SMG Studio

Game does not use true dice roll probabilities. Many, many times I've had 97-99% chance to win and dont.

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FYI: Rolling = Recording of the rolls made through the game / game stats

 

A bajillion people have said the dice are flawed - and Marky Mark comes along as the Lone Crusader to say they are fine lol!

Dude, ya obviously aren't up to speed with the probabilities... check out this website for a basic primer = 

http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/november22011/index.html

Like I said, we still have a level playing field as everyone has the same crappy dice (although it does mean you have to adjust the strategy of how you play) - however the monumental problem is, crappy rolls kill the popularity and profitability of the game... 

Right now it seems about 5 million people have downloaded Risk - which is great... but it could/should/would be double or even triple that!

More importantly, only a small percentage of people go ahead and pay for Premium - that percentage would be much higher... if SMG fixed all the many minor and major issues!

Anyway, seeing as you're even more obsessive than me (way to go bro lol!) and have recorded/uploaded some games - I'll go through them and put the data into a public Google spreadsheet... so we can all analyse till the kangaroos come home!

Aitch, there's no need to be a prick.  I have no problem with you or anyone else who thinks there's a issue with the dice, and I'm not in any way insulting you or them.

I'm aware that a lot of people have complained about the dice, and I'm also aware that I'm not the only person who thinks these complaints have been blown out of proportion and may well be artifacts of human psychology.  I didn't just jump into the tail end of this discussion without reading the previous posts and other threads on this same topic.  Just because a lot of people think something is true doesn't make that thing true (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum).  In all of the complaining that's been done about the dice I haven't seen any evidence.  The evidence I have access to (my videos and others I've found on youtube) doesn't seem to support these claims of bad dice.  If I see evidence that does support bad dice, I will happily change my tune.

I'm also very familiar with the probabilities of rolling dice as they relate to RISK.  Not only have I seen the probability tables that can be found in numerous places on the internet, but I have actually worked out the probabilities myself to confirm what I've seen elsewhere.  I also have a background in math, specifically a BS, and I'm a math teacher by trade.

Post your spreadsheets if you want, but the raw data (videos) that you mentioned would be much better.  If you post videos, no one has to take your word for it that your spreadsheets are accurate.  I have my own raw data (my videos and others' videos on youtube), and that data does not seem to support the claims you and others have made about frequently encountering very improbable dice rolls.  That's why I'm skeptical.  If you're offended by my skepticism and requests that you actually support you claims with actual evidence, that's your problem.

Well of course everyone gets the same "advantage" or "disadvantage" but if the dice aren't rolling as expected, strategies may need to be changed. In this case, the slight variances in 1's wouldn't change gameplay much. It just means that in small battles that defender has slightly better edge than if the dice were exactly as they should be. It's not enough to sway me from playing, obviously.

Actually, the greatest flaw in my opinion is how long it takes to roll. Your choice is either roll and run out of time or take a risk with a Blitz. In desperate measures, Blitz is fine but sometimes I only want to attack if I can continue to advance. And it's not often I'm willing to attack with only 2 or 1 left when the defender may still have say, 8 or more. They need rapid rolling for these circumstances which happen to me a lot in gameplay. Sometimes, I'm just beating down armies so the next turn can't be offensive. Odds are in favor of the attacker. I always take the offense when I know there's going to be lashback (typically only when it's 1v1)

 

Briand, I was curious enough to do the calculation for the 1 vs 1 case to see just how much difference changing the % of ones would make.  Long story short, you were correct that defender is better off with a reduction in the 1's probability and you were also correct that the change would be very small.

Specifically, if the probability of rolling a 1 was reduced from 1/6 to 0.14 and all the other probabilities were increased evenly, the defender's chances of wining would increase by about 0.073%.  This is such a small change that it would be very difficult to actually observe, but none the less you were right.  This small change would then carry over to other battle scenarios, but again the change would be so small as to be practically unnoticeable.

