Dice Complaints and Various Suggestions to Fix Them

[seamusmacdeath]

Hey all,
So I'm pretty new to the site, but I've found so far that the dice seem stacked towards the defense. Maybe I'm just having a bout of bad luck, but I've definitely lost some attacks that numerically should have been won (as in 13 on 3, 10 on 1, etc.). Just wondering if anyone else has these problems.

-Mike
(Seamus MacDeath)

[PacoTheCharm]

well, its bad luck, but the defense does get the upper hand in ties.

[joetalk]

in rsponse to seamusmacdeath's coment about the defense, it has always been that way with the defense getting the tie, and evin if they only have two die its only the highest two of the attackers anyways, so really it is the defense that has always been in advantage. I know from many years on a board that the average is 15 man min, to remove a 10 man defense Thats with good rolls. AND NO ITS NOT JUST U I THINK WE'VE ALL HAD A COUPLE OF BOUTS LIKE THAT
Joetalk OUT

[thegrimsleeper]

Yeah, we've all had that terrible run at the country with 3 armies that took out 14 guys... it sucks. What sucks more is that as long as this site keeps getting new users, the old ones are gonna have to keep reading this thread.

[irishhebrew82]

I suggest we use some other way of rolling dice....the F-ck-ng computer just boned me 12 times in a row!!!! that said.....this is a great site...keep it up man ......

[craig84]

i think its not fair when 75% of te time i lose all my armys, i lost 7 to a 3 wtf how does that happen, i want it so things are fair none of this bullshit

[Darkfire001]

lol...7v3 the odds aren't too heavily in your favor I just lost a 13v4 earlier hurt quite a bit more

[jraym]

Too much bitching... This is a risky game and sometimes it pays off and other times it does not. You win some you lose some... yadda yadda. Get over it and mop up the spilt milk...

[lackattack]

I have replaced the dice. Here's the announcement.

[lackattack]

i actually just replaced the dice. here's the details.

[papabud]

i understand that the problem was "fixed" but in my last few games, I haven't been able to win a battle on my first turn! Now that's like 6 attempts. Odds or not, clearly the defender's dice are rolling strong.

[craig84]

i am so tired of hearing u jray effin kiss my ass i dnt care if u think im bitchin or not u piece of shit stf^ b/c it only sounds like u post to start shit

[oman]

I lost over 30 people without taking out one single person, but its part of the game, and thats why they call risk risk

[Sheik-e]

The power of the dice is...curved. There is something wrong...I know it.

[zorba_ca]

Obviously people are divided on the issue of fairness of the dice.

Is it possible for Lack to create a log of dice rolls for a day (or two?)
This should yield thousands of dice rolls and offer a valid sample.

We can then compare these results against the actual probability tables and see if there are any anomalies.

To further assist us in parsing the data it would be helpful if we were also able to catalogue the attacking and defending armies involved in each roll.

[max is gr8]

That would prove if the dice work or not

[moz976]

I actually think the dice work fine. You win some and you lose some just like in real life.

But if this would help stop some of the complaining I would be for it.

Also have you tried to keep track of your own wins/loses on your games? I might try to do that and see how I come out.

[zorba_ca]

It's too hard to do in my own games. When playing, I just want to roll - the adrenaline rushes. Especially in a freestyle game.

Hopefully Lack can do this easily.

For the record, I'm not complaining about the dice rolls although I do find there to be an abnormally low amount of 1-1 loses. I just want to put the issue to rest (or bring a problem to light). This is the best way.

[lackattack]

Okay, here's how the dice work:

I have a list of 50,000 dice rolls I got from random.org. Each line in the file looks like this: A1 A2 A3 D1 D2

So each time you attack I only use the numbers you need and then erase the line from the file. When the file is empty it is automatically re-loaded. We currently consume 30,000 rolls each day.

So every 50,000 rolls the dice repeat themselves, and this is why I don't want to publish the list. If you attack twice quickly at 4:00 AM Montreal time, there is a good chance you would get consecutive lines in the file. Granted, it would be very hard to cheat if you had the file but I'm not sure it should be made public.

