suppressed sun production during the forced "Streak-Breaker" losses in Battlez ?

For potentially streak breaking matches, I kinda feel that but rarely see a bot when the match ends. In addition to sun-starvation, zombie-starvation (no zombies to kill, lower score) is also a problem.

It is difficult to keep track of sun production and play the game at the same time, but I have kept track of scores.  I know that EA cheats me with forced losses, I'll have 5 or 6 wins where my score is about average, then I'll have a loss where my score is something like 15 to 25 standard deviations below the mean.  After that forced loss, I'll have 5 or 6 more games where my scores falls within 1 standard deviation.

I have been beaten by players who either have better strategies or have higher level plants.  During those losses, my score is usually about average, they just have a higher score.

I've experienced "zombie starvation", I didn't know sun starvation was a thing.  So other people have experienced this then ?

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@TempJmag wrote:

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I've experienced "zombie starvation", I didn't know sun starvation was a thing.  So other people have experienced this then ?

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Well... It's not the mainstream term... I just called it that... 😓

I can't speak of others' experiences but IIRC in the "BattleZ experience" thread, this has been mentioned before.

I think @lawmfw cited similar issues.

I have experienced both conditions as well.  Even noticed Humplemann's game start condition but thankfully never for 30 seconds !  Just long enough for me to notice it and begin to wonder what is going on...

Guess the prevailing strategy to survive SUN starvation might be to build up lots of extra SUN early in every battle in order to survive this condition near the end. 

Zombie starvation is just downright annoying !!  I wonder if playing at Turbo mode afecds Zombie stavation ?

I rarely play at normal speed...

I've been using goldbloom so I've never had a problem with sun production or squids landing on my sun plants.

EDIT: currently in gold league where life is a bit easier than jade.

Humplemann described it pretty well.

I have been using a lot of Moonflowers and surrounding them with other shadow plants.  When a squid lands on one of them, the damage-dealing plants behind the squid-covered Moonflower quickly make sushi out of the squid.

But all of the strategizing is for naught if the Moonflowers don't produce sun due to whatever underlying computer code is in play when EA is trying to f their customers over with a forced loss.  And BTW...  I've never experienced this in other parts of the game.  I've never experienced this in Adventure, Inzanity or anywhere else in the game.  While I cannot predict exactly how much sun will be produced by a particular plant at any given time, over the course of 2 minutes, it pretty much evens out.  In 6 out of 7 games, I'm able to replace plants that have been killed by imps but in the streak-breaker games, I'm just stuck waiting for sun while the zombies destroy everything on the board.

Like Humplemann said, when I experience 'Sun Starvation' it always turns out that I was fighting a Bot - high opponent scores that are at odds with the low level plants in nonsensical plant combinations, y'know - the tell tale signs that it is an EA artificial loss.

This is what pisses me off about EA, and why I put PVZ2 down and go for long stretches without playing it...  They're just f-ing with the parameters of the game to artificially force you to lose.  I don't mind being beaten by a real opponent who just outplayed me, but knowing that EA is running code that just stops zombies from appearing on the field and just flat out stops suns from falling and flat out stops my sun plants from producing suns in order to make me lose,  I think that violates anyone's sense of fairness.  

@lawmfw

Once my sun production has finally kicked in I'm able to build up my plants pretty quickly, but those 30'ish seconds obviously mean my strategy takes longer to kick in at full strength. It also means I have to use a Spear-mint before I would normally.

My usual play in the first segment is to plant a further five Laser Beans and four Starfruits. Once they're all in place I use my first Spearmint. 

As soon as I realize I'm under 'Sun starvation' conditions I immediately deploy a Spearmint, but that means I have to space out further deployments so I have at least two lots of Plant food in hand for the final few seconds.

I run with Power Lily + imitated Lily. That way I can usually keep my Laser Beans powered up virtually all through the match following the first deployment.

When I don't get the early sun, I need to have several periods of a few seconds each without the Spear-mint power-up in constant action so I'll still have two lots of Plant Food ready for the final few seconds to boost a couple of Laser Beans that have Gargantuars in their lanes to get the high scores from them. That spacing out has a side effect of slowing my scoring rate. The marginally slower rate of scoring in those few seconds each time wouldn't normally be a problem, but when I'm up against a Bot it could prove costly if I don't keep tight control over the spacing out of the Spear-mint deployments to minimize the effects.

If I receive normal sun in the first few seconds, I find this week's tournament pretty good and easy to keep on top of. Without that early sun, things can get rather fraught and even the slightest misjudgement in timing can make the difference between surviving the streak-breaker or losing.

I'm guessing that someone 'in certain quarters' has worked out that many players can now defeat the Bots, so they've introduced another sneaky tactic that makes it that much harder for us. 

I experienced two SUN starvations this evening and each lasted about 10 seconds.  I usually put out Spearmint at the start so that I can add two more Cauli ASAP with my first 300 SUN.

The not so secret Bot strategy does seem to be duly noted by EA.  Hey, we like challenges, right ??

I also 'plan' to save two PlantFood for the final minute of action for use with Spearmint...but best laid plans do not always work out

I prefer to use Shadow Peashooter to protect against Imps but have found that my Level 8 StarFruit works well enough to "free" up a slot to have either Peppermint or Appeasemint

Same happened to me in 11th game, sun disappeared and I lost the game.