I completely agree about the time it takes to roll the dice.  The dice rolling animation really doesn't add anything to the game, and is pretty much just a waste of time.  A quick roll alternative to the blitz roll would be great.

If you are (or anyone else is) interested, I've included the details of my calculation in an image with this comment.

The funny thing about your emphasis on "random" is no computer can truly generate random numbers. There has to be something to base it on. Time is usually what they use. Such as the ms on the timestamp or something like that. That can be predictable if you were capable of triggering the roll right at the exact ms, or whatever they use. But ultimately, because you're talking really arbitrary numbers from a user stand-point, it is pretty random, whether rolling one by one or using a Blitz matrix. It's still a "random" choice as to which outcome it selects. They do this to save on processing power. In the old days when it appeared to not use a matrix, an army of 50 against 50 would freeze the device for about a second while waiting for the result. It was irritating to be honest.

It's hardly even "random" when you roll dice as well. Some people can sort of control what they will roll. Of course the average person just drops them and hopes for the best but humans can modify the outcome.

Now, the most truly "random" I've seen that a computer can do is what random.org implements. They use slight changes in weather as their method for determining numbers. That is quite interesting and I guess as random as you can get, since that's a function based on natural occurrence and cannot be predicted.

In the end, as long as they aren't skewing the code one way or the other, I am fine with it. But I do think they have a skew on 1's. unless those stats are wrong. And I don't like slightly moving the edge towards the defender.

 

Mark, 

See my previous posts. The collective dice outcomes are not randomly distributed.  I logged just short of 1000 battles then removed combinations that had less than 13 observations. When entering into a battle, the probability of losing 1,2,3, etc armies was significantly lower than the actual outcomes. It was persistent and repeatable. Yet, the frequency of the numbers were more or less normally distributed. 

There were two distinct patterns. The distribution of armies lost for an overwhelming attacking force was bi-modal.  Either the attacker didnt lose enough armies or lost way too many. Even when accounting for the lower bound. 

When attacker & defender were within 3 armies of each other, if the attacker rolled lower numbers, the defender tended to roll lower numbers and the when the attacker rolled high numbers the defender rolled low number. You can see how this is problematic when individual die rolls are normally distributed right?

 The dice sequence is dependent on what SMG refers to as "transition matrix" (TM). The random number sequence if conducted in a "serial mode" requires many more random numbers (one for each state) than the TM approach. In Discrete Event Simulation, to go from State A to State B given a probability P, throw 1 random number in a uniform probability distribution between [0,1] and assign State A if the random number is < P, or State B if the random number is > P. Thats for a simple transition of one state to one other. Now if you want to go from State A1, A2, A3...Aa  to State B1, B2, B3 ..Bb  then you would need an axb size matrix, where the matrix elements correspond to the individual specific transitions. I would think SMG ran say 10 million dice simulations with all types of combinations to populate their overall BlitzMode TM. They have to simulate enough transition states to get whats called The Law of Large Numbers (normal distribution) mean and variance..   The issue is that their matrix element values may be juiced or skewed so when the one dice is thrown Blitz Mode, it might not seem to be in accordance with the probability distribution of the TM.

The Random Number Generator (Merseinne Twister) is a very robust algorithm. However the TM values are not subject to the same statistics as the generator.

If SMG gets the message their TM elements are hosed, then they will correct it.

There is a small probability that 5 armies will prevail against 15.

Anxious to see if I get the same result.

 

I wouldn't say 99% of the time but it was definitely quite consistant with a little bit of favor towards the attacker. What was obvious is when blitz against 1 army territories, both attacker and defender both lost 1 every single time. I've seen this bug before, on the last update, and submitted a ticket already. Not gonna play till that's fixed. Takes about a day or so.

 

Please fix this it makes the game very unenjoyable. For every one person that complains on this board there's probably a few hundred that feel the same way but don't bother posting.