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Discussions RISK Global Domination Feature Requests
Implemented

New Dice Algorithm / True dice rolls

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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How are the numbers generated anyway? Can SMG enlighten us? And since this is likely to be put into an update, what type of number generator will be implemented? In the end, no computer algorithm to generate numbers is ever really random. It has to have some sort of basis, such as time. One website, random.org uses slight fluctuations in weather (realtime data) to determine its generated numbers. That's about as random as you can get. Probably more random than rolling dice.

Is the blitz code any different than rolling one at a time? I have noticed the blitz with large armies takes a bit to compute and will lag the game, so this suggests it's more than just selecting a random overall result and I think it's actually rolling all of the dice rolls one by one in the background. So it shouldn't be any different. I get burned sometimes but i am aware of potential bad luck so I know when to use Blitz and when not to. Sometimes time forces me to blitz when I shouldnt though.

It would be nice to reset our dice statistics. Like with a car odometer. Show me the total but allow me to see what they were for a particular game or whenever I last hit the reset button. that'd be cool to see how bad I rolled on one game vs the obvious 16% across the board that everyone sees after a few games. I had one account that was skewed a little bit on the low side for a while.
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Yeah, this new dice system is far fetched...but it helps at the begining of the match...it allows following players to have a chance after the first turn of the first player. But still, 23 to 7 ....just flatened me, so upset... Plus i went on a rediculius loosing streak due to this un realistic dice rolloing algorithm. "Sigh" ive bought every add (premium version and all maps) and i am a Grandmaster. Its hard keeping a true statistical record. Its stressful but i deal with it.
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The dice rolls are completely ridiculous. The amount of times I lose all my troops on a 10 v 2 battles is just plain annoying and in no way reflects the odds. The icing on the cake was just now when I had 23 v 5 and I lost all my troops and they only lost 2. The game is just unplayable when it's like this.
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Geez. I don't have a PHD. I only have a bachelor's in aerospace. Statistics was only one class in engineering courses though. Anyway, nothing done by a computer is truly random. However, using a transition matrix is far worse from calculating each roll. Blitz before did tax the processing power of your device because ti calculated each roll in a Blitz and maybe that's why they did it but I don't want it randomly generating a result based on possibilities I want it to roll each one.

 

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How about instead of giving out free premium accounts you guys use a solid algorithm? 

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And remove "true dice rolls" as "Implemented"....

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As a statistician, I can tell you that we humans are very poor at determining when a process is random and when it is not.  Here's an example that my stats professor gave me when I couldn't understand how a roulette wheel could bring up a bunch of "red" in a row.   Consider 2 scenarios.


Take a deck of cards, remove all but the face cards.  We're left with 12 cards, 4 K, 4Q, 4J.  I want to draw a K because it is a high card and will let me win.  The probability of drawing a K is 4/12 or 33%. So shuffle the deck, I draw one and it is a K.  Yea.  Now what is the probability I can draw another one.  Less than 33% right?  Sure it is 3/11 or 27 percent.  Want to draw a third K, probability is 2/10 or 20%.  Here's the point, drawing one K changes the probability of drawing a second one.  It's called conditional probability because the likelihood of drawing a K depends on what happened before.  Drawing without replacement.


Scenario 2.  Same deal, only after I draw a card, put it back into the deck and reshuffle.  So I draw a K again, likelihood 33%.  I put the K back into the deck and draw again, what is the likelihood of drawing a K?  It's the same.  Probability here is not conditional based on what happened before.   Drawing with replacement.  Dice are like this.  They have no memory. 


But we Risk players do hate it when we get a run of the same result that goes against us.  Of course we do.  I just built an Excel spreadsheet that randomly pulls H or T like a coin.  I ran it 50 times.  Run 25 was a T, Run 26 was a H followed by 7 more heads in a row.  If I'm at a roulette wheel and see Red turn up 7 times in a row, my gut tells me the next will be Black.  It's just no so.


As Frog said, show me your data.


