Best posts made by Eqqman

@The_Good_Captain Yes, I have it in downloadedfMaps after doing the direct download since telling the game to install the map itself from the Experimental list doesn’t launch. I haven’t had any issues playing local games.

Yeah, the current system is pretty annoying. Even after having worked a management-level position in a game development company I’m still amazed by the odd UI quirks that end up in games. I’m always running across things that make me think ‘how did the developers themselves not find this immediately annoying and try to fix it’?, like having your ships decide to move to the ‘wrong’ (from your view) SZ by default.

@The_Good_Captain
Are the units in France correct? I see a damaged French tank which should not be there unless you used Edit Mode to damage it before the dice were rolled (which you should do, to make sure there are no issues when assigning damage to Tanks on defense). However I don’t see any use of Edit Mode in the log.

@brian-cannon said in 🎲😢 PRNG dice support group — and ranting:

@eqqman So sayeth another one of the dice defenders.

Not really, as it happens. I have two major issues with the game that have caused me to quit playing twice: I don’t like being able to play only country a day in a game and then spending 23 hours waiting for my opponent to do something and I don’t like the dice outcomes (for example, I ‘feel’ like Battleship bombardments fail at a much higher rate than 1/3 of the time). The former is hardly a fault of the developers and the latter I am honest enough to admit is an opinion not backed up by any personal analysis of the dice results, it’s anecdotal.

What I -do- defend however are hypotheses backed up by data and real proofs over opinions. Read any post complaining about the dice and you will find a lot of emotion that drowns out all acceptance of the facts. The ‘facts’ usually presented are ‘I and everyone I know had a bad experience (or continue to have a bad experience) therefore the algorithm doesn’t produce a random result’. This is not a proof that withstands any scrutiny but players having a bad time expect it to be taken as gospel because they are frustrated.

Consider this example: a player rolls a single die to attack with three Fighters and three Infantry and gets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. No analysis I can think of on this data (a real math wonk can correct me here) will indicate that the dice rolls as an aggregate show anything out of the ordinary. If the player chose to roll their Infantry first, they will complain that the dice are unfair because they ‘should’ have gotten at least one hit from their Fighters. If they rolled the Fighters first they may be aware that the rolls seemed to have given slightly more hits on average but are very unlikely to complain that the dice are unfair. Player interpretation of the rolls has zero bearing on the randomness of the algorithm producing the rolls.

Anyone who swears that the dice are not sufficiently random is welcome to try the following experiment: play a game and record every dice roll that occurs and then total them up for how many times each number occurs -only-, so for example if you logged a total of 957 rolls you know that a 1 was rolled 342 times. If for example you find that by doing this over the course of several games the expected value of the dice is many standard deviations off then maybe there is something there about the dice being poorly randomized. If the person doing this experiment is also one who swears that these kinds of rolls ‘never’ happen to them in real life, I would also then recommend performing an equal number of real life rolls by hand and comparing the outcomes. Forum posters love to state that such bad luck as happens in A&AO never really occurs to them, but since no person I know has ever actually logged the results of their dice throws playing a face-to-face version of A & A such statements are supposition and not proof.

A subset of posters claiming they’ve ‘proved’ the dice aren’t random like to say things such as ‘the dice are broken because in X games I wrote down the number of AA rolls and AA hit more than Y amount of the time’. The flaw in these arguments is that probability doesn’t care if you’re rolling for AA or not. Players are adding additional layers of outcome requirements that have zero to do with genuine randomness- like AA ‘should’ hit 1/6 of the time or if every battle I fight has 80% odds then I ‘should’ win 80% of my battles. Sticking with the AA example, players complaining that AA outcomes ‘prove’ the dice are broken need to go back and do the experiment to see if the number of 1s rolled over the course of the entire game seems to be about 1/6 of the total rolls or not.

At the start I mentioned I don’t like the dice rolling either. I’m very disappointed only around 1/3 of players (I think, it was pretty low) wished for the low luck option as this makes it unlikely to be pursued by the developers. My own opinion (not fact) is that the algorithm being used produces streaks of results too frequently, giving lots of situations that result in excessive hits or misses. But this doesn’t mean that the rolls skewed too heavily one way or another over the course of a game. Our problem here is that we prefer to have a more even distribution of values over an extremely small sample size (i.e., less than a dozen rolls). I have no idea what algorithm currently developed by computer science gives this result better than the one currently in use by the game. I suspect if there was one the developers would switch to it in a heartbeat. Either way though, the minute you say ‘I want random but I don’t want streaks’ you’ve moved away from a ‘genuinely random’ system. I wrote in another post and I stand by it that nobody playing this game really wants a truly random number generation, they only want one that ‘feels’ random. Be honest- if the dice ‘felt’ right to you, would you care enough about the actual randomness to go into any in-depth analysis on if the numbers would truly be random enough? Anyone who ‘feels’ like their AA is hitting consistently 1/6 of the time should actually be suspicious since it would be odd that such a small specific subset of all the dice rolls in a game happened to have such an even distribution all on its own.

