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I'd love to know the difference of true odds vs their algorithm for these larger armies, mostly concerning average troops lost. How much worse does it look for the attacker as more and more troops exist? 

Well I had a game today, where 9 lost vs 1 twice. I mean the chances of this happening is somewhere in the ball park of 1:1000000. I don't think I'm that lucky. I don't get how it can be this hard to approximate true dice rolls. Any decent programmer can write an algorithm that can do it in less than an hour ;/

Well, no matter how stacked the odds are, there is only one case where attacker loses all and defender loses none. You should play the lottery if you are getting a 1 out of 357,737 chance 3/5 of the time.

Risk employees will always maintain that the dice do NOT favor anyone. They are stubborn about this.  The reality as experienced is quite different. They are not running an honest game. Example 15v4 the 15 gets wiped out and the 4 stands. They will not listen to experience. It is pointless to try and work with them.

Good morning Reginald,

I have also played this game for 40 years starting with the board game; my brother and I had a rivalry and played hours upon hours.  Our generation grew up playing many many  games that include dice such as monopoly... guess what role is statistically the most probable 7 right....  We grew up playing cards which is also a game of statistics.  The point is our generation is uniquely positioned to make observations about the probability of dice rolls without being PHDs in math; we have a pretty good sense for when things don't seem right.  Further you don't need to have a PHD to look up the probability of winning a 3 attacking dice on 2 or 1 defending dice where the defender wins a tie; the probablility information for ALL POSSIBLE outcomes is readily available on the internet.

While there are many responses and opinions on this board about this specific topic, please be aware that some of those posting also understand that when we played the board game we got frustrated by the results that went counterintuitive to odds.  AND we blamed our brother for not holding the dice high enough off the table or dropping the dice on the floor, surely that doesn't count.....  My point Reginald is that those of us that have played this game also understand that our emotional response to upside down odds is not warranted if we play enough games and the results SMOOTH out over time.  Do I get frustrated when I get autosetup with horrible board position, on top of multiple 5 card only turn ins in a row, coupled by the only option I get on fixed turn in is three infantry.  Do I get frustrated in the same game when my start position is last of 6 players, YEP because it is a BIG disadvantage.  Should I conclude that everything in the game is stacked against me because I've had upside down odds for one game, NO!  One game isn't a large enough sample set to make that conclusion.  The key to this whole topic is are the people posting on this topic just being emotional or are they going a step deeper and looking at the hard number results.

So I embarked on that quest.  I asked myself if I was gettting emotional or if that patterns I was seeing were correct; that I was getting CONSISTENT upside down odds on autoattack where I had the clear advantage.  I tracked 2 games then 4 then 6 then 10 and the results I got were not consitent with probability.  When I attacked 3 dice on 2 I was averaging around a 50% win ratio.  When I attacked 3 dice on 1 I was around 60%.  Those results are not consistent with probable outcomes; I could give you the probability for each of those outcomes but I will let you look it up yourself.  I did the same thing with board positioning, turn positioning etc and etc.  There were times I felt I was getting a raw deal but when I tracked a large enough sample set I realized that I was wrong and I was being emotional; everything is against me.....

I reached out to SMG support and asked what probability they expected for each scenario and while I could share these emails with you TRUST me when I tell you SMG's support staff have no clue what dice probability should be.  I was told that if I attacked 3 dice on one that I have a 90% chance of winning, REALLY Reginald, really!  I could only wish that were the case but I glad it isn't because that would mean when my opponent attacked me he would get those same odds and that isn't just statistically wrong it is galactically wrong and you don't need to a PHD to intuitively know it's wrong.  OK, OK that is just one guy who is 20 something that understands programming and game gliching but really isn't up on dice probability right?  NO!  I went back and forth for over a month with different analysts and they all quoted me different odds for the same scenearios in the same email thread and not once but over and over.  And none of them ever quoted me the correct odds even after I provided them links to Risk statistical odds by people that actually have PHDs in math.

So when I provided my spreadsheet of a sample set of 10 games and my results to a higher level analyst that seemed to understand he said he would have to look into it because those results shouldn't happen that way.  While you got a bad 10 game snapshot you say.  No I did this over and over painstakenly with basically the same results.  Can this happen, well of course.  But is it probable, NO.  When you start going down this road you have to be careful.  Can you attack 100 on 1 and lose, YES it can happen but is it probable NO!  Dont' tell me if that happened you wouldn't be in a state of shock even though you no it's possible....  That event isn't wrong but if happens with frequency IT IS!

