Greetings, Alchemists!
We meet once again to discuss the state of the matches currently in progress. Just as we did in last week's blog, we’ll be covering what has been happening using information publicly available to all players. We do this to avoid unbalancing the game, as in the world of Cladia, information is more valuable than talisman fragments.
This week, the active matches are "Novato Party", "Partida Masiva", "Team Battle!" and the newly started "JoinNowBro!".
Index
1. Novato Party
"Novato Party" is the match reserved exclusively for the new Alchemists. As we mentioned last week, the player leading the game was Rascor3000. He wasn't just dominating because he was the only player with talismans, but he was also the player with the highest threat by a significant margin... However, it seems that what we’ve been predicting since the first week has finally happened: the giant Rascor3000 has been "defeated" by the challenger, Ayami, who had been in second place for the entire match, following the former leader, Rascor, very closely.
This is the in-game player ranking at Turn 41.
This is the threat evolution per turn throughout the match.
* Threat color legend for Turn 40.
We can see that, in terms of threat, LuaLeon currently holds the top spot—but only because both Rascor and Ayami have dragons in Limbo. What actually happened is that Ayami very astutely attacked Rascor while Rascor’s strongest dragons were away, hunting for the few remaining talisman fragments. As we had warned in previous weeks, Rascor couldn’t afford to let his guard down; any of the challengers could attack at any moment to steal his precious 9 talisman fragments.
True to his aggressive playstyle, Rascor decided to take a gamble and used his dragons to attack Ayami’s tower in Rascor's own region... But he failed to cast "Premonitory Dreams".
For the newies: this is a spell that causes the dragon it’s cast upon to defend you if your capital is attacked, provided it’s in the same region.
So yes, he destroyed Ayami’s tower and sent his dragons to Limbo... but the capital was defended by only 2 dragons, who perished in combat trying to protect Rascor's capital. In the end, as we’ve already mentioned, Ayami took the talismans and is now just 2 fragments away from winning the match. The "bright side" is that Rascor didn’t lose all of his dragons, as those stationed in other regions remain intact.
Now, the match is in a very interesting state. Ayami could try to play defensively, synthesize 2 fragments, and win in 6 turns... but he could also play aggressively and try to obtain the missing fragments by eliminating the BOT Galadon or the player IkerDiCa. Or even a combination: eliminate one and synthesize the other.
On the other hand, Rascor is thirsty for revenge and is already planning how to take back his talismans. His options are certainly not easy: he can either ally with IkerDiCa to try and take down Ayami together or try to catch Ayami off guard. Meanwhile, IkerDiCa is completely intact and could try to take advantage of his healthy state to attack Ayami, who currently has dragons in Limbo returning next turn.
Let’s see what happens in the coming turns.
2. Partida Masiva
As we mentioned in the previous blog, "Partida Masiva" is a record-breaking game in the world of Cladia, as it features the highest number of human players we have ever had in a single match.
This is the threat value over the course of the 24 turns played so far:
* Color legend for player threat at Turn 24.
Since there are so many players, we are going to create another chart and legend focusing on the last 10 turns.
* Color legend at Turn 24.
This is the current in-game ranking.
As we can see, there has been a lot of movement in the rankings since last week. Jaxun has taken off and is now the highest threat player, with a 10K lead over the runner-up, TobotebXIII.
Regarding the number of talismans, The Fool is in the lead with a total of 3. There are 8 talisman fragments in this match, meaning every single one has now been collected.
Comparing this to last week’s ranking, we see that XaxitoEnjoyer has been eliminated—likely at the hands of "Salchiperro" (playing as "AlientoDeBallena" in this match). Additionally, the player Rezo managed to survive thanks to Contingency, though his talismans were taken. Rumor has it that Jaxun was behind it. We also witnessed something that hasn't been seen in Cladia for a long time: a player with talismans died due to a lack of gold—that player was Jonay.
