Riddler - Solutions to Castles Puzzle: castle-solutions.csv
Data license: CC Attribution 4.0 License · Data source: fivethirtyeight/data on GitHub · About: simonw/fivethirtyeight-datasette
1,349 rows sorted by Castle 5
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Link | 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? |
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1 | 1 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | because, I am number one! |
4 | 4 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 25 | 25 | The total points up for grabs is 55, and to win the war I need 28 points. I want to get 28 points by using the least number of castles, so I can put more soldiers in each castle and increase my odds of winning that castle. I can earn 28 points by winning castles 1, 8, 9, and 10. So I will put 25 soldiers each in castles 1, 8, 9, and 10 to maximize my odds of winning each of those castles simultaneously. |
5 | 5 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 25 | 25 | Submission #4. A variation of my third submission. Equally divided among just enough points to win. (Not convinced this will win either). |
6 | 6 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 25 | 25 | There are 55 points up for grabs, so 28 are needed to win. Winning castles 1,8,9,10 are the fewest number of castles needed reach 28 points. Castle 1 is as important as castle 10 for getting to 28 points. |
7 | 7 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 25 | 25 | Since there are 55 available points, I only need to win 27.5 or more points to win any given battle. By maximizing my soldiers in the four castles that are worth 28 points combined, I maximize my chances of beating more evenly distributed enemies. |
10 | 10 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 26 | 27 | If you were to win castles 10, 9, 8, and 1 each time, you would win every matchup. I put all of my soldiers on those castles, with a few extra on the more valuable castles to beat out anyone with the same strategy |
12 | 12 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 25 | 30 | it put high power making it easy to win the castles with troops. |
25 | 25 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 26 | 42 | Submission #5. I guess I have the second most confidence in this (of my 6 submissions). Defending just enough points/castles to win and dividing them unequally in (probably vain) hopes that I can win. |
36 | 36 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 29 | 29 | Seeing as there are only 55 total points available, you only need 28 victory points to win. The "easiest" way to do this (in terms of total number of castles won) is Castles 1, 8, 9 and 10. I then split the number of soldiers such that the ratio of soldiers at castles 8 to 9 to 10 is 1:1:1 and the number of soldiers at castle 1 is greater than 10. This strategy will beat anyone who splits evenly between the 10 castles, and (I'm hoping) will beat a decent number of people who go for the same four castles. An example strategy this would lose to is is someone split all 100 of their troops between e.g. Castles 9 & 10. I decided not to employ a similar strategy since I think more people will try something similar to mine rather than something somewhat counter-intuitive like betting all their troops on only two castles (although this isn't really based on any evidence). |
37 | 37 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 29 | 29 | Focus all troops on the fewest number of castles that would win the minimum 28 points necessary to win. |
78 | 78 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 29 | 31 | |
96 | 96 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 30 | If I win castles 1,8,9,10 I will receive 28 points and my opponent will only receive 27. This is the least number of castles that I need to win in order to beat my opponent. Assuming that I need to win all 4 to have a chance and that my opponent will put very little into winning a single point from castle 1, I will only deploy 10 soldiers. Winning castle 1 is a lynchpin though and I need to win it or my theory fails. All other castles are very important to me and I am able to put 30 soldiers in castles 8, 9, and 10 because castles 2-7 mean nothing to me. I can lose them all and still win if I win 1,8,9,10. |
97 | 97 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 30 | Load up the soldiers on the minimum castles needed to win |
98 | 98 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 30 | Tried to choose the fewest number of castles (and in the case of #1' the least likely to be attacked) to attack that would give me a majority of the points. |
99 | 99 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 30 | Deploying hopefully overwhelming force at castles 8 through 10, and a token force to capture 1. It doesn't allow any room for failure, but hopefully will be strong enough at the one point to ensure victory. |
127 | 127 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 31 | 31 | 28 or bust. |
