rowid,Castle 1,Castle 2,Castle 3,Castle 4,Castle 5,Castle 6,Castle 7,Castle 8,Castle 9,Castle 10,Why did you choose your troop deployment?
13,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,32,32,32,You only need 28 to win
26,6,6,7,0,0,0,21,25,0,35,"Castles 1-3 and 6-8 were the most ignored by the top 5 warlords in the last round. 4-5 and 9-10 were most popular. I figured if I can almost guarantee getting 10 by placing 35 soldiers, ignore 9 where most others will send a significant amount, capture 7-8 which look to be ignored by most, and capture 1-3 which will be ignored for low point value, I could total 31 points which is more than enough to win a majority of the battles. Maybe a simpleminded strategy but this is based purely off the results of the last round and it could be an obvious one. "
41,1,5,10,0,0,0,0,28,28,28,Because I'm trying my best.
55,1,2,0,0,0,0,0,32,32,33,"The top 3 castles score 27 points in total, almost 50% of the point total. Assuming I can win all 3 and pick up a single unguarded low point castle, i will prevail."
59,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,32,32,32,"I do have to win all 4 of my engagements, which doesn't leave any margin for error. I'm confident in castle 1, and 2/3 for 8-10. So I just have to get a little lucky that opponents spread their forces out too much."
113,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,99,0,Just Cause
123,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,99,0,0,"You need to get points, and probably the only way to do that is to win a house outright. I am guessing that someone will do 100 for 10 and 9, so guessing 8 will be the one where people don't apply 100."
128,1,0,9,15,0,20,25,30,0,0,
161,5,1,0,0,0,0,0,32,31,31,"I anticipate a backlash against the deployment of troops to the highest castles given the data from the last war. Because of this, committing roughly a third of my troops to each of the three largest castles should overwhelm the majority of opponents. 8 has historically been one of the most sought after castles, likely being used to deny narrow strategies like mine a victory, so i will fortify it with an extra troop. 

Additionally, if i win 8/9/10, only one other point is necessary, and the first castle has been historically poorly defended. I send my final troop to the second castle, because someone who has committed more than 5 troops to the first is probably less likely to have fortified the second."
179,1,4,0,0,0,0,27,0,34,34,
205,1,0,0,0,0,9,10,10,35,35,"For the goal of winning 28 points, I plan to take castle 9 and 10. Then win any two among castle 7-9. I'm avoiding castle 4 - - 5 as they seemed to be hotly contested in prior matches"
208,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,22,37,40,
213,1,0,14,0,0,18,0,0,33,34,"Going big on castles 10, 9, 6, 3. It is designed to ""just barely"" win against what I figure is an average deployment. It matches up well with the top castles of Round Two but struggles against some of the top castles from Round One. As you might be able to guess, I don't expect people to go back to the Round One strategy."
216,1,0,0,12,0,12,25,25,25,0,"In order to assign the maximum number of soldiers to selected castles, from all castle combinations that sum up to 28 with just 4 castles, I choose to ignore castle 10 and concentrate forces to 9,8,7 (25 on each) then I just need one of 4,5 or 6 so I had to share the rest 25 soldiers to those 3 castles. To increase chances I placed 12 soldiers to 4 and 6 and the last remaining to castle 1( that was unintentional, since I had to place at least on soldier to castle 1)"
249,1,0,9,0,0,20,20,20,0,30,"You must win at least 28 points. Since the given strategy seems to be to avoid large commitments on 10, and attack 4,5, and 9, I chose to deploy my troops to 10, 8, 7, and 6 in large numbers, concentrating the rest on 3 to offset losing 1 and two. Its a high risk strategy, because losing just one of the higher values will result in a loss. "
254,1,0,0,0,0,0,24,25,25,25,Control the four top castles that add up to more than the rest.
277,1,0,0,9,0,15,0,35,40,0,Cheapest way to 28 total points. It did make me place one troop in castle one for some reason. Would rather have put that soldier at 4.
287,3,4,0,10,0,16,7,22,10,28,watching Game of thrones taught me to just go for it!
306,8,0,0,0,0,0,0,31,31,30,"I am just trying to get to the minimum amount of points to win: 28. I found the combination with the least amount of castles I possibly need to win and dumped all my points into these 4, forgoing the rest completely as they are not important in my winning strategy. Also, based on the previous 2 games, I decided to put the least in castle 1 in order to stack 8, 9, and 10 to the fullest possible."
349,2,0,0,0,0,17,18,18,20,25,
352,0,1,1,10,0,0,29,29,30,0,"Exact victory points, fewest required wins, avoid 10."
354,0,0,10,0,0,20,28,32,5,5,Because I'm the Grandmaster.
355,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,24,36,35,"limit losing troops, look for highest return on investment"
364,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,100,0,Nash Equilibrium
390,0,0,1,19,0,19,1,25,1,34,
407,0,6,0,0,0,0,0,33,33,28,"I wanted to win 28 point by attacking as few castles as possible. By focusing as many troops as possible on castles 8, 9 and 10 and choosing a low value castle that people typically don’t commit many resources to, I hoped to win the majority of bouts. "
439,5,5,0,0,0,0,0,20,30,40,Castles 3-7 are pretty lame
447,0,0,0,11,0,0,26,31,32,0,"I went for the less ""psychologically significant"" castles which would still give me a significant advantage. I sent 11 troops to 4 as an additional bonus in case someone is close to me in the upper ranges, or sweeps all the castles I didn't send any troops to - and since 11 just barely beats the simple strategy of sending 10 troops to each castle. I sent 26 to 7 because 26 is one more than 25 (another round number I expect people to use a lot), and similarly I sent 31 (rather than 30) to #8. Hope this works!"
449,6,0,0,0,0,0,0,32,31,31,"If I win the 10, 9, 8 and 1, I have 28 which is just enough to win."
467,0,0,10,0,0,16,0,0,35,39,"I started with the averages and the winners from the last 2 rounds. Then I tried to craft a few strategies: a few random ones, some crafted to specifically beat the winners, some crafted to take advantage of historically undervalued spaces between winners and averages, - with some variations on how little/much to put on some of the lighter weighted castles. Then I sat down and went for a hyper aggressive strategy that had a single path to 28 points and would defeat all of the above hahaha. And so we end up here, with a warlord who styles him/herself also as an edgelord, and possibly did not do enough to account for beating strategies that were previously losing. "
468,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,30,30,35,"I only need 28 points to win, so I'm only investing my soldiers in 4 attacks to get me the 28 - the three highest totals plus one point."
471,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,32,33,32,"I need 28 points to win, so I'm fighting hard for those 28 points."
473,0,0,12,0,0,22,0,0,34,32,"4-castle all-in no scouts.  Relative value. My min allocation has to be > 10 to beat naive even split.  My overpayment vs avg cost... I must win castle 9. The other castles I will overpay relative to my overpayment on castle 9.   Castle 3 +7, castle 6 +11, castle 9 +18, castle 10 +14. You really have to beat my contested castles.  Weakness is castle 3, but I’m at +7 and castle 6, +11. Beats all past winners."
478,2,1,0,0,0,0,0,28,33,36,
489,0,0,0,0,0,25,0,34,41,0,The minimum number of castles needed is 3 which have to add up to 23.  6 is app. 25% of 23 so 25 soldiers 8 is app. 33% of 23 so 34 soldiers and the rest go to 9.
493,0,0,0,13,0,12,0,0,37,38,23 points are needed to ensure a win - Overwhelming top two castles can get to 19 and then I just need to pick up one more of the other castles to win. Splitting between two helps cover bases if I lose one of the 9/10 and also increases odds i get the one castle to push me over 23 if I win the top two.
511,7,1,1,1,0,0,0,27,28,35,"There are 55 available points among the castles, which means I need 28 to win. My strategy is to sell out for the top 3 castles, which gives me 27 if I win them all, then hope to take the smallest castle to push me over the edge. In addition I have a single scout sent to the next three smallest castles to try and steal one of those as well. Castles 5, 6, and 7 I will concede in favor of castles 8, 9, and 10."
512,0,9,0,0,0,0,0,32,32,27,
541,7,0,0,0,0,0,0,35,32,26,"The bare minimum to win 28 victory points, assuming I win all of my chosen battles.  This allows me to maximize my troop deployment  to a minimum number of castles.  "
542,10,0,0,0,0,0,0,30,30,30,People are going to overthink it. 1/8/9/10 is enough to win.
546,0,0,0,20,0,0,0,0,40,40,23 points to win.  Overload the highest rated castles and sacrifice everything else
548,3,5,6,8,0,12,14,15,17,20,"Scale investment to reward, but then abandon castle 5 and use the extra soldiers to try to beat other warlords scaling investment to reward"
550,0,0,0,0,0,15,17,0,33,35,
552,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,32,31,32,The goal is to get 28 points. Concentrated troops at the least amount of castles to achieve that.
556,0,0,0,0,0,10,15,20,25,30,"Win four of the top five castles, and you win. This particular troop distribution fights harder for the bigger prizes; would win against four of the five top strategies devised last time; and should be able to compete against anyone putting significant effort in winning lower tier castles, as people have been doing."
558,8,9,9,10,0,0,0,30,0,34,"Try to win 1,2,3,4,8,10 to get to 28"
580,0,0,0,0,0,0,25,25,25,25,"Instead of spreading out my troops, I wanted to backend my troops toward the castles with higher amount of individual points."
587,0,0,0,0,0,20,23,26,30,1,"Grasp barely enough castles to win, plus one in 10 as a counter strategy against a mirror match."
611,1,1,1,1,0,0,24,24,24,24,
614,3,6,0,14,0,22,25,30,0,0,"I figured you need 28 points to win and winning 1-7 will get you there exactly. That means you can reallocate all your points from 8-10 to 1-7 and stand a good chance of winning. Other people might do that too though, so I did some other stuff on a whim to mix it up."
634,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,30,30,35,"28 points is a win, so that's all I'm going for. The Castle 1 victory is essential!"
648,0,0,0,0,0,100,0,0,0,0,All of the troops at the first castle higher than 5
662,0,0,0,0,0,0,26,32,42,0,"I only need to win 3 castles, assuming people focus on 10, I decided to ignore it an focus on the next three and then power creep 9 and 8 in case people had the same idea as I did."
667,0,0,8,11,0,22,28,31,0,0,Strongly attacked with the most likely castles to reach 28.
672,0,0,17,0,0,0,29,23,2,29,"All-in on 3,7,8,10"
678,30,30,30,0,0,0,0,0,0,10,"As I expect many to choose low troop numbers for the top castles, I deploy many soldiers there in order to hopefully take those three. After that, only one point is needed to win, so I chose to attack castle 10 in hopes that it is the least guarded. This appears to be a reasonable strategy based on the previous distribution."
681,0,0,12,0,0,26,0,0,29,33,Choose just a few castles and maximize the chances of winning those.
713,0,0,0,0,0,10,10,15,25,40,
714,4,0,7,0,0,11,0,0,38,40,"Focus on getting required 28 points to win by targeting top tiers to make up bulk of points, and a few lower tier castles to add in just enough points."
720,0,7,0,14,0,21,25,0,33,0,"I considered strategies which are most efficient in usage of troops (ie. trying to get exactly 28 points) which would allow for ~3.57 troops per point value of the castle. Then I considered rounding error on the troops deployed - if others are also using 28-point strategies, then the best of them would be those that used the castles with small negative rounding errors. (ie. Castle 2 asks for ~7.14 troops but would be satisfied with 7). So I pick castle 2,4,6,7,&9 which leaves me with one leftover troop - I think Castle 9 might be the most competitive among 28-point strategies, so I drop the extra troop there."
727,0,14,0,0,0,0,0,28,29,29,"To get more than half of the 55 total points, it requires 10+9+8+1 (28/55), thus, we should focus our soldiers most at the top three castles. The last point can come from any castle. Since it is likely that castle 7–being worth 7 points—will be paid attention to more than the castles lower than it, we should let that one fall. Since we only need one more point after assuming a win at 8-10, we should go for the lower castles. I believe, however, that many people will go after 1 strategically to get one last point, so I choose to go after 2, which tho it has more point value, might get raided less by those who are attempting a similar strategy to mjne."
731,0,7,0,0,0,0,25,0,32,36,
735,1,2,2,0,0,4,6,8,34,43,win 10/9 and two average others
745,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,30,32,34,"My plan hinges on capturing the most valuable castles, 8, 9 and 10, as well as capitalizing - hopefully - on a perceived deficiency in the lowest value castle, 1. The total value of 55 divided by 2 gets 27.5, so the magic number is 28. 10, 9, and 8 would get me to 27 already, so capturing 1 alone would put me over the top. If I lose any battle I've committed to, I lose. If I tie any battle I've committed to, I lose (other than 1, in which I'd tie). Hopefully all works out."
755,4,1,15,0,0,0,0,0,40,40,"Only need 22.5 points to win. Figured 40 would win most of the time at 9 & 10, so I only need 3.5"
759,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,41,31,24,Magic
766,0,5,0,0,0,0,0,35,30,30,"There is 55 points total. 28 is what you need to win. So win 10,9,8 and 2. Focus on the minimum amount of effort to win. Win by a little or a lot, a win is a win."
771,2,2,2,8,0,19,26,41,0,0,Avoid wasted troops at high value targets and low v; win on aggregate over sim.
777,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,35,30,30,"28 is a win, so concentrate where you need to win, and win!"
780,0,0,4,6,0,16,16,18,35,5,
786,1,6,0,10,0,15,5,19,21,23,"I try to get the best of both worlds, as much as possible, by sending big battallions to the largest castles while still having a good chance of grabbing the even-numbered lower ones by punting on odd numbered low castles. It's a bizarre strategy that does well against the average strategies from both the other years as well as the winning strategies from those years.

I do have to punt on one of the bigger numbers, so I choose 7 since I think people tend to ""randomly"" select that one a lot, plus 7 is ""big enough to be important but not so big that others will get it, so I will"". I do still send 5 troops there to avoid losing to other strategies that punt there."
791,0,0,0,0,0,10,10,10,35,35,A gross misunderstanding of all logic
796,5,5,5,5,0,0,0,10,30,40,"Intuition and guesswork based on the past data. Most generals had more even distributions and none of the top 10 had any allocations above 40. So if I capture the highest value prizes and a few of the smaller ones that garner less attention, I figure I should be in pretty good shape."
798,6,0,0,0,0,0,0,34,30,30,"A deliberate overkill strategy, designed to get exactly 28 points. If my guess is right then people will back down a bit on the bids on the higher, and still ignore the lower values. In this strategy you have to take the top 3, so the 1 value castle is the best hope to steal a final strategy. It just seemed like an interesting idea."
799,0,3,0,18,0,17,9,15,5,33,"The winning strategy in round 2 was primarily to take castles 4, 5, 9, and 10. I'm largely trying to disrupt that by using more force at 10 and 4. At the same time I'm trying to take 4, 6, 8, and 10 to get myself to 28."
804,0,0,0,20,0,10,20,30,0,20,just felt intuitively good
806,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,33,33,34,Go big or go home
811,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,33,33,30,"Just need 28 points to win.  Figure I can almost always win 1 point with a small number on 1.  Then maximize my focus on 8, 9, and 10."
818,0,0,11,0,0,7,7,7,34,34,"I don't want to lose any large castle by a narrow margin, as this would be a significant waste of troops. If I win a large castle narrowly, this is the best scenario, but an overwhelming loss is also acceptable (since it will cost my opponent many troops to achieve this, and therefore give me numerical superiority elsewhere). It's like the electoral college!

In the previous rounds, players deployed troop amounts on the large castles that were either very small or very large. My strategy depends on my expectation that this pattern will repeat itself. I chose all of my troop placements with this in mind, determined not to lose any large castle narrowly against either of those strategies.

I invested heavily into castles 9 and 10, expecting to win their points almost every time. If I win one or both of them narrowly, then this is a significant boon to my efficiency. If I win them overwhelmingly, this is not as good, but for 19 points I'm willing to take the risk. I expect to defeat most players who conduct a predictable attack on one or both of these castles. If I lose either of these castles after such a large investment then I probably lose the match.

I expect to do well in castles 3, 6, 7, and 8. I'm vulnerable to opponents who attack three or more of these simultaneously with medium-sized forces while conceding castles 9 and 10, as some top finishers did in the first round, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. Any two of these mid-range castles, plus the 19 points above will give me the 28 points necessary for the win.

Castles 4 and 5 seem to have been highly overvalued in the earlier rounds, so I did not contest them at all. I am hoping to take an overwhelming loss here against opponents who try this again. If I lose them narrowly, that's unfortunate, but it won't matter too much. My path to 28 points is fairly difficult to block even without them."
820,0,2,7,0,0,22,3,1,33,32,10+9+6+3 = 28 and both 6 & 3 are not common choices in previous editions.
823,0,0,0,10,0,0,0,30,25,35,Just a hunch I had based on previous editions
825,0,0,0,0,0,19,23,27,31,0,"All focused on the fewest castles needed to win, avoiding the highest and lowest valued."
834,7,0,0,0,0,0,0,31,31,31,28 to 27
836,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,30,35,30,"No modelling, just a ten second guess on what others would do on average. (It's a no stakes game.) 28 is needed to win. 10 + 9 + 8 + 1 suffices. Naturally you'd expect them to be hotly contested, but this is well above the average content of those castles so let's let the last two round's data suggest it is worth a go attacking them. So let's sacrifice losing to players that take alternative strategies to see if this wins enough rounds against common submissions. And taking a complete guess that the peak of the contest will move from castle 8 to castle 9."
838,0,0,0,0,0,17,18,30,35,0,
840,2,0,6,1,0,0,22,0,40,29,"55 points to win, this is a race to 28. The quickest way to that is winning 9 & 10 and then then figuring how best to win one big-ish castle and win/split a small-ish (but not smallest) one. I focused on 7 because I thought the battle would be bigger for 8, and then 3 to win or split. That takes me to at least 27.5 with the hope that one of the other towers breaks my way (particularly the 1 point as a win or split)."
850,1,0,0,0,0,0,30,30,39,0,Highest % troops outside Castle 10
852,0,0,0,0,0,20,0,0,40,40,"I wanted to deploy high numbers of troops to the highest value castles to get as close to victory at the beginning as possible. From there, it only takes 6 more points to win the game, so I put all my remaining troops in Castle 6 to have the best chance of taking the points needed to win."
862,0,0,0,20,0,0,26,26,28,0,"Maximizing distribution to minimum number of castles needed to win, while avoiding expense of castle 10.  "
873,7,0,0,0,0,0,0,26,31,36,Protect the bag
890,10,0,0,0,0,0,0,15,25,50,Forces concentrated on minimum four castles to win
891,0,10,0,0,0,0,15,25,50,0,Forces concentrated on alternative 4 castles to win
913,0,7,1,0,0,1,28,1,33,29,I took one of the better performing solutions from last simulation that seemed to work well against the other top solutions and tweaked it slightly.
914,1,1,0,0,0,15,20,31,30,2,"I figured most people would favor Castle 10, so I instead heavily reinforced Castles 8 and 9. I also left several troops in Castles 6 and 7. If I can win the middle numbers, I will be in good shape. "
952,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,20,30,50,Seemed smart
966,0,0,0,11,0,0,27,31,31,0,"No point putting a small number of soldiers in a castle as you get no points for a loss. 9+8+7+4=28 is just over half the maximum (55). I think a bunch of people will go all in on 10, 9, 8, 1 with a 30,30,30,10 spread and this will beat that. Similarly, this beats a 25-25-25-25 spread on 10,9,8,7 and the 10 on all castles approach. Finally by ignoring castle 10, we also beat the strategies that put alot on castle 10 and spread a little to everything else which I think might be common."
981,0,0,0,0,0,25,25,25,25,0,
1005,0,10,0,0,0,0,0,30,30,30,Make or break: a massive push to reach the target point value to win (i.e. 28 points)
1006,0,0,0,0,0,40,60,0,0,0,Want to overwhelm the squishy undervalued middle with enough troops to fend off anyone who doesn't just flood one of the two castles. Pin the rest on luck and the fog of war.
1010,0,0,0,0,0,0,10,20,30,40,
1019,0,0,0,0,0,6,16,21,26,31,
1027,0,0,0,0,0,10,20,30,40,0,"Most people will try locking in 10, I'd rather let them spend their points since 9 is almost equal.  Further it allows me to hit a few more relatively high value targets further down"
1035,0,0,0,3,0,22,23,24,25,3,
1051,0,0,3,0,0,14,14,5,33,31,"I tried to come up with a troop arrangement that would outscore the top five deployments (averaged out) and the top deployments from the previous rounds. It was mostly a matter of trial-and-error.  And I didn't quite succeed in my goal (my deployment beats the ""average"" 36-19 and the second round winner 43.5-11.5, but loses to the first round winner 25-30).  But I feel good about my choices of castles to attack with strength (9, 10) and about my decision to emphasize attacking castles 6 and 7 at the expense of castles 4 and 5.  I am a little bit uneasy about my decision to make only a modest 5-troop deployment to castle 8 as there may be a rush by others to scoop up those points this round.  But I think the decision to abandon castles 1 and 2 in favor of a token 3-troop deployment to castle 3 is sensible.  "
1065,2,1,1,17,0,31,0,33,4,11,"I'd like to rescind my previous submission!  I've now looked at the previous two metas. I'm trying to anticipate the next 28-set and stake out a slightly different 28-set, with the guess that 10 will skew low again. "
1076,0,1,9,0,0,19,6,0,35,30,I went with my gut
1086,6,3,0,0,0,0,1,32,32,26,"Loading up on the high value castles is in some ways the most obvious strategy. However, it is possible that folks will overthink, in which case this might do well."
1087,2,3,5,0,0,0,15,25,0,50,Arbitrary
1096,1,1,2,0,0,24,24,24,24,0,just trying to win 4 key castles
1098,0,0,10,0,0,26,0,0,28,36,"No time = no thought = no analysis = no strategy.  Anyone defeated by this should have a long walk accompanied by a bell and ""Shame!  Shame!  Shame!"""
1107,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,30,33,34,I'm trying to get the majority of available points with the fewest castles.
1117,0,0,0,0,0,17,18,18,29,18,55 points available. Give up the first 15 points and focus all the efforts on gaining by going above the average for each of the remaining castles. I went heavy on 9 assuming that most others would have the same thought process and skew towards the higher values except 10.
1130,0,0,0,0,0,0,20,23,27,30,"Determine the maximum number of castles that can be abandoned while still achieving net victory assuming individual victories at the remaining castles. sum(i, i = 1 .. 10) = 55, sum(i, i = 7 .. 10) = 34, sum(i, i = 1 .. 6) = 21. 34-21 = 13, therefore only castles 7-10 need to be won. Soldiers were distributed approximately proportionally to the point value of the castle, but preferentially rounding down for lower value castles and up for higher values."
1152,4,4,4,6,0,0,25,25,25,7,"Sacrifice what should be hotly contested castles (5 & 6) in favor of what are likely lesser contested castles (1,2,3,7,8,9,) and try to pick off castles 10 & 4 against forces trying to sneak away with them"
1157,0,0,0,0,0,0,20,30,50,0,Random Hunch
1160,10,0,0,0,0,0,0,30,30,30,Adds up to 28
1171,1,3,5,0,0,14,19,2,24,32,"To avoid overvaluing castles 4 and 5, I chose a strategy that cedes 4, 5, and the hotly contested 8. 28 points are needed to win, and if I win every castle I am invested in I will come ahead with 38. This allows me to lose even my most valuable castle and still win. "
1176,100,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,"I'm a warlord, yes, but all I really care about is myself. . . and I want a castle! If anyone stands in my way they will be sorry."
1179,0,0,0,12,0,0,18,30,40,0,28 is the minimum number of points to win. I sent the least number to castle 4 because I anticipated that it would not need to be taken with higher numbers in most scenarios.
1181,7,2,2,11,0,6,24,5,33,10,random & fudging & top loading
1192,1,1,2,6,0,0,27,30,33,0,
1196,10,0,0,0,0,0,0,25,37,28,To win just over 50% of the points with the least number of castles by deploying enough troops to four castles to win 28/55 points and abandoning the other six
1205,0,0,0,0,0,0,10,20,30,40,"Higher value=more soldiers, keep it simple"
1218,0,0,10,0,0,0,10,20,25,35,"The focus is on on reducing the battlefield down to enough castles to get 28 victory points, and then identifying the set of castles that make up 28 points that past players have shown the least interest in competing for."
1223,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,31,33,33,all or nothing
1230,1,1,1,0,0,20,20,22,35,0,
1240,5,0,0,12,0,13,0,30,35,5,Trying to secure a baseline of 17 and steal either 10 or 7+3 as well as the first castle
1248,3,4,5,13,0,0,0,0,35,40,The middle castles seem to be the most hotly contested and the lower ones were completely ignored. Secure the most valuable pieces with overwhelming force and pick up cheap points at the bottom.
1251,0,0,0,0,0,14,14,14,33,25,"Looking at previous results the middle became the highest value for least deployments. BUt I wanted to be able to take the the 10 and 9 as well.  so I loaded the top end and placed enough in the middle that might get me to 28 points.

