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?
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."
1320,0,0,3,3,16,6,16,21,4,31,"I know this is really late, but here is a serious entry. The code used to generate this is at https://pastebin.com/ieFeGQzN"
1319,0,1,2,16,21,2,3,1,32,22,I used the data from the previous two competitions and this was the highest win rate configuration I could find.
1318,0,0,0,18,18,2,2,2,34,24,This strategy beat the previous top-5.
1317,1,4,1,8,1,13,15,17,19,21,"Adjust forces to prizes, sacrifice 2 castles to be slightly better elswhere"
1316,1,2,8,16,16,5,14,15,18,5,bi modal distribution seems optimal from previous battle royales
1315,4,6,9,11,16,18,0,0,0,36,Trying to reach 28 points to win and looking at past deployments. Also keep a fairly constant point per soldier ( between 2.75 and 4)
1314,2,3,10,10,10,5,20,30,5,5,Eh?
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.
1312,1,1,1,6,6,12,16,21,31,5,Top heavy while giving up ten for most battles.
1311,3,3,7,4,4,24,5,34,8,8,I spent way too long on this and I still hate my answer.
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.
1309,1,2,4,10,21,12,26,16,4,4,"Contest everything, but don't commit heavy to the point-heavy (castles 9 & 10) obvious grab strategies that people are likely to employ (similar to the first round of the contest, but countered in round two with a lot of people choosing a 4,5,9,10 strategy).  Deployment had to defeat/tie some of the default, non-strategic assignments (e.g., 10 everywhere, 25s in each 7-10, % assignment based on value).  Castles 5 (main counter to round two strategies), 7 (main counter to round one strategies), and 8 (some round one strategies) can break a lot of opponent strategies so contesting them is where my main investment took place.  It is a bit of a gamble to pick up stray points in low commit castles when my other investments aren't high enough to offset opponent high commits."
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."
1307,2,2,3,5,5,8,10,15,20,30,"Guessing, I guess..."
1306,0,1,2,16,21,2,3,1,32,22,"I built myself a fancy excel spreadsheet of all of the previous submissions, and then attempted to optimize against those."
1305,3,5,1,9,17,13,15,19,11,7,"Odd numbers between 1 and 19, centered on Castle 8 and distributed around it in descending order."
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."
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."
1302,5,2,5,7,22,23,22,2,2,10,
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."
1300,4,6,7,1,1,14,17,20,17,13,Ran a bunch of simulations in Excel
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"""
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."
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."
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""."
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."
1294,1,2,3,4,5,9,20,21,5,30,
1293,2,2,3,5,5,7,8,26,26,16,
1292,0,1,4,12,15,4,27,33,3,1,"I looked at prior distributions chosen by winners with my own strategy. I looked at prior winners and then determined I would be served well by leaving the less valuable castles because they aren't worth as many points and I put low amounts of soldiers at the more valuable castles thinking others may distribute many soldiers at those in an attempt to grab the higher point values. The wager basically assumes that allowing the lesser castles to go undefended and the more valuable cases to go undefended, that I would be able to grab more points in total by winning castle 4, 5, 7, and 8. In college I only took basic logic and I in no way stylize myself as a mathematician. Therefore, I treated this as a sort of a game of Risk or Stratego (games I love) to come to how I wanted to distribute my soldiers."
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."
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."
1289,3,5,8,10,13,3,24,26,4,4,Random
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.
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."
1286,2,1,3,7,10,14,19,22,19,3,"A little bit of this, a little bit of that."
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."
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.
1283,1,2,0,0,17,20,25,35,0,0,
1282,2,2,3,3,22,22,32,4,4,6,Win the middle
1281,2,9,3,17,22,6,7,7,4,23,
1280,2,2,2,2,2,10,25,25,25,5,
1279,0,1,2,13,21,5,8,13,34,3,f i b a g u c c i    a e s t h e t i c
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."
1277,1,2,3,12,18,21,18,12,10,3,"Try and hold 5-7, make efforts at 4, 8, & 9, small deployment at others to prevent single-soldier capture."
1276,6,1,1,1,1,0,0,30,30,30,Go big or go home
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."
1274,0,15,5,0,15,20,20,25,0,0,Distributing them where I don't think people will put them so as to get at least 27.5 points
1273,2,2,2,4,5,15,15,15,20,20,previous solutions anchored expectations for lower troops at high value castles
1272,1,1,1,15,15,0,0,0,34,33,"I want to get to 28 points in the most efficient manner possible. Castles 9 and 10 have been undervalued, but I think their true value is around 35. Castles 6-8 are highly sought after and are best to avoid. Castles 4 and 5 may come more easily. I will take a large risk by essentially giving up the remaining Castles, but it may be worth it for the THRONE. "
1271,1,1,4,6,16,17,19,7,7,22,I tried to do something that would work well against previous strategies.
1270,2,2,2,2,2,22,30,30,4,4,
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. "
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."
1267,1,1,3,5,7,9,17,21,3,33,stochastic approximation
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.
1265,2,4,5,6,6,6,28,6,6,31,ay81o
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
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
1262,2,1,4,1,17,6,21,6,36,6,
1261,1,1,1,1,20,20,24,1,1,30,"I need to get to 28. The minimum to get there is four castles. I want to pick the four that add to 28 and will be the least defended by my opponents. 10 is obvious, but for this reason may be overlooked by others, so I choose it. Ineed 18 more, so I pick 5,6,7."
1260,7,8,2,15,17,14,24,5,3,5,I did a brute force excel simulation and this strategy did alright. It won ~most~ of its battles.
1259,0,0,0,0,0,0,12,12,12,64,focused highly on the highest valued castles
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.
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."
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.
1255,3,4,8,15,18,23,29,0,0,0,Only fight for enough castles to win
1254,2,2,2,2,19,19,2,24,26,2,"Using the data from the first 2 royales, I attempted to distribute my troops on places most players would not go for."
1253,5,6,7,8,12,0,19,21,21,1,
1252,1,2,4,6,12,2,16,18,22,17,
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"
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."
1249,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,
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.
1247,2,4,8,16,20,20,16,8,4,2,Focus on the middle.
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."
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."
1244,1,1,1,1,1,15,18,26,34,2,Guesswork
1243,1,1,2,16,20,2,3,1,32,22,This worked last time?
1242,1,1,1,1,16,16,2,29,30,3,
1241,0,0,3,5,11,13,21,22,14,11,"Kind of a guess, really"
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
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."
1238,3,0,6,8,15,22,4,3,31,8,a computer told me to
1237,0,0,0,10,10,25,25,15,10,5,Because the middle will be ignored
1236,0,1,2,3,16,19,22,5,6,26,"Try to win castle 10. Put one more than 25 there, thinking that some people will go for the even number. Add 5, 6 and 7 as a strategy to get 28 with 10. Try to capture the other numbers a fair fraction of the time when nobody targets them, but don't overspend on low numbers."
1235,1,1,8,19,6,20,18,22,3,2,hope to get my points in random places
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)"
1233,0,0,0,16,21,1,2,1,35,24,"Optimised against top fives from both runs and median from the first. Depends on snatching the top two bolstered by four and five, these four wins would total a bare minimum of 28 of 55 points. Sometimes snatches the 6–8. If most strengthened the top prizes a bit, yeah, I'm screwed. Didn't want to do a deep dive into the complete data."
1232,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Each castle has just under twice their point value in troops.
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."
1230,1,1,1,0,0,20,20,22,35,0,
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."
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."
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."
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."
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.
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. "
1223,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,31,33,33,all or nothing
1222,0,0,0,1,17,23,28,3,4,24,"Castle 8 and 9 are highly contested, so you have to put in a lot of troops to gain a high probability of winning them.  However, if your strategy is 9-10 heavy, 8 is weak for you and I might win or tie with a few there; if your strategy is more focused on 8-10 or lower values, I might snag a tie or win with a couple troops in 9.  Overall, the winning strategy is 5-6-7-10.  If I lose 10, I hope to win 8 or 9, and tie or win a few of the lower ones.  I will definitely lose games, but the hope is that I can win against a bunch of strategies.  For instance, this beats about half of last years' winners."
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"
1220,0,1,10,0,2,1,20,29,6,31,"try to win 10 8 7 3, then some random backups"
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."
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."
1217,1,1,15,20,20,20,20,1,1,1,"I will assume that castles 8 - 10 will be heavily fought over. I will assume loss in each of these. Although, if a person decides not to send anyone to a castle I can still win that caste. I did the same with Castles 1 & 2 bc they are not worth enough. I then spread my forces evenly across the middle. "
1216,0,1,2,6,15,10,27,32,4,3,"I was willing to give up castles 9 and 10 and lose those by large margins, while still winning those slightly against players who completely abandoned them. Instead, I focused on the other large numbers (5, 6, 7, 8)."
1215,10,1,1,1,1,1,1,28,28,28,
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.
1213,0,0,0,2,20,18,2,24,32,2,"Since the previous contest winners all focused on a group of castles totalling 28 points, I somewhat randomly chose 5, 6, 8, 9 and put 3 troops per point value in each of these.  That left me 16 troops.  I decided to minimally defend castle 4, 7, and 10 with two troops each and then reinforced two of my targeted castles with five more troops each.  "
1212,1,1,1,1,1,20,25,30,1,19,Trying to pick the gaps in previously winning deployments.
1211,1,1,2,16,21,3,2,1,32,21,simulations
1210,0,4,1,3,19,10,12,7,12,32,"I ran a genetic algorithm starting from the best solutions from Riddler Nation Battle Royale round 2, and testing against both round 1 and 2 deployments.  The one I submitted is just the deployment with the most wins after a bunch of iterations."
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.
1208,1,1,1,9,22,24,24,6,6,6,"I tried to guess what would beat the people who tried to guess how to beat the last winning strategy. 1 up the people who tried to 1 up the low number of soldiers for the high valued towers. Assume I win one one of those which means I can lose towers 1, 2, 3 and sometimes 4 depending on which high value tower I won. "
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"
1206,6,8,11,14,17,20,6,6,6,6,A slightly altered version of my 'joke' entry.  Definitely no 'evolved' entry coming like in previous battles.
1205,0,0,0,0,0,0,10,20,30,40,"Higher value=more soldiers, keep it simple"
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.   "
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"
1202,1,1,11,14,18,22,1,1,1,30,"Targeted 28 pts via Castles 10, 6, 5, 4, 3"
1201,3,3,3,5,16,20,6,19,7,18,"roses are red, violets are blue. I needed a number, so I picked you"
1200,0,0,0,5,12,16,18,24,25,0,The top one and bottom 3 are simply not worth the manpower.
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."
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."
1197,1,6,9,12,15,2,2,2,24,27,"Targeted ones that were worth the most points per average soldier assigned in previous rounds (2-5, 9-10)."
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
1195,0,0,1,1,22,24,1,4,25,22,"I wrote a half-baked genetic algorithm that evaluated strategies against random strategies, entries from the previous contests, and the top strategies from the previous generation, and then chose the strategy that most often received the highest fitness of its generation."
1194,1,9,9,8,1,7,2,6,3,54,Because I am The Warlord!
1193,0,1,2,16,21,2,3,1,32,22,"This is almost an exact replica from the dataset that the winner submitted last time, except one troop moving from Castle 6 to Castle 7. It won 84% of it's games against the database, plus over 95% of the games against the partial optimal database that my father and I created."
1192,1,1,2,6,0,0,27,30,33,0,
1191,1,5,1,1,17,23,24,25,1,2,"2,5,6,7,8 for the win"
1190,1,1,3,6,12,17,16,18,23,3,
1189,2,2,2,12,3,3,26,3,26,21,This is left as an exercise for the reader.
1188,1,1,1,1,1,1,50,25,12,7,Inverse of 7 down strategy
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."
1186,2,3,3,6,19,15,19,22,11,0,Too lazy to write code. Don't underestimate scouts. Gain max troops from (almost) abandoning Castle 10. Fight hard for undervalued castles.
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."
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)"
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."
1182,0,0,7,3,5,2,16,17,28,22,hope
1181,7,2,2,11,0,6,24,5,33,10,random & fudging & top loading
1180,0,3,5,0,10,16,25,21,20,0,I just picked ones I thought would win
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.
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). "
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. "
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."
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."
1174,3,3,5,6,8,14,15,16,18,12,Put a premium on the higher point castles except for the highest one.
1173,5,3,9,2,18,3,0,0,29,31,"It's a race to 28!  I broke down the data from the last two editions, determined WITTW for each castle at 90-95% level, and targeted castles with better value per soldier-required. 7&8 are bloodbaths - I'm staying away."
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."
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. "
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.
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.
1168,0,2,2,4,7,15,15,25,3,27,The best defense is a good offense.
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"
1166,1,1,2,2,2,14,20,25,30,3,I chose the deployment that would win.
1165,0,0,0,15,20,20,20,25,0,0,Figuring the enemy would over commit to the larger value castles.
1164,0,2,3,3,13,13,21,20,0,25,I consulted Mars the God of War and he suggested this.
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."
1162,2,2,3,5,8,10,10,15,20,25,Put more troops on castles worth more points
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."
1160,10,0,0,0,0,0,0,30,30,30,Adds up to 28
1159,6,9,12,16,19,22,4,4,4,4,"This is a joke entry, but I may not have the time to create a serious entry, so this is what you get."
1158,11,26,11,29,6,5,4,3,3,2,
1157,0,0,0,0,0,0,20,30,50,0,Random Hunch
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. "
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.)"
1154,3,6,8,10,13,0,25,29,3,3,have to win battle 4 and 5
1153,1,1,1,1,1,19,25,25,25,1,"Trying to win 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 most "
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"
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."
1150,0,2,3,4,15,22,1,2,31,20,Largely based on plagiarism of previous years with some added spice
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. "
1148,0,2,1,3,18,16,19,13,22,6,Because I didn't want to think too much about it.
1147,0,0,0,10,15,16,17,18,24,0,Best balance of middle points
1146,0,1,1,2,3,22,22,23,3,23,Because I am not very smart.
1145,0,0,0,17,19,20,21,23,0,0,Capture the middle
1144,1,1,1,11,1,11,3,34,3,34,Even numbers are cool.
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."
1142,2,2,6,5,5,20,10,25,24,1,Wish I could say
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."
1140,0,1,0,15,18,2,3,5,33,23,"This is my *second solution*. Please delete if that's not allowed. Strategy is the same as the first solution: used a genetic algorithm (the same as last competition) to explore distributions that would be good against the first and second round distributions. Then used the same algorithm to optimize against *those* and the first and second round distributions simultaneously. However in selecting *this* solution, I constrained the final search to make sure to pick a distribution that tied my first solution."
1139,0,0,4,17,21,2,4,5,32,15,evolutionary ai found a better solution
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.
"
1137,0,0,0,14,21,1,0,1,33,30,"This combo won 100 simulation rounds in a row using randomized, previous champs, and tweaks of previous round winners."
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. "
1135,3,3,3,17,17,17,17,17,3,3,total guess
1134,4,8,12,15,19,22,4,5,5,6,"From the previous round of this game, two peaks are observed: those at the low quantities from those who barely defend and those at the high quantities from those who value the castle. If I can stay just ahead of those barely defending, then I distribute the remaining troops as possible to attack the well-defended."
1133,0,0,2,5,17,5,17,17,33,4,I want to win a number of castles. I tried to adjust for the adjustments people would make when comparing the two previous winners.
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."
1131,5,6,7,8,9,11,12,13,14,15,laziness
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."
1129,2,2,2,12,17,17,17,17,7,7,"Go for the middle point values, hope it works. "
1128,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,
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.
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. "
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."
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."
1123,2,3,5,20,30,40,0,0,0,0,I decided it was easier to capture alot of lesser castles
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."
1121,5,5,5,5,5,10,30,30,2,3,Gank those mid high castles bruh
1120,5,6,12,17,25,5,6,7,8,9,"Collect leftover high-value castles, sweep the low value castles."
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. "
1118,4,6,12,19,24,7,7,7,7,7,"With the notable exception of the linear deployment strategy ( distribute more troops linearly over increasing castle value), almost every strategy depends on securing 2 - 3 spots in castles 6 - 10, and then 2 - 3 in 1 - 5. My strategy should scoop the ignored castles in 6 - 10 and sweep castles 1 - 5 on average.