128 | 128 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 31 | 31 | There are 55 points total to be won between the 2 warlords if all castles are fought for, so whoever gets 28 or more wins in that case. In that case there are 14 ways to get at least 28 points, by winning one of the following specific groups of castles: {10,9,8,7}, {10,9,8,6}, {10,9,8,5}, {10,9,8,4}, {10,9,8,3}, {10,9,8,2}, {10,9,8,1}, {9,8,7,6}, {9,8,7,5}, {9,8,7,4}, {8,7,6,5,4}, {8,7,6,5,3}, {8,7,6,5,2}, {7,6,5,4,3,2,1}. I would like to try to win the fewest number of castles yielding at least 28 points and including a castle that fewer warlords would desire if possible so I can win it with a light deployment and concentrate in the others. From the above, it appears that a 4-castle group of {10,9,8,1} satisfies that, so those are my targets and I have concentrated the soldiers in the higher values castles as desired. |
129 | 129 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 31 | 31 | Well i was in the armed forces for about 27 years soooooo i think i know what I'm talking about pfffff |
130 | 130 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 30 | 40 | There are a total of 55 victory points available, so 28 are needed to win each war. Winning is not necessarily about getting the most victory points -- it's about getting to 28 victory points as often as possible. Thus I dumped almost of my troops in the 8,9, and 10 victory point castles, since winning those three is a total of 27 victory points. Unfortunately, I needed one more victory point, so I put 7 in the 1 victory point castle, hoping that it would be virtually ignored by most people. If one were to distribute troops to castles proportional to their victory points, only (1*(100/55))= 1.818 (which rounds to 2) would be sent there, so I hoped 7 would be enough to take care of that. |
152 | 152 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 27 | 41 | |
196 | 196 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 30 | You need a minimum of 4 castles. Want to try to ensure the top three and gives a good shot at lower. |
203 | 203 | 5 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 30 | 35 | 0 | Hope to win majority of points available and no more. |
205 | 205 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 31 | 37 | The three most-valuable castles are worth 27 total, and the 7 least-valuable are worth 28. So making a strong claim to 27 points and a weak claim to the 28th point seems like a good distribution. The vulnerabilities can be exposed, though, by a distribution that weights castles 2-7 as moderately important, and emphasizes a strong attack on one castle in the 8-10 range. I just have to count on my 8-10 range being fortified enough and few enough other people being crazy enough to send 5 soldiers to a castle worth 1 point. |
206 | 206 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 30 | 40 | Only need 28 total pts to win the battle |
252 | 252 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 32 | 32 | Since I needed to win just over 50% of the possible 55 points I put all my men into the 4 castles that would earn 28 points and conceded the rest to my enemies. I figured this would allow me to concentrate my forces on castles that would guarantee me a victory if I was able to capture them. I know this is a risky (foolish?) strategy because I'm giving my enemies 27 points and failure to capture my 4 target castles would guarantee defeat. I'll be interested to see how my gamble/this game plays out. "Once more unto the breach" |
253 | 253 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 32 | 32 | All in, just like in Poker - I bet you can tell I lose a lot of money :( |
254 | 254 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 32 | 32 | I decided to go all in on a single strategy instead of hedging. You need to conquer a minimum on 4 four castles to win. I am putting all my soldiers into those four castles, so I want at least one of them to be uncontested to free up soldiers for other castles. There is only one such group of four that includes the least contested castle. That is (1, 8, 9, 10). I put the minimum force towards 1 that I thought could gain me victory relatively often. |
255 | 255 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 32 | 35 | |
256 | 256 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 32 | 36 | I want to maximize my victory points, that is, with the least number of soldiers. The higher the castle, the more troops needed to secure a victory point. To win, I need more than half of the total victory points, which is 55 (to win, I need 28). To achieve this, I selected the fewest castles that will allow me to get 28 victory points, that is: castles 10, 9, 8 and 1 (10+9+8+1=28). So I need to distribute 100 soldiers in these 4 castles and let opponent take all other castles. I weighted the victory points to win vs the amount of soldiers, ie castle 10= 10/28*100=35.7, or 36 , castle 9= 9/28*100=32.1 or 32, castle 8= 8/28*100=28.57, or 29-1. and castle 1 is 1/28*100= 3.57 =4. I assumed castle 1 would be uncontested, but ensured at least its value of 4. |