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I've noticed my roll stats always staying at a consistent 16%. This by itself seems sketch to me. There should be some fluctuations here and there. If I know that even with a small sample of rolls such as a single game, that all players including myself will roll 16% equally, I have a slight inclination on when streaks are likely to occur. For instance, if I just busted something absurd like 3 armies defending and defeating 15 armies, I know that I am less likely to have that happen again. I'll take more chances than I would normally, like attacking a 4 with only 5 armies. This seems to work more than it doesn't. Anyone else have a similar experience?
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Any chance that this is just a blitz problem. I've gone back to rolling everything out(at least at the start of the game when it really counts) and I'm no longer seeing ludicrous wins or loses. Perhaps the random number generator isn't so random when the dice is rolled in quick succession as the blitz implementation might do.
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I don't really care how the dice roll, as long as they roll the same for all players = fair

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Guys, its not the random number generator itself, but the Blitz algorithm that uses the numbers. SMG has said it uses a "transition matrix" algorithm. This algorithm short cuts the number of manual rolls required to finish an opponent. The TM embeds probabilities for every attacker-defender combination and the random number between 0-1 is rolles to see what "matrix element" is tested. Then another random number is thrown to see if the test is good or not. So at least two random numbers are used in the algorithm, one to decide the interaction probability and one to test the win/lose criteria for that particular interaction. This is called a "Markov Chain". I think SMG doesnt want to tax their servers and use tbis simplistic yet inaccurate or nonrealistic approach to save compute time. However, the intelligent programmer could devise a scheme to utilize parallel computing in Blitz mode such that more transition probabilities are determined and tested simultaneously. This is the way they do it in real life with chemical kinetics, radiation transport, and ocean/environmental science. SMGs opted for a quick and simplistic approach to the algorithm makes the game not enjoyable in the long run. Why dont they fix the algorithm? The random number stride is long enough, but tbe way they use the numbers is highly suspect. I use the Merseinne Twister and even though we use the same generator, my algorithms that use the numbers alway sample from a true probability distribution.
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No dude, of the millions playing, hardly anyone will come here to complain - they will just get sick of the app and uninstall lol... I dread to think of how much money SMG has lost over this issue!


People are interested in Risk because they've played the board game - so they know how real dice behave... and understand that the the attacker has a slight advantage over the defender when its 3v2 dice etc...


Unfortunately I have yet to see that advantage displayed in most of the games I've played - what I do see however, are a constant stream of virtually impossible rolls... which lose vastly more troops then were defeated! 


Sure there will always be some little kids who will rage-quit if they get one bad roll lol - but it's kinda silly to think grown adults, who've been playing the game for years... are just complaining for no reason lol!


This game has the potential to make millions for SMG - but they are sabotaging it's success by not fixing three major issues, namely:

1) Maintaining 100% Reliable Connection

2) Integrating Anti-Cheating Measures

3) Developing Truly Random Dice 

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Jukka, I completely agree. I had the goal of getting to master and would just play a few games per day, often one or two at my lunch break (depending on how long the first one took and I averaged about 30 minutes). Anyways, after getting to Expert, I kind of just stopped playing because it wasn't fun working against the faulty statistics. And regardless of how the math works out (I haven't tested it yet, but it's on my to do list), we've all played the "real" board game and there's obviously something to the complaints when we tell SMG that the board game was more fun. The dice rolls needs a serious fix.

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I just deleted Risk app after reading Michaels comment. Anyway, I played occasionally but left the game immediately if my game was destroyed by strange dice probabilities. This of course is very annoying for the remaining gamers behavior since the AI based player is so annoyingly dumb. 


It escapes me that the game developers have ignored this issue while introducing constantly news stupid features. Since they are incompetent to develop a startup, I hope they will go bust and someone more competent gets to re-write the game. I'd be happy to play if the game follows some rules of probabilities. Exactly as Michale noted above.

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Before SMG changed up the dice weren't they random roll for roll (Or acceptably random anyway)? I never understood why they were changed. Now my accounts have their percentages skewed to the higher numbers how does that reflect real life dice? Before they were all 16's. Of course I remember people clamoring for change back then but I think it used to be a much more satisfactory algorithm. On spectator mode it is a good way to spy on suspicious players. I took down the #2 player Wednesday by joining his game and reporting him (He played two of three humans and had a bot). His secondary was ranked 118 so he was getting points from beating that every game. As far as I can tell SMG deducts massive amounts of ranking points from cheaters so it is almost like banning them. Besides if they keep their old name we can remember them so that is nice. I am confident that the rest of the top ten and many other top accounts are cheaters as well but they are inactive or smarter. Still if I see any top accounts playing I think I will crash their party.
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