Maybe my 50,000 rolls does have a lot of lossing streaks in it. Maybe I should replace it with another file with higher variance. If anyone knows how to assess the variance of a file of 50,000 dice rolls please raise your hand!

[moz976]

I say let the dice be. I think your always going to have someone say the dice isn't right because he gets a few or even a lot of bad rolls.

But in the intrest of quiteing people who think the dice is messed up why don't you get a few volenteers to keep track of their dice rolls for a day/week whatever seems appropriate and then get all the info together and see if we have a problem. Id be glad to help out. I seem to have a lot of free time on my hands between computer repairs at my job.

[mastersneeze]

Okay, here's how the dice work:

I have a list of 50,000 dice rolls I got from random.org. Each line in the file looks like this: A1 A2 A3 D1 D2

So each time you attack I only use the numbers you need and then erase the line from the file. When the file is empty it is automatically re-loaded. We currently consume 30,000 rolls each day.

Something seems wrong with this algorithm. So you are saying if I am attacking with two dice and you are defending with 1 die, then conquerclub.com would read the next line in file and compare A1 A2 to D1? If this is true, then that leaves A3 and D2 out of the statistical calculations. So in the long run the probability distribution of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 would be skewed according to how they are ordered in the file. What this means is that in the long run never attack with less than 3 dice and never defend with less than 2 dice. I'm glad you posted this because this is a major flaw. The easy way to fix this would be to have 2 files "Attacker.dicerolls" and "Defender.dicerolls", each file having 1 die roll per line. So if I attacked you with 2 dice and you defended with 1 die, then conquerclub.com would read 2 lines from "Attacker.dicerolls" to get the attacking dice and 1 line from "Defender.dicerolls" to get the defending die. If "Attacker.dicerolls" had 150,000 lines and "Defender.dicerolls" had 100,000 lines then you could maintain your current churn rate and maintain something closer to the statistical averages of 16% independent probability of each die roll coming up.

It would be cool if you posted the statistical averages of the file (which can be done as soon as a new file is updated - and this should be the baseline file) vs. the statistical averages of the die rolls actually used (i.e. keep a counter for how many times a 1 comes up for attackers on a die that is actually used according to your current algorithm, a 2, a 3.. etc. and also for defenders; then look at the average over the same 50,000 sets of rolls and you should see much higher "skew" in the averages. What's more interesting is that the skew should be different for defenders and attackers.)

[mastersneeze]

An interesting side note to my solution of posting statistical averages for each of the six independent die rolls is that it would shut people up about unfairness in the dice.. And remember people, dice don't have to be fair in the short term only in the long run. (I recently went 15 up against 7 and lost everything while the defender lost only 4... I didn't cry for too long because statistics comforted me.)

[lackattack]

So you are saying if I am attacking with two dice and you are defending with 1 die, then conquerclub.com would read the next line in file and compare A1 A2 to D1? If this is true, then that leaves A3 and D2 out of the statistical calculations.

Yes that is how it works. If one line of dice rolls looks like 1 5 6 5 1 then sometimes it can mean attacker looses 1, at other times defender looses 2, depending on how many dice are being rolled.

So in the long run the probability distribution of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 would be skewed according to how they are ordered in the file. What this means is that in the long run never attack with less than 3 dice and never defend with less than 2 dice.

I don't understand how you reached this conclusion. So what if I don't use A3 and D2? I can waste 100 numbers and then the 101st number is still a perfectly good, independent roll from 1 to 6.

[Tr0y]

Heh, your dice are fine Lack, no need to defend them in my honest opinion.

There can be streaks in real life too people. Take a coin and flip it a 1000 times.. You may find a streak of 8 tails/heads.

[zorba_ca]

I agree with Tr0y. I like the dice. I adpot the philosophy of Sun Tzu on war (and Dick Cheney on lawyers): Attack with overwhelming force. Statistics tend to favour these odds.

However, I do think that running some tests on the numbers would put some people's minds to rest.

Knowing that the numbers are generated based on atmospheric pressure one successful strategy I have begun to employ is to exhale when attacking and inhale when defending. When it's not my turn I just hold my breath.