I just attacked with 23 units against 3.  I never had a second thought against using the 'T' button.  The attack was unsuccessful.  I lost 20 attacking units with 2 defending units lost.  Any mathematical types want to work out the odds of that?

Tell us your worst single click loss.

Well it wasn't a loss for me, but I beat 50 units attacking from a territory with 4 sometime last year. It didn't really matter for the game but it was pretty funny.

32v3, I lost, it came down to 1v1 which I also lost, it was on a monopoly board with no dice modifier.

My current record is losing 13 consecutive 3 vs 1 dice rolls, I had the 3.

Using a rough estimate of attacker winning 2/3 of those, that would be 1 outa 3^13, or about 1 in 1.6 million.

couple nights ago i lost 15v3 :/

IRoll11s wrote: My current record is losing 13 consecutive 3 vs 1 dice rolls, I had the 3.

Using a rough estimate of attacker winning 2/3 of those, that would be 1 outa 3^13, or about 1 in 1.6 million.

I once lost 18 units attacking a single unit territory.

Want me to bring The Angel Problem over so you all can really see some epic losses?

RiskyBack wrote: Want me to bring The Angel Problem over so you all can really see some epic losses?

Yes.

35v3 was my worst. i've had multiple instances of losing 5 or 6 on a single.

weathertop wrote: 35v3 was my worst. i've had multiple instances of losing 5 or 6 on a single.

Oh sure, outdo me by 2 armies.  Pfft.

heh, well i need to be able to beat you at something!

This week has been my worst single loss ever....I can't win anything, If you are looking for just one instance though I believe I lost 30v3 the other day, and ended up still not taking the territory. It may just be me but I seem to have had more epic losses on this site than that other site.

Don't fret, it's not just you, seems there have been many epic losses here. It's like the computer version of "300"!

Maybe you guys should try fighting in the shade?

Patton wrote: Don't fret, it's not just you, seems there have been many epic losses here. It's like the computer version of "300"!

I have raised this before, but there seems to be so many of these "rare" occurences here.  I know the MS Twister is meant to be a state of the art random number generator, but it appears to have a characteristic where the defender often rolls the same number as the attacker, which explains the attackers loses being so high.  I have had too many 1,000,000 to 1 roll losses occur than should be statistically expected.

Hope I don't sound like I'm whinging, it is really just a point of fascination and curiosity for me, and it is interesting to note that others seem to have the same experience.

Perhaps the routine being used is not very good at mixing up random numbers for a small range (ie.. 1 to 6).  It would be interesting to see the results that would be obtained if something like the following was used:

Mod(Rand (6000)/6) +1

"but it appears to have a characteristic where the defender often rolls the same number as the attacker"

I agree. A few weeks ago when I lost the 13 times in a row clicking the 3 button to attack 3 vs 1, I started paying attention. Far too often when you use that 3 button you wind up with:

6,2,2 vs 6
5,3,3 vs 5
4,1,1 vs 4
2,1,1 vs 2

I've since switched to using the drop-down list to attack 3 vs 1, and although I still sometimes lose 4-5 armies, the frequency of losses seems more natural to me.

I have no idea why this would be the case, but at this point I am almost certain there is something wrong with randomness and/or code involved specifically in using the top 1,2,3 buttons to attack.

I'm assuming the 1 and 2, but never really use them, because that's rookie =/

IRoll11s wrote: I agree. A few weeks ago when I lost the 13 times in a row clicking the 3 button to attack 3 vs 1, I started paying attention. Far too often when you use that 3 button you wind up with:

6,2,2 vs 6
5,3,3 vs 5
4,1,1 vs 4
2,1,1 vs 2

Exactly!!!  Not only do the highest numbers match, but when you get into one of the bad losing roll sequences, you have those matching 2nd and 3rd numbers for the attacker.  It is really freaky how often this happens.  It is the sort of thing that initially looks like an error in the programming, but surely it can't be the code, as it would then happen all of the time.  Therefore I'm just presuming it is a natural sequence that is present in the MS Twister, which is why I proposed the coding in my previous post to try and break it up.

I've updated the logging so I can differentiate between multiple and single attacks in the log file more easily.

Give it a few days and I'll email whoever wants to analyse it a copy of the results for single (i.e. button) attacks and we'll take it from there.

Thanks tom for logging this and making it available. While I'm not skeptical, it's a great thing to have people check.

By the way, the ties may seem freakish because they happen with higher probability than you might imagine (much better than 1 in 6). Against a single defending dice, 49.0% of the losses occur with tied dice. So among streaks of losses, a streak of ties, while not a common event, isn't that rare either. I checked some of my recent loss streaks, and there weren't any bizarre tie streaks.

For defender defending with 2 dice, 16.7% of the situations where the attacker loses 2 involve tying both the high and the 2nd highest die. This is about 1 in 6, far better than the 1 in 18 "intuition" seems to suggest. Details can be provided upon request :)

-Hugh

tom wrote:

I've updated the logging so I can differentiate between multiple and single attacks in the log file more easily.

Give it a few days and I'll email whoever wants to analyse it a copy of the results for single (i.e. button) attacks and we'll take it from there.

Hi Tom,

Sorry, I never really meant for you to have to do anything, you have much better things to do with your time.  I just find things like this interesting, so was curious to see if I am the only paranoid one on the site and wanted to hear other opinions simply for the sake of discussion.  I'm now guessing my skepticism comes from the fact that I never got to have so many rolls in such a short time playing risk at the dinner table, so now that I'm online, I should expect to see more of these strange events.  Whatever happens, it happens to all, so in terms of fairness, we're all on a level playing field.  As I've said before, brilliant site, love it all !!!

Regards,

Paul.