Help With Correlations

I've been playing a lot of Roll Through The Ages on Yucata recently. It's a short dice game with a few reasonable paths to victory. I've cycled through some different plans as I've played games with reasonable success but I don't know what the optimal plan is. When I get beat I try to figure out what I did wrong and adapt my play in the future but I'm not sure what really works.

One of the neat things with Yucata is you can replay any game you've played in the past. I was thinking it would be useful to build a spreadsheet or database with the key parts of every game I've played and then crunch some numbers to figure out which choices correlate with winning.

One of the things you do in the game is spend turns building infrastructure for better future turns, but the game is really short. When is it right to shift from building more cities into scoring points? At 5 cities? 6? 7? Does it depend on what your opponent is doing?

If you had the choice should you choose to go first or second? There are definite advantages to both. Personally I like going second but I can't justify that stance. (Some aspects of the game are first come, first served so going first is good. But the end of the game is variable and the person who goes second can often end the game if they'll win or extend it one more turn if they won't.)

How about techs? Quarrying into engineering seems good. Quarrying into empire seems good. Agriculture and masonry seem good. But which wins more often? Does it matter what the opponent is doing?

If your opener is 4 goods and 3 food should you buy a 10 cost tech or save up? What if your opener is 2 goods, 3 food, and a coin?


I know from my sports nerdery that this sort of analysis is possible. (Did you know in the NFL that defensive penalties have no correlation with winning percentage? Offensive penalties on the other hand are negatively correlated, especially false start penalties.) But I don't know how to do it. I'm sure I could have taken some third or fourth year stats course that would have taught this sort of thing but I didn't take enough stats courses it seems...

So, my question to anyone reading this... Anyone know of any books I could buy that would help out?