I don't get freaked out when I attack 5 on 1 and lose all my men.  I get frustrated yes because it is statistically improbable.  But if this scenario happens a couple times per game over multiple games isn't it reasonalbe to say well that is an improbable pattern if it continues and if it continues game over game over game isn't fair for me to ask Support what's going on.

Reginald I have played over a 1,000 games on the SMG site and I can tell you that smoothed out over time my odds are roughly 50% attacking 3 dice on 2 consistently.  Have I had one or two games or dice rolls where I obliterate the other guy, YEP.  But it is just as emotional to EXPECT those statistically improbable odds to continue.  

When I asked an analyst what their dice algorithm odds were he said that he couldn't provide it because that was proprietary.  Well that's odd dice probability is NOT proprietary and that answer is problematic.

I too have had to play my same turn over several times becausee I kept losing connection, I concluded I was getting a weak wifi signal in that room and simply stopped playing the game there.  I've also uncovered a bug where I lost wifi and when I reconnected my opponent was granted a significant amount of men and this was confirmed by support.  So there are problems with the game to be sure.  But pound for pound I'd rather play it than the board game any day of the week because I don't have 2 hours to play one game.

Regards,

Rich

Rich,

More power to you. It's just not that serious for me. I think I am more annoyed by the obvious cheating than the algorithms. If it wasn't for being shut in by Covid, I probably would not have started playing online. While I excelled at math in HS and college I hated it and reading some of these posts gave me flashbacks to probability and statistics, algebra and Diffy Q. Thoughts that are akin to PTSD for a Philosophy major...lol. My opinion was just my personal casual observation that even though the game as many flaws. These flaws are equally distributed to every player from game to game. I think short of SMG hiring a Machine Learning firm which would make the game too pricey for probably 75% of the players, this rendition of the game is pretty good to play and just have some fun. Today I played several games. The first I got as many 3 card sets as I did 5 card sets and I won most of the 3 on 1 and 2 on 1 battles. I rarely go 3 on 2 unless my army is turtling and it is my only option. In that game I was 5th of 6 players and finished 2nd. The 2nd game I got almost all 3 cards sets with an occasional 4 card. I started 6th  and finished 1st while winning about 50% of the small battles. The 3rd game I started 1st in a 5 player game and was the first eliminated. In that game I lost every small battle. Plus I lost 12 on 5, 16 on 8, 12 on 7 and 10 on 5. Not ONE single time did I win a battle when the other player had more than 1 army. So a 1st, a 2nd and a fifth in three consecutive games doesn't bother me one bit regardless of how I lost that 3rd one. I don't bother keeping notes because it's just a free game to keep from climbing the walls. Oh in case you were wondering I don't play novices or beginners anymore so all my games have no more than two intermediates and the rest experts and above. I do this because of all the rampant cheating by players who are playing more than one player during a game on a proxy server. I figure if I am going to lose I want to lose against a better ranked player. I can tell a lot of times by how the lower ranked player will constantly be shielding and attacking to one players benefit. When possible I take one of them out (usually the lower ranked one) even if I  have to suicide...lol. Better to lose to a Grandmaster or Master than an intermediate. I know that probably sounds dumb, but w hen I  stopped playing beginners my ranking shot up in two days to Expert. See you on the battlefield.

 Yeah every time I play a game in the app version I experience something wonky and come here to find out if it's just my imagination or if it's really happening.

I just played a game where I was wiped out in 3 turns.  I went head to head with a guy to start off.....we both had almost exactly the same number of troops to start off with.  In three attacks he wiped out all but 2 of my guys and he lost 5 troops total.

I get that rolling a die is random but three straight turns he wiped me out while losing 5 troops total? 

I'm just wondering is the roll system in the game something that can be hacked?  I mean if a player wanted to could they rig it in their favor? 

There's so many things about this game that are infuriating.  I'm pretty decent at risk, I understand the strategy of the game and have played the board game for years.  I win fairly often in real games but the online version seems to either be just dumb random luck or rigged.

Between players using more than one account and the (seemingly) busted rolling system it really takes the skill out of the game.