View unanswered posts | View active topics It is currently Fri Mar 29, 2024 2:36 pm



Reply to topic  [ 45 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next
 Post Your Spreadsheets 
Author Message
Group 1 winner
User avatar

Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:26 am
Posts: 1030
Location: Sydney Australia
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
atriggerx23, you have put a lot of effort into this!

Fantastic man.

Tell me please, how were you able to determine the speed, stamina, consistency values to the nearest .5 measure??

I need some sort of magnifying glass to check and even then its not graded minutely enough to tell.

Thanks

John

_________________
GO PACK GO


Fri Nov 06, 2015 10:46 pm
Profile
Group 1 winner
User avatar

Joined: Tue May 01, 2012 6:57 am
Posts: 2867
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
You think it will work with OpenOffice? I am a cheapskate and using that. I currently have a trial version of Microsoft Office but that will be gone in a month. Please upload it and I'll give it a spin. Mainly the lineage recording. I would like a 6+ generations lineage recording because I like to see every once in awhile what I have done over time. I spent a long time last night going through the lines of the Sire I am breeding with now to see on "paper" what his lineage looks like. After much back n forth (and game crashes) - I came up with this representation of my sire Cross That Bridge...

Image

In real life this inbred freak wouldn't be fit to pull grandma's apple cart. But this is a game. Darker green are gamebreds and lighter are homebreds. Number next to horse is breeding distance indicator. Gamebred Over The River is one of the most influential horses I ever had. In the CK he would beat most horses from 6f to 10f. Go way back to gamebred Appeal Denied and he was my very first breeding sire in S06. Homebred Across The Galaxy was the horse that most of my future stars can trace directly to. He was a beast that I lost when forgetting to back him up. :?

Staring at this last night I came to the conclusion that the male side is progressively being bred to go longer and the female side is progressively being bred to go shorter. I found it very interesting looking at my work over this time.

I've posted my spreadsheet nonsense here before...

Image

These are the stats that matter to me in order of their importance to me. All stats being recorded at the beginning of the 5yo season. Horses are sent to game pool at the end of 4yo season after I record these and reload the save. The last 4 categories are the sum of each of the 3 stats categories with the last being the total sum of these 3. Purple being top percentile and green being above average.

This example is my current breeding foray with Cross That Bridge and 3 mares - Great Find, Madrass and Silence Please. So far I have two keepers from the breeding - Great Cross and Dont Cross Me. Some more are coming.

_________________
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClB2FZ7Qvwq0Ons_6jN1lAQ - Watch The Cats! 24-7 Webcam Of Non-Profit Cat Rescue


Fri Nov 06, 2015 11:49 pm
Profile
Selling plater
User avatar

Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:34 pm
Posts: 66
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
atigger - I love your work :) I've studied dosage a bit so especially excited to think about using it in a game context.

I'm planning on spending a lot more time focused on breeding so I definitely will find good use for your templates. I might be doing something wrong but I got 'link expired' message when I tried to download?


Sun Nov 08, 2015 3:30 pm
Profile
Group 1 winner
User avatar

Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2012 8:40 pm
Posts: 1631
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
Very nice job! I tried to do spreadsheets for my horses but updating them after every race eventually made my games last wayy too long once I had more than 5 horses (especially with 100 horses in my stable, one month could last over an hour; and a whole year... weeks).
Just downloaded them and they might give me a reason to start playing again.
And welcome back to the forums! Been awhile since we've heard from you. Hope all is well with you.

_________________
http://www.horseracingstation.wordpress.com


Mon Nov 09, 2015 6:58 am
Profile WWW
Selling plater
User avatar

Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:34 pm
Posts: 66
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
Up and running with your spreadsheets :) The grading using subtle shading from best to worst is much more visually informative than my old system of colour coding different ranges of numbers.

With your meticulous record keeping I'm now wondering how you deal with progeny? I'm thinking I might have to do a lot of experimental coupling to see which abilities I want to encourage/improve. Do you have a spreadsheet you use for that too?