I am willing to cede 15 points to the opponent"
1256,5,10,0,15,0,20,0,25,25,0,I assumed that many would allocate more towards higher level castles so I allocated more there and allocated less as castles devaluated.
1257,1,1,11,0,0,0,23,28,0,36,"I chose 4 castles that I had to win and devoted most of my resources to them.  In looking at the last winners, I didn't want to waste any resources on pricey castles I wasn't all in to win.  On the other hand, if someone outbid my 3, I wanted to take the chance that they might have said nothing on 1 and 2."
1259,0,0,0,0,0,0,12,12,12,64,focused highly on the highest valued castles
1269,0,0,11,14,0,21,25,29,0,0,"I’ve narrowed down the gameplay to around 14 possibly optimal plays. This is one of them.  There are 33 possible exactly 28points to win strategies.  This one is 8-7-6-4-3. Allocated by relative castle value. Castle/28*100. 
Here’s the list of 9, allocate by taking castle/28*100:
10-9-6-3
10-9-5-4
10-8-7-3
10-8-6-4
10-7-6-5
9-8-7-4
9-8-6-5
10-6-5-4-3
8-7-6-4-3

The other 5 are semi suboptimal vs the 9 but forms the “rock,paper,scissor”:
ExpectedValue: castle/55*100
EvenAcross: 10/castle
Ultimate: castle/28*100+1 for castle 8,9,10
Lucky7: castle/28*100 for castles 1 to 7
Troll: 47,53 on castle 9 and 10 respectively.
At least one of these strategies will do well depending on the market. And the market will shift around these strategies depending on the amount of trolldom. "
1288,2,4,0,0,0,0,0,9,40,45,Go nearly all in on the most valuable castles. Plus cheap wins on the least.
1291,2,0,5,10,0,0,24,24,35,0,"Trying to focus on getting 28 victory points while sacrificing the ""10"" assuming most people will want the big win."
1310,2,4,6,9,0,3,3,21,24,28,I chose something that held up well against different scenarios like previous winners and averages.
1321,1,0,0,0,0,0,10,27,29,33,"My focus was on getting 28 total victory points out of a possible 55, so I concentrated on 8, 9, 10, and winning 1 extra point on the ""1"" castle."
15,1,1,1,2,1,15,21,26,31,1,"Goal is to maximize odds of winning 28 or more, and winning 6 through 9 seemed to have the easiest path of getting there. Skipping 5 and leaving 2 at 4 is because 4+6+7+8+9 is enough to win, happy to leave 5 behind to win 6-9."
16,1,1,1,21,1,1,21,21,31,1,"In order to win a war I need to get 28 points, anything more doesn't matter and anything less may as well be zero.  So I chose to strongly contest 4 spots which would allow me to get that score if I only one those (9, 8, 7, and 4).  For each of the remaining spots I chose to place a single troop in case someone also heavily contests one of these numbers but leaves another spot entirely uncontested.  Finally I chose numbers ending in 1 because I assumed that many people would choose round numbers and therefore I would have some chance of barely beating them."
17,1,0,0,0,1,14,34,34,14,2,"It’s basically a bell curve, but with one soldier in Castle 1 because I had to. "
18,1,1,1,1,1,19,19,19,19,19,"I only need 4 of the 5 largest castles to win, so I just put all my troops equally in those 5 so there is no chance someone beats me in all 5!"
28,1,1,1,1,1,5,5,10,25,50,"I figured if I can guarantee a split or victory of high level castles, that can override the lower level ones--this is not very scientific.  Also, the form doesn't allow us to send 0 soldiers to a given castle."
30,1,1,1,1,1,1,91,1,1,1,Banking on winning ALL the battles at Castle 7
37,1,10,1,1,1,1,28,28,28,1,28 is the number needed to win so targeted to scrape a win. Did not contend the highest scoring castle as some will likely go very heavy there
57,1,4,9,10,1,13,16,17,14,15,I assumed the number of soldiers necessary based a trend from the previous two events.  I then added one soldier to castles 6 through 10 and subtracted one soldier from castles 1-5.  I then decided to sacrifice castles 1 and 5 and minimize their defenses and put their soldiers on the other 8 castles.
58,4,0,1,1,1,0,0,31,31,31,My goal is to acquire 28 points. This is on permutations of castle attacks that makes it likely
61,3,3,1,1,1,1,10,35,44,1,focus on castle 8 and 9 with the assumption that castle 10 is likely going to be taken and castle 1 and 2 will have 1 soldier brought to them
68,1,1,1,1,1,4,30,30,30,1,"Folks are likely to put a concerted effort to a few castles to secure their victories there. I'm hoping to win the less contested, but higher value castles."
77,1,1,1,15,1,20,1,28,2,30,Win 10 and 8 while giving up 9 to those who heavily go for it but winning it from those who send very few troops with the objective of winning 4 castles to get to 28 points.
89,1,1,1,1,1,5,10,15,25,40,
90,1,6,14,19,1,15,21,21,1,1,"I focused on the 3,4,6,7,8 field, that have good reward, but aren't tied. Put down at least one in the others to surprise my enemies who left castles unattended. By giving my enemy 10,9,5,2,1, I win out by 1. I am weak to attacks on the higher values, as a 7,8,9 30 split with a dump on 10 will destroy my attempt. As long as the enemy doesn't consolidate, then I shall claim victory."
94,1,0,0,2,1,0,17,21,27,31,"Securing the high castles is paramount to our victory, with a few sneaky +1 to counteract those who wish to tie us in mortal combat."
102,1,1,1,1,1,20,1,1,34,39,Ties are wins
109,1,1,1,1,1,23,23,24,24,1,
117,1,1,0,1,1,5,10,25,55,1,
124,2,2,2,10,1,1,25,25,30,2,"Maximize the troops that could take 28 points, and the others are 2 to cleanup places where my opponent sent only 1."
129,1,1,1,21,1,1,22,24,26,2,"I figured a lot of people would go 10 on each, and this would consistently beat those ones. I also guessed a lot of people would put two on each of the lower ones to beat out the one you are forced to put there, so I made sure to take that into account. The second question for me was the people who went a bunch in top half and left one each to the lower ones so I knew I would need to adjust the numbers to favor something would also win against someone who went 1-1-1-1-1-19-19-19-19-19 because that seemed like it would be like the second most common formidable strategy. 

The last thing I considered was that because you need 28 points to win and the easiest way to there seems to be 9+8+7+6 the easiest way to get there. I ignore the ten because other people will dump a bunch of points there and either way I will need to  get four numbers total as 10+9+8 only gets you to 27. This strategy pretty cleanly beats both those strategies. To beat this you would need to foresee it probably and get 9 at least. I think if you went for a 10-9-8 strategy and just low balled a bunch of other numbers hoping to get one you might beat me but you will lose to everyone playing 10 on everything so I think this is the most stable that I can come up with."
133,1,1,12,1,1,20,1,1,34,28,Anticipating another adjustment after the second round. Min/maxing numbers to reach the 28 point threshold.
139,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,23,33,36,"Just win 10,9,8 and get lucky somewhere else."
150,3,1,1,1,1,1,2,26,27,37,"Get 28 points with the fewest number of castles possible (10, 9, 8 & 1).  Try to defend those with as many soldiers as possible and leave 1 at the other castles in case any are left undefended. "
154,1,1,1,1,1,3,33,20,20,19,"To achieve over 50% of the available points, you must either win either the lowest 7 or highest 4, or otherwise mix and match point values up to 28 points. I have chosen to fight hard for the 4 highest values, in hopes that most spread their troops more conservatively. Because Castle 7 is included in both of these combinations, it is likely to be highly contested, so I have placed a third of my troops there. 1 troop was distributed to all castles in the lower 6 to snag extra points in case of similar strategies, or to those which chose not to contest certain castles. This strategy only works if I am able to win all 4 top castles, so this beats the winning Feb 2017 strategy of aiming low, but not the Jun 2017 strategy of splitting between 9/10 and 4/5. That makes this strategy considerably more risky and dependent on what the general trends are among the other participants this time."
157,1,1,9,9,1,15,2,2,29,31,"Mostly guessing. 6, 9, and 10 seems like an efficient way to get close to 28, and hardly anyone's going to put lots of troops to both 3 and 4."
172,1,1,1,1,1,1,19,22,25,28,Proportionally allocated to the top four based on point values
185,2,3,4,12,1,24,4,26,2,22,"Pretty random, some psychology"
192,2,5,10,1,1,16,3,31,27,4,Random to avoid overthinking the problem
199,1,1,1,1,1,12,12,24,1,46,I dunno
202,1,1,1,1,1,1,4,20,20,50,
204,1,1,1,1,1,1,9,20,30,35,I want castle 10 baby!!!!!!!!!
222,31,31,31,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,Trying to get the top three castles and then hopefully catch one other castle my opponent didn't put any troops at
233,1,5,10,1,1,19,2,23,34,4,"28 by way of 2,3,6,8,9 instead of 4,5,9,10 or 1(2),3,4,5,7,8.  Mixed strategy which emphasizes 3 and 6 over 4 and 5 and splits the first two rounds emphasis on 7,8 and 9,10 by focusing on 8,9"
239,1,4,1,1,1,1,1,30,32,28,going for the top 3 and hoping to get lucky and get one other
240,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,31,31,31,
243,1,1,11,1,1,1,1,21,32,30,I want to beat troop allocation based on castle % worth. And also equal split. The base naive case.  While at the same time I want to have an edge against some of the winners in Feb and June meta.  I win against 40% of Feb winners and 20% of June winners.  The meta unlikely to repeat.  My max overpay is +16. Median overpay is -2.  It’s a more concentrated strategy. June had a more displaced strategy. Feb is more concentrated. Meta will swing back towards concentration.
244,1,1,3,3,1,22,1,8,27,33,"I was bored in class, troops weren't going to deploy themselves"
267,1,5,1,1,1,1,1,28,29,32,
274,1,1,1,2,1,15,20,3,29,27,"The trick seems to be strategically giving up on castles while committing the least number of troops to the ones I'm playing for in order to succeed. Four seems to be the best number to go after, while also strategically leaving 2-3 troops rather than one in a few locations in order to scoop up easy victories against foes committing 1-2. I'm a little concerned that I'm committing too few troops to Castle 6, but that's above the mean from each of the last two contests."
289,10,1,1,1,1,1,1,39,20,25,
293,1,1,7,9,1,1,30,48,1,1,I wanted to assure myself of winning 20 points and invested heavily in those castles unlikely to be the principle investments of others.
297,1,1,1,18,1,1,18,26,32,1,Getting to 28 points
303,1,0,1,7,1,20,3,27,14,26,
304,1,1,1,1,1,10,15,20,20,30,"The first 4 castles are only worth as much as 10 combined, so I'm willing to give up the smaller ones for a higher point castle. Then just lower the troops accordingly, weighted towards the higher points."
309,1,6,5,1,1,1,20,1,32,32,I'm trying to get to 28 points as often as possible.
311,1,1,1,5,1,10,1,20,0,60,Must win 28 points
315,1,1,1,1,1,18,21,26,29,1,All castles should have at least 1 soldier just in case someone sends 0. Castle 10 will be the hardest to capture so put the minimum. Castle 6-9 will need to be captured to win if castle 10 is sacrificed. Proportionally distribute remaining soldiers to castles 6-9 favoring the higher scoring castles slightly.
321,6,1,1,1,1,38,39,1,1,11,Castles 6 and 7 seemed undervalued so I focused troops there and put a middling 11 on castle 10 in case a significant number based their strategies on the previous battle.
332,7,8,8,1,1,18,18,1,37,1,Win Castle #9 and the other castels that seem overlooked.
333,1,1,1,1,1,23,5,33,30,4,Because it's the best
338,1,6,1,13,1,21,24,1,31,1,"I chose 5 castles (9,7,6,4,2) to try and win 28 points most often and sorted my troops according to point values per castles. Then I took 1 troop from each castle and allotted to other 5 castles (just in case opponent sent 0 or 1 troops to those castles also)."
342,0,0,1,3,1,1,22,23,24,25,"This is my second entry. I created it as the counterpoint to my strategy (sort of) in the first. Here, I must win 3 of the 4 largest and then pick up 4 more points."
359,5,8,11,1,1,17,21,1,34,1,Aim to get 28 points. Look to beat prior winners. Rely on intuition and a quick excel check (keep time invested at ten minutes).
373,0,0,0,4,1,16,1,16,31,31,To win.
383,1,2,1,1,1,11,12,31,35,5,"I earn enough victory points from castles 6, 7, 8 and 9 so I focused on them.  I put at least an army in each castle to prevent free wins.  I only sent a few armies to castle 10 because I felt others would devout a lot of troops there.  I didn't want to waste mine in a large battle there but I put some in case others have my same strategy of avoiding a large battle at castle 10.  I also put a great deal in castles 8 and 9.  I wanted to nearly guarantee victories at those castles."
386,1,0,19,1,1,21,0,23,0,34,
389,1,0,19,1,1,21,0,23,0,34,
406,0,0,0,16,1,1,25,28,28,1,
410,1,1,1,1,1,8,14,19,26,28,nearly abandoning the first 5. then load up 6-10. Winning 4 of those 5 guarantees a win. probably won't win
421,5,7,9,13,1,16,16,17,15,1,Trying the maximize the chance of at least winning 28 points.
436,2,2,2,1,1,1,1,32,31,27,"Win the big castles, grab a couple other points somewhere."
443,1,1,1,1,1,15,17,19,21,23,"Calculated relative worth of each castle and deployed troops accordingly, then removed all but 1 troop from lower half of castles (to get more points from enemies who chose 0) and distributed them evenly over the high value castles, because I have no clue which ones will be highly sought after this round."
451,1,1,1,1,1,10,14,19,25,27,"55 possible points, first 5 only get you 15. Just in case the other warlord did not use any on the first 5 I will win with one on each. For castles 6-10 I dispersed the rest of the troops with the number getting bigger as the castle’s value got bigger"
454,1,19,1,19,1,19,1,19,1,19,"If you win the even numbered castles, you win."
456,1,1,1,15,1,18,1,26,2,34,"Trying to secure 28 points via castles 10, 8, 6, and 4. If other responses rely heavily on similar castles...hopefully a few stragglers in each castle provide a fighting chance. This loses to strategies that sell out for castles 6 or 8 pretty dramatically but I think those will be few and far between."
470,2,5,6,8,1,12,14,16,17,19,"There are 55 points on offer. With 100 troops, that means deploying my troops evenly per the points on offer requires sending ~1.8 troops for each point in the castle. Most people probably figured this out, so I looked where they would round up/down to get to whole soldiers, and I sent 1 more soldier than that to each castle. This strategy required 10 extra, so I gave up on castle 5, which was taking 10 soldiers. Then, I moved 1 soldier from castle 1 (which had 3) to castle 5, so that if they did some weird strategy with no troops to 5 I'd win it, and only was increasing my risk at a 1 point castle."
482,0,3,4,5,1,8,15,18,22,24,Looks good to me!
483,1,1,11,12,1,20,24,28,1,1,I choose to send at least 1 soldier to each castle in case I could take the castle unopposed.  After that I decided to concentrate my soldiers towards 5 castles that could give me enough points to win (28/55).  I then distributed my troops according to the worth of each castle.  Finally I then added one extra troop to a castle in case I came up against someone using my initial strategy but without going for the undefended castles to ensure that I would still win.
501,3,3,3,1,1,15,3,22,27,22,This combination had a good performance in tests against the data from past competitions
527,3,1,1,1,1,1,1,26,30,35,"The goal is 28pts, split them between the fewest number of castles weighted by worth of each castle. with a chance to win empty castles"
530,1,1,2,1,1,11,11,11,26,35,
568,1,2,6,1,1,18,3,2,33,33,To maximize winnings.
610,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,33,33,33,"Try to ensure victory at the top 3 values, which are greater than the sum of the rest"
626,1,1,1,1,1,15,20,20,20,20,
642,1,1,1,1,1,17,18,19,20,21,"Token support on the least valuable castles.  Divide the remaining forces on the most valuable 5 castles, weighting the distribution of soldiers to the more valuable castles. "
663,1,4,1,1,1,1,23,1,28,39,"This is my second submisssion, I wanted to try a completely different strategy.  Here I aim to win 10, 9, 7 and 2 against many opponents, when that fails, I hope to win enough from the rest as I expect many entries to have several 0's and 1's."
692,1,1,1,1,1,2,31,31,31,0,"all out to capture 7,8,9 and pick up any 0s elsewhere"
694,2,9,2,2,1,12,21,16,19,16,trying to divide in a way to get at-least half victory points based on the distribution that might be possible based on the previous two distributions.
709,9,1,1,1,1,1,1,25,30,30,"55 points possible, so 28 wins. I wanted to defend the fewest amount of castles. Also, I made sure to at least attempt a defense of each castle. "
711,1,1,1,1,1,19,19,19,19,19,I am an Aquarius.
747,4,1,6,1,1,20,0,32,0,35,"Goal is to take castles 1, 3, 6, 8, 10 for a winning 28 points. Single points in castles 2, 4, 5 are to tie with other people who put a single point in their castles or win against people who put 0 points in there castles. On a weighted percentage any opponent who puts more into castle 10, 8 or 6 is drastically overvaluing these castles (since you need half the points to tie any castle with more than double its weighted percentage is overvalued) and may beat me but will not be beating the majority of other opponents. I slightly undervalued castle 10 and castle 6, because I anticipate heavy investment in castles 8 and 9.  Concerns are a skew to castle 3 in response to round 2 and that naive strategies (say 0 0 0 0 0 0 20 20 20 40) that are more top heavy are prevalent enough in the 538 reader base that I cannot win castles 10, 8, 6, and 3 consistently. Interestingly enough an even distribution of (10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10) beats my distribution and the top 5 distributions from round 2. I assume however that most of the 538 reader base will not submit such a simplistic submission. My distribution beats the top 5 from round 2, but loses to the 3 of the top 5 from round 1.  I do not anticipate to win round 3, but am anticipating many readers will play similar strategies. "
770,1,1,1,1,1,1,40,26,15,13,inverse of the 7 down strat
794,5,6,8,10,1,16,21,31,1,1,"In previous battles the winners took two different approaches. The first round the winners focused on castles 4,5,7,8. In the second the focus was on 4,5,9,10. My idea was to focus on 6/7/8. then capturing as many little castles as I could."
805,1,2,22,1,1,22,1,1,27,22,"It's almost 4 am, this is better than anything"
830,0,0,0,13,1,21,2,23,3,37,Felt right :)
841,1,3,4,1,1,4,6,8,38,34,"A few simulations to find good strategies, and then searching for one that would perform well against those."
842,1,1,1,13,1,1,22,27,32,1,"28 points are needed to win so I decided to invest all of my soldiers in taking castles 4,7,8, and 9 for a total of 28 points. I decided this combination was less obvious than ones including 10, which I think will receive heavy investment from opponents, but still uses to smallest number of castles. A point is worth about 1.8 soldiers so I expect investing 3.2 soldiers per point in my castles to take them will win. I also put one point in each castle to have a win condition if I lose  one of my castles to a player also play a concentrated strategy."
864,0,2,2,4,1,18,19,19,14,21,I ran 100000 different random combinations that summed to 100 against 500 random opposing combinations and then chose the distribution that resulted in the highest average point total against its 500 imaginary opponents.
870,1,1,6,9,1,13,26,4,4,35,"A lot of people seem to be going for castles 7 and 8 or 9 and 10, so I thought I would try to create a set-up to consistently win 7 and 10 and steal whichever of 8 and 9 they didn't go for. The rest of the distribution was designed to just tack on a few extra points--giving up castle 5 allowed me to put bigger point totals elsewhere."
887,1,1,2,10,1,8,8,9,26,34,"First I wanted to beat all 5 of the top 5 from the last time. Then I wanted to beat the build optimized to beat them. Then I wanted to beat the build optimized to beat that. After that I still had 42 troops left, so I started thinking about what I lose to. I lose to builds that are stronger on any of 6,7,8. The way to beat this could be either increase my 6-7-8 numbers or pick up points from elsewhere from that person. I decided that playing for the 9 might be a good idea. The 9 was really expensive last time, but it was enabled to do so by the low 6-7-8 numbers. I'm assuming that this person is beating some or all of my 6-7-8, so they can't shove on the 9 as well. I've fairly arbitrarily decided 26 on the 9. This leaves me 16. First, I'm putting at least 1 on each of the first 5 to punish any 0s. Now I have 11. I might want to put everything on 5, and that would be strong against people who were playing around the previous set where 5 was a huge spike for no reason, but the 5 could easily be a huge spike again for no reason so I don't want to put much into it. The 4 seems like a significantly better spot because it was lower the last time but still part of the spike which means people playing around the last time will avoid it. I'm putting 9 more (10 total) on the 4, leaving me 2 left to place. 1 is going on the 3 to play around 1s and the other is going on the 8 to put it at 9 because I was scared I would lose the 8."
895,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,46,46,"I'm predicting that most of your audience is pretty smart, and will have worked out that you only need 1, 8, 9 and 10 to win, and will have placed 25 soldiers on each of those castles. This strategy is designed specifically to beat that."
909,1,1,1,1,1,10,15,10,34,26,"Looking at the last two top deployments and data breakdowns, the top deployments were throwing the bank at 9 and slightly less for 10.  My strategy is top-heavy; it is very dependent on winning the top end and all but sacrificing the lower end (one soldier per castle for the bottom five will claim undefended territories and nothing else).

The focus was on beating the winning strategies from the last cycle.  34 for castle 9 and 26 for castle 10 beats the top four cleanly, for a cost of 60 soldiers.  Castle 7 gets some value play, too, so 15 goes there, and 10 each for castles 6 and 8.  This leaves five soldiers to pick off anything undefended; our strategy is to win all or nearly all of the top 5, and then anything below is gravy.  Weaknesses are if they can claim the 6-8 and not sacrifice the bottom to do so; a tie or better on one of those three and winning 9 and 10 should bring victory."
917,23,0,2,1,1,1,1,23,24,24,"I placed at least 1 troop to every castle except for 2. I assume that my enemy sends at least 1 troop to every castle and therefore will give me the best chance to win 3. Next I assume the point of the game is to get 28 as there a total of 55 points. By dividing up all other amounts amongst the quickest way to make 28, (10+9+8+1) I have given myself the best chance to win those numbers."
927,0,0,12,1,1,23,3,3,33,24,Used a genetic algorithm (the same as last competition) to explore distributions that would be good against the second round distributions and the first and second round distributions combined. Then used the same algorithm to optimize against *those* and the first and second round distributions simultaneously.
932,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,91,
942,1,5,11,1,1,22,26,3,3,27,
954,1,5,7,15,1,1,1,1,34,34,"Designed to defeat the average player; effectively giving away castles 1, 5, 6, 7 and 8 (27 points) while focusing soldiers on castles 2, 3, 4, 9 and 10 (28 points)"
955,1,1,10,1,1,1,1,21,27,36,Need 28 points so I focused on that but didn’t give any away
969,1,1,1,11,1,1,26,28,29,1,"Need 28 points to the win, focused on fewest points castles necessary to achieve that goal"
989,1,1,1,1,1,1,14,25,25,30,Concentrated on high value targets
1000,1,11,1,1,1,1,1,20,28,35,"Focus+surprise. 