For the newcomers (and even the veterans, as this is a rare occurrence): when a player holding talismans dies due to lack of gold, the game selects a random region and attempts to create a new location there. If successful, it adds all the talismans to that location and finishes. Yes, if Jonay had held 20 talismans, it would have placed all 20 in the same spot... in the interface, we would only see the tag indicating the location has talismans, but not how many.
If the game cannot create a new location (because the region reached its limit), it searches for an existing neutral location and places them there.
If there are no neutral locations in that region, it picks a neutral location from any other region.
If there are none of those either, it looks for a neutral settlement in any region.
Finally, the most controversial part: if none of the above are available, it finds the player with the fewest talismans and the lowest threat and gifts the talismans to them.
Some players have suggested that instead of placing talismans in a random location, it would be better for Kanendulas to collect them—and if Kanendulas has already been defeated, he should return even stronger, carrying those talismans.
3. Team Battle!
As we mentioned last week, Team Battle! is a quite peculiar match. This is only the second team-based game ever played in the world of Master of Cladia. As we’ve noted before, the previous match played in this format was the longest in our history, lasting a total of 70 turns. Let’s hope this one doesn't drag on as long as that one!
Current in-game ranking:
Este sería la amenaza de los jugadores hasta el turno 29
* This is the player threat level up to Turn 29.
Color legend for player threat at Turn 29.
We can see that Aarón has reclaimed the lead in terms of threat, although he is being followed very, very closely by Salchiperro and Toboteb.
Regarding the number of talismans, the player with the advantage is JuanLu, with 2 talismans in his possession.
However, this is a team match, so we are going to create another chart showing the Joint Threat (the sum of the threat of both group members) and the Average Threat for each team (the sum of both members' threat divided by 2).
With "Joint Threat", we can see how well the group is performing based on its members "individually", while the "Average Threat" allows us to see how the group functions as a collective unit.
We have put together some small charts using Jaxun’s magic book, "Eksel", to visually compare the groups' Joint Threat.
Here is a visualization of the average threat.
This week, BetoBot and Raimon remain in the lead for another week after overtaking Ayami and Aarón's team.
However, if we look at the in-game player rankings, we can see that there are three groups holding 2 talismans each: the Toboteb & Tim duo, the JonatanGil & Lcapote team, and the pair of Salchiperro (El yuca) & Rumomo.
In this match, there are 8 talismans scattered throughout the world, and as of Turn 29, all of them have been collected.
It appears that Ayami and Aarón's team survived Juanlu's incursion into their region, but so far, there seem to have been no reprisals.
4. Join Now Bro!
As we mentioned in our blog, last week we were blessed by the gods of Cladia with a new update that introduced a brand-new mechanic: "Relevant Experimentation".
If you want to know all the details of the update, I’ll leave the summary blog post here. If you want to stay up to date on how the new Relevant Experimentation mechanic works, here is the link to the FAQ explaining it.
To test the new version—and especially the new mechanic (which is only available in matches that started AFTER the update)—we have created the "Join Now Bro!" match.
There is nothing particularly special about this match: 8 human players, 4 normal regions, and 2 neutral regions. No special rules other than testing the new experimentation and its chaotic effects. The match is currently at Turn 11, so not much has happened yet, but here is the current ranking.
As of right now, TobotebXIII is leading the pack in both threat and talismans.
* Color legend and threat levels at Turn 10.
Although Jaxun held the lead almost from the start, Aarón overtook him in the previous turn (Turn 9)... However, his time at the top only lasted one turn, as Toboteb jumped from 3rd to 1st place in a single move. Now, Aarón remains above Jaxun, but by a very, very slim margin... It makes you wonder: how will Jaxun take being in 3rd place? Many in Cladia fear the potential consequences.
5. Conclusion
That is all for this week, Alchemists. The atmosphere in these matches is slowly heating up, and with "first blood" already drawn, we’ll surely have plenty to talk about next week. It is worth noting that these games underwent an update during their progress, which has resulted in a one-turn delay.
