riddler-castles/castle-solutions-3: 334
Data source: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/blob/master/riddler-castles/castle-solutions-3.csv
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? |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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). |