"
1030,0,0,1,15,1,1,26,26,30,0,I just tried to ensure I had 28 points and didn't want to invest in 10 or 1/2
1032,2,2,1,3,1,3,8,26,27,27,"I tried to give myself a chance at winning at every castle but wanted to focus on winning the top 3 castles. If I win those, all I need is to win one other castle to win the contest. With 26+ troops on each, I should be able to win those against most opponents. If not, I like my chances to win castles 4, 6, and 7. Winning those would make up for losing castles 8 and 9. "
1033,1,1,1,1,1,14,17,19,21,24,My foggy early morning math says that I’ll need to win 28 points in battle...I’m giving minimal protection to low-value castles and increasing value to the rest...
1039,1,1,1,6,1,19,19,26,1,25,Counter
1053,0,1,1,1,1,4,9,14,25,44,Guessing
1080,4,0,9,5,1,18,1,33,3,26,Attempted optimization against both of the previous two rounds.
1113,0,1,1,1,1,4,9,14,25,44,Guessing
1124,4,4,4,11,1,11,22,6,5,32,"I started by noticing that most people only commit 3 or less troops to any area they aren't contesting, so I mostly kept my lowest number at 4. With the remaining troops, I contested one of each group of two adjacent castles (10 and 9: I chose 10. 8 and 7: I chose 7, etc.). As long as I win the ones that I contest aggressively, I should be at most one point behind, which I hope to make up by winning the 1 point castle. Finally, I tried ending with 1 or 2, as a decent number of people will end with 0, or try to end with 1 to beat them, so I should either tie or beat the people who ended with 1."
1138,6,1,1,1,1,1,1,28,30,30,"I ran some quick analysis and was aiming for 28 points, the minimum for victory with the existing point structure. Given those constraints there are 40 solution combinations.  I further narrowed it down based on which involved the fewest castles.  Of the 40 solutions, 9 required focusing on 4 castles. From here on it becomes judgment calls.
The last warlords competition saw 4 of the top 5 winners with the combination 10,9,5,4 (also employing the 28 point strategy). I’m unsure of whether this means we will see more or less of this particular combination, however 7 of the 9 found before use castle 10 and 6 use castle 9.  I decided to go with 3 heavy hitters in 8,9,10 so that I could spend less on my 4th castle in castle 1.
On choosing the amounts, the first warlords page provided some very useful information on the underlying statistics of the distribution. I noticed this was missing from the next time, so I made some inferences. We see the skewed distribution for just about all 10 castles, so the median should nearly always be lower than the mean – and in this case significantly so. So choosing the amounts for castles 8,9, and 10 I based off the mean (and previous winners for an approximate upper range) to establish a point where my guess would be safely in the 90%ile or higher for each.
For the remainder of castles, I feel leaving them empty is unwise – as most of the time my selections for 1,8,9, and 10 should all win against normal opponent selections – for castles 2 through 7 I was debating leaving anywhere from 1 to 3 to defend.  I landed on 1 in the interest of increasing defense for my primary 4, but so that in the fringe case that somebody defeats one of my castles I have a chance to gain points back if they leave something undefended.
"
1143,0,0,17,1,1,16,3,3,29,30,"Last time, the top players fully settled on a 10-9-5-4 strategy. I think this time around, players are going to actually contest the 10 and 9 castles correctly - the fact that 7 and 8 have had more troops than 10 and 9 is just wrong & the meta has to trend away from that - but it may not quite get there. This 10-9-6-3 goes for the same number of points, and should beat a fair number of other approaches (e.g., 9874) while being pretty good against the classic 10-9-5-4 just because 29/30 is on the high end for 10 and 9."
1144,1,1,1,11,1,11,3,34,3,34,Even numbers are cool.
1153,1,1,1,1,1,19,25,25,25,1,"Trying to win 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 most "
1188,1,1,1,1,1,1,50,25,12,7,Inverse of 7 down strategy
1194,1,9,9,8,1,7,2,6,3,54,Because I am The Warlord!
1204,0,0,11,11,1,20,22,34,1,0,"Trying to win the lowest number of castles that reach 28 points, with maximum force at higher numbered castles where more enemy attacks can be expected.  We hope to take away castle 8 from anyone who is focusing on the top castles, and win some cheaply.   "
1207,1,1,13,1,1,23,2,3,26,29,"Thought the 10,9,5,4 strategy might be overused because of success last time so went with 10,9,6,3"
1212,1,1,1,1,1,20,25,30,1,19,Trying to pick the gaps in previously winning deployments.
1215,10,1,1,1,1,1,1,28,28,28,
1231,6,1,2,2,1,3,6,24,34,21,"Previous battle victories seemed to be all-or-nothing attempts to get 28 pts from the fewest castles to maximize troop strengths. That's fine. If four castles is what it takes, that's what it takes. My goal in this round is to make Castle 1 mean something! Assuming you're a real warlord, going in order, you want to get that first victory to make your troops follow you. Besides that thought, I used no formulas or special computations. I just looked at what went before and decided this looked reasonable enough."
1244,1,1,1,1,1,15,18,26,34,2,Guesswork
1246,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,31,31,31,"Just winning the top three castles is enough to win, so I'm only focused on winning those; I sent one soldier to the rest just in case the castle is undefended."
1258,1,1,1,1,1,1,13,40,40,1,1 to every castle to ensure I capture any uncontested castle. Most people will likely focus on the highest value castles and you need 28 total points to win so castles 8/9/10 would do it and splitting troops 3 ways to grab those I would still take 8 and 9.
1264,1,1,1,1,1,1,3,27,30,34,Proportional alignment based off points needed to win + at least 1 troop at every castle
1276,6,1,1,1,1,0,0,30,30,30,Go big or go home
1287,0,1,1,13,1,19,2,31,2,30,"If I win 4,6,8, and 10 I will have just over half the points. My strategy goes about 50% higher than the mean on those four areas. The last two strategies have changed which values were highly targeted so I am hedging my bets against either previous strategy. I throw in a couple scouts on the odd castles so they aren't as easily won."
1290,1,4,14,22,1,12,12,12,11,11,"Focused on beating the winners from first game, then adjusted to also beat winners from second game. Then adjusted again to effectively concede castel 5 and castle 1 to allow for greater margin at others. Only beats 9 of the 10 winners from last 2 times."
1295,1,0,0,26,1,1,26,26,17,2,"The simplest win is on 10/9/8/1. Two problems: it's already popular, and weak players over-defend Castle 10. I'll try to win on 9, 8, 7, and 4 instead."
1297,1,1,1,1,1,6,13,19,25,32,"I wanted to have at least one soldier for every castle. However, even if one were to win castles 1 through 5, that's only 27% of the total points. Castles 6-10 were incrementally weighted."
1300,4,6,7,1,1,14,17,20,17,13,Ran a bunch of simulations in Excel
1313,2,1,1,1,1,13,22,34,24,1,I wanted to have really high on either 8 or 9 for people wanting to win by going after the top 3.  Then leave some to go after some castles that might have no troops.
1317,1,4,1,8,1,13,15,17,19,21,"Adjust forces to prizes, sacrifice 2 castles to be slightly better elswhere"
23,2,2,3,14,2,16,2,4,32,23,Intuition.
44,1,2,2,2,2,2,29,29,29,2,"Becuase I'm smart, in my head."
54,1,1,1,1,2,7,10,20,35,22,"I went top heavy and ignored the low point castles due to their inefficiency as the are 1.8 digits
Soldiers per point. "
118,4,8,4,27,2,16,17,18,2,2,
137,1,1,13,9,2,2,23,22,2,25,"Going all-in on Castles 7, 8, and 10 gives 25 points of the 28 needed to win. After that, I just split my troops between 3 and 4 with the hope of winning one of the two battles and pushing myself over. Castles 5, 6, and 9 each got 2 troops so that I could win those if the opposition left them undefended."
146,1,1,1,11,2,21,3,26,3,31,"I really decided to only focus on castles 10, 8, 6, and  4 since those would win it for me.  I started thinking of doing 30, 25, 20, and 10 respectively, but if a lot of people like doing multiple of 5s, adding one more to each could give me a lot more wins.  I figure some people would put 0 in 1, 2, and 3, so I put one in each just in case.  The remaining 8 troops went pretty evenly into 5, 7, and 9."
152,3,5,7,2,2,15,18,20,0,28,"The Name of this game should be 55. Why? Well for a similar reason why your website is called 538. 55 is the number of total points a player could win in this game, but 28 is the number of points a player needs to win, like 270 in an election. If a player can get to 28 points then he automatically wins. (Said player can win with less if there are ties). 

Instead of viewing the board as 55 points I can win, I view it as 28 points I need to win. That being said, each point is worth 3.57 of my soldiers (100/28). I am making an assumption, that most people will undervalue lower point tiers. Putting 3, 5, and 7 soldiers on tiers 1, 2, and 3 respectively, 15% of my soldiers, but gains 21% of the points needed. A major victory for my army. 

4 and 5 are tricky. They are needed to win if you go the 10,9,5,4 strategy (last season's winners did). But they were overcommitted to those areas. Being wary of losing them due to people overcommitting on them, I left them at 2. Every soldier needs someone to guard his back. Pick up the easy win vs those who bid 0 or 1, but don't lose out on those playing the 10,9,5,4 strategy. Probably a minor loss for my army. 

6,7,8 are much easier. They deserve 21, 25, and 28 soldiers respectively (using 3.57x *point value). But they are also VERY underappreciated by both past winners, and the average submission. Capitalizing on this, I can gain these points by using a decent amount of soldiers, but near the amount they deserve. Another major victory for my army. I can count on wins by using only 15, 18, and 20. 

This leaves me with 9 and 10. And 28 troops. If history tells us anything, its that people like castle 9 more than they like castle 10. This is an either or situation, you won't win both unless you overcommit. I place all 28 in castle 10. 

"
159,1,0,1,2,2,2,23,23,23,23,People seem to try to get clever by guessing which castles others will give up on or go all-in for. Maybe being not-clever and just going for the high-value ones counters that?
175,1,1,2,2,2,16,16,30,3,27,Not too sure.
191,3,6,7,8,2,13,15,1,33,12,It's what I submitted last time. I did a bunch of simulations two years ago but I'm not doing any more work today for this glorified rock-paper-scissors match.
219,1,1,13,2,2,14,2,3,31,31,Trying to win 10+9+6+3=28 points
253,2,3,5,8,2,22,23,4,27,4,"Well, I didn't use *actual* game theory, that's for sure!"
263,1,1,2,15,2,2,17,27,31,2,"1)Focus on 4 castles that give 28 (just over 50%) and sacrifice biggest prize castle 
2) don’t give away any castles for free 
3) anticipate opponent strategy to send at least 1 to all castles and send 2 to hedge in case one of key 4 is lost 
4) calibrate weights to beat simple backloading "
291,2,2,7,9,2,15,17,20,21,5,"I will probably lose 5 & 10 (15 points) and win 6, 7, 8, & 9 (30 points) against most value-based opponents.  I left castle 10 with enough resources to hopefully win that castle against similar counter-value-based strategies."
292,2,2,2,2,2,20,20,20,20,10,"Essentially, splitting the difference between the first two rounds by having even numbers across castles 6-9, a fair number on 10, and token troops on 1-5."
320,1,6,2,12,2,18,2,24,3,30,"I wanted a strategy that would defeat any median-style strategy, and chose to win the even-numbered castles.  I put a small number of troops in the odds numbered castles to beat those that sent 0 or 1, which was common in the first try, and then allocated the troops to even-numbered castles proportionally to their value."
328,1,1,2,2,2,3,4,8,18,59,"f(1)=1.218, f(x)= f(x-1)^1.4.  Rounded result, mostly. "
348,2,2,12,2,2,12,2,2,32,32,"Win 10, 9, 6, 3 = 28 pts = win. few troops to others just in case."
365,2,2,2,2,2,30,0,0,30,30,Felt like it.
374,1,2,2,2,2,11,26,26,26,2,"Giving up the highest value castle to counter people putting a lot of chips on it. Instead securing the next 3 (9, 8, 7). Trying to put enough soldiers on the other ones to counter the strategy of one guy per castle if they spent too much on higher castles. Arggh gonna lose."
384,3,7,2,13,2,19,22,25,3,4,"I wanted to aim for what I hoped was a less conventional 1-2-4-6-7-8 win, with enough scouts at the others to swing a few battles."
385,2,4,4,1,2,24,26,3,31,3,Gotta take >half the points baby
396,0,0,11,13,2,21,21,21,0,11,"Gut feeling, picking the less selected castles by either of the previous two rounds."
419,2,2,8,2,2,18,2,2,31,31,Bc 2 > 1 and 10+9+6+3=28
422,2,1,11,8,2,17,24,5,3,27,Trying to maximize a few different areas (victory points) while not giving many easy wins to others.
433,1,1,2,2,2,2,20,20,20,30,"No strategy, just tried to weight the higher points castles higher"
438,0,0,15,2,2,2,23,25,2,29,"This strategy should beat proportional strategies and rotations of proportional strategies, and I think that these will be the most common type. This will probably lose to some similar strategies (very concentrated on a few highest numbers and some low numbers), but by betting 2 on some of the middle numbers we'll hopefully beat more similar strategies than we lose to. We'll get crushed by strategies that beat us on 10 and 9 and also win a lot of low numbers, but I think these strategies will be least common."
459,0,2,8,2,2,14,2,2,34,34,"Never send just 1 so that you win vs any solo scouts, focus on 9 and 10 to try and insure 19 out of 28 required points, aim for over average on 3 and 6 to try and secure the 8 additional points needed for a win while hoping that victories over singles allow for any shortfall, sacrifice the 1 pt castle as winning it fails to make up for a split anywhere else that will determine the game."
492,2,2,4,10,2,16,25,3,33,3,"I decided to leave Castle #10 essentially undefended, and instead focused on some of the less-worthy castles, especially #9 and #7, to get a ""winning coalition"" of six castles with around 30 points."
494,2,2,8,2,2,16,2,2,31,33,tried to invest in 4 castles that I felt relatively sure of winning and conceded the rest. High risk appetite!
500,1,1,16,2,2,21,2,2,26,27,"It's based on previous player's strategies. Focus on getting just enough points to win, while trying to pick up a few extra points on unguarded castles."
526,2,2,2,22,2,22,22,22,2,2,"go for 28 points exactly, figure everyone is sending at least 1 soldier to each castle, so i sent 2"
539,0,1,2,2,2,4,23,23,22,21,
570,2,0,6,0,2,0,23,36,0,31,I think people are going for 9. Trynna lock down 8 and 10 and hope 7&3 are strong enough.
571,2,2,2,2,2,11,21,31,11,16,"I think a major underlooked part of the strategy is that many people will default to round numbers. Going one over the natural human instinct for round numbers should have a high return all over the board. Additionally, the previous two winning strategies had low numbers on the high-value castles, presumably because competition is fierce up there. But eventually enough people will switch resources away from those castles to make them profitable conquests again. I'm hoping third time's the charm! "
574,1,2,2,18,2,18,22,33,1,1,"I expect that there will be even more of a focus on number 10 this time, so I'm going to ignore that one. My plan is to get to 28 without winning either 9 or 10."
601,1,1,1,1,2,5,11,24,26,28,"Take the highest values, easy points for people abandoning low values"
603,2,2,2,2,2,15,18,21,34,2,"Assume no-one leaves any with 0, so 2 beats the 1s. Assume most people aim for 10. Load up on next highest in descending priority."
605,2,6,2,12,2,18,2,28,10,18,"A very non-sophisticated strategy based on simple logic and even numbers. With 55 points up for grabs, I need 28 to win. 10+8+6+4 is my ideal path to 28 in this strategy. So I put lots of troops into those castles. I picked the exact numbers based on multiplying the averages from previous versions of this by ~1.5. I spent what was left by dropping a couple “just in case” 2s in castles 1, 3, 5 and 7, then the remaining 10 in castle 9."
622,2,2,2,16,2,2,18,23,30,3,"Trying to win the game 28-27 every time. compete for 9+8+7+4, if we both compete for the same one have just enough to maybe split a weird one (10,6,5)"
624,2,2,2,2,2,12,2,42,12,22,
635,2,2,2,2,2,22,22,22,22,2,Give me all those 1 troop castles. They are mine.
636,3,5,11,18,2,19,19,17,2,4,Already submitted but I think I typoed to have my totals over 100?
638,2,2,2,11,2,21,1,28,1,30,"Step 1: Secure enough points (28) for the win with as few castles as necessary (4) to allow for largest deployments. Attempt mainly even numbered castles  - partially a gut feeling, partially so that a lost castle can be compensated with a few small ones more easily.
Step 2: Prevent a loss against an archenemy with a normal distribution of forces (10 at each castle) by using at least 11 at my primary targets.
Step 3: Place at least 1 in each lesser-targeted castle in case my archenemy doesn't attack it, but put 2 in the lower ones to increase the chance of scooping up extra points to offset a potential loss of a large castle.
Step 4: Bask in glory as I defeat a majority of the would-be warlords in Riddler Nation!
"
653,2,2,2,2,2,2,10,25,50,3,"I gave at least two to all the castles so I can try to bank some smaller points and I think if my opponent tries the same he'll probably only throw one out there. Then, I targeted Castle 9 with Castle 8 as a back up, in case they throw all of their points at 10. Then I stagger the rest I guess"
661,2,2,2,2,2,14,24,27,23,2,My plan would be to take 54.5% of the points possible and put 88% of them toward that in order to help secure as many points as possible in the 6-9 range. Then have 2 soldiers at each other castle to hopefully catch people who don't value the lower valued castles or assume they are going to lose Castle 10 and don't put anyone there.
680,0,0,12,1,2,23,3,3,33,23,"I used k-medoid clustering to find median strategies that represent the most common strategies, then found an allocation of soldiers that beat the 8 most common strategies. I then used that as an initial input to Robbie Ostrow's simulated annealing code from Part 2, which spat out the above."
683,1,2,2,2,2,21,22,23,25,0,
695,3,1,1,1,2,2,2,22,34,32,Seems like it'll do the trick often enough. Not even gonna worry about the meta.
705,1,1,2,2,2,10,10,20,50,2,Spread troops to high point value locations but saved on troops sacrificing the highest.
739,0,0,1,18,2,24,3,22,3,27,"go for 4 castles that add up to just over half of points: 10, 8, 6 & 4. put some troops for most other castles in case i get wiped out on my targets by someone who sends few or no troops elsewhere. go all in on castles 6 & 4 (4 & 4.5 troops per point) with less investment in castles 10 & 8 (2.7 & 2.5 troops per point). send 0.33-0.43 troops per point to castles 3, 5, 7 & 9. this troop alignment happens to beat the top 10 previous finishers (5 from first round & 5 from second round). the main weakness of this strategy is if someone sends a ton of troops to castles 10, 9, 8 & 7 however not many players seem to take that strategy. the other weakness is an odd-numbered-focused strategy where the opponent sends a ton of troops to castle 10 or 8, plus a moderate number of troops to castles 9, 7, 5, 3, 2 and/or 1."
763,0,1,10,19,2,22,2,4,20,20,"counters some and breaks even with most of the previous top 5s, and counters the counter-strategy by avoiding the hotter zones."
774,3,6,7,1,2,22,22,2,2,33,"-Always choose numbers of men above multiples of 5. 
-Shift focus away from 4 and 5, where large numbers were sent the previous two times
-go back to focusing on 1, 2, and 3. 
-Finally, move focus away from castle 9 to 10."
775,2,2,2,3,2,2,2,22,28,35,I'm honestly really tired so email me if I win (I doubt it)
783,11,0,2,11,2,14,5,16,3,36,"-Try to lock up 10
-While everyone else is going for 28, go for 29. It guarantees you a couple towers you want, and hopefully if they went all in on 8, 6, or 4, hopefully you can pick up  the number beneath it and you still hit 28"
808,2,2,2,17,2,18,5,18,32,2,
816,0,8,2,2,2,32,2,35,9,8,"hope most people ignore castle 9 and 10, and then go over 27 with castles 8 and 6"
822,0,0,2,30,2,30,2,34,0,0,Three eyed raven told me
855,1,1,8,1,2,2,23,27,3,32,"Hoping to win 10, 8, 7, and 3 for 28 points. Putting small numbers on everything else in hopes I can win some cheap points in case other things go wrong."
856,2,2,2,2,2,8,13,18,23,28,"2 points on each to hedge, dump the rest at high-value castles"
858,0,2,3,16,2,3,23,24,24,3,I chose 28 points to contend for and 27 to (mostly) cede.
872,0,0,1,1,2,3,6,12,25,50,Keep cutting my troops in half starting from top to bottom
882,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,6,77,2,Give up on castle 10 since lots of people will go for that. Try and guarantee 9 points from Castle 9. Never send 0 or 1 units to a castle since other folks will try that. Throw a few extra at Castle 7 and 8 in case others are thinking similar to me.
892,2,2,2,1,2,2,16,24,24,25,WIn 28 and loose rest
905,0,1,1,2,2,20,11,24,11,28,It's a bifurcated attack on the previous two seasons.
940,3,3,3,11,2,6,12,31,1,28,
956,3,6,2,12,2,18,2,25,28,2,"Using java, I found how often flipping a castle would change the outcome of a war (given a random distribution of castles beforehand).  This actually is fairly predictive of how many troops the top players sent to the castles they wanted to win.  

Most winning players picked a selection of targets that added to just more than 27, so thats what I did too.  There wasn't much method to the madness, I just picked the ones that I thought would win this time around, not too different from past combinations but not too similar.

My targets were 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, adding to 30 points.  I am sending an appropriate number of troops to each target, and 2 scouts to the other four castles to maybe win against single scouts or cause ties.