Likewise I don’t understand why players insist that the developers release some set of data for them to scrutinize. Anyone who already thinks the dice are unfair will never be convinced otherwise by looking at some imagined developer data since logic rarely trumps emotion. You can see it already in the posts where people -do- attempt rigorous analysis of the rolling only to be countered by what basically amounts to ‘don’t confuse me with facts, I know what I know’ arguments.

Apologies for the overly long response, and good luck to you with your gaming.

@Eqqman
Never mind it started pre-damaged.

@drdachel said in newbie with a bunch of questions:

• My wife surprisingly is willing to play this online with me.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re with a woman willing to play board or video games with you, especially strategy games, you better be sure you’re treating her like gold!

@The_Good_Captain
Game History

Round: 9

    Puchase Units - Americans
        Americans buy 1 artillery and 6 infantry; Remaining resources: 0 PUs; 

    Combat Move - Americans
        Turning on Edit Mode
        EDIT: Adding units owned by Neutral_True to Greece: 1 artillery and 1 infantry
        EDIT: Removing units owned by Americans from Greece: 1 artillery and 1 infantry
        EDIT: Turning off Edit Mode
        Turning on Edit Mode
        EDIT: Adding units owned by Americans to Coastal Barrage 1: 1 coastal_attacker
        EDIT: Turning off Edit Mode
        2 artilleries and 1 fighter moved from Greece to Albania
        3 transports moved from SZ 17 to SZ 16
        6 infantry moved from Spanish Morocco to SZ 16
        6 infantry and 3 transports moved from SZ 16 to SZ 17
        6 infantry moved from SZ 17 to Piedmont
        1 artillery and 7 infantry moved from United States of America to SZ 1
        1 artillery, 7 infantry and 4 transports moved from SZ 1 to SZ 14
        4 transports moved from SZ 14 to SZ 1
        1 artillery and 7 infantry moved from SZ 14 to Spain
        1 artillery and 1 infantry moved from Portugal to Spain

    Combat - Americans
        Americans creates battle in territory Coastal Barrage 1
        Battle in Coastal Barrage 1
            Americans attack with 1 coastal_attacker
            Contested defend with 1 coastal_artillery
                Americans roll dice for 1 coastal_attacker in Coastal Barrage 1, round 2 : 1/1 hits, 1.00 expected hits
            Units damaged: 1 coastal_artillery owned by the Contested
                Contested roll dice for 1 coastal_artillery in Coastal Barrage 1, round 2 : 1/1 hits, 0.50 expected hits
                1 coastal_attacker owned by the Americans lost in Coastal Barrage 1
            Contested win with 1 coastal_artillery remaining. Battle score for attacker is 0
            Casualties for Americans: 1 coastal_attacker
            Turning on Edit Mode
            EDIT: Changing unit hit damage for these Contested owned units to: coastal_artillery = 0
            EDIT: Removing units owned by Americans from Spain: 1 infantry
            EDIT: Turning off Edit Mode
        Battle in Spain
            Americans attack with 2 artilleries and 7 infantry
            Neutral_True defend with 1 artillery and 7 infantry
                Americans roll dice for 1 battleship in Spain, round 2 : 1/1 hits, 0.67 expected hits
                Americans roll dice for 2 artilleries and 7 infantry in Spain, round 2 : 3/9 hits, 3.67 expected hits
                Neutral_True roll dice for 1 artillery and 7 infantry in Spain, round 2 : 5/8 hits, 4.00 expected hits
                5 infantry owned by the Americans and 4 infantry owned by the Neutral_True lost in Spain
            Neutral_True and Americans reach a stalemate
            . Battle score for attacker is -3
            Casualties for Americans: 5 infantry
            Casualties for Neutral_True: 4 infantry

    Combat Move - Americans

    Place Units - Americans
        1 artillery and 6 infantry placed in United States of America

    Turn Complete - Americans
        Americans collect 22 PUs; end with 22 PUs

Combat Hit Differential Summary :

Americans regular : -0.33
Contested regular : 0.50
Neutral_True regular : 1.00

Greeks decline combat. Did not convert the Spanish to CP side in case you want them to decline combat on your turn you won’t have to waste time making them neutral again.