Thanks again for sharing with us!


Mon Nov 09, 2015 3:02 pm
Profile
Handicapper

Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2011 9:59 pm
Posts: 129
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
Image

Been dabbling with spreadsheets myself although I don't tend to get as detailed. I get too picky when I do. My current spreadsheet is a bit different from the pictured one but still similar. One shown is just my horses in training. My current spreadsheet has values for potential, battling qualities, cruising burst, extra speed raiting, distance adaptability, and then a few tabulated scores such as win score, stat score, and the two added together further to the right that were added after the screenshot. Win score is just the graded wins added up (G1 * 3, etc). Stat score is just the various stats I keep track of added together but each are weighted depending on how much I want to value that stat. I have 100% potential added to the score but 50% of cruising burst and 125% of the other 3. I fiddle with the weight over time to figure out what horses to keep.

I also have a breeding sheet that's not shown but that one has nearly all the same columns except stats. The sheet does include things like how many foals that horse has, how much they've earned, the average per foal, how many G1/G2/G3 wins, and then breaking that down into fillies, colts, and geldings. I wanted to see if some mares or stallions were more prone to have colts that needed gelding or not while also comparing geldings to colts and fillies. I also track NPC horses I bred to by recording how much their breeding fee was and how many foals I got from them. I can then see if I made a profit from the breeding when the foals retire themselves or if the horse was a complete dud. I also keep track of how long a horse has been in the barn so I can decide if I want to retire them after so many years/foals. Then my big column is a net worth one where I figure out if a horse is any good in the barn via their foals or if they just plain suck.

I used to have things color coded, but I got irritated with OpenOffice (don't like Microsoft Office although I do have it) screwing up my conditional statements when I copied, pasted, and deleted data. So I just went to the simplest colors and conditionals to make fixing it faster. Wish there was a way to lock conditional statements so regardless what you do (delete rows, paste rows, etc), they don't change. Ugh. Most of the conditional statements are now gone because of it.

I'm still dabbling with it but currently trying to make my own schedule so no idea when I'll get around to another game to tweak my spreadsheet more. I was trying to do a database program to track my horses that way rather than via spreadsheets, but I kept getting errors when building the template so I threw in the towel. May try again one day.


Tue Nov 10, 2015 1:02 am
Profile
Handicapper

Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2011 9:59 pm
Posts: 129
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
Heh. Just relooked at the image and realized that was my breeding page, not my racing page. Meh. They're virtually identical outside of the foals columns and stats anyway.

The stats for the racing horses:
Image

Think most people just value different stats. I picked the ones I did since they seemed the most relevant (I don't focus much on things like constitution and confidence). Since people can change the names of the columns, if you set it up like mine and have the weighted percent editable, then people can change the stats themselves based upon what they value without having to toy with a formula they may not understand. Give people like 10 columns they can use to record what stats they value. If they use 5 and the other 5 have 0% for their weight, it won't change the score so no harm having blank columns. Columns can be hidden easily enough. If people want more, they can either add them themselves or ask you for another spreadsheet with additional columns.

The "225" above "End Status" is the cut off value I use for the Stat and Full Scores.

"Win Score" is 0.00 because I don't have any values in the group wins columns.

I tend to record my stats when they first appear in my stable at age 2. I used to record speed, etc but since I know those change over time, I ditched them. I don't bother changing my stats after I enter them. I really don't put much stock in distances. I just keep track of those more for when they're in training. Drives me bonkers when I have a 1m2f horse who really wants 6f or a 7f horse that wants 1m3f. :roll: Used to use notes to keep track of that, but that got old. So just use my spreadsheet instead. Faster to edit and faster to see who runs what distance. Striking Louhossoa is supposedly 1m5f, but she sure didn't keep that distance. Not at 3 anyway. This is my current game although I haven't played it in months so not sure if she'll stay longer at 4. Andromeda drove me bonkers, too, with her being bred for 1m2f but wanted 5f.