Here's a desmos link: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/41xuwxlaeq"
957,0,8,2,9,2,15,26,2,32,4,"I dug up a spreadsheet that I made in 2017 to plan for round 2 of this challenge.  I remember putting a fair amount of thought into it (optimizing against the results of round 1, and then making some tweaks whose details I can't remember), but then I forgot to submit it.  So this may be based on outdated intel, but it'll have to do--2019 Ravi doesn't have as much free time as 2017 Ravi."
1007,1,2,2,2,2,16,22,23,27,3,Ancient warlord secret
1011,0,0,0,15,2,3,21,25,30,4,Figured this setup would get me the 28+ points I need against most other folks' deployments.
1017,2,2,2,8,2,2,20,26,34,2,"4, 7, 8, 9 and sneak a couple of others."
1022,0,1,1,1,2,23,23,23,23,3,"Hoped others would prioritize castle 10 and I could win without it, built a monte carlo model to evaluate many outcomes to optimize general strategy"
1025,2,5,5,2,2,16,2,2,32,32,
1037,0,1,1,1,2,2,2,5,41,45,"Focus almost entirely on the big castles, but spread some soldiers out for easy pickups."
1040,0,9,0,0,2,1,29,1,31,27,"Used a genetic algorithm which slowly replaced the original entries with the newly generated ones, hopefully optimising against everyone optimising for the previous round. "
1077,2,2,11,1,2,16,3,3,30,30,"Last round fight was for 4&5, so I went after 6&3 (Plus 9&10 to get to 28)"
1079,1,5,1,12,2,18,3,24,4,30,People like odd numbers - so contest the even ones.
1166,1,1,2,2,2,14,20,25,30,3,I chose the deployment that would win.
1169,0,1,11,3,2,22,2,2,29,28,Win enough castles to get to 28. Put enough in non target castles to pickup if unmatched.
1209,2,2,2,2,2,20,24,24,20,2,I wanted to beat anyone trying to be crafty sending just one person to each castle while beating anyone who didn't commit to the higher valued castles. I gave up on castle 10 thinking some players will just send all of them to 10 in some circumstances.
1220,0,1,10,0,2,1,20,29,6,31,"try to win 10 8 7 3, then some random backups"
1224,2,3,4,10,2,24,20,2,3,30,"I think most people will cycle back to strategy 1 but I think one could use that to take many 10's back.  Otherwise, concentrating on the middle again - but not contesting the highest contested castles. "
1227,2,2,8,12,2,21,23,26,2,2,"absolutely no reason whatsoever. If I somehow win, I want the word ""flapjack"" somewhere in the post."
1228,2,2,2,2,2,10,14,16,24,26,"Well it's kind of arbitrary.  But the first 5 castles only give 15 points while the next 5 give 40.  So I figured I would largely abandon the first 5, putting 2 on each because putting one seemed wrong.

Then looking at the previous answers it looked like you could do fairly well against a good mix of opponents by fighting particularly hard for 9 and 10 and fairly hard for 6, 7, and 8.  The 7 and 8 aren't 15 and the 9 and 10 aren't 25 because I figured a lot of people might use those nice round numbers."
1266,4,0,5,0,2,2,18,30,20,19,Developed a troop deployment that beat 1386 out of 1387 of the castle-solutions.csv from two years ago.
1270,2,2,2,2,2,22,30,30,4,4,
1280,2,2,2,2,2,10,25,25,25,5,
1298,4,6,4,12,2,17,18,27,5,5,"I based my numbers on the 2017 distributions, hoping history would repeat and not a ton would pore over the results much. In that data set, there were a lot of clusters in the 1-4 range at the higher and lower castles, so my castles 1-3 and 9-10 all hovered at or around 5 troops to cover. In the middle castles, I figured I'd sacrifice one to put each of the rest in play."
7,1,1,1,9,3,1,24,28,31,1,Need 28 to win. Don’t focus on 10 as others will. Hedge with a maybe getting 5
21,3,3,3,3,3,10,15,20,30,10,"Just guessing based on the previous two events. 678 heavy vs 459,10 heavy, sort of a mix."
104,5,5,5,3,3,19,1,2,27,30,"Based on the last two games, those with less troops were overwhelmed. I figure most people will leave 9 and 10 relatively open, and 1-5 will be given 4, to take out the 3's from round 2. Let's see what happens!"
120,3,3,5,5,3,16,17,16,16,16,"you need 28 points to win. I maximize my chances of winning 10 points 100% of the time in castles 1-4, concede castle 5, then hope even distribution wins me 3 of 5 in castles 6-10 versus a field that allocates 30 plus to a single castle. "
122,2,5,0,11,3,19,22,4,28,6,"Choose who I want in my main coalition based on trying to have some overlap and differences with both previous rounds, but come up with 2,4,6,7,9 without too much further thought. Allocate 85% of my army to this coalition to not leave others undefended (except 3, out of spite)."
160,1,1,2,11,3,26,2,27,26,1,"I choose to ignore castle 10 since it will be often stormed by a great number of troops. I think castle 8 is more strategic unless a lot of people applied the same strategy as me. Round numbers (or numbers ending in 5) are never a good bet since a lot of people will most likely put that number and you'll find yourself tied, so one upping those is to me a good strategy"
164,2,4,8,12,3,19,2,6,12,32,Just wanted to beat the best of the last two battles...
173,1,1,2,12,3,18,4,24,5,30,"Go strong to get to the 28 point win count from castles 10, 8, 6, and 4, and scatter other forces to avoid losing other high value castles to just 1 or 2 soldiers. Given that strategy, allocate soldiers in proportion to the castles' value. Specifically, targeted castles get 3x their value in numbers of soldiers while the remaining castles get half, rounded up. Given 100 soldiers, the specific numbers just sort of shook out that way.

Round 1 winners went strong for upper-middle and low numbers to get to 28 -- something like 8,7,5,4,3,1. In response, round 2 winners went strong specifically for 10, 9, 5, and 4. I'm countering those while still focusing on my primary strategy: try hard to get my primary targets to get to 28 points, while giving myself a chance on the other castles if I happen to lose one or two of my primary targets. Running against the previous 10 finalists I'd finish 9-1, and the one loss is 28-27, so mine may be a popular winning strategy as a counter to those, just as the leaders in previous iterations of the game used similar strategies to each other.

------

I wonder if you could provide the average score for the previous winners, and other people who might have had a higher average result, but won fewer duels. "
174,1,1,1,2,3,26,30,30,3,3,Highest value avoiding copy cats and those who will put everything on 10 and 9
183,4,8,9,11,3,2,5,2,27,29,Trying to get undervalued castles for cheap while leaving highly contested ones on the board
190,3,1,2,1,3,3,16,19,26,26,"Go with non-derivatives, sacrifice 5's and 6's for 7's and 8's. In the words of Brienne of Tarth, ""Don't go where your enemy leads you."""
242,2,2,2,3,3,11,31,36,6,4,"Trying to capture the sweet spot of being 1 more than multiples of 5, or just 1 or 2. I bet this game play very differently with prime numbers of troops and castles, that are not easy to divide."
247,1,1,1,2,3,5,8,14,25,40,loosely based off fibionnaci sequence
258,1,0,0,3,3,21,22,23,24,3,Captain Chaos
261,1,2,2,2,3,18,18,26,26,2,"Avoid 10 as the most likely to be contested. Put 2 as a mininum to beat anyone just throwing 1's in. Focusing on 6, 7, 8 & 9 as together they defeat 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 10. "
269,3,3,3,3,3,20,20,21,21,3,
280,1,3,3,3,3,26,4,26,27,4,"Winning 6, 8 and 9 will all but assure me victory. If I lose one of them, I hope I have enough at castle 7 or 10 to pick up one of those instead"
300,3,8,11,21,3,4,3,4,22,21,"I focused on getting to 28-half of all points and other than a few scouts, focused on winning the fights that would just barely allow me to make it"
314,1,8,9,15,3,3,5,6,28,22,"Intuitive distribution, then found local maximum"
319,1,1,1,1,3,7,1,21,1,63,
340,1,1,2,7,3,12,7,22,8,37,"The crux of the 4 castle strat is taking castle 10. So if I get it, then have even deployment in the other castles, I'll beat everyone who tries it hinging on 10. If the majority of people hinge the 4 castle strat on 9, I'm screwed. "
363,6,3,3,16,3,22,31,4,4,8,"I found that having more troops at castles 1, 4, 6, 7, and 10 would be enough to win, so I focused on those. Also, those castles were not as heavily contested last time. I did just enough in those castles to win most games last time then allocated the rest of the troops to the other castles."
380,3,4,5,17,3,19,3,19,3,24,"This is a defensive strategy. What is the most straightforward way to gain a majority (4+6+8+10) and then a defensive distribution to pick off lone scouts in the advent that you get overwhelmed in the core 4. As an added bonus, the strategy beat the top 5 of both previous years."
404,0,2,0,16,3,19,3,0,33,24,Did not overthink it.. the strategy likely relies too heavily on taking castle #10 with a modest deployment
427,2,9,3,10,3,18,3,22,3,27,straight up guess
448,0,0,3,3,3,18,18,3,26,26,Focus on castles 5-6 and 9-10
463,0,0,1,2,3,6,8,15,25,40,More troops at higher point total castles. Abandon the smallest castles as they aren't worth winning.
495,0,0,0,0,3,16,16,27,27,11,Sacrifice the low scoring to just barely overload the mid-to-high tier castles
497,1,2,2,2,3,4,5,25,30,26,"Several troops on each in case someone puts down 0, and tried to have more than 1 since I suspect others will put 1 at each (at least). Thought 10 is a place where people would have very low or high, so I went medium to beat the lows but not waste too much. Trying to really capture 8, 9, and the misses to add up to 23 (winning number)"
538,1,1,3,3,3,14,18,17,20,20,Top heavy is my favorite.
562,0,1,3,20,3,0,21,24,0,28,"Looked at the past distributions and estimated what it would take to win castles 10, 8, 7, and 4. Saved some leftover men for other random castles. But figured castle 9 wasn't worth it. "
565,1,0,4,0,3,20,27,6,34,5,"I picked something that would defeat the top 3 in both prior battles.  I added one army in #1 to catch those with zero in #1, for a 9+7+6+5+1=28 win.  I put five in #10 to catch those who put two to four in it.  I think my most-likely wins will be 9+8+7+6, 10+9+7+6, 10+9+7+3, 10+8+7+6, 9+7+6+5+3, 9+7+6+5+1, 8+7+6+5+3.  I will lose to anyone who is heavier in 10+8+5+4+2 or 10+8+5+4+1."
566,1,4,9,7,3,9,7,25,20,15,Heavy on 8s and 9s thinking others would overrate 10.
595,3,3,1,2,3,6,5,20,12,45,Made a non linear shot for two big numbers and hope to get a couple of lower castles.
608,3,3,3,3,3,17,17,17,17,17,
612,3,3,9,2,3,14,21,5,17,23,"There are 7 strategies I'm trying to beat, 4 historical and 3 forecasts. The 4 historical strategies are the February Average, the May rematch Average, and the two champions Vince Vatter and Cyrus Hettle. The 3 forecasts are what I call the ""Forecast Average,"" and Copycat 1 and Copycat 2. The Forecast Average is what I expect the average castle distribution to be based on the last two battles: 3,4,8,9,11,11,14,15,12,13. The Copycats are players who are trying to synthesize the strategies of the last two winners. Copycat 1 focuses troops on castles 5, 8 and 9 (distribution: 1,3,5,8,12,2,3,31,33,2). Copycat 2 focuses troops on castles 4, 6, 7, and 10 (distribution: 2,2,6,12,2,17,22,2,3,32).

My distribution scores very well against the 3 historical averages, which I hope will represent the majority of players and get my win rate above 50%. And hopefully it narrowly defeats most of the elite players who are trying to copy previous champions, putting me in the upper echelon."
689,0,0,0,3,3,18,18,18,18,22,
741,3,3,3,3,3,11,24,35,8,7,Last time but winning those.
750,2,2,2,3,3,11,16,31,3,27,this did ok when tried with a smaller group of students
778,2,3,2,2,3,8,22,22,15,21,
793,1,1,3,3,3,4,19,24,20,22,"I would like to say I performed a complex game-theory simulation to optimize the outcome, but I basically eyeballed it to weight toward higher victory points without abandoning any castles; since the two previous contests had both the 7/8 and 9/10 focus strategies winning, I did not exclusively focus on either."
835,0,1,2,8,3,15,18,20,3,30,Fancied a go aye
865,1,6,2,16,3,26,8,32,3,3,"I put 3 at 9 & 10, noting how many winners had put 2 there in previous years, and then assuming others would borrow their strategy. I then overloaded on the even numbers to try to eke out victory."
888,3,3,4,5,3,16,23,7,17,19,"I'm counting on an overreaction to the distribution in 9 and 10 while focusing on the undervalued 7. It seems warlords are maximising the extremes though, so a token force to the lows should capture some value."
897,1,1,1,3,3,27,28,30,3,3,"Weighted on 6,7,8 which would get 21 out of needed 28 points to win, and cover just enough on the others to prevent easy steals"
899,0,0,0,0,3,11,21,21,22,22,Nothing complicated - just based on past winners and seems like an even mix across the top castles may work.
943,3,3,3,3,3,5,15,20,20,25,"Looked at previous good ones, made some guesses on how people would respond this time around"
959,2,7,6,8,3,19,0,21,25,9,"I set up a simulation that would generate entirely random deployments for my team. Then, I had them fight 100 battles against an enemy that placed their somewhat randomly (not entirely random like my deployments, but weighted more towards deploying more at higher castles). This distribution was the best of 10,000 random deployments."
984,3,3,3,3,3,17,17,17,17,17,This strategy is to spread a wide net. Which clearly hasn't worked so far. But lets try it
1008,0,1,11,2,3,24,6,8,37,8,"The big lesson from round 2 was that it's really effective to invest heavily in only four castles, totalling 28 points. Not only did all the top deployments from round 2 follow that strategy, but deployments optimized against the first two rounds' results (and deployments optimized against optimized deployments!) follow it also, sometimes even more strongly. That has left me perfectly torn between two opposite approaches - take the obvious lesson, invest heavily in 4 castles and try to win that way (which would mean a deployment like 0-0-11-0-0-23-1-2-36-27); or assume that everybody will try 4-castle approaches now, and optimize against them while still scoring decently against other plans. I've changed my mind about a dozen times, and finally decided to do the latter. I'm tackling the 4-castlers head-on in castles 3, 6 and 9 (a 4-castle plan needs to go through at least one of those), and putting more than just a token presence in castles 7, 8 and 10 because simulations. The problem is that unlike the 4-castle approach, which is essentially dumb-plan-proof, my approach loses to simple deployments like 1-3-5-7-9-11-13-15-17-19 or even the dreaded ""put ten guys in every castle and pray""; and because my presence in castle 3 isn't that great I'm somewhat vulnerable to a 10-8-7-3 plan too. But the advantage is that fewer people will likely try this approach than the 4-castle one; even if the 4-castle approach turned out to be the winning approach in general, there's no guarantee that I personally would win; whereas if this is the basic winning approach, my chances of winning or placing high should be good. Essentially, I'm gambling that not too many people will submit really simple and obvious deployments."
1016,0,0,8,0,3,0,31,9,9,40,"Noticing that in both prior rounds people have hammered the middle numbers or the top numbers, but not both, I wanted an allocation that would win outright at one of those values (31 on 7, 40 on 10) while also winning whichever of 8 or 9 opponents leave under-defended, and winning enough lower-hanging points to get to magic number 28."
1018,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,26,26,27,Trying to maximize value at the bottom side poaching empty castles while still having a shot against most who split their forces to 25 or less.
1036,1,1,10,3,3,18,3,3,29,29,Focused on winning these 4 battles to get to 28 as 3&6 have been under focused in past battles.
1060,1,1,1,22,3,22,3,22,3,22,Focus deployment on 10-8-6-4 to get to 28. Potentially steal some of the odd castles if opponent ignores them.
1083,2,4,8,10,3,13,14,15,6,25,"2-3 soldiers per point, with castles 5 and 9 adjusted according to the fact that they were so heavily garrisoned last time.  These bids will win against others who neglect these castles for that reason, and will not be too costly of a loss against those who distribute soldiers more proportionately."
1089,0,1,2,12,3,18,4,24,5,31,"I compared my strategy to the average values and ""top 5 player"" values for each of the previous two runs of this puzzle. I noticed that 'average' players have a gradually diminishing tendency to focus on Castles 7 and 8, and to de-emphasize Castles 9 and 10, while the best players fluctuated on their focus of Castles 9 and 10. Splitting the difference, I focused on ONE of 9&10 and ONE of 7&8. ""Focus"" meant 3 troops per point awarded, economically exceeding the average amount of nearly two (100/55 = 1.8). I added focus to enough midlevel castles to generate a minimal winning score of 28 (Castles 10 + 8 + 6 + 4 = 28). That took up 84 troops total for focus areas. Near the bottom I was highly economical, figuring zero troops at Castle 1 and one troop at Castle 2, which I figure will win me an occasional half point and even an infrequent point. The remaining 15 troops were to be split up into scouting parties for Castles 3, 5, 7, and 9, roughly in proportion to reward (2, 3, 4, and 5 troops) with one untidy troop reassigned to Castle 10 to beat anybody who overuses nice round numbers in the most effective possible place.

I recommend, after the main contest's round robin, you try scoring it a different way: a series of round robins for which only the top teams survive; keeping only the first 2^n teams (n being the largest number such that 2^n is smaller than the number of entrants) and keeping half after each successive round robin. Make the great players beat each other rather than beat the weak players more efficiently."
1105,0,1,1,0,3,22,27,5,34,7,my earlier entry only had a total of 99 troops. Bad math!
1146,0,1,1,2,3,22,22,23,3,23,Because I am not very smart.
1178,0,7,10,13,3,4,5,5,30,23,"This was not an elegant method, but I figure there's 55 points available. So I need to try and win 28 to win. So if you look at troops deployed per point of castle, the smallest way to get to 28 is to win the 10, 9, 2, 3, and 4 castles which had on average just 42.5 troops deployed to them. I can take the average number of troops deployed, double it, and then place 5 troops each at the 8, 7, and 6 castles which should win one or more of them if my opponent is similarly taking my strategy. Personally, I don't like the idea of giving up the 5 point castle without any troops, so instead I'm actually going to pull one troop from 6 and 2 from castle 4 (which still has 13, good for 5.5 over its average). "
1189,2,2,2,12,3,3,26,3,26,21,This is left as an exercise for the reader.
1221,1,1,3,3,3,17,17,3,20,32,"target 6,7,9 and 10 while still picking up pts from 0's from others"
1225,2,2,6,3,3,21,21,18,3,21,I am mixing a few low-effort and high effort attacks with a medium effort thrown in to test low-level dedication.
1268,1,2,3,2,3,12,21,26,26,4,"Good chance to win 7,8,9 plus beating all the people that give up (0 or 1 army) on other castles."
1278,1,1,0,3,3,22,2,32,33,3,"I figured this round would be a blend of the previous two.  In particular, I anticipated a larger push towards committing resources to the 10 point castle.  Knowing I need at least 23 points to win, I decided to heavily invest in castles 9, 8, and 6."
1304,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,26,26,27,"The top 3 castles are worth the same as the other 7, so I focused troops there and equally disbursed troops in the other 7 castles to pick up any that they didn't attack with much force."
10,2,1,5,20,4,20,4,20,4,20,
50,4,4,4,4,4,24,24,24,4,4,"I figured at least 4 in each would pick off the people who sent out tiny forces, but still let me sink in a few in more strategic spots."
72,1,1,2,3,4,21,27,28,6,7,
103,1,1,1,2,4,5,36,36,12,2,"7 and 8 seem like a sweet spot for points vs competition, and I want to put in enough to beat most people who came to the same conclusion. At the same time, I want to make sure I don't get beaten by tiny troop commitments to the other castles. I figured 9 would be a nice bonus to sometimes get."
130,1,3,1,7,4,12,32,3,34,3,"Lots of folk went for 7-8 or 9-10 previously.  I figure few will go for 7-9.  With those in the bag, I need another 12 points.  I'm hoping for 2-4-6, but also spreading out my options to get lucky against a poorly defended 8, 10, and 5."
158,3,3,11,11,4,4,19,20,21,4,"The past winners placed 2-3 troops at each of their worst bases, by placing 4 I could acquire those bases at a lower marginal cost of entry. I wanted to try and take 5 bases total, and wanted to make sure that each of those 5 bases had more than 10 so that I could beat out the average person who just runs 10's across the board. I avoided the 10 spot because I think the average person will overplace value on that and overallocate their troops there."
170,1,3,3,4,4,7,8,13,20,37,Roughly exponential increase for each next castle
230,4,4,4,4,4,22,13,22,21,2,In hic signo vinces
236,1,1,1,1,4,12,20,28,20,12,fun
250,1,2,2,2,4,4,1,28,28,28,"I'm punting 7 towers.  Looking over past results, I'm choosing towers that were punted most often - I put enough into lower towers in case someone went on a one tower strategy."
275,2,4,5,8,4,11,16,8,23,19,Macro economic model of optimizing against market inefficiencies as surmised from previous rounds
378,1,1,1,1,4,6,21,21,22,22,"Just general intuition on how people will likely make their deployments. The low tier castles get one each, since about 30% of people send 0 to these, and most people that send any send more than one. Mid-tier receive few as well, but a few more, to win about 30% of battles there. The high tier castles receive more, but rather than clumping into 6-7-8 or 9-10, they are distributed closely between 7-8-9-10. I expect to win 2 of these 4 most of the time, and 3 of 10 quite a few times. 

