| Name | True Cost | Calc Cost | Diff Cost | Index | |
| 1 | Blue Gremling | 7 | 10,01 | 3,01 | 1,43 |
| 2 | Dwarf Panzergarde | 11 | 13,82 | 2,82 | 1,26 |
| 3 | Tataree | 6 | 8,77 | 2,77 | 1,46 |
| 4 | Gargoyle Sentry | 11 | 13,61 | 2,61 | 1,24 |
| 5 | Ichthellid | 9 | 11,52 | 2,52 | 1,28 |
| 6 | Guardian Angel | 12 | 14,39 | 2,39 | 1,20 |
| 7 | Kralathor, The Devourer | 16 | 18,18 | 2,18 | 1,14 |
| 8 | Ludwig Boltsorm | 13 | 15,16 | 2,16 | 1,17 |
| 9 | Earth Elemental | 20 | 22,15 | 2,15 | 1,11 |
| 10 | Psylok | 8 | 10,08 | 2,08 | 1,26 |
| 11 | Ravenous Ghoul | 13 | 15,05 | 2,05 | 1,16 |
| 12 | Asyrian Cleric | 5 | 7,05 | 2,05 | 1,41 |
| 13 | Whirling Spirit | 12 | 14,02 | 2,02 | 1,17 |
| 14 | Thunderift Falcon | 6 | 7,91 | 1,91 | 1,32 |
| 15 | Flaming Hellion | 13 | 14,78 | 1,78 | 1,14 |
| 16 | Darkfenne Hydra | 16 | 17,74 | 1,74 | 1,11 |
| 17 | Deathfang | 8 | 9,68 | 1,68 | 1,21 |
| 18 | Necropian Vampiress | 16 | 17,63 | 1,63 | 1,10 |
| 19 | Emerald Tegu | 9 | 10,60 | 1,60 | 1,18 |
| 20 | Screech Harpy | 11 | 12,54 | 1,54 | 1,14 |
| 21 | Dire Wolf | 12 | 13,52 | 1,52 | 1,13 |
| 22 | Gray Angel | 12 | 13,43 | 1,43 | 1,12 |
| 23 | Mana Leech | 8 | 9,42 | 1,42 | 1,18 |
| 24 | Firebrand Imp | 5 | 6,36 | 1,36 | 1,27 |
| 25 | Darkfenne Bat | 5 | 6,35 | 1,35 | 1,27 |
| 26 | Bitterwood Fox | 5 | 6,33 | 1,33 | 1,27 |
| 27 | Shaggoth-Zora | 8 | 9,22 | 1,22 | 1,15 |
| 28 | Zombie Crawler | 4 | 5,00 | 1,00 | 1,25 |
| 29 | Dark Pack Slayer | 13 | 13,92 | 0,92 | 1,07 |
| 30 | Thornlasher | 7 | 7,89 | 0,89 | 1,13 |
| 31 | Dwarf Kriegsbiel | 11 | 11,78 | 0,78 | 1,07 |
| 32 | Spitting Raptor | 11 | 11,77 | 0,77 | 1,07 |
| 33 | Orc Butcher | 8 | 8,69 | 0,69 | 1,09 |
| 34 | Timber Wolf | 9 | 9,64 | 0,64 | 1,07 |
| 35 | Skeletal Minion | 5 | 5,58 | 0,58 | 1,12 |
| 36 | Goblin Builder | 5 | 5,55 | 0,55 | 1,11 |
| 37 | Tarok, the Skyhunter | 13 | 13,54 | 0,54 | 1,04 |
| 38 | Goblin Bomber | 8 | 8,46 | 0,46 | 1,06 |
| 39 | Iron Golem | 13 | 13,43 | 0,43 | 1,03 |
| 40 | Venomous Zombie | 7 | 7,40 | 0,40 | 1,06 |
| 41 | Vine Snapper | 7 | 7,23 | 0,23 | 1,03 |
| 42 | Zombie Minion | 7 | 7,20 | 0,20 | 1,03 |
| 43 | Skeletal Sentry | 8 | 8,18 | 0,18 | 1,02 |
| 44 | Acolyte of the Bog Queen | 5 | 5,16 | 0,16 | 1,03 |
| 45 | Makunda | 17 | 17,12 | 0,12 | 1,01 |
| 46 | Sosruko, Ferret Companion | 7 | 7,09 | 0,09 | 1,01 |
| 47 | Grey Wraith | 10 | 10,05 | 0,05 | 1,00 |
| 48 | Steelclaw Grizzly | 17 | 17,04 | 0,04 | 1,00 |
| 49 | Brogan Bloodstone | 15 | 14,95 | -0,05 | 1,00 |
