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Would it serve you to read the instruction manuals for the games you buy? It certainly helped a computer win at Civilization II. Initial attempts at playing the game netted the system a 45% win rate. That seems respectable, but just shy of a coin toss. Using a specialized program, however, that allowed it to parse data, the computer read through the Civilization II instruction manual and increased its win rate to 78%. Instruction manuals are the oft-overlooked savior of the uninformed gamer. Once upon a time, they contained a wealth of information on the intricate interplay between game systems, lists of enemies and items, even pages on which players could write their own notes for reference. Now, they’ve been largely eschewed in the name of in-game tutorials as players focus on learning by doing or crying for help in public chat boxes. Most manuals are a thin slip of promotional material for other games from the company with a few health warnings within. The Civilization II manual, however, uses 3,638 different words in 2,083 sentences. At an average of almost 17 words per sentence, that works out to almost 35,000 words. A veritable novella. 
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