I know, not very scientific. But the best generals seek to understand to mindset of their opponents, and tailor their strategies to beat them. I am curious to see how this fairs."
417,0,1,2,3,4,5,9,20,21,35,
423,0,2,2,4,4,7,7,7,35,32,"Try to obtain 9 and 10 over all others, and for those who can beat me in one or both; punish them by taking other castles they hopefully skimp on."
485,1,2,2,3,4,6,9,14,23,36,"I used the Fibonnaci sequence to provide a ratio of importance to each castle, starting with 0,1,1,2,3 etc. But I had 12 soldiers left over so i just added one to each castle except castles 9 and 10 where i added two soldiers."
536,1,1,2,4,4,8,8,8,32,32,Powers of 2 are fun?
609,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,5,34,34,Slanging it
615,0,0,8,4,4,21,16,22,4,21,Rd2 winners saw 2 trends v. 1: Entrants mimicked 1 and therefore 2 winners were differented from 1 winners in placement and throw-away towers were defended with 3-4 v. 1-2 solders to win. I picked a strategy that is different from 1-2 and increases throw-away defense slightly.
637,3,4,4,4,4,25,25,26,2,3,
647,5,6,10,3,4,5,4,54,4,5,"Looked at past battles and picked the inflection point of diminishing returns, had like 50 troops left and threw them all at castle 8 which was highest point value with widest distribution"
733,7,13,7,13,4,16,4,16,2,18,"I was trying to guess the 100,000,000 number and this answer keeps coming up"
760,0,0,0,2,4,13,27,32,18,4,"I am modifying a model of a weighted bell curve, giving least priority to castles that have the least effective in point value, but also avoiding major battles for the top castles, which are relatively equivalent in value.  Also trying to beat people who tend to round off or beat people who round, though that might be overthinking it."
795,2,4,9,4,4,4,4,4,33,32,"Ensure I could beat both previous winners. This game is transitive, right?! It would be fun to know all the results! Maybe you can share the a google spreadsheet with everyone's answers, but maybe not our names and emails? :)"
800,1,2,2,4,4,25,26,26,5,5,The heart wants what the heart wants <3
831,2,2,2,4,4,19,19,22,23,3,Must beat Jason Weisman!!! Considered how he thinks and deployed troops to beat him. Also looked at previous results and guessed.
860,10,20,5,6,4,10,10,10,5,20,To keep castles unbalanced.
876,1,10,4,10,4,4,22,16,13,16," [0, 11, 4, 10, 4, 4, 22, 16, 13, 16"
910,0,0,0,4,4,10,17,28,32,5,"The additional deployment scheme was won with emphasis on castles 7 and 8 .. and in the reprise (second) simulation, the winning submission emphasized Castle #9 and #10.  By putting 0 soldiers in Castle #1, 2 and 3, I am going to concentrate my forces in Castles #6 - #9 with just putting enough soldiers in Castle #10 to avoid giving it away cheaply.  In addition, I am putting 4 soldiers each in Castles #4 and #5 as a way to score a few ""cheap"" points against people who concentrate almost exclusively in Castles #6 - 10."
922,1,1,3,20,4,3,16,3,28,21,Wanted to send at least a few to every castle. Focused on the biggest ones but couldn't go all out. I did look at previous winners but still feels like a total guess.
933,3,4,5,4,4,4,31,4,37,4,"Try to guarantee 9 and 7 and pick up 12+ elsewhere

"
944,0,1,5,20,4,10,0,10,10,40,Random
963,1,1,1,10,4,10,7,22,18,26,"No good reasons, just playing."
968,0,1,2,3,4,5,10,15,20,40,
987,1,2,2,3,4,6,9,14,22,37,fibonacci is awesome so fibonacci +1 must be better
1012,0,8,10,0,4,23,26,0,0,29,"Winning castles 2, 3, 6, 7, and 10 are enough to win a majority of point, so i spent most of my soldiers there, with an extra 4 in castle 5 who could win some points here and there"
1054,0,0,0,5,4,5,24,5,30,27,"Winning the first few castles is essentially meaningless, so any significant troops sent there are wasted, even as a blocking action.   Beyond that point, it's a matter of trying to strike a balance with remaining troops between attacking in force, and defending against small raids.  There seems to be a consistent trend in the previous battles to focus most troops on Castle 8, so that seems to be the best place to not fight too hard over, in order to preserve sufficient troops to win other battles instead."
1061,4,4,18,4,4,18,4,20,20,4,
1198,1,3,3,4,4,14,12,19,24,16,"You have to win the high value castles to win it all, but should still defend the low level ones as well."
1311,3,3,7,4,4,24,5,34,8,8,I spent way too long on this and I still hate my answer.
12,1,2,1,3,5,20,21,33,7,7,
33,4,4,4,5,5,16,5,5,21,31,
45,1,3,5,5,5,5,5,32,5,34,"The most prominent strategies that have been winning have been strategies that have had the ""four castle"" strategy which would win the slight majority of the points (28). Assuming this is the strategy most people seek to optimize on I wanted to build a strategy that would beat these strategies. Every four base must win either castle 10 or castle 8 to reach this 28 point threshold (which is the primary way they win). After that the number of troops sent to the other castles should be greater than with a four castle strategy that you win the rest of the needed points on the castles that others gave over for free. I would like to test it with 30 in bases 8,10 and 5 troops in 1 and 3 as well but I think you need to make sure you juice your troop count in the bases you are going for because if you don't win at least one of those you are going to be in trouble. You will also lose to a split evenly strategy but I don't think that will be popular as most people will look at the data and realize you probably want to have a win condition."
189,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,55,Tried to guarantee 10 and get what I could with the rest
262,1,4,5,5,5,10,10,20,20,20,
270,5,5,5,5,5,5,10,20,20,20,
299,1,2,2,5,5,5,21,26,32,1,My strategy is to invest heavily in castles 7-9 to get to 24 and then try to secure the other 4 points by divesting my remaining points and hope to capture enough.
308,1,1,1,3,5,13,1,1,37,37,"Prioritize high value targets.  Eschew low value targets.  Skirt mid-value conflict.  Steal low-mid value clinchers.  Try not to optimize based off of previous datasets, to avoid both adjustments, as well as adjustments-to-anticipated-adjustments."
322,2,2,2,3,5,21,21,2,21,21,"I couldn't put a 0 in some of the columns (the webpage rules wouldn't allow me).  So knowing that, I put heavy focus on winning 4/5 top levels and put slightly more than minimum on the lower ones (hoping to pickup a couple scraps)."
339,0,0,0,0,5,20,20,20,20,15,
395,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,12,"Starting with Castle 1, it is the first 9 terms of the Fibonacci Sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34).  ΣF9=88, 100-88=12 troops remain for Castle 10.  I don't think I'm likely to win, but isn't it more important to be beautiful?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93lrosBEW-Q"
402,1,9,12,6,5,26,5,5,7,24,
412,1,1,1,13,5,11,20,20,20,8,"I saw the most potential value in the 7-9 range so I wanted to focus there, while guaranteeing the exploration of any opponent who sent 0 to a castle. "
505,1,1,1,1,5,15,20,25,30,1,"I'm assuming that most people will try to take Castle 10 - so I'm giving that castle up (with a single soldier in the event that I battle someone with a similar strategy who puts 0 in there).  From there, I gave preference to the remaining castles based on higher point values.  "
514,1,2,3,3,5,5,14,12,30,25,Winging it.
594,1,1,1,1,5,17,17,17,20,20,
600,1,4,0,0,5,6,10,24,23,27,"I didn't put much into the lower troops, but went bigger into high troops. Tried to eek out a win at Castle 1, but other than that I went low."
625,1,2,3,4,5,11,16,21,26,11,"Always have at least 1 soldier to pick up free wins. Try to be one above round numbers on the more valuable castles. Assume 10 will be the most contested, so cap out on number 9. Beats a strategy of putting 20 each in the last 5, as well as 25 each in the last 4, or 10 in each."
641,0,0,5,15,5,10,20,20,25,0,I abandoned the first and last castles as not worth fighting over and focused on castles a little before and after the center that other teams might neglect.
676,1,3,3,3,5,5,10,10,30,30,I distributed them based on how important the castle was.
690,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,18,28,"The golden ratio is a beautiful thing. It is everywhere in math, so why shouldn't it solve this problem too?"
696,2,2,3,3,5,11,16,16,21,21,I came. I saw. I conquered. I used Google Translations to say something cool in Latin.
701,2,3,4,5,5,15,15,25,25,1,I’m feeling lucky.
736,5,5,20,5,5,20,5,5,10,20,"Not sure, just playing! "
743,1,1,1,5,5,5,5,30,30,17,
751,0,10,0,10,5,10,15,20,10,20,My 11 year son is pretty sure this will win.
762,1,2,3,4,5,5,23,21,19,17,Random guessing.
772,0,0,0,3,5,23,16,13,17,23,"Inverted bell curve for the top castles, leaving ineffective castles empty."
797,2,3,3,4,5,10,18,22,18,15,I tried to ride the wave from earlier deployments and emphasize the trough in the middle.
863,5,5,5,5,5,10,10,15,15,25,If I can commit enough to with with higher value forts then the rest don't matter.
904,1,5,6,9,5,4,10,20,0,40,"I've done these things before, and I know that people stack the second-highest value. I decided to go a more conservative approach and split a lot of things, stacking on those where less soldiers would be and retreat where others would stack."
906,1,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,32,32,Put a lot on high value targets + pick up the forgotten points. We'll see how it goes.
934,0,1,2,4,5,12,15,16,8,37,"On castles 10, 8, 7, and 6, I'm trying to overbid by a small margin those who are trying to overbid the last round by a small margin. On 4, 5, and 9, I'm trying to lose by a wide margin to those who overbid on those castles, while still beating anyone who more or less drops out of those battles completely."
947,0,0,2,2,5,5,29,1,1,55,winning #10 cancels out the first 4 if lost. then 567 > 89 so put more there.
980,2,1,2,5,5,20,20,20,25,0,"Assuming the opposing warlord would place the highest value on Castle 10, I instead tried to capitalize on castles 6 to 9 in order to try and solidify my points gains."
1042,0,0,0,5,5,15,15,15,20,25,Random
1043,0,0,0,5,5,15,15,15,20,25,Random
1056,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,24,24,24,
1110,2,3,5,5,5,13,17,19,23,8,
1119,2,3,4,7,5,6,29,8,26,10,"Tried to do a combination of attributing points based on ""value"" (100 soldier -> 55 points = 1.81 soldier per point) and blocking people going for winning coalitions. So heavily focusing on a few castles to win the game. "
1121,5,5,5,5,5,10,30,30,2,3,Gank those mid high castles bruh
1136,5,3,4,2,5,18,20,19,21,3,"I wanted to avoid any single troops beating me.  My goal is to win 6, 7,8, 9 and from there win 2 castles from my opponent  undercommitting. "
1142,2,2,6,5,5,20,10,25,24,1,Wish I could say
1161,0,4,5,5,5,7,8,11,20,35,"I wanted no Castle to contain more than 40 troops.  The higher the point value of the Castle, the more troops deployed.  An even distribution would have yielded 10 troops per castle, so I had 3.5X that amount for my highest-point Castle, and 2X that amount for my 2nd highest-point Castle. One more than that amount for my third-best Castle."
1177,1,1,2,3,5,13,8,21,13,33,"Focus on castles 10 and 8 based on the prior results, distribute the remaining castles using a fibonacci distribution but flip 13 to castle 6 to avoid focusing on adjacent castles. "
1182,0,0,7,3,5,2,16,17,28,22,hope
1199,1,2,8,1,5,5,14,19,8,37,"Not having much time to figure out what to do this time, I decided to play heavy for 10, and most likely try to pick up a victory on the back of 10-8-7-3, but also have a little bit of contesting other places in case I could get some very cheap points. Somehow this seems wrong, especially from what I remember when I worked out what to do last time, but oh well."
1203,2,2,5,5,5,5,20,24,6,26,"Decided to abandon Castle 9 with the aim to win the battles for Castles 7, 8 and 10. With a possible 55 points on the board, winning a guaranteed 25 and hoping to steal one more castle of at least 3 points should give me the win in most matchups"
1273,2,2,2,4,5,15,15,15,20,20,previous solutions anchored expectations for lower troops at high value castles
1284,0,1,4,10,5,15,25,10,0,30,I'm guessing (hoping) that people will still (despite the data) skew away from over-committing to castle 10 and I'm sacrificing 9 and probably 8 to win there and hoping to compensate with a lot of smaller wins.
1293,2,2,3,5,5,7,8,26,26,16,
1294,1,2,3,4,5,9,20,21,5,30,
1296,0,1,5,10,5,4,15,10,25,25,"I used points per soldier from a previous round of battle, followed by a bit of semi-random assignment with a dash of ""not trying to be too tricky about this because everyone else who reads this is smarter than I am anyway so I may as well go simple""."
1303,0,3,3,8,5,19,19,20,20,3,"Created two sets of the 1000 top results out of 1000 random arrays compared against themselves.  Then compared the top performing array sets.  The above was the best performing solution.  Performed with SAS, using SQL and the datastep. Run time was about 20m."
1307,2,2,3,5,5,8,10,15,20,30,"Guessing, I guess..."
1308,1,1,1,5,5,15,16,1,24,31,"My approach: generate a bunch of random strategies with the requirement that they can beat the 'uniform' strategy of evenly deployed troops, then set them against each other to see which one wins out. I won't account for expected human choices, but I will allow the previous winners to be represented on the battle field to see how they do. My expectation is this will be close to a GTO approach in the sense that it will be hard for others to guess and exploit the strategy. On the other hand, since we'll be playing against a bunch of other humans, it wouldn't surprise me if I get killed by an exploitive strategy. FWIW, this field crushed my initial guess at a good strategy (focus on 10, 9, 6, 3 to get to 28 points). This deployment was based on results from a 60,000 random assortment.

p.s. I know I'm late ... hope you find it in your heart to allow the entry anyway.
p.p.s. Also happy to share my python code for this."
1,2,2,2,2,6,18,2,28,36,2,DONT KNOW
3,2,3,4,5,6,22,6,22,22,8,"Based on previous results, I focussed on castles 6, 8 and 9 and left myself a healthy backup in each of the others"
4,2,2,4,6,6,10,11,14,17,28,"Fairly evenly spread out, with an emphasis on the point-heavy castles."
38,3,4,4,4,6,8,11,11,23,26,"A gradual top down deployment, going for numbers that would beat rounded off choices like 25 or 10 on some of the larger castles."
42,1,2,9,4,6,14,9,8,21,26,Send the troops where the most points are.
166,3,3,3,6,6,25,25,27,1,1,
169,2,3,4,0,6,15,10,26,34,0,Clustered to win as many points against last time's winners.
186,1,2,2,2,6,9,18,18,24,18,We know nothing.
257,2,3,4,5,6,6,32,31,5,6,"Focused on 2 in the middle, never lower than 2 to beat the 1s deployed and heavier on two important"
325,1,1,2,4,6,8,10,20,40,8,Thought it looked cool
366,3,3,4,6,6,3,3,34,4,34,
370,1,2,3,0,6,12,0,30,32,14,"I wasn't really going for castle 10, but thought I would beat some people.  I really wanted to pick up castle 8 and 9, so I put a lot of troops there.  I thought I would pick up some easy points by not putting ""0"" in the early castles.  I though people would waste a lot of troops on castle 5, based on last time, so I didn't put a lot there."
430,0,0,7,5,6,17,16,17,16,16,
445,1,1,1,1,6,0,0,30,0,60,"Many players won't choose lower point castles, so it could be potentially easy to get several low-point castles and gain as many points as the largest castle."
499,2,2,2,2,6,21,21,21,21,2,"The first 4 are so low value I'm giving them away, and the last one will be so hotly contested it's not worth fighting for. I put two there in case people put 1 - it's basically to take freebies while not costing anything substantial. I wanted to push all my chips in for the upper mid range ones. I went 21 for those as I think people might cap themselves at round numbers (20) for them, so it'd give me a slight edge."
520,1,1,2,4,6,9,13,17,21,26,I made it porportional to the point value squared
576,6,6,6,11,6,16,6,6,16,21,No round numbers.  Try to take castles that would be overlooked by others.
593,3,3,6,13,6,18,9,11,14,17,"I generated some random troop deployments, had them all battle each other, and this was the best one."
616,2,5,8,5,6,16,15,18,8,17,Rd2 winners saw 2 trends v. 1: Entrants mimicked 1 and therefore 2 winners were differented from 1 winners in placement and throw-away towers were defended with 3-4 v. 1-2 solders to win. I picked a strategy that is different from 1-2 and increases throw-away defense slightly.
627,1,1,12,6,6,23,2,2,25,22,Prior data wanted to win high value targets while getting to 28 in most efficient way possible while still covering possible deficiencies or ignored castles.
644,1,6,6,15,6,6,6,6,42,6,"This strategy focuses on disrupting any focused deployment strategies that players may build based on previous winners. In previous editions of this game, 6 troops win most battles for most castles. So I should win anytime someone chooses to send a small number of troops. I'm also virtually guaranteed to win castles 4 and 9 due to my excessive forces in both locations. The result is that I will steal a castle from all players focused on either high value, or midrange castles, preventing them from winning one of the castles core to their strategy, while taking all of the castles they chose to ignore."
671,1,1,2,4,6,9,13,17,21,26,"it's a quadratic distribution of soldiers, and I like smooth curves"
682,1,3,4,9,6,18,8,18,6,27,"Base: Assign soldier number equal to castle number using 55. Do it again using castle #-1 using the other 45. Adjust: disfavor odd # castles trying for wins in #4, 6, 8, and 10."
693,4,5,3,1,6,25,36,2,9,9,
726,2,5,5,2,6,11,30,29,6,4,"Not quite randomly, I looked at a line graph of the averages of top scorers from the first and second iteration.  Then I imagined the future iterations as something of a jump-rope moving.  While over-caffeinated, this was the decided plan of attack: 
Let x1 and x2 be the vectors of troops deployed per castle.
Let y3 = 1/2(x2-x1)
Because x2+y3 gives negative components for castles 9 and 10, we assume that there is a ""bounce-back"" from 0.  
Now we need to re-assign the 31.8 troops over castles 1 through 8.  So we assume ""exponential decay"" as a function of distance from castle 9 (alpha=0.8, chosen arbitrarily).
Magic?"
728,0,0,0,5,6,7,8,22,25,27,
878,2,4,6,6,6,21,25,30,0,0,
937,1,1,1,1,6,15,20,25,20,10,bet big on large numbers w/o surrendering anything
946,0,0,0,0,6,5,11,18,28,32,Top Heavy
960,1,8,11,20,6,6,6,6,33,3,"I'm betting on most players putting the majority of their troops on 4 castles that add up to 28. By stacking high numbers of troops on 4 and 9 I hope to disrupt this strategy. Most of the 4 combo castles to reach 28 will include 4 or 9 or both. For example: the winning strategy in the 2nd run of this game was to take 4,5,9,10. Against most players using that strategy I can easily take 2,3,6,7,8. So I just need to have enough to tie either 4 or 9 for a win"
1078,1,1,2,2,6,6,14,20,22,26,"I didn't think about it too much. I guess I tried going one above round numbers (1,5,20,25) to beat people dividing troops with that type of organization."
1158,11,26,11,29,6,5,4,3,3,2,
1219,2,3,3,6,6,10,10,20,20,20,"diversified deployment with more troops sent to higher castles, placing slightly higher relative value on even numbered castles."
1226,1,1,2,4,6,9,13,17,21,26,"I used a sum of squares distribution, rounded, with a minimum of one troop per castle."
1235,1,1,8,19,6,20,18,22,3,2,hope to get my points in random places
1265,2,4,5,6,6,6,28,6,6,31,ay81o
1312,1,1,1,6,6,12,16,21,31,5,Top heavy while giving up ten for most battles.
11,1,4,12,14,7,16,18,20,3,5,"I focused on a combination that would get me to 28 points, but still tried to have above average on the castles that others might try to put 1-3 troops at."
24,2,3,4,5,7,9,26,33,6,5,It just felt *right*
63,1,1,1,2,7,18,20,22,23,5,Seemed pretty good I guess
79,3,3,4,6,7,9,15,25,27,1,I've never actually participated in something like this before. I assumed most people would attempt to capture the castle worth  the most points (10). I felt if I essentially sacrificed that castle and then stuck to a rather linear distribution of soldiers increasing from 1-9 I stood a greater chance of capturing those castles and thus winning the Game. I guess we'll see.
91,1,2,3,5,7,15,30,33,2,2,Get to as close to 28 without wasting troops
115,1,1,1,6,7,20,27,35,1,1,I wanted to win the middle castles
135,2,3,0,5,7,12,16,18,18,19,Idk let's see if I win
148,2,2,2,7,7,27,27,2,10,14,"Paired scouts to 1/2/3 - not worth more troops, but good to snipe or deny a 1-troop snipe. Common practice in last games has been to focus on 4 castles, with a small number spread to others. This strategy is designed to narrowly defeat any small force at any castle, while focusing on castles 6 & 7 (usually ignored, but form a good base to combine with other towers) and increasing numbers of troops to castles 9 & 10.  Castle 8 is almost ignored, anticipating others will focus efforts there."
217,2,5,4,3,7,11,11,26,4,27,Gut feeling
256,1,1,3,5,7,9,13,16,20,25,"Disregard game theory, and just kind of wing it?"
290,1,2,5,5,7,20,20,20,20,0,Sacrificed Castle 10 in hopes of winning slightly-lesser castles
347,0,4,4,4,7,26,4,21,26,4,This is the same strategy I used to defeat the Persian Army in the 5th Century.
405,4,5,5,6,7,9,11,16,27,10,"Reverse variant of Benford's law. Law typically only covers numbers 1-9, so I gave castle 10 the average weight of 10 soldiers, then reversed the probabilities of the Benford's law digits putting 9 highest and 1 lowest, and divided by the new total weight of 110.

Probably suboptimal, but who knows."
577,0,1,3,5,7,10,13,16,20,25,Based on a fibonacci series with rounding to the nearest integer.
588,0,0,0,5,7,8,13,15,20,32,"The smallest 3 castles combine for only 6 points, so they're not worth deploying to, especially since that increases the available troops you can commit to the more valuable targets."
598,1,2,2,5,7,20,20,20,20,3,
628,2,3,4,6,7,11,12,14,16,25,Trying to adhere to the 2 troops for 1 vp but with some skew to capture 10 based on last time around.
655,2,3,5,6,7,15,14,15,16,17,"Tried to win castle 6, plus 2 of 7, 8, 9, 10 assuming that most contestants will go for 2 of 7, 8, 9, 10.  Then scatter enough on 1-5 to pick up some points there."
686,5,0,7,7,7,21,3,24,2,24,"This strategy wins at least 24 points against an average opponent, and has the opportunity to take at least 4 points from castles that must be left largely unguarded. If an opponent takes 6, 8, or 10, then they likely used too many troops to adequately cover the mid-tier castles."
687,5,0,7,7,7,21,3,24,2,24,"This strategy wins at least 24 points against an average opponent, and has the opportunity to take at least 4 points from castles that must be left largely unguarded. If an opponent takes 6, 8, or 10, then they likely used too many troops to adequately cover the mid-tier castles."
704,4,5,8,10,7,13,10,14,17,12,Mixed strategy
724,3,3,3,7,7,6,6,15,30,20,My goal was to fight for every castle. A sizable investment in castle “9” and “10” was meant to punish any player who got too cheeky while also remaining competitive in the middle values. No castles for free to the opponent.
732,1,1,3,5,7,13,16,22,15,17,Value weight plus noise
801,0,0,0,5,7,10,21,24,33,0,Avoided overcommit on 10.  Attempted to stack 9 and upper middle.
826,2,7,2,7,7,19,7,19,7,23,No even numbers. Only choose every second castle for real winning. Take a few to the rest to win against zeros.
829,0,1,3,3,7,7,8,22,23,26,
833,1,2,2,5,7,13,19,21,14,16,
857,1,1,1,3,7,16,22,24,3,22,Worked off last time’s results and heavy fortification on number 9
949,4,5,6,7,7,14,19,24,7,7,"Wanted a reasonable chance of winning castles 6,7,8 along with a decent chance of winning the other ones by generally deploying 7 troops since it's likely that 2-7 will win some of them based on past history."
998,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,37,Massing at castle 10 takes it out of the equation (against most stratagies). This means only 18 points needed out of the remaining 45 points. Best strategy is to equally distribute so as to win the castles less protected by the opponents strategy to get over the top.
1108,1,1,1,4,7,12,18,24,30,2,
1168,0,2,2,4,7,15,15,25,3,27,The best defense is a good offense.
1267,1,1,3,5,7,9,17,21,3,33,stochastic approximation
1299,4,4,8,6,7,15,18,6,18,14,"Ran a bunch of simulations in Excel to pick the ideal strategy based on past results and then ran a final simulation designed to beat the ""ideal"""
40,2,3,4,6,8,9,18,20,12,18,"I am uncertain as to how people will adjust to two contests worth of results, so I've taken a slightly more balanced approach that targets higher value castles more proportionately to their values, while still leaving enough troops to pick up the low and mid value castles that others may defend lightly."
71,3,4,5,5,8,21,6,23,4,21,get em
93,1,5,0,7,8,21,0,28,30,0,optimize higher castles but never go in increments of five (leads to more ties which are inefficient). use 0 on castles that have a higher chance of being contested
155,1,1,1,2,8,10,20,25,30,2,The Art of War
227,3,5,7,7,8,10,10,10,20,20,"Used the previous results, and tried to pick the opposite strategies"
228,2,2,3,4,8,11,12,28,29,1,"Have at least 1 at every castle, aim for capturing castles 6 - 9, much higher value than the lower value counts, and hopefully less contested than castle 10"
232,2,4,6,7,8,15,23,35,0,0,"Idk, could work"
234,1,2,4,6,8,11,14,16,18,20,"True percentages, rounded down and subtracted 1 for less valuable castles 2-5, and rounded up and added 1 for more valuable castles 6-10"
264,3,1,6,6,8,22,13,15,24,2,"I'm not even going to pretend I can guess what everyone else is doing, so I kind of focused on getting 6 and 9, but might have enough from 7, 8 and the lower end if people overcommit there."
341,1,1,3,8,8,2,2,22,22,31,
392,5,7,9,3,8,5,27,31,2,3,
399,2,2,2,15,8,8,28,33,1,1,"1. In order to win one only needs to get 28 points. 
2. Most players will send most of their troops to the top two or three castles, with minor amounts sent to castles at the bottom end of the scale. Most players will probably ignore castles 5 and 6. 
3. Occupying castles 4-8 will win the game for a player. 
4. Player should make only a minor attempt to capture castles 9 and 10, and should throw the lion's share of their forces against castles 7 and 8. They should also send a small force to each of the low scoring castles, as insurance in case of failure. 
5. Player should send at least one soldier to each castle, just in case the enemy ignores them. 
6. Player should send two or three soldiers to castles 1-3, to prevent a single enemy spy from capturing them. "
487,0,0,0,7,8,0,0,35,35,15,
573,1,1,3,4,8,13,17,18,27,8,Felt good
646,1,1,2,5,8,11,14,17,19,22,Diminishing returns
684,2,4,7,7,8,15,18,18,20,1,They can all go after the top castle all they want. I am giving them the top castle to strengthen my middle.
721,2,8,8,8,8,30,2,30,2,2,Goal was to get 28 points. Abandon high value targets and hope that they draw many troops.
785,1,5,4,8,8,12,12,16,15,19,"My basic strategy was to distribute the troops in a proportion equal to the percentage of total points that each castle holds, rounded, with a twist! Each of these proportions were (1/55 * castle#). I believe this is the best mathematical solution, but I thought that others might have thought the same, so I conspired to beat them. For each even castle I added 1 troop, and subtracted 1 from each odd castle. This way, I will win ties against those who shared my thought process."
846,2,3,4,6,8,10,13,15,19,20,"I started from simulating a tournament of 500 random players, that is, each players distribution of soldiers over their castles was uniformly sampled from all possible soldier configurations (at least I hope it was uniformly sampling from that). Then the top 5 players were taken and put aside. I then repeated this random tournament 99 more times to obtain 500 top 5 players. These players then competed in another tournament and I took out the top 5 players (top of the top players as I call them). Then I repeated this whole thing 99 more times to get 500 top of the top players. 

