Campaign Stats
We've been mulling over the campaigns and some upcoming rule changes in the office as we are wont to do and Bloo put together some nice charts I though I would share. The info from these is readily available at Battleground Tools.
Victories:
This shows the winners and losers of each of the campaigns and how long they lasted. We use this to cross check with RDP cycle times and what not and of course look for trends. Of course charts can;t ever tell the whole tale as they don;t cover things like morale but they are interesting. Longer campaigns tend to be won by the Axis. Shorter campaigns tend to be won by the Axis. Since ToEs the Allies have had their first real strings of victories. I love pondering these types of numbers. What are your thoughts?
Thanks to Bloo for the data.
Victories:
Average Campaign Length: All-Time: 36 Days
Moving Average Currently: ~42 Days
All-Time Total: 49
Axis: 29 (60%)
Allied: 19 (39%)
Truce: 1 (2%)
(Percentages rounded)
Last 10 Campaigns (back to 2/21/2007, during which 1.25 was released):
Axis: 3 (30%)
Allied: 6 (60%)
Truce: 1 (10%)
This shows the winners and losers of each of the campaigns and how long they lasted. We use this to cross check with RDP cycle times and what not and of course look for trends. Of course charts can;t ever tell the whole tale as they don;t cover things like morale but they are interesting. Longer campaigns tend to be won by the Axis. Shorter campaigns tend to be won by the Axis. Since ToEs the Allies have had their first real strings of victories. I love pondering these types of numbers. What are your thoughts?
Thanks to Bloo for the data.
Labels: wwiiol
posted by Gophur at
11:24 AM
8 Comments:
"Longer campaigns tend to be won by the Axis. Shorter campaigns tend to be won by the Axis."
If I understand the below, I think that second sentence should read "Allied"?
Axis: 29 (60%)
Allied: 19 (39%)
If so, I'm guessing it's mostly down to the layout of the map and starting positions combined with maybe the fact that tier 0 is one of the more challenging equipment wise for the Axis.
Not sure if you saw the below thread, but I had an idea for moving starting lines that added a self balancing aspect to the map. It seemed to be almost universally popular with both Allied and Axis players:
http://forums.battlegroundeurope.com/showthread.php?t=218580
Sorry the above link seems to be too long to display. If you are interested, it's thread number 218580 and here is the basic idea:
"Probably an old idea but I think the starting front should move at the beginning of each campaign to a slightly more favourable position for the loser of the previous campaign.
So, if Allies win this campaign, the line moves West a couple of towns. If they win again, it moves again. When Axis win, it goes the other way.
It's a victory tax of sorts but it's small and understandable. It might also provide a bit of a morale boost for the losing side."
I don't know if you folks save your hourly population numbers...but if that data is available for say the last ten campaigns, it might be at least internally useful to develop some means of conflating hourly population numbers to arrive at a meaningful measure of side player-hours in each campaign, and (perhaps) either prove or disprove the common belief that small population differences are a key factor.
A similar analysis could be done by correlating wins and losses with some aggregate measure of kill ratios for major weapon classes (i.e. tanks and SPGs, fighter aircraft).
Of course, it's always difficult to develop meaningful aggregate representations of complex and varied data that can be correlated to a parameter with a very different time scale.
Yeah we save the hourly pop data. It can be useful but it tends to even out quite remarkably.
Moving the start line on a regular basis might be OK if we were playing fantasy world online. We aren't. We're playing World War II.
Now we do have some things we could change on the start line and we are looking at doing that, at least in the short term until we can build out more Axis towns. We never had to worry about this before as the Axis typically won 2/3 of the Campaigns. I think putting that factory in the south along with the incredible morale momentum of the Allies post ToE (and the removal of their "crutch excuse") makes it imperative we add some more back filed to the Axis. We also need to do that so we can implement the Victory Conditions Plan.
There's a fine line between treating the game like a football game and having some historical flavor. Technically the Germans are the aggressors. The Allies didn't have to go to Berlin to win, all they had to do was keep the Germans in Germany. That doesn't play as well as a game but some of that flavor needs to be present in the victory conditions. That can be achieved by having a winning score and allowing each side to accumulate points towards that goal by holding territory. The Axis then need to take territory to win. I don;t know that we'll go that direction of course but it is one possibility.
Fair enough, I can see why you don't like it. Thanks for the reply though.
After reading the thread one element became readily apparent. The variety that it would offer at map start iis compelling. I think the biggeswt challenges, once we throw away historical, is that some process would have to decide how much and what to change and why. Then it would also present the HC with a difficult time changing their starting placements every time and that is very difficult on them.
Not that I don;t like it, I just see some obstacles that might not be readily apparent to the "I vote for this!" posters.
Given the complexity of what you guys are doing, I'm sure that's almost always the case. Anyway, I'm glad you've seen it even if it doesn't pan out.
Offtopic: that matrox thingy you posted in the prod notes forum looks very, very sweet especially since you said it works with trackir. I'll have to start saving my pennies.
I have played for 6 years and have noticed some trends. Allies usually have high numbers during evenings in the USA and on weekends. This is most true at the beginning of a campaign. The Axis have highest numbers early Monday morning when the USA players have gone to bed after a weekend of battles and have made their biggest gains during that time. A campaign that starts on a Friday often results in taking of good amounts of territory by the Allies which the Axis attempt to recover Mondays and Tuesdays.
The Axis Tier 0 advantages are mainly seen as the Flak 88 and the Stuka where the Allied advantages are seen as heavy tanks and more generous capability to destroy Axis armor. The Axis advantages are difficult utilize in that the Flak 88 is of very limited use. It requires a long field of view which has been more difficult to achieve with the increase of the trees and bushes in the game. It is time consuming to set up and very fragile while requiring air superiority as does the other advantage which is the Stuka. Some have accused the Axis of not playing until Tier 1 equipment had been added based upon the lack of conquests during Tier 0. There may be a slight increase in Axis numbers at Tier 1 but I do not feel it is large.
There is the perception that the early tiers favor the Allies and that swiftly overwhelming the Axis before they can get to later tiered equipment leads to shorter campaigns being won by the Allies. It may be that the Axis campaigns wins take longer because there is more territory to take for the Axis to achieve victory.
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