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Sweet Spot Theory Debunked




There has been a theory going around that enemy units have sweet spots that you can aim at to get a higher chance of critical hits.  For instance, the sweet spot for soldiers would be their heads.  Many players believe in and practice applying this theory in their games.  

Long, heated discussions on the Sweet Spot Theory have taken place, including on the official Zynga Empires & Allies forum.  In a recent post in one such discussion, a poster by the name of Zu Nim delivered the coup de grĂ¢ce to the theory:
Nothing wrong with telling folks to "put up or shut up" if they're going to make a claim. They never could. No surprise, really, because it was all in their heads. (Confirmation Bias says Hello!)
I don't want to get into the technical here in case it violates some of Zynga's terms. But long after this topic had run its course, I learned much about the game works as part of adding information to the wiki. And:
  • No information is passed from the client about the location of a hit, only which player unit strikes which enemy unit
  • The client relies on Zynga's servers to tell it how much damage was done to an enemy unit
  • The client is told all kinds of minute information about the units, but no information about hit boxes (sweet spots)

There are no sweet spots.
The folks at Zynga must laugh hard when they see what people can convince themselves of. Laugh all the way to the bank... 
Original post: Sweet Spot Theory Debunked - Zu Nim

Assuming Zu Nim's technical investigation was thorough, no evidence can be more convincing than this against the Sweet Spot Theory.  Another possible piece of evidence would be a statistical analysis pitting combat using sweet spots versus combat using random aiming.  It would be difficult, however, to gather the data manually for such an analysis due to the enemy units constantly moving around.

On the same thread, General Dogsworth had this response:
I hope you ALSO bear this in mind the next time you run into someone who is insisting that the AI has a better chance of inflicting Direct or Critical Hits than you do
The General was referencing Enemy AI Hit Rates, another theory by players that exemplifies confirmation bias.


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