Not pictured to the right of the "End Status" is a "Triple Crown" column. I record how many races the horse won of (the US) triple crown races although I don't record what race was won specifically. Fillies go to 6 while colts go to 3. Would you believe Striking Louhossoa won all 6 filly US triple crown races? Her stats suck but she took all 6 easy. Meanwhile, Hotfoot Jake took the Kentucky Derby and Mr Classic took the Preakness. Their stats didn't suggest they'd be able to do that. That resulted in me putting hefty value on the triple crown races. So each win is added to the "Full Score" column * 100. Striking Louhossoa got 600 points from her 6 filly triple crown wins. Otherwise, I might have just retired her. I'll probably reduce it so it's more like 5 or 10 points per win rather than 100, though.

All of the grey horses in the screenshot I sold. The "End Status" column goes off the "225" to just give me an indicator on whether or not I should sell a horse based on their full score. It's only ever blank or has "Sell". Not something I put much stock in, honestly. I may delete the column ultimately.


Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:50 am
Profile
Selling plater
User avatar

Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:34 pm
Posts: 66
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
Although I doubt we'll reach anything definitive, or even a general consensus, I think it's useful to consider much weight we individually give each stat. The more contributors we get, the more a 'hive mind' approach might show itself.

I split stats into different tiers:

Tier 1 - Potential (I still believe potential to be worthy of the top spot on its own).
Tier 2 - Speed, Stamina, Acceleration, Cruising Burst, Extra Speed Rating (I believe an aggregation of these stats provides a good overview of a horse and largely removes distance bias).
Tier 3 - Start, Battling, Confidence, Finish, Consistency (These are 'cherry on top' for me - if a horse that scores highly in Tiers 1 and 2 also does well in this category it adds that extra little something).
Tier 4 - Constitution, Enthusiasm (of marginal importance to me).

Any stats not mentioned are the ones I ignore.

I haven't actually done any weighted scoring so I'll need to do a bit of work on that (and see what impact various weightings have on my rankings) but it'll be an interesting exercise.


Wed Nov 11, 2015 10:02 am
Profile
Selling plater
User avatar

Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:34 pm
Posts: 66
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
Yes, the uncertainty is probably a useful thing (as frustrating as it is for someone who likes certainty!).

I've been playing around with stats and weightings but I can't come up with a formula i'm happy with yet.

Something I'm changing my mind on is the Stamina rating as I think I was wrong to aggregate it with Speed and Acceleration. I don't have enough longer distance horses to be sure but I think a 'good' longer distance horse should also be scoring highly on Speed and Acceleration? If that's the case, the addition of a high Stamina rating will actually accentuate distance bias. For instance my best IC horse has Speed 100, Stamina 30, Acceleration 90 = 220 ... I have a mundane PE horse that has Speed 75, Stamina 85, Acceleration 65 = 225. I think that proves I need to adjust my weightings and maybe remove Stamina entirely.

I know Sirius values the Finish rating highly but, considering our best horses often win with daylight between them and the runner-up, I'm not sure it is 'activated' in every race in the same way as Potential, Speed, Acceleration, Cruising, Extra Speed are.

What each horse achieves in their career isn't such a great indicator either I don't think. I had a very good 10f horse that won relatively little in the shape of G1s due to being the same generation as two monster gamebreds, whereas I've had sprinters and milers I'd consider less talented who have scooped up multiple G1s due to their distances being less competitive in their generations.

I don't use the CK but I probably need to start doing so (although it sound buggy right now so hopefully it'll be fixed). Once I have enough of a pool available to run trials I can perhaps start to draw more conclusions about which stats are commonly high among those who do well in trials. It'd be interesting to hear what people who have done much more trialling and testing have worked out on that score.


Wed Nov 18, 2015 4:26 pm
Profile
Handicapper

Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2011 9:59 pm
Posts: 129
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
Chances are stats interact with each other. Confidence each race probably has a dice roll. If the horse rolls low, then other stats may be less likely to have much effect while if it rolls high, then they might have more of an effect.