Most pick-4 strategies (where you try to perfectly distribute on 4 castles to hit >=28 points, e.g. 10, 9, 8, 1 or 10, 9, 5, 4 etc) will lose to this strategy by virtue of not allocating enough to secure their least valuable, but critical castle. The pick-4 that my strategy is most vulnerable to (10, 9, 8 ,1) is also likely the least common because of how precarious it is to try to take all 3 of 8 - 10 given those are critical for other pick-4 strategies).

7 is the deployment number for 6 - 10 to counter people who might arbitrarily station 5 at each one and the people putting up 6 to counter that. "
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.
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.  "
1115,1,1,1,8,15,16,5,5,25,23,Wanted at least a couple everywhere but thought it would be better to go after the top and near the middle to earn the points.
1114,3,3,6,6,12,3,6,29,8,24,
1113,0,1,1,1,1,4,9,14,25,44,Guessing
1112,2,4,2,6,10,2,14,23,14,23,Looked OK to me
1111,3,3,4,12,13,22,18,13,6,6,It seems about right.
1110,2,3,5,5,5,13,17,19,23,8,
1109,1,2,3,5,16,21,5,5,21,21,"Ran code similar to the simulated annealing (took all answers from last two, plus 5000 additional randomly generated entires) and simmed all against each other.

