We've all had this problem. Your place 10 troops on a territory, and roll all of them to capture a territory with 2 on it. It should be no problem. 11 v 2 is great odds. BUT, somehow you lose ALL of your rolls, and the 2 enemy troops stay solid, and you lose a game even though your strategy was intact.

In short: Bullsnit rolls. 

It's annoying. AND it's occuring too often. 

Has anyone considered a game option that had built in roll modifiers that limited the BS? For instance, if you roll at a ratio of 3:1 (15 troops against 5) with standard rules, having a mod that somehow makes it that you can only lose 2:1 (you lose 10, and the enemy loses 5)?

I keep losing at rations of 4:1 or 5:1. It takes the fun out of the game. To be fair, sometimes I win at those rates, but that also takes the fun out of the game. Who want's to win because of a random number generator that has a tendency to roll in favor of one side? I know I can't be the only person who is experiencing this, because if I am, I'm cursed, and somehow I don't think there are any good WarGear voodoo doctors out there yet.

So, any of the programmers out there up for figuring out a game option that can do this? I'm sure it would be a commonly chosen option. 

My last two rolls, I lost 7 to 1 and 6 to 0

how could you limit variance? dice = random, 10 units lost in a row in a 3 dices vs 2 dices match up is rare but it happens. it's part of the game and doesn't require any changes I think.

but it isn't rare. that's the problem.

Also, I'm not saying things have to be changed. I'm saying an "option" would be good. Sort of like choosing turn lengths, and number of players, or whether the game is foggy or not.

Epstein, Consider that you are just as likely to roll 11111111 as you are 32156436 in that exact order.  This is how permutations work.  It's only peripherally relevant to the conversation  Understanding combinations is much more relevant.

If you rolled a die 6000 times, what do you think is the probability that you would roll exactly 1000 sixes, 1000 fives, 1000 fours, etc?  I'm going to guess that it happens less than 1% of the time.

In fact, I'd wager that it's more likely that you will roll more than 1050 ones.

There will always  be the possibility of losing 10, 20, and even more in row.  Going back to your scenario and considering all the possible combinations of rolls, there are thousands of ways (permutations) to lose 10 and win 0 or only 1 (our defined combination).

With combinations, you need to understand that the larger the sample size (short of infinite) the most likely of outcomes becomes  more and more unlikely to occur because the number of other possibilities becomes quite large, and the sum probability of all of what you might consider to be unlikely possibilities may turn out to be a higher probability than you might think.

yeah yeah, I just lost another 5 to 0

BTW, these aren't real dice. This is a generator that cant randomize as well as reality. meanwhile, I'm about to lose a war based on luck rather than strategy.

Again, I'm not saying that all games need a fix. It is a suggestion for an option that leans towards strategy rather than luck. An option that rules out putting 10 troops against 2 that are guarding one of the European borders and losing the game due to 1) an opponent that gets a bonus that really wasn't deserved and 2) a lack of troops that also wasn't deserved, and 3) not getting a card which was deserved. 

...considering that losing 10 when attacking 2 at a weak border blows the whole concept of strategy out of the water. At that point, it's just luck...

SO... How bad would it be for a game to have an option that offered a reduction in luck based wins/losses, and an increase in strategic wins/losses?

Key word here... "option."

Heck, if there are people who have fun playing simulgear, there have got to be people that would have fun playing "strategear."

Epstein wrote:

BTW, these aren't real dice. This is a generator that cant randomize as well as reality. meanwhile, I'm about to lose a war based on luck rather than strategy.

Have you played the board game in real life?  The conversion of bad rolls/bad luck is always the discussion there as well.  Sometimes the discussion of unfair rolling technique comes up when a defender doesn't take any armies or an attack rolls a lot of 5s and 6s.  This is just part of the game.

I do like the idea of fixed proportions, completely determined games, something like attacker loses 50%, defender loses 60% or reversed or completely different.  The conversation has come up, but it makes risk completely strategy (not to mention tough to decide how many armies are lost in a 1v1).  This would take away part of the game.

The games Seven, Five, and Space Lines are completely strategy based games (no dice), but many players do not like the idea of fixed dice, it takes away the risk part of risk.  I have failed to eliminate when I have 40 against 20 and was upset, but there were other times where in desperation I attack 40 with 20 and won.  The unbelievable wins are often ignored (especially when they happen on the defensive side).

The more you play, the more often these 10-0 loses will occur to you and from you so just let them be part of the game. 

Anyway, we all understand the frustration of failed attack; it happens to all of us, sometimes in streaks.

I hear ya, and I agree Alpha, but having grown up on the board and dice versions of Risk and Axis and Allies, I have to say the dice are a bit more random. 

I agree that you have to take the good with the bad, and I'm not suggesting an option that removes dice, (although that would be an interesting choice too) I'm suggesting an option that sort of sits in the middle. For every x v. y, the max losses are set to z.

How about this... Just thought about it...

Many of the games include dice modifiers, such as 'fighting from X to Y has a +2 attack', or defend or whatever... How about a mod for a game that calculated something like: for every X troops compared to y, you get a modifier of +1? That would be awesome and totally realistic. Sort of like how a real fight (on even land and terms) of 10 to 1 is unfair, so can a roll of 10 v. 1 be unfair.

