Guild Battlegrounds

Guild Battlegrounds is a feature which was introduced to the game by InnoGames on 14th November 2019. It is envisioned as an alternative guild feature to Guild vs Guild. It is also an attempt of bridging the gap between mobile and desktop players. However, it is not a replacement of Guild vs Guild and both will exist side by side.

The only requirements for participating in Guild Battlegrounds are that the player must be a part of a guild and has to have researched the Military Tactics technology.

In a nutshell, all guilds who want to participate will be match-made into various battlegrounds. Each battleground is its own map that holds five to eight guilds and will last for 11 days. Within each battleground, the participating guilds will fight for victory by holding as many provinces as possible for as long as possible.​

Gameplay

Accessing the Map

Once the player has researched the Military Tactics technology and is a part of a guild, the Guild Battlegrounds can be accessed by selecting the Battleground building located at the north-east corner of the city. The player will then be transported to an island nation, which contains a fixed number of provinces.

Overview

Five to eight guilds battle each other for 11 consecutive days. Each guild starts at the edge of the battleground map with a province, which cannot be taken from them, called the headquarter (HQ). The distance between neighboring guild headquarters will be about the same. From there, the guilds can start conquering adjacent provinces. Every guild member can click on an eligible province and either perform a fight or a negotiation. These fights and negotiations will always match the era of the player who performs it.

After completing the fight or negotiation, the member will provide his guild with one or more advances, which will be visualized as a conquest flag on the target province. The first guild to accumulate enough advances will gain control over the given province, whereas all other guilds that tried to conquer it as well will lose half the advances that they have made towards that province.

Gaining Provinces

Guilds can only attack provinces which are adjacent to one of their own. With each won encounter, advances are gained. The guild with the highest amount of advances in a province will have its “conquest flag” displayed in the respective province. Other guilds having advances in a province have their shield displayed next to the conquest flag of the leading guild. The closer the guild with the highest progress is getting to conquering the province, the higher the strength of the displayed flag will be.

When a certain amount of advances is reached, the province will get taken over. The amount of advances needed depends on the league - higher leagues needing more advances.

A province that was just taken will be under lock-down for four hours, giving the new owner some time to get victory points or build sector buildings. During lock-down, no guild can progress their conquest flag further in that province.

Attacking & Negotiating

Any guild member can tap on a province to bring up its window. There will be two options for earning points available there - Attack and Negotiate. Both the opposing army for attacking and the goods required for negotiation will depend on the player's age (similar to Guild Expeditions). Negotiating an encounter will bring more advances than attacking as more time and resources are required for it.

Defending

There is no means of directly defending the acquired provinces. The only way of defending your guild's provinces will be by trying to take the provinces of the attacking guild before they take yours. In this case, if the opposing guild loses all adjacent provinces they also lose all advances that they have made towards your province.​

Winning Battlegrounds

The leader board of a battleground gets dictated by victory points, which are automatically earned by every guild once per full hour. The amount of victory points gained depends on the provinces that a guild holds. Provinces towards the center of the battleground map provide many more points than those at the edge of the map. The player can see the rankings for their specific battleground at any time, listing all participating guilds, the number of provinces held, their current gain in victory points per hour, their current amount of victory points and the rewards of every rank.

Completion

Upon completion of each battleground, there will be a 3-days break for the guilds to rest, collect their rewards and make new preparations. The guild score will then be updated.

Victory Points

The Victory Points are particularly used to measure and count the points towards the completion of the current battleground, thus they are reset at the start of every new round. Each province, besides the HQ, that a guild holds will provide victory points every hour. The magnitude of points provided by a province increases the closer it is to the center of the map.

Provinces give a certain amount of victory points per hour and the values are randomized for every battleground and every season:

• Provinces of the inner most ring (ring coordinate 1), may give between 100 and 200 Victory Points per hour.
• Provinces of the second ring (ring coordinate 2), may give between 60 and 120 Victory Points per hour.
• Provinces of the third ring (ring coordinate 3), may give between 40 and 80 Victory Points per hour.
• Provinces of the outer most ring (ring coordinate 4) may give between 10 and 40 Victory Points per hour.

Attrition

Whenever a player successfully completes a battle or a negotiation (in the context of a Guild Battleground) they will build up Attrition. This is a percentage value that directly affects the (attack and defense) boosts of the defending armies and the difficulty level of the negotiations that the player will face.

