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Post by hodsopa on Jul 18, 2017 21:49:41 GMT
I'm colourblind so goodness knows what Indigo means - but it is what the Tuareg wear and they scythe through the soft oasis dwellers like butter
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Post by hodsopa on Jul 15, 2017 20:14:46 GMT
Excellent collection of armies Richard
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Post by hodsopa on Jun 25, 2017 20:17:53 GMT
Great afternoon indeed. My Sassanids got whupped often and deservedly, and I was amazed how well Peter did with his Sarmatians (10 Kn, 2 Ps). Good to see the big boards in demand. I am also glad to have better understood the line-to-column rule!
Paul H
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Post by hodsopa on Mar 26, 2017 18:29:29 GMT
I'm a 66% likely possible, Simon.
Paul H
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 26, 2017 22:15:41 GMT
You're right Bob about solo games - though I would use the term personal incompetence (in managing some troop types) more than bias. I'll keep recording, and keep keeping the competitive games separate.
Paul
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 26, 2017 19:35:02 GMT
Scott, you're right, I spoke too loosely. I think the Cm being at the top of my table is a blip, but I can see a good case for 4Pk (which also come above 3Bd) being the best of the heavy infantry with the narrowed front lines that are a feature of 3.0, certainly in armies that have a decent quantity of them. What I meant is that lots of wise people think they are at or near the top, and my contribution is one more indication of that.
Paul
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 26, 2017 12:00:28 GMT
I thought it would be interesting to compare troop types not on the basis of how often that particular type of element kills and gets killed (which is what I tried first), but rather on how often they are part of a winning or losing army, and by what margin of victory. In this way the valiant enemy psiloi who (too often for comfort) charge into the bad going and immobilise half my mounted force, without ever actually fighting, can also get recognition. I have collected data on 23 competitive battles and 68 solo games (is it embarrassing to play so many solo?). To describe the margin of victory, if the loser scored no kills, I valued the battle at 4 points, however many kills were scored by the winner. Otherwise, I reduced its value according to the ratio between the winner's and the loser's kills. (For example, a game in which the winner scored 5 kills and the loser scored 4 kills was valued at (4x1/5) = 0.8 points.) I counted an extra kill for a general or the first double element, and 0 points for Hd etc. (On reflection I am not convinced that this is the best way to describe the margin of victory; and maybe it might anyway be better to count all wins as +1 and all losses as -1, whatever the margin; comments welcome.) I then awarded the value of each battle as a "plus" to each element on the winning side and a "minus" to each element on the losing side. So in a 4-point battle with 3 Cv on the winning side and no Cv on the losing side, the total score of the "Cv" troop type would increase by 12. In a 0.8 point battle with 2 Ps on the winning side and 3 Ps on the losing side, the total score of the "Ps" troop type would decrease by a net 0.8. To compare the troop types, I took all those for which I had records for at least 30 battle participants. I divided the total score for each of these troop types by the total number of battle participants. I did the same for the subset of competitive battles. The results are shown in the table.
| all games (91) | competitive games only (23) | Cm | 1.0 | 0.6 | 4Pk | 0.9 | n.a. (not enough examples) | 3Bd | 0.6 | n.a. | Sp | 0.5 | -0.6 | 3Ax | 0.4 | n.a. | 3Pk | 0.2 | n.a. | 3Wb | 0.1 | 0.5 |
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| 3Kn | 0.0 | 0.3 | Cv | 0.0 | 0.1 | Ps | 0.0 | -0.5 |
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| LH | -0.3 | -0.7 | 4Lb | -0.3 | n.a. | 3Bw | -0.4 | 0.1 | 4Bd | -0.8 | -0.3 | LCm | -1.0 | n.a. |
Comments: 1) Obviously this is a work in progress. The sample, though it feels large, is too small to give reliable results. 2) Still, it confirms my broad impression that 3Bd are the best troop type (I haven't used El much) and LH are woefully underpowered. 3) The good performance of Cm and 3Wb comes from the fun I have had, both solo and in competitive games, with the Tuareg, nomadic pre-Islamic arabs and Welsh. I wonder if the bad performance of the 4Bd comes from the successes of the Welsh against Viking-type armies (where I had a lot of luck in the last PAWS of the year). 4) The better performance of the Bw and Lb in competitive games than solo ones is because others use them better than me! I will keep this up and would welcome comments. The numbers can roughly be interpreted as meaning "If you had an army of 12 4Pk, you could expect to score 0.9 more kills, by the end of the game, than the average army". But obviously this ignores the need for balance in armies; and the way I calculated victory margins mean that this description is anyway only approximate. Paul H
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 25, 2017 15:25:05 GMT
Thanks Stevie. The first one, in particular, will save me time in mental calculation.
