Will it be Zerg? Terran? Protoss? For the last 15 years, the three races of the perennially popular science fiction strategy game StarCraft have waged war across the Koprulu Sector on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy. Their armies have been painstakingly balanced against each other by the game's developer Blizzard to ensure that fans could battle online forever with no race gaining a clear advantage.

However, a pair of researchers at the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh took it upon themselves to find out which race would ultimately triumph if given enough time. Thomas Targett and Duncan Forgan observed competitive StarCraft II matches, then dropped the collected data into statistical models.

The researchers watched the strategies of 500 professional StarCraft II matches, and logged the results of the match when players adopted a “macro” strategy (focused on developing economic strength for long-term success) and when they played a “micro” game (built a small force as quickly as possible to damage or destroy the opponent early.)

"Our project is an example of 'percolation modelling'," said Thomas Targett in an email. "Which can be used to model the percolation of one thing into another, such as in this case civilizations into the galaxy, but also things like bacteria into a petri dish, or water moving around objects in a river."

Then they measured the probability of success based on each race adopting each strategy. Further, they plugged all that data into a simulation of a representative portion of the Milky Way and ran it over and over again. Specifically, they ran 100 Monte Carlo Realization simulations, a complex type of algorithm used to analyze highly complicated systems.

“By observing the average success of each civilization over many simulations, we are able to trace smaller effects which were present only on the larger statistical level,” reads a blog post that accompanied the paper (PDF).

“It was found that the Terran inhabitants of the fictitious Koprulu sector," read the post, "pursuing a strategy of early pressure against their opponents, would eventually conquer their Zerg and Protoss adversaries.”

The humans, a group of exiled Earth prisoners called the Terran Dominion, often use fast attacks designed to wipe out opponents before they have a chance to build a proper army. Though the researchers say the races would be very nearly deadlocked, this strategy would give the Terrans a slight advantage.

The focus of the study was mainly to raise awareness of the scientific method and the statistical sciences, but the researchers are trying to get some good out of the process. They’re interested in seeing if further study of video game communities can yield scientific insights similar to the Corrupted Blood Incident in World of Warcraft, a viral outbreak that was used to study the spread of real world epidemics.

"Advanced scientific concepts are often very difficult to convey in press articles, and while its wonderful that people are excited about astronomy, they often take away little more than 'this universe is pretty'," said Targett. "Instead of trying to convey a new concept in science, we are trying to convey how scientists rigorously work though data and analyze it to get to the result. We hope this will help people understand the scientific method a little better, rather than simply providing another new fact."