| 50 | Galador, Protector of Straywood | 16 | 15,95 | -0,05 | 1,00 |
| 51 | Skeletal Knight | 13 | 12,85 | -0,15 | 0,99 |
| 52 | Togarah, Forest Sentinel | 21 | 20,73 | -0,27 | 0,99 |
| 53 | Mort | 16 | 15,69 | -0,31 | 0,98 |
| 54 | Feral Bobcat | 5 | 4,57 | -0,43 | 0,91 |
| 55 | Devouring Jelly | 13 | 12,55 | -0,45 | 0,97 |
| 56 | Goran, Werewolf Pet | 15 | 14,51 | -0,49 | 0,97 |
| 57 | Goblin Grunt | 4 | 3,40 | -0,60 | 0,85 |
| 58 | Royal archer | 12 | 11,29 | -0,71 | 0,94 |
| 59 | Zombie Brute | 11 | 10,13 | -0,87 | 0,92 |
| 60 | Samandriel, Angel of Light | 21 | 20,08 | -0,92 | 0,96 |
| 61 | Highland Unicorn | 13 | 12,03 | -0,97 | 0,93 |
| 62 | Cervere, The forest Shadow | 15 | 13,96 | -1,04 | 0,93 |
| 63 | Plague Zombie | 9 | 7,75 | -1,25 | 0,86 |
| 64 | Unstable Zombie | 9 | 7,72 | -1,28 | 0,86 |
| 65 | Bridge Troll | 13 | 11,69 | -1,31 | 0,90 |
| 66 | Sir Corazin, Bladmaster | 16 | 14,63 | -1,37 | 0,91 |
| 67 | Mountain Gorilla | 16 | 14,57 | -1,43 | 0,91 |
| 68 | Valshalla, Lightning Angel | 21 | 19,54 | -1,46 | 0,93 |
| 69 | Knight of Westlock | 13 | 11,46 | -1,54 | 0,88 |
| 70 | Moonglow Fearie | 8 | 6,42 | -1,58 | 0,80 |
| 71 | Gorgon Archer | 16 | 14,26 | -1,74 | 0,89 |
| 72 | Goblin Slinger | 7 | 5,12 | -1,88 | 0,73 |
| 73 | Giant Wolf Spider | 15 | 13,01 | -1,99 | 0,87 |
| 74 | Adramelech, Lord of Fire | 24 | 22,00 | -2,00 | 0,92 |
| 75 | Redclaw, Alpha Male | 16 | 13,97 | -2,03 | 0,87 |
| 76 | Malacoda | 16 | 13,81 | -2,19 | 0,86 |
| 77 | Thorg, Chief Bodyguard | 17 | 14,74 | -2,26 | 0,87 |
| 78 | Stonegaze Basilisk | 12 | 9,67 | -2,33 | 0,81 |
| 79 | Skeletal Archer | 11 | 8,48 | -2,52 | 0,77 |
| 80 | Fella, Pixie Familiar | 12 | 9,03 | -2,97 | 0,75 |
| 81 | Invisable stalker | 15 | 11,79 | -3,21 | 0,79 |
| 82 | Hugin, Raven Familiar | 11 | 7,74 | -3,26 | 0,70 |
| 83 | Thoughtspore | 8 | 4,56 | -3,44 | 0,57 |
| 84 | Grimson Deadeye, sniper | 15 | 11,04 | -3,96 | 0,74 |
| 85 | Selesius, the East Wind | 21 | 16,56 | -4,44 | 0,79 |
| |
I am not sure what information I am gleaning from this chart, and therefore don't know how it could be helpful. It doesn't match my idea of efficiency in creatures, which measure's how much I can expect to get out of a creature before it dies and compares that to its mana cost. In that regards, Tataree is most definitely not a very efficient creature. I am paying 6 mana to get maybe 2 or 3 healing/channeling out of her before she dies to a single unavoidable attack. Yet you list her as the 3rd most efficient creature? I call shenanigans.
