Stats from the WCS 2019

60TD Ez mode here. 45:32 mark

This has nothing to do with balance, or "ez mode". The Axis are grossly outmatched in that engagement. IS-2, SU-85, SU-85, Jackson and Jackson versus Tiger, StuG and Panther.

Go do the math on the costs involved there and please come back to us with the result.
(Spoiler alert: the Allies brought over 1.5x as much value into that fight)

VonAsten played exclusively as OKW and USF.
Luvnest almost exclusively went SOV and OKW. He had 3 games as OH, none of these vs. SOV. He also was the only one playing as SOV against OH.
Noggano played mostly OKW and USF; he has 2 games as SOV, and 2 games as OH vs. SOV (winning 1).
Jove played 6/5/5 games as SOV, OKW and USF and only 2 as OH (one against SOV, one against USF, winning both).

Obviously you can argue that the players that mained OH didn't get to the semifinals because OH is shut down hard by SOV, but that's conjecture.

And then number of games is still limited...

I'm not saying the numbers are meaningless, they certainly can indicate a trend. However, I doubt that the data base is sufficient to prove something without the shadow of a doubt given the many factors that play a role.

The data set is terrible for trying to make conclusions. Having the four finalist rarely play Ost means that Ost will have much fewer victories than other factions and look like it is UP. If someone was going to analyze this like an actual statistician, the first thing they would do is throw out all of the outliers (3-0 or 3-1 matches). They would then be down to 5 matches with 25 games. However, win/loss is nominal data. You can't calculate anything on nominal data, you have to transform it into some type of numerical data. In this case, you would transform it into winning percentages. The problem now is that you only have five data points from the five matches. With just five data points, you couldn't calculate standard deviations for all the factions. Without a standard deviation, you cannot calculate a margin of error, compare means, or any other statistical check.

That said, it would be interesting to find out why they didn't pick Ost, in the same way that they didn't pick UKF. It may be that the four finalists didn't pick Ost because it is worse. Without input from them, we can only speculate.

This has nothing to do with balance, or "ez mode". The Axis are grossly outmatched in that engagement. IS-2, SU-85, SU-85, Jackson and Jackson versus Tiger, StuG and Panther.

Go do the math on the costs involved there and please come back to us with the result.
(Spoiler alert: the Allies brought over 1.5x as much value into that fight)

Axis lost 2 stugs, 2 tigers, 1 vet3 panther, 1 ht, 1 pwafer, some pgrens and 1 frag bombs

Alles lost 2 su85.

Some questions.

How is the cost of getting shrek pg, pak, stug, panther/wafer, tiger? Vs jackson, is2, su85

How did 60td make a mockery of axis tech up armour now?

Axis had been leading before hand. Allies even throw away a jackson at 44m mark.

How did allies managed to amass those tanks 1 min later?

If i am wehr i would think twice with another panther beforehand. Cost effective reasons with double Jackson on field. Besides the wehr player was short on fuel and mp.

The 60 tds were firing away just before the push. Free hits like nothing.

Does it not alarm all, all it cost them was 2 su85? Just simply using is2 armor, simply moving the 60td down the lane? Isnt it ez mode?

But there is no random faction assignment...

If I check out the games I have for the four semifinalists (and seems I have everything there except VonAsten vs. Stalingrad):

VonAsten played exclusively as OKW and USF.
Luvnest almost exclusively went SOV and OKW. He had 3 games as OH, none of these vs. SOV. He also was the only one playing as SOV against OH.
Noggano played mostly OKW and USF; he has 2 games as SOV, and 2 games as OH vs. SOV (winning 1).
Jove played 6/5/5 games as SOV, OKW and USF and only 2 as OH (one against SOV, one against USF, winning both).

Faction assignment isn't random - that's true. Side assignment, however, is.

Take VonAsten; as you said, he played exclusively OKW and USF. Again, for simplicity, let's say all of his games were 3:0. There might have been some 3:1 games, but it likely doesn't matter. Because all of his games were 3:0, that means any G1 as USF resulted in G2 being a win for OKW, then G3 going back to USF. If, however, G1 had him as OKW, then G2 was USF and G3 was again OKW.

