Conquer Club

f*ck the dice, lag here is the real problem

The less you complain about dice the more fun you have.

iAmCaffeine wrote:The less you complain about dice the more fun you have.

and the more time you have to complain about other people following the rules......

elfish, others have dropped links to multiple dice threads. This is not something Team CC or management are interested in fixing. Their stance appears to be that since everyone is subject to the same set of lunacy based dice outcomes it is an even playing field. Not a bad stance I guess, if they can't/won't pay or spend the time to fix things. What school does you boy teach physics at? Maybe reply via pm so the trolls and haters don't start stalking him. Have a couple of close mates that are physicists and have worked/taught in America and Holland. Evidently is a pretty small community when you reach a certain level of competency.

KoolBak wrote:Interesting....can we get a mod / admin in here and testify?

No! Ohwait...

Tbh, the last I heard from an admin (It was lack) we were using random.org. I'd pester Blake, but i've been pestering him for about 2 months about little things. and i'm unsure if he has the answers.

elfish_lad wrote: All others who responded as douche bags can continue to live in their parents basements.

But... the basement is warm!

greenoaks wrote:do you have proof the dice results are not supported by reality?

your dice stats suggest they are spot on.

typical arrogant response
no wonder so many great players left this website

its a shame

iAmCaffeine wrote:The less you complain about dice the more fun you have.

My complaint is not actually with the dice, per se, because I understand that streaks are a necessary part of randomness, and I try to adjust my play accordingly. I do have a problem with sloppy programming that has introduced a bias into what should be unbiased source data, and with the attitude that in a game that is controlled by dice rolls, it is a very low priority that those rolls be truly random.

Two months ago, in another thread:

Metsfanmax wrote:Recall that the dice stats information was set up by a previous administration. And a new administration will have different priorities. All I can say is that, while you've provided enough evidence to warrant the code base being eventually looked at to ensure nothing is wrong, I can't promise it will be an immediate priority with this administration unlesss there's evidence of unfairness.

This is the closest I've seen to an admission that something is wrong, and while I like many of the recent changes, it seems that a little time could have been found to at least try to identify the cause of the problem. Was it really more important to change the home page yet again, and make a nice new background image for it, than to verify that the random.org data is being updated regularly?

benga wrote:f*ck the dice, lag here is the real problem

Fucking a

BoganGod wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:The less you complain about dice the more fun you have.

and the more time you have to complain about other people following the rules......

elfish, others have dropped links to multiple dice threads. This is not something Team CC or management are interested in fixing. Their stance appears to be that since everyone is subject to the same set of lunacy based dice outcomes it is an even playing field. Not a bad stance I guess, if they can't/won't pay or spend the time to fix things. What school does you boy teach physics at? Maybe reply via pm so the trolls and haters don't start stalking him. Have a couple of close mates that are physicists and have worked/taught in America and Holland. Evidently is a pretty small community when you reach a certain level of competency.

Cheers mate. I'll suggest that. He was in France and now is home. He actually may still remember his CC password as he played 3 or 4 years back. Or?... is The Elf really a multi?????

And for those who still care, I wasn't complaining about my dice against the Cook. The Cook outplayed me and I lost because I forgot how to play mogul and attacked too early. Those rolls I meantioned were MINE. I was trying to save my arse and almost did. But the rolls were still nutty.

I'm all better now. I've consumed the Kool-Aid and rejoice now in all things CC!

Awesome!!!

E.

Changed my fucking view on complaining about the dice.. 16v3 loss cost me my first battle royale win, and another 16v3 loss has just made me lose a polymorphic which was a guaranteed win. Bullshit!

iAmCaffeine wrote:Changed my fucking view on complaining about the dice.. 16v3 loss cost me my first battle royale win, and another 16v3 loss has just made me lose a polymorphic which was a guaranteed win. Bullshit!

Try losing 35v1 over a six turn period.

well I have to chime in and say yes the dice are ridiculous ,most of the time u know when it's a good day for CC dice because u can cake walk thru games at ease even win in 3 rounds,but it's those days when it's a close game and skill and cards and dice are even,when boom the CC dice swing happens,we all know what I am talking about,seems like the game is locked up and the CC swing changes the direction of the game,I know I have enjoyed this many times,I actually quit playing for a bit maybe 1 game a day down from 10 15 speeders a day! I complained but it fell on deaf ears as this will too.So now I just play,if I'm winning I plan to lose,if I go on a 10 game winning streak I know a 20 game losing streak is coming and I wait a week or 2 and the dice are back to normal (sometimes) yeah I think it sucks that the dice are shit ! but the CARDS are just as shit how many 3 card sets can people get?? oops thaat's another argument ,cheers