Example: A horse has 90 confidence. Before the race, the computer rolls a number between 0 and 90. If the number rolls a 0, stats like extra speed rating, battle qualities, etc will do next to nothing. If the number rolls a 90, extra speed, etc may get an extra bonus making the horse excel in the race. If the computer rolls a 45, the horse just runs normally and has a 50-50 chance of battling qualities, etc mattering.

I'm sure other stats also interact such as whether or not a horse likes to be front ridden. A front horse who gets challenged but has low confidence and high battling qualities might very well give up while a front horse with gets challenged but has high confidence and low battling qualities might pick up the pace a bit but still fail at the wire.

There's also horse personality. Some horses like to lead and sulk when taken on. Others are just hot tempered. Some just plod along. Then there's starting. If a horse fumbles at the start, that can possibly drop their confidence or force them to use more stamina to catch up.

Some horses also have the colored * in the paddock before races which are also very likely to effect them. Since those are largely random, they're hard to control for. I've had calm horses end up in the paddock with the boiling over comment and have had hot tempted horses have the parading well comment.

There's also the horses that just refuse to start at all. Someone posted a picture a while ago of a horse in their game that was all or nothing. The horse either won the race or refused to run at all. Similarly, how would you account for horses that fall on a regular basis in a jumps game but wins big when they do finish?

There's hidden values in the game (personality being among them) so even if we did figure out a good formula, those hidden factors would potentially skew things. A horse that looks great can be screwed over by those hidden factors.

I'm not so sure we should be focusing so much on stats. They're a nice indicator, but they're not the end all be all answer. Those hidden stats can likely make what looks to be a great horse unable to win a seller while what you'd think would be a claimer horse could take the Dubai World Cup with 10 length. I never thought Striking Louhossoa could take all 6 US triple tiara races. I never thought Mr Classic or Hotfoot Jake would take the Kentucky Derby or Preakness Stakes. I though Triple Acquisitive would be my top horse and he wasn't what I thought he was.

Then there's also hidden breeding stats that could make a poor stallion a great stud or a great stallion a terrible stud. I'm sure there's also a fertility stat we're unaware of which relates to why some pairs may take 6 months to breed ... or never breed at all. Certainly makes that realistic. I'm sure many were disappointed to find Cigar was sterile.

Only Mark knows how many hidden stats there are, but I'm sure there's far more than what we're thinking about. And some of those stats possibly have more weight than the ones we can see.

If you still want to figure out what stats to value the most, there is something that might give you an idea. I caught that when a legendary horse retired, I could view their stats by clicking on them in the Legends screen. Pick a legendary horse who performed really well and look at their stats. Then look at a legendary horse who performed poorly and compare them. Compare them to your own horses that ran well and that ran poorly. There's likely similarities there that would reveal what stats are worthwhile to keep an eye on.

Just 4 legendaries who left one of my games:
Image
Image
Image
Image
(The stats don't appear over the races before someone gets confused. I copy and pasted them so they'd be in one image.)
(Schedule was also a custom one I made that I'm not overly happy with so I'm redoing it.)

Ignoring constitution which tends to be high for legendaries anyway, this reveals something. Just looking at Bullet Train and Secretariat, battling qualities pops out along with finish application, cruising burst, and distance adaptability.

Extra speed rating didn't do much for Bullet Train nor Dayjur or Lochsong. So perhaps extra speed rating shouldn't be valued so highly. Meanwhile, Dayjur also has some quirks unlike the other three which could have potentially ruined his win chances. Enthusiam doesn't seem to do much and confidence doesn't exist for any of them so confidence may not actually have much value. Deterioration potential is hit or miss. Only one that seemed to flop hard at the end was Bullet Train. The rest went out on a win although Lochsong went out on a handicap win rather than a graded stakes. Deterioration is likely so high just to ensure they're retired at a realistic age. Believe I had that box checked for this game but I don't recall. The bar may not be so high if the box is not checked.