"
1108,1,1,1,4,7,12,18,24,30,2,
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.
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.
1105,0,1,1,0,3,22,27,5,34,7,my earlier entry only had a total of 99 troops. Bad math!
1104,4,6,9,16,21,0,0,0,27,17,minimize cost
1103,4,7,9,15,21,0,0,0,27,17,minimize cost/point based on previous responses
1102,3,6,9,12,15,0,0,0,26,29,minimize cost/point
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. "
1100,1,8,8,0,16,17,0,25,25,0,To get over 28 or more points
1099,1,1,1,16,18,20,20,21,1,1,"Figured that 9 and 10 are gonna be highly sought after, so it might not be all that worth it to go for those. You need 28 points to actually win (since half of 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 is 27.5) and starting from the bottom might not be worth it since those points do not go a long way to getting to 28. So instead, I prioritized 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 (which add to 30), and sent 1 to every remaining castle in case they go uncontested. I'm not very confident in my strategy since I didn't spend a lot of time looking at other potential strategies, but I hope that this one does at least better than average (which I'm sure it probably won't be). "
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!"""
1097,0,0,4,16,21,2,4,5,32,16,variation on a theme
1096,1,1,2,0,0,24,24,24,24,0,just trying to win 4 key castles
1095,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,Idfk
1094,1,5,6,11,16,18,2,1,15,25,Easy points and late points
1093,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,just based upon slowly increasing value ... ignoring previous rounds
1092,2,2,8,10,13,17,21,21,3,3,
1091,1,1,4,5,10,15,21,41,1,1,Focused on winning castles 7 and 8
1090,3,4,5,7,9,9,0,19,21,23,bit random tbh
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."
1088,1,4,0,0,20,20,21,21,7,6,"Middle of the road approach targeting 5-8 heavily, ignoring 3 and 4 which have low point to troop value across most top scorers and the averages."
1087,2,3,5,0,0,0,15,25,0,50,Arbitrary
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."
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"
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."
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."
1082,1,1,15,19,19,1,11,11,11,11,"I think people will go big on only two of the top four. I should win 2 of them, then get 3,4 & 5."
1081,0,2,2,16,22,16,16,22,2,2,"I'm hoping to pick up on points in the middle, also I picked slightly above nice round numbers (e.g. 16 instead of 15) hoping to win some castles against people who chose the round numbers"
1080,4,0,9,5,1,18,1,33,3,26,Attempted optimization against both of the previous two rounds.
1079,1,5,1,12,2,18,3,24,4,30,People like odd numbers - so contest the even ones.
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."
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)"
1076,0,1,9,0,0,19,6,0,35,30,I went with my gut
1075,1,2,2,2,19,15,15,16,1,27,I threw some numbers together that would win against each of last iteration's top five plans.
1074,0,2,3,4,16,6,16,16,11,26,I noticed that multiples of five were popular answers in the first round so chose numbers just above those.
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.
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.
1071,0,0,0,15,21,0,0,0,36,28,Better than Mike
1070,2,2,2,2,13,15,19,22,19,4,
1069,2,3,3,17,17,3,4,4,23,24,better than Eric
1068,0,0,0,15,18,1,1,1,32,32,better than Derek
1067,0,2,4,14,15,5,5,5,33,17,better than Winder
1066,0,1,1,16,21,3,2,1,32,23,better than Vince hahaha
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. "
1064,0,0,0,15,15,0,0,0,35,35,We go all in on the minimum value to win.
1063,0,0,0,0,8,2,25,30,35,0,
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. "
1061,4,4,18,4,4,18,4,20,20,4,
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.
1059,2,3,2,4,12,14,7,19,25,12,"Try all castles, but more on just a majority of points"
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.
1057,0,0,2,16,21,3,2,3,32,21,variation on a theme
1056,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,24,24,24,
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"
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."
1053,0,1,1,1,1,4,9,14,25,44,Guessing
1052,1,1,3,10,20,20,20,10,10,5,"I tried to put troops in the middle where points would be high, but not so high that everyone would attack there first"
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.  "
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"
1049,0,2,6,4,8,5,20,12,23,20,
1048,0,0,5,18,20,1,25,26,3,2,"focus mainly on the the middle castes, sacraficing castles to increase distribution to castles 8,9"
1047,9,10,12,15,16,17,18,1,1,1,"the bottom seven castles win against the top three by one point, so if i concentrate all my men on the bottom 7 castles ill win against any opponent who splits their soldiers across all 10 castles. Added one guy to the top three to beat anyone who uses this strategy but completely abandons the top castles "
1046,5,5,5,5,16,17,18,19,5,5,"It takes 28 points to win the battle.  The easy way to do that is to win 8, 9, and 10 (allowing you to win by winning any of the other castles).  But if a large number of people go with that strategy, you can get a decent number by winning 5, 6, and 7 and hoping to clean up the last ten points by having enough guarding 1-4.  I am hoping that 19 points will be enough to have a shot at winning 8, and if not that those going with a top heavy strategy will not have enough left for any of the other castles."
1045,0,0,2,16,21,3,2,2,32,22,Best of last two plus some ai
1044,1,3,0,17,20,0,0,3,28,28,Divination by dreams (and some code that seemed to make sense but I can't really explain)
1043,0,0,0,5,5,15,15,15,20,25,Random
1042,0,0,0,5,5,15,15,15,20,25,Random
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.
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. "
1039,1,1,1,6,1,19,19,26,1,25,Counter
1038,2,3,5,7,11,3,15,18,27,9,
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."
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.
1035,0,0,0,3,0,22,23,24,25,3,
1034,2,3,10,13,16,19,3,3,4,27,"Good against last round, great against the schemers"
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...
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. "
1031,0,0,2,2,22,4,22,22,4,22,
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
1029,4,4,4,18,23,0,13,0,34,0,I concentrated on winning more of the lower value castles.
1028,1,4,5,11,12,0,15,12,19,21,Not really sure
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"
1026,3,2,5,18,9,18,6,15,6,18,Trying to get to 27 against various previous methods.
1025,2,5,5,2,2,16,2,2,32,32,
1024,1,3,6,12,20,3,25,20,4,6,"I tried to guess where the biggest battles would be, avoid them, and then go a bit above where people would put low troop counts. There was a decent amount of guessing."
1023,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Troops proportional to point value
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"
1021,7,13,9,4,12,14,8,13,9,11,Pi
1020,1,1,1,1,19,19,19,19,19,1,"Surrender 10 and 1-4 against all but 0 troop deployment strategies, and evenly spread remaining troops for best chance of taking 5-9 which together (35) exceed the points total of the other castles (20)."
1019,0,0,0,0,0,6,16,21,26,31,
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.
1017,2,2,2,8,2,2,20,26,34,2,"4, 7, 8, 9 and sneak a couple of others."
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."
1015,0,0,2,2,17,18,27,3,4,27,Hold strong on 10+7+6+5. If I don't win one of these distribute enough to hopefully get lucky on one or two other castles. This strategy has better than 75% win percentage against previous rounds and beats 8 of the 10 top 5 competitors in the previous two battles.
1014,0,0,2,14,15,5,5,5,34,20,"I assumed that most people would choose a strategy from one of the top performers from the last time we ran this competition. I started my “strategy bank” with the top three performers from last time. Then, my process was to move a single soldier from one castle to another for each strategy, store this as a new strategy in the “strategy bank”, play each strategy against the others, and keep the top 2% performing strategies as the seed for the next generation of strategies. I coded this in Matlab. After 5 generations, the top strategy I got was [0 0 2 14 15 5 5 5 34 20]."
1013,7,8,10,10,15,15,15,0,20,0,"I ceded two of the bigger castles knowing my opponent would load them up, and targeted the mid range castles"
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"
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.
1010,0,0,0,0,0,0,10,20,30,40,
1009,2,3,3,12,13,2,3,29,31,2,Similar to winning results in prior battles
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."
1007,1,2,2,2,2,16,22,23,27,3,Ancient warlord secret
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.
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)
1004,0,0,0,0,10,15,20,25,30,0,sacrificed top and bottom
1003,0,5,7,9,11,15,22,26,2,3,
1002,0,0,0,18,18,8,5,5,35,11,
1001,0,1,2,16,20,3,2,2,32,22,use best of last two games against full sample and used evolutionary ai with intuition
1000,1,11,1,1,1,1,1,20,28,35,"Focus+surprise. 







"
999,1,2,10,6,21,1,16,11,11,21,trying to beat common breakpoints/ round numbers
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.
997,1,9,1,1,14,19,25,30,0,0,Aim to get just 28 points
996,5,6,6,8,13,22,27,4,4,5,slightly above average plus one on most with choice wins from 5-7
995,2,4,5,7,9,10,13,15,16,19,Proportional representation of the troops based on the points of the castle
994,6,5,5,25,18,13,10,7,6,5,
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. "
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.
991,0,0,10,0,22,0,0,0,34,34,I only need 28 points to win and castles 9&10 seemed undervalued by the average player. I’ve gone all in on four castles.
990,10,14,14,14,14,14,20,0,0,0,Total of 55 points.  Need 28 to Win.
989,1,1,1,1,1,1,14,25,25,30,Concentrated on high value targets
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
987,1,2,2,3,4,6,9,14,22,37,fibonacci is awesome so fibonacci +1 must be better
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."
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."
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
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."
982,0,0,2,3,12,15,18,11,5,34,28 to win. Win 10. Win any 3 of 5-8.
981,0,0,0,0,0,25,25,25,25,0,
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."
979,1,1,1,12,20,20,21,20,2,2,Optimize the middle values assuming they are under deployed
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."
977,1,2,5,17,11,13,16,18,0,17,"Counter positions of most successful players from last time, while exceeding averages."
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.
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
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). "
973,0,0,5,15,20,5,0,0,25,30,God told me.
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.
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.  "
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."
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"
968,0,1,2,3,4,5,10,15,20,40,
967,0,0,0,6,12,18,26,32,3,3,
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."
965,5,5,10,10,15,15,20,20,0,0,"Slightly higher than the average for each castle from the last two games. Ignored castles 9 and 10. Adds up to 36 maximum points, well enough to win. Even if losing castles 7 and 8, can still win. "
964,0,0,8,11,15,18,22,0,26,0,It looked about right.
963,1,1,1,10,4,10,7,22,18,26,"No good reasons, just playing."
962,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,(points for castle/total castle points)*100=troops deployed
961,4,7,9,10,15,20,0,35,0,0,"Since I figured most would go for the large numbered castles, I decided not to contest those, instead choosing to go with a more conservative strategy in which I compiled that lower numbers to form a small majority."
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"
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."
958,0,2,2,2,12,16,2,27,35,2,total guess
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."
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"
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
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)"
953,2,1,5,7,9,13,1,18,20,24,
952,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,20,30,50,Seemed smart
951,0,0,4,5,17,16,25,0,0,33,
950,1,1,5,16,19,1,1,1,31,24,
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."
948,2,2,2,13,17,2,3,5,33,21,Estimate near last winners
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.
946,0,0,0,0,6,5,11,18,28,32,Top Heavy
945,0,0,2,3,20,20,20,2,2,31,"Castles 8 and 9 received a lot of attention in the previous two iterations, respectively, because of various assumptions about the other players. We’ll see if this will work, but 10/7/6/5 are enough to win, and I’m gambling on any deployment that beats one of those splitting other castles with me."
944,0,1,5,20,4,10,0,10,10,40,Random
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"
942,1,5,11,1,1,22,26,3,3,27,
941,3,4,4,4,24,6,6,7,8,34,"Last time people frequently went with a strategy where they stacked castles that gave them exactly 28 points. I'm trying to steal one of the ones they stacked, while picking up the ones they left relatively undefended."
940,3,3,3,11,2,6,12,31,1,28,
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."
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
937,1,1,1,1,6,15,20,25,20,10,bet big on large numbers w/o surrendering anything
936,1,8,8,16,18,5,0,19,5,20,"I just looked at the previous rounds of winners. Both rounds, there was an effort to win 4 and 5, so I assume there's some reason that works. 1 is pretty much negligible so I threw it. Most winners also didn't try hard for 6, so I followed that as well. There seems to have been an increase in efforts towards 2, 3 by the second round, so I followed that too. Then I just chose two out of the last 4 to make a push for. I did 8 and 10 cause I figured 9 and 10 would be a common strategy."
935,2,3,4,7,10,12,16,20,24,2,
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."
933,3,4,5,4,4,4,31,4,37,4,"Try to guarantee 9 and 7 and pick up 12+ elsewhere