G1's SIDE assignment was always random, so, this should average out to an equal number of games where he played G1 as OKW, and where he played G1 as USF. That means any match he played where he won 2:1 as USF/OKW should be balanced out by a future 2:1 OKW/USF match - resulting in an over-all USF/OKW win loss for him of 50:50.

And then number of games is still limited...

I'm not saying the numbers are meaningless, they certainly can indicate a trend. However, I doubt that the data base is sufficient to prove something without the shadow of a doubt given the many factors that play a role.

This is actually a valid concern. However, it's pretty much this data vs. no data. Like I said before, a +/- 10% win/loss ratio probably wouldn't be of note, simply because there weren't than many games; so random chance and match-ups could probably offset it by a reasonable amount. It's the +/- 21% over a dozen or more games that's suspicious.

No, you're still not understanding. When the matches are almost all 3-0, wining faction rate is determined solely by which faction was picked. Imagine for a second that instead of 64 players, there was just 2 players, Player B who won all of the matches and Player A who lost all of the matches (matches were all 3-0). If Player B plays more than half of his/her games as Soviets, you would conclude that Soviets are OP because the win rate was more than 50%

You keep trying to assert that players choice is random and follows a normal distribution, but it isn't and doesn't.

I literally just posted a chart showing how Player A can win every single game against Player B, and provided there's even ONE extra player, it'll still evens out. Yes, if you simplify it down to 2 players, you get the result you're talking about - but it's not a 2-player tournament, and it's also oversimplification.

If you can re-balance that chart to give roughly 50:50 win/loss ratios for Sov vs. OKW, USF vs. Ost, USF vs OKW, and somehow 72:28 for Sov vs. OST, you'd have a point. However, it's not possible if the starting side is randomized via coinflip, and also because it goes against your claim that the better player always won (which is likely true, due to the numerous 3:0 games).

Further more, as I've said several times now, player choice regarding SIDE (i.e. Axis or Allies) is random - it's a coin flip, as per the rule set. It's the faction choice that is player driven.

The data set is terrible for trying to make conclusions. Having the four finalist rarely play Ost means that Ost will have much fewer victories than other factions and look like it is UP. If someone was going to analyze this like an actual statistician, the first thing they would do is throw out all of the outliers (3-0 or 3-1 matches). They would then be down to 5 matches with 25 games. However, win/loss is nominal data. You can't calculate anything on nominal data, you have to transform it into some type of numerical data. In this case, you would transform it into winning percentages. The problem now is that you only have five data points from the five matches. With just five data points, you couldn't calculate standard deviations for all the factions. Without a standard deviation, you cannot calculate a margin of error, compare means, or any other statistical check.

That said, it would be interesting to find out why they didn't pick Ost, in the same way that they didn't pick UKF. It may be that the four finalists didn't pick Ost because it is worse. Without input from them, we can only speculate.

Yeah, pick rates are at least a relatively solid measure of the player's perceived faction performance (distinct from the actual faction performance), so in itself those are already a pretty good measure of faction balance (within the parameters of the tournament).

And I certainly wouldn't say that you can "prove" anything with these numbers. Hence my formulation that the numbers at best could indicate a trend. I figured this would be vague enough, no? Thing is, this is kind of the best shot we get. We certainly also can check out automatch stats (and I did so in the past), but these come with there own set of problems. These can all be pieces in a puzzle.

Ok, thinking about this the other way around: Assuming that a certain faction IS actually OP. This certainly will have an effect on the win percentages, right? Now, as we probably all agree, there are soo many other factors that contribute to these numbers which will skew the results in one way or the other. So, at the end of the day you'd have to make a judgement on how much of the resulting number is due to the OPness of a faction and how much is due to other factors. If you think that all of the other factors have a much bigger impact on the numbers, fair enough. But to some extent the actual faction balance will be buried in there...

Btw, I was wondering about your 3-0 and 3-1 issue: True, the 3:0 tell you little about details of faction balance as those matches more likely were mostly decided by the discrepancy in skill level rather than faction performance.

Sidenote on 3-0 rounds:
Show Spoiler

But the 3-1: Well, actually I would consider these very interesting points. Clearly, one of the players was good enough to realistically beat the other as he showed in the one match he won. We still don't know whether it was faction performance, the map or luck (as we never do with these kind of stats), but I wouldn't know why you would consider this "datum" worth less than a 3:2 round or even an outlier.

