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Date of posting: September 2022
Last updated: September 2022
Note: I specifically wrote S258 because I’m from State 258, and I’m not sure if other states have the same system as ours. (Even after the state merge, the merger came towards 258, so…). Also note that I have since quit the game last July, and am not updated with the game that much except for the new events/event changes (and that’s why I have a top-badge from SoS’s FB page, lmao).
Table of Contents:
- Alliance Showdown Registration and Rewards
- Alliance Showdown Battles/Winning Condition
- Setting up Showdown Lanes
- Setting up Showdown Troops and Heroes
- Technique for Switching Lanes
(I personally recommend only reading the last part (#5) if you already know how Showdown works).
1. Alliance Showdown Registration and Rewards
There are 3 showdown lanes where a max of 20 players can register in the 3 lanes, for a total of 60 players. For alliances with more than 60 members (since the max is 100), it is inevitable that there are members who can’t join Alliance Showdown. Regardless, everyone should still register because regardless of whether a player who registered gets to battle or not, all registrants will get the alliance rewards from showdown.
There can be more than 20 registrants in a lane, but only the top 20 registrants in that lane will be counted for battle. The top 20 registrants has the benefits of possibly getting extra winning rewards if they win a battle (which I’ll be explaining below). The solo winning rewards is a lot less (and useless) than the alliance rewards, so for members who registered but can’t battle, they don’t really lose much. Plus, noone will lose troops in the battle (think of it like a simulated battle), so yes, register regardless if you’re part of the top 60 members or not.
It is important to note that alliance rewards can only be received if you are still in the alliance by the time it is given (which is on Saturday, same day as Capital Clash). If you leave the alliance even a minute before you receive the rewards, and even if you were in the alliance the whole 5 days of the fight, you will receive nothing. This is why during Capital Clash (in-state or state-vs-state), when it’s better to merge alliances, some members usually wait until they receive the rewards before moving.
2. Alliance Showdown Battles/Winning Condition
Showdown is a battle between 6 alliances, where each alliance battle each other – so there’s 5 battles or rounds for all alliances. The winning condition for the alliance is to have the highest win rate, and if there’s a tie, there’s the “kill” points (in “” because no troops are killed per se, but in Showdown, they’re counted as killed for the round.
As mentioned, there are 3 lanes in Showdown. Each Showdown round has the 3 lanes (right, center, left) battling against the respective 3 lanes (right, center, left) of the other alliance. For an alliance to win the round, they have to win at least 2 out of 3 lanes. To win a lane, the alliance must beat all of the registrants in the enemy alliance’s respective lane.
So, how does each lane battle work? The lane battle starts with the weakest players in the respective lane, the two fight, and if one wins, they can move on to battling the next player. Players can only battle a max of 2 times, so you won’t win if the enemy lane has more than twice participants than your lane even if your overall battle power is way higher. When battling, troops are killed, so if a player wins, they have less troops for the second battle. As mentioned, there are troops killed, and this is what we call “kill” points.
Since the battle happens per player, the overall battle power of the lane isn’t that important, but rather the battle power of each player in the lane. A lane can have a very high overall battle power if one player in the lane has a high bp, carrying the whole lane’s overall bp. But again, a player can only battle twice, so if the other players in the lane are weak compared to the enemy lane, the enemy lane will still win.
With all that said, Alliance Showdown is honestly just a registering game for members. It is an auto-battle type of side-event that happens weekly. As for leaders, they have the option of switching lanes to strategize which lanes they believe their alliance’s lane set-ups can win.
3. Setting up Showdown Lanes
A common technique is to have the top 40 players in the alliance distributed to 2 lanes, then everyone else in the 3rd lane. For ease of instructing the members which lane to register in, most leaders check the average battle power of the alliance (from the previous showdown or from the member list, and instruct the members with battle powers higher than the average to register into 2 lanes, then the rest to the third lane.
Near the end of the registration day, leaders may check if all 3 lanes are well set-up. It is better to have the third lane have all the extra registrants because the other 2 lanes’ registrants are the ones with higher battle power than the third lane – so leaders need to ask the extra registrants in the 2 lanes to move to the third lane.
As for alliances with less than 60 members, I suggest the same. Fill-up two lanes (one stronger than the other) as much members as you can, then the last one only needs one registrant. Well, of course, if you have more than 41 members, the last lane may have more than one registrant.
4. Setting up Showdown Troops and Heroes
This one, I’m not really sure of since I’m really outdated. But one technique is to simply use the troop formation commonly used in normal PvP events (like Capital Clash, Fortress Fight) – which is 60:20:20 Infantry:Hunters:Riders, or a similar variation where there Infantry > Hunters > Riders.
As for the heroes, it’s better to use the hero formation for rally leaders than rally joiners. Again, I am outdated with heroes (I’m more outdated when it comes to heroes because new heroes come so often). If you are updated with the suggested hero set-up for PvP fights, just use that.
This is easier to plan when you’re in a relatively older state when the whole state is share information with each other, ngl. Also, you may also simply just register the default troop formations it shows – then just leave the fight to your alliance leader.
5. Technique for Switching Lanes
Phew, I discussed a lot for an honestly boring side game (lol). Well, I call Showdown boring as a member, the fun part in Alliance Showdown is for the leaders only. Because for members, Showdown is just a regular event where you need to register. every. single. week. – which becomes tedious, honestly. But for leaders, they have the power to switch lanes, and hence needs to be actively “playing” showdown. Switching lanes is usually done near the end of the timer, right before the next round starts. So it’s not only a battle of strategy, but also a battle of who-presses-last-wins… as opposed to Fortress Fight’s fastest-fingers-first.
Well, I don’t know if other alliances do the same, but in my main alliance (FZ1, FaZe), me and our top-leader (Dark) strategize to win. Here’s a pic on how I plan for showdown (this is when I was already in another alliance (TFS), and I didn’t have Dark with me, so I’m planning by myself). Basically, I list the power of our own set-up and the other alliances’ then compare one-by-one if we’ll win or not. This is probably a lot easier to do using a program, but since I can do it fast enough manually, I just opted to do it manually than to code a program, lol.
I do believe that the heroes and troop formation matters aside from the power, but that’s too much effort to take into account, considering that we can’t see the enemy troop formation. So I just compare the battle power of each registrant in the lane compared to our lanes. If our weakest lane can beat the weakest lane of the enemy, that’s an easy decision. The harder decision is where to pitch the 2 stronger lanes against, especially when it seems like a close fight.
Note: this is an old journal, that I’m using as a scratch notebook.
For the first round, there’s no way to strategize around it except for checking the total power of the lane. After that, with some luck (or not), you get to see the enemy alliance’s line-up by checking the battles of the other alliances. And with that information, you can make this list, like I did. You can see that in the second lane of “Round 2” as listed, I had blank spaces (or squigglies) – that’s because that lane won too early so you can’t see the full line-up.
Well, that’s all. I really love Alliance Showdown when I was the leader. It’s fun looking at the line-ups, and see which ones we can beat and which ones we can’t. I genuinely enjoyed the mode even after a long time (more than a year; after that, well… I lost my leadership role after moving alliances, so I just treat Showdown as a registering game).
Wings-p O_O 