Strategic Sinning #1 - Casino Odds

Hola Paradisians! (Paradisers? Heighterians? We’ll work on it!)
 

I hope you all have been enjoying our latest update. Luciana and I are hard at work at the next one, which will be adding new characters and a whole lot of steamy scenes. We’ll be starting on previews for the new content soon, but since we’re not yet ready for that, I wanted to dive in a little more to this past update and talk about the Casino. Call this a post a strategy guide, for those that are interested!
 

The Casino is unique among Paradise Heights buildings in that it doesn’t produce a flat energy per day. Instead, there’s a random chance of your casino winning (or losing) energy at every new morning. You can control how much risk you’re willing to take by adjusting just how conservative or aggressive your staff is, but when should you be timid and when should you go all in? That’s the subject for today.
 

First, we need to look at how the casino works. In its base mode, this is pretty simple. After a bit of behind the scenes chicanery to make it a little more difficult to save scum (I know who you are!) the game rolls a D20 to determine the day’s take. There’s a 20% chance of each of the five results, so the table ends up looking a little something like this.
 

Catastrophic: -250 Energy         1-4

Bad:                    -150 Energy         5-8

Okay:                +150 Energy         9-12

Good:                +250 Energy      13-16

Great:                +500 Energy      17-20. 

If we want to determine what our expected value is, we have to multiply each result by the possibility of it happening. If we rolled the dice 20 times and got each number once, we’d end with 2,000 energy after 20 results. Since we get 1 result per day, that means we average…100 energy a day. Not bad, but the Casino is quite an expensive place. How can we play our odds better? 

To do that, we look at modifiers. Currently, there are three possible adjustments to your roll. Playing conservatively adds +1 to the die…but halves the amount of energy we collect or lose. Playing aggressively doubles the energy…but it subtracts 1 from our roll. And upgrading the casino with rigged machines adds +1 to our roll no matter what we’re doing. We can add them up the same way we did before, and see what we get! Don't worry, I've totaled up the math below.
 

Conservative:                         68.75

Conservative+Rigged :        87.5

Normal:                                      100

Normal+Rigged :                  137.5

Risky:                                          125

Risky+Rigged:                          200

So we can see from these numbers that riskier play always provides better rewards in the long run…but anyone who has had two days in a row of the catastrophic result can tell you it isn’t all fun and games. Playing conservative will earn you less, but you’ll be able to predict it far more. What choice you should make depends on your playstyle and the situation. If you're running tight on energy and building toward a new construction, perhaps flip it over to conservative for a while. If you've got no immediate need, why not let the place run risky and let the odds even out in the end. The House always wins, and the House is you!
 

The Casino will always be a variable tool. Some players may never have the luck they need, while others may pay back their costs in a week. Good luck at those tables, and be sure to look for upcoming previews for version 1.3.0! 

Happy Hunting!
Cambion