257 | 257 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 32 | 36 | To choose a strategy, I have thought about two axes. The first one is the tendency of players to use balanced strategies such as x y x yäó_ with x+y =20 as a response to the simplest strategy of 10 10 10 äó_ the second one is to concentrate troops on castles with 28 as value sum (the number needed to win a battle). Each castle i with a number of troops proportional to its value i.e. 100i/28. Using these two hypotheses, castles with highest values would have fewer troops than their values required (using the first axe). The best strategy would be then (using the second axe) to use a set a castle with sum values 28 and with the highest values possible. We end up then with using Castle 10,9,8 and 1 (sum is 28). Proportional allocation would be 36,32,28 and 4 (sum is 100). |
261 | 261 | 3 | 7 | 11 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 0 | 36 | I've no real knowledge of game theory so I'd imagine mine is extremely primitive but it was based on the idea of attempting to win exactly enough points to have a majority and not contest the other towers. Obviously there are a variety of combinations that come to the 28 points needed. I then calculated how many troops should go to each tower proportionally based on the value of the tower relative to the target value of 28. As for which of the many combinations adding up to 28 I selected? Well I stook my finger in the air and picked (10, 8, 4, 3, 2, 1), as I felt it had a nice balance of covering the Highest value tower, but also covering a decent spread of other towers. |
268 | 268 | 3 | 7 | 0 | 14 | 0 | 21 | 26 | 29 | 0 | 0 | The strategy in blotto games is always an attempt to win each castle that you win by as few soldiers as possible, while losing the castles you lose by as many as possible, in such a way as to get more than half of the available points (here the target is 28 points). I decided to chose the castles adding up to 28 points that I thought the fewest people would put significant resources in to securing, and roughly allocate my 100 armies to those castles proportionally to their point values, giving up completely on the other castles. |
332 | 332 | 3 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 | 31 | 36 | 0 | It doesnt waste troops on castles that I dont need to win |
333 | 333 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 35 | 35 | 0 | Abandon hopes of Castle 10 and put all the eggs in the basket of 7-9 + 4 or 3 and 1 |
334 | 334 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 32 | 34 | To win the most wars you need to get >=28 out of 55 points the most often. Giving 30+ troops to each of Castles 8, 9 and 10 will hopefully guarantee you 27 points. Then 3 troops on Castle 1 hopefully gets you that one last point you need. |
335 | 335 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 32 | 36 | There are 55 available points, so the winner needs 28. Castles 8, 9, and 10 provide 29%, 32%, and 36% (respectively) of the 28 points required. I allocated my troops according to their relative importance, and then put the last 3 on Castle 1 to grab my last needed point. |
336 | 336 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 32 | 36 | |
337 | 337 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 32 | 36 | 28 wins, proportional to castle value |
338 | 338 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 31 | 37 | There are 55 points available on the board, so only 28 are needed to win, assuming no ties. I could incorporate ties in my strategy, but I'm an engineer, not a mathematician, it's late on a Friday afternoon, and I'm kind of tired. 28 points can be achieved through winning only four castles: 1, 8, 9, and 10. I concentrated all my forces on those four keeps. I split up my army to assail those keeps with a distribution of 3, 29, 31, and 37 warriors, respectively. I chose those numbers because like a good commander I know my troops. And I know my warriors fight best when arranged in groups of Prime Numbers. |
366 | 366 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 | 31 | 41 | 0 | 0 | give up the high points castles to win the middle castle points with a small attempt to win the bottom two |
368 | 368 | 2 | 4 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 15 | 25 | 30 | Assume low value castles may be lightly defended, so try to pick up 3 castles for a total of 15 soldiers. Send most resources to highest value castles, and basically hope the archfiend has wasted troops trying to overwhelm me at 4, 5 and 6, |
393 | 393 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 0 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 18 | 20 | I wanted to distribute my soldiers proportionally to each castle value. At two soldiers per castle point, I would need 110 soldiers, so I just dropped #5. Although it reduces my maximum to 52.5, that distribution has the advantage of faring well against very lopsided strategies... I'm guessing :) |
467 | 467 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 11 | 12 | 21 | 23 | 23 | I wanted to maximize my chances at the top end while also giving myself a chance to pick up a few low numbers if anyone decided to completely punt those castles |
