, since they come from the fact that they know how much they need to do and are trying to do so.
I agree with op that attacking second is actually a huge advantage since there is no downside to it but the information you get can help you greatly. Knowing precisely how risky you need to play to achieve victory is just so strong. I would even go further and say that if you wanted to make it really suspensful and fair you would need to not show anything your opponent did and only display it after the round has been played.
Of course you lose the « real-time war » kind of thing and it may not be as rewarding. So i guess not showing the opponent’s banner would be an easy way to make it at least a bit more fair.
Agree with this 100%....if the pressure is on your opponent it's easy to make unforced errors assuming of course you did well enough to force tight battles....trying too hard can be a killer. I always attack straight out of the gate and if my opponent can make a perfect attack run as well then so be it. I always play my squads as tight as I can so whether I know how many banners I need or not has zero bearing on my strategy
Agreed. Or if you completely blow someone out with 1 team each full clear, they might expect less from your defenses and then get surprised by a team hidden in the back. There are ways to use both times of attacking in your strategy.
A. You put yourself at this claimed disadvantage. If you believe, it's a disadvantage to go first, then don't.
B. Why didn't you also adjust your own squads to earn a few extra banners from undersized wins? If this is what decides the round, you only have yourself to thank for the loss.
If you're opponent doesn't know what you've scored they may go through and do their best and average 57.5 banners per squad. If they see you've cleared with an average of 57 before they go they may start to overthink it and save strong teams for the back sections thinking they need 58s across the board. Then they stumble and get a 52 or lose a battle in the front sections. That's definitely an unforced error.
You can absolutely change your opponent game plan if you go first and do well enough. Whether or not you think that's better than the advantage you gain from them not knowing what you scored is up to you.
I maintain that the pros and cons of both are equal and it comes down to personal preference.
It's not really about what's better or worse. It's just that the display of the banners adds more strategy to the mode. If both of us want to hit early as a strategy and you hit first, you executed your strategy better than I did mine. If you know you won't be able to play until later, maybe a strategy of going early isn't the correct one. I think it adds a bunch of subtelty to a game that occasionally (often) lacks it.
1. Don't assume everyone has no life and has the opportunity to attack whenever they want.
2. Some of us, including me, have our payouts during the last hour of GA so if they wait for the last hour to attack then we are forced to sacrifice our arena payouts for it.
3. Availability should never be a determining factor for the win, there's a reason attack phase lasts 24 hours and not 2.
To those who said that attacking first can be an advantage because you force your enemies to make unforced errors if you perform really well:
Your logic doesn't stand. A player will always do the bare minimum that's required to win. If I know I need to get two wins with undersized squads and all other need to be over 57 banners, then you will do exactly that and no more. There can never be a disadvantage to having this knowledge.
Regardless the benefit of attacking first doesn't outweigh the disadvantage
I would argue that hiding banners adds more strategy to the mode because it forces both players to maximize their efficiency. If I know my opponent slipped up in one battle then when I'm attacking second I don't have to put any pressure on myself.
I think that actually removes strategy. It forces the mode into "efficiency bordering on being reckless." It's a gamble then. Where with how it's set up now, if I decide to go first, I can play it safe when attacking and force you to try undersized squads if I think my defense can hold. This forces you to react.
I have a great start and end time (I'm in the Eastern US) and I 100% support this.
Speak for yourself friend lol... I never do bare minimum in any phase of this game.....if I can win with a hatchet but have a nuke, I will use the nuke everytime
Your pay style and mine differ greatly. I enjoy GA and always exhaust my battle opportunities. Saying "a player always does the bare minimum" is a bit of hyperbole.
This is clearly the best solution to it no matter what everyone thinks. If you think it's a disadvantage or an advantage, it's still only fair to rotate it so that everyone would have equal opportunitues. Personally I don't think it actually makes that much of a difference unless the last battle comes down to being one that needs to be won in an undersized squad. For a good chunk of Late December/Most of January I was in New Zealand so my start time and end time for Grand Arena was 11am instead of the 5am US eastern that I had found very easy to work around. Usually meant I had to do my GA battles the night before, but it didn't cause me to lose any of the rounds. One round I lost because I messed up an offensive fleet battle, and that was it. Even attacking first I still found that I ended up winning based on efficiency with multiple full clears and that had much more to do with my defensive set-up and how I positioned my teams and careful planning on offense.
You misunderstood. By bare minimum I meant the most efficient. If you know it takes a 4v5 to win the GA would you ever consider going in with a 3v5? When you can see the banners you can calculate that in advance.
Bare minimum =/= most efficient. You either misspoke or you changed what you were trying to say after the fact.
That side, if you can win with 3v5 100% of the time, why wouldn't you? Once you are forced to run a team that you normally wouldn't, and l which presumably has a less than 100% win rate, you are at a disadvantage whether it's 5v5, 4v5, or 3v5. Your opponent has already won their matchup. The only person under pressure and facing any risk is you. I don't consider that an advantage.
I also don't consider running a team that I don't have very high confidence in as having an advantage.
If you're consistently getting 58 and 59 banners then this shouldn't matter. If you're not then your disadvantage comes from the fact that you're inefficient.
As I mentioned, your opinion on pressure and risk may differ which brings it all back to personal preference.
Again i strongly disagree with that way of thinking which looks extremely illogical to me. Even if your opponent is unable to do basic math and count the number of banners needed, they will never, ever in any imaginable circumstance, have more pressure than you had yourself when attacking first. Attacking first will favor unforced mistakes, since you might play it riskier than needed due to lack of information. It will put pressure on you to spread yourself and play as if you needed to ace every fight because you don’t know if you actually do or not (meaning you are actually forced to try)
Attacking second will allow your opponent to know exactly how much they need to do and strategize accordingly. If they need to take risks, they would have taken them regardless attacking first, if they don’t they can avoid those risks and increase significantly their chances of winning. You can change your opponent gameplan. Just only for the better.
There is strictly zero downside to wait. But let’s say it’s a difference of « opinion » (i don’t think it is) and let’s agree to disagree.
I do think that hiding the banner count would add strategy, not take it away, and i do think that rotating start times would be another nice solution.
See the post right above yours. It happens.
And I'm not talking about you going in and clearing the board lackadaisically at 55 banners per squad (no fleets). That's really the only case where 'your opponent is unable to do basic math' comes into play.
If you have a solid game plan, and since we all set defenses I presume we all put a lot of thought into what our opponent might do and which teams we should save for offense, and you execute it well you should be averaging 57-58 banners per clear.
If you can't do that, if you consistently fail to execute, then you are absolutely right, you're better off going second. The pressure of your opponent averaging 58 might encourage you to take more risks or the lack of pressure from your opponent averaging 54 might relax you.
Whatever helps you get into the right mindset to hit that 58+ banner threshold is what is best for you. And it differs from person to person. Whether you strongly disagree or not (and since you do strongly disagree, you're kind of proving my point).
Perhaps in his case he was just purely outclassed and he had a rough matchup. It would not matter if he went first or second he'd probably lose anyways.
I still don't understand how having info and thus the ability to plan more efficiently, be in any case a disadvantage
How am I going first putting more pressure on me? I know exactly what squads I will attack with, how to maximize my offensive banners and dont have the pressure of taking unnecessary risks if i see I'm a few banners behind. Unnecessary risks ultimately lead to failure roughly half the time and if I can force my opponent into that position then that's a win for me. You can never lead from behind
Bare minimum is definitely = to most efficient. Bare minimum as in shortest path or easiest path or both. Bare minimum means you know you will win and you're not making wasteful decisions.