Samurai Warlords IX

[L'Impresario]

There is a difference here: In a 2v2 (and this is even more pronounced in a 1v1) you usually engage over a limited front where most "kills" are indeed kills and not captures, while at the same time you 're more likely to get a less decisive win due to less "outside" factors -eg allied cav- that can affect the various match-ups. Even if the winner gets a clear victory, his "killing potential" will be limited by his ability to not to rout all of his enemies together. Similarly, in a 3v3 or 4v4 in order to get a high killing score you 're counting on the dispersal of the routing enemy forces and your cav superiority. If you can have a dedicated cav to win all those struggler kills, then you can afford to suffer more losses at some point, sooner or later. Eitherway most of the time you can't continue a rout solely with infantry or very few cav forces.

In the case of a "perfect encirclement", where you and your allies will be winning both flanks and pushing them towards the center, it's even more likely that kills will be minimized by a fast rout.

The reason Cain got a good score in the last game was due to it being a more decisive battle, a moment of bad synchronization with Cain (where he commited his left flank forces sooner than the "right time" and was under heavy pressure from Tomi - nearly got routed that is) and my deliberate attempt not to divert to Tomi's rear 2 or so from my 6 flanking cav, so as to prolong the time for captures.

[Puzz3D]

Well, it's clear that you can play in a way that attempts to maximize your or a team member's kills or kill differential, but I don't do that. I just play to win the battle, and I don't chase routers just to get more kills. I would say it's better to develop a style of play that you can use after this competition is over because the method being used to determine a winner is going to change. Right now it's just a method that allows random teams while still designating a single winner for the day's battles. I would have stuck with total kills since I don't like changing rules in the middle of a competitoin. We need more players involved before we can establish a real, teambased competition.

We could just get together and play battles, but I appreciate Tomi's effort to give a more visible face to Samurai Wars since it was languishing badly before this. We now have a new stat and money level which, in preliminary testing, appears to improve the gameplay as a result of experience gained in this CWC event.

[Tomisama]

Regarding the high score system, I still believe that having a score based on *your* and not the opponent's is technically better, because it reduces the effect game size has. Therefore, whether you're playing 2v2 or 4v4, your army contains a certain number of men and is a more comparable measuring medium. After all in 4v4 you got about 720 more possible kills to hunt than 3v3, and 1440 more than 2v2. Your army's size remains the same.

I certainly see your point Alex.

And if it weren’t for random draw allies, I believe it would provide a good measurement.

We have used something similar in a previous contest, where the “value” of the surviving troops, compared to the “original cost” of the armies, gave us a percentage score to compare between battles.

But it was only used when combining the value of “all” of the winning side’s survivors, giving us a “team” score. When applied to individuals in a non-team random army group, the possibility that an ally could “hold back” to get a higher score, lurks in the shadows.

And of course the above was only good for comparing same size army groups (2v2, 3v3, etc.).


As far as just keeping the Kills score by it’s self. The possibility exists as we have seen, where the member of a loosing side could manage to “out-Kill” the individual winners of the Battle. My apologies to Tempiic, but that was the rule at the time

The “minus losses” helps keep that in check, and also limits rush armies that can get many Kills, but also incur very heavy Losses. The Emperor tells me that he considers heavy losses to be poor generalship

We could try to limit our Battles to 3v3 or 4v4 to get a better balance for comparison, or only accept scores from Battles of a certain size. But I am not sure our Samurai Warlord community is that strong yet. Maybe?

I know, another change? That may not be healthy at all. But this has been a grow-your-own Competition from the beginning. So let me know what you think