509 | 509 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 11 | 0 | 21 | 31 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 28 points requires 4 or more castles, I wanted to avoid the competition for the top spots as much as possible so chose a wider distribution assuming that fewer opponents would go for the 1/2/3 point castles. This is probably strong against 4 castle solutions (competing strongly for 8 and 7, then challenging at a weaker level for 6 and 4 should hit a weak spot in most 4/5 castle solutions). Probably weakest against larger spreads, and a bit of a crap shoot against other 6/7 castle solutions, just depends where you load up. Fun one, thanks. |
581 | 581 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 33 | 33 | I need to win the top 3 castles plus one so I tried to optimise for this result. |
582 | 582 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 33 | 34 | |
711 | 711 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 14 | 16 | 18 | 21 | 24 | |
914 | 914 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 15 | 21 | 0 | 28 | 32 | Each point is worth about 2 soldiers. But like gerrymandering, you want to win a lot of castles by a slim margin and lose a few castles by a large margin. So I didn't compete for castles 8 and 5 and hope to use those soldiers to win the other big castles by a little. |
915 | 915 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 0 | 48 | 28pts wins. I hope my opponent won't play for castles 1, 2, 3, and 4, and so I put one soldier each there, splitting the remainder between castles 8 and 10 to make exactly 28. Cool idea, BTW! |
916 | 916 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 32 | 32 | Tell us denote a particular deployment by a 10-tuple, castle 1 first. So the above deployment is (1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 32, 32, 32). I have been considering 3 broad classes of strategy. (Obviously there are deployments which don't fit into this schema, but which may still be meritorious.) I call these classes Paper, Scissors and Stone. Paper strategies cover all the castles with forces approximately proportional to the value of the castle, for example (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19). I also consider an equal distribution of forces, 10 to each castle, to be a Paper deployment. Scissors surgically target a winning subset of castles, for example (10, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 30, 30,. 30). Clearly Scissors will defeat paper. Stone strategies target subset of castles insufficient to win on their own, but additionally hope to win or tie enough other castles to gain the extra points to win the war. (1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 32, 32, 32) is a stone strategy. It will win if it wins castles 8, 9, and 10 and either wins castle 1 or ties any other castle. Stone loses to paper (it wins its targeted castles but loses the rest). It mostly wins against scissors because both strategies are likely to contest at least one high-value castle, and stone's forces will be more concentrated. It's my expectation that the majority of depoyments submitted will be Scissors or paper-scissors hybrids. My original idea was the stone (1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 33, 33, 33) This is elegant in that it wins precisely when it wins castles 8, 9, and 10, and any other castle is uncontested by the opponent. The first condition is nearly certain against a scissor strategy since these must target at least four castles, and it will be very difficult to commit as many as 33 soldiers to any one of them. The second condition is much less certain. I cannot predict how many competitors will decide to contest every castle. I decided to tweak my original idea as I suspect that rather more scissor players will put at least one soldier into every castle than w… |
917 | 917 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 24 | 30 | 35 | 0 | 0 | Just get to 28. Leave 9 and 10 alone because they are too enticing. |
919 | 919 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 0 | 60 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | I assume a lot of people are going to go all out on Castle 10. I just am trying to avoid confrontation and maximize my chances of beating people who went all on ten. |
922 | 922 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 33 | 33 | |
923 | 923 | 0 | 26 | 32 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | I thought people would fight it out for the high value targets and end up splitting a fair number of those castles. If I could take enough of the lower (less competitive castles) I would win more points. Also, stay away from clean looking numbers. |
925 | 925 | 0 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 0 | 27 | 27 | I think I need to get my minimum 28 points by trying to take 4 castles, which is the minimum it would take. There are 27 combinations of 4 that generate at least 28 pts. All of them require some combo of castle 10, 9 or 8. I chose the one that has two castles well below 8 where I think there will be less competition and concentrated my troops on 9 and 10. Bit of a punt. Can't wait to see the results! |