Interestingly, jump potential is identical between all 4 as is training adaption so both of those can be tossed out as making a difference.

Looking at things like stamina, etc, I'd assume Secretariat would barely be able to do 1m2f let alone 1m4f yet he won the Chicago Championship Cup (a made up race) at 1m4f in two consecutive years. He could also drop down to a mile and still win. So I doubt stamina, etc really mean much compared to the other stats, especially distance adaptability.

Going by legendaries, seems finish application and cruising burst are likely more important values. Distance adaptability is only if you like to run your horses at a variety of distances. I value it myself because of the US triple crown, but I ignore it otherwise. That's not to say there's some hidden stat for legendary horses to make winning easier for them, though.


Wed Nov 18, 2015 7:37 pm
Profile
Selling plater
User avatar

Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:34 pm
Posts: 66
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
That was really interesting - thanks for adding your thoughts at length :) I didn't know we could view stats for retired legends but i'm going to go look at my games after I type this, hehe.

I know it's a really small sample size but battling qualities and cruising burst jumped out for me too when I was initially looking at their stats. Just a pity that every horse in my transfer pool has 10 for battling qualities! I'm still not convinced about finish application but i'd obviously prefer it to be 100 where possible.

I agree there are complexities far beyond simply adding together a few stats and you make great points about how things like running style, starting ability and temperament etc can skew performance on any given day. All things being equal though, there must be certain stats that are beneficial to 'breed into' offspring. As I don't have any short term option to improve battling qualities, I'll pay close attention to cruising burst among my high potential horses and try to improve that across my lines.


Wed Nov 18, 2015 8:03 pm
Profile
Group 1 winner
User avatar

Joined: Thu May 15, 2008 8:48 pm
Posts: 15142
Location: Republic of Ireland
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
wow never seen max distance adaptability before

_________________
Website http://www.aidanobrienfansite.com
Email pjrhodes1122@gmail.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/aobrienfansite


Thu Nov 19, 2015 9:30 am
Profile WWW
Selling plater
User avatar

Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:34 pm
Posts: 66
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
atiggerx33 wrote:
I have now added a Breeding Sector to my file (it does not replace the original), the new link will be on the first page under Horse Data 2.0!

So now, on both your "Horse" page and "Lifetime Scores" page you also must include the name of the Sire and Dam of the Individual (or if a gamebred leave them blank). Once you've filled these two columns with names, Let's say one of my Sires is named Dan The Man, you'd go over to the "Sire Scores" page and simply type "Dan The Man" (without quotes) into the name field, it will automatically fill in EVERYTHING else for you. The formulas took a lot of finagling on my part, they work 100%, however under NO circumstances should you EVER try to edit the data in a column other than the "Name" column, unless you're really good with formulas, you may cause irreparable damage. If you dislike a column (other than the foal count column) simply get rid of it. I warn you though, once removed by "deleting" a column cannot be brought back.

Please note: If you leave a "Name" cell blank in the chart, that row will look quite ugly (a lot of errors mentioning you're dividing by 0, since everything is divided by the horse's foal count) until you fill it in. Also, I am like 90% sure the entries are case sensitive so use capitals and whatnot.

Image

Here is what the "Horse" page's two new columns look like, simple enough.


Image

This is a picture of my "Dam Scores" sheet. All the data is autofilled except for the name, so after filling out your "Horse" page and "Lifetime Scores" page with the sires and dams, simply type in some Dam names on the "Dam Scores" page and Sire names on the "Sire Scores" page and it'll automatically fill in every bit of the other information for you. If you do not use the "Lifetime Scores" or "CDs" simply delete the "AvScore" column, and the "AvCD" column.

If you enter in a horse's sire and dam as soon as it is born, but do not enter in the other info (like potential and whatnot) until they are 4, you will get a messed up sire and dam score. (It is programmed to divide by the number of foals, so it'll divide by lets say "5" instead of "4", pretty much acting like your horse just gave birth to the worst foal in the history of foals, a foal with all 0 stats.


