Celestial Tournament: Round Strategy

Although it went to three games and twice to VoD, I've come to the conclusion that last night's match was somewhat of a slaughter. Which seems to be the general trend – most matches in the tournament have been won 2-0, meaning one team runs away with it. Even the now-classic QQ/EW match was made up of an amazing first round followed by two let-downs. The reason, I think, is the tournament's format. It's a best of three but the while the pairings and order of battles are determined more or less randomly, the advantage goes to the team that gets challenged first.

Maps, after all, aren't random or pre-determined even though if this was an absolutely fair tournament they probably would be. Instead, the choice of where to play is left up to the guild that's being challenged. And that gives them a sizable advantage because they can tailor their build to the environment while their opponent has no clue what to expect. One thing I'd like to see but haven't is an break-down of which maps have been used in the tournament. I suspect that if there were such a list that we'd see that it's maps like the much reviled Jade and Corrupted that are being used. Maps that reward one strategic extreme or the other while more flexible maps are being ignored. Even in the match last night the choices were Burning and Meditation, pretty much peer-acceptable versions of the 8v8 scrum forcing Jade and the split-friendly Corrupted. Those are the maps that teams are going to favor because they allow them to play to their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Afraid of a 5/3 split? Pick Jade and you don't have to worry so much about it. Want to run your opponent around the map because you crumble in flagstand battles? Well, Corrupted's a big circle and your gank has a straight shot at the Lord without worrying about being sandwiched from behind.

There's nothing all that unfair about map choices during ladder play because you have no idea whether you're going to play. Your opponent could be higher ranked and you'll be home with the advantage, presumably of knowing your home terrain, or they could be lower ranked and you'll be away and deprived of that slight advantage. Could be either and while you want to have a plan that's suited to your guild hall you might play anywhere so it doesn't pay to scheme too much for where you'll be playing. But in tournament play, you know your opponent and you know when and where you'll be playing. That gives teams the opportunity to skew their builds to an even greater degree.

And this gives a big advantage to the team which gets challenged first because just like the ladder, their opponent has no idea what to expect. Their best move is to go with a build that's going to be able to handle everything moderately well but is going to be overwhelmed by something truly extreme – a balanced build, in other words (Which, actually, isn't what OoX went with last night. We started off going aggressive with a 2xWRPM which really needs to steamroll early or its in trouble. But we felt that would be able to split well enough and cope with most things well enough and that a little shock and awe would set the table for the rest of the match. And, again, if it wasn't for a disastrous first few minutes it might well have worked.). But that plays into the hands of their opponent who are armed with the knowledge of where they'll be playing and have the opportunity to push things to the extreme. That home field and build advantage gives them a significant edge, all things being equal, and if the teams are evenly matched, you'd expect the team challenged first to win.

The battle then goes to the other team's map where the first team can either win and close out the match or lose and send things to a decisive third game. Unlike the first game, they'll have had a look at their opponent and while they might switch their builds up they have at least some idea what to expect and how that team will react to certain tactics. The homefield advantage in the second game is not as big of an advantage as it is during the first, then, and while you'd expect the home team to win, the odds aren't quite as high.

That third game, however, takes place on the map of the loser of the second game. Meaning, it should, if home field advantage holds, take place on the map of the first team. Even if they switch, they again have the advantage of knowing where they'll be fighting and crafting something to take advantage of that. And with a twenty minute grace period between matches, it's not that difficult to do so.

The net result is that the team listed second in the pairings has a decided advantage over their challenger. It's not so big that it can't be overcome but between equal teams it's enough to turn things in their favor. Throw in the fact that the skill level of guilds competing is no where near equal and you have a recipe for a lot of blow-outs. But it's the fact that OoX only played one game on our map that shows me we were not just a better team but a much better team.

Which, you know, good for us and all but I wonder how this is going ot work out with the upcoming Automated Tournaments. This Celestial Tournament was thrown together using the existing tools and the simplest way to do so was through unrated guild battles. That's why the games aren't on observer and we have to send in screenshots and everything else but it also means that the system has a lot of cracks that can be fixed with the tools available to the ATs. For one, I think it's pretty well established that letting guilds pick their own maps leads to trouble. Whether it's going to be a completely random selection, a pre-determined map for all battles during a tournament, or a small section of the existing maps to be valid choices for tournament play it should be easy enough to include in whatever code is going to automate these things. Add in some better bracketing to ease scheduling concerns – as I've said repeatedly the three choices of regions just aren't enough to adequately model the times teams play at and a lot of scheduling concerns and forfeits could have been avoided by matching guilds from similar timezones in the first few rounds. Along with a better system than simply random pairings – an accelerated pairing system to reflect past tournament success would be my favorite, of course - and a lot of these concern fade away. The details of the AT haven't been released but hopefully they've learned from the lessons of the CT to build it well.