riddler-castles/castle-solutions-3: 152

This directory contains the data behind the submissions for castles puzzle.

Readers were asked to submit a strategy for the following “Colonel Blotto”-style game:

In a distant, war-torn land, there are 10 castles. There are two warlords: you and your archenemy. Each castle has its own strategic value for a would-be conqueror. Specifically, the castles are worth 1, 2, 3, …, 9, and 10 victory points. You and your enemy each have 100 soldiers to distribute, any way you like, to fight at any of the 10 castles. Whoever sends more soldiers to a given castle conquers that castle and wins its victory points. If you each send the same number of troops, you split the points. You don’t know what distribution of forces your enemy has chosen until the battles begin. Whoever wins the most points wins the war.

Submit a plan distributing your 100 soldiers among the 10 castles. Once I receive all your battle plans, I’ll adjudicate all the possible one-on-one matchups. Whoever wins the most wars wins the battle royale and is crowned king or queen of Riddler Nation!

The data includes all valid submissions, with solvers’ identifying information removed. The 11 columns represent the soldiers deployed to each of the 10 castles, plus a column where the reader could describe his or her strategic approach.

Correction

Please see the following commit: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/commit/c3f808fda5b67aa26ea6fa663ddd4d2eb7c6187f

Data license: CC Attribution 4.0 License · Data source: fivethirtyeight/data on GitHub · About: simonw/fivethirtyeight-datasette

This data as json, copyable

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?
152 3 5 7 2 2 15 18 20 0 28 The Name of this game should be 55. Why? Well for a similar reason why your website is called 538. 55 is the number of total points a player could win in this game, but 28 is the number of points a player needs to win, like 270 in an election. If a player can get to 28 points then he automatically wins. (Said player can win with less if there are ties). Instead of viewing the board as 55 points I can win, I view it as 28 points I need to win. That being said, each point is worth 3.57 of my soldiers (100/28). I am making an assumption, that most people will undervalue lower point tiers. Putting 3, 5, and 7 soldiers on tiers 1, 2, and 3 respectively, 15% of my soldiers, but gains 21% of the points needed. A major victory for my army. 4 and 5 are tricky. They are needed to win if you go the 10,9,5,4 strategy (last season's winners did). But they were overcommitted to those areas. Being wary of losing them due to people overcommitting on them, I left them at 2. Every soldier needs someone to guard his back. Pick up the easy win vs those who bid 0 or 1, but don't lose out on those playing the 10,9,5,4 strategy. Probably a minor loss for my army. 6,7,8 are much easier. They deserve 21, 25, and 28 soldiers respectively (using 3.57x *point value). But they are also VERY underappreciated by both past winners, and the average submission. Capitalizing on this, I can gain these points by using a decent amount of soldiers, but near the amount they deserve. Another major victory for my army. I can count on wins by using only 15, 18, and 20. This leaves me with 9 and 10. And 28 troops. If history tells us anything, its that people like castle 9 more than they like castle 10. This is an either or situation, you won't win both unless you overcommit. I place all 28 in castle 10.