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.
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.