929 | 929 | 0 | 16 | 16 | 17 | 0 | 17 | 0 | 17 | 0 | 17 | A wild shot in a dimly lit room. Loosing any one of these forts would guarantee victory. By focusing on fewer castles, but allowing for a plan B, I feel like there is a fighting chance. To be clear, this is a guess. |
930 | 930 | 0 | 15 | 14 | 14 | 0 | 14 | 15 | 14 | 14 | 0 | Sacrifice a few castles completely to have a better chance winning against all the even splits. 3 was a hunch but considered only sacrificing 1. Then on a psychology hunch I assumed the ends and the middle would be where people did something screwy so those were the sacrificial castles. |
937 | 937 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 0 | 28 | 32 | I wanted make sure I was always ~2-3 points above a multiple of 5, since I think a lot of people will use either a multiple of 5, or add 1 extra to a multiple of 5. This is a risky strategy since I only bet in 4 rounds, and I need to win every single one of them. However, I think many strategies will be vulnerable to this one. |
939 | 939 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 14 | 0 | 19 | 25 | 31 | 0 | 0 | 28 points will win any battle, so any troops deployed fighting for more are essentially wasted. I decided against chasing the top castles, as they may typically require more resource, and focused on the required 28 points on a sliding scale, aiming to take no castle within that for granted. |
947 | 947 | 0 | 10 | 30 | 60 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | swag |
949 | 949 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 20 | 0 | 28 | 0 | 30 | Each even castle is worth more than the odd castle before it |
953 | 953 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 30 | I'm "cheating" in that I am doing the opposite of my first battle plan. |
954 | 954 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 30 | My goal was to defeat the strategies I thought would be most commonly used, specifically, 10 at every castle, 25 in castles 10-7, 25 in castles 10-8 and 25 in 1. My strategy does lose to 10-8 34 33 33 however I don't think that strategy will be heavily employed as it loses to 10 at every castle. |
955 | 955 | 0 | 9 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 40 | I didn't work the math out precisely, but I first established that I only wanted to deploy troops to win 28/55 victory points to avoid spreading myself thin. Next, I gave some thought as to which Castles I felt would be least likely to have troops deployed. This is primarily guesswork, but I went with 2, 3, 6, 7, and 10. For the distribution of troops, I put more eggs in the higher values castles but didn't calculate too much beyond that. |
957 | 957 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 30 | 35 | 0 | 0 | We have to keep in mind, our goal is to beat other people, not randomness. My feeling is that most of the analytical riddler minds will modify proportional distribution, giving slight edges to certain castles to try to win them by slight margins, as this seems like the optimal plan. So let's turn that on it's head, and beat a lot of people who smoothly allocate their points. There are 55 total points, so 23 total points win. There are many ways to get this with only three castles, but let's keep in mind people will tend to try to do sneaky things to steal high number castles (particularly #9, as that seems "sneaky" to ignore 10 and steal 9). My first reaction was: just win 7,8,9. Put all your points in and win those. This gives 24 and a sure win. But again, 9 seems like a very highly contested castle. So I decided instead, 6,7,8,2. Surely 2 and 6 should be more guaranteed than 9! Now just how to distribute. Well, I should mirror how others will be distributing their points here. (obviously 25 troops to each could lose me 7,8 somewhat frequently). While it seems like I MUST win all four to win, many people will likely assign 0 to some castles, so tie points may come into effect. So even losing 6 can be repaired by a tie in 10 and 3. So I aim to get 23 total points, so let's assign proportionally: {0,2/23*100, 0,0,0,6/23*100, 7/23*100, 8/23*100, 0, 0} = {0,9,0,0,0,26,30,35,0,0}. I need to win every one of these four I've chosen (unless other people elect 0 on some castles... very possible?), but I think in the long run, I've overvalued weird castles that aren't likely to be beaten in general. |
958 | 958 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 14 | 0 | 21 | 25 | 0 | 32 | 0 | Instead of comparing all options, I compared all combinations that sought to defend 4 castles and promoted the best 10 combinations to an 'a-league'. These combinations were subject to constraints: the total points being defended by at least one army was 28 or more and the armies were allotted to the castles proportional to the number of available victory points for the number of castles I decided to defend. I then did the same for all combinations that sought to defend 5 castles, 6 castles, and 7 castles, 8 castles, and 9 castles. I then ran these a-league combinations (60) against each other and found that this combination won 43 fights, tied 16 fights, and lost none. http://imgur.com/a/TUJmZ. Interestingly, this wins at most 28 points and is thus vulnerable to 0 7 0 14 0 21 25 0 32 1 and the like. I suck at game theory and I'm counting on not everyone coming up with this optimization and having one person specifically beat it. |