"
932,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,91,
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."
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"
929,1,2,1,12,22,4,8,10,23,17,I used an excel sheet and found a strategy by trial and error and some calculations that would best every previous winning line up and that would also beat the average line up.
928,1,2,1,12,22,4,8,10,23,17,I used an excel sheet and found a strategy by trial and error and some calculations that would best every previous winning line up and that would also beat the average line up.
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.
926,0,0,0,0,10,12,15,18,21,24,Started proportionally and then let go of the lesser castles
925,0,0,0,20,20,20,20,20,0,0,Why not?
924,2,4,6,12,16,18,20,22,0,0,
923,0,2,2,16,21,11,26,16,3,3,Trying to pick 1 more than round numbers.  Concentrating on the mid-value castles
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.
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"
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 "
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."
918,2,3,7,9,10,10,18,20,6,15,Adds to 100
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."
916,5,5,5,5,10,10,20,20,10,10,
915,2,5,10,10,15,15,20,23,0,0,"Trumpian Electoral college: ignore NY and CA, go for TX, PA, FL"
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. "
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.
912,3,7,10,14,18,22,26,0,0,0,"I aimed to win 28 points (minimum for a simple majority out of 55), and targeted the lowest value castles to reach a 28-point total while avoiding committing troops to the high-value targets. My goal was to pay just over 3 troops per point. "
911,1,2,2,2,11,15,17,22,15,13,COC
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."
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."
908,1,1,1,1,23,6,11,11,23,22,"First, leave nothing undefended.  Next, beat an naive even distribution (10 everywhere) and a distribution that concedes the first 5 and doubles up on the rest.  Bonus that it beats most of the previous winners and the top 10 from 10 million random strategies I ran on the computer."
907,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Gave more to more valuable castles without writing any off
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.
905,0,1,1,2,2,20,11,24,11,28,It's a bifurcated attack on the previous two seasons.
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."
903,2,2,2,15,20,20,20,15,2,2,
902,1,3,4,6,15,21,3,19,8,20,"Castle 6, despite good value, has been ignored in the past two games. Castle 10 needs to be contested, but not with too many troops. Similarly, castle 8 should be one that there is a large play for. I expect many players to overcommit to castle 9 and waste a lot of troops for something I can easily overcome with castles 6, 8, and 5."
901,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Assigned soldiers proportional to castle value
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."
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.
898,0,0,1,2,21,14,3,33,4,22,"I ran a monte carlo with all the previous troop deployments, plus a bunch of variations on the previous successful strategy, and it popped out this trimodal distribution. Basically, I optimized a trimodal distribution to beat optimized bimodal deployments. "
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"
896,0,0,0,0,19,23,0,27,31,0,"Go all-in on 4 castles that give just enough points to win (28), ceding the other 27 points’ worth.  Stack a few more troops on the high value castles just because."
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."
894,0,0,0,0,18,22,22,33,0,5,Give up 5 castles expecting to split points on some of them. Maybe get a cheeky 10 against similar strategies.
893,0,0,1,1,15,20,20,1,1,41,"The most direct method of achieving a majority while (hopefully) limiting exposure to defeat by fielding more men along my prescribed victory path than does the opposition. 

No backup plan, no reserves. When in doubt, attack. "
892,2,2,2,1,2,2,16,24,24,25,WIn 28 and loose rest
891,0,10,0,0,0,0,15,25,50,0,Forces concentrated on alternative 4 castles to win
890,10,0,0,0,0,0,0,15,25,50,Forces concentrated on minimum four castles to win
889,1,0,2,15,22,1,2,3,33,21,
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."
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."
886,2,2,2,2,12,20,25,35,0,0,I didn't try for 9 or 10 and went for 5-8.
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."
884,2,2,2,11,11,11,26,31,2,2,"Middle weighted, but no zero castles"
883,1,5,6,11,16,22,1,36,1,1,"Anticipating even, uniform placement with person using some 0s"
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.
881,1,2,3,4,9,11,13,16,19,22,
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."
879,0,2,3,3,15,21,3,21,5,27,"Just trying to win 10 and two of 5,6 and 8 , at which point a few small ones would get me over the line. "
878,2,4,6,6,6,21,25,30,0,0,
877,1,1,8,5,15,3,15,8,27,17,
876,1,10,4,10,4,4,22,16,13,16," [0, 11, 4, 10, 4, 4, 22, 16, 13, 16"
875,0,0,0,7,23,5,4,3,34,24,Beat the top player from last time then designed a strategy to beat that then designed a strategy to beat that
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."
873,7,0,0,0,0,0,0,26,31,36,Protect the bag
872,0,0,1,1,2,3,6,12,25,50,Keep cutting my troops in half starting from top to bottom
871,5,5,5,10,20,25,30,0,0,0,trying for a plausible counter-intuitive plan
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."
869,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,Gave more to more valuable castles without writing any off
868,1,2,6,20,20,20,26,1,2,2,"Getting 3 to 7 is sufficient for victory, so all others are just token moves in case the enemy didn't defend."
867,2,4,10,12,14,16,18,20,2,2,Strategy :)
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."
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."
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.
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.
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.  "
861,5,5,10,15,20,25,5,5,5,5,"Expecting that the hardest fighting will be for the most valuable castles this should leave the lesser value ones relatively undefended and easier to pick off.  However, for those who share my view a small commitment of troops is worthwhile in case others go for an all or nothing strategy and do not think high value targets are worth it.  Expecting to win 15 to 25 total victory points remaining consistently around or above average. "
860,10,20,5,6,4,10,10,10,5,20,To keep castles unbalanced.
859,1,2,4,10,19,24,27,4,5,4,This feels nice
858,0,2,3,16,2,3,23,24,24,3,I chose 28 points to contend for and 27 to (mostly) cede.
857,1,1,1,3,7,16,22,24,3,22,Worked off last time’s results and heavy fortification on number 9
856,2,2,2,2,2,8,13,18,23,28,"2 points on each to hedge, dump the rest at high-value castles"
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."
854,2,3,5,5,14,14,16,16,14,11,
853,0,1,1,2,18,16,3,25,31,3,"Winning strategies focused on capturing 4 castles that could get you over 28 points so stuck to that. Was hoping 6, 7, and 8 would still be relatively neglected and put my effort toward winning 9."
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."
851,2,3,5,13,17,2,14,15,17,12,Averaging the two
850,1,0,0,0,0,0,30,30,39,0,Highest % troops outside Castle 10
849,1,3,5,13,17,2,14,16,17,12,I just took an average of the distributions of the previous two winners
848,0,0,1,2,21,21,22,3,4,26,"Trying a 4-castle deployment, as it's just easier to rely on. Throwing a few around in the larger unattended castles in order to protect against other 4-castle deployments. This mostly beats the recent winners and isn't the obvious 10-8-7-6 that stomps the last round. I could be in trouble if people really try to jump on 10, though."
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. "
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.  

