by Ditocoaf on Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:24 pm
copy/paste:
random doesn't mean fair. Look at the following two strings of numbers, and tell me which is more random:
145263352164241653
155364536253432124
The first one looks more fair, doesn't it? Turns out that there are exactly three of each number. That's not very random at all, in fact that's dividing the numbers equally. What kind of dice purposely tries to spread things out fairly?
The second one is much more random--I rolled actual dice. Looks as if a lot more high numbers were rolled,especially towards the beginning. That's not fair, if the first half represents the defender, and the second the attacker. The defender would destroy, even with a few armies to the attacker's large force. But it's more random.
Random means unpredictable. Every several turns, there's probably going to be a completely uneven battle. Overall, the defender will get unfair wins just as many times as the attacker will get unfair wins. But it will even out over months, over all the games. It won't even out over one turn. According to randomness, there could be a week where attackers won 8 out of 10 dice rolls. This is very unlikely, but it could happen. That's randomness for you.
If you think about it, how would the dice be unfair? It doesn't use a different number generator for different dice... the attacker gets the random numbers from the same place that the defender does. You get your dice from the same place your opponent does. So unless you're claiming it's on purpose, then unfair dice are just luck, and randomness. It's not fair, but this game isn't supposed to be fair. It's supposed to be random.
The reason that dice seem more streaky to you here than in real life, is because you roll WAY more dice online than in real life. If you just sat around and rolled dice, playing six or seven games of RISK at a time, you'd find these streaks as well. But you don't, because you do it online instead. Personally, I'd be much more worried if I rolled thousands and thousands of dice, and the good rolls were evenly spread out the entire time.
I would suggest that while planning your strategies, you keep in mind that you might have bad luck. Preparing for unpredictable circumstances is part of war, and part of this game.
