Duel fine print
From the Polandball Go Wiki
How a duel works covers the four moves, the order of a round and the damage formula. These are the rules from the game's own duel rules that are easy to miss, and what duels show about the bot.
1 Lineups can be short#
- A lineup can hold 1 to 5 balls, not always five.
- In PvP, a side loses after 3 KOs, or as many KOs as it has balls if that's fewer. A two-ball lineup is beaten after 2 KOs.
- Short lineups do turn up on the ladder. A short side needs fewer KOs to lose but also has fewer balls to fight with, so it is almost always a handicap.
2 Ties#
- PvP, at the round cap: the side with the larger share of HP plus Protection left wins. An exact tie goes to the defender.
- PvP, both sides reach their KO target in the same round: the defender wins.
- Alliance war attack, the last attacker and the last defender fall together: the attacker wins.
3 Momentum#
- Momentum comes only from a Block that stops an Attack.
- It makes your next Attack go first. Any Attack you make spends it, whether or not it mattered.
- It adds no damage. The game's rules have a damage bonus for Momentum, set to zero.
- Whether a Swap or a KO clears Momentum isn't published.
4 Block, Swap and the free send-in#
- A Block that nothing hit still counts as your Block. You can't Block the next round either way, and the game labels it "BLOCK WASTED".
- A Block stops Attacks only. A Weapon goes through it for half damage.
- A Swap needs a living ball on your bench, resolves before anything else that round, and the ball that came in can't Swap out the next round.
- After a KO, the next ball comes in free. No round passes, and that ball has no Swap lock.
5 No Multis, no Ults, no Synergy#
Duels have only Attack, Block, Swap and Weapon. There is no Multi or Ultimate move. The Ultimate orb track still counts, through Speed. The game's rules state that Synergy doesn't apply in duels. See Multis and Ults and Speed and turn order.
6 Small print in the damage#
- A hit's type score counts each of the defender's different types once. A ball listed with the same type twice defends as that one type.
- Every step rounds half up, and the arena's 5% is applied after the type bonus, then rounded again.
- The game keeps a fraction of each ball's CP that the roster doesn't show. A hit worked out from the roster's CP can come out 1 to 3 short of the real one.
- In game, HP shows as a percentage, and gear and level can take it past 100%.
7 Your build at the moment of the fight#
- PvP reads each ball as it is when the battle starts: CP, level, stars, prestige, orbs and item. An upgrade counts in your very next battle.
- Alliance wars read each ball as it was at the roster lock. An upgrade after the lock waits for next week's war. See Roster lock.
8 The move timer#
Each round, both sides pick a move on a timer. The game marks each pick as yours, AUTO (the button that plays for you), a timeout (you ran out of time and the game picked) or the bot. Attackers use AUTO in about one round in seventeen.
9 How the defense bot plays#
The bot's move choices aren't published. Across ladder duels it plays like this:
- Each round it Attacks about half the time, Blocks about a quarter, Swaps about a fifth and fires a Weapon about one round in twenty. Players Attack more, Swap less and fire Weapons twice as often.
- With a Weapon charge in hand, the bot fires about one round in five. Players fire about one round in three.
- After a Block, the bot Swaps more than half the time.
- It never fires a Weapon two rounds running.
So the bot often leaves Weapon charges unused, and its Swaps after a Block spread your damage across its lineup. See The round cap and Defense planning.
10 When the attacker wins#
The attacker's edge depends on how long the duel runs. In Open League, attackers win about 7 in 10 duels that end in the first four rounds, about 9 in 10 of those ending in rounds 5 to 12, and only about 6 in 10 of those that reach rounds 21 to 24. About one duel in sixty ends in a forfeit.
11 Not known#
- Whether Momentum survives a Swap or a KO.
- What a forfeit does to the score in a war attack.