Rework Consript upgrade
Germany most Panzer Vet2 armor bonus change to add less HP and less armor
OKW Tech tree need little change
USF are fine
UKF NEED REWORK！

...
Ok, thinking about this the other way around: Assuming that a certain faction IS actually OP. This certainly will have an effect on the win percentages, right?
...

I am sure one can tell that certain faction where OP at certain times like:
UKF on release
Penal/flamers
USF broken mortar

So if one can find tournaments during those times one can put that question to the test...

Yeah, pick rates are at least a relatively solid measure of the player's perceived faction performance (distinct from the actual faction performance), so in itself those are already a pretty good measure of faction balance (within the parameters of the tournament).

And I certainly wouldn't say that you can "prove" anything with these numbers. Hence my formulation that the numbers at best could indicate a trend. I figured this would be vague enough, no? Thing is, this is kind of the best shot we get. We certainly also can check out automatch stats (and I did so in the past), but these come with there own set of problems. These can all be pieces in a puzzle.

Ok, thinking about this the other way around: Assuming that a certain faction IS actually OP. This certainly will have an effect on the win percentages, right? Now, as we probably all agree, there are soo many other factors that contribute to these numbers which will skew the results in one way or the other. So, at the end of the day you'd have to make a judgement on how much of the resulting number is due to the OPness of a faction and how much is due to other factors. If you think that all of the other factors have a much bigger impact on the numbers, fair enough. But to some extent the actual faction balance will be buried in there...

Btw, I was wondering about your 3-0 and 3-1 issue: True, the 3:0 tell you little about details of faction balance as those matches more likely were mostly decided by the discrepancy in skill level rather than faction performance.

Sidenote on 3-0 rounds:
Show Spoiler

But the 3-1: Well, actually I would consider these very interesting points. Clearly, one of the players was good enough to realistically beat the other as he showed in the one match he won. We still don't know whether it was faction performance, the map or luck (as we never do with these kind of stats), but I wouldn't know why you would consider this "datum" worth less than a 3:2 round or even an outlier.

Some disclaimer here: I'm a reliability engineer so I analyze industrial processes instead of any type of sport. Normally I have access to lots of historical data, which is good because I'm normally looking for small differences. When you look for small differences, you have to throw out results that are far from the mean (or sometimes median). At work, I would throw out the 3-1's because they're far from the mean and I can always get more data. Here, it isn't that simple and I'm sure if you ran a bunch of tests with similarly skilled players, you would probably get some 3-1 results. On the whole, it still seems like the effect of the player is *probably* more than the effect of the faction in a 3-1 match. To make a more informed decision, I'd need faction, map, pick, and match length at a minimum. Match length would be especially helpful because equal players usually seem to battle longer.

Today's data scientists know more techniques and might be able to get something more out of it than I could, but I think even they couldn't get around the small observation size and multiple independent factors. If the balance was horrible, the small data set wouldn't be such an issue.

Also, I wasn't trying to say that OST definitely isn't UP, just that there isn't enough data to say it with such certainty. Doomlord might be right but this tournament isn't a good proof either way.

Some disclaimer here: I'm a reliability engineer so I analyze industrial processes instead of any type of sport. Normally I have access to lots of historical data, which is good because I'm normally looking for small differences. When you look for small differences, you have to throw out results that are far from the mean (or sometimes median). At work, I would throw out the 3-1's because they're far from the mean and I can always get more data. Here, it isn't that simple and I'm sure if you ran a bunch of tests with similarly skilled players, you would probably get some 3-1 results. On the whole, it still seems like the effect of the player is *probably* more than the effect of the faction in a 3-1 match.

I'm a physicist that has to derive some secondary quantities from a limited amount of data that is known to be noisy and inaccurate/biased (although the degree and trend of the noise and bias is commonly unknown). So I'm kind of used to the situation that you have to make the best out of a potentially strictly not sufficient data set. The upside to this that everybody in this business knows of the uncertainties of the result (although those are hard to quantify), or so you'd hope. So, I guess we approach something like this from a different angle

We do throw out outlying data as well, but really, even 3-0 are not that unusual and 3-1s should be as common as 3-2s if the outcome of a match is totally random (perfect match of player skills and everything is totally balanced). Sounds strange?

