I still have a bunch of checking to confirm whether this actually works, but I’m getting my preliminary decision down ASAP:
CWB/OOH/XXD (where the Xes are Nothing or Goblins depending on whether I’m Hard-mode-ing)
On the basis that:
Adventurers should prioritize the ‘empty’ trapped rooms over the ones with Orcs, then end up funelled into the traps and towards the Hag; Clay Golem and Dragon are our aces, so they’re placed in the two locations Adventurers can’t complete the course without touching.
On further inspection it turns out I’m completely wrong about
how traps work.
and it looks like
Dungeoneers can always tell what kinds of fight they’ll be getting into: min(feature effect) between 2 and 4 is what decides how they collectively impact Score.
It also looks like
The rankings of effectiveness are different between the Entry Square, the Exit Square, and Everywhere Else; Steel Golems are far and away the best choice for guarding the entrance but ‘only’ on par with Dragons elsewhere.
Lastly
It looks like there’s a weak but solid benefit to dungeoneers having no choice even between similarly strong creatures: a choice of two dragons and a choice of two hags are both a bit scarier than hag-or-dragon. (Though that might just be because multiple of the same strong creature is evidence you’re in a well-stocked dungeon? Feature effects are hard to detangle.)
Also
It seems like there’s a weirdly strong interaction between the penultimate obstacle and the ultimate obstacle?
Did some more tinkering with this scenario. It is remarkably difficult to be 100% confident when determining the basic mechanics of this scenario, i.e.
whether adventuring parties can see more than one room ahead.
And I’m beginning to suspect that
some adventuring parties always take the optimal path, while some others are greedy algorithms just picking the easiest next encounter.
I still have a bunch of checking to confirm whether this actually works, but I’m getting my preliminary decision down ASAP:
CWB/OOH/XXD (where the Xes are Nothing or Goblins depending on whether I’m Hard-mode-ing)
On the basis that:
Adventurers should prioritize the ‘empty’ trapped rooms over the ones with Orcs, then end up funelled into the traps and towards the Hag; Clay Golem and Dragon are our aces, so they’re placed in the two locations Adventurers can’t complete the course without touching.
On further inspection it turns out I’m completely wrong about
how traps work.
and it looks like
Dungeoneers can always tell what kinds of fight they’ll be getting into: min(feature effect) between 2 and 4 is what decides how they collectively impact Score.
It also looks like
The rankings of effectiveness are different between the Entry Square, the Exit Square, and Everywhere Else; Steel Golems are far and away the best choice for guarding the entrance but ‘only’ on par with Dragons elsewhere.
Lastly
It looks like there’s a weak but solid benefit to dungeoneers having no choice even between similarly strong creatures: a choice of two dragons and a choice of two hags are both a bit scarier than hag-or-dragon. (Though that might just be because multiple of the same strong creature is evidence you’re in a well-stocked dungeon? Feature effects are hard to detangle.)
Also
It seems like there’s a weirdly strong interaction between the penultimate obstacle and the ultimate obstacle?
Oh and just for Posterity’s sake, marking that I noticed both
the way some Tournaments will have 3 judges and others will have 4
and
the change in distribution somewhere between Tournaments 3000 and 4000
but I have no clue how to make use of these phenomena.
Maybe sometimes a team will die in the dungeon?
On reflection, I think
my initial guess happened to be close to optimal
because
Adventurers will successfully deduce that a mid-dungeon Trap is less dangerous than a mid-dungeon Orc
and
Hag-then-Dragon seems to make best use of the weird endgame interaction I still don’t understand
however
I’m scared Adventurers might choose Orcs-plus-optionality over Boulders
so my new plan is
CBW/OOH/XXD
(and I also suspect
COW/OBH/XXD
might be better because of
the tendency of Adventuring parties to pick Eastern routes over Southern ones when all else is equal
but I don’t have the confidence to make that my answer.)
Did some more tinkering with this scenario. It is remarkably difficult to be 100% confident when determining the basic mechanics of this scenario, i.e.
whether adventuring parties can see more than one room ahead.
And I’m beginning to suspect that
some adventuring parties always take the optimal path, while some others are greedy algorithms just picking the easiest next encounter.
Built a treebased model; trialled a few solutions; got radically different answers which I’m choosing to trust.
The machines seem to think that the best solution I can offer is
BOG/OWH/GCD
and I’ve
found a row which confirms the adventurers-scout-one-room-ahead paradigm is, at the very least, not both eternal and absolute
so I’m making that my answer for now.
Oh, and as for
the Bonus Objective
if I’m continuing with my current paradigm I’d guess it has something to do with
an apparent interaction between Orcs and Hags which makes a path containing both less dangerous than might otherwise be expected
possibly such that
I could remove the Goblin in Room 7 without making the easiest path any easier
but
I have low confidence in this answer
and
I have no idea how I could get away with purging the second Goblin