966 | 966 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 14 | 0 | 21 | 25 | 0 | 33 | 0 | Ranked by troop efficiency points by expected value, all-in |
973 | 973 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 23 | 26 | 0 | 33 | 0 | the maximum point in this game is 55, so to win in any 1 on 1 match up i only need to get 28 points. so focusing on specific castle(s) with total points of 28, i could distribute 100 troops in only 5 castles to guaranteed a control. this strategy can also works if i decide to put 100 troops in 4 castles e.g 1, 8, 9, 10. However majority of people tends to contest "high-value" castle(s) (castle 7, 8, 9, 10) so it would be a safer pick if i just distribute the troops in less-contested castles. |
977 | 977 | 0 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 0 | Need 28 of 55 to win a matchup. |
995 | 995 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 13 | 0 | 4 | 20 | 27 | 26 | 1 | The best result from a quickly-bodged genetic algorithm. If I realized the deadline was EST this is what I would have submitted then. |
1000 | 1000 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 22 | 24 | 21 | 24 | Need to win at least 28 points to win a battle. A reasonable strategy should be to exceed the expected number of soldiers at each castle if they were evenly distributed according to points such that you gain at least 28 points (e.g. try to win castles 10, 9, 6, 3). In practice, I used a genetic "like" algorithm to randomly evolve a population of 1000 strategies that competed against each other and took the best performing strategy out of that population after 1000 generations. The algorithm used elitism where the top 10% of strategies were carried over from one generation to the next. The top 40% of strategies were each randomly modified by shifting a few soldiers around (15 on average). The final 50% of the population at each generation was a set of random new strategies. |
1057 | 1057 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 96 | Maximize my chances of winning castle 10 while hedging in the event I lose castle 10 that I get other castles to sufficiently win the game. |
1060 | 1060 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 18 | 0 | 20 | 22 | 25 | 0 | 0 | If I am able to win all 5 that I try for, I will win. |
1063 | 1063 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 28 | 29 | There are 55 points up for grabs. I need at least 28 of those points. 10+9+8+1=28. So I need to win 10,9,8, and some other number. 3 seems like a good other number to win. It's probably not too popular. But one in 4, just in case it gets left open and is the points I need to win, or someone puts only 1 in it and it's the points I need to tie. The 27/28/29 beats this exact strategy except with 28/28/28 instead. And it doesn't leave me too vulnerable to 27/27/27s because if they let their fourth number be something other than 4 and they do put 1 into their other numbers, I win. (I win the 3, then I win with the tie from 4). If they don't put 1 into their other numbers, their fourth number needs to be 3. |
1064 | 1064 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 30 | 35 | 0 | 0 | There are 55 points to win, I need 28. I don't need to win every round, just the majority so if I deploy to win exactly 28 points in some of the less likeable castles, I should win more often then not. |
1065 | 1065 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 35 | It beat my previous strategy |
1067 | 1067 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 15 | 0 | 15 | 15 | 39 | 1 | 1 | The most general strategy for defeating "random" deployments is to pick a set of castles representing a majority of points. Most obvious would be the high-point castles, and in fact if you look at the 27 combinations of four castles that add up to 28 points or more, each of the top three castles are required for at least 17 of the 27. So, we expect most strategies to rely on two or more of the top three castles plus two others (25,0,25,0,25,0,25,0,0,0). The available approaches to beat these baseline strategies are: 1) Claim two of those three with overwhelming strength and pick two more with sufficient strength to pick them up against token support (0,37,37,0,13,13,0,0,0,) 2) Figure that almost everyone wants to use either the 9-point castle or the 10-point castle and overload that, then spread the rest fairly widely expecting to pick up the holes in the opponent's broken strategy (1,51,8,8,8,8,8,8,0,0) 3) Execute the strategy more or less directly, trying to claim three of the top four with strength, then choosing a fourth castle to claim with less than overwhelming support. (1,26,26,26,1,17,1,1,1,0) 4) Pick a strategy that requires winning five castles that do not include the top two. (1,1,41,14,14,1,14,14,0,0) Of these, the third seems the weakest--the others break it. Counterintuitively, the fourth strategy is the most successful. Going hard after the 8-point castle leaves enough points to pick four others against token support that other strategies can afford after preparing to win one of the top two castles. The disadvantage is that it fails against even support Variations include how many troops to send as tokens to the other castles, hoping to pick up all of the points from an undefended castle. |