From these 500 top of the top players, I calculated the median placements for each battlefield. 

Then I repeated the above until I had a 10 medians for each battlefield. I took the mean of each battlefields medians and used the 10 means to calculate my strategy. 

I begin by allocating 1 soldier to each battlefield and set this as my starting configuration. Then I calculated the points per median soldier allocation for each battlefield. This would give me a way to rank which battlefields should be allocated to first. 

Going according to the highest points per median soldier allocation battlefield, I added to the battlefield the floor of the respective battlefields mean of medians. I went down the rankings until I ran out of soldiers or finished allocating to the last battlefield. 

If there were any remaining soldiers, I allocated one by one to the battlefield that had the highest points per soldier if adding one more soldier meant I won that battlefield.  

 "
874,2,3,4,5,8,12,16,24,26,0,"hit the higher valued castles harder, except for 10, which I believe my opponent will overvalue."
1049,0,2,6,4,8,5,20,12,23,20,
1058,0,1,1,2,8,6,16,16,19,31,The goal is to take as much from castles 7-10 and hold on for dear life at the bottom. Castles 6-8 seemed like an opportune place to pick up ground based off of last go round.
1063,0,0,0,0,8,2,25,30,35,0,
1106,6,10,13,6,8,16,16,9,7,9,I can't do number theory logic so I just simulated a ton of games in Matlab.
1151,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,36,4,4,"Previous winners put almost all their troops into 5 or so key castles with only a token force (or zero) for the others.  I figured 36 was enough to almost always win Castle 8 and then I went relatively flat to try to capture any castles that weren't being defended.  I did less on 9 and 10, since I figured most will go after those."
1162,2,2,3,5,8,10,10,15,20,25,Put more troops on castles worth more points
1174,3,3,5,6,8,14,15,16,18,12,Put a premium on the higher point castles except for the highest one.
1175,1,3,5,6,8,12,19,19,20,7,"It's still important to win the big-point castles; if you can win 3 of 7,8,9,10 you only need one of the smaller castles. I suspect there will be correction away from the 10-point castle, but not so big that you can slip in with a 3-man force."
1183,1,1,1,8,8,16,16,22,22,5,"I think that castle 10 will be overvalued, and castles 1 to 3 will be overvalued. If I can win 9,8,7, and 6 without ties then I will win every battle."
1275,2,2,2,6,8,16,26,34,2,2,"Most people will target the higher numbers for good reason. So, if you allow the top two to be losses, then you can make up the ground in the middle by trying to guarantee wins there for cheaper. Many people will also commit 1 troop at minimum to every castle in order to get points for anyone who sends none. To overcome this, 2 troops were sent to each at minimum. If all castles with 2 troops are lost, the points for the other castles are still higher."
8,1,4,5,8,9,11,12,15,16,19,Simple weighting according to expected value
32,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Linear
52,2,4,6,7,9,11,13,14,16,18,Weighted distribuation
56,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,I took the ratio of the points for each castle against the total points possible (10/55) and multiplied it by 100 to determine the number of soldiers for each castle.
74,1,1,6,7,9,11,13,15,16,21,100 points/55 weighted castles' value = 1.8181; multiplied that times each castles' value to determine proportioned weight; made a few gut adjustments
75,3,4,6,9,9,10,19,15,11,14,looked at prior results and then sort of winged it
80,1,2,3,6,9,14,16,17,16,16,It slightly beat something that slightly beat May's average.
85,2,4,5,7,9,11,12,15,16,19,"Direct mapping. Soldiers per castle = (points per castle / total points) * total soldiers, with rounding, and leftover soldier goes to castle 10. Trying to win by playing simpler than people expect. :)"
86,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,"Trying to be competitive at every single castle, without wasting too many soldiers."
127,2,2,4,7,9,11,14,15,17,19,"Added up all the VPs to be had (55) took 100 and divided it by 55 (1.8). This is how many soldiers each VP is worth. I then multiplied the castle number by 1.8, rounded and skewed it towards the high end a bit for people who employed the same strategy."
136,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,"Need 28 pts to win, expected value of n pts/ 55 total its per castle. Rounded up higher pt castles."
140,3,4,5,6,9,12,16,21,23,1,"I place 1 troop #10 assuming my opponent will allocate a large contingent of his troops, thus increasing my chances of winning a majority of the others."
143,2,2,2,8,9,11,12,18,18,18,
165,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,"It was based on relative value. Castle 10 has 18% of the total points (55) so they get 18 troops, 9 has 16% of the total points so they get 16 troops, and so on. "
180,2,2,2,5,9,11,11,11,11,36,trying to win the higher castles without leaving any empty and pick off the 10 on each strategy
209,1,1,4,5,9,12,12,18,12,26,Seemed like a good idea at the time
212,1,4,4,13,9,10,10,23,19,7,"I am no game theorist, but I figure a decent concentration on the higher and middle numbers couldn't hurt."
229,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,I reinforced the higher value castles with 1 army from each less-valued castle in the hopes that I could both win some high-value battles against warlords trying to win a greater number of low-value castles and some (more?) low-value battles against top-heavy warlords.
251,2,2,2,8,9,10,12,22,31,2,Wag
260,1,1,1,22,9,22,1,22,1,20,guess work
268,1,2,4,6,9,12,14,16,17,19,"I want this to be fun, not work, so I avoided any serious algorithm and went with my gut. Seems like you should send at least 1 to every castle, and given the linearly-increasing value of each castle, it makes sense to send numbers that follow that pattern.

THEN YOU GET TRICKY and spice it up with a few extras taken from the lower valued castles and given to the mid-range castles, because I figure there's other lazy nerds like me who'll do the same thing as I did in paragraph 1, and I WANT TO BEAT THEM AND HEAR THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR ADVISORS.

Thus, castles 6-8 got one extra soldier, who will provide The Edge To VICTORYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!"
316,1,3,5,7,9,13,16,18,15,13,I took last round's averages and shaved the lower half to give more juice to the top castles.
327,2,4,5,7,9,11,12,14,16,20,guess
401,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,"I figure everyone else is goint to overthink it, so I just went with a basic strategy. Since every castly is worth progressively more, I decided to put progressively more troops in each castle"
426,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,"On average, you can deploy 1.8 troops per castle point. This strategy sends troops to each castle based on their values."
455,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,Gave castles weighted amount based on their value
481,1,3,5,7,9,10,13,15,17,20,Roughly their percentage value of 55 total available points.
507,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,"There are 55 victory points up for grabs, so I found the value of each castle (castle #10 was worth 18.1% of the points; #9 was 16.3%, etc.). From there, I placed troops with those percentages as the base (18% at castle #10, 16% at castle #9). However, I would choose to round up the number of troops if the decimal would have rounded to 1 decimal point (ex: castle #6 is worth 10.9%, so I placed 11 troops). So basically just expected value. "
572,0,3,6,8,9,11,12,14,17,20,"Using a base-10 logarithmic scale to determine base troop deployment for each castle (base troop deployment = log(castle#) * 10).  Deduct each base number of troops deployed at each castle from 10, and send those troops to each castle in reverse order.  E.g. spare troops from #1 go to #10, spares from #2 to #9, and so on until spares from #10 go to #1.  I end up not sending any to #1 because log(1) = 0 and log(10) = 1."
581,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,I just distributed troops proportionally to the value of the castle.  I very strongly doubt that this will be successful.
582,5,6,7,8,9,11,12,13,14,15,"I attempted to give more weight to the more valuable castles, but not neglect the less valuable that could give me the upper-hand."
591,1,1,10,12,9,18,2,2,20,25,
620,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,19,
643,1,3,5,7,9,10,12,14,16,23,"Trying to maintain approximately the same troop-to-score ratio for each castle (1.8 soldiers per point, rounded down), then threw my 5 left over soldiers into castle 10 to try and win the highest scoring castle."
660,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,Figured the most efficient distribution is 0.55 points per man.  Applied the ideal to to each castle and rounded to the closest whole number.
688,1,3,6,7,9,10,13,15,17,19,"If F is a fraction of the troops, 1F+2F+...+9F+10F should equal 100. F is 100/55, or 1.81818...As there are no fractional people, I wanted to allocate the closest whole-number equivalents to 1F, 2F, etc. to the various castles, to minimize my ‘shortfall fraction’. So because some castles have an extra fractional person, the castles I chose to have a ‘shortfall’ were 1, 2, 4, 5 & 6."
699,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,2V-1.  Assets (troops) distributed in proportion to cattle point values.
702,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,Based on value of castles.
708,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,14,15,15,
716,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,"I split all my troops up equally based on each castles point value. Since there were a total of 55 points between all ten castles and I was given 100 troops there was no way to split up 100/55 straight up. Instead, I went with the equation 2(points)-1= soldiers. This leads to having exactly 100 troops distributed among the ten castles while assigning troops equally among each point value. "
725,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,19,Made it up
749,2,3,4,6,9,14,21,17,12,12,Focus on the valuable middle to high castles
764,2,3,4,5,9,9,11,19,19,19,Fibbinochi sequence
765,1,5,5,5,9,16,13,17,21,8,"I went with my gut, I also glanced at the data of the past two matches"
773,0,0,0,5,9,14,21,21,30,0,Ill sacrifice the extremes and try to take the bulk of the points in the middle
832,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,"Each point is worth about 1.8 troops. Distributing troops so as to pay approximately their value for each point led to this distribution. Seems to me that anyone overpaying elsewhere will spend more troops than they should for a castle, allowing me to pick up a different castle(s) at near troop value. The more they overspend anywhere, the worse this becomes for them. "
869,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Gave more to more valuable castles without writing any off
881,1,2,3,4,9,11,13,16,19,22,
901,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Assigned soldiers proportional to castle value
907,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Gave more to more valuable castles without writing any off
921,1,1,1,1,9,9,1,21,26,30,"Trying to optimize from the second iteration, should perform well against people who go for the low castle value strategy"
953,2,1,5,7,9,13,1,18,20,24,
962,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,(points for castle/total castle points)*100=troops deployed
975,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,14,18,Trying to balance protecting/winning the high-value targets and preventing token squads from picking off the low-value forts
983,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,"I chose a simple strategy: based on the total points available, determine the number of points per soldier, and deploy the appropriate number of soldiers to each castle assuming they would win that number of points.  While this strategy does not account for the slight differences in over and undervaluing deployment if one is rounding up or rounding down (since only whole numbers of soldiers can be deployed), it should (in theory) help to appropriate weight the value of all castles and penalize opponents who skew their distribution of soldiers too heavily in any direction."
993,1,2,4,6,9,11,21,22,22,2,"I'm guessing people will over deploy to 10, so I'm sacrificing it to strengthen 7-9, with the suspicion that people will also go for round numbers like 20, or go 1 over that. Otherwise a proportional distribution slightly less weighted at the start, where I suspect people will underdeploy. "
995,2,4,5,7,9,10,13,15,16,19,Proportional representation of the troops based on the points of the castle
1023,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Troops proportional to point value
1026,3,2,5,18,9,18,6,15,6,18,Trying to get to 27 against various previous methods.
1062,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,"I calculated that there are 55 point in total, and for each castle, I assigned a number of soldiers proportional to the percentage of total points. I rounded up or down with fractions. I am pretty sure this would beat most people, since it is human nature to greedily focus on the large point values and overlook the small ones. "
1084,11,15,6,20,9,1,9,16,12,1,"Wrote a Python program to randomize troop deployment; as I'm submitting this I realize that the program was built upon failed assumptions, but that will be even more hilarious if it places in the top-5."
1090,3,4,5,7,9,9,0,19,21,23,bit random tbh
1093,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,just based upon slowly increasing value ... ignoring previous rounds
1095,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,Idfk
1101,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,"the total points are 55. I would like to secure with the highest probability 27.5 points or above. If I had 110 soldiers I would assign each soldier to every 0.5 points. Since I have 100 soldiers I believe that is the best strategy to secure at least 27.5 from most people, regardless if they have chosen to concentrate their forces in the 3 more valuable castles or any other combination. "
1125,1,3,5,7,9,10,12,15,18,20,"Most solders I can spend at each castle, without paying more than 1.81 soldiers/point. Maximizing my chance of winning each, without overpaying. The most efficient overpays are an extra soldier at 8, and 2 extra soldiers at 9 and 10 each."
1127,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Each castle gets 2x-1 of its value. No particular reason; simply a fun pattern.
1131,5,6,7,8,9,11,12,13,14,15,laziness
1163,5,0,1,10,9,12,5,0,18,40,"I ran a program that simulated a thousand rounds of battles with 20,000 participants and made random updates to each strategy after each round based on how well the players performed on the previous round. This was the winner of the last round."
1185,2,4,6,7,9,11,13,14,16,18,"I figure each soldier at .55 points and distributed in a way that most approaches that mean. It is an exploitable strategy, but I am expecting more people to try to exploit gambits than exploiting the obvious answer."
1232,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Each castle has just under twice their point value in troops.
1249,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,
1263,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,The number of troops at each castle is roughly equal to the ratio of each castle's value relative to the total number of available points
22,1,2,2,8,10,15,17,19,23,3,"I tried to look for a mix between the successful armies in 1 and 2. I targeted 4-9 because they total more than half the points, and dropping 1-2 of these castles wouldn't stop my victory. "
29,2,4,5,8,10,11,12,14,16,18,Impossible to say.
36,1,1,3,5,10,18,24,30,4,4,"A few at top to steal from old strategy, then strength in higher numbers, gave up bottom completely "
48,4,2,5,10,10,17,16,16,4,16,"I foresee a lot of fighting over Castle 9. Thus, I focused on 7,8, and 10 to hopefully get a fair number of victories there."
82,1,1,4,8,10,13,16,19,16,12,seems plausible
125,1,1,1,1,10,10,2,20,20,34,Try to create as many options to get to 28 as possible. Goal is to win 2 out of the top 3 then pickup enough of the rest to get to 28+
151,1,1,4,4,10,12,14,16,18,20,
188,2,2,2,2,10,10,28,12,30,2,"Somewhat randomly. Generally speaking, either try to win or don't. Not a lot of in between."
200,1,1,1,5,10,20,25,30,3,4,Shooting for mid numbers (adds up to more than the extremes put together). Still put a few in the top numbers in case of a steal.
211,1,1,1,7,10,12,14,16,18,20,"More troops for higher value castles, but not ignoring lower value ones"
241,1,1,1,8,10,14,17,19,16,13,"I guessed how people would react to the last round, and reacted to that"
266,1,3,5,7,10,12,0,19,23,20,"Slight tweak on EV 1, 3, 5 etc. deployment"
286,5,5,10,15,10,20,24,5,3,3,"I wanted to prioritize taking castles 1-7. Taking every single one of these castles will provide me with 28 points, just over half. I chose to escalate with the number and hope others would focus on the ""big"" castles"", leaving me to win with the small ones. However, I still sent some troops to the small ones in case someone went all in on the same strategy. If they do, I'm hoping the small amount I sent+the variation in the troops I'm sending will allow me to win those matchups."
294,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,18,25,1,"By giving up castle 10 entirely I can distribute more troops elsewhere, with at least 2 soldier per point for castles 1-9.

I did leave one soldier on castle 10 as a counter play for anyone who sends noone for similar reasons"
296,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,"To beat me, you have to place 11 soldiers at 6 castles. You can't. I win!"
302,5,6,8,5,10,2,2,15,23,24,How do you know which risks in war are the right ones? You wait to see if you win.
310,1,3,4,8,10,13,16,1,34,10,"I assigned troops proportional to castle value, then sacrificed castle 8 and a bit of castle 10 to target castle 9. Just to change it up."
318,1,1,1,1,10,15,20,25,25,1,Giving up on the 10
346,1,1,1,1,10,28,28,28,1,1,
369,0,0,0,7,10,0,0,24,28,31,"Subscribe to the ""Barely Win or Lose by a Lot"" theory."
441,1,1,3,1,10,10,18,24,31,1,"I believe that most individuals will go for the 10 point castle, and i will concede it, in order to focus on the next-highest value targets. With the assumption that I can win most but not all of the castles of high value below 10 points, I then distributed 3 soldiers to the 3 point castle in order to try to add to my value with an easier to acquire target. I also added 1 soldier to the remaining castles in order to take it from individuals who simply leave it alone."
444,0,3,5,4,10,17,0,0,29,32,"I assumed everyone would group-think back to the round before the last one (focusing on 7 and 8).  Given that, I mostly copied the strategies of the last round , assuming that everyone else is ""too smart"" to try it."
476,1,3,6,8,10,12,14,16,15,15,I split the difference between the average soldiers per castle from the previous iteration vs. roughly proportional #s of soldiers per castle value.
480,0,0,0,5,10,10,15,20,22,18,Maximize points from ties
491,5,6,7,8,10,12,13,12,13,14,"Summation x+4, then just added random numbers to make it add to 100"
508,0,1,2,8,10,18,27,27,4,3,"11% 1st 4, 55% middle 3, 1/3 top 3"
509,5,5,5,10,10,5,11,30,11,8,"I felt like Castle 8 had the best view, so I really wanted to take that one."
522,1,1,4,4,10,20,20,20,20,0,Avoid wasting resources on a high contention battle (Castle 10).  Spread out on high value targets with less contention (Castle 9 through 6).
543,0,6,7,8,10,17,20,3,25,4,"I'm guessing 8, 10, and 1 will be the least cost effective castles, based on the previous wars, so I focused my troop deployment on the others."
557,2,3,4,6,10,13,14,19,15,14,Average of prior deployment data with small adjustments.
578,1,1,2,4,10,17,27,32,3,3,
579,1,1,2,3,10,5,15,32,4,27,I think the key may be to pick up some free points from the lower castles.
607,0,3,3,5,10,21,21,21,10,6,"Castle 1 is basically worthless, and as for the rest I just have to beat the most people, not the best people. So I'm assuming most people who do this didn't read and react the previous results and will therefore lose to a similar strategy as before just with minor tweaks."
629,0,0,0,3,10,21,29,22,11,4,Created a slightly skewed normal distribution centered on 7 then mapped 100 soldiers across that distribution!
631,1,2,3,4,10,15,15,15,4,31,Last time it seems the top teams underrepresented castles 5-8. Zig when they zag and whatnot.
665,0,0,3,7,10,14,18,21,18,9,"Zeroed out castle 1 and 2 since 3 points is small potatoes. Created a constraint that castle 3-10 had to be at least (Round One Median +1). Created 12 opponents, 5 winners from round 1, 5 winners from round 2, 2 opponents of my making. Used excel solver to maximize number of wins out of 12. Essentially creating an optimal solution to beat all 10 named winners with the additional requirement that each castle above castle 2 should be above the median and therefore more than 50% likely to be captured by me in any given game"
685,3,4,5,6,10,10,11,13,16,22,"I wanted to use just enough troops on the earlier castles to win them , and wanted to win 9 and 10."
698,5,5,8,8,10,17,20,23,2,2,Winning with the middle picks (maybe) didn't check the last results
706,2,4,6,8,10,10,12,14,16,18,
723,10,10,10,10,10,25,25,0,0,0,"There are 55 points up for grabs. To win, I would need 28 or more. I disregard castles 8, 9, and 10. That loses me 27 points. However, I deploy the remaining soldiers in the following manner -

1. Castles 6 and 7 get 25 soldiers each. Assuming that the opponent has committed most soldiers to castles 8, 9, and 10, I should be able to gain these two castles.

2.  For the remaining castles, I will assign 10 soldiers each.

The hope is that the opponent over-commits on the higher value castles while undervaluing the remaining castles. By flipping that thinking on its head, I hope to undermine the opponent's strategy."
753,2,3,4,6,10,18,24,1,31,1,I wanted to obviously weigh the greater castles with more troops. I didn’t want to dump a lot of resources into 10 because people would target it. I also chose 9 instead of 8 due to previous results (in case that influenced other people’s picks)
803,4,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,13,14,Trying to get win at several castles with an emphasis towards the high point castles.  Weighting for each castle proportional to the square root of the value.
821,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,Equal distribution beats the game theory.
824,3,5,1,11,10,15,15,20,17,3,idk it’s 5am
827,2,3,3,7,10,14,18,21,18,4,"I figured I'd look at what strategy riddlers used last time.  I looked at both the mean and the median.  I started with the median set and increased most of the numbers 1.  I also compared this number set to the mean.  It won 35 of the 55 points.  So, why not go with that?  "
866,3,5,7,17,10,16,19,15,5,3,"I reviewed and added both of the table of previous winners to an excel spreadsheet and manipulated the numbers until I won most matchups in against both sets of winners. The second winners appear to essentially concede 27 points (1,2,3,6,7,8) while the first winners in general sought their points in the 5-9 range. Unfortunately, you won't get an awesome math answer for my choices."
880,1,1,2,1,10,20,25,30,5,5,"Using the data from two previous trials, I wanted to balance between the two winning strategies and maximize EV."
916,5,5,5,5,10,10,20,20,10,10,
918,2,3,7,9,10,10,18,20,6,15,Adds to 100
926,0,0,0,0,10,12,15,18,21,24,Started proportionally and then let go of the lesser castles
930,3,6,7,10,10,18,16,14,1,15,"General ramping-up from low to high, leaving out one high to improve the chances on the others"
931,3,2,5,5,10,20,20,20,10,5,"Best to at least contest the small ones, 10 is gonna be over deployed y a lot of people. Capturing the soft gooey middle should rack up enough points to win a fair number."
935,2,3,4,7,10,12,16,20,24,2,
938,0,0,0,5,10,10,15,30,20,10,Just giving away the low point castles and loading up on the 8 and 9 but hoping to eke some wins out of the 10 and 7
978,0,0,2,3,10,15,17,17,18,18,"Because in the last battle the most successful warlords targeted the middle and top numbered castles with an overwhelming number of troops, I wanted to spread my points more evenly across castles with a value of five or higher (because even if you conquer the lower castles you still lose). This general strategy might be susceptible to players who cluster their soldiers at the top, but I am hoping to split the difference and more evenly spread my troops in the hope that when the smoke clears I can - to paraphrase Varys from Game of Thrones - be king of the ashes."
985,2,2,2,10,10,20,2,2,25,25,"Basically, I assume people will see what happened last time (lots of troops in 4,5,9, and 9) and avoid those this time. So I put troops there."
1004,0,0,0,0,10,15,20,25,30,0,sacrificed top and bottom
1041,1,1,1,17,10,21,5,5,35,4,Noticing that winning strategies go big on 2 high value castles and 2 low midvalue castles. Decided to go all in on 1 high value castle - and try 3 midlevel castles that would be split evenly lower for anyone throwing points at a secondary high value castle.  And raised the lower bar up to 4 for castles >3 points as easy gimmes in case people copy last winning strategy.
1085,5,5,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,20,"even spreading of troops....except 10 is prioritized highly, at the expense of lesser castles 1 and 2"
1091,1,1,4,5,10,15,21,41,1,1,Focused on winning castles 7 and 8
1112,2,4,2,6,10,2,14,23,14,23,Looked OK to me
1126,0,2,5,4,10,15,20,20,23,1,"Ran a similation with random troop selections, this was one of the best models with a good spread, which I thought might be a good approach. "
1128,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,
1149,2,2,3,3,10,12,14,16,18,20,"focused on the heavier castles and tried to apportion troops with respect to their weights. 

if someone beats me in one then likely they would lose in at least one other place. "
1156,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,18,14,12,"I figure staying near the average from previous wars will, oddly enough, lead to either massive victory in the campaign or humiliating defeat. "
1180,0,3,5,0,10,16,25,21,20,0,I just picked ones I thought would win
1184,0,0,0,10,10,12,14,16,18,20,"I am anticipating others wasting troops on the low value targets, which I will abandon.  I assigned troops to each other site based on their value alone, anticipating the others at this point would overthink and leave the high value targets undefended(but in an unpredictable way)"
1237,0,0,0,10,10,25,25,15,10,5,Because the middle will be ignored
1286,2,1,3,7,10,14,19,22,19,3,"A little bit of this, a little bit of that."
1301,1,1,1,7,10,10,20,0,20,30,"In order to win any game, a player only needs to score 28 points, so I tried to teach 28 with the fewest possible castles.  