So at some point, performing attacks or negotiating will become unfeasible as the defending armies become too strong and the negotiations become too complex or too expensive. However, attrition resets to 0% each day (midnight server time).

Currently, the attack penalty and the negotiation factor will stay the same after reaching level 100 attrition.

League System

According to a guild's performance, they can climb the ladder to join the highest leagues. New guilds start off in the Copper league and can advance to Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond league. Upon introduction of the Guild Battlegrounds on a Server, all existing guilds will get assigned to a league depending on various parameters of the guild that reflect the guilds activity.

A guild's league will be shown in the global rankings and also affects the magnitude of their battleground rewards. Performing great in a battleground will increase the guilds league rating while performing poorly will move the guild down a league.

MMR (Match Making Rating)

The guilds league is dependent on the guilds rating (MMR - Match Making Rating as Inno calls it).

The guilds MMR can reach from 0 to 1000.

When the Guild Battlegrounds were introduced, every existing guilds MMR was roughly estimated depending on various factors like guild size, activity in Guild vs. Guild (GvG), activity in the Guild Expeditions, guild level, and so on. Hereby the MMR was intentionally estimated too low, so no guild started out in the diamond league and only a few started in platinum.

Every guild founded after the introduction of the Guild Battlegrounds, will start in the copper league with an MMR of 0.

After the initial MMR estimation, the MMR will only change depending on the guilds ranking in the respective battleground.

Depending on the placement and the number of opponents in the battleground, the guild loses or gains MMR when the battleground concludes:

Should a guild be pulled into a battleground of a higher league, that guild would receive a bonus of 50% on the MMR gain if they place in the upper half and receive a discount of 50% on the MMR loss in case they place in the lower half.

As can be seen from the MMR range for the leagues and the gains and losses of MMR for every battleground, it might take a couple seasons to rank up or down if the guild repeatedly places only slightly above or below the middle. Even when placing first or last, it might take two or three seasons before a change in league can be observed.

Match Making

The Battlegrounds match making algorithm takes the guilds in the order of their MMR and puts them into battlegrounds together. That way all guilds in a battleground will have similar MMR values.

In the case a league has no guilds, there will be no battlegrounds for that league. In the case a league has fewer then five guilds (left), the guilds with the highest MMR of the next league down will be pulled up into the higher leagues Battleground.

Example

In the beginning there might be the case that there is only a single platinum guild and eight gold guilds. In that case, the four of the gold guilds with the highest MMR will get paired with the only platinum guild in a platinum level battleground. They will receive platinum level rewards for the season and they will have higher gains and fewer risks regarding the change in MMR depending on their placement. The other four gold guilds will be paired with the silver guild with the highest MMR to play in a gold level battleground. The silver guild will gain the before mentioned bonuses.

Province Buildings

Each province has up to three slots for province buildings. Each province building affects its own or adjacent provinces in a special way. For instance, they may make taking an adjacent province easier or they may make it harder for the enemies to take the province.

Any member with the "Battleground Constructor" role can access provinces of their own guild to decide which of the available province buildings they want to build. However, each province building takes time to complete and will cost guild treasury goods to be constructed.

The costs depend on the building. The costs given below are the total amount of goods which is split over three random goods. The goods can be from any era represented in the guild at the start of the battleground - bronze age players hereby will be counted as iron age players. The more players are of a specific era, the more likely it is that a needed good is from that era. The respective goods and specific amounts are randomised for every building, guild, province and battleground.

The building time can be shortened by using 50 diamonds. The same building can be build multiple times per province if the province has multiple slots for province buildings.