1071 | 1071 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 13 | 0 | 22 | 25 | 28 | 0 | 0 | Who cares. It's probably wrong :) I know that I have to win every castle that I put troops in. I just thought about the different configurations that people might choose and I'm hoping that I win against more than anyone else |
1072 | 1072 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 13 | 0 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 0 | 0 | Picked castles that, if I won, would give me one more point than those points attributed to castles I lost. |
1073 | 1073 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 23 | 1 | 1 | 29 | 34 | Please send me results if and when available. Much appreciated. |
1074 | 1074 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 15 | 0 | 20 | 26 | 28 | 0 | 0 | Goal is to get 28/55 points and no more. Anticipating what other peoples' common strategies might be, I selected a combination of castles and troop deployments designed with an attempt to win exactly 28 points in a typical one-on-one match-up. |
1075 | 1075 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 14 | 0 | 21 | 25 | 29 | 0 | 0 | Find the total points (55) then minimum winning total (28). Determine which combinations of castles yields 28 points (15 total combinations). Find the percentage each castle would make up a victory condition. Add each percentage of a combination and remove any combination above 100% leaving 6 combinations. Find each castle's percentage of total points then remove any combinations above 50% leaving four combinations (10-8-6-4, 10-9-6-3, 8-7-6-4-3, and 10-9-4-3-2). Went with gut in decision of 8-7-6-4-3 combination due to belief that majority of people will go after 10 and 9. Used percentages from winning total calculations as number of units in each castle. |
1076 | 1076 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 14 | 0 | 20 | 24 | 29 | 1 | 1 | You need 28 points to win so only play for them, I went for the mid values as I more people would go all out for the high values. |
1077 | 1077 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 13 | 0 | 22 | 25 | 29 | 0 | 0 | Heavily stacked castles summing to 28. |
1079 | 1079 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 12 | 0 | 16 | 30 | 31 | 0 | 0 | Cede 9 and 10, concentrate power on 6,7,8 with remaining forces allocated to ensure a point victory is possible |
1083 | 1083 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 11 | 0 | 21 | 26 | 31 | 0 | 0 | I need 28 points to win. I m gonna put everything in castle 8 7 6 4 and 3. I need to win all of them though (can't tie). |
1084 | 1084 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 11 | 0 | 21 | 26 | 31 | 0 | 0 | If I "forfeit" some battles, I can focus my forces on the battles I choose to take. I can feasibly win with four battles if I take castle 9 and forfeit 10, but I could instead to forfeit 9 & 10 and win with five castles total: 8, 7, 6, 4, 3 (one might also replace "...4, 3" with "...5, 2"). To win with 6 castles, forfeiting castle 6: Castles 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 1. Another option is to forfeit castle 7 as well, again winning the war with 6 castles: Castles 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. Lastly, if I wanted to win with 7, I'd need to win all the castles from 1 to 7. These are somewhat minimalist answers, as I tried to forfeit the highest-valued castles possible. I chose to go with castles 8, 7, 6, 4, and 3, but I tried to avoid multiples of 5, since I suspected them as likely answers from other submitters, and ties on castles 6, 7, or 8 should result as a loss for my battle plan. 0 on 10, 0 on 9, 31 on 8, 26 on 7, 21 on 6, 0 on 5, 11 on 4, 11 on 3, 0 on 2, 0 on 1. |
1086 | 1086 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 27 | 0 | 36 | This approach goes all-in on winning just enough points to win. It is very vulnerable to "random" distributions, which only need to win one of the castles I actually allocate troops to, but puts enough troops in the "target" castles that I should be able to win them most of the time. |
1088 | 1088 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 15 | 0 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 0 | 0 | I need to get to 28 points and distributed them on 3,4,5,7, and 8 giving up the other 5 |
1089 | 1089 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 13 | 0 | 22 | 25 | 30 | 0 | 0 | I decided to commit all of my troops to castles 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8. If I win these 5, that will be enough points to win. This beat many of the other things I tried. |