Ok, after one match the result will be 1-0 or 0-1 with a 50:50 split. After two matches the options are 2-0, 1-1, 1-1 and 0-2. After three matches, you have 3-0, 2-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-1, 1-2, 1-2 and 0-3, so 2 out of 8 or 25% of matches will have ended in either 3-0 or 0-3 (last post I correctly stated that the chance of 3-0 is 12.5%, but forgot that the 0-3 would go in the same bucket...).

So, the remaining 75% of rounds will be at 2-1 or 1-2 after three rounds. Again, if the chance of winning is 50:50 for either player, we will have a 50:50 split between 3-1/1-3 or 2:2 results (which would end up in 3:2/2:3, obviously).

As a result, if match outcomes are completely random, 3-0/0-3 are expected in 25% of rounds, 3-1/1-3 in 37.5% and 3-2/2-3 in the final 37.5%. This was kind of unexpected for me, but the thing is that we do not actually play 5 games. If one player has three wins, the series stops. I guess we tend to sort of extrapolate that after 5 games the 3-0 would certainly end up in a 5-0, but potentially the other player could have won games 4 and 5.

If we look at the actual results, we see that we have 20 3-0/0-3 (which obviously are way too many to say that these where even matches), 7 3-1/1-3 and 5 3-2/2-3 so the 3-1/1-3 are not much of an outlier, really. Actually, if the player skills would be similar and all rounds end in 3:2s, you can be pretty certain that something else was unbalanced...

To make a more informed decision, I'd need faction, map, pick, and match length at a minimum. Match length would be especially helpful because equal players usually seem to battle longer.

Sounds reasonable, but if you break it down that much you would end up with a small single digit number of matches per case. Match length seems like a good indicator, but on the other hand you have cases where a player throws the towel early because he lost a crucial unit (we even saw this in the last two rounds). Still, if you are interested, I could give you this data. And yeah, I guess statiticans would probably tell us to "Get more data!".

Also, I wasn't trying to say that OST definitely isn't UP, just that there isn't enough data to say it with such certainty. Doomlord might be right but this tournament isn't a good proof either way.

Well, seems like we overall agree then

Problems with automatch stats are, well: First up, I think there is a considerable skill gap even in the top 50 of players; I didn't check but I wouldn't be surprised if all players that made it to the main round are in the top 100 with at least one faction. And back when I did the post on the automatch stats, I actually looked into what I get when using only games of the top players; you quickly get to the point that you are left with very few matches. I don't recall the exact numbers (might be like 100 matches across all factions, a larger map pool (with uncertain starting positions) for the top 50 or so over three months) but there were so few that I dropped the idea of putting that in the article.

Another issue was pointed out by Momo4Sho in a similar discussion: Top players will often try out new strategies in automatch games, so they might not actually play to win. This is different in tournament games.

So, at the end of the day I guess this is actually close to my work enviroment where decisions have to be made based on multiple different pieces of information (which here could be player feedback, tournament stats, automatch stats...), none of which are conclusive by themselve but together hopefully form a somewhat consistent picture.

Im a semi retired florist/gift shop owner, and i have technical diploma, prefers not to think too much complex equations

Imo the 2 determinations ultimately are player skills and faction up/op. Rng? Imo it is randomly fair. Map? Imo also randomly assigned and fair and designed as much so.

As such we just keep simple thoughts and look at faction v faction results. Imo a startling wehr loss to sov does say one faction is oppressively balanced now. Of course we can look deeper at their total VP scores and dive deeper into player ranks/seeds/cards.

Opinions before the cup also predicted such trend. From my experience as low level player, also indicated such trend.

Why so? My thoughts are since the balancing switched to targeting wehr as the reference faction. Yes it is good to have a startin point. I guess its just that when it hits, it hits everywhere.

So if one can find tournaments during those times one can put that question to the test...

My point was that it likely will have an effect but other factors also play a role and those potentially might be larger to the extend that they actually overshadow the effect of the OPness of a certain faction.