A long long time ago in a CC far far away I reached out to the creator of Random.org, Dr Mads Haahr. I explained to him the way the dice work at CC, and he was nice enough to respond back. He confirmed the way CC was picking numbers wasn't a truly random method of picking numbers, only pseudo-random. I tried to explain it to people here, but they thought they were smarter than Dr Mads Haar. I stopped fighting the morons as they kept dragging me down to their level and beating me with experience.

bedub1 wrote:A long long time ago in a CC far far away I reached out to the creator of Random.org, Dr Mads Haahr. I explained to him the way the dice work at CC, and he was nice enough to respond back. He confirmed the way CC was picking numbers wasn't a truly random method of picking numbers, only pseudo-random. I tried to explain it to people here, but they thought they were smarter than Dr Mads Haar. I stopped fighting the morons as they kept dragging me down to their level and beating me with experience.

I'm curious about what you know about the CC dice. It was explained to me that they get a set of 50,000 random rolls (1-6) from random.org, and hand them out sequentially to players as needed, starting over from the beginning after they've used all the numbers. They claim that they get a new set of numbers every hour, but the most logical explanation for the dice data I'm seeing is that the list has not been updated for years.

degaston wrote:

bedub1 wrote:A long long time ago in a CC far far away I reached out to the creator of Random.org, Dr Mads Haahr. I explained to him the way the dice work at CC, and he was nice enough to respond back. He confirmed the way CC was picking numbers wasn't a truly random method of picking numbers, only pseudo-random. I tried to explain it to people here, but they thought they were smarter than Dr Mads Haar. I stopped fighting the morons as they kept dragging me down to their level and beating me with experience.

I'm curious about what you know about the CC dice. It was explained to me that they get a set of 50,000 random rolls (1-6) from random.org, and hand them out sequentially to players as needed, starting over from the beginning after they've used all the numbers. They claim that they get a new set of numbers every hour, but the most logical explanation for the dice data I'm seeing is that the list has not been updated for years.

You have the basic premise down right, but I think the sample size was actually 500,000 rolls, not 50,000. At the time I was Operations Manager that's the way it worked. I had a conversation with lackattack back then and it seemed like he had done a good job of trying to find the best workable solution for the number of dice rolls the site was churning through at the time. I don't remember exactly how often the list was updated, but it was fairly often, and it actually worked fairly well if I remember right from when I was playing lots of games. I never thought I had particularly bad or particularly stellar dice most of the time, they just seemed pretty regular to me.

It could very well be that the updates are not being made any longer or the system has been completely changed and nobody was told.

Optimus Prime wrote:

degaston wrote:

bedub1 wrote:A long long time ago in a CC far far away I reached out to the creator of Random.org, Dr Mads Haahr. I explained to him the way the dice work at CC, and he was nice enough to respond back. He confirmed the way CC was picking numbers wasn't a truly random method of picking numbers, only pseudo-random. I tried to explain it to people here, but they thought they were smarter than Dr Mads Haar. I stopped fighting the morons as they kept dragging me down to their level and beating me with experience.

I'm curious about what you know about the CC dice. It was explained to me that they get a set of 50,000 random rolls (1-6) from random.org, and hand them out sequentially to players as needed, starting over from the beginning after they've used all the numbers. They claim that they get a new set of numbers every hour, but the most logical explanation for the dice data I'm seeing is that the list has not been updated for years.

You have the basic premise down right, but I think the sample size was actually 500,000 rolls, not 50,000. At the time I was Operations Manager that's the way it worked. I had a conversation with lackattack back then and it seemed like he had done a good job of trying to find the best workable solution for the number of dice rolls the site was churning through at the time. I don't remember exactly how often the list was updated, but it was fairly often, and it actually worked fairly well if I remember right from when I was playing lots of games. I never thought I had particularly bad or particularly stellar dice most of the time, they just seemed pretty regular to me.

It could very well be that the updates are not being made any longer or the system has been completely changed and nobody was told.

I'm not sure when it was, but I do remember there being an announcement to the fact that dice mechanics had changed to 50K

Edit: Didn't take too much digging. This was the last amendment to the dice to my recollection
New "Intensity Cubes"

lackattack wrote:We haven't touched the dice... erm, intensity cubes since February 14, 2006 because they were pretty darn random (see here). However, thanks to some prodding and advice from Dako, sherkaner and jakewilliams I became convinced that it is worthwhile to make some alterations.

This is how the intensity cubes now work:

• We have a series of 50,000 high quality random numbers from random.org
• Each time the game engine generates a random intensity cube, the next number is read in sequence from the series (e.g. in a 3v1 attack 4 numbers are read sequentially)
• When the last number in the series is read, we "rewind" and continue with the first number in the series

The advantages are twofold:

• Each individual number in the series is used for both attacker and defender, so our intensity cubes cannot be biased for either side.
• The series is stored in memory so the dice perform much faster. This makes a huge difference when auto-assault is used with large numbers of troops on both sides.