I was going to wait until next round to move on Spain, but your big push convinced me to speed that up slightly.
usa9.tsvg

@The_Good_Captain said:

Awesome! Well, for this game - we can play as long as you like but the CP will offer concession. Been a uniquely rough one.

The offer is accepted. I was happy enough to even contest Ruhr last turn, but after I took it outright with such minimal loss I immediately thought “I think this game just ended!” Not sure what lessons (if any) I want to take away from this game since the big shellacking the CP navies took the first turn skews it… having 2 UK Transports immediately available is pretty huge.

As it is I’m completely satisfied with my defense of Russia and the US’ Balkan adventures, they more than met my expectations. I actually didn’t want to move into Karelia last turn but figured I should even though Belgium is now way too thin, since if I didn’t you could split your Artillery between there and Finland making it too dangerous to land back up there again. But since now all your spare Infantry up there are gone splitting up is no longer possible so I always have an outlet to drop somebody off safely.

If you were curious about the Italian attack into Tyrolia I figured it was the last chance I could make such a move given that you were relying on the Ottomans and not AH to clean out the Balkans. Since it’s guaranteed to be contested on the AH turn that’s an 8 IPC swing in my favor already before we add in the combat results, and maybe you might even move some Germans there if you thought I wanted to stick around.

At the start of French turn 5 I was wishing I had moved up to Picardy instead of Burgundy and the French Fleet was in the channel. In that situation I might have loaded Kiel with both the British and the French plus hit both Ruhr and Alsace, with the goal of causing a crisis on where to move your reinforcements and lower your income by keeping your territories contested. Not 100% sure that plan might be worth it as I didn’t crunch all the numbers. But of course the French fleet is not there, as it isn’t clear to me what the best Entente play is for their ships once the CP navies are out. In the future I may make going to the Channel a standard move for the French so I at least have it as an option. I belatedly did it this game and was worried you might get suspicious as to why I was moving those ships of a sudden. One possible kink in this scenario is that based on what Krieghund said, when I take Kiel with France, they risk the mines but the UK will not on their turn. Now if the Germans move in to contest Kiel, then the mines are back. So that’s something to consider there.

From my end of the board it looks like the biggest risk you took was using the Ottomans instead of AH to deal with the Balkan threat. My own general staff would likely conclude it’s just far too risky since the ground you cede in the Middle East is likely not recoverable so your gains are forfeit due to the UK enrichment. And now the onus is on AH and Germany to keep Russia sealed since you declined the RR. But of course my whole overall plan calls for you to make exactly those kinds of hard choices. Maybe the only yellow card I give you in that area is not using that last smidgeon of AH troops to clean out the small amount of UK left in Sevastopol to make sure that the Ottomans had full freedom of movement on their turn, as I mentioned earlier.

So I obviously watched all your 1914 videos beforehand-

Patton said :
Rommel you magnificent b-, I read your book!

And I don’t think you went into a full discussion on Tanks, so I wasn’t sure what would happen when they became available in this game. To me they are like Bombers in the WWII variants, really awesome when you have a bunch but the opportunity cost to get them is quite high, so buying enough to make them a real game-changer is a calculated risk. The best use feels like just having a few around to help take the hits when picking off blockers, so in this particular game I might have just only ever used them in India. But when you started buying them for Germany, it felt unwise to let you be the only player over there to have any. In a similar vein the air war fascinates me since it gets to resolve completely while the ground battles don’t (plus you still get your strafe shots in!). You only need a surplus of 1 plane to get the Artillery bonus, so any surplus you have over that is potentially a waste of money. If I’m the economic leader I’m quite happy to match you plane for plane as you keep spitting them out since the opportunity cost for you to have such a large air force is so high. From my end of the board the biggest mistake I made was losing the 3 French Fighters, I should have staged them in Venice to support the Italians since I could have flown them back to Alsace/Lorraine if needed in an emergency. I do still support the concept of making such an attack, though, since if your response is to crank out more planes instead of Infantry then strategically I count that as a win.

Hmmm… that covers just about everything… oh, wait, the Americans. I debated a lot trying out the “Spain First” strategy in this game but decided against it. All my instincts keep telling me not to go there because of the extra delay and the lack of mobility you get from not having Transports in the Mediterranean. As you can see I’m not opposed to getting around to it eventually. With the movement rules, I can move units into contested Spain from the US and move a matching number (if any) out of it without any disruption to the flow of units into Europe. But as I said in this game I was going to be more patient and only start that process when I could hit Spain with 12 units rather than the 10 I went with (10 being what I consider the bare minimum to even attempt moving into Spain, YMMV).