I personally like Piousflea's suggestion to one of your previous charts. He suggested that you forget about the traits, and calculate the expected mana cost of each creature based purely on their Life, Armor, and Attacks. You can then compare this to their actual cost and determine how much of a premium you are paying for the abilities and traits that they actually have. I don't believe this would allow you to rank them in any significant manner either, but at least it would give some useful data.
I personally like Piousflea's suggestion to one of your previous charts. He suggested that you forget about the traits, and calculate the expected mana cost of each creature based purely on their Life, Armor, and Attacks. You can then compare this to their actual cost and determine how much of a premium you are paying for the abilities and traits that they actually have. I don't believe this would allow you to rank them in any significant manner either, but at least it would give some useful data.
Perhaps ranking creature usefulness with respect to mages is more helpful than ranking creature usefulness overall. For example, for a mage like the Warlord, creatures like Goblin Grunts are fairly useless since the Warlord is not built to swarm.
Instead of mage, it should be made for mage archetypes. Solo or Thoughtspore Forcemaster and Grizzly Forcemaster are both the same mage, but they play very differently. Cards that would be useful to one might be useless to another.
nr 1 and number 85 are correct.
everything else is incorrect.
(Some would argue that the last spot is shared between selisius, mountain gorilla, goblin bomber and Makunda - all creatures i have never seen summoned)
It will tell you how much Attack, Armor, Health and abilities/Traits you will get out of your invested mana.
I also thought about Piousflea's suggestion and remove the traits totally. Problem is you can not compare it towards the true cost in that case (the traits are naturally included there), and that means you can not do the comparison at all.
Ones again strong opinions about my tables. I like. 8)
First I will punch you all down in the "trait discussion". ;) I have not set any values for anything. Anything! Not for traits or coefficient. This is simple math. The only thing I have done is to tell the algorithm to consider obvious rankings like Double strike is worse than Triple strike. The rest is set by the math and the convergation towards the best possible curve for all creatures. So, if "Regeneration 3" is higher evaluated than "Fast" it will only tell that the creatures with "Fast" have higher values in Armor, Attack and Health compared to creatures with "Regeneration 3". This is how AW has set the parameters and how the numbers falls out based on the creature pool we are currently looking at. Simple, but NOT arbitrarily chosen.
@Aylinis
The OP said he was not going to repeat what he had previously said. He then linked to the two previous posts he made on this topic for reference to his methodology.
Perchance did you read those? I haven't in a while but do recall that there was reasoning and logic for his power rankings. If you haven't, please take the time and I think things will make more sense to you then.
@Aylinis
The OP said he was not going to repeat what he had previously said. He then linked to the two previous posts he made on this topic for reference to his methodology.
Perchance did you read those? I haven't in a while but do recall that there was reasoning and logic for his power rankings. If you haven't, please take the time and I think things will make more sense to you then.
I read the links he posted. They did not answer my questions.
Basically all it had was what his formula was and the values he had given to traits. How those were arrived at was not given.
Hydras are very strong vs swarm.
Hydras are much weaker vs Few bigs (high armor)
Hydras a decent vs high armored targets.
Hydras are godlike vs targets without armor
How does your list take this into account?
I cant be bothered reading what your list is based on, because just looking at it tills me that its 70%+ wrong.
Your list gives traits values... we dont need that.An calculated estimate used in the equation to give the calculated cost, yes. That is not what the list is for.
Sometimes traits will be useless... so we need a clean list of pure HP / Damage / armor /resilient / incorporalHere you apparently want to bring in traits anyhow (Resilient and Incorporeal)..?... As I said before: If you want to do a good calculation you can not just skip things just because they are hard to figure out. It is much better to make your best guess, and even better if you do your evaluation with good reasoning and research .
Okay, I will give it one more try (since it apparently was hard to follow the first time).
The objective is to create a curve that in the best possible way describe all creature "performance". Out of this you/we can see how valuable each creature is and compare them to each other.