This is a wonderful addition that I'm going to immediately start using! Thanks so much for sharing :)


Thu Nov 19, 2015 10:24 am
Profile
Selling plater
User avatar

Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:34 pm
Posts: 66
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
atiggerx33 wrote:
Pebbles Girl wrote:
This is a wonderful addition that I'm going to immediately start using! Thanks so much for sharing :)


No problem Pebbles! I've been enjoying playing with Excel, I never even realized it could do 1/2 the things I've asked it to figure out for me. It's been a bit of a b*tch figuring it all out, a lot of formulas I tried to get what I wanted came back with errors, for a while I thought I was asking the impossible. I actually manually entered a lot of data on a formula page to begin with, which was a real pain, very time consuming and just a miserable experience, I also only recorded the filly/colt percentages, number of foals, and the AvScore. Then I decided I wanted it not only to give me a lot more info (which I did not want to manually enter each time) but also decided there had to be a better way of getting it.

What really encouraged me though, was that Sirius said he would like to see what I did for progeny. I knew I was sorely lacking there, but having someone else asking for it really encouraged me to get it done. I'm still so early in my breeding that it wasn't 100% necessary yet, but I knew from looking at what I could see of Sirius's charts that he was much further in, and not having excel himself would greatly appreciate it.

So I guess a shout out to Sirius, for accidentally giving me the encouragement I needed. I wanted to kill excel and punch my computer several times (kept getting formula errors), and if you take a peek at the formula for the AvCD score you'll see why! It's like 5 solid lines of formula that it's coding for that one score (I really thought knowing the average progeny distance was important to breeding).

For those who haven't downloaded the Dosage Chart but are curious what the brightly colorful column means just know its a tweaked version of a Thoroughbred Center of Distribution (google it, it's a pretty cool concept), but simply put the numbers range from -2.5 to +2.5. A score of "2.5" would signify that a horse was best at 5-6.75 furlongs, while a "-2.5" would (in my tweaking) signify a horse was best at around 15-16.75 furlongs, and a "0" would signify that a horse liked 10-11.75 furlongs... the closer to "0" the better they'd be suited (IMO) to the American Triple Crown. Not 100% sure, but I think that'd probably be what you wanted for the UK TC too, just with a really high Distance Adaptability bar to go with it.

Just a note, I made the AvCD score brightly colored because I did not want to signify one distance as bad, and another as good. With the other stats, obviously lower is bad and higher is good thus the red to green coding (or in the case of Deterioration Potential I coded it to be green to red since you want that score to be low). I didn't want to imply a bias that a Classic runner was somehow better or worse than a sprinter, a good horse is a good horse whether they have the endurance of a quarter horse or an arabian or anywhere in between. I considered not color coding it at all, but then thought it would be easier to find similar-distance-producing sires/dams if the color coding was there. In hindsight I should have made stamina similar, I'm just so used to seeing it red-green on mine that it was habitual to look at it that way...


I'm a complete Excel dummy so you have my total admiration for the coding. The colour coding variations for CD and Deterioration make complete sense.

It was actually me who had asked for details of how you deal with progeny so I'm really excited about this addition. Especially considering it goes far beyond what I imagined might be available.

This will mean an instant end to the piles of paper I was accumulating manually recording stats etc. Now, if only Mark could come up with an option for exporting stats to Excel our workload would virtually disappear, haha.


Thu Nov 19, 2015 12:04 pm
Profile
Selling plater

Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2007 2:43 pm
Posts: 12
Post Re: Post Your Spreadsheets
How does the spreadsheet calculate the Lifetime Score? There's no formula entered on the spreadsheet so it doesn't do any calculations when i put all the info in?


Wed Nov 25, 2015 3:11 pm
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Reply to topic   [ 45 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by STSoftware for PTF.