Analysis of Defendable Territories

Well being a financial analyst (my career) I decided to answer the following question: When making a map, what is a good percentage of territories that are also "defensive" territories? In other words, territories that need to be defended to keep your region bonus safe. Here is the results of my analysis of 41 published maps on D12 (I did not include Oregon Cities because quite frankly I don't understand that map, LOL).

~ Only one map has less than 40%, Caribbean (10 of 26) or 38.5%
~ 4 maps fall between 40% & 49.9%
~ 17 maps fall between 50% & 59.9%
~ 7 maps fall between 60% & 69.9%
~ 8 maps fall between 70% & 79.9%
~ 1 map (World Expanded) is 83.5%
~ 1 map (Brethren Coast) is 90%
~ 2 maps (Saturn & Caribbean Double) are 100%
~ The average across all maps is 63.1%
~ The middle 50% of maps range from 53% to 71% of defendable territories
~ The middle 75% of maps range from 47% to 80% of defendable territories
~ The most common % is 56% (4 maps)

So there you have it... It seems that as long as you are between 40% and 80% you are well within D12 norms. Just thought this was an interesting topic to discuss.

That was a lot of physical counting of territories. Nice job!

The problem of this broad spectrum is due to; no set procedure that says, "you have to have X amount of defensible territories".

It's the community that decides whether or not to go with the map in it's current game-play condition and connections are altered many times during most maps journey from creation to completion.
Sometimes it is seen that a region is more defensible than others and the bonus reflects this.
Sometimes it is quite easy to add more connections / territories or even merge territories to counter the low average, but it is decided to keep it this way for its character & quirky game-play.
Beta testing can sometimes pull up more defensible necessities and this number can change again (+/-).
Sometimes defensible region territories are less important due to Super Regions such as in Italia and therefore, the defensible territory count is hard to calculate and implement.

When all is said and done, the map goes live without a check on where it is in the 'Defensive Territories Spectrum', but it normally won't go live if you can't defend your regions at all nor if you can defend them too easily such as in the 1st Brethren Coast, so it's always best to give some thought to how people will enjoy playing the game if they have something that's fun to try for and obtainable too.

It is an interesting parameter but it is not always significant for the reasons explained by aeronautic. The most evident example is Caribbean Double, very defensible super-regions are there but the formula gives a 0% defensibility. But still I appreciate the mathematic approach, if it is not significant for every map, still it is for many of them.