Algorithm of 400 Clan Ranking (Sep 30, 2011)

[FarangDemon]

Hello Sportsfans,

I have been working together with Jigger1986 and now Gunn217 to maintain a performance-based clan ranking. We plan to update the ranking with the results of new clan wars once a month. I will post the updates to this original post.

Thanks also to jpcloet for providing me the clan war results files he tabulated up to March, 2011.

To find out how the algorithm works, please check out this thread:

http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewto ... 5#p3088157

Data

I'm using data that includes all clan wars, including Clan League sets that consist of relatively fewer challenges.

You can check out the data I'm using with the link below. Please notify me if you find any inaccuracies.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ph3 ... t?hl=en_US

Ranking

Data as of Sept 30, compiled Oct 19th. I'm only including clans with 150 weight points.

Best Showing in 1 Year provides info on the highest ranked clan that each clan has beaten or tied, only counting wars of 40 games or more.

Click image to enlarge.

Unofficial Ranking

This shows all clans that have at least 50 weight points. This is not my official ranking, but I provide it to give these clans an indication of how they're doing.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6110/627 ... daa0_b.jpg

Chart

Here is a chart of performance over the past year:

Click image to enlarge.

Basis of each Clan's Rating

Here is a breakdown showing the ratings and weight from each clan war that were used to determine each clan's overall rating. If you are surprised about a clan's rating, this is where you should look. The rating a clan derives from a clan war is equal to their opponent's score +/- a number from 200-600, depending on the margin of victory/loss. But if one of the clans has completed less than 2 clan wars, I use +/- 100-300.

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

[Leehar]

The weightings still feel somehow shoddy...

[Army of GOD]

Is there a reason the Spelunkers of Hell aren't on here...?

[FarangDemon]

I just realized that the 3 most recent KoRT games were not counted correctly because of a naming inconsistency in the data file. I'm updating results as we speak.

The weightings still feel somehow shoddy...

Please describe the problem in greater detail if you think there is a way I can improve it.

Note, the weight applied to each challenge is computed as the product of how many games in the challenge TIMES decay factor. I am using 2 years as the data window, so that means that a war from 2 years ago has 0% decay factor (means does not affect score anymore), 1.5 years ago has 25% decay factor, 1 year ago has 50% as decay factor, 6 months ago would be 75% as decay factor, yesterday would be 100% decay factor.

Is there a reason the Spelunkers of Hell aren't on here...?

I had it set to a 150 weight point cutoff, and at just 3 challenges you didn't accumulate enough weight points.

[danryan]

Looks pretty good actually, once the results of the CC are added in a lot of this is going to be turned on its head.

PACK is going to be interesting to watch as they stick out like a sore thumb in that grouping.

[Sniper08]

Looks pretty good actually, once the results of the CC are added in a lot of this is going to be turned on its head.

PACK is going to be interesting to watch as they stick out like a sore thumb in that grouping.

yea im kinda suprised we are ranked so high when i first when through the list i though we had been left out until i looked at the top . No losses so far with big % wins ofc after the NC finals are over we will see were we stand.

[FarangDemon]

Looks pretty good actually, once the results of the CC are added in a lot of this is going to be turned on its head.

Yeah, everybody has been talking about the increasing competitiveness of the top 10 clans as of late, and I think these results support that notion. It is such a very tight race between 4th and 9th place that practically every challenge is going to result in some reshuffling there.

PACK is going to be interesting to watch as they stick out like a sore thumb in that grouping.

yea im kinda suprised we are ranked so high when i first when through the list i though we had been left out until i looked at the top . No losses so far with big % wins ofc after the NC finals are over we will see were we stand.

Yes I was surprised at first, too, but PACK does have a strong record, 5-0 with high win margins. Definitely keep in mind that the highest ranked team (with 150 weight points) that they have beaten so far is BSS at 20th (though SOH is provisionally ranked right behind ID which is 15th on this same list).

[FarangDemon]

Is there a reason the Spelunkers of Hell aren't on here...?

Spelunkers of Hell have 128 weight points at the moment, so you were just below the 150 weight point cutoff. The choice of 150 as the cutoff is somewhat arbitrary but seems to work.

