The following video by YouTuber Spirit Of The Law is one of those few-but-beautiful videos that is tightly targeted and site-appropriate, being chock full of great game analysis all the way through. Spirit, an Age of Empires II analyst, uses math and in-game testing to arrive at data-driven answers to strategy questions. Here he gets to work to create a useful formula for estimating villager gather rate, previously nebulously-understood. After arriving at a formula, he goes a step further, applying it to answer some otherwise-unanswerable questions:
Tag: mathcrafting
[D3] Quin69 analyzes the area damage weapon property in Diablo 3
YouTuber Quin69 goes into the mechanics of the "area damage" weapon property. The initial overview of the rules of area damage functionality is followed with a powerfully convincing mathematical calculation to demonstrate its efficacy relative to other DPS properties. I found the entire video both entertaining and enlightening despite not being a D3 player. I think you will enjoy it too.
[LoL] RheingoldRiver’s “How to Theorycraft Effectively”
RheingoldRiver’s How to Theorycraft Effectively provides excellent guidance for analysts and theorists, with well-put general advice supported by specific suggestions for effectively gaining insight using a spreadsheet tool. I strongly recommend reading her post in full, as she goes into the specifics of constructing an effective question and the spreadsheet targeted at answering it. At the highest level, the steps she goes into are:
- Choose a good question
- Decide what stats you need to answer the question
- Figure out what intermediate values you need, and calculate them
- Make your formulas universal enough that you can autofill EVERYTHING!
- Decide how you want to present the final data, and fill in that formula
- Make sure everything is correct
- Duplicate your chart with other starting values
- Make gameplay decisions based on your numbers