First approach:
We know the stats for each creature (Attack, Armor & Health). We also know which Traits they have. If we add this together it should represent the cost for the creature. Thus:
Attack + Armor + Health + Trait = Calculated Cost => which squared difference should be minimized towards the true Cost
In order to evaluate how much each term gives or represents a coefficient is used (this is what is calculated later on):
x1 * Attack + x2 * Health + x3 * Health + x4 * Trait = Calc cost
However, each term isn't strictly linear. Therefore the following apply to each component:
Attack:
Attack = max(Attack1 or Attack2) + 0,3 * min(Attack1 or Attack2)
Attack1 = #dice * attack type ^y1 * (attack1_trait +1) same for Attack2
attack1_trait = (attack_trait1 +...+ attack_trait_n) / max(all_attack_traits) same for Attack2
y1 is the first exponent I have used which determine the value between melee, range and AOE attacks. As you can see every set value one each creature is represented and multiplied. The importance of the attack type is also corrected. The +1 is to give creature without an attack_trait a coefficient which is not 0, since it is a multiplayer. As you can see the trait component is just one third of the overall attack part in the general equation.
Armor:
Armor is set to have a square root behavior. x2 * Armor^(1/2). This because the first point of armor is better than the second and so on. Armor is not a linear.
Health:
The most simple one. 1 health is half as good as 2 health, and 4 health is twice as good as 2 health. Health is strictly linear. x3 * Health.
Trait:
The generate traits have similar model as the ones for attacks, but without the +1 (no trait, no gain).
trait = (trait1 +...+ trait_n) / max(all_attack_traits) which gives an normalized function. To make the evaluation even better an exponent has be assigned even here. x4 * trait^y2
Now we have a equation purely based on the behavior of all input data each creature have. This without guessing anything or to make assumptions regarding any values/traits. The only thing to do now is to calculate the parameters: x1, y1, x2, x3, x4 and y2 to make the best fit possible.
Calculation:
To find these best values of the parameters. I have used the common: "least square method":
(Calc_Cost(x1, y1, x2, x3, x4, y2)_n - True_cost_n)^2 => 0. For all n.
This will give the best curve fit.
I used a Mote Carlo sampling to generate starting points and to track the directions of the values for the parameters.
Up until here is what I have done prior to this post / version.
In the first version of this calculation I had set trait values. As I wrote in the first post I have now done a similar calculation as the one described above, but now for traits instead. Basically I have used the calculated parameters out from what I just described as fixed values and instead tracked the trait values. By doing these two calculations back and forth a few times the optimum curve (both for traits and other inputs) could be achieved.
I hope this gives you a better understanding of what is done. If it doesn't I think you have to read some book about math first and I will gladly discuss further with you.
*Sigh.* Multiplier, not multiplayer.I'm sorry, but English isn't my native language. We can have this discussion in Swedish or your third language if you like?
You have yet to present a curve. (Hint: a curve is also known as the graph of a continuous function!)The curve is stated in my last post and the parameters are in the excel this time (as the curve). As you know it is impossible to draw a curve with more than three degrees of freedoms.
And what exactly makes you so sure that these should just be added together? How do you know you that there aren't mixed terms?I'm not. Help me out if have a better suggestion. The curve fit quite good however.
Right off the bat you've failed to consider when secondary attacks are never worth using.THe second attack is only given a 30% portion of the attack term. This I have also tested to give a good fit.
Your final equation is especially bizarre: you're saying that an attack that only has Doublestrike and an attack that only has Triplestrike are the same!No, I defiantly don't. I have always stated that Triplestrike is better than Doublestrike, both in the calcualtions and in my posts. Thinkagain.
Your equations for "attack1_trait" and "Attack1" also have you doubling the value of an attack if it has any traits. Your own equation says that you're valuing a 3-dice piercing +1 attack over a 4-dice attack! Even worse it would give the same value for a 2-dice piercing +1 attack as it would for a 4-dice attack with no traits! That is inexcusableWrong again. I don't know how much I should explain? It seems like you don't want or can understand.
Because of it the second point of armor is as good, if not a little better, than the first.It is much easier to roll one perfect die with three dice than two. Thus: the first point of armor is better then the second and so on. You are correct though, that it might not be a square function.
Same problem as above, except here it's even worse! With this equation you're having Dark Pact Slayer's Flame -2 and Knight of Westlock's Lightning +2 both add 1 to their values!Same problem as above, you have read it wrong again. These two does not give the same value.