 "
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"
844,0,0,0,8,18,19,21,30,3,1,Try to have a large enough force where opponents would not expect it.
843,1,1,2,2,15,11,0,5,33,30,"Worked against the 10 previous winners, plus uniform, plus heavy uniform, plus strategies from a friend."
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."
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."
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)."
839,0,0,7,10,12,14,17,19,21,0,1 and 2 are low-value; 10 will be too heavily contested
838,0,0,0,0,0,17,18,30,35,0,
837,2,1,6,7,12,16,22,1,31,2,
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."
835,0,1,2,8,3,15,18,20,3,30,Fancied a go aye
834,7,0,0,0,0,0,0,31,31,31,28 to 27
833,1,2,2,5,7,13,19,21,14,16,
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. "
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.
830,0,0,0,13,1,21,2,23,3,37,Felt right :)
829,0,1,3,3,7,7,8,22,23,26,
828,3,5,7,9,11,12,14,17,19,3,Forfeit the 10 points and win the others
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?  "
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.
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."
824,3,5,1,11,10,15,15,20,17,3,idk it’s 5am
823,0,0,0,10,0,0,0,30,25,35,Just a hunch I had based on previous editions
822,0,0,2,30,2,30,2,34,0,0,Three eyed raven told me
821,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,Equal distribution beats the game theory.
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.
819,0,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,12,leave out the 1 and always beat the mean
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."
817,1,2,4,11,16,20,21,16,5,4,"Short the larger castles where some may devote a lot of resources, focus on winning more of the castles in the middle. Pretty much the opposite of NBA shot optimization."
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"
815,1,1,1,2,30,1,2,2,30,30,I’m guaranteed at least one if not two high value castles while still having a chance at all of them
814,3,3,6,15,20,25,25,1,1,1,to attack the other guys
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.
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."
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."
810,3,3,4,15,16,15,18,20,3,3,Not really sure
809,3,3,6,11,14,2,27,27,2,5,
808,2,2,2,17,2,18,5,18,32,2,
807,4,5,6,7,11,27,28,4,4,4,Guess
806,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,33,33,34,Go big or go home
805,1,2,22,1,1,22,1,1,27,22,"It's almost 4 am, this is better than anything"
804,0,0,0,20,0,10,20,30,0,20,just felt intuitively good
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.
802,1,1,1,6,15,20,25,25,5,1,I put the most troops in castles that were in the middle in points in attempt to win several smaller castles instead of a few larger ones.
801,0,0,0,5,7,10,21,24,33,0,Avoided overcommit on 10.  Attempted to stack 9 and upper middle.
800,1,2,2,4,4,25,26,26,5,5,The heart wants what the heart wants <3
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."
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."
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.
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."
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? :)"
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."
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."
792,3,6,6,16,19,12,12,20,3,3,"I found the average troop deployment of the top 5 placers from both of the last tournaments, and then I found a strategy that would beat them both on average."
791,0,0,0,0,0,10,10,10,35,35,A gross misunderstanding of all logic
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."
789,0,5,9,12,21,19,5,5,0,24,"My brother worked on this, and I think he was on the right track. But he failed to account for how many will just use variations of the plans that won last time. I used a set of info Thomas made from your last two warlord games and made a strategy that works almost as well, but specifically targets the winners of the previous two games. My goal here is to have just one or two more soldiers than my enemy in the areas I'm fighting, and abandon the places where my enemy puts the most soldiers. "
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. "
787,0,0,0,0,15,20,0,40,25,0,Choose four castles whose total point value is 28. Go all out for them.
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."
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."
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!"
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"
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
781,1,2,2,3,17,18,19,3,4,31,Because it's good. Done.
780,0,0,4,6,0,16,16,18,35,5,
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."
778,2,3,2,2,3,8,22,22,15,21,
777,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,35,30,30,"28 is a win, so concentrate where you need to win, and win!"
776,0,0,0,1,17,17,1,21,10,33,
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)
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."
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
772,0,0,0,3,5,23,16,13,17,23,"Inverted bell curve for the top castles, leaving ineffective castles empty."
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.
770,1,1,1,1,1,1,40,26,15,13,inverse of the 7 down strat
769,0,0,1,16,21,2,25,3,29,3,
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."
767,1,3,4,13,15,18,1,20,22,3,"Go hard on 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9."
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."
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"
764,2,3,4,5,9,9,11,19,19,19,Fibbinochi sequence
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."
762,1,2,3,4,5,5,23,21,19,17,Random guessing.
761,2,5,7,20,21,8,13,20,2,2,Optimized against those who optimized against the best strategies from last time. It ended up looking like the strategies of the first time the riddler was posted.
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."
759,4,0,0,0,0,0,0,41,31,24,Magic
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."
757,1,1,6,10,20,25,20,15,1,1,"Center around middle, most point per troop (don't want to waste at any point). At least one in each-points if ever left empty"
756,0,4,6,8,22,20,12,12,9,7,"pure guess, did not look at previous games"
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"
754,3,5,7,10,15,22,28,2,4,4,"Mostly abandon the top tier castles and focus my forces on the lower values. However, send what are hopefully slightly larger scouting parties to the high value targets. "
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)
752,5,7,10,12,15,17,31,1,1,1,"I wanted to guarantee victory on the first 7 castles. Briefly looking at past data, I estimated 28 victory points would be the number to aim for."
751,0,10,0,10,5,10,15,20,10,20,My 11 year son is pretty sure this will win.
750,2,2,2,3,3,11,16,31,3,27,this did ok when tried with a smaller group of students
749,2,3,4,6,9,14,21,17,12,12,Focus on the valuable middle to high castles
748,1,0,2,2,11,12,24,24,0,24,
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. "
746,1,1,2,8,15,20,3,4,23,23,
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."
744,1,2,6,8,12,14,16,19,11,11,
743,1,1,1,5,5,5,5,30,30,17,
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 "
741,3,3,3,3,3,11,24,35,8,7,Last time but winning those.
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. "
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."
738,2,5,5,17,19,7,7,6,18,14,"Played around with numbers in excel until I found a combo that would beat all of the top 5 entries from both of the past 2 contests, as well as the mean numbers from both"
737,0,0,4,15,18,6,4,2,28,23,Random ass guessing
736,5,5,20,5,5,20,5,5,10,20,"Not sure, just playing! "
735,1,2,2,0,0,4,6,8,34,43,win 10/9 and two average others
734,6,7,9,12,16,21,26,1,1,1,"Total of 55 VP to be won, and a player who wins the top 4 castles wins the game. Some will push really hard to win the top 4. Others will realize this and try to scoop up the low VP castles cheaply while still competing for some of the top 4. Honestly that's pretty much what I'm doing too, but rather than competing for the top 4, the idea is to scoop up the bottom 7, while tossing a bone to the top 3 castles to hopefully outdo anyone who is using a similar bottom-up strategy.

The idea is that, while most people will invest a lot into the top castles (because they are valuable and because they expect others to do the same), many will not invest much into the bottom castles. This makes them (hopefully) cheap to obtain, and allows a pretty hefty force to go to castle 7 to (again, hopefully) outdo those who want castle 7, but who value it 4th most."
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"
732,1,1,3,5,7,13,16,22,15,17,Value weight plus noise
731,0,7,0,0,0,0,25,0,32,36,
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."
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."
728,0,0,0,5,6,7,8,22,25,27,
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."
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?"
725,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,19,Made it up
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.
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."
722,1,1,5,1,20,20,1,25,25,1,"There's no way to win without taking at least 4 numbers with an average of 7 (need to sum up to 28 to win).  I figure there will probably be a psychological bias towards playing a lot of troops on 10, and a psychological bias towards abandoning numbers not getting played for in strategies.  The 1s are to pick up those abandoned numbers easily, and I figure plays of 20 on mid tier numbers have a high likelihood of winning."
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.
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."
719,1,6,1,1,41,7,7,34,1,1,"Starting with the goal of reaching 28 points, I went with a balance of offense and defense.  The distribution I was shooting for was winning 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8.  Leaving 9 and 10 pretty much open would let my opponent waste much of their capitol on those, leaving only 8 and 5 as 'battles,' but ones in which my opponent would have less to spend.  Seeing the distributions of the previous 2 rounds, 6 and 7 seemed pretty safe, so I spent my soldiers on 5 and 8, leaving token 1's to leverage against random strategies with zeros.  "
718,1,1,1,6,20,20,20,25,3,3,"Looking at last time, if I wanted to beat that I would go for a bit more on the higher values and drop the lower ones. This should beat that by having a few more on 5-8, while also picking up 9 and 10 if people dump that, and beating 0s on 1-3"
717,4,6,8,12,17,22,31,0,0,0,"Focus on the front 7, which adds up to 28, which gives you one more than your opponent, who takes 7,8,9 (total 27)"
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. "
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.
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."
713,0,0,0,0,0,10,10,15,25,40,
712,2,2,4,4,16,16,21,31,2,2,No particular strategy
711,1,1,1,1,1,19,19,19,19,19,I am an Aquarius.
710,5,8,8,10,17,22,27,1,1,1,"I am assuming the opposing warlord will wager a lot on capturing the high-value targets, and as such am going as close to throwing them as I can (Leaving 1 to attack just in case he doesn't go for them at all.

Instead, I have focused on the lower value targets, hoping that the opponent will focus on the other end.

In this manner, the true key battleground will be Castle 7. If we assume that I win castles 1-6, I will have 21 points against the 27 of 8-10. Therefore, castle 7 becomes critical and if I can win that, victory is almost certain. Additional rear-guarding goes to 6 and 5 to be safe, but I suspect that minor forces can take castles 1-4, leaving most forces to hold for 5-7, and only cursory forces watching for a sneak on castles 8-10."
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. "
708,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,14,15,15,
707,1,2,4,8,12,16,21,31,2,3,Peak at 80 and decline downwards. Don't sacrifice any entirely.
706,2,4,6,8,10,10,12,14,16,18,
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.
704,4,5,8,10,7,13,10,14,17,12,Mixed strategy
703,2,2,7,17,22,22,13,4,4,7,I am inevitable.
702,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,Based on value of castles.
701,2,3,4,5,5,15,15,25,25,1,I’m feeling lucky.
700,5,6,6,6,11,5,5,6,25,25,"Performs well against round 2, wins more often than not against round 1..."
699,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,2V-1.  Assets (troops) distributed in proportion to cattle point values.
698,5,5,8,8,10,17,20,23,2,2,Winning with the middle picks (maybe) didn't check the last results
697,1,2,5,13,17,0,26,0,36,0,"I need 28 VPs. So I aimed for an unusual combination of getting them. As long as I get castles 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9, I have my 28 points and have no need to get any others. I will lose only to people who outbid me on one of these five, but those who don't bid 0 on any, or even multiple, castles, will have fewer troops to deploy on those five, so my chances are reasonably good. I expect to lose to those who max out on castles 9 and 10 but to win against a good percentage of other contestants.