Like, say faction A "objectively" is stronger than faction B. However, for some reason the better players for some reason favor faction B (or maybe the games end up being played on a map that favors faction B, even though on all other maps A would be clearly better). The result could be that the win percentage of faction A might be 45%, while faction B might end up with 55%.

What I'm saying is that even in this case the strength of faction A is still likely to have a positive effect on the win percentage of that faction. Without it being that strong the win percentage could be a lot less than 45%.

So, there are a lot of factors that have an impact on the resulting numbers; faction balance most likely has an effect, although not necessarily the dominant effect (ok, I said the same thing three times with different words now ).

..and I guess this is mostly undisputed. The discussion is mostly about how strong the different components are and to what extend and in what way the these would skew the numbers: Some people could say that faction balance only has a minor contribution, rendering the values close to meaningless for balance discussions, others might be of the opinion that all of the other effects cancel out and what remains is close enough to actual faction balance.

My point was that it likely will have an effect but other factors also play a role and those potentially might be larger to the extend that they actually overshadow the effect of the OPness of a certain faction.

...

And I am saying that if one compares they result with the times when he knows that the game was out of balance, one can estimates how much balance effect result.

We do throw out outlying data as well, but really, even 3-0 are not that unusual and 3-1s should be as common as 3-2s if the outcome of a match is totally random (perfect match of player skills and everything is totally balanced). Sounds strange?

Ok, after one match the result will be 1-0 or 0-1 with a 50:50 split. After two matches the options are 2-0, 1-1, 1-1 and 0-2. After three matches, you have 3-0, 2-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-1, 1-2, 1-2 and 0-3, so 2 out of 8 or 25% of matches will have ended in either 3-0 or 0-3 (last post I correctly stated that the chance of 3-0 is 12.5%, but forgot that the 0-3 would go in the same bucket...).

So, the remaining 75% of rounds will be at 2-1 or 1-2 after three rounds. Again, if the chance of winning is 50:50 for either player, we will have a 50:50 split between 3-1/1-3 or 2:2 results (which would end up in 3:2/2:3, obviously).

As a result, if match outcomes are completely random, 3-0/0-3 are expected in 25% of rounds, 3-1/1-3 in 37.5% and 3-2/2-3 in the final 37.5%. This was kind of unexpected for me, but the thing is that we do not actually play 5 games. If one player has three wins, the series stops. I guess we tend to sort of extrapolate that after 5 games the 3-0 would certainly end up in a 5-0, but potentially the other player could have won games 4 and 5.

If we look at the actual results, we see that we have 20 3-0/0-3 (which obviously are way too many to say that these where even matches), 7 3-1/1-3 and 5 3-2/2-3 so the 3-1/1-3 are not much of an outlier, really. Actually, if the player skills would be similar and all rounds end in 3:2s, you can be pretty certain that something else was unbalanced...



Sounds reasonable, but if you break it down that much you would end up with a small single digit number of matches per case. Match length seems like a good indicator, but on the other hand you have cases where a player throws the towel early because he lost a crucial unit (we even saw this in the last two rounds). Still, if you are interested, I could give you this data. And yeah, I guess statiticans would probably tell us to "Get more data!".



Well, seems like we overall agree then

Problems with automatch stats are, well: First up, I think there is a considerable skill gap even in the top 50 of players; I didn't check but I wouldn't be surprised if all players that made it to the main round are in the top 100 with at least one faction. And back when I did the post on the automatch stats, I actually looked into what I get when using only games of the top players; you quickly get to the point that you are left with very few matches. I don't recall the exact numbers (might be like 100 matches across all factions, a larger map pool (with uncertain starting positions) for the top 50 or so over three months) but there were so few that I dropped the idea of putting that in the article.

Another issue was pointed out by Momo4Sho in a similar discussion: Top players will often try out new strategies in automatch games, so they might not actually play to win. This is different in tournament games.

So, at the end of the day I guess this is actually close to my work enviroment where decisions have to be made based on multiple different pieces of information (which here could be player feedback, tournament stats, automatch stats...), none of which are conclusive by themselve but together hopefully form a somewhat consistent picture.

Overall we agree
The statement that I changed to bold was one of the points I tried making to Doomlord. If the factions were badly unbalanced, there would be a lot of 3/2 splits.

