Vattle

I have a very small clan of only 2 members. Despite our very small size, we are very active in Naval Battles and have been slowly but consistently developing our base week after week, month after month with our results on naval battles. It might not be very impressive but it works for us, and we are happy with this arrangement. At this point we don't want to expand the clan size. So far we have always been paired to clans of our same size (2 members) in every naval battle engagement stage and everything was fine, until this weekend. This weekend, for the first time, our clan of 2 was set to compete against a clan of 5. No big deal, right? After all, as long as you play well you should have a chance to win, even if you go against larger clans. At least that's what I thought. WRONG. As the rules are set it turns out that the larger clan ALWAYS wins and the smaller clan has no chance at winning a naval battle engagement. Let me explain why: -Each member on a clan has 10 attempts to win a battle, achieve a certain base XP and then win a corresponding star. -The clan that collects more stars wins the engagement stage. Since my clan has only 2 members, our maximum number of attempts combined is 20, hence the max amount of stars we can collect is 20 stars, and that would mean 20 perfectly flawless naval battles without a single mistake. A top score, for a small clan like ours. As the opposing clan has 5 members, their total attempts will be 50, making it potentially possible for them to obtain 50 stars. Since the clan that collects more stars wins the engagement stage, 50 stars will always beat 20 stars. As things are set right now, the smaller clan ALWAYS LOSES. This actually happened to my clan this weekend. Before we even had the chance to play our first battle, our rival clan (of 5 members) had already achieved 21 stars. Since we can never get more than 20 stars max, it was lost before we even played a single battle. Extremely fair, right? You might think this is not a real problem since very small clans are not so common. But this issue affects every clan: Every clan paired against a larger clan will potentially lose on naval battles, as the larger clan has always more attempts. An easy solution would be to equalize attempts: When two clans of different size are matched, the number of attempts for both will be those of the larger clan. This measure would restore the balance again. In my own example my clan (despite having only 2 members) would now have 50 attempts (same number of attempts as the larger clan) and could now compete in all fairness. The winner would be the better clan and not necessarily the larger clan anymore. Anyway, this is just a suggestion and I certainly hope the devs will check this post and fix this huge unbalance about naval battles. I already filled a ticket and complained with support. Support did absolutely nothing and suggested addressing this issue to the forum in the hope that devs would see it and fix this issue, that is why I am posting here. I have no high hopes, but here it is just in case a dev actually reads this and does something about it. After all, It would be nice to have a chance of actually wining naval battles when you play better than your opponent, independently of the size of the clan. I am attaching a picture just to prove my claims: 1) My clan has only 2 members and can reach a max of 20 stars. 2) A rival clan of 5 members had already scored more than 20 stars (actually 21 stars) before we even had a chance to play our first battle. Please note that the rival clan is picked randomly, so my beef is not with them at all: They bear no responsibility in this whatsoever. My issue is with the current rules that allow for larger clans to always win. The rival clan appears here merely as an example, where you can confirm they have more than 2 members and that is why they reach a higher score. They might be very skilled or not, but that is not the reason of their victory. They are winning solely due to their larger size (larger number of members).

As I suggested in my OP, I would just equalize attempts, by giving both clans the same number of attempts. If you have a clan of 2 going against a clan of 5, you would have 20 attempts vs 50 attempts, totally unfair. i would give the smaller clan the same number of attempts as the larger one, then it would become a clan of 2 with 50 attempts vs a clan of 5 with the same 50 attempts, totally fair now. In a clan of 28 going against a clan of 32, i would give 320 attempts to each clan, instead of 280 to the smaller and 320 to the larger. If the number of members is not the same I would always give both clans the same number of attempts of the larger clan. That would solve this issue. With smaller clans, you will notice a huge difference right away and a totally unfair situation would become fair as the best clan would be able to actually win despite its smaller size. With larger clans, I am sure it will be a lot less noticeable as there are a lot of inactive players that make it very hard to know if that unfair advantage actually played any role in the victory. But in this way, at least, we would be sure that the larger clan has not an unfair advantage anymore. That's my whole point: Give equal conditions, and may the best clan win...

Naval battles aren t always won by the larger clan, but larger clans have the potential to win them over smaller clans. They have an advantage in attempts and they shouldn't. If two clans are matched, their attempts should be the same, in that way we are absolutely sure no one is benefiting from an unfair advantage. This advantage is obvious when considering a small clan: Lets say a clan of 5 (50 attempts) vs a clan of 2 (only 20 attempts) but it is there as well for the larger clans. Larger clans don t usually take advantage of it, as they don t need to. But they could if they wanted to and it bothers me that there is an unfair advantage out there waiting to be exploited.

Yes, I agree with you. But my whole point is that this advantage shouldn t even be there in the first place...

Hello Astolfo, thanks for your answer. I absolutely agree with you. Naval battles were probably not designed for smaller clans but they are out there, smaller clans play them and there is this issue with the system. It only makes sense to me to have it addressed. Obviously most large clans won t notice this as many of their player won t even be active. But I am sure there are many cases of larger clans that will actually notice it, such as large clans with very active but rather bad players, such as the example I gave ColonelPete. And probably many other odd cases that do not come to mind right now. From your own example, of course a clan of 6 could potentially beat you. But I would not have any issue with that, because they would be the most active players if they did, although your clan (280 attempts) has the big advantage over a clan of 6 (60 attempts). I would have an issue though if a clan of 29 did beat you because they had that extra player, with those extra 10 attempts. Of course, when you have a lot of members (and lots of inactive ones) it becomes rather difficult to assert that the cause of a defeat was due to having fewer members. We would be sure though, if there was a protection in place that didn t favor larger clans any longer... I also love naval battles and was really looking forwards towards the weekend engagement stage, before this discovery. This ruined a lot the whole thing for me. I don t like the idea of putting some effort into something and knowing that despite my best efforts it will always be impossible to win due to an unfair disadvantage. Maybe it s just me... Anyway, it would make a lot of sense to me, now that we know this flaw exists, to put in place a protection (as you described very well) not only for small clans but for all clans, in order to make sure that the winner is the clan that puts the bigger effort and not only the one that has the larger numbers...

Hello ColonelPete, thank you for your answer. If you crunch my numbers a bit, you will conclude that larger clans will always have a huge advantage in extra attempts when compared with the smaller ones. So, the larger clans have the potential to win every time against the smaller ones. This advantage is very obvious in the case of a very small clan such as mine, but will always be there in the larger clans as well. Lets take this example: Clan A vs Clan B - Clan A has 31 members - Clan B has 32 members The advantage is there: Clan A has 310 attempts at winning stars, while clan B has 320 attempts. The advantage is already there. Imagine both clans are pretty bad but very active: every player plays but every player will only win one star every 10 attempts, this would give automatically the advantage to clan B with 32 stars vs Clan A, 31 stars. Clan B would win not because they are more skilled, but simply because they have more members. In practice many players of the larger clans won t even participate so the advantage gets diluted, but it is there for anyone that wants to take advantage of it, and totally unfair too. Of course it makes a huge difference in small clans right away and I also suspect that MM paired me with a larger clan because there was not another same sized clan available. Either that or they matched me with a clan with a similar naval battle rating, which usually are larger clans (not large but always larger than 2 members). Anyway, even if in practice it doesn t affect large and small clans the same way, it doesn t mean it is right and I feel this issue should be addressed.