Alright now I think I’m done. ;)

David S. Pumpkins said:
Any questions?

@The_Good_Captain
Game History

Round: 1

    Puchase Units - Russians
        Russians buy 1 fighter and 6 infantry; Remaining resources: 1 PUs; 

    Combat Move - Russians
                Germans roll mine dice in SZ 11 : 0/1 hits, 0.17 expected hits
                Ottomans roll mine dice in SZ 20 : 0/2 hits, 0.33 expected hits
        2 artilleries and 6 infantry moved from Ukraine to Poland
        2 artilleries and 6 infantry moved from Belarus to Poland
        2 artilleries and 3 infantry moved from Livonia to Poland
        2 artilleries and 6 infantry moved from Moscow to Ukraine
        1 infantry moved from Karelia to Livonia
        1 infantry moved from Finland to Karelia
        1 battleship moved from SZ 12 to SZ 11
        1 artillery moved from Romania to Ukraine
        1 artillery and 3 infantry moved from Tatarstan to Ukraine
        1 infantry moved from Sevastopol to Ukraine
        2 artilleries moved from Sevastopol to Ukraine
        1 infantry moved from Kazakhstan to Tatarstan
        2 cruisers moved from SZ 21 to SZ 20

    Combat - Russians
        Russians creates battle in territory SZ 11
        Battle in SZ 20
            Russians attack with 2 cruisers
            Ottomans defend with 2 cruisers and 1 mines
                Russians roll dice for 2 cruisers in SZ 20, round 2 : 1/2 hits, 1.00 expected hits
                Ottomans roll dice for 2 cruisers in SZ 20, round 2 : 1/2 hits, 1.00 expected hits
                1 cruiser owned by the Ottomans and 1 cruiser owned by the Russians lost in SZ 20
                Russians roll dice for 1 cruiser in SZ 20, round 3 : 0/1 hits, 0.50 expected hits
                Ottomans roll dice for 1 cruiser in SZ 20, round 3 : 1/1 hits, 0.50 expected hits
                1 cruiser owned by the Russians lost in SZ 20
            Ottomans win with 1 cruiser remaining. Battle score for attacker is -9
            Casualties for Russians: 2 cruisers
            Casualties for Ottomans: 1 cruiser

    Combat Move - Russians

    Place Units - Russians
        1 fighter and 6 infantry placed in Moscow

    Turn Complete - Russians
        Russians collect 25 PUs; end with 26 PUs

Combat Hit Differential Summary :

Ottomans mine : -0.33
Russians regular : -0.50
Ottomans regular : 0.50
Germans mine : -0.17

Lucky Fourteen ready for action.

Ryan said:
Let’s chip this up and take a look

r1.tsvg

@The_Good_Captain
Game History

Round: 1

    Puchase Units - French
        French buy 1 fighter and 6 infantry; Remaining resources: 0 PUs; 

    Combat Move - French
        1 infantry moved from French West Africa to Gold Coast
        1 infantry moved from Tunisia to Libya
        1 infantry moved from Morocco to Spanish Morocco
              French take Spanish Morocco from Neutral_True
        1 infantry moved from Algeria to Spanish Morocco
        1 battleship, 1 cruiser and 2 transports moved from SZ 16 to SZ 2
        1 battleship and 1 transport moved from SZ 15 to SZ 2
        1 infantry moved from Brest to Picardy
        2 artilleries, 1 fighter and 6 infantry moved from Paris to Picardy
        2 artilleries and 6 infantry moved from Lorraine to Picardy
        1 infantry moved from Burgundy to Lorraine
        1 infantry moved from Burgundy to Lorraine
        2 artilleries and 4 infantry moved from Burgundy to Picardy
        1 infantry moved from Bordeaux to Burgundy

    Combat - French

    Combat Move - French

    Place Units - French
        1 fighter and 6 infantry placed in Paris

    Turn Complete - French
        French collect 25 PUs; end with 25 PUs

Combat Hit Differential Summary :

I decided to write up all my thoughts for every turn of this game so I can post it at the end as it might help other players. I’d already included in those notes that the Poland defense R1 only seems viable if Romania was left contested.
uk1.tsvg

@The_Good_Captain
You posted the results of your move but not the end-of-turn save.

End of the game, I will post my notes in the main 1914 thread.