Data and Dice

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106

Melee threat range is far easier to calculate, cater for and counter.

Shooting, with (usually lot longer range) is harder to mitigate against. The fact that you also have to decide who to charge in one go, but can choose who you are shooting at unit by unit. This makes the ranged stuff more flexible and in the hands of good players really dangerous.

Having a potential shooting range metric, plus a damage one would work - but it probably needs to be separate - or dual use units just contribute the best/average ranking in any overall total (as obviously they can’t be charging and shooting things at the same time)

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107

It’s also worth noting that shooting is easier to coordinate into a single target and one can generally get more units shooting the same target than shooting the same target

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108

You guys have me convinced. I’ll build in threat ranges just looking at melee/charges.

109

Post-Australian Masters. Not much time for write-up, so it’s more of a datadump.

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110

If you wanted what might be a last dive into a pre CoK25 event, Warfare is a 46 player 2day event at 1995pts this weekend.

Here are the lists - being run through the Companion.

https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1gav_hlkCfaLNeDlxEzipAq9V0KPwvsu8?usp=sharing

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111

Thanks! I did a quick data pull and have a csv of the lists. Does this generally look correct to you?

lists

One wasn’t in pdf but the other 45 appeared correct. I’ll try to run it through the pre-tourney list exporter once we confirm the underlying data. I have to do a bit of recoding to rescale from 2300 to 1995 (originally everything was just built for 2300, but that should be straightforward enough to change).

EDIT: It appears your allies weren’t added in. I"ll get that straightened out.

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112

Kings of Warfare III: A Comprehensive Tournament Analysis for 2024 Kings of War Meta Trends – Data and Dice

Quick data pull and parse–

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113

Nice stuff.

The power concentration info is interesting - esp as 2nd and 3rd in the list play each game 1!

114

I was trying to think through different ways to look at list effectiveness. Originally I was tracking number of hammers, but it occurred to me that we could calculate a gini coefficient and apply it here. It’s the first time I’ve included that, so we’ll see if it has any predictive power.

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115

Do you have the tournament number for the mantic companion results? I’m poking around but not finding it for warfare III.

116

Not sure of event number, but we were certainly submitting results on it.

Final standings here. Was 5/3/1 for W/D/L and scenario points first decider (capped at 7 max a game).

Screenshot_20241117-204226_Messenger
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117

Sadly, to run elo calcs and other analysis, I need the game-by-game results. If those are available, I’d love to take a look, but I also realize that may not be doable.

118

I took the time to update the units for the CoK 2025 updates, and then reran the meatgrinder elo simulator (1.25 million combats between units). Quick summary here: https://dataanddice.com/evaluating-unit-cost-effectiveness-in-kings-of-war-a-comprehensive-analysis-using-elo-ratings-for-the-cok-2025-updates/

There’s a ton of data to play with, and I’ll pump out some new army reviews for CoK 2025. In the meantime, let me know if you want any particular analysis or direction I should take this. I still have a long list of ideas queued up by TastyBagel that I’m playing around with!

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119

I had some time to dig into the issue around complexity creep–some quick thoughts.

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120

Agreed, but only if one ignores Command Dice.

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121

A bit delayed with work, but the Kingdoms of Men army review:

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122

You heard it here folks! The data says 4’s are indeed swingy, and Rampage Giants are better than Slayer Giants! :rofl:

I enjoyed catching up on these entries today! I skimmed them when they were posted originally, but wasn’t able to take any notes or think too deeply at the time.

I would agree with DarkBlack, that the complexity question shoots up severely if you try to account for Command Dice being introduced. It’s been neat seeing more Keyword changes and support (Undead Ghast getting the TC aura for free now, for example), and I wish they leaned a little more into keywords instead of the new Orders mechanic. I think there is a lot of untapped design space here for a lot of armies.

There are some neat standouts in the meatgrinder simulation! I know you kinda ranked them in the presentation, but adding the column for “Cost Effectiveness” in each section might be beneficial for readers. (For example, it looks like the KoM Beast Cav are the best Monster Cav… but don’t make the cut for cost effective units in this overview.)

I appreciate the shoutout in write up. As the basis for so many armies, the Kingdoms of Men are certainly peculiar to analyze. Really intriguing to see the Militia Mob horde come out as the biggest winner, but yeah, I suppose that is a lot of Nerve to get through for 105 points. They are cheaper than Zombies even! I might need to try them out sometime, though I don’t think the army has the other fun tools for those more “trashy” lists. Neat to see the Foot Guard (Keyworded with Knight) do so well too. Clever Generals might notice that the Monarch has a neat upgrade to give Knights Rally as well… I liked it, but have only run it… maybe once so far? The Kingdoms of Men are definitely a neat army with some interesting build options.

-Neat to see the Rampage Giant beat out the Slayer Giant, as mentioned. More targets probably helped with that a bit, as I’ve seen in my own testing a bit as well. Neat to see the basic Monarch ranked above them as well.
-Crazy to see the Mammoth rank above them though. I haven’t really liked the Mammoth since they took my light ballista away, and felt like the 5 points between them and the Giant got you a lot of value. Could be rampage targets coming into play though, or swinginess with the Giants more variable attack number?

I’m having more fun than I probably should hunting through the big graph. A few missing entries I think are worth mentioning:
-Pikes (upgrade from Spears). I think Pikes are way more common than their baseline spear units.
-Rifles (upgrade from Crossbow Block). Infantry shooting isn’t common, but this might be neat to throw on the chart as well, especially as there is so little difference between the Bowmen and Crossbows currently.
-Foot Guard with two-handers. A personal musing! We’ve seen two-handers make for more effective infantry hordes (I believe with the old Melee 4+ Lower Abyssal profile?) Might be illustrative to run the numbers on the potential swap here too.
-Mounted Scouts with Blackpowder Weapons upgrade. Another personal musing. I have always liked the concept of these skirmish units, but they have been tough to get value from. I’m not too surprised to see them at the very bottom of the the chart! My gut says giving this unit an edge (good stats + elite for elves, TC for Centaur Hunters) makes them better units, so I’m wondering if buying Piercing helps or hurts their effectiveness.

Thanks for the articles! Interesting reads as always!

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123

Yeah, it’s a bit of a balance. The match ups are pseudo random and a mix of picking close in elo and then randomly. Rampage impacts more units, but slayer impacts more units at the top, so it cuts both ways. My sense is that slayer is theoretically better with the right match up, but good opponents will work hard to make that not happen, so Rampage is a way to hedge your bets.

I’ll look into building out more of the options for units. It’s unfortunately completely manual because the way upgrades appear in the companion is completely haphazard and not uniform so it can’t be done programmatically.

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124

I’m glad to see that my crude data collection revealed something sensible!

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125

Yeah, I remember you saying tracking the weapon swaps and such was a bit of a pain. I tried to order these in terms of importance. Pikes are easily the most popular of these units, and so many KoM approaches have used them, that it was notable that they in particular were missing.

Still, good stuff! We’ll see if we can get a petition going for your boss to add this to your current job duties. :rofl:

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