List containing all clans with at least 50 weight points on 06-13-11

Click image to enlarge.

Spelunkers come 18th in this list, right behind ID.

Also note, TFFS at 9th and AFOS at 11th. These clans will soon have enough weight points to be included in my more official listing, and they will make the top 10 even more competitive.

[benga]

What is weight and what is rating?

Explain in math please, I don't need a dictionary.

[Great-Ollie]

This looks very good guys, well done. I think this ranking system may be a little off with some clans, but really overall a very good job. This is a step in the right direction for all clans to become more competitve. As the leader of the PACK i am surprised we have jolted up the standings so fast. I know we are very strong, and i know we could compete with the best clans anytime. It is nice to have a performance based ranking system. I am looking forward to seeing if we can remain in the top ten after a top level clan challenges us. After the NC is done i hope we have earned enough respect to be able to get a top level challenge, only time will tell! Thanks guys, and keep up the great work!

[Qwert]

its will be interesting if you can present ranking only to result from 2011,to see if we have some similarity in ranks

[Chuuuuck]

Let me first say I think you have done a great job and I am always happy to see people putting time in to try and make things better instead of just bitching about why other people's ideas are stupid.

In saying that, I will now put my time into bitch about how stupid this is.... just kidding!

I do have a small worry though and am curious for a talking point if there is anyway it can be improved on. Someone like The Pack being up there scares me because if the clan world ever decides to put a lot of weight on your rankings and everyone identifies it as the official pole, then it will change the clan world essentially for the worst (IMO). Instead of there being a TOFU/BotFM match, or a KoRT/THOTA match, then you would just have all of the clans at the top racing to sign up big wars against the 10 worst clans just so they can get staggering lop sided numbers which appears it would improve their rankings here.

No offense to The Pack, I don't really know much about them, but at a quick glance it seems that they have done little more than beaten up new clans that would probably get a brutally lop sided loss to anyone in the top 10-15.

I am also sorry if I just didn't take the time to understand this well enough and my concern has already been taken into consideration and I just didn't see it.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning. Great work and glad to see someone actually trying to do something about it as well.

[FarangDemon]

Let me first say I think you have done a great job and I am always happy to see people putting time in to try and make things better instead of just bitching about why other people's ideas are stupid.

In saying that, I will now put my time into bitch about how stupid this is.... just kidding!

I do have a small worry though and am curious for a talking point if there is anyway it can be improved on. Someone like The Pack being up there scares me because if the clan world ever decides to put a lot of weight on your rankings and everyone identifies it as the official pole, then it will change the clan world essentially for the worst (IMO). Instead of there being a TOFU/BotFM match, or a KoRT/THOTA match, then you would just have all of the clans at the top racing to sign up big wars against the 10 worst clans just so they can get staggering lop sided numbers which appears it would improve their rankings here.

No offense to The Pack, I don't really know much about them, but at a quick glance it seems that they have done little more than beaten up new clans that would probably get a brutally lop sided loss to anyone in the top 10-15.

I am also sorry if I just didn't take the time to understand this well enough and my concern has already been taken into consideration and I just didn't see it.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning. Great work and glad to see someone actually trying to do something about it as well.

Thanks for your kind words and support. You raise a very valid concern.

I think the best way to solve the problem would be to leave the ratings formula unchanged, yet extend the definition of 'provisional' to include those clans that have not beaten their peers. I prefer to try this way rather than to alter the ratings formula because as a side effect from altering the ratings formula to disincentivize the higher-ranked clans from playing the lower, the higher-ranked could get penalized too much for playing the lower-ranked clans that they might be forced to play in various leagues.

So we need a rule to determine whether or not a clan has "beaten its peers". I think this is much easier to define with a rule than solving the problem I stated in the above paragraph. A simple rule could be:

A clan's rating is provisional if they have not beaten any clan 3 places below their current standing or better within the past 6 months.

So if The PACK is now ranked #7, this would be considered provisional if, within the past 6 months, they had not beaten any clan ranked #10 or better (rank of enemy clan at time of clan war).

