Steam Summer Giveaway 2014

Put 'er all on Skyrim.

Okay here we go 90 points on Crusader Kings II, 10 points on Papo & Yo.

As I understand it, if the game you chucked points on pops and you fail to win it, you don't get your points refunded. If you put all 100 points on games and none of them reach the Top 4 that are raffled at the end of the round, do your points sit on the board and carry over to the next round?

Yes, any points spent now will sit on the board indefinitely until the game either goes up for raffle, or until the person who spent them leaves the game.

So in the scenario you asked, Scrub could very easily hold onto his 100+ points until whenever Game E was about to go up for raffle, but they wouldn't really have any particular advantage over somebody who had been pumping all of their points into Game E from the very beginning.

Point hording is kind of a trade off in that it gives you a lot more flexibility later on if you ever decide to go after a different game instead, but it obviously comes at the cost of missing out on the chance to win many of the more popular games available.

Oh also worst-case scenario! What happens if Casual wins the draw on A B, C, and D? Do they get to choose the game they want and the remainder get re-drawn with Casual's points taken out of the pool?

In the interests of simplicity and of not having to hold the game up until Casual checks back in, I'm going to say that they would automatically win Game A (the first one drawn), and then immediately be kicked out of the running for B, C, and D.

However, if somebody in Casual's position wanted to let me know beforehand about a preference they had for a certain game(s), it would not be difficult for me to include them in that drawing and than go back and redo Game A's raffle without them if they happened to also win one of the others. In general though, I'm not too worried about people putting any points on games that they don't really want.

Oh sweet, decisions decisions.

I will put 50 points on Age of Empires II HD
and
45 points on To The Moon.

20 points to Crusader Kings, 20 to Skyrim, 20 to Bastion,

(I don't plan on taking 1st round, just helping.)

Cthulu bundle or dredmor, cthulu bundle or dredmor... zomg (heheh)

40 in bioshock, 30 in dead space, 20 in psychonauts, and 10 in the binding of isaac.

100 on the cthulu bundle

Going to make another ruling that I don't think Coldblooded covered. It hopefully won't be a problem but I'd rather tackle these sorts of things regardless:

Please don't go around editing posts, especially when it comes to what you're bidding on. I know with so many people making high bids on certain games, it can be tempting to want to change your own bids after the fact in order to give yourself a better chance of winning something you want. Unless Coldblooded has a problem with it, I don't see why that shouldn't be allowed.

However, please change your bids in an entirely new post - otherwise, changes might be accidentally missed, either by me and Coldblooded or by other people who might want to change things themselves. I'm also going to ask that you restrict changing bids more than once or twice, lest things become a confused mess.

29 points on Skyrim, 24 on the New Vegas Pack, 37 on Dead Space, 8 on Rogue Legacy

50 points on Rogue Legacy, 10 on Banner Saga, 10 on Shredded Please. Mostly just poking at curiosities here, I have most of the games in there already.

Also Vote Palamedes oh wait I guess we aren't doing that.

(I'm surprised we went this long without someone making that joke.)

Shredded Please : 20
Monaco: 20
Bastion: 20
Crusader Kings: 20
Rogue Legacy: 20

75 on Civ V
15 on Marlow Briggs

I'll be holding onto my points this round.

I reread the rules. 100 Points on Dead Space.

goin 50 on Shredded Please

100 points on Age of Empires II HD

I'm gonna change my points to 100 on civ 5 after that note.

25 points on civ 5, 75 on Dungeons of Dredmor

80 on skyrim

100 points on Civ V

Wait, is saving points for D2 a thing?

I am thinking. I'm trying to math out the stuff.

You don't get back points on games you don't win. If you do, then you might as well go all-in on your top-choice game right now. The choice is whether you go for a strongly contested game D1, or a less contested game D2 (or D3 or D4 etc.). There will be 40 players D2, assuming no vig kills, so it's a matter of how many competing points are removed D1 that determines whether D2 is an easier or harder environment.
Let's say, for instance, that you're deciding whether to jump in for Civ 5 now, or Rogue Legacy D2. And for the sake of simplicity, let's say that the current bets are final.

Right now there's 400 points on Civ 5 and 70 points on Rogue Legacy, so you have the option of having a 1/5 change of Civ 5 or some other chance in Rogue Legacy. The question is: what is that chance? You'll have 125 points D2, so if the bets stay as they are you'll have about a 64% chance of getting Rogue Legacy. But there will be empty-handed D1 players that might have Rogue Legacy as their second pick. And more D2 waiters that also secretly had their eye on Rogue Legacy jumping in. So considering those, you would need a total of 500 competing points before your odds of winning Rogue Legacy are also 1/5, and you could spring just as easily for Civ 5. That would be 17 players who went all-in D1 and hold only their 25 point daily stipend, or just three-and-a-half players who were waiting for D2 Rogue Legacy as well.

But if you're perfectly honest with yourself, you don't want Civ 5 and Rogue Legacy equally. To be thorough, you'll want to assign a utility to both games. Let's say for the sake of math, that since Civ 5 is $30 USD and Rogue Legacy is $15 (on steam, currently) you value Civ 5 twice as much as Rogue Legacy. In this case, it would take a 2/5 chance of winning rogue legacy, or roughly 187 total competing points before you'd rather have gone for Civ 5 over Rogue Legacy. And there's already 70.

For the record, 1875 points are currently tied up in bets, 975 of which belong to the current top 4. There are 4400 points in play this round. 1000 points are added to the game D2, 900 D3, 800 D4, and so on. If the day were to end today, there would be 3525 circulating points D2, plus 900 existing bets, which gives 4425 competing points D2. But if a few more points were spent on top 4 games today, D2 would be an easier environment for the theoretical Average Game. But given the heterogenous nature of the game, it's probably best to take some guesses as to how many of those more points will be on your game of choice D2.

And that's not even getting into strategies of bumping certain games into or out of the top 4.

Of course, it's important to remember this is just a fun family activity for forum folks. Puzzling out the pro strats and meta can be part of the fun for you, but if it isn't then don't sweat it! Also I just realized I forgot to account the chocolate pi votes, so the civ 5/rogue leg scenario is now For Demonstrative Purposes Only and is not intended to cure or treat any disease.

lynch gnauga
STOP TEXTWALLS