I made a late change to go for 3+ points from 1, 2 and 3 combined"
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.
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.
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.
693,4,5,3,1,6,25,36,2,9,9,
692,1,1,1,1,1,2,31,31,31,0,"all out to capture 7,8,9 and pick up any 0s elsewhere"
691,0,0,0,10,14,14,0,24,20,18,"Assume strategies converge to a Poisson distribution around the lastest averages, and optimise."
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?"
689,0,0,0,3,3,18,18,18,18,22,
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."
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."
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."
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."
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.
683,1,2,2,2,2,21,22,23,25,0,
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."
681,0,0,12,0,0,26,0,0,29,33,Choose just a few castles and maximize the chances of winning those.
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."
679,2,4,7,15,18,21,0,2,0,31,"I dunno, I tried to win all the battles I picked. My strategy does well against last time's winners and beats the average distribution, I guess."
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."
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.
676,1,3,3,3,5,5,10,10,30,30,I distributed them based on how important the castle was.
675,1,1,1,1,23,15,3,26,3,26,"Past winning strategies seemed to either focus on 7&8 or 9&10, so I've focused on the 10 and 8 to try to win the higher of each pair. Also previously neglected was 6, so I went for that as well, and went for the jugular on 5 since that pushes the total over the halfway mark points-wise. The others I put minimal investment in, though with 3 soldiers to the higher-end castles since 2's are common scouting forces."
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."
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."
672,0,0,17,0,0,0,29,23,2,29,"All-in on 3,7,8,10"
671,1,1,2,4,6,9,13,17,21,26,"it's a quadratic distribution of soldiers, and I like smooth curves"
670,0,5,5,3,23,23,27,11,1,2,"Decided to weigh 7-5 the heaviest, as they are accountable for a good chunk of points. Didn't want to lose 9 or 10 if they were abandoned, so I put a few there (but mostly empty). Then I concentrated some on 8 (expecting that it would be defended less than 5-7 but not as minimally as 9-10). The lower values were kind of chosen randomly."
669,0,0,9,11,21,18,18,0,0,23,Just kinda throwing some troops like the US Govt throws money at the army
668,0,0,0,0,23,24,25,0,28,0,
667,0,0,8,11,0,22,28,31,0,0,Strongly attacked with the most likely castles to reach 28.
666,2,2,7,10,16,22,29,4,4,4,win everything 7 and below and beat people sending 3 or less to high numbers.
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"
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."
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."
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."
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.
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.
659,1,1,2,9,11,13,16,18,15,14,+1 to average May battles less on castles 1-3
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."
657,1,1,10,10,15,25,5,5,1,27,
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."
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."
654,1,7,1,1,14,18,21,33,2,2,"Similar strategy to previous winners, adjusted numbers slightly for some variation"
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"
652,4,5,6,5,12,23,14,15,14,2,mystery
651,1,2,2,11,11,11,8,18,18,18,Concentrate on the higher values with some randomness mixed in.
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"
649,2,3,4,20,23,13,4,7,0,24,Counter Strategy
648,0,0,0,0,0,100,0,0,0,0,All of the troops at the first castle higher than 5
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"
646,1,1,2,5,8,11,14,17,19,22,Diminishing returns
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.  "
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."
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."
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. "
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.
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.
639,0,1,1,1,17,20,2,26,29,3,
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!
"
637,3,4,4,4,4,25,25,26,2,3,
636,3,5,11,18,2,19,19,17,2,4,Already submitted but I think I typoed to have my totals over 100?
635,2,2,2,2,2,22,22,22,22,2,Give me all those 1 troop castles. They are mine.
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!"
633,4,7,10,14,17,22,26,0,0,0,Distributed proportionally-ish on the buckets (hopefully) most likely to get to 28
632,0,0,7,8,11,0,0,23,25,26,
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.
630,1,3,7,9,12,8,24,30,3,3,
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!
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.
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.
626,1,1,1,1,1,15,20,20,20,20,
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."
624,2,2,2,2,2,12,2,42,12,22,
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!"
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)"
621,0,0,1,10,11,12,1,1,32,32,"Fight for the top two, plus the center"
620,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,19,
619,2,1,10,12,14,3,13,4,37,4,"Defensive strategy, hope opponent went all in on 9. "
618,4,4,4,14,14,14,4,4,34,4,
617,1,1,1,13,16,19,22,25,1,1,4-5-6-7-8 is enough to win.
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.
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.
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."
613,0,4,8,10,15,5,30,23,5,0,Putting more troops into the medium level castles
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."
611,1,1,1,1,0,0,24,24,24,24,
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"
609,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,5,34,34,Slanging it
608,3,3,3,3,3,17,17,17,17,17,
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."
606,0,0,0,15,15,20,25,25,0,0,Focus more troops on enough points to get more than half of points.
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."
604,0,2,0,11,11,0,25,24,27,0,You only have to win by a little.
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."
602,1,2,11,2,14,16,17,31,3,3,Go for the middle
601,1,1,1,1,2,5,11,24,26,28,"Take the highest values, easy points for people abandoning low values"
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."
599,0,1,1,16,21,2,2,3,32,22,"I created a giant spreadsheet that I filled with placements from the previous rounds (with winners on the list twice because they rock). Then I built formulas to calculate my win percentage against them and played with my placements. After lots of testing, I chose a modified Vince Vatter (Round 2 champ who) that performed slightly worse that his Round 2 victory in my experiments. I did this because I figured people would note that leaving 0 or 1 soldier in a castle was a bad move and would start leaving 2 or 3. Basically, I did some math then took a guess as to how the masses would behave. My goal is over 80% victory!"
598,1,2,2,5,7,20,20,20,20,3,
597,0,3,5,6,15,5,6,10,24,26,Basically a half-baked revision of the winner of the last time (trying not to duplicate exactly or respond too directly)
596,1,1,1,9,16,21,22,23,5,1,"I am deploying to win points, not the most castles. If most are deploying troops to the larger point totals, they can win those in a blowout, while I put together a strong contingent of mid tier wins to get to 28 total points. However, I avoid conceding any castle outright."
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.
594,1,1,1,1,5,17,17,17,20,20,
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."
592,1,1,1,1,19,19,2,20,34,2,I do whatever your mom tells me to do.
591,1,1,10,12,9,18,2,2,20,25,
590,6,6,6,20,20,20,5,5,6,6,"A lengthy period of psychoanalysis — I pictured some folks committing a ton of troops to collecting 7 to 10, and others committing almost none elsewhere... 5 or 6 was chosen as a number that would defeat those folks that just said 1, 2, or 3."
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.
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."
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."
586,0,0,0,0,21,21,0,29,29,0,"Let me try this again because I did my math wrong.  Sacrifices must be made! Castles 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 10 are dead to me."
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.
584,3,2,5,9,11,15,22,20,3,10,Trying to beat the last two averages from the riddles before
583,1,3,6,8,13,14,15,16,1,23,This feels like what Nate Silver's mom would do.
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."
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.
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."
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.
578,1,1,2,4,10,17,27,32,3,3,
577,0,1,3,5,7,10,13,16,20,25,Based on a fibonacci series with rounding to the nearest integer.
576,6,6,6,11,6,16,6,6,16,21,No round numbers.  Try to take castles that would be overlooked by others.
575,0,0,8,12,13,13,13,13,14,14,
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."
573,1,1,3,4,8,13,17,18,27,8,Felt good
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."
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! "
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.
569,1,1,4,12,20,20,20,20,1,1,"I assumed most opponents would go for castle 9 or 10 so I tried to leverage 5-8, with a 12 also likely taking 4.  I added 1's to other castles just in case an opponent deployed a zero on X castle strategy also. "
568,1,2,6,1,1,18,3,2,33,33,To maximize winnings.
567,1,2,4,7,19,11,24,17,3,12,I chose it for the win!
566,1,4,9,7,3,9,7,25,20,15,Heavy on 8s and 9s thinking others would overrate 10.
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."
564,1,3,0,4,15,0,21,16,9,31,"I generated it randomly. I multiplied the value of each castle by a random real number selected from a Poisson distribution with rate=2, rounded down to the nearest integer, then gave any remaining soldiers to castle 10. I generated a few allotments this way, picked one that looked nice, and checked it against the top five from the past two iterations. I had a decent record against past winners so I went for it!"
563,0,0,0,0,17,21,0,26,36,0,"I think a lot of people will be fighting for #10 and #1 because 10 is worth the most points and #1 is the tiebreaker if you went 10,9,8,1 or 7,6,5,4,3,2,1. I considered going for 10,9,8, 2 to avoid fighting over the #1 and because I could win even with a tie on #2, and then realized I could avoid #10 as well. In summary, I'm avoiding fighting over what I expect to be hotly contested #10 and #1 in favor of #6 and #5 while maintaining the concentration of my troops by only needing to capture 4 castles to win. As far as specific troop distribution goes, I made sure I had at least three times the castle number and dumped a bunch extra on #9, which I think will receive a heavy designation from anyone pursuing a variant of the 10,9,8,1 strategy. I did not assign any troop numbers that end in 0 or 5, they are too popular."
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. "
561,0,4,0,0,22,22,22,30,0,0,
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."
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. "
558,8,9,9,10,0,0,0,30,0,34,"Try to win 1,2,3,4,8,10 to get to 28"
557,2,3,4,6,10,13,14,19,15,14,Average of prior deployment data with small adjustments.
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."
555,0,0,25,0,25,0,25,25,0,0,"Sacrifices must be made!  Castles 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, and 10 are dead to me! Going hyper-aggressive (but not the most aggressive strategy).  Best Case: I win! Worst Case: I am a troll!"
554,0,2,3,3,16,20,22,26,4,4,
553,1,3,5,10,16,26,20,11,4,4,Why wouldn't you choose this troop deployment?
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.
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"
550,0,0,0,0,0,15,17,0,33,35,
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. "
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"
547,0,4,6,8,11,14,22,23,12,0,I'll never tell.
546,0,0,0,20,0,0,0,0,40,40,23 points to win.  Overload the highest rated castles and sacrifice everything else
545,1,1,2,2,17,17,17,4,1,38,Maximize towers to get to 28 points
544,0,0,0,0,18,22,26,0,0,34,Stakeout the middle and get the top one. Didn’t waste on other castles.
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."
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.
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.  "
540,4,5,6,7,20,25,30,1,1,1,Capture the low value castles
539,0,1,2,2,2,4,23,23,22,21,
538,1,1,3,3,3,14,18,17,20,20,Top heavy is my favorite.
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.
536,1,1,2,4,4,8,8,8,32,32,Powers of 2 are fun?
535,1,2,3,0,22,6,27,31,4,4,"Looked to see where the past winners had shifted their troops from game 1 to game 2. Identified 5, 7, & 8 as places to pick up points while also noticing that Castle 6 is under attacked by 7/10 past winners. My hope is that those who only send a very token force to 9 & 10 (2 or 3 seem the most common) will lose to my 4 troops, while not costing me very much on the 3 main ones I focused on."
534,0,1,1,15,18,2,2,3,31,27,"You need 28/55 points to win. Went big for the big castles since winning those two gets you within 9 points of victory. Then went for castles 4 and 5 since that gets me right to 28. No need to try and blow anyone out. Left token forces at castles 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8 to capture them against opponents who did not attempt for them, while not wasting too many soldiers on the assumed large group who will try to rack up the middle-high values of 6-8. I know this is a strategy used before and there is also merit in avoiding the large castles, but I'm going with the all-in strategy on this one!"
533,4,7,10,14,18,22,25,0,0,0,Get 28pts by focusing on the less valuable castles
532,1,1,1,1,16,16,16,16,16,16,"I win by having 6 castles.  meaning I should focus everything on 6 castles and spend no resources on the other 4. 100/6= 16.6 meaning I can have 16 in each castle with 4 remaining. I decided to put those 4 in the empty castles to attempt to win any uncontested castles. 