I'd be interested to hear feedback on this proposed method of determining provisional/official status. How recent should the war be, how many peers should they have played, how close do peers need to be?

For example, an alternative formula could be of the form:

A clan's rating is provisional if, within the past 6 months, they have neither beaten a clan the same rank as themselves NOR beaten two clans ranked within 3 ranks of themselves

This rule would mean that The PACK's score would be official if they either beat one team ranked #7 or above OR two teams ranked #10 or above.

[Frederik Hendrik]

Beautiful!

I have tried to create a ranking system in somewhat the same way last year, but wrestling with formula's, a failing database and RL business caused me to quit. I recognise the problems in the system, but also the great oportunities of it to act as a well working ranking.

One point of advice you might want to try. I found out that intergrating the clan league results helped the ranking greatly. The matches theirselves have very small weight, but the total games played in the league are huge. And the beauty is that so many clans play eachother, that it really smoothes out the ranking perfectly.

Clans (often new ones) that have gathered many points beating low-ranking clans remain the biggest problem in this system. A logic solution would be to never let a clan get to a higher position than the highest-ranked clan they have ever beaten (within the decay-time), regardless of their points. To add "provisional" to the ranking of a clan makes its "real" position unclear and to refuse a clan a higher position than just above the best clan they have ever beaten is both logical and makes them want to play the higher ranking clans.

I want to repeat that your work on this is great!

FH

[FarangDemon]

One point of advice you might want to try. I found out that intergrating the clan league results helped the ranking greatly. The matches theirselves have very small weight, but the total games played in the league are huge. And the beauty is that so many clans play eachother, that it really smoothes out the ranking perfectly.

These results do include all three seasons of Clan League. I never did state what results I was using, but I intend to post the data file to a URL so everybody can see for themselves, and use as a basis for their own ranking systems, to save them time tabulating results.

Your other advice regarding the issue Chuuuuck brought up, I will think about more and comment on later.

Thanks for your support and constructive feedback as well.

[Great-Ollie]

Let me first say I think you have done a great job and I am always happy to see people putting time in to try and make things better instead of just bitching about why other people's ideas are stupid.

In saying that, I will now put my time into bitch about how stupid this is.... just kidding!

I do have a small worry though and am curious for a talking point if there is anyway it can be improved on. Someone like The Pack being up there scares me because if the clan world ever decides to put a lot of weight on your rankings and everyone identifies it as the official pole, then it will change the clan world essentially for the worst (IMO). Instead of there being a TOFU/BotFM match, or a KoRT/THOTA match, then you would just have all of the clans at the top racing to sign up big wars against the 10 worst clans just so they can get staggering lop sided numbers which appears it would improve their rankings here.

No offense to The Pack, I don't really know much about them, but at a quick glance it seems that they have done little more than beaten up new clans that would probably get a brutally lop sided loss to anyone in the top 10-15.

I am also sorry if I just didn't take the time to understand this well enough and my concern has already been taken into consideration and I just didn't see it.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning. Great work and glad to see someone actually trying to do something about it as well.

Tsk Tsk Tsk, Chuuuck my friend, do you and your Tofu robot care to test your theory? Let me know if you are. I think you will find us to be a little more then a cake walk, but then again, who am i to judge. I think you are scared @#$%less that there may be a clan that came out of nowhere to compete with the best of them. We want a high end challenge, so who wants to be the first to beat THE PACK? Or is everyone a little nervous?

[tec805]

Clans (often new ones) that have gathered many points beating low-ranking clans remain the biggest problem in this system. A logic solution would be to never let a clan get to a higher position than the highest-ranked clan they have ever beaten (within the decay-time), regardless of their points. To add "provisional" to the ranking of a clan makes its "real" position unclear and to refuse a clan a higher position than just above the best clan they have ever beaten is both logical and makes them want to play the higher ranking clans.