Yours,
Paul H
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 25, 2017 14:40:50 GMT
I included notes on terrain but not homeland type; could share them if you like.
In my model, if homeland type is relevant, it is part of the skill of choosing an army. If terrain actually obtained is relevant, this would mean that being the defender is relevant - which it may well be (and it is partly a result of skill in choosing an army with good terrain and low aggression, partly of luck).
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 25, 2017 12:42:36 GMT
For 16 recent games, I've noted down each side's movement PIPs, each side's kill chances (eg Sp vs Sp, if one rolls a 1 the other kills on a 6, so each has 1/36 of a kill chance) and the kills actually obtained. Since I'm not so cruel as to make my opponent wait while I do this, they are all solo games, mostly with armies for the recent Mercian DBA and the upcoming Northern Cup.
I decided to count all kills equally (not double for a general, not 0 for a Hd).
The number of kills obtained by each side can be expressed as the sum of (a) the number of kill chances obtained and (b) the difference between the number of kills they 'ought' to have obtained and the number they actually obtained. For example, last night I fought the Later Sargonid Assyrians against the Medes. The Medes had 30/36 kill chances (which I call "0.8 kill chances" and converted none of them ("combat luck of -0.8"). The Assyrians, rather lucky, had 45/36 kill chances ("1.3 kill chances") and obtained 3 kills, including the Median general (3-1.3 = "combat luck of 1.7".)
In this particular case the difference in kills obtained was 3. This was accounted for by a difference of 0.5 in kill chances (1.3 minus 0.8) and a difference of 2.5 in combat luck (1.7 minus (minus 0.8)).
My hypothesis is that the number of "kill chances" that an army obtains is a reflection of the skill of the player in choosing and using it. If so, the comparison between the role of kill chances and of combat luck can be used as an index of the relative role of skill and luck in the game.
Skill is relevant in solo games because some armies are better than others (=more skilful choices, in tournaments where you choose what you bring) and because I think I play some armies ("medium" in weight) more skilfully than others ("heavy" and/or shooters). But the result will still probably be an underestimate of the relative role of skill that would appear in competitive games (there are some players against whom I nearly always lose; I think they are more skilful than me across a range of army types).
However, two other factors might influence the number of kill chances obtained - invader vs defender, and PIP dice obtained ("movement luck").
Among these 16 battles, the invader won 10 (63%). However, in a larger dataset that I have kept (85 battles), the invader won only 38 (45%). At least at the moment, this makes me feel comfortable in discarding this as a factor.
Among the 16 battles, the winner's PIP dice averaged 0.1 more than the loser's, a rather small difference. A larger dataset of 29 battles gives the same result. In the 16 battles, the correlation between the difference in PIP dice in any particular battle and the difference in kill chances in that battle was only 0.05, implying that "movement luck" explained only 5% of the difference in kill chances. Again, this seems small enough to set aside in this small sample.
So let's cut to the chase. Across the 16 battles, the winner killed on average 3.1 more elements than the loser. Differences in "kill chances" (calculated as above) accounted on average for 1.45 elements of this differential; differences in "combat luck" accounted on average for 1.65 elements.
Conclusion: based on this small sample, it seems that luck and skill play roughly equal roles in DBA 3.0.
But: it would be interesting to have a larger sample and to use competitive games rather than sole games.
(Maybe if I make a table with all the kill chances, rather than working them out for each combat, it will slow things down less.)
Comments welcome!
Paul H
PS later today I plan to mail some more slightly obsessive statistics, about differences between troop types
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 17, 2017 22:15:45 GMT
I love history and I love games and wargames combine the two. (I love geography too, board wargames do more for me in that dimension.) Plus I just like to look at the models even if I don't paint them (my armies are from ebay, thanks to everyone who assembled them). Last weekend at the Mercian DBA I was driving someone else's 4 elements of 4Pk, Spanish I think, with pikes as long as my arm up towards two lines of bow arranged in a v, it felt like I was on the hill at Balaclava watching the charge of the light brigade. I didn't win that game but it is one of my best memories of DBA.
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 15, 2017 22:52:44 GMT
Great day Pete. I like the formula. Fighting against your own army with someone else's is like wearing someone else's clothes. And 0 for a draw suits me (despite my rather poor results)!
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Post by hodsopa on Feb 9, 2017 8:19:11 GMT
Can't wait, Paul
Paul H
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Post by hodsopa on Jan 31, 2017 21:52:56 GMT
Pete, I am planning to come along unless family issues prevent. What time do you think to finish? What do we do for terrain - bring both invader and defender for our own army?
Paul H
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Post by hodsopa on Jan 29, 2017 16:57:43 GMT
Sorry to say I will miss it, it's the missus' birthday.
Paul H
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