But really I built a simulation and tested out a variety of strategies against a computer to see what I liked best. It really comes down to if I use the least used strategy that provides the most wins. Plus a little bit of razzle dazzle.

Cheers."
1314,2,3,10,10,10,5,20,30,5,5,Eh?
19,3,5,7,9,11,2,16,18,15,14,"I have optimised this strategy to beat the average deployment from the last iteration of the game, by sacrificing castle 6,which was not well contested last time, so I expect it to be hotly contested this time round."
34,1,6,6,11,11,16,16,16,11,6,"Figure 5x would be a popular number to distribute, so 5x+1 along a skewed curve based on intuition."
47,1,6,6,6,11,11,6,26,21,6,Tried to use just above multiples of 5 because that is a human habit when splitting things.
81,4,4,4,5,11,17,23,26,3,3,
83,3,6,6,11,11,1,27,30,2,3,"cluster forces around valuable castles most likely to be fought over (7 and 8), choose one middle but less valuable castle (6) to offer almost no defense of,  give  11% of forces to next level valuable castles (4 and 5) assuming most will give 10% to those castles. Also assumes most will attempt to cluster forces proportionately to win larger castles in some ratio of all forces in the 10, 9, 8, 7 castles, keeping more than 25% in castles 8 and 7. "
95,1,1,2,15,11,3,8,23,34,2,"Random, except for deciding to let the low castles go without much of a fight."
96,2,2,8,11,11,13,14,16,21,2,"Ignore castle 10 as large amount of pepople will try to send huge numbers of troops to take it, send at least 2 troops to every castle."
126,2,2,2,2,11,11,2,22,44,2,"I was looking for four castles that would add up to 28 points, the minimum required to win. I found I could not do this without castle 9. I chose to leave out castle 7 because 5 and 6 should be easier to get. I sent token forces to 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 10 to force my opponent to keep those covered. That left me 88 troops. I sent half of those to castle 9, which I assumed would be contested heavily. Half of what was left was sent to castle 8. The remaining troops were split between 5 and 6."
142,8,10,7,5,11,13,3,15,26,2,"I wanted to have some troops at every castle to have a chance to win any of them.  I think some people may try to just win the 4 most valuable castles, as that wins you a majority of points, so I wanted to make sure I hit one of them hard to pre-empt that.  The rest was pretty much random!"
156,2,2,2,7,11,14,17,17,15,13,"Designed a strategy that would beat both the average strategies from the last 2 battle royales, without winning any castle with a high excess of troops."
178,1,1,1,1,11,12,15,17,19,22,"I assumed that a reasonably common strategy would be trying to spread the troops proportional to the castle scores (so, basically scaling up from a 55 point triangular spread). The idea here is to cede 10 points every game to build a more top-heavy spread to specifically counter those players and some variations on that theme."
181,1,1,1,9,11,14,17,18,15,13,My goal was to build a strategy that beat the average of both of the previous two rounds of raiding.
197,1,2,2,2,11,13,3,32,31,3,"Assume many will either go for 7/8 or 9/10, and those that do will weight heavier on the higher of the 2, so trying to split the difference and win one of each pair.
3s to try to pick up a few where people put 1 or 2, then using the majority of the rest to try for 5/6, which outweigh 1-4 combined."
214,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,1,Prioritizing high-end targets while keeping out of Castle 10 battle - marginal gain on that castle is not worth the battle
223,2,3,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,11,random assignment
265,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,16,0,Sac the queen!
283,3,4,6,11,11,21,11,11,11,11,"I didn't want to overthink it. The last rounds, switched based on where people loaded up, so I wanted to do a fairly even distribution to take the ignored categories while maintaining something in each category to not give anything away. I loaded up on 6 to try to win it since the best ones in the previous rounds each essentially gave away 2 of the top 4 so winning the 5th highest could be very beneficial."
330,1,4,7,9,11,13,16,18,20,1,"most people will load up heavy on the castles worth more points, i went for an even distribution slightly skewed towards the higher value castles. Based on the numbers 1-9 percentage of 45. IE 9 was 20%. I just took one off the lowest value castle in case someone did the same thing and put it on the 10."
351,0,0,4,0,11,0,30,31,0,24,"I came up with about a dozen different strategies. Strategy A was an even distribution (10 per castle), B was weighted (2 for Castle 1 up to 18 for Castle 10); C was weighted to beat A-B, D could beat A-C, all the way until strategy O. After Strategy O, I couldn't make another distribution that could beat N plus the other ones I had already made. It's banking on chaos and people not wanting to overpay for Castle 10, thinking they can take Castles 6-9 for a little more points"
387,3,3,3,3,11,11,16,21,26,3,You’ll never know
393,10,11,10,10,11,11,11,11,10,5,"Pretty much evenly distribute my forces winning any castle left undefended, while sending one extra guy to 5 castles that accumulate enough points to win on their own. Sacrifice Castle 10 as I don't need it to win and hope others will focus on it"
397,2,2,11,11,11,18,21,22,1,1,I focused on winning the midtier castles while still sending a few troops to others in case they completely abandon them.
416,4,4,4,4,11,22,33,7,6,5,I'm one step ahead of everyone else
446,26,11,11,11,11,12,15,1,1,1,"It's sort of a counter-intuitive strategy that ignores average return per troop deployed in favor of attacking three strategies I think will be most common. Ironically, castle #1 is the pivot for many strategies that I think will be most common, so it's more important than the return of 1 would indicate. I think a lot of people are going to try to reach 28 troops by taking 10,9,8 and 1. This makes sense intuitively, because you're defending the fewest number of tiles, but it would mean glossing over 7-2, and I doubt many of those people would put more than a quarter of their troops on castle 1. I'm also trying to maintain enough troops on 7-2 to beat anyone who just assigns 10 troops per castle. If a player is taking a rational approach and assigns troops in such a way as to average out the expected return for each troop deployed, it would look something like 2,3,5,6,9,11,14,15,17,18 with .5-.67 expected return per troop and a slight preference on sending leftovers to the higher number castles. I would still get them by sweeping 1-7. I've also defended against even more extreme players like me by leaving 1 troop going to 10, 9, and 8 to get a quick score if they get too cute by leaving those blocks totally undefended, and I'll almost certainly still take #1 for the win hahaha. My strategy is most vulnerable to a more moderated version of my strategy where less resources are attributed to castle 1 and distributed over the mid range, but I would expect them to lose a high percentage of games to people pursuing the 10,9,8,1 strategy. Overall, I think my strategy will be successful."
465,1,2,4,8,11,15,26,27,3,3,Looks a bit better based on the data from the last two.
472,0,0,0,0,11,11,11,21,21,25,Guarantee 10 and then assume no one else would expend more than 20 on any particular castle. Guarantee 9 and 8 on this rule and then spread the rest out descending.
486,0,0,0,0,11,4,0,15,35,35,Compared the strategy against a uniform deployment (10 / castle) and against the winner from second round.  Tried to get at least 28 points against both strategies.
529,9,9,9,10,11,12,12,15,5,8,"1 and 2 are not that important, but controlling the “middle of the pack” (4, 5,6,7,8) will give me an advantage over anybody else, no matter what they win. 9 and 10 are unimportant luxuries that will help, but are not necessary. 4 will help build up points, but as long as I have the “middle of the pack”, I will win."
547,0,4,6,8,11,14,22,23,12,0,I'll never tell.
584,3,2,5,9,11,15,22,20,3,10,Trying to beat the last two averages from the riddles before
585,4,5,7,9,11,14,17,20,0,13,surrender castle 9 completely -- exceed the average of BOTH original and May average per castle strategies for every other battle.
589,0,0,0,8,11,14,17,20,17,13,beat the average for both original Feb. and May soldiers per castle for all of the most valuable castles - punt on the low point battles.
604,0,2,0,11,11,0,25,24,27,0,You only have to win by a little.
621,0,0,1,10,11,12,1,1,32,32,"Fight for the top two, plus the center"
632,0,0,7,8,11,0,0,23,25,26,
645,1,2,2,5,11,13,16,17,17,16,"I compiled the list of winning strategies from the first and second bouts, plus the median from the first, the mean from the first (weighted double), and the mean from the second (weighted triple). Then I picked an allotment that would win against around half of these for Castles 5, 6, and 7, and more than half for 8, 9, and 10. Then I fudged around with 7, 8, 9, and 10 so they formed a nice symmetric 16/17/17/16, and put a token remainder on Castles 1-4.  "
651,1,2,2,11,11,11,8,18,18,18,Concentrate on the higher values with some randomness mixed in.
656,1,2,2,2,11,2,21,26,31,2,"Tried to win 7/8/9 in most cases, then need only 4 pts left for victory.  2 gaps help defeat all gap fillers of 1."
658,2,5,5,9,11,10,26,28,2,2,"I looked at the first battle you had, added up the total on each castle for the top entries, then divided proportionally.  There seemed to be something vaguely bell-curve-derivative about the winners."
659,1,1,2,9,11,13,16,18,15,14,+1 to average May battles less on castles 1-3
673,0,0,2,15,11,6,5,3,27,31,"I tried to place heavier in the 9 and 10 spot to guarantee more points and let the 1 and 2 spots go, as they provide minimal points.  I also sacrificed a chicken to Jobu."
677,3,6,6,9,11,2,27,31,2,3,Trying to bet 1 more than what I believe the majority of people will do based on your historical data.
700,5,6,6,6,11,5,5,6,25,25,"Performs well against round 2, wins more often than not against round 1..."
715,1,3,5,7,11,11,13,15,16,18,Allocated the same proportion of troops equal to the proportion of total points the castle represents.
748,1,0,2,2,11,12,24,24,0,24,
758,1,1,1,11,11,6,6,6,22,35,"A hybrid strategy that attempts to guarantee Castle 10, and secure the remaining 18 points from poorly-guarded castles.  Similar to last year's winners, but weakens the investment in Castle 9 in exchange for a moderate investment into Castles 6, 7, and 8 designed to reliably overwhelm token forces.  This strategy edges out the points-per-solider distribution and the uniform distribution, as well as last game's 4-5-9-10 meta."
779,1,1,1,1,11,11,1,21,51,1,"I assumed 10, being the most valuable, would be the most likely to see the bulk of enemy troops, by leaving only 1 soldier, I can still claim victory if they ignore it, but lose little to an attack. (Same theory for 1-4 and 7). Since 28 points are needed for victory, and I'm assuming a 10 point loss, the bulk of my troops are stationed at castle 9. With significant forces at 5, 6 and 8. If i can claim these four, i have victory. If i fail on some of these, the single soldiers in other forts hopefully claim unopposed victory."
790,1,2,4,6,11,12,13,14,17,20,"Value is highest at 10, I presume that the lower values castles 5 and below are expendable."
807,4,5,6,7,11,27,28,4,4,4,Guess
813,1,1,1,1,11,19,19,1,21,25,I’m conceding the low-value castles and one of the most over-valued (#8). Then I concentrate forces for high-probability wins in the highest-scoring and mid-range castles. I’m also hoping to pick up some small gains from those who concede castles by listing 0 or 1.
819,0,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,12,leave out the 1 and always beat the mean
828,3,5,7,9,11,12,14,17,19,3,Forfeit the 10 points and win the others
845,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,1,"Strategy distributes based on points, dropping 10 to pack enemy into valuble territory and give a better advantage overall.  1 point initially to all castles to win in the event of no compete.  Remaining points distributed through castle 1-9 at a rate of 2:1"
847,1,3,5,7,11,15,17,19,21,1,"Sacrifice the king, win the rest, and maybe sneak the 10 if someone sacrifices harder. "
884,2,2,2,11,11,11,26,31,2,2,"Middle weighted, but no zero castles"
911,1,2,2,2,11,15,17,22,15,13,COC
920,1,1,1,11,11,20,25,30,0,0,"castle 9 and 10 would be the most valuable so should get the largest number of troops assigned to them by the other overlords so fighting over them would be the most pointless allocation of troops since you're most likely to lose there. castles 1-3 are of limited value so while they could safely be ignored you could steal one of them with minimal troop numbers. combining those 5 castles gives you 25 points which won't be enough to win. castles 6-8 are the most valuable as far as being high enough to want to take but not so high that you would risk sending all your troops to, so 20-30% of your forces should be enough to win those three, especially castle 8 as you've conceded 9 and 10 already so you have to win castle 8 . castles 4 and 5 are the risky ones as losing either one means you lose, but again aren't valuable enough for large troop dispositions. however in the event of the enemy dividing his troops evenly among all 10 castles I need to commit more than 10 troops to ensure victory. doing things this way should give me a 30-25 victory "
972,0,5,7,9,11,13,0,0,23,32,I pretended I was playing against my brothers Devon and Nate. So hopefully people generally think like the two of them.
977,1,2,5,17,11,13,16,18,0,17,"Counter positions of most successful players from last time, while exceeding averages."
1003,0,5,7,9,11,15,22,26,2,3,
1038,2,3,5,7,11,3,15,18,27,9,
1050,0,5,7,9,11,21,0,21,0,26,"2, 3, 4 instead of 9,  and then and 3 of 5,6,8, and 10"
1116,0,0,1,6,11,18,28,5,0,31,"I tried to use Ken Nickerson's strategy from the first battle but with a focus on two castles that were differently successful in the first two battles.  In the first one, 7&8 were the main targets by the top 5.  In the next one, 9 and 10 became the big numbers to target.

I need 28 points to win the battle. My goal is to take 5, 7, 6, and 10 in most matches.  I get all four of those and I win.  If I don't, well, hopefully I can steal the 8 (or the 4) and use dumb luck to conquer smarts.  "
1214,2,3,5,4,11,13,16,6,6,34,I went with a strategy designed to beat the best strategies from the first two rounds and the average of the previous games. I didn't want to think harder than that.
1234,2,2,3,11,11,16,16,16,21,2,"Never put 0, conceede castle 10, focus on 4-9, and put castle values 1 higher than common values (1, 10, 15, 20)"
1241,0,0,3,5,11,13,21,22,14,11,"Kind of a guess, really"
1245,2,11,11,11,11,11,12,12,17,2,"I tailored my placement to counter what I believe will be popular strategies. One strategy being placing at least one soldier on each castle, another being splitting them evenly at 10 soldiers a piece, and another being overloading castle 10."
1285,2,4,6,9,11,14,16,18,20,0,"Give away the ""sexy"" castle that others are likely to overpay to win and then allocate troops based on average available points per troop."
6,2,2,11,12,12,16,16,17,6,6,"I focused on getting the extreme castles (1,2,3,4,9,10) while hoping to steal one of the middle castles (5,6,7,8)"
27,2,6,9,9,12,2,28,27,2,3,Just did a pretty similar strategy to Cyrus.
35,2,4,6,12,12,2,21,3,30,8,
65,4,8,8,8,12,32,17,4,3,4,Get 7 through 5 and then either 10 or 4 through 1.
132,2,2,2,5,12,2,5,28,32,10,
134,3,4,4,11,12,16,20,21,4,5,Try to pick up a couple with my 3-5 at the ends and then win 4 of the middle ones where the strength is.
145,1,1,1,14,12,12,14,14,30,1,Not a lot of thought went into the deployment.  trying to get castles 9-7 most of the time.
167,2,3,5,7,12,17,20,25,5,4,Sounded good to me
177,3,5,4,4,12,12,26,26,4,4,Overvalue the undervalued
187,1,1,1,3,12,17,5,27,3,30,We're in the Endgame now.
203,3,3,3,3,12,12,3,29,29,3,"I choose to concentrate on towers 8 and 9, hopefully winning them almost all the time. I should also win towers 5 and 6 much of the time making 28 points for a victory. If I miss one or both of 5 and 6, I hope to make it up with scouting forces of 3 soldiers which may be more than most scouts."
246,1,0,1,2,12,21,27,32,2,2,"never gonna win 9 & 10, don't want 1-4, split the rest leaning higher for higher values"
331,2,1,1,10,12,2,19,25,25,3,"The idea was to win 7,8, and 9 as well as one of 4 and 5. That gives me either 28 or 29 which wins. The others are to make sure i dont lose to a 1 or 2"
335,12,12,12,12,12,14,26,0,0,0,I figure the bulk will put their points in to the top 4 if i can win everything else i should be good to go
362,0,11,11,12,12,13,13,14,14,0,"This won't work, but I am attempting to avoid over-optimisation by ignoring all previous data. Accept the loss of 1 and 10, and try to win on average against the rest, with a slight bias to higher value targets"
413,2,2,6,9,12,16,21,24,4,4,I added up to 100... i guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
414,4,8,14,2,12,10,22,6,3,19,Why Not
477,5,5,5,6,12,12,16,9,12,18,Hoping other warlords don't put very many in the early castles
496,0,1,1,1,12,15,18,20,17,15,"3-4 points higher than previous average on higher point castles, at least 1 point per castle."
504,2,4,7,9,12,2,27,31,3,3,Built to beat Cyrus
516,10,10,10,10,12,16,23,3,3,3,"It just felt right, people seemed to overvalue blowout victorys in high point castles"
521,1,1,2,3,12,17,3,12,22,27,ez money
537,1,6,11,11,12,13,14,15,16,1,Assume opponent will load up on the most valuable castle so I will concede it and attempt to dominate the middle values.
549,0,4,6,9,12,15,18,0,18,18,"Previously I had anticipated 10 to be the central battleground and abandoned it, the past two rounds the central battleground has ended up being 8 instead. I've abandoned contesting 8, focusing on the surrounding high number figures, and tapering off from there. 1 is also abandoned as low reward. "
559,0,2,3,1,12,12,12,12,12,34,"Top strategies in round 2 were all-in on 4 specific numbers, particularly 9+10 and a 9-sum pair (4/5, 3/6, 2/7, 1/8). Looking to break that by stealing 10 then getting 3 out of 5-9 range. Loses to top strategies of round 1 (more balanced emphasis on 5-9 range), hopefully the 'meta' doesn't drift back. "
630,1,3,7,9,12,8,24,30,3,3,
640,1,1,6,10,12,12,15,16,13,14,Assumed a trend based on the first two events.  Added one solider more than the anticipated trend value to castles 4 through 10.  Put the minimum on Castles 1 and 2 and the remainder on Castle 3.  Crosses fingers.
650,2,4,7,10,12,2,27,28,4,4,"Slightly higher deployment from last time’s in castles 9-10. If people saw the last one and went for 3 soldiers to win it I win, if they didn't see it and behaved the same (average 2-3 soldiers) I still win"
652,4,5,6,5,12,23,14,15,14,2,mystery
664,1,4,6,7,12,3,27,33,3,4,"I need 28 points to win. Following the logic from previous iterations, I'm focusing on trying to secure 15 points from castles 7 and 8 while hoping to steal the remaining 13 points from winning 1 or 2 from castles 2-5 and 1 of castles 9 and 10."
707,1,2,4,8,12,16,21,31,2,3,Peak at 80 and decline downwards. Don't sacrifice any entirely.
729,0,0,8,10,12,14,17,19,20,0,"I guessed that an distribution proportionate to point values will rarely win the 10 and will waste trips on the low-value castles, so I dropped the 10 and the bottom too and then loosely distributed them proportionally from there fight estimating as I wrote on some construction paper with a crayon."
730,17,11,11,11,12,15,20,1,1,1,"The warlord can win with 1-7.  Rather than targeting the high-point castles, target the low-point castles.  In case our competitor tries the same strategy, we left one troop on each of 8-10, and loaded up on 1."
744,1,2,6,8,12,14,16,19,11,11,
768,0,0,0,2,12,16,0,33,34,3,"Trying to win 9, 8, 6, and 5, and hoping I can steal some of the others."
788,4,4,5,12,12,12,2,3,23,23,"I understand the changes between the last two games to show that my fellow warlords are smart but not going down the path of ""if I do this then she does this then I'll do this and then she'll do this."" Basically, they're making first-order adjustments. This deployment will hopefully work against both the average players and also the ones making first-order adjustments. That's shown clearly in the second digit of all my guesses--I think people naturally go for round numbers, and then smart players go one over round numbers to beat the round number players, so I'm going three over to beat the first-order guesses. I also focused on return on investment. Theoretically I can win most of the smaller castles with this deployment, and then I only need to win one or two of the big ones. "
812,0,3,6,1,12,20,24,23,6,5,"Following the logic of last games winner, trying to optimize against those who optimize. Without too much thought."
837,2,1,6,7,12,16,22,1,31,2,
839,0,0,7,10,12,14,17,19,21,0,1 and 2 are low-value; 10 will be too heavily contested
886,2,2,2,2,12,20,25,35,0,0,I didn't try for 9 or 10 and went for 5-8.
900,0,1,1,10,12,13,16,17,15,15,"This strategy is based on two data points: the average deployment in February and the the average deployment in May. It presumes the changes will continue linearly, and therefore this troop deployment is set to beat that presumed average deployment.

The troop deployment also forfeits castles 1, 2 and 3 to reinforce higher value castles."
958,0,2,2,2,12,16,2,27,35,2,total guess
967,0,0,0,6,12,18,26,32,3,3,
976,7,11,11,11,12,21,21,2,2,2,To counter groups focusing too much on higher value castles and also those who may send nobody to them.
982,0,0,2,3,12,15,18,11,5,34,28 to win. Win 10. Win any 3 of 5-8.
992,20,10,10,11,12,15,22,0,0,0,It is a race to 28 points.  Chosen locations least likely to be fought for.
1021,7,13,9,4,12,14,8,13,9,11,Pi
1028,1,4,5,11,12,0,15,12,19,21,Not really sure
1059,2,3,2,4,12,14,7,19,25,12,"Try all castles, but more on just a majority of points"
1114,3,3,6,6,12,3,6,29,8,24,
1167,0,4,5,2,12,19,2,2,24,30,"To win you need 28 victory points  which gives about 3.5 troops per point (which suggests it is not worth sending more than 3.5 troops per castle point). Finally the last two rounds showed a the field adopting the previous strategy and the winners planing to win against it. Assuming that people are still seeking patterns and have detected the shift and will now have the default as the shift, whilst still keeping some value on the high value castles. Also from examining the averages the 7,8 castles are over valued compared to the 9,10's suggesting a strategy strong on these will do well. Also this means that if both of these are won only an additional nine points need to be picked up elsewhere.