New clans have to play other new clans or "low-ranked" clans, as no other clan would care to take them on - little to gain, much to lose. Kind of like brigs playing cooks 1 vs 1 all day - won't stay a brig for long even winning the bulk of the games. High ranked clans would have no incentive to play new clans and little incentive to play lower ranked. Get to the top, play 1 war every month or so against other closely ranked clans and they all stay at the top while others can never get higher then a clan they beat. The PACK may not be able to trounce THOTA or BotFM like we have every other clan to date, but I'd wager we would give any of them a run for their money. Would any of them play us? Not if we could only get to #15 or 20 by beating the clans we have played to date even if we had won by 99%. Even at the rate we are going it might be a year down the road before a "top" clan gives us a shot.

Any system that is purely based on calculations can be worked to someones advantage. You will never have a ranking system that everyone is happy with unless you have input from it's members. I think Chuuuuck's system at least forces clans to have wars with possible contenders as their "perceived rank" would suffer if that clan ignored all but the highest ranked clans challenges. Is his system perfect? Of course not.

Obviously I like this new ranking system, as we are nicely placed for a 7 month old clan

[Hamanu]

The PACK may not be able to trounce THOTA or BotFM like we have every other clan to date, but I'd wager we would give any of them a run for their money. Would any of them play us? Not if we could only get to #15 or 20 by beating the clans we have played to date even if we had won by 99%. Even at the rate we are going it might be a year down the road before a "top" clan gives us a shot.

CC cup "forces" top clans to play lower ranked clans and IMO, CC cup is the best possible way for a new clan to prove their worth and gain entry to the upper echelons. Granted, the Pack is "too new" to have participated in this edition of CC cup, but CC cup 3 will be your golden opportunity to beat one or several top clans and thus validate your inclusion into the top ten.

[lynch5762]

The PACK may not be able to trounce THOTA or BotFM like we have every other clan to date, but I'd wager we would give any of them a run for their money. Would any of them play us? Not if we could only get to #15 or 20 by beating the clans we have played to date even if we had won by 99%. Even at the rate we are going it might be a year down the road before a "top" clan gives us a shot.

CC cup "forces" top clans to play lower ranked clans and IMO, CC cup is the best possible way for a new clan to prove their worth and gain entry to the upper echelons. Granted, the Pack is "too new" to have participated in this edition of CC cup, but CC cup 3 will be your golden opportunity to beat one or several top clans and thus validate your inclusion into the top ten.

That is a good point... I wish the next cup started tomorrow but I think all of us at "The Pack" are willing to be patient... Obviously this ranking system will be a bit flawed due to this very argument but it is a great start!! hats off to all involved in putting this together... We look forward to our next challenge

[josko.ri]

This clan ranking is the best of all current rankings in my opinion.
and that is not because KORT is currently #1, I am sure we wont anymore be #1 after our 12-7 loss vs AoC will be added to database.

about ThePack, I am sure they deserve to be high placed. it is true that they won (played) only vs lower ranked clans, but every their win was with a huge of difference. I would really want to see if any of so-called "top" clans would be able to win 42-18 vs AKA for example. it is mess that they wasnt in CCup2 to show on big scene what they are really capable for.

big thanks for this clan ranking system, which is the only who counts all relevant factors to make clan ranking:
- EXACT result of the challenge, not only winner
- weakness/strength of both clans ON THE TIME when challenege was happening
- sample size (number of games played in challenge)
- time elapsed from a challenge
- do NOT include someone's personal opinion (where it can be included, but do not have to, animosity or friendship between some clans/players)

[FarangDemon]

I believe I've come up with a solution that prevents clans from rising too far to the top of the rankings from beating brand new clans. I've updated the rankings in the OP if you want to check it out.

I changed the way basis points were calculated for challenges where 1 or both clans had completed less than 2 wars. If this is the case, I divide the "delta" value in half. What is the delta value? The delta value is either added or subtracted to your opponent's score, depending on whether you win/lose, in order to determine your basis points for that challenge (which are then weight-averaged together to determine your overall rating).

Since I'm using 200 points as minimum delta and 600 points as maximum delta, this means that normally, if a clan beats another clan that is rated 1000, the basis points they'd get range between 1200-1600 depending on the margin of victory. However, if they lose, they'd have something between a 400-800.

With my update, if one clan has concluded less than 2 wars, the basis points one would get for beating them (if they are at 1000) would range between 1100-1300. Likewise, if one lost against this clan, one would have between 700-900 for that challenge.

