Lol PB, never knew you were so deep. should have figured with all the crazy builds.. I don't know about direct modelling, so many factors. Instead of graphical you would have to use some kind of matrices and that gets really complicated. However, I have this nagging idea that the current era of heavy micro could be undone by some kind of elementary power strat. By this, I don't mean lust. I mean macro build, low tech. I did an experiment using real time measurement. in roughly 8 minutes you can make 9 lusted ogres. in that same 8 minutes you can make 54 lvl 5 grunts. Not really practical, but interesting. I remember before the excellent catapult micro and wall in expertise combination attacks of grunts/ogres without lust and dual options with low tech. Some variation of these ideas could lead to diversity game play instead of all the cookie cutter crap that is going on now.
Yeah I like the way you're thinking.
Obviously the problem with this type of big low-tech build would be breaking wall buildings ... i.e surprise lusties can kill a building before the defender even has a chance to start repairing it, but you can't get 54 grunts to attack the same building simultainiously, so you're going to need something else... cats ... saps ... archers?!
How many cats can you build for the price of a hold+alch+1 sap?
One thing I am amazed about - and I think is a mistake - is that most gow players seem to NEVER upgrade their cats. Even when people are spending 900 each on 6 or more cats in a 9/s9 cat battle they still don't seem to think its worth spending 1500 to upgrade them all.
Bear in mind that the upgrade takes the same time as building the first cat, so you get the advantage right from the start of the battle... or if you only upgrade when you see your opponent is catting too then you get it from when your 2nd cat is built.
How is this not worth the cost?