"
531,1,1,9,13,17,21,26,1,8,3,"I wanted to get the mid to upper values people wouldn't defend, while also tricking people who left 9 wide open."
530,1,1,2,1,1,11,11,11,26,35,
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."
528,1,7,1,1,18,16,15,29,5,7,Used the first two deployments to try and create an optimal strategy that does well against both. Potato
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"
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"
525,0,0,0,0,16,19,0,30,35,0,"I'm going all-in for getting the bare minimum points of 28 or more.  The fewest castles I need is 4.  10-9-8-7 is an option but lots of people will go after castle 10, so I'm going after 5-6-8-9.  Same number of castles, but I'm playing off the beaten path.  Also, 5-6-8-9 are all castles that are in fewer winning combinations, so they're more likely to be won by me.

The actual troop placements are based on the relative difficults I computed for winning those particular castles."
524,0,2,0,0,16,6,19,25,0,32,"Way I figure it, the goal's to get 28 points.  Minimum number of castles you can get that with is four.  Best way to go about it is to abandon a couple of them completely so you can withdraw troops to ones that help the overall plan, while still targeting another lightly in the event that you lose an opening.  Ergo, this."
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
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).
521,1,1,2,3,12,17,3,12,22,27,ez money
520,1,1,2,4,6,9,13,17,21,26,I made it porportional to the point value squared
519,0,0,0,0,16,19,5,26,29,5,
518,0,1,3,1,16,22,0,1,32,24,I am defending the most important places unlike Game of Thrones
517,0,10,0,0,15,25,25,25,0,0,"Only deploy to certain castles to win, hope to get lucky."
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"
515,1,1,10,12,13,14,15,16,17,1,Win the middle!
514,1,2,3,3,5,5,14,12,30,25,Winging it.
513,0,0,10,15,15,15,15,15,15,0,rather take the sum of the middle numbers over the first and last
512,0,9,0,0,0,0,0,32,32,27,
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."
510,1,1,1,1,17,19,19,19,21,1,"Prioritizing middle enough to win, safeguard others with 1 point"
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."
508,0,1,2,8,10,18,27,27,4,3,"11% 1st 4, 55% middle 3, 1/3 top 3"
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. "
506,0,0,9,22,22,6,27,2,6,6,"I chose to give up 1 and 2 completely, focus on 4,5, 7 while putting enough points into the rest to hopefully stall non advances."
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.  "
504,2,4,7,9,12,2,27,31,3,3,Built to beat Cyrus
503,2,2,10,2,30,36,3,3,6,6,"Trying to beat more people so i assumed that people either put a lot of soldiers in the higher castles or none  at all(1-5 soldiers ""just in case"")"
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! :)"
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
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."
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."
498,1,1,9,9,18,19,20,21,1,1,Have 1 at each castle to win against anyone who doesn’t send at least one troop there. Then I put the rest at the mid tier castles because I just need to win a majority (28). Castles 4-8 are worth 30.
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)"
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."
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
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!
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.
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."
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"
490,0,3,8,9,13,5,28,30,2,2,
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.
488,3,3,4,18,18,3,6,11,17,17,I looked at the top deployments from the previous rounds and looked at how they fared against each other. I then chose the best one and manipulated it until it beat all the others.
487,0,0,0,7,8,0,0,35,35,15,
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.
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."
484,0,0,0,16,20,20,21,21,1,1,
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.
482,0,3,4,5,1,8,15,18,22,24,Looks good to me!
481,1,3,5,7,9,10,13,15,17,20,Roughly their percentage value of 55 total available points.
480,0,0,0,5,10,10,15,20,22,18,Maximize points from ties
479,1,1,2,15,19,0,11,14,17,20,"I tried to plan a balanced attack of the high-value castles (7-10) and the low-value castles (4-5) with increasing troops in each category. Since castle 6 was ignored in both previous editions I figured most players would attack this castle, so I left it exposed to avoid losing troops there."
478,2,1,0,0,0,0,0,28,33,36,
477,5,5,5,6,12,12,16,9,12,18,Hoping other warlords don't put very many in the early castles
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.
475,2,4,9,17,22,16,5,7,5,13,"I took the top 5 winners from the last 2 times, along with the averages for each castle from the last 2 times, then maximized the number of points scored if my distribution faced each of these 12 opponents. "
474,10,10,10,10,20,20,5,5,5,5,"My strategy is people don't expect you to send troops to the small stuff, so they don't send troops there. The most troops are sent to the big ones, so your best chance of getting points is in the middle."
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."
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.
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."
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."
469,0,0,0,15,17,2,3,4,21,38,"predictive to the human adjustment from round #2, I assumed flipped value on #9 and #10, otherwise assumed the meta deployment would be similar to before "
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."
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. "
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
465,1,2,4,8,11,15,26,27,3,3,Looks a bit better based on the data from the last two.
464,2,2,26,13,30,1,3,10,5,8,I rearranged a previous winner's deployment and prayed.
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.
462,1,2,3,10,25,4,5,5,10,35,
461,0,0,0,1,18,21,0,22,36,2,
460,2,3,3,15,18,23,24,1,1,10,
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."
458,0,0,0,0,20,50,30,0,0,0,"6 seems like a good number. And I didn't want to send any lone soldiers off to die. I expect to win Castle 6 around 1/3 of the time, so hey, that's like 2 points. I'm feeling positive about it."
457,0,0,4,13,16,8,14,14,17,14,Took the average of the previous two winners and made a team that could beat that.
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."
455,2,4,5,7,9,11,13,15,16,18,Gave castles weighted amount based on their value
454,1,19,1,19,1,19,1,19,1,19,"If you win the even numbered castles, you win."
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."
452,1,2,2,2,18,17,16,15,14,13,
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"
450,5,5,10,15,15,15,15,10,5,5,"Compete everywhere, but not too hard for the low and high value castles"
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."
448,0,0,3,3,3,18,18,3,26,26,Focus on castles 5-6 and 9-10
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!"
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."
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."
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."
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."
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!"
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."
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."
439,5,5,0,0,0,0,0,20,30,40,Castles 3-7 are pretty lame
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."
437,2,4,7,9,17,19,30,4,4,4,With the power of my brain.
436,2,2,2,1,1,1,1,32,31,27,"Win the big castles, grab a couple other points somewhere."
435,0,2,1,1,19,22,25,28,1,1,"Stating the obvious first- there are 55 possible points, meaning you need 28 points to guarantee a victory.  I feel like Castles 9 and 10 are overrated since Castle 10 is worth the same as Castles 8+2, 7+3, etc.  My strategy was to win castles 5, 6, 7 and 8 for a total of 26 points.  If accomplished, I only need to win ONE castle out of castles 2, 3, 4, 9 and 10 to guarantee a victory.  I dedicated the vast majority of my soldiers (94) to get castles 5-8 while the rest only got 1 or 2 soldiers each.  I actually put 2 soldiers on Castle 2 since it has the lowest value, I feel like putting a 2 there gives me the best chance of getting it.  Putting 1 soldier each at 9 and 10 may seem silly but I still may get points against some other similar strategies. Even winning half of those castle 9 or 10 points would put me over the top.  Anyway I have an English degree so the pressure is on you, math people!  I wish you good fortune in the wars to come."
434,3,3,8,3,21,5,26,10,10,11,"I wanted to defeat the previous champions. The first round winners won by going heavy in 4,5,9,10. The 2nd round they went heavy in some combination that didn't include 9,10. I went for go for 7, 5 and 3. With average values in 8,9,10 in hoping to get one or two of these."
433,1,1,2,2,2,2,20,20,20,30,"No strategy, just tried to weight the higher points castles higher"
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
431,1,1,1,1,15,20,29,30,1,1,think it could work
430,0,0,7,5,6,17,16,17,16,16,
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)"
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."
427,2,9,3,10,3,18,3,22,3,27,straight up guess
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."
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"
424,0,1,2,17,20,17,14,16,6,7,Beat previous submitted solution (plus all others considered...but with smaller margins on many others).
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."
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.
421,5,7,9,13,1,16,16,17,15,1,Trying the maximize the chance of at least winning 28 points.
420,1,1,1,1,17,12,22,23,21,1,"Winning big on castles 7, 8, 9, and loosing most of the rest on the assumption people will increasingly ignore 7, 8, 9 based on past data"
419,2,2,8,2,2,18,2,2,31,31,Bc 2 > 1 and 10+9+6+3=28
418,0,2,2,3,15,15,15,15,18,15,
417,0,1,2,3,4,5,9,20,21,35,
416,4,4,4,4,11,22,33,7,6,5,I'm one step ahead of everyone else
415,1,1,1,15,20,20,20,20,1,1,-
414,4,8,14,2,12,10,22,6,3,19,Why Not
413,2,2,6,9,12,16,21,24,4,4,I added up to 100... i guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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. "
411,0,1,1,17,20,20,20,20,1,0,Dominant the middle/paint like in basketball
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
409,1,2,3,16,23,2,4,6,23,20,
408,0,1,3,17,21,17,14,16,5,6,"I devised a strategy to beat all ten presented in previous iterations, then I added that strategy and devised the way to beat all ten plus that solution.  I repeated several times adding improved solutions to my list to beat."
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. "
406,0,0,0,16,1,1,25,28,28,1,
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."
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
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."
402,1,9,12,6,5,26,5,5,7,24,
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"
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. "
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. "
398,2,3,3,5,17,19,19,2,2,28,"Try and win 5, 6, 7, and 10 against most people, which would give me the 28 points needed to win. "
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.
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."
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"
394,6,6,5,15,20,20,28,0,0,0,Seed the top scoring castles and focus heavy on winning the middle ones. The castles worth few pointe I assumed few people would go for
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"
392,5,7,9,3,8,5,27,31,2,3,
391,0,11,0,0,16,19,22,31,0,1,"There are 55 points on offer. But you only need to win half plus 1 (.5 actually)
My strategy was to secure the minimum points for victory by winning the 5 Castles. 8,7,6,5 and 2.
Hopefully avoiding the high value castes will allow me to put more troops on lower values and win the war.
Throwing 1 soldier to castle 10 in the event my opponent is thinking the same way."
390,0,0,1,19,0,19,1,25,1,34,
389,1,0,19,1,1,21,0,23,0,34,
388,0,0,8,19,17,12,4,4,4,32,"Trying to win 10, 6, 5, 4, 3.  Probably not a strategy to win the whole thing but should be good enough to be in top 50%."
387,3,3,3,3,11,11,16,21,26,3,You’ll never know
386,1,0,19,1,1,21,0,23,0,34,
385,2,4,4,1,2,24,26,3,31,3,Gotta take >half the points baby
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."
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."
382,1,4,5,8,16,16,22,22,3,3,"try to conquer  5,6,7,8 and win"
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."
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."
379,1,2,2,2,13,13,20,7,27,13,i liked the numbers
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."
377,5,5,13,14,17,21,22,1,1,1,"I waffled between heavily targeting castles 8, 9, 10, and 1 to get to 28 points, or my submitted strategy of trying to nab castles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.  It seemed to me that using more troops on fewer castles was the more simplistic option, so I thought that more people might try that option, so I decided to go the other way and spread my troops out over more castles.  It was fun to think about, but I doubt I'll do very well.  I'm not mathematically inclined."
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."
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."
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."
373,0,0,0,4,1,16,1,16,31,31,To win.
372,1,1,2,18,19,2,4,3,30,20,
371,0,0,0,2,21,21,21,2,2,31,Try and get the 10 and then the 5-7 which weren't as heavily contested
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."
369,0,0,0,7,10,0,0,24,28,31,"Subscribe to the ""Barely Win or Lose by a Lot"" theory."
368,0,0,1,17,22,2,1,1,33,23,I slightly modified Vince Vatter's distribution from Round 2. I'm very original.
367,0,11,12,0,16,18,2,3,2,36,
366,3,3,4,6,6,3,3,34,4,34,
365,2,2,2,2,2,30,0,0,30,30,Felt like it.
364,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,100,0,Nash Equilibrium
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."
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"
361,0,0,11,12,17,0,25,0,35,0,"I need 28 points to win, castle 1 and 2 have little value, I feel like people will value 10 and or 8 highly. 10 seems like a median number and something someone would throw at 3 or 4 so I went with 11 and 12. It's really a win all or lose scenario for me. Hopefully people spend resources out instead of concentrating. 10,9,8,1 seems like the most common strategy for people to really go after, I think I can overwhelm the 9 slot and forfeit the others while getting what I want"
360,2,3,4,20,26,15,10,10,5,5,"There are 55 points available for capture.  The first to 28 points wins.  No one can win unless they capture AT LEAST 4 castles.  Most people would likely try to capture the most valuable castles first and weight their troops towards those objectives.  But those who spend 50ish troops on castles 9/10 only have 50ish troops to spend on the remaining 8 castles, needing to win at least 9 points, between those 8 castles. I could see a 2, 7, 9, 10, strategy working well enough compared to last year's 4, 5, 9, 10, meta.