Since we don't really know how strong a new clan is, I think it makes sense to set tighter upper and lower limits on the ratings obtained from them - they could be vastly overrated or underrated.

After implementing the change, nearly all ranks remained the same. The only effects were:

1) Pack drops from #7 to #10
2) KoRT's lead over TOFU shrinks from 31 to 3 points, essentially a dead-heat
3) TSM ties AOC for 7th (instead of trailing AOC 1235 to 1254)

*It says AOC is 8th but this should say 7th. When I wrote the script I didn't anticipate ties so I'll need to fix this.

[josko.ri]

I believe I've come up with a solution that prevents clans from rising too far to the top of the rankings from beating brand new clans. I've updated the rankings in the OP if you want to check it out.

I changed the way basis points were calculated for challenges where 1 or both clans had completed less than 2 wars. If this is the case, I divide the "delta" value in half. What is the delta value? The delta value is either added or subtracted to your opponent's score, depending on whether you win/lose, in order to determine your basis points for that challenge (which are then weight-averaged together to determine your overall rating).

Since I'm using 200 points as minimum delta and 600 points as maximum delta, this means that normally, if a clan beats another clan that is rated 1000, the basis points they'd get range between 1200-1600 depending on the margin of victory. However, if they lose, they'd have something between a 400-800.

With my update, if one clan has concluded less than 2 wars, the basis points one would get for beating them (if they are at 1000) would range between 1100-1300. Likewise, if one lost against this clan, one would have between 700-900 for that challenge.

Since we don't really know how strong a new clan is, I think it makes sense to set tighter upper and lower limits on the ratings obtained from them - they could be vastly overrated or underrated.

After implementing the change, nearly all ranks remained the same. The only effects were:

1) Pack drops from #7 to #10
2) KoRT's lead over TOFU shrinks from 31 to 3 points, essentially a dead-heat
3) TSM ties AOC for 7th (instead of trailing AOC 1235 to 1254)

*It says AOC is 8th but this should say 7th. When I wrote the script I didn't anticipate ties so I'll need to fix this.

hmm, I dont understand this perfect. if you changed only scoring system for clans that played 1-2 wars, how then KORT can loose 28 points, and KORT never played vs a clan that had 1-2 completed wars, so practically that change should not have any effect to KORT.

[FarangDemon]

hmm, I dont understand this perfect. if you changed only scoring system for clans that played 1-2 wars, how then KORT can loose 28 points, and KORT never played vs a clan that had 1-2 completed wars, so practically that change should not have any effect to KORT.

Good question. It's complicated.

When KoRT was formed, it had not yet completed any wars. So your first two clan wars were recomputed using the revised formula. Btw, halving the deltas affects both clans in the war, not just the points gained/lost by the established clan. So as you can see, every clan's score would have been altered in this way as every clan had a beginning. The fact that KoRT's lead over TOFU shrunk a little is a combination of many things, including how often KoRT or TOFU played against new clans themselves, or against clans that had gained a lot of points playing new clans. Or against clans that had gained a lot of points against clans that had gained a lot of points against new clans. Following this logic, changing one clan's score at one moment has the potential to eventually alter every clan's score.

So I'm actually surprised and relieved that the changes in the rankings from this revision were relatively minor.

I am not going to try to fully explain what caused the shrinking gap between KoRT and TOFU, as it would take a long time comparing the ratings of the clans that KoRT and TOFU had played against, and then looking at the clans that those clans had played against..... I did notice that THOTA dipped slightly and realize that KoRT had recently beaten THOTA. But I cannot prove causality, i.e. did KoRT dip because THOTA had dipped or did THOTA dip because KoRT had dipped?

So I hope you appreciate the complexity of it and why I cannot give you a more exact answer.

[VampireM]

im a big fan of this system.. farang is my dawg!

[The Voice]

This is beautiful. On behalf of visual learners everywhere, thank you for the charts. I feel like I'm analyzing stocks, only not because every godforsaken line would be plummeting ^^. Everything makes so much sense. I'd love for this to account for 50% and the ranking system used for the Conqueror's Cup to account for the other 50%.