Best posts made by MrRoboto

Thanks for your comments, dawg!

Actually, an ELO system would help all 3 points that you raised.

1. It would give incentive for top and medium players to play against you. I have not challenged you for a game this year because of the known reasons

2. Your PPG is kinda set after a certain number of games. Your 28 games brought you 75 points for example, which is 2.68 PPG. Even an extraordinary feat like winning against Adam, Gorshak or ArthurBomberHarris would only give you 8 more points, so 83 / 29 = 2.86 PPG.
   So your PPG would barely move, that’s why it’s hard for you to climb after a certain number of games. The reason: the current ranking represents the AVERAGE yearly result, not the current one.
   With an ELO-based system you ALWAYS have the chance to climb, at any point. There is always motivation for you to reach certain goals you set yourself. A win against a top player would catapult you quite a lot!

3. You are correct, sometimes 3 great results are enough for a good spot. And players could abuse it. Right now, Gorshak is #1 with his 3-0, even though none of the 3 wins were against top8 players and one was against #34.
   One could argue that scoring 8-1 is a bigger feat.
   So, without saying that’s what he is doing, it would be in Gorshaks best interest (if the goal is to optimize ranking) to stop playing for the year.
   An ELO system works completely different. More wins will always put you further and stopping at 3-0 will never get you a top spot.

So all of your points are arguments FOR a ELO rating :-)
And lifetime or not won’t be a huge difference there… It will only make the rankings more accurate

To everybody: You can help me collect past results!

It’s 3 am here and I have 3 kids, including a 3months old baby. It’s past time I go to bed haha.

Go to the Sheet that’s named “Results before 2023” and enter the data.
There are only 6 cells required and I named them so I think it’s self-explanatory

The last entry I made myself is on Page 109 of the Post results thread, I was working myself backwards…

@farmboy and @gamerman01
This is not possible since that would mean to retroactively adapt the ELO change of past games when you play more recent games.
That contradicts the whole idea and is actually not even possible to implement since that creates circular references again - the biggest problem the old system had.

It’s also not necessary at all. As you, gamerman, already stated: At a certain point the first few games are completely irrelevant. That point is FAR earlier than 50 games.

Just an extreme example:
Dawgoneit is currently 5-45, with an ELO of 1059
With only 4 wins against some of the current top5 players, he can increase his rating to ~1600 even though he still is only 9-45 at that point.
The system accurately shows the current strength.

Thanks to Mr_Stucifer we now have the data of 2022 too. I think the system already looks extremely solid.

Everybody can create a copy for themselves with
File -> Make a Copy.

You can then play around and add some results as you like to see how the system behaves.

We have 4489 games finished now.

The Average rating is 1486,77
The Median rating is 1459.

So as you can see, everyones rating hasn’t increased and a brand new player with 0-0 is even better than average ;-)

Or, if you are @Adam514 , just ignore ELO and farm each and every one of us, enjoying a 90% winrate over 165 games

I love that summary, thanks @JDOW !

You know you have to cover all high-profile matches now, do you?

It’s impossible to put a number on it like you ask for.

Maybe I’ll try to explain the general function of the ELO system and this could help you understand how it works.

The ELO system tries to measure your skill. For example on a 0 - 10 scale, you could be a 5.84 and the system would try to find out that number.
Now we all start at 1500, which on a 0-10 scale would be a 5. Everyone starts at 5.
Why do I not use a 0-10 scale? Because we don’t have a fixed limit on how good or how bad someone can be, so we need an open-ended scale. And in many many other cases where ELO is used, 1500 has been established as some kind of standard starting point.

Now let’s say your skill is around 1650. The system doesn’t know it yet, of course. But that would mean you should win most games against players below 1650 and lose most games against players above 1650. That’s why your ELO will gravitate towards that number.

Every unexpected result (wins against players above 1650 or losses against players below 1650) will deflect you from that path. You might be above that 1650 because you had some lucky unexpected wins, so you might be at 1700 now. But now the system expects you to win against 1680 players most of the time so whenever you do lose against a 1680, it will bring you down a bit more than if you were at your “ACTUAL” skill level of 1650. Of course the opposite is true as well.