Finally the minimum should always be 2 as it beats both zero and the cheap guess which beats 0. Except for one because I believe that 2 soliders will have a more effective return elsewhere"
1172,1,1,3,6,12,13,18,31,2,13,"Based on past strategies I distributed my troops closer to the middle, but I also went a little hard for number 10."
1187,0,0,3,1,12,17,2,31,2,32,"Well, the first time the winners targeted 7 and 8, and the second time the winners targeted 9 and 10.  So I'm going to target 8 and 10 - as long as I win those and break even on 1 through 6, I should beat the copy cats from last time, and anyone who hopes to beat the copycats by one-upping them on key castles.  In order to break even or better on 1 through 6, I'm targeting 5 and 6.  After that, I've got 8 armies left to split among the remaining castles, in case I lose some of the others.  I ignore 1 and 2, which aren't worth much, in favor of taking advantage of those who leave some higher-value castles empty or close to empty.

I also made sure that my solution beats most typical solutions (i.e. even splits, or assigning armies proportional to value), as well as most of the winner's solutions (although admittedly Jim Skloda's submission from the first time counters mine pretty perfectly).  I also think it's worth going for numbers that are 1 or 2 mod 5, since many people will submit nice round numbers, as proven by the winning submissions from the previous contests."
1190,1,1,3,6,12,17,16,18,23,3,
1200,0,0,0,5,12,16,18,24,25,0,The top one and bottom 3 are simply not worth the manpower.
1239,0,3,3,12,12,17,12,17,12,12,"Looking at the data from the first two iterations, castles 6 and 8 seemed most likely to be winnable.  I focused on 12s and 17s as I assume others like to throw in a lot of 11s and 16s to get 1 army over those who put in 10s and 15s."
1252,1,2,4,6,12,2,16,18,22,17,
1253,5,6,7,8,12,0,19,21,21,1,
9,4,4,14,13,13,2,15,15,10,10,"I mostly trusted my gut, but did a back over the envelop best response iteration."
51,1,5,8,12,13,1,26,30,2,2,I copied the first winner one minor arbitrary change.
69,3,3,3,3,13,18,21,32,2,2,"I put at least two people in each castle so I could beat the 0s and 1s in each castle. And then I tried to mimic the winners from the first time, thinking that the winning strategy would revert back to the first game."
87,2,7,2,2,13,18,23,29,2,2,"I wanted to get 28/55 points by committing to castles 8,7,6,5 and 2. I deployed these troops to help obtain 8 most frequently and 2 the least. I deployed 2 troops on each other castle to not allow for my enemies to get an easy 1-0 victory on any castle. If I can win one or two of those, that would be great "
99,4,4,4,10,13,14,17,16,8,10,Deception combined with winning the battle in the trenches
114,3,6,9,11,13,14,18,22,2,2,"55 total points and 100 troops means just fewer than 2 troops per point. Assuming opponent uses same math, I will overemphasize the lesser valued castles and hope she goes big."
119,1,1,8,10,13,1,26,30,4,6,"I took the winning strategy from the first battle royale but then redeployed a few troops from castles 1 & 2 to castles 9 and 10. My thinking is that most players will be trying to beat the winning strategies from game 2, and won't be considering the game 1 strategies as much. Essentially, my hope is that I'll be ""zigging"" while others are ""zagging""."
144,1,1,1,11,13,4,29,32,4,4,"I picked two more than the winning deployment from a previous round for all the top castles, assuming that most other players would pick one more than the winning deployment.  This made me run out of soldiers by the end though, so the least value castles are pretty weakly defended."
218,1,1,4,13,13,18,22,22,3,3,
279,7,9,9,11,13,0,0,0,51,0,It adds up to >20 points and I don't think anyone's gonna care as much as I do about the ones I chose? Idk though
282,5,6,8,10,13,15,5,28,6,4,"Lose the middle, win the ends"
312,2,5,8,10,13,2,26,30,2,2,Took the winner of Round 1 and moved 1 soldier to beat it
317,1,1,1,10,13,17,25,30,1,1,
350,7,7,7,13,13,7,11,11,11,13,
358,3,4,6,11,13,7,6,21,26,3,"Many people are math adverse. When dealing with 100, people may be inclined to use numbers like 5, 10, 25. Numbers like 6, 11, 26 may get close wins and save more soldiers to put into other spots. "
375,1,2,4,5,13,18,23,27,6,1,"I tried to adapt to the changes from the previous wars. I believe castle 10 will be the most hotly contested, so I only want to gather the table scraps there. I think castles 5-8 will be the most important to win this time."
379,1,2,2,2,13,13,20,7,27,13,i liked the numbers
400,8,12,13,13,13,14,0,27,0,0,"I hope to allow my opponent to take the top two and the 7th castle while preserving those forces to have enough to counter what I expect to be a smaller amount dedicated to castles 1-6 and 8, thereby getting a majority of points and castles. "
425,1,7,1,1,13,17,22,36,1,1,"At least 1 soldier at every castle to take easy points from undefended castles, but mainly focusing on castles 8,7,6,5, and 2 which yield enough points on their own to win a battle with half the points + .5"
428,1,10,13,13,13,15,2,27,3,3,"Think I need to send somebody to every castle, but potentially concede 10,9,7,1; hopefully sweep remainder."
490,0,3,8,9,13,5,28,30,2,2,
502,1,3,4,7,13,20,24,28,0,0,"I figured most people would choose increasing sequences, which means a lower numbers on 1-8 and more on 9 and 10. So if I put all my solders on 1-8 and beat them, maybe I'd have a better chance! :)"
515,1,1,10,12,13,14,15,16,17,1,Win the middle!
560,2,2,7,10,13,17,8,10,8,23,"Moneyball style. The goal is to buy points, and our goal is 28 points (more than half of 55). I divided 100 soldiers by 28 points and determined that the ""right"" value of a point is about 3.5 soldiers. I then determined the ""right"" value of each castle. I made a list of all the possible castle combinations to get to 28, and did some math to determine the inefficiencies between ""right"" values and ""actual"" values of the castles in prior exercises (for instance, Castle 10 was worth about 33 soldiers, but averaged 11.5 soldiers). Then I picked one combo that did not emphasize the most emphasized castles in the prior exercises (8,7,9). Then I averaged the ""right"" value for that combination against the average value placed on each castle in the previous two exercises, and went with that. I checked it against the averages and winners of the last one and felt comfortable to submit."
575,0,0,8,12,13,13,13,13,14,14,
583,1,3,6,8,13,14,15,16,1,23,This feels like what Nate Silver's mom would do.
674,0,8,9,10,13,15,20,0,25,0,"When you consider how many soldiers you spend for each point gained, from the previous data eight is the worst value, so should not be contested and ten is the best value, so I think many people will be trying to prioritize castle ten, so I just left it out. Victory doesn't come by contesting all the points but by being able to secure more than half of them. basically 49% of the points don't matter at all."
742,3,4,7,9,13,17,18,21,4,4,"Assumed trend toward more rational actors with castle troop distribution trending toward implicit value, anticipating some over-correction on most favorably imbalanced "
784,0,5,9,12,13,14,0,0,21,26,"The strategy I chose is a tweaked version of “distribute troops proportional to the value of the castle, while abandoning the highest conflict Castles (historically 7 & 8) and the lowest point castle (Castle 1). I tweaked the exact numbers to fit my liking though.

My goal with this deployment was not to beat the top performers - it was to beat the field. Beating the #1 warlord is the same as beating anyone else after all.

I decided on this strategy by coming up with several theories on how to win, and testing them against an approximation of “the field” I created using the data provided by the previous contests and a Gaussian number generator. 333 “participants” were based off of the data from the first contest, 666 from the second, each of the top 5 strategies got 15 entries, and to make it an even 1150 the last participant placed 10’s in each castle.

Hopefully there aren’t too many people who copy-paste the winning lists, otherwise I’ll lose! While I calculated a roughly 70-75% win chance in total vs the field, and a solid 80% win chance vs the initial top 5, I literally lose to each of the most recent top 5. So... good luck to me? Hopefully this won’t blow up in my face!"
885,0,1,3,11,13,14,17,28,8,5,"Focus on the core 5, 6, 7, 8, hope to grab a few 9s and a few 10s."
970,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,1,3,"The last two time people won with a more focused approach on just a couple castles. I think enough people will try and copy that so, a spread out approach might work. Or not and I will loss terribly."
971,0,3,3,11,13,16,4,4,22,24,"Notice clustering in first 4 numbers on troup distributions in all castles -- so worth getting ahead of that, except on castle 1.  Castle 7 and 8 still most heavily contested, so let others seriously fighting for them have them.  "
974,4,5,7,11,13,15,18,25,1,1,"My starting point was to look at the number of men that would be needed to beat the averages from both previous battles -- {4 5 7 9 11 14 17 20 17 13}. Then, I figured out the cheapest way to get 28 points with that number of men in each castle -- I came up with {0 0 0 9 11 0 0 0 17 13}, using 50 men. I then tried to counter that strategy, eventually deciding on punting the ""most valuable"" castles 9 and 10 and reinforcing the castles I felt I needed to do best in (4, 5, and 8). "
988,0,3,6,11,13,16,0,51,0,0,Because you need to get to 28 to win so maximum chance of getting to 28
996,5,6,6,8,13,22,27,4,4,5,slightly above average plus one on most with choice wins from 5-7
1009,2,3,3,12,13,2,3,29,31,2,Similar to winning results in prior battles
1070,2,2,2,2,13,15,19,22,19,4,
1092,2,2,8,10,13,17,21,21,3,3,
1111,3,3,4,12,13,22,18,13,6,6,It seems about right.
1141,0,0,8,0,13,4,6,5,36,28,"Similar to last time's champion, optimised against first and second submissions and solutions optimised against them with more weighting given to the latter."
1154,3,6,8,10,13,0,25,29,3,3,have to win battle 4 and 5
1155,1,2,1,3,13,1,24,12,21,22,"The King left none living, none able to tell.
The King took their heads and he sent them to hell.

(Also, FYI I noticed that one non-integer submission snuck through last time.)"
1164,0,2,3,3,13,13,21,20,0,25,I consulted Mars the God of War and he suggested this.
1170,1,2,4,7,13,12,15,3,22,21,In consulted my 9 month old and this is what he suggested after simulation with his toys.
1229,0,8,6,8,13,1,19,11,2,32,"Ran a genetic algorithm simulation and this was the winning strategy. The best strategy depends on the other strategies entered, so it is within the space of possible, winners, but probably won't win."
1289,3,5,8,10,13,3,24,26,4,4,Random
14,1,1,6,10,14,15,23,24,3,3,"I'm reverting to something closer to the winning strategy of this question's first instance. I'm sending few troops to the highest and lowest valued castles, instead focusing my parties on the middle-values."
31,1,1,1,2,14,15,2,28,32,4,"Winning 5, 6, 8, and 9 gives me just over half of the available points, so I went hard for those four."
39,6,8,10,12,14,0,0,0,24,26,I think people will adjust back to the top half numbers after the success of the winning answers from last round but will still be scared to drop too much into the highest value targets.
100,2,2,5,5,14,2,16,19,4,31,"The winners of last round went after the castles that were under-targeted the first time around (9 and 10) while ignoring the castles that were over-targeted (7 and 8) and slightly bidding up on the castles that were 2nd most important (4 and 5). That leaves castle 6 as being the most likely attacked castle, so I'm ignoring it. From there, I expect 4 and 5 to start getting ignored with 1 through 3, so there's an opportunity to get those for cheap. If I get those, win 10 and win either 8 or 7 that puts me above the 28-point win level."
147,2,2,9,12,14,16,2,2,2,39,to score 28 points 90% of the time
196,2,2,5,10,14,15,20,20,10,2,"devalued the highest due to probability someone would pick those, and the lowest due to lower value.  Centralized in the middle, hoping to win the majority of 4-8.  Put at least 2 in all categories so if any are using a similar strategy but ""giving up"" certain castles I will win those, and used 2 instead of one to try and outsmart any with the same strategy using 1 soldier."
206,1,1,0,9,14,20,25,30,0,0,"Just give up on the biggest ones, probably a waste "
210,1,0,0,12,14,13,0,0,31,29,"I expect eight and seven to be hotly contested, so I left them open along with three and two giving the opponent 20 points out of the gate. One required a value greater than zero, so I gave it one. With an average of three, I will likely lose one  and the opponent will have 21 points. I plan to take four and five which were hotly contested in the last round and may be less so in this round. Six will be a toss-up. Nine and ten must be taken. If I can take four, five, nine, and ten, I will have 28 points and the opponent would have 27."
288,1,2,3,17,14,4,3,2,21,33,"I picked a strategy similar to the previous champion, but modified to be able to beat the previous champion."
305,5,4,12,12,14,20,3,3,5,22,DAVE ALWAYS WINS
344,0,2,3,11,14,15,5,5,35,10,
602,1,2,11,2,14,16,17,31,3,3,Go for the middle
618,4,4,4,14,14,14,4,4,34,4,
619,2,1,10,12,14,3,13,4,37,4,"Defensive strategy, hope opponent went all in on 9. "
623,4,6,11,4,14,6,21,4,24,6,"Decided to fight heavily for all of the odd numbered castles - competition for 10 is likely to be high based on the last two rounds having 10 be somewhat low! I might pick up some easy points on the even numbers. Rather than trying to come up with a nice pattern, do the unexpected and be odd!"
654,1,7,1,1,14,18,21,33,2,2,"Similar strategy to previous winners, adjusted numbers slightly for some variation"
691,0,0,0,10,14,14,0,24,20,18,"Assume strategies converge to a Poisson distribution around the lastest averages, and optimise."
740,11,11,11,13,14,20,20,0,0,0,"I think people will underinvest in low value castles, and invest more on high value castles than the middle range ones.  So my hope is to win one through five relatively cheaply, while having a decent chance of winning 6 and 7. "
782,2,3,8,10,14,7,6,5,21,24,If I don't know what I'm doing than certainly no one else will
809,3,3,6,11,14,2,27,27,2,5,
854,2,3,5,5,14,14,16,16,14,11,
867,2,4,10,12,14,16,18,20,2,2,Strategy :)
919,11,11,11,11,14,21,21,0,0,0,"I expect most people to put most of their troops in the higher numbered castles, so my strategy is to win the lowest 7."
939,0,1,3,13,14,5,1,2,35,26,"Similar strategy as Round 2 winners, with some small shifts that seek to contest castles 9 and 10 more vigorously while devoting a few more troops to potentially undervalued castles like castle 6."
986,2,2,3,3,14,18,25,25,2,6,"Target middle value castles (5, 6, 7, 8) with larger forces while deploying a midsized force to castle 10."
990,10,14,14,14,14,14,20,0,0,0,Total of 55 points.  Need 28 to Win.
997,1,9,1,1,14,19,25,30,0,0,Aim to get just 28 points
1055,1,1,1,9,14,18,2,24,28,2,"I figured people would go for the 10, so I decided instead to go for the 9 and 8 and then go after some of the middle castles"
1072,5,5,8,10,14,14,12,17,15,0,Sending more men To the higher castles is more important than the others down the list. Ten isn’t worth it.
1073,5,5,8,10,14,14,12,17,15,0,Sending more men To the higher castles is more important than the others down the list. Ten isn’t worth it.
1122,0,0,11,12,14,4,24,4,27,4,"I'm sending 4 to castles 6, 8, and 10 to try to beat anyone who sends only a few there. I then focus on winning castles 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 to get my 28 points."
1132,1,2,7,11,14,17,2,3,21,22,"I wrote a Python program to randomly generate troop deployments, match troop deployments against each other, and then match the winners against other winners.  My submission was my overall winner."
1250,0,0,13,13,14,14,12,12,11,11,"I'm figuring that most people will concentrate there forces mostly in the first few castles and somewhat in the last few. With this strategy I think i'll have a strong troop advantage in the middle castles and a weaker troop advantage in the end while only completely ceding the first 2 castles. Even if someone uses a similar strategy with a single troop in the first 2 castles, I'll still have a competitive advantage in at least one castle without sacrificing a more dominant position in the middle and end."
43,2,3,3,12,15,7,14,14,17,13,"I looked at the historical success strategies of the first and second FiveThirtyEight crusades. It looked like people in the second war adjusted their strategy away from what won in the first war. So I took the top 5 from each war and took the average number of troops per castle. I picked numbers close to the average to deploy my troops for the Third FiveThirtyEight crusade. And once I take over the world, I'll change the name of your website to FiveThirtyNine."
70,1,2,5,11,15,3,3,27,31,2,First round won by 7/8 strategy. Second round won by 9/10 strategy. Went with 8/9 strategy.
107,1,9,20,29,15,10,2,8,5,1,"Distribute to all, try to find a place where numbers will be thin."
138,1,1,1,1,15,15,20,25,20,1,
141,1,1,15,1,15,1,20,2,20,24,"Focusing on the odd numbers offers fewer points than focusing on the even numbers, but if I can capture one even as well, I can pull ahead.  "
162,3,3,6,13,15,17,4,15,15,9,Sort of a smooth mound shape but I pulled back on #7 to boost the tails
195,4,4,10,14,15,14,15,16,4,4,"4 each seems like it will win 9+10 pretty frequently based on past distributions.  Then, big numbers at 8,7,6,5 all will lose to even bigger ones of course, but will do well against people who followed either of the strategies of the past two winners - big numbers on 7/8 or on 4/5 - and hopefully win enough of the castle 3 in addition to take the battle.  "
224,3,6,9,12,15,16,15,12,9,3,I think the middle castles will be where the war is won
226,1,1,2,9,15,8,18,21,0,25,"Mean of previous winners, then equalization of ROI on all but Castle 9 because I don't like the location of that property ."
248,1,2,3,4,15,15,15,15,15,15,"balanced chance for the higher scoring castles, and can still get points for those who neglect the lower scoring castles"
252,1,1,1,13,15,19,22,24,2,2,"Castles 1-3 not worth winning
Castles 4-8 are enough to win
Two troops at Castles 9 and 10, in case they are undefended."
285,1,1,1,1,15,21,24,1,1,34,"Completely unscientific and eyeballed it based on the last two results.  You need 28 points to win and at least four castles to make up that point total.  I chose 10, 7, 6, and 5.  It seemed like castle 10 was undervalued in the first round and corrected more in the second, so I'm anticipating that 10 will be more contested in this round.  The other castles are the lowest value castles remaining that I need to get to 28 points.  It appeared that the second round saw a greater emphasis on higher point castles and a more dispersed strategy (based, poorly, on averages).  I put remaining troops in those castles assuming that enemy troops will drop off on castles 5 and lower. The remaining castles are just to cherry pick any undefended castles and force enemy troops to send at least 2 to capture."
324,5,7,8,10,15,25,30,0,0,0,Willing to concede three castles with most points in hopes of winning all others (28 of 55 possible points).  Assigning most soldiers to those with most points among the group that I was aiming to win.
329,0,0,0,13,15,18,26,28,0,0,Distributed my troops evenly through 4-8 which will give me 30 points each time banking on that I have more troop in those stations giving the other opponent 10-9-3-2-.
336,1,2,2,12,15,16,4,26,18,4,"I punted on Castle 10 assuming that a large number of people would simply deploy troops largely in direct proportion to the number of points, but still put more that 0-2 in the hopes of catching some that decided to punt entirely. I grouped the bulk of my troops around the 5-9 castles as I assume most would do, but hope to have just a few more quite often. To do this, I picked another one to punt on (Castle 7) guessing that that is a sweet spot in terms of points I can lose and where I think others will load up. My strategy is going to require me to win almost all the castles to which I committed significant troops (which is somewhat risky—but I think really the only way to go) or to steal a lot from the castles I committed few (but not zero) troops to. That seems like an unlikely path to victory but a decent hedge against someone that stacks all of their troops on Castles 7-10. I am quite worried about a 25-25-25-25 or a 27–26-24-23 deployment, so I decided to put 26 in Castle 8 which should give me a victory over all of those. Also a little worried about those deployments along with 1 troop at other castles, so decided to go with 2s mostly on the punts."
337,5,7,8,10,15,20,26,3,3,3,"Try to win 1-7, and sneak a few victories over 8-10."
357,2,0,11,12,15,22,8,1,28,1,"Focusing on a few moderate-to-large castles. Expected to lose 2 every time, 8, 10 almost every time. About half of 1 and 7. Most 4, 5, 6, and 9."
376,6,7,9,12,15,18,23,3,3,4,"My strategy does very well against the first iteration of the game, and is hit-or-miss against the second. I would guess that different people will emphasize different iterations in their thinking, so I came up with a plan that does reasonably well against both and very well against anyone who reverts to the thinking of the first iteration."
381,0,7,0,8,15,0,1,32,32,5,"I'm going for 2,4,5,8,&9 = 28 for the win... However... if someone is really going after 8 and 9 too, my 5 soldiers on 10 will hopefully be enough to carry the day."
403,1,3,4,15,15,16,16,26,2,2,"Two basic ""coalitions"" can get to 27 points.  The first is 8+9+10 (or mods of 9+10 lower numbers).  The second is 8+7+6+(7--either 5+2, 3+4, 4+2+1, 5+3, 5+4).  Because the winners all took the first last time, I'm focusing on the second.  I give extra protection to 8 because it is most likely to be challenged by an 8+9+10 strategy.  I need to win all of 8, 7, 6 and at least one of 5, 4, with 3,2,1 insuring against the loss of either 5 or 4.  The oddity of my approach is that it would lose to the past winning strategy, but I expect that the _reason_ that strategy won is that most people attacked the 8 rather than devote so many resources to the 4 and 5, and that people will shift toward 8,7,6 and away from 4 and 5 this time.  I keep a few guys on 9 and 10 as insurance against similar strategies that are more purist."
418,0,2,2,3,15,15,15,15,18,15,
429,0,3,3,13,15,16,17,17,10,6,"The lower numbers are obviously less valuable. 10 and 9 I armed moderately, so that they could take a small force, but I didn't want to waste forces that could be used on the medium-high numbers. Those are the meat, and if past trends prevail, 10 and 6 may very well be good enough to beat many people anyway (for 9 and 10)"
431,1,1,1,1,15,20,29,30,1,1,think it could work
432,1,1,1,1,15,15,15,15,15,21,Need to make sure you have someone at every castle. This beats most other combinations because it sends a man to every castle
440,2,2,6,5,15,18,2,12,3,35,"Based on the last couple of series I tried to take advantage of what people were conceding without overspending. The most valued castles (9&7) I largely abandoned in favor of 10, 8 and 6. If I win those three and a couple low point castles I can secure a win."
442,7,9,11,13,15,16,1,26,1,1,"I used one soldier for the 7, 9, and 10 castle. If someone chose not to attack a given castle, it is worth my deployment of at least one soldier there. 

But then, I figured that castles 10, 9, and 8 would see the highest deployments. My goal is to get to 28 points... so even if I lose castles 7, 9, and 10, I can still win by winning every other castle (with one VP to spare). I have a lot of excess soldiers to win all of these. I chose to fight hard for castle #8, figuring there was a decent ""bang for your buck"" return on that castle. 

So I distributed my remaining 97 soldiers, giving slightly more to the higher-worth castles, and prayed!"
450,5,5,10,15,15,15,15,10,5,5,"Compete everywhere, but not too hard for the low and high value castles"
453,2,2,2,15,15,15,15,2,2,30,"Basic bell-curve distribution, with a good amount on 10 to potentially tie at best with someone who puts a lot at 10."
466,0,1,3,6,15,18,0,0,27,30,Focused on towers where 2nd game average was 2 soldiers or less per point
513,0,0,10,15,15,15,15,15,15,0,rather take the sum of the middle numbers over the first and last
517,0,10,0,0,15,25,25,25,0,0,"Only deploy to certain castles to win, hope to get lucky."
523,0,0,0,15,15,15,25,30,0,0,Play for the middle and push for the top but don’t over commit
551,0,0,0,0,15,20,2,2,27,34,"Focusing resources where they could be useful, deliberately avoiding a couple of high-value targets to win the war"