I'm not familiar with Monte Carlo (with an 'n'!) methods, but I can definitely say that if your initial equations are wrong (and they fail at almost everything) then you won't get anything close to accurate.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method
Considering how poorly this was done, I would never suggest that anyone take math lessons from you. Ever.I think this was the worsted tone I have ever heard in forum. I haven't done anything to you except trying to explain what I have done. If this table doesn't match up with your favorite creatures it is not my fault. Do take it so personal; it is bad for your reputation.
I'm not going to bother going through your whole list as the mistakes are legion. If you can't see them, then you need to spend more time actually playing rather than messing with your calculator. Everybody who has commented has stated the list is in error, yet you still defend it. I will give a single example for your pleasure.
Asyran Cleric is listed as the 12th most efficient creature. Comparing that to the list to see how valuable it is relative to the others, as you state the list is intended to do, we get the impression that it is a better deal than over 85% of the other creatures. Yet it is pure garbage!
By itself, nobody would ever in their life cast the asyran cleric. The only time you ever see somebody try using it is in combination with other cards, such as Temple of Asyra and Holy Avenger. Even in those cases, most people agree it is a sub-optimal play. There is not a single instance I can think of where casting this guy is definitively better than 85% of the other creatures you could be casting, as I have trouble thinking of times when I would ever want to cast it.
QuoteYou have yet to present a curve. (Hint: a curve is also known as the graph of a continuous function!)The curve is stated in my last post and the parameters are in the excel this time (as the curve). As you know it is impossible to draw a curve with more than three degrees of freedoms.
QuoteRight off the bat you've failed to consider when secondary attacks are never worth using.THe second attack is only given a 30% portion of the attack term. This I have also tested to give a good fit.
QuoteYour final equation is especially bizarre: you're saying that an attack that only has Doublestrike and an attack that only has Triplestrike are the same!No, I defiantly don't. I have always stated that Triplestrike is better than Doublestrike, both in the calcualtions and in my posts. Thinkagain.
QuoteYour equations for "attack1_trait" and "Attack1" also have you doubling the value of an attack if it has any traits. Your own equation says that you're valuing a 3-dice piercing +1 attack over a 4-dice attack! Even worse it would give the same value for a 2-dice piercing +1 attack as it would for a 4-dice attack with no traits! That is inexcusableWrong again. I don't know how much I should explain? It seems like you don't want or can understand.
QuoteBecause of it the second point of armor is as good, if not a little better, than the first.It is much easier to roll one perfect die with three dice than two. Thus: the first point of armor is better then the second and so on. You are correct though, that it might not be a square function.
Same problem as above, except here it's even worse! With this equation you're having Dark Pact Slayer's Flame -2 and Knight of Westlock's Lightning +2 both add 1 to their values!Same problem as above, you have read it wrong again. These two does not give the same value.[/quote]
QuoteI'm not familiar with Monte Carlo (with an 'n'!) methods, but I can definitely say that if your initial equations are wrong (and they fail at almost everything) then you won't get anything close to accurate.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method
It doesn't matter what values you assign them (as long as they aren't 0) if you just divide it by itself every time an attack only has one trait.
Is wikipedia where you learned the rest of your math "skills"?What's the matter with you? You didn't know what it was so I helped you get info about it. And no, I did not learn from Wiki, but apparently you did have the book about it so sent you the link. I can't buy the books for you.
I believe I have realized where we might have our disagreement on efficiency. Your chart only considers the efficiency of their mana cost, while my observational analysis of game play is skewed by action efficiency as well. A creature that costs 15 mana doesn't have to be strictly 3x better than a creature that costs 5 mana to be more efficient, because it only takes 1/3 the actions to summon compared to 3 of the 5 mana creature.
I think if you somehow factored in action efficiency into your calculations, your chart would align much better with people's concepts
QuoteIt doesn't matter what values you assign them (as long as they aren't 0) if you just divide it by itself every time an attack only has one trait.
It is apparent that you don't understand the normalization of the traits.
the max(all_traits_x) applies for all traits not just the ones you use for the particular creature. That is how you normalize your function.
Aylin,
You are amazing man. I have never ever said my model is perfect in any way, rather the opposite. Here I have start a topic where I publish what I have done and ask for a nice discussion. Then you jump into it and keep on nagging on about your unproved theories and gut feelings about the model with no mathematical or scientific explanation at all. You have even clearly proven over and over again that you don't understand model despite me trying to explain it for you (no I have not written a scientific repot about it explaining everything, since it is quite basic.). The only thing you have contributed with is your bad attitude.