An interesting note - as of June 2010 Conquer Club processes 1,000,000 assaults each day!

we are all missing the real point here. shouldn't it be "elvish_whatever"?

I think the larger point is that unless the management were making it clear to everyone up front that the dice are biased ( in favor of rolling more 1's ), the playing field is clearly not fair for everyone playing the game. Only a small group of people actually realize that the dice are not random ( or random enough ) and are biased in this manner. That means one group of people gets to play with more information than the another group of people. This is clearly NOT FAIR.

The person who can contend that the dice are not random but that the dice are fair .... can only be accurate in their statement if the entire site is informed that there is a bias. Otherwise, the dice are clearly not fair. Having a small group knowing that their attack odds are worse than a random dice would allow for is an unfair advantage for that group and a clear disadvantage to the uninformed.

All of my losses are because I suck at the game but let's not pretend this is not an issue for the site. The actual integrity of the games being played should be the number one priority of the site, and that includes random dice or at a minimum informing the populace of the site of the bias upon sign up.

clowncar wrote:I think the larger point is that unless the management were making it clear to everyone up front that the dice are biased ( in favor of rolling more 1's ), the playing field is clearly not fair for everyone playing the game. Only a small group of people actually realize that the dice are not random ( or random enough ) and are biased in this manner. That means one group of people gets to play with more information than the another group of people. This is clearly NOT FAIR.

The person who can contend that the dice are not random but that the dice are fair .... can only be accurate in their statement if the entire site is informed that there is a bias. Otherwise, the dice are clearly not fair. Having a small group knowing that their attack odds are worse than a random dice would allow for is an unfair advantage for that group and a clear disadvantage to the uninformed.

All of my losses are because I suck at the game but let's not pretend this is not an issue for the site. The actual integrity of the games being played should be the number one priority of the site, and that includes random dice or at a minimum informing the populace of the site of the bias upon sign up.

I did some analysis earlier. If the dice were extremely biased so that they never rolled a 1, then the attacker's win rate (3v2) would drop from 53.96% (expected for normal dice) down to 51.616%. The CC dice are only slightly biased against 1's, and when I simulated 1 million battles with CC dice, the change in win rate was undetectable.

So I don't think it's valid for anyone to say that the dice are affecting their win rate - unless they want to claim that the emotional stress of knowing that the dice are biased is causing them to make poor strategic decisions. In which case, it could be argued that the people who don't know about this may actually be at an advantage because they aren't freaking out about it.

But I agree that the integrity of the games should be a top priority, and this should be fixed before they make another cosmetic change to the website.

Agreed. I admit to not taking the time to determine the statistical significance of the bias and certainly knew it wouldn't be something that overwhelmingly skewed game results. But they are, by definition, ( Assuming the bias exists ) not fair if one party is aware of the bias and one party is not.

As I said, my losses are because I play bad and my wins are usually because I associate with good teammates.

Some kid just rolled 15v32 against me and won.. Because that ever happens.

iAmCaffeine wrote:Some kid just rolled 15v32 against me and won.. Because that ever happens.

Apparently it does. What is your question?

Dukasaur wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:Some kid just rolled 15v32 against me and won.. Because that ever happens.

Apparently it does. What is your question?

It does with streaky dice that haven't been replenished yes.

iAmCaffeine wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:Some kid just rolled 15v32 against me and won.. Because that ever happens.

Apparently it does. What is your question?

It does with streaky dice that haven't been replenished yes.

Streaks are a normal part of a random distribution.

Evidence has been posted that there is a dice bias which skews the distribution to the right. Skew and streakiness have absolutely nothing to do with each other. If the skew was fixed, the streakiness would not in any way change.

The "haven't been replenished" allegation is pure nonsense. The skew is pretty definitely proven, but it's far more likely to result from a rounding error than from he alleged non-replenishment.

Except we know that the same sample of dice is being re-used over and over.

Dukasaur wrote:... The "haven't been replenished" allegation is pure nonsense. The skew is pretty definitely proven, but it's far more likely to result from a rounding error than from he alleged non-replenishment.

How can you call it nonsense? A mod has already admitted that the "haven't been replenished" allegation is a possibility that would account for the results we're seeing:

Metsfanmax wrote:We were told that the list is replaced every hour. So one possible failure mode is if, for some reason, the list is no longer updating and got stuck on a list that was particularly non-uniform. But if the lists are still updating once per hour, then your explanation would require the sum total of those lists to be non-uniform.

His last sentence essentially confirms that any other explanation is extremely unlikely. A rounding error does not make any sense because there is nothing to round. The numbers they get from random.org are integers (1-6), and I've already tested numbers directly from random.org and found no bias. Also, the skew is not just to the right, - it skews away from 1's, and towards 2's and 4's. That could not be the result of a simple rounding error.