Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard
Back on topic- I think a better title for this thread would be- "How do you get the game right early on?
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Kevin, I was asking similar questions
not so long ago.
Like Andrew, I usually use a spreadsheet to match actions with their scoring values and predicted times and difficulties to find what I believe to be the optimal strategy for my team. The priority order I usually use in picking designs is:
1. Win matches.
2. Seed high.
3. Desirable to partners.
Depending on where a team sits on the "food chain", this priority is likely to shift.
I originally did not intend to post in the thread, but I felt like I learned two important lessons since I made my post in the 2010 thread.
The first lesson may seem like a cop out, but what has been most valuable to me personally in analyzing games is simply experience. The more games I see, the better handle I get on what is a "realistic" way every new game will play out. Each year I've been able to get a firm grasp of how match play will look earlier and earlier in the build season because I can relate it to previous games. This has been very helpful in guiding students to the right strategies, and asking them questions that deepen their understanding of the year's challenge.
The second lesson is to never accept your understanding of how the game will play as final. This applies equally during build season and competition season. There have been years where I've analyzed the game, had an excellent understanding of it for week one, and then failed to update my analysis. The best understanding of a game comes from constantly questioning, how does my strategy hold up under X, Y, or Z circumstance. A great way to do this is during build season is to find friends on other teams and compare their strategies to yours. During competition season, I find it easier to watch as many webcasts as possible and figure out how to react to the current metagame. For example, if you couldn't pass back to the human player by 2014 championship, you were at a real disadvantage. Strategy should constantly evolve as you learn new information -- getting your strategy perfect early on is not as important as adapting quickly and getting it perfect every match.