Valhalla stats

[Olorin]

Seems as good as anywhere to place this.  We have finished 113 (at last count) games in Maelstrom.  So we have enough to look at general trends and see where each Kingdom is relative to the others.  Obviously this changes as the Kingdoms do but as an overall, this will work.

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First is how popular the Kingdom is. This is simply how many times it is picked to play in the various games.

Obviously Death Knights is the most popular. Chosen 77 times, or over 2/3rds of the games.

2nd place goes to Giants at 71 times.
3rd is a tie between Lycans and Demon Princes at 67.

The rest that have been chosen for at least half the games are:
5th: Dark Elves at 63.
6th: Druids at 59.
7th: Necromancers at 58.

Last of the top quarter:
8th: Red Dragons at 54.

Rest of the top half in popularity:
9th: Illusionists, 50
10th: Underworld, 49
11th: Gnomes, 46
11th: Free Traders, 46
13th: Sacred Order, 43
14th: Ancient Ones, 41
14th: Sorcerer, 41
16: Lizard Men, 40

On to the bottom:
17th: Warlock, 39

The rest are chosen less than 1/3rd of the time.
18th: Tyrant, 37
19th: Dwarves, 36
20th: Cimmerians, 34
21st: Fairy Folk, 32
22nd: Rangers, 30
23rd: Elves, 29
24th: Forgotten, 28

Then the bottom quarter, chosen less than a quarter of the time or worse.
25th: Amazons, 27
26th: Black Dragons, 26
27th: Pirates, 24
27th: Elementalists, 24
29th: Halflings, 19
29th: Alchemists, 19
31st: Atlanteans, 13
32nd: Nomads, 5

[Olorin]

Now that that is out of the way, we move on to wins and podium appearances. this is where it gets interesting. Death Knights have the most wins [at 14], but they do not have the best winning percentage. The Demon Princes have that. What am I talking about? The number of wins as a percentage of games played. Demon Princes have 13 wins from 67 games played in. That is winning 19.4% of the time. Death Knights have 14 wins in 77 games played in. Which is 18.2%.

These are not really surprising. They are still #1 and #2. What gets interesting is seeing who else is in the top 8.

#3: Ancient Ones [17.1%, 7 out of 41]
#4: Red Dragons [16.7%, 9 out of 54]
#5: Halflings [15.8%, 3 out of 19]
#6: Forgotten [14.2%, 4 out of 28]
#7: Illusionists [14.0%, 7 out of 50]
#8: Elves [13.8%, 4 out of 29]

Seems some of those should be more popular. On to the top half of the winning %.
#9: Druids [13.6%, 8 out of 59]
#10: Lycans [13.4%, 9 out of 67]
#11: Warlock [12.8%, 5 out of 39]
#12: Pirates [12.5%, 3 out of 24]
#13: Sorcerer [12.2%, 5 out of 41]
#14: Necromancers [12.1%, 7 out of 58]
#15: Cimmerians [11.8%, 4 out of 34]
#16: Tyrant [10.8%, 4 out of 37]

The next quarter won from 10% down to 5%.
#17: Rangers [10%, 3 out of 30]
#18: Free Traders [8.7%, 4 out of 46]
#19: Dwarves [8.3%, 3 out of 36]
#20: Sacred Order [7%, 3 out of 43]
#21: Gnomes [6.5%, 3 out of 46]
#22: Dark elves [6.3%, 4 out of 63]
#23: Underworld [6.1%, 3 out of 49]
#24: Alchemist [5.3%, 1 out of 19]

The last quarter takes us down to no wins fairly quickly.
#25: Lizard Men [5%, 2 out of 40]
#26: Elementalists [4.2%, 1 out of 24]
#27: Amazons [3.7%, 1 out of 27]
#28: Giants [2.8%, 2 out of 71]

The rest have no wins.
#29: Fairy Folk [0%, 0 out of 32]
#30: Black Dragons [0%, 0 out of 26]
#31: Atlanteans [0%, 0 out of 13]
#32: Nomads [0%, 0 out of 5]

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The podium stats is where it is most interesting to me. Wins could be blowouts or really close runs, and there is no way to tell from plain stats. The podium means first, second and third get recognition so we get a more general idea of how good a Kingdom is. Coming in at second a whole lot may just indicate that the players were just a bit unlucky rather than the Kingdom is all that bad. So I assigned 3 points for a first, 2 for a second and 1 for a third and added all the points for each Kingdom. Then divided the number of points by the number of games to give a percentage for each. Luckily, every Kingdom has been on the podium. Except one. Nomads. Hopefully Brek turns that around soon.