1093 | 1093 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 36 | This deployment was optimised to contain the fewest castles required to reach the minimum needed points to win (28). Specifically, I wanted the deployment to have the most "bang for your buck," and to that end I looked for the most efficient castle. The metric I used was troops per point per point, which produced castle number 3, leaving only 2 selections for the castle, 3, 6, 9 and 10 or 3, 7,8 and 10. I chose the combination with the fewest points per troop, and then weighted troop placement by the number of troops I'd expect someone who had placed them based on value alone would have placed them. |
1094 | 1094 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 30 | 30 | Going straight from either end, leads to Castle 7 being the swing castle. I am therefore avoiding Castle 7 altogether. Putting 25 on the last four seems strong, but you would only have to lose one castle to lose. Putting 40 on Castle 7 and 10 on the first six would be good unless someone won castle 8-10 and stole a single other castle as 8-10 gives 27 points and to win you need 28. To avoid these scenarios, you could take 5,6,8,9 with force, leave 7 alone and try to benefit from a possible 0 on 4+10. Putting 30 on 8-10 and 10 on 2 would win all. Except Castle 2 may not be that under the radar so instead I will go after Castle 3 if that means I win against similar strategies to mine that choose Castles 1 or 2. I am avoiding the middle because of those that will go for the averages, avoiding the high value targets and the worthless low ranking castles. Scenarios that lose would be 31-33 on 8-10, but those would also lose to other scenarios. |
1095 | 1095 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 30 | 33 | A good strategy needs to achieve a number of goals: 1) It should deploy troops in proportion to the number of points to be won 2) It should concentrate on getting enough points to win, rather than trying to win all of the points 3) It should be robust against opponents who make small deviations from the same strategy 4) It should beat every obvious strategy There are 55 points available but only 28 points are required to win. Therefore, most of the troops are concentrated on winning castles 8, 9 and 10, for which 27 points are available. The remainder of the troops are concentrated on trying to win castle 3, rather than trying to win castle 7. This is because castle 7 will be more competitive than castle 3, and deploying a proportionate number of troops to win castle 7 will be a waste of resources which could be used to fight for the other castles. This strategy is robust against another strategy which leaves a lot of the smaller castles undefended. Even if it lost castle 9 or castle 10 to such an opponent, it would still win because of the split points at the castles ignored by both sides. It would lose to a strategy which attempted to win castle 1 rather than castle 3 but it has an advantage over the latter strategy in that it would beat the "obvious" strategy of putting 10 troops on each castle, while the latter strategy would not. |
1101 | 1101 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 17 | 25 | 40 | 0 | 0 | Targeted 28 points with what I guess is a relatively infrequently chosen combination and small number of castles. Distribution of soldiers is a bit of guesswork on relative prioritization |
1106 | 1106 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 11 | 0 | 22 | 27 | 32 | 0 | 2 | I need 28 points to beat any opponent. I figure most strategies out there will be of several forms: (1) get all the high point castles, so 10-9-8 plus something small; (2) skip the 10 and try to get something like 9-8-7-4 or 9-8-6-5; (3) get all the small castles, 7-6-5-4-3-2-1, and (4) some general "what-is-each-castle-worth?" strategy that has a declining point value for each castle. To triangulate against them, I went with a very specific 8-7-6-4-3 strategy to try to get to exactly 28. I also assume some human bias toward numbers ending in 0 or 5, so my numbers are 1 or 2 above those values. Finally, I put 2 points in castle 10 to cover against those putting 0 or 1 in there. Note that winning castle 10 would cover against losses three different ways: 8 or 7-3 or 6-4. I don't expect to win, but I'm hoping that I'll place pretty high with this strategy, with an outside shot at winning. |
1110 | 1110 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 22 | 25 | 28 | 0 | Sunk cost |
1111 | 1111 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 22 | 25 | 28 | 0 | Sunk cost |
1112 | 1112 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 22 | 25 | 28 | 0 | Sunk cost |
1119 | 1119 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 0 | I choose to abandon the 10, instead focusing on the next best castles. Winning 6-9 is enough to win with even a little margin for error. |
1145 | 1145 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 0 | 4+9+7+8=28 which is the least amount needed to win the war. |
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CREATE TABLE "riddler-castles/castle-solutions" ( "Castle 1" INTEGER, "Castle 2" INTEGER, "Castle 3" INTEGER, "Castle 4" INTEGER, "Castle 5" INTEGER, "Castle 6" INTEGER, "Castle 7" INTEGER, "Castle 8" INTEGER, "Castle 9" INTEGER, "Castle 10" INTEGER, "Why did you choose your troop deployment?" TEXT );