For a while now I have wanted to try providing more insight to the questions in this forum with some more data other than my experience. The below is my attempt to do just that.
Hopefully this will be of some interest and help to provide some insight or at the very least, generate some interesting discussions based on my findings and thoughts (which may or may not be correct!)
Hopefully I’ve linked all the right images, if not and something looks out of place, please let me know
The Data
Over a couple of weeks in February to March 2022 I collected data covering:
Just for reference, the average winners rating was 406.6 and the average losers rating 301.6 so just over 100 points difference however this would be expected when looking at the top players who would likely have a higher rating than the majority of their opponents
Key
Where I refer to ‘Pantheon’ or ‘Agora’ I am referencing games with ONLY the one expansion added. Standard is self explanatory, and ‘Both’ refers to a game with Agora and Pantheon enabled.
#1 Games Played
The distribution of games over the 5000 analyzed was:
#1.1 What game type are the most played?
Most players play standard (vanilla) 7wd on BGA. This was the expected outcome since this is the most accessible version
There is however a fair amount of play using both expansions (better than I expected), with approx. 1 in 4 games involves all expansions. This may be higher than the overall average if preferred by the top players, this is the reason however why I took a cross section to try shy away from just looking at the top 10 so it is hopefully more balanced and gives a true reflection
Pantheon alone is very seldom played (which was a little bit of a surprise)
#1.2 Should the arena have alternative formats?
Either expansion alone would have little player base
Just agora has a strong enough player based but would not cover the majority of players
Two stand alone arenas would likely be the best solution > standard & both
#1.3 Do players play different game types?
When looking at the top 10 games played for each player the distribution was within +/- 1%. This leads me to believe that players general play a fixed game type and don’t jump between the formats too often
#2 Win Type
In the games analyzed, the win ratios were as follows:
Standard
#2.1 Military is slightly lower than I would have expected for standard but this win type is definitely the least utilized for the majority of players I believe with science and civilian being slightly more frequent in the standard game
#2.2 Pantheon is more unbalanced to science wins. I have seen many games where both players are waiting for one token at the start of age three, so this comes as no surprise.
When the science token is in play in the standard game this put a whole new dynamic on the game due to the increased likelihood of a science win. The Pantheon gods make it much more likely this token is available and gives other ways to copy token making science much easier to achieve and unbalancing the game in my opinion
#2.3 The rate of political wins is slightly lower than I expected so I will fall on my sword here a bit. Political is nearly the dominant win type and is much stronger than military and science, but with both expansions it balances ok with a civilian victory so its not too game breaking
#2.4 With agora alone, science is less impactful. Adding Pantheon gives back that science advantage and helps to balance it out
#3 Turns vs Wins
Next I looked at the number of turns taken between the two players to see the trends
This value is based on the player I was collecting the stats for and their +/- turns vs their opponent and whether they won or lost. On average, the top players would win just under 70% of the time in a game with an equal number of turns, increasing the more extra goes they had
#3.1 Not too much to say here. As expected, the more turns a player has, generally, higher their win percentage as this gives more chance to gain cards for more points or other effects
There are a couple of outliers in agora only with a few games being won with 4 less turns but this seems like an exception
Hopefully this will be of some interest and help to provide some insight or at the very least, generate some interesting discussions based on my findings and thoughts (which may or may not be correct!)
Hopefully I’ve linked all the right images, if not and something looks out of place, please let me know
The Data
Over a couple of weeks in February to March 2022 I collected data covering:
- A cross section of the top 500 players (3,8,13,18,23)
- High level data for their last 50 ‘ranked’ games (removing anything which was conceded, abandoned etc)
- Low level data for their last 10 games (players starting ages, wonders selection / construction etc)
Just for reference, the average winners rating was 406.6 and the average losers rating 301.6 so just over 100 points difference however this would be expected when looking at the top players who would likely have a higher rating than the majority of their opponents
Key
Where I refer to ‘Pantheon’ or ‘Agora’ I am referencing games with ONLY the one expansion added. Standard is self explanatory, and ‘Both’ refers to a game with Agora and Pantheon enabled.
#1 Games Played
The distribution of games over the 5000 analyzed was:
- Standard : 3049 (61%)
- Pantheon : 225 (4.5%)
- Agora : 596 (11.9%)
- Both : 1130 (22.6%)
#1.1 What game type are the most played?
Most players play standard (vanilla) 7wd on BGA. This was the expected outcome since this is the most accessible version
There is however a fair amount of play using both expansions (better than I expected), with approx. 1 in 4 games involves all expansions. This may be higher than the overall average if preferred by the top players, this is the reason however why I took a cross section to try shy away from just looking at the top 10 so it is hopefully more balanced and gives a true reflection
Pantheon alone is very seldom played (which was a little bit of a surprise)
#1.2 Should the arena have alternative formats?
Either expansion alone would have little player base
Just agora has a strong enough player based but would not cover the majority of players
Two stand alone arenas would likely be the best solution > standard & both
#1.3 Do players play different game types?
When looking at the top 10 games played for each player the distribution was within +/- 1%. This leads me to believe that players general play a fixed game type and don’t jump between the formats too often
#2 Win Type
In the games analyzed, the win ratios were as follows:
Standard
- Civilian: 58%
- Science: 25.6%
- Military: 16.4%
- Civilian: 44%
- Science: 38.7%
- Military: 17.3%
- Civilian: 37.6%
- Science: 10.2%
- Military: 22.7%
- Political: 29.5%
- Civilian: 33.8%
- Science: 16.0%
- Military: 19.2%
- Political: 31%
#2.1 Military is slightly lower than I would have expected for standard but this win type is definitely the least utilized for the majority of players I believe with science and civilian being slightly more frequent in the standard game
#2.2 Pantheon is more unbalanced to science wins. I have seen many games where both players are waiting for one token at the start of age three, so this comes as no surprise.
When the science token is in play in the standard game this put a whole new dynamic on the game due to the increased likelihood of a science win. The Pantheon gods make it much more likely this token is available and gives other ways to copy token making science much easier to achieve and unbalancing the game in my opinion
#2.3 The rate of political wins is slightly lower than I expected so I will fall on my sword here a bit. Political is nearly the dominant win type and is much stronger than military and science, but with both expansions it balances ok with a civilian victory so its not too game breaking
#2.4 With agora alone, science is less impactful. Adding Pantheon gives back that science advantage and helps to balance it out
#3 Turns vs Wins
Next I looked at the number of turns taken between the two players to see the trends
This value is based on the player I was collecting the stats for and their +/- turns vs their opponent and whether they won or lost. On average, the top players would win just under 70% of the time in a game with an equal number of turns, increasing the more extra goes they had
#3.1 Not too much to say here. As expected, the more turns a player has, generally, higher their win percentage as this gives more chance to gain cards for more points or other effects
There are a couple of outliers in agora only with a few games being won with 4 less turns but this seems like an exception