 By all but abandoning 9 and 10, i should like take the other 8 castles in most scenarios mainly due to the fact that the enemy had no more troops to spend. I put substantial enough troops in each castle that no one can steal cheap points without investing a fair amount into those castles in the first place.

Against last year's winners, I would have won:
Vatter: 36-19
Winder:  33.5-21.5
Shafer: 36-19
Schmidt: 35-20
Trick: 36-19
"
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).
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. "
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."
356,0,1,2,16,21,3,22,32,2,1,Savviness and wordsmithographyophillia
355,5,0,0,0,0,0,0,24,36,35,"limit losing troops, look for highest return on investment"
354,0,0,10,0,0,20,28,32,5,5,Because I'm the Grandmaster.
353,0,0,1,2,20,22,3,24,28,0,"Resubmission of my last entry, which required me to put at least one on castle 1. Want to concentrate my efforts on reaching 28, the required score for winning the battle. The others are slight contingencies, in case someone else does the same thing."
352,0,1,1,10,0,0,29,29,30,0,"Exact victory points, fewest required wins, avoid 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"
350,7,7,7,13,13,7,11,11,11,13,
349,2,0,0,0,0,17,18,18,20,25,
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."
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.
346,1,1,1,1,10,28,28,28,1,1,
345,4,5,6,12,21,26,26,0,0,0,"I did the math and discovered that 28 points is the magic number. 8, 9, 10 get you 27, and 1-7 get you 28. So, I punted on 8,9,10, expecting most people to stock up on those and give them a free victory there while they use the majority of their troops. Meanwhile, I'll be happy to take all the smaller castles because 28>27. I debated going for 8,9,10 and 1 to take 28 points, or even 2,3,4,6,7,8 to make 28, but figured my first thought would win more often than the other two, which would be harder to distribute troops since 8 would take so many to guarantee the victory. "
344,0,2,3,11,14,15,5,5,35,10,
343,0,0,0,0,20,23,0,30,27,0,"There's no way to win without at least four castles, so I focused on winning four and tried to optimize versus earlier distributions. "
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."
341,1,1,3,8,8,2,2,22,22,31,
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. "
339,0,0,0,0,5,20,20,20,20,15,
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)."
337,5,7,8,10,15,20,26,3,3,3,"Try to win 1-7, and sneak a few victories over 8-10."
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."
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
334,0,1,1,20,22,4,5,6,10,31,"Before looking at the historical data, I settled on a 10-9-5-4 distribution, with individual soldiers heading to remaining castles so as not to completely cede any points. Once I looked at the last match, I saw that this had been a popular choice for the leaders, confirming its soundness. My draft distribution lost against those leaders, though, due to weakness in the 8-7-6 range. I also noticed that the bulk of forces were being sent against castle 9, producing uncertainty around the success of even a healthy amount of force there. To adjust, I reduced allocation to castle 9, redistributing those troops across castles 9-8-7-6, but left my highest concentrations at 10, 5, and 4. I ultimately ceded castle 1, because I assessed the value of an additional soldier to win a 4+ castle as higher than avoiding the 1 point loss (and most likely, the Battle for Castle One will be a quiet 0-0 match, yielding a free .5 point anyway)."
333,1,1,1,1,1,23,5,33,30,4,Because it's the best
332,7,8,8,1,1,18,18,1,37,1,Win Castle #9 and the other castels that seem overlooked.
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"
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."
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-.
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. "
327,2,4,5,7,9,11,12,14,16,20,guess
326,0,0,0,14,17,20,23,26,0,0,Ignored 9&10 and chose the fewest castles past that to give me more than 28 points and weighed troops by value
325,1,1,2,4,6,8,10,20,40,8,Thought it looked cool
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.
323,2,5,5,1,23,1,1,25,35,2,My goal was to win 8 and 9.  With that I only need 11 more points to secure victory.  I sacked 6 and 7 given that they were low in the last one and more people are likely to focus on those.  That leaves me with needing to win 5 and 3 and then either 1 and 2 or 4.  I sacked 4 given that it was high in both prior events.
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)."