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Best overall points by percentage:
#1: Ancient Ones. At 80.5%, 33 points out of 41 games.
#2: Death Knights [79.2%, 61 out of 77]. I know, no surprise here.
#3: Sorcerer [78.0%, 32 out of 41.
#4: Halflings [73.7%, 14 out of 19]. These guys have been on the podium 1/3 of the time they have been played.
#5: Warlock [71.8%, 28 out of 39]
#6: Pirates [70.8%, 17 out of 24]. Again, been on the podium 8 out of 24 games.
#7: Demon Princes [68.7%, 46 out of 67]
#8: Illusionists [68%, 34 out of 50]

Second Quarter:
#9: Lycans [65.7%, 44 out of 67]
#10: Druids [62.7%, 37 out of 59]
#11: Necromancers [62.1%, 36 out of 58]
#12: Cimmerians [61.8%, 21 out of 34]
#13: Gnomes [58.7%, 27 out of 46]
#14: Red Dragons [55.6%, 30 out of 54]
#15: Elves [55.2%, 16 out of 29]
#16: Free Traders [52.2%, 24 out of 46]

And moving to the top of the bottom half:
#17: Tyrant [51.4%, 19 out of 37]
#18: Forgotten [50%, 14 out of 28]
#19: Underworld [49%, 24 out of 49]
#20: Alchemist [47.4%, 9 out of 19]
#21: Sacred Order [44.2%, 19 out of 43]
#22: Dwarves [41.7%, 15 out of 46]
#23: Rangers [36.7%, 11 out of 30]
#24: Lizard Men [35%, 14 out of 40]

And, finally, the last of the Kingdoms
#25: Dark Elves [31.7%, 20 out of 63]
#26: Atlanteans [30.8%, 4 out of 13)
#27: Amazons [29.6%, 8 out of 27]
#28: Elementalists [25%, 6 out of 24]
#29: Giants [19.7%, 14 out of 71]
#30: Fairy Folk [15.6%, 5 out of 32]
#31: Black Dragons [3.8%, 1 out of 26]
#32: Nomads [0%, 0 out of 5]

[Lord Garth]

That's a lot of good research. I particularly like your last stat. Thanks


Lord Garth
2x Consecutive and Current Reigning Runner up Alamaze Champion.

[davekuyk]

Interesting stuff! Thanks for putting this together Olorin.

I believe we should only consider single-player games. Team games and games where players play multiple kingdoms can throw things off. For example, the RA has three wins, but one is from a Warlord game and another is from a Titan game (both me btw ). I don't feel this reflects similar success in the single-player format.

Primeval is another option to consider. The AN has two wins and a second place in that game mode, which is very friendly to the AN's style of play.

That being said, I'm not sure how to obtain that information without access to the raw data or manually processing it.

[Olorin]

Would require manually processing it. Pretty sure the info needed is in the Valhalla records, just would take a while.

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Then there is the question of which games included which changes, like who had immortals, etc. Parsing all that out would take a fair bit more work than I have time to devote to it right now.

I will see if I can get the singles. No promises.

[Xerro]

WOW very impressive stats, Yes there are ways to refine and clarify the stats more, But I think this gives a good picture of the overall situation. The kingdoms that win excessively and lose excessively are identified. They can recieve some tweaks to balance them a bit. Fixing the popularity of the kingdoms is harder. Some concepts are much more exciting and sexy then others. The dark elves are a popular race in many fan fiction and people want to play them. The fact they are in the bottom half of winners makes no difference to how often they are picked. This will be difficult to fix and might mean renaming or other extreme measures. I think processing these stats is going to help the game greatly. You did express a concern about blowout wins and early drops influencing things. If you are real ambitious you could exclude all results before turn 20 and get past those false flags. However I think that what you have here paints the picture pretty clearly. Thanx for compiling and analyzing this so well.