The Global League and its counterpart the Live League are the ranked matchmaking arms of Advance Wars By Web and represents the most competitive circuits available on the site, where anyone looking to test their skills may participate and compete.
Currently, both matchmakers support the game modes of Standard, Fog of War and High Funds games, with time settings appropriate for asychronous and synchronous play respectively. There is currently also a separate unofficial League for High Funds Fog (HFOG) overseen by volunteers rather than the website matchmaker; admission for this league is given on request in the Discord server rather than the main site.
Signing Up[]
The Global League may be accessed using the tab at the top of the screen, under Competitions. From the main page, a handful of options may be chosen before starting:
- Desired Game Count, which informs the matchmaker of the maximum number of League games you wish to have active at any given time. This can be set up to 5 for new players, increased to 25 once five games have been completed. This can be set wherever is most comfortable for you depending on how much time you have to play the game or how competitive you are, and can be changed at any time, including setting the count to 0 which will effectively remove you from matchmaking as no new games will be generated.
- Game Mode, which informs the matchmaker of the different game modes you wish to participate in, depending upon your preferences. It is currently not possible to specify a ratio or game limit for each game type.
When these are set and Update is clicked, the system will place you in the matchmaking queue.
Matchmaking and Elo Rating[]
The Global League runs on a cycle every few hours and each cycle will attempt to generate games for you based on your chosen settings, up to your Desired Game Count limit, with opponents of roughly similar rating to you. The matchmaker may not always assign you enough games to reach your limit in a single cycle, but will prioritise players who currently have low game counts.
The current maps and settings used for each queue are shown here. Notably, matchmade games will never use settings allowing the use of T0, or broken COs (see Tier List).
Once a game has been generated, you will have the option to select your preferred CO from the list for the game and your country, and can then click Ready to signal to your opponent that you are ready to begin. The game will automatically start either after both players have readied, or after 4 days if one or both have not done so yet.
Each game type has their own given matchmaking rating (Elo) which determines the level of opponent you will be matched with for each game. Players also have an overall rating which uses an aggregate of all three rating systems, and is typically slightly higher than the highest rating for any individual league. Wins will cause your rating to increase, and vice versa for losses, with slightly accelerated gains/losses up to the first 30 games.
The formula used for League rating change is shown below.
If the winner has an equal or higher rating:
If the winning player has a lower rating:
This change is then applied to each player's rating appropriately:
Where:
- R1old & R2old = current ratings for Player 1 and Player 2
- R1new & R2new = new ratings for Player 1 and Player 2
- k = 50 if user has under 30 completed games, k = 30 otherwise
Δ is logically added or subtracted from the existing rating depending on the result of the game.
The rating change is calculated logarithmically. If you have the same rating as your opponent, the base rating change is +25 before 30 completed games, and +15 afterwards. If you are the winner, your rating boost scales proportionally with the rating of your opponent (higher-rated opponent = the more you get from defeating them).