Half the spells are for offense, half for defense. A wizard never goes to a duel with pure offense or pure defense prepared.
As per other spoilers, Dark is an element, elements come in anti-correlated pairs, and total mana level is 150.
Each spell has elemental affinities that make sense. For example, Fireball works better with high levels of Fire and Air mana and Abyssal works better with high levels of Water and Dark mana. (3C2)*(2^2)=12.
Offensive and defensive spells’ affinities are divided “fairly”.
Something lets weaker-mana spells win sometimes. It looks like defenses of an element do not protect well against offenses of that element, and defenses of an opposed element protect very well.
I’d like to figure out precisely what protecting well or not well means, but haven’t yet. I think the most likely candidates for best spells to prepare are:
(current choice because YOLO Edit: not anymore) Fireball, Mud Missiles, and Rays. No defense. What could go wrong. No one ever does it because in real combat you need defenses but in duels all-out-offense turns out to be technique.
(hope this ends up being right) Fireball, Lava Levee, Vambraces. Hoping counters trump weaknesses.
(would be a bit sad if right) Fireball, Mud Missiles, Abyssal Armor. Just high stats with an obvious weakness.
Are mana levels actually normalized to 150 total, or is that an effect of our measurement/prediction process?
How do duels actually work? They could be as simple as “add up mana values of elements on offense, modify defense mana values according to effectiveness, subtract; compare results; higher wins” or much more complicated like bucketizing mana levels, choosing a random person to attack first, choosing a random attack and a random defense, doing [something like the simple one] to determine damage, switch attackers, repeat until someone has taken X damage, also wizards have native attack/defense/elemental bonuses, also wizards have different HP so X1 and X2 not just X”.
Seeing if I can figure out how duels work, now. First guess is not correct: that mages pick an offensive spell and defensive spell at random, then calculate damage, and whoever hits for more, wins; damage is determined by for each offensive element, taking the mana level, reducing it by half the mana levels of the defensive elements, adjusting defensive x2 if element opposes and x0 if element is the same, summing the two results.
I need more randomness, maybe; my calibration curve looks decent, but overconfident at both ends. In particular this predicts certain duels are 100% determined, but they do not always work out that way.
How about picking an element at random, too? The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t really do much re expected value. I’d expect that it’s more like “whoever does X damage first wins” so that repeatedly pinging for 8 can be better than a 50⁄50 chance of hitting for 13. That may make the difference between Levee and Vambraces for defense, for example, as the opponent’s expected mana-levels-getting-through vs Levee is ~1.5 less than vs Vambraces, but Levee is more likely to let some damage through.
Trying the original, but letting the probability of winning be proportional to the respective damage dealt, yields decent calibration but underconfident in the 5-25% and 75-95% ranges. This seems very suggestive of “deal damage until X”; a huge advantage translates to a win, a tiny advantage translates to a tiny advantage, and a moderate advantage, repeated, translates to probably-a-win?
In any case, it seems very likely that the structure has something like “opponents choose an offense vs a defense spell, then ??”, so I think I need to abandon my YOLO. :( I would like to go with “maybe higher EV? beats reliably blocking?” and choose Lava Levees for my defenses, with Fireball and Rainbow Rays for offense. I think Fireball is the very clear choice for offense, but Mud Missiles might be better than Rainbow Rays.
Half the spells are for offense, half for defense. A wizard never goes to a duel with pure offense or pure defense prepared.
As per other spoilers, Dark is an element, elements come in anti-correlated pairs, and total mana level is 150.
Each spell has elemental affinities that make sense. For example, Fireball works better with high levels of Fire and Air mana and Abyssal works better with high levels of Water and Dark mana. (3C2)*(2^2)=12.
Offensive and defensive spells’ affinities are divided “fairly”.
Something lets weaker-mana spells win sometimes. It looks like defenses of an element do not protect well against offenses of that element, and defenses of an opposed element protect very well.
I’d like to figure out precisely what protecting well or not well means, but haven’t yet. I think the most likely candidates for best spells to prepare are:
(
current choice because YOLOEdit: not anymore) Fireball, Mud Missiles, and Rays. No defense. What could go wrong. No one ever does it because in real combat you need defenses but in duels all-out-offense turns out to be technique.(hope this ends up being right) Fireball, Lava Levee, Vambraces. Hoping counters trump weaknesses.
(would be a bit sad if right) Fireball, Mud Missiles, Abyssal Armor. Just high stats with an obvious weakness.
Wondering about:
Are mana levels actually normalized to 150 total, or is that an effect of our measurement/prediction process?
How do duels actually work? They could be as simple as “add up mana values of elements on offense, modify defense mana values according to effectiveness, subtract; compare results; higher wins” or much more complicated like bucketizing mana levels, choosing a random person to attack first, choosing a random attack and a random defense, doing [something like the simple one] to determine damage, switch attackers, repeat until someone has taken X damage, also wizards have native attack/defense/elemental bonuses, also wizards have different HP so X1 and X2 not just X”.
Seeing if I can figure out how duels work, now. First guess is not correct: that mages pick an offensive spell and defensive spell at random, then calculate damage, and whoever hits for more, wins; damage is determined by for each offensive element, taking the mana level, reducing it by half the mana levels of the defensive elements, adjusting defensive x2 if element opposes and x0 if element is the same, summing the two results.
I need more randomness, maybe; my calibration curve looks decent, but overconfident at both ends. In particular this predicts certain duels are 100% determined, but they do not always work out that way.
How about picking an element at random, too? The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t really do much re expected value. I’d expect that it’s more like “whoever does X damage first wins” so that repeatedly pinging for 8 can be better than a 50⁄50 chance of hitting for 13. That may make the difference between Levee and Vambraces for defense, for example, as the opponent’s expected mana-levels-getting-through vs Levee is ~1.5 less than vs Vambraces, but Levee is more likely to let some damage through.
Trying the original, but letting the probability of winning be proportional to the respective damage dealt, yields decent calibration but underconfident in the 5-25% and 75-95% ranges. This seems very suggestive of “deal damage until X”; a huge advantage translates to a win, a tiny advantage translates to a tiny advantage, and a moderate advantage, repeated, translates to probably-a-win?
In any case, it seems very likely that the structure has something like “opponents choose an offense vs a defense spell, then ??”, so I think I need to abandon my YOLO. :( I would like to go with “maybe higher EV? beats reliably blocking?” and choose Lava Levees for my defenses, with Fireball and Rainbow Rays for offense. I think Fireball is the very clear choice for offense, but Mud Missiles might be better than Rainbow Rays.
Current submission: Fireball, Lava, Rays.