If a province gets taken over, each province building that was being built there has a 50% chance to be destroyed. The remaining buildings will benefit the new owner.​

	Name	Properties	Costs	Building Time
	Outpost	This province requires +10% advances to be conquered.	500	5 hours
	Fortress	This province requires +30% advances to be conquered.	3,000	6 hours
	Decoys	If an enemy fights or negotiates to conquer this province, there is a chance of 15% that this enemy will suffer double the amount of attrition.	500	4 hours
	Traps	If an enemy fights or negotiates to conquer this province, there is a chance of 45% that this enemy will suffer double the amount of attrition.	3,000	5 hours
	Watchtower	If members of the owning guild of this province advance into adjacent provinces, they have a 8% chance to not increase their attrition level.	500	1 hour
	Siege Camp	If members of the owning guild of this province advance into adjacent provinces, they have a 24% chance to not increase their attrition level.	3,000	2 hours
	Banner	This province generates 10% more victory points.	250	30 min
	Statue	This province generates 30% more victory points.	1,500	1 hour
	Palace	This province requires +30% advances to be conquered. This province generates 75% more victory points.	12,000	6 hours
	Militia Barracks	unknown - not implemented (yet)

Battleground Rewards

When a battleground ends, guilds may obtain various rewards which depend on placement:

• Prestige Points for the ranking according to your current guild rating (MMR)
  • 18 prestige per point in MMR
• Guild Power according to placement within a battleground
• Fragments for the Statue of Honor

A guild needs 40 advances or more total to receive a reward.

Copper	Rank	Nr. of Fragments of Statue of Honor	Guild Power
	1	13	54,600
	2	12	47,900
	3	11	43,300
	4	10	40,800
	5	10	40,400
	6	10	39,900
	7	10	39,500
	8	10	39,100

Silver	Rank	Nr. of Fragments of Statue of Honor	Guild Power
	1	39	163,800
	2	35	143,500
	3	31	129,700
	4	30	122,300
	5	29	121,000
	6	29	119,700
	7	28	118,500
	8	28	117,200

Gold	Rank	Nr. of Fragments of Statue of Honor	Guild Power
	1	65	273,000
	2	57	239,000
	3	52	216,100
	4	49	203,000
	5	48	201,600
	6	48	199,000
	7	47	197,400
	8	47	195,300

Platinum	Rank	Nr. of Fragments of Statue of Honor	Guild Power
	1	91	382,200
	2	80	334,800
	3	73	302,600
	4	68	285,200
	5	68	282,300
	6	67	279,300
	7	66	276,400
	8	66	273,500

Diamond	Rank	Nr. of Fragments of Statue of Honor	Guild Power
	1	130	546,000
	2	114	478,200
	3	103	432,200
	4	97	407,400
	5	96	403,200
	6	95	399,000
	7	94	394,800
	8	93	390,600

Loot

Apart from rewards for your guild, there are also individual rewards; whenever you contribute an advancement (by fighting or negotiating), there is a chance to loot some Forge Points, Goods, a military unit or even Diamonds. This chance will be higher in case the advancement is made by negotiating. Looted Forge Points will be added to the players Forge Points bar.

The chances given below are counted occurrences so far.

Loot Distribution

	League
Chance for	Copper	Silver	Gold	Platinum	Diamond
Forge Points	12/28 for 2	40/104 for 3	221/577 for 5	for 7	for 10
10 Goods	3/28	5/104	16/577
50 Goods		3/104	10/577
1 Military unit	2/28	2/104	7/577
5 Military units		3/104	17/577
Medium Attack Boost			6/577
Large Attack Boost			7/577
Diamonds	for 5	2/104 for 10	10/577 for 15	for 20	for 25
1 Fragment of Statue of Honor	50% (just for reference: 344/709)

Summary

• New battleground starts every 14 days
• 5 to 8 guilds of the same league fight on the battleground for 11 days if a higher league has not enough members, guilds from lower leagues may be pulled into the higher league battleground - they will have a chance for higher winnings and also have less loss in League progress if they come out in the lower half of the ranking.
• Winning / losing a battleground affects the league your guild is playing in, and the rewards you get after the 11 days
• A guild's league dictates which opponents they will face on their next battleground
• Victory is decided by gaining victory points from holding provinces on the battleground map
• To conquer provinces, guild members perform battles or negotiations
• Provinces can be customized with province buildings, which are unique boosts for this new feature (not yet implemented)
• All guild members that researched the technology Military Tactics (Iron Age) will be able to provide a valuable contribution for their guild

A list of FAQs regarding Guild Battlegrounds may be found here.

Gallery

• Guild Battlegrounds Building Copper
• Guild Battlegrounds Building Silver
• Guild Battlegrounds Building Gold
• Guild Battlegrounds Building Platinum
• Guild Battlegrounds Building Diamond

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