At this point, I still think it would be more helpful to interview tournament participants, especially the upper players, to find out why they're not picking Ost, rather than trying to do any more statistical analysis. Here is an analogy from my work. I was once asked to look into a problem on a paper machine. When the paper machine has the problem, the paper gets sent to a rework bin. That is really expensive. If it is happening a lot, the workers often slow the paper machine down, which is also expensive. I was asked to check into what is less expensive. I got a really surprising result. When I normalized for speed, slowing down didn't improve the defect rate at all, contrary to what people were saying. When I asked some of the workers about it, the general reply was "Ya, we already know that but it means we have to get up and fix it less often."

People will optimize what is best for them, regardless of what statistics say, and that is especially true for the small group of elite COH2 players. Some of the players switched from OST to OKW. Why? Does the heavy tank meta make OST a worse choice? Something else?

I also agree on your comments about the skill gap between players, but think it can extend a long way down the ladder. This has an effect that a lot of people don't realize when they are complaining about "balance." If someone's ranking is XXX, even if there is a balance patch, the XXX-1 players that are better than them are still going to be better, and the players that were beating them before are still likely to beat them, so their ranking and win rates aren't going to change much.

It would be interesting to look at both the tournament and automatch data sets sometime, if you can share. If you're not supposed to share it then no worries.

Gentlemen, I too work with data, and despite nearly drowning in hundreds of thousands of entries of it per project, I still find myself also saying "I wish I had _more_ on _this part_ to get a better idea of how these relate..."

For what it's worth, I think it's important to keep in mind the ubiquitous commander picks, too.

I only watched the few games that were cast toward the end and Grand Offensive was very prominent for OKW players.

Makes me wonder, if Grand Offensive didn't have a Tiger, would people have been more likely to pick Wehr or would they have defaulted to Command Panther (or Fals?).

Gentlemen, I too work with data, and despite nearly drowning in hundreds of thousands of entries of it per project, I still find myself also saying "I wish I had _more_ on _this part_ to get a better idea of how these relate..."

For what it's worth, I think it's important to keep in mind the ubiquitous commander picks, too.

I only watched the few games that were cast toward the end and Grand Offensive was very prominent for OKW players.

Makes me wonder, if Grand Offensive didn't have a Tiger, would people have been more likely to pick Wehr or would they have defaulted to Command Panther (or Fals?).

I don't know, other than being pretty sure this would've put players in a worse spot when playing as Axis. Some might also have tried Elite Armor with HEAT rounds. I think there would've been complaints about the T70 into IS2 and a lot of people wanting the IS2 to have a higher CP requirement.

I don't know, other than being pretty sure this would've put players in a worse spot when playing as Axis. Some might also have tried Elite Armor with HEAT rounds. I think there would've been complaints about the T70 into IS2 and a lot of people wanting the IS2 to have a higher CP requirement.

I mean, we already have a lot of complaints about t-70 into is-2; but I do wonder if the over-representation of OKW-to-Wehrmacht is in no small part because Grand Offensive fills so many gaps for OKW (early snares; good mobile heavy, etc.)

I'm not good enough to make any real predictions, but just going off of what I saw as "common" in the games.

I mean, we already have a lot of complaints about t-70 into is-2; but I do wonder if the over-representation of OKW-to-Wehrmacht is in no small part because Grand Offensive fills so many gaps for OKW (early snares; good mobile heavy, etc.)

I'm not good enough to make any real predictions, but just going off of what I saw as "common" in the games.

That is what I am guessing happened, probably in response to the new heavy meta. It would be interesting to see if just toning down down the heavys (more CP's) help with OST or if the Panther and Stug need buffs. I play mostly 3's and 4's and don't like fighting IS2's with Panthers much. On some of the city maps they can be really hard to kill if used even somewhat cautiously.

I think the biggest axis problem was almost everyone going Tiger doctrine only, which seemed to be autolose since 1 SU85 or 2 ZiS guns countered it pretty effective.

Surprised that people didnt try other docs like Hans did vs Nicko successfully in G4 (Elite Armor vs Pershing doc)

I tried going different doctrines and I came to the same conclusion as OrangePest:

Either Tiger, or you die in the lategame.