You might have had a loss streak and now stand at 1500. The system would expect you to lose against 1600 players. But since you are ACTUALLY better than 1600, you DO win against them (which the system didn’t expect) so you will gain more points than usual.

In the end you will gravitate towards the your skill level and your ELO will oscillate around that number.
The only way to inrease that center of that gravitation is to actually improve your skill.

There is one caveat though, a small weakness in the system.

If you only choose opponents better than you are thus lose most of those games, the system can’t find your actual skill level. Let’s say you only play the top 1-5 players - each loss will only cost 1-2 ELO rating and thus the rating will only fall EXTREMELY slowly, but there are not enough wins to tell the system where you belong. In the end, if you lose to a 2000 player that could mean everything: You could be 600, 1500 or 1900.

Same goes for the opposite.

If you only choose weaker players and play the bottom 1-5 all the time, these wins are almost worthless (giving you 1-2 points). It’s not practical to climb the rankings that way, because you can’t play the bottom player 500 times in a row. But again, if there are no losses the system cannot know how good you really are. Defeating a 700 ELO player can mean everything as well…

And to give some perspective, here is your personal BM4 graph, @oysteilo with all your 74 completed BM4-results.

As you can see, there is not that much movement, so let’s zoom in a little bit:

The orange line is the trend line.
From looking at this, I’d say your skill level is between 1550 and 1600.
Between Dec 2019 and May 2020 you had a couple of wins in a row which lead to your all-time high of 1684, but that was followed by a 9-game loss streak.
On 8 Nov 2021 it seemed like you mass forfeited 6 games, which of course brought you down a lot.
However, with 4 wins our of your last 5 you almost got back to where you were before those forfeits. (1573 on 8 Nov 2021, 1538 now).

As you can see, a single result 30 games ago has basically no impact on your current rating.
A blunder against a much better opponent with an expected loss? No impact. A blunder against a weaker opponent that cost you the expected win? That hurts and you need at least a game, maybe 2 to offset that unexpected ELO drop.

My own BM4-Graph looks like this btw:

When I first played in 2016, it looks like I was a 1480 player. These were some of my very first A&A games.
However, 6 wins out of the last 7 games rewarded me with my then highest rating of 1563.

I came back playing 2 years later and it seems like I improved to be something like a 1530 player.
2 forfeited games (because I went AWOL) brought me down from 1536 to 1466 though (70 points in 2 games!)

In my current stretch of games, it looks like I have improved once more to be around 1570. My current rating is 1591 but I have some losses incoming, so that sounds about right.

The sorting works fine and, in my opinion, as it should. Stickies sorted by creation makes sense. Everything else sorted by activity.

That being said - it seems there are a number of users here confused by the sorting. That creates the question: Why?

It must have something to do with the design.
One thing’s for sure: Stickies are not clear enough. It’s only that one little pin, while in the old forums they were highlighted.

And then the “xxx months ago” below the thread title could be misleading for some who think this could be the last post?

Also, the right column does not have a headline labeling it as “most recent post”.

Do we / the admin have any way to adjust the design?

Hello fellow players.
returning player here. I’ve played quite a lot back in the day, but the last one has been 4 years ago.

Now I’d like to play again! I’m familiar with the Balanced Mod (that one was around back then), but the Path to Victory is new to me. I would be open for both types though!

Ah, yes, I have been asked about that song several times, so I know it by now. However, I am not so familiar with the song that I could immediately make the connection to Japan.

I think Monopoly is a bad example for two reasons:

1. That game is notoriously bad designed and much more luck dependent. The “skill” involved comes down to 2-3 ground rules, knowing the event cards and knowing the field values (very easy to learn). An extremely experienced player can be beaten at any time by a 10-year-old.

