Unit Cost Equation

[Scott Hebert]

Also, why is the mage commander different from the non-mage commander?

[BigDaddy]

Sushiboat's equations don't answer "why" questions, they answer only "what" questions. Such as, what is the price correlation between this and that for mage commanders. . . The fact that mixing the commander types together decreased his significance showed him that he needed to seperate them.

In this case, he's reverse engineering the pricing method.

[BigDaddy]

Its quite nice to see regression analysis used this way. As I stated, I believed it would work quite well for "normal" units. I still have my doubts about its usefulness for powerful units, so in these cases, your use should be more reserved (higher prices).

Sushiboat, I think you'll see a significant changes to the pricing of mages when you add magic paths. I'm curious as to whether or not after testing all the magic paths really turned out "even" in terms of pricing. Don't worry, I appreciate the difficulty of your working in figuring that particular question out (are their combinations that are more expensive, do you need to put a variable in for lvl2 earth path, or just lvl2 path?). Happy hunting!

[sushiboat]

BigDaddy, I am toying with the idea of converting cost to percentile scores
and then giving a table for converting back from percentiles to gold cost for
someone who uses the formula. I think that would address nonlinearity more
efficiently than various curve fitting schemes. I bet that math professors
everywhere are feeling mysteriously uneasy that someone somewhere is
using linear modeling with percentile data, but I think that it should work
alright from a practical perspective. Of course, it's extra work, so who know
whether I will get around to it.

[Saber Cherry]

sushiboat said:
Prediction is not what you might think.

... that is an absoultely awesome quote

[BigDaddy]

Nah, normalizing the data is a straightforward method of "tabling" it. I'm sure the practice is commonplace. It will also give people an idea of what the "upper-bound" of your study is; They would then know when they can no longer use your numbers to determine cost.

I think it might be just as easy though, to just type out a cumulative cost chart for each stat. Then you don't need to normalize, just plug and chug. Just dump the equation parts in a spread sheet and...

Oh, and by the way, you may want to remove outliers from the unit lists. Any units which break the mold by being too cheap (likely for nation balance purposes by the devs) where never meant to meet your "entrance criterea."

[BigDaddy]

Well, here's the ugly beta version for you to mess with sushi. Anyone else, use the higher numbers at your own risk!

See next post. . .

[Scott Hebert]

BigDaddy said:
Sushiboat's equations don't answer "why" questions, they answer only "what" questions. Such as, what is the price correlation between this and that for mage commanders. . . The fact that mixing the commander types together decreased his significance showed him that he needed to seperate them.

In this case, he's reverse engineering the pricing method.

I understand. My question is if I can remove the specials and magic paths from the equation, so that only the stats matter.

Presumably, a stat is a stat, right?

[BigDaddy]

OK, so I felt guilty about dropping that crappy spreadsheet on you guys, so heres a more useful and straightforward version. . .

SushiUnitPriceCalcV02.xls

Hope you have Excel.

[BigDaddy]

Well. . .
I'd say that different stats make a mage commander better, like Defense and HP. So, the "a unit is a unit" priciple probably isn't the way it is. Anyway, without the path prices included the cost method is sketchy for mages at best. . .