Alpha, I just realized that I may be over-thinking this, and it goes to my understanding of how the basic calculator you are using works.   I.e., specifically, what types of calculations tax the system?  Perhaps you can set me straight. 

Is it laborious for the calculator to come up with a single number that predicts the probability of success (victory) as a percentage?   ..say 9000 armies destroying 10,000 defenders with 3v2 dice?

If not, then this shouldn't be too difficult.  It's just a matter of passing that percentage through a table and backing out an implied SD number.

If so, then is there a way to do this without the need to calculate anything other than the 50% numbers?  ..or is it necessary to find the system of equations that identifies the ratio of wins to losses for any given percentage as I suggested in my last post?

I propose giving the problem to the 5th grade math class and going with whatever they come up with, beyond that it's probably unnecessarily overly complicated

I hope I have bad luck, that way it makes me look better!

Yertle wrote:

Did you see the movie 300?

Did you know that the actual event that movie/comic book was very loosely based on included well over 300 soldiers? The Spartans weren't the only ones fighting on the Greek side of that battle. I don't remember the exact number, but they weren't nearly as outnumbered as they were in that movie.

Despite that, though, I like the luck aspect of this game. I don't like it when games are pure luck, but I like that there's a good amount of strategy with some luck mixed in. In a way that's kind of realistic. But I get where you're(you as in the OP, not Yertle) coming from, too. Having the option to have less luck-based games wouldn't be so bad, and I'd probably even play them sometimes.

Well stated Valentorg. A "less luck-based game."

Not a pure strategy one like chess, and not a pure luck either. One that maybe applies a little more luck in favor of the larger or smaller group, and not just territories predetermined by the board creator. 

See Risky, I'm not demanding a change to the whole set up, just planting an idea in the heads of the programmer folks out there to come up with a mod that does the same thing for %differentials (number of soldiers vs number of soldiers) as is already done for att/def modifiers for territories on many boards. The concept is the same, but one is static, the other is dynamic.

Dud wrote:

All this aside....just give me MORE DICE

I don't know if this is what you are suggesting, but one option would be to allow designers to set a different # of dice for players to roll.  Right now if you have 10 guys or 100 guys to attack, you still roll 3 dice.  Likewise a defender with 100 guys defending still rolls 2 dice each time.

What if map makers could increase these numbers.  For example - an attacker could roll up to 5 dice, and defenders could roll up to 4 dice.  It would certainly change the dynamics, and at least for an attack like 7vs2 would shake things up.   I do think if this were to happen, you would also need to start with more units on each territory.  For example, in the hypothetical attacker rolls up to 5  & defender up to 4, you'd probably want to start with 4 or 5 units on each territory instead of 3.

My weak attempt at humor has been overshadowed by serious thinking. 

I don't know if this is what you are suggesting, but one option would be to allow designers to set a different # of dice for players to roll.  Right now if you have 10 guys or 100 guys to attack, you still roll 3 dice.  Likewise a defender with 100 guys defending still rolls 2 dice each time.

What if map makers could increase these numbers.  For example - an attacker could roll up to 5 dice, and defenders could roll up to 4 dice.  It would certainly change the dynamics, and at least for an attack like 7vs2 would shake things up.   I do think if this were to happen, you would also need to start with more units on each territory.  For example, in the hypothetical attacker rolls up to 5  & defender up to 4, you'd probably want to start with 4 or 5 units on each territory instead of 3.

..and throw a Standard Deviation based luck stats calculator out the window.

It is an interesting idea, but I would question what it accomplishes that you can't achieve with dice mods.

Valentorg wrote:

Yertle wrote:

Did you see the movie 300?

Did you know that the actual event that movie/comic book was very loosely based on included well over 300 soldiers? The Spartans weren't the only ones fighting on the Greek side of that battle. I don't remember the exact number, but they weren't nearly as outnumbered as they were in that movie.

I did do just a quick check to see that it was somewhat accurate before I posted that .  I figured there was quite a bit of artistic freedom used in the movie, but from what I gathered is that it was a smaller army vs a bigger army and the smaller army killed a lot of the bigger army...so similar but, yes, still different.

Ozyman wrote:

Dud wrote:

All this aside....just give me MORE DICE

I don't know if this is what you are suggesting, but one option would be to allow designers to set a different # of dice for players to roll. 

 That's kind of an intriguing thought, it almost meshes a bit of SimulGear aspect (more troops=more dice) into TurnBased.  That seems like it could have potential and one that I haven't really seen elsewhere.

I propose this:  All the people who've been complaining about dice luck enter into the same game and find out who is truly the unluckiest of them all!

AttilaTheHun wrote:

I propose this:  All the people who've been complaining about dice luck enter into the same game and find out who is truly the unluckiest of them all!

Nice!

The different dice for different players has been done on Warlight and it sucked!  I hated it a lot!

AttilaTheHun wrote:

I propose this:  All the people who've been complaining about dice luck enter into the same game and find out who is truly the unluckiest of them all!

Brilliant idea

I think when DUD takes your unit bonus territory with 5 units versus your defending 5.  You officially want to break your monitor.

Well, that would of course depend on the screen size.....

It also depends if it's an old screen. In this case, just break it.

Toto wrote:

It also depends if it's an old screen. In this case, just break it.

Amen.

Mad Bomber wrote:

whats the odds of a defender rolling 6 single dice rolls and getting a 6 every time?

1/6^6 = 1/46,656

~0.002%

Same odds for an attacker of course.

Bad luck happens to the best of us.. Poloquebec just lost 8 v 1 in this game

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/46893

Of course, the difference between me and him is that he's so good that he could still win.

Just lost 12 armies in a row vs 2 without killing 1 (  http://www.wargear.net/games/view/47264 moves 589+). How does it compare ?

Toto wrote:

Just lost 12 armies in a row vs 2 without killing 1 (  http://www.wargear.net/games/view/47264 moves 589+). How does it compare ?

~0.3%

250:1

Ten times more likely to happen.

I didn't read this thread too closely, but a few comments:

- People complaining about "abnormal bad luck" are likely suffering from observational bias. You pay more attention to painful rolls, and tend to remember those over lucky streaks. Case in point: I have yet to see anyone complain about "abnormal good luck"

- More observational bias: because your defense rolls occur automatically when you're not watching, you're rarely aware of "lucky streaks" you enjoy as a defender. In fact, for every unlucky attacking streak, there is a lucky defense streak. If the attacking rolls really were losing more often than they should, every player would be enjoying "lucky" defense streaks.

- More observational bias: If you grew up playing Risk as a board game, you should realize that you have probably played many, many more games of Risk online than you ever have in real life. You're probably observing more rolls playing online than an avid Risk Board game player would observe during a lifetime of playing. As such, you're going to encounter statistical outliers much, much more often.

- I just noticed luck stats are available, so you can actually see your dice distributions over the course of the entire game. Whenever I've looked, I haven't seen anything ridiculously off.

- I'm currently playing a Koprulu match where I lost 19 armies trying to take a territory defended by 3, normal dice odds. It may have cost me the game. No one's pain is greater than mine, so quit yo b*tchin.