Think about it... If I pick a fight with ten dudes all my size and fight skill, it doesn't go down 1 v. 1 and repeat until one side is out. In a real fight, the extra dudes hold arms back, punch from behind while I fight forward, and throw stuff at me from the sides.

In a real war on even ground, if 1,000 fight 100, similar things happen that make the fight more uneven than simple math.

 

BTW, again, I just rolled a 10 to 3, and lost everything. The 3 lost one. Annoying, and ruined the game.

It would not solve your debate, but I think it would be very interesting to have a 'luck index' displayed for each player. As it was said, you always consider more the bad luck you had attacking than the good luck you had defending. Such an index would help you to better understand if you won/lost because of good/bad luck or because of good/bad strategy.

I'm with you on that Toto. Still, I don't like it when I know I won because of a BS roll.

We have talked about a luck stat/index and it's probably (pun intended) something that Tom will get around to, although I don't know that we came to a group consensus regarding exactly what that would entail.

Personally, I'm not a fan of lots of stats (like on ToS where you see everything you've rolled). Most stats will be meaningless to me unless they are accompanied by some sort of standard deviation value.

Epstein wrote:

BTW, these aren't real dice. This is a generator that cant randomize as well as reality. 

Reality is a fickle thing to.

Many of the games include dice modifiers, such as 'fighting from X to Y has a +2 attack', or defend or whatever... How about a mod for a game that calculated something like: for every X troops compared to y, you get a modifier of +1? That would be awesome and totally realistic. Sort of like how a real fight (on even land and terms) of 10 to 1 is unfair, so can a roll of 10 v. 1 be unfair.

SimulGear uses percentage dice, which has a similar effect.  If I'm not mistaken, with percentage dice, you can't destroy any more armies than you attack or defend with.  ..or perhaps I'm confusing how SG work with Kjeld's engine. 

Risk dice have some interesting properties:

Did you know that with standard risk dice you are likely to lose attacking 10 v 10 but will win over 60% of the time attacking 25 v 25? 

BTW, fighting 10 v 2, you will be unsuccessful  almost exactly 1% of the time.  Now I'm pretty sure I've attacked a small stack with a much larger stack 100's of times, so I'll bet it's happened to me as well.

M57 wrote:

We have talked about a luck stat/index and it's probably (pun intended) something that Tom will get around to, although I don't know that we came to a group consensus regarding exactly what that would entail.

Personally, I'm not a fan of lots of stats (like on ToS where you see everything you've rolled). Most stats will be meaningless to me unless they are accompanied by some sort of standard deviation value.

Great if Tom is working on it. To my understanding, it would have to be something very simple for exemple 1 number between -100 and +100 meaning that your rolls are above what you could have expected if the number is positive. I am pretty sure some mathematicians on this site will help building this index.

Toto wrote:

It would not solve your debate, but I think it would be very interesting to have a 'luck index' displayed for each player. As it was said, you always consider more the bad luck you had attacking than the good luck you had defending. Such an index would help you to better understand if you won/lost because of good/bad luck or because of good/bad strategy.

There is a luck index in the works, the mathematics and such for it has been worked out and it is in the large list of things on tom's plate. The index will have the following basic properties: unbounded in either direction (good - positive, bad - negative). defense luck: calculated by itself on all defensive rolls attack luck: calculated by itself on all attacking rolls overall luck: sum of attack and defense The sum of all of the luck in the game is 0. The luck is not based on dice rolls exactly, but on the expected values of winning/losing and attack/defense roll. I apologize for the formatting, using an old IE version and none of the formatting sticks.

Epstein wrote:

...considering that losing 10 when attacking 2 at a weak border blows the whole concept of strategy out of the water. At that point, it's just luck...

So to you when you attack 2 with 10 you should always win? And it's unfair if you don't? That's a very biased and result-oriented point of view. As long as there are units defending, taking control of a territory can never be sure.

You need to change your state of mind and understand this if you want to become a good risk player.

Did you see the movie 300?

Alpha wrote:

Toto wrote:

It would not solve your debate, but I think it would be very interesting to have a 'luck index' displayed for each player. As it was said, you always consider more the bad luck you had attacking than the good luck you had defending. Such an index would help you to better understand if you won/lost because of good/bad luck or because of good/bad strategy.

There is a luck index in the works, the mathematics and such for it has been worked out and it is in the large list of things on tom's plate. The index will have the following basic properties: unbounded in either direction (good - positive, bad - negative). defense luck: calculated by itself on all defensive rolls attack luck: calculated by itself on all attacking rolls overall luck: sum of attack and defense The sum of all of the luck in the game is 0. The luck is not based on dice rolls exactly, but on the expected values of winning/losing and attack/defense roll. I apologize for the formatting, using an old IE version and none of the formatting sticks.

If I understand correctly ad 0 is the sum of all luck, which is game adjusted away from the expected outcome.

So a luck index of -1 means something like:

..you had one worse roll than the average player on this board?

..you lost one more army than you should have if you had the same amount of luck as the average player in this game?

If I'm close, wouldn't there be a huge difference in meaning between a -10 rating over the course of a 2000 move game, and the same score over a 500 move game?  If not, I'm curious to understand how this number retains a kind of relevance between situations like these.

I would really like to see independent numbers for each player that represents a SD from the expected outcomes.  Maybe one each for offensive, defensive, and sum of rolls.