Potato_Simulator/README.md

# Simulator for Potato, a one-page RPG
    
See https://twitter.com/deathbybadger/status/1567425842526945280 for details.

**Potato** is a single-player, one-page RPG where you play as a halfling,
farming and harvesting potatoes while the Dark Lord amasses his forces
elsewhere in the world. 

You have three scores: DESTINY, POTATOES, and ORCS. Each round, you 
roll d6 to determine which type of event you experience: a day in the 
garden, a knock at the door, or a darkening of the world. 

For the first two, you then roll a second d6 to determine how your 
scores change; the third event makes it cost more potatoes to get rid 
of orcs. (At the beginning of the game, you can spend 1 potato to 
reduce your ORCS score by 1.) If any score reaches 10, the game ends
with that score's ending; if DESTINY and ORCS reach 10 in the same
round, ORCS wins, and if DESTINY and POTATOES reach 10 in the same
round, you get a multi-win. (ORCS and POTATOES can never reach 10 in
the same round.)

When the simulator has simulated the requested number of games, it will
report its results: the number and percentage of wins for each score 
type, and the mean and median number of rounds it took to win a game.

## How to run it

The simulator requires Python 3.6+, but it doesn't need any third-party
libraries. To run it, download `potato_game.py`, navigate to the directory
you downloaded it to, and run `python3 potato_game.py` in the command line.
This will run the simulator with the default settings: *not* verbose,
*not* multiwin, *no* potato-spending algorithm, and *10,000* iterations.

To change the simulator's behavior, you can use various option flags
on the command line. You can use more than one option at once.

## Game Options

| Short | Extended       | Description |
| ----- | -------------- | ----------- |
| -v    | --verbose      | Print detailed information about each game. This gets very long; probably don't use it if you're asking for a large number of games! |
| -n    | --numruns N    | Simulate N games. Default: 10000 |
| -m    | --multiwin     | Announce on the console when a game ends in a multi-win. This can lead to a lot of output. |
| -i    | --instructions | Print these instructions and exit without doing anything else. |

### Mutually Exclusive Options:

| Short | Extended       | Description |
| ----- | -------------- | ----------- |
| -a    | --alt          | Use Wanderer's algorithm for determining when to spend potatoes to reduce orcs. This spends a potato if ORCS could win this round and POTATOES could not, OR if ORCS is greater than one and a 1d10 comes up less than the ORCS score. It will only spend a potato if there are enough potatoes to spend. |
| -p    | --potatoper N  | Use the Potato-Per algorithm for determining when to spend potatoes to reduce orcs, using a ratio of N potatoes to 1 orc. This spends a potato when the ratio of POTATOES to ORCS rises above a certain amount, modified by the POTATOES cost to reduce ORCS by 1. It will only spend a potato if there are enough potatoes to spend. |