As you probably know this is the third time I post this calc. Why is that? Because it’s been improved each time, due to the discussion we have had about it in here. Completely the opposite of what you are claiming.
I was also surprised how the result came out. But instead of crying like a baby I tried to understand the result and why it became like it did, and not just the approach "the table is wrong because my favorite creature isn't on top".
So please stop posting in here if you don't have any constructive to come with or redeem yourself with explain to me (in a scientific way) your statement: "the truth of it is that there just isn't enough data yet to make one that has any hope of accuracy". If you can't I ask you nicely to just keep it for yourself.
*Sigh.* Do you really need this explained to you?I'm not going to pick on your comment. I just want to say that I am well aware of the needed statistical requirements. I was just going to see if you had anything solid, which you have. I also became aware of this issue when I made the analysis. So what I did was that I grouped the similar traits together. Example:
I also became aware of this issue when I made the analysis. So what I did was that I grouped the similar traits together. Example:
Triplestrike
Doublestrike
Sweeping
Counterstrike
Doublestrike or Sweeping
Now there was 8 creatures that shared the same group in the above example. Then I made this for all traits and placed a guess as my starting difference between the traits in each group. Basically I said that Triplestrike must be 50% better than Doublestrike and so on. Now I could vary the groups value instead of each trait, which prevented the effect you and I see in this. After the groups had find a steady state level I went into the groups again started to see if the relation within the groups had to be changed. I published the table when I saw that I couldn't change much without losing reality (as you use to say) between the perceived values in the traits. (Like double strike being higher evaluated than Triplestrike)
What do you say about this approach? Maybe you could suggest which trait should go into which group?
I'm not big on that approach either.
Triplestrike isn't 50% better than Doublestrike because Melee +X (or Bloodthirsty +X or Charge +X, etc.) only take effect on the first swing. If both Hydra and Goran have Bear Strength, for example, then Triplestrike is only 37.5% better (against 0 armour). Or if neither are enchanted but Goran gets Bloodthirsty then it's only 14% better (assuming Goran is in the same zone as its controller).
Likewise, the relationship between Doublestrike and Sweeping is a bit complicated as well. Which is better: hitting the same creature twice or being able to break through a guard and still hit your target? How much better is it? How much better is having the option to do either?
Also some traits scale with how big the creature is. Psychic Immunity doesn't really matter on Zombie Crawler or Skeletal Minion, but it's a big part of what makes Iron Golem so powerful.
The second largest problem is that there are so many traits that can't be quantified currently. Grey Angel can kill itself to heal another creature for 6 dice, though the usefulness of this ability is hard to judge in a vacuum since it depends on how much damage is on Grey Angel and a potential healing target. Malacoda's AoE damage of 2 every upkeep is very nice if you and your creatures are immune to poison and your opponent has several small to medium-sized creatures, but in almost every other situation it isn't that great.
In my opinion, any solution would need to remove the need to factor in the meta (because mathematicians are lazy). Honestly the best solution would probably be to make a chart that shows the minimum, maximum, average, and one standard deviation of damage from 1-12 dice vs. 0-6 armour and incorporeal and resilient.I actually did that table a while ago, but I never compleatly finished it...
Wow a lot of negativity in here. Just wanted to get in my 2 cents!
First I just want to say that I work as an analytical mathematician. My firm deals with market trends.
It is impossible to predict with 100% accuracy anything in the real world. One of the things that makes this game more enjoyable for me than any other strategy game I have ever played; Is that it too has a truly intense number of variables to consider.
I think that Given the currently available data this is a great collection of data! I think that most peoples problem lies not so much in the math, but in its presentation. they seem to think that just because an item appears higher on the list, it is better (or that the creator is claiming that it is). It is simply a cost/benefit analysis. One with high margin of error but one that is more than acceptable given the lack of data.
If you grouped them by true cost (most to least expensive) and then arranged them with the calculated cost (again greatest to least) you might get a decent idea of how they would match up in an "ideal world". I use "decent idea" and "ideal world" because this will in many cases not be true but in general the guy at the top of each true cost list should match up favorably with the next one down. and the guy at the bottom of each true cost list should, in general lose to the ones above it. It does not take into account everything, and certainly does not compare direct synergy. It is however a place to start! and I think that that is all it ever claimed to be!