Do you calculate odds?

[TormentaBANNED]

Hi, until a couple of months ago I didn't calculate odds before making a move, I just trusted my judgement.

I'm talking about multiplayer escalate, which is the setting I play mostly, and roughly speaking I would say every month there was a week when I won most games and then in the rest of the month dice were catastrophic and maybe I won 10 or 20% of the games. So every month I won, say, a bit less than half the games, although there were some months that were worse.

I had started to pay because I thought it would be funny if I could reach number 1, who was permanently occupied by sensadrome since I discovered MC, but I didn't even reach 5000 points (later there have been some players reaching that number, but at that moment only sensadrome was above) and stayed as number 2 for weeks in 3 or 4 occasions.

Then suddenly I had a bad streak of 20ish games lost, and I didn't renew my subscription as I started to consider MC as a huge waste of time (and money, though not much), and anyway th-child had replaced sensadrome so it was pointless to play, for example, tourneys with crazy players that irritated me.

After that, I thought that if I lost so much it was maybe because I was making mistakes about which I didn't realize, so I started to use a dice calculator (recommended by th-child in the forum, if I recall rightly).

So, after a couple of months using it (I don't use it for every move, only when I have to use a good amount of troops) I can say my dice are catastrophic, and this is more a reality than an opinion. I have registered the last calculated moves and the results are these:

1. Between 50 and 60% odds: 4 unsuccessful attempts, 1 successful.
2. Between 60 and 70% odds: 4 unsuccessful attempts, 2 successful.
3. Between 70 and 80% odds: 4 unsuccessful attempts, 3 successful.
4. Between 80 and 90% odds: 3 unsuccessful attempts, 3 successful.
5. Between 90 and 99% odds: 1 unsuccessful attempts, 2 successful.

So, recently I don't care about winning very much, but it's annoying to know that, whatever you do, you are bound to lose unless you have more than 90% odds, and knowing that means 66%...

So what's your experience? Do you use calculators? Do the odds respond to reality?

(By the way you can save your comments about "sometimes dice are very good, sometimes very bad", when the odds were below 50% and I had no better chance, I always failed, though I didn't write down those occasions, somewhere between 2 and 5 times).

 

[TormentaBANNED]

2 more big moves with more than 70% probabilities to succeed, and I failed (not even close).

So as you can see, in my last 18 attempts with more than 70% chances, I only succeeded in 8, less than half.

Apart from that, my bad luck is extended now to my teams, having lost the last 2 games because of catastrophic luck against teams which essentially made crazy moves.

I'm going to try to end properly my last 2 games and maybe I change my mind if good luck appears there, but as I think data for three or four months are quite representative, my conclusion is that in general I can't win unless I have 4 troops per each enemy troop. That doesn't usually happen so I don't see the point in playing if I know the outcome before hand. I may play in RT 1vs.1 against noobies (strategy matters there, though they usually go awol) and a multiplayer there once in a while to kill the time, so see you there if you visit it from time to time. See you all!

 

[th-child]

Just touching on some of your points:

Yes, I use calculators, for almost every decision. I see crazy dice regularly, but sometimes in my favour, so I don't complain.

I do notice streaks though, but this should be expected, and tbh I don't think your sample is long term enough to tell if your dice are indeed catastrophic. Based on the fact that you've maintained a consistently high score, they can't be that catastrophic, can they?

Anyway, it'd be a pity to see you leave, and I guess I already suggested to you to try fixed force, no such problems there.

--

Sheriff, the record of all of our dice rolls do exist in the logfiles, don't they? Would it be possible to display the average of all of our rolls, and maybe the average of the last 1000 rolls on our stats page?

 

[Cardinalsrule]

I believe those stats are planned with the new game engine

 

[TormentaBANNED]

Based on the fact that you've maintained a consistently high score, they can't be that catastrophic, can they?

Well not really, in fact when I was a specialist I oscilated between 4200 and 4800 and since then I oscilate between 3700 and 4000 so there's a big loss. Anyway I'm not saying my luck is worse now, I think it has always been catastrophic (but now I have this evidence and before I got big points from the tourney wins). I imagine that rank doesn't go down because in general I choose to play with good players so I lose few points, 30-25, and then in the few games I can surprisingly kill 20 troops with 40 and the like, I win 150 points, plus the team games I have won I stay more or less the same.

Sheriff, the record of all of our dice rolls do exist in the logfiles, don't they? Would it be possible to display the average of all of our rolls, and maybe the average of the last 1000 rolls on our stats page?

That would be ok but if it's not detailed it may not be significant information (in my case at least). I imagine I could look at all my rolls and dice wouldn't be catastrophic, ok, but normally I just try to take singles until I can (fail to) run the board, when the 6, 8 or 10 ices in a row appear.

Anyway, it'd be a pity to see you leave, and I guess I already suggested to you to try fixed force, no such problems there.

Yes but I said FF is too boring for me, what I like about risk is that you need to think, but not too much

Thanks, much appreciated, I'm going to try with team games only, at least for a while. I mean, all my partners can't be unlucky too, right? (Although they look like me lately).

 

[micky]

I actually managed some time ago to loose my link to these calculations. Could someone send me this link again please? Thanks in advance - oh - and asap of course as I have difficulties deciding on my next move in one of these games. Thanks

 

[th-child]

http://diceroll.stritar.net/Risk.html

 

[micky]

Thanks so much th-child. Missed that link alright