2. It involves psychology. Auctions work fundamentally different on a mechanical level. If someone is a very charismatic player, he or she may persuade others to make worse choices.

When there is a skill / Experience difference, the better player can overcome dice deviations from the average. Whenever I play someone better than me, my opponent manages not to give me any chances for a big gamble. They maneuver their units in such a way, that I have maybe a 15% chance to attack somewhere - which would make no sense for me to do. Thus, they avoid many chances for dice hitting them in the face.

However, at same skill level, dice can play a crucial role and have led me to take a break from the game because it can be super frustrating. I also recognize I had my fair share of wins against evenly skilled players due to dice, which actually also feels hollow.

Haha actually I am waiting for some more people, I have sent out more game requests.

But I have not improved during my break, if anything I got worse.
The 4-0 is just a snapshot, I have a couple of losses incoming.

But that’s fine, I already have learnt from some mistakes I have made and will do better.
Dice have ruined 2 games for me so far - they gifted me a win against @Avner and they are about to make me lose my 2nd game against simon I guess.

@Adam514 has impressed me the most so far, leaving me no chance at all. The way he dominates me everywhere is very helpful for my learning curve.

Ghostglider’s Allies defeat my Axis in BM.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40110/l23-bm4-ghostglider-allies-12-vs-roboto-axis/137

This is a great example of what I was just talking about.
The first big battle came in the last round (round 15), when I finally got a big TUV change of +92, but it was too little too late.
In fact, my Axis still have all big army chunks left: Germany’s core land army is still there, Japan’s land army is big and the Japanese Navy has basically never fought besides some skirmishes with blockers.

Yes, that’s almost exactly what I said a page earlier @crockett36
Gamerman seemed to disagree, but I still stand with my opinion: Especially when playing against better players than myself, I seem to not even get a chance to get lucky.
Of course I can always get small deviations from the average in many small battles which could add up. A prime example is China - land units for both sides are extremely valuable here and if one side just always hits 1/1 with 0.33 expected hits, this can change the whole outcome.

But apart from this, I rarely get a chance for even doing big attacks (when playing better players). And they usually only attack when victory is nigh certain in huge battles.

Unfortunately yes. That’s the state of League game right now.

There is a discussion going on too, in the General Discussion thread. Right now we have to live with the fact that we can’t be certain that everything is correct. Everyone can cheat right now and there’s not much we can do about it.

I propose something though: We can roll every major battle on the forum. If you’re feeling safer, we can actually roll EVERY battle here too. I don’t mind, even though it’s more work for us obviously.

And I want to extend an olive branch. That attack on 110 was only a hail mary to take as much with me as possible, it was never meant to succeed. I do know the feeling of being diced, believe me. I have had my fair share of games lost because of crazy dice results.
So, why don’t we pick up after the sub hits and roll everything again on the forum?

Oh wow that went well for me.

That game went on for so long by now, I have lost track of the countless dicings happening in both directions. Lately they have been swining in my direction it seems

Simon, you are a good sportsman! I never noticed that typo.

It doesn’t change much, though. I will kill the battleship and the transporters with the additional hits. Let’s roll it, just to be sure:

[dice 9d6<=2]

I never knew about that retreat rule, thanks for clarifying! Learned something new!!!

You are right, rolling on the forum would have been easier. However, I have been asked many times to roll big sea battles on the forum, because of the sub casualty situation.
And, more importantly, I am having a dispute with another player right now because of a big sea battle where we did not get MARTI Dice mails. So I wanted to make sure there is 100% transparency here.

@farmboy said in League General Discussion Thread:

@MrRoboto I’m assuming the axis win percentage by M or E players is just telling us how often do they win if when they play axis. If it is easy to do, do you have how often they win as allies? It would be interesting to know that too.

Not quite right.

That graph shows the win% of axis, when one or both opponents are M or E.
The top player can be Allies or Axis, and the top player might have lost against the bottom player!

It might also be a game where both opponents are M or E…

I can give you the exact statistic of Axis Win% and Allies Win% of Top players in a moment