Dice generator - the non-conspiracy take

[euklid314]

Noticing some of the games are just showing last turn:
https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=814794584

Anyone know why?

There are several games where game replays are broken, Space Empires X is one example of those games. This was mentioned at the very beginning of the disscussion, right? That is the reason why you are writing down all rolls manually at the moment.

Even watching your games I can - at each moment - only see the last 2-4 turns of the games, i.e. as a spectator I might have missed several battles. Up to now I have seen 163 battle rolls, only 13 doubles and only 1 triple in the 5 games you are playing since this discussion started (#794311831, #813252920, #813771685, #814794584, #815302543).

You definitely have collected all the rolls. After all those 5 games are finished (in 1-2 weeks?) you will probably also be convinced that the number of doubles and triples on BGA are not higher than they should. Please give us the exact numbers then!

It is very important that those discussions end with some data - otherwise people continue to trust their gut feeling rather than the actual numbers. This discussion can be a good example of data collection and analysis.

[Deckeon]

Was there at least one battle before the last turn?

yes sigh... yes I guess i have to manually take the number starting now.

[Deckeon]

Noticing some of the games are just showing last turn:
https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=814794584

Anyone know why?

There are several games where game replays are broken, Space Empires X is one example of those games. This was mentioned at the very beginning of the disscussion, right? That is the reason why you are writing down all rolls manually at the moment.

I guess i missed that and saw the game where it had the whole log and thought the other was the stealth win game.

Anyway i'm not writing down every roll. I'll keep track of triples and total rolls.

[euklid314]

Noticing some of the games are just showing last turn:
https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=814794584

Anyone know why?

There are several games where game replays are broken, Space Empires X is one example of those games. This was mentioned at the very beginning of the disscussion, right? That is the reason why you are writing down all rolls manually at the moment.

I guess i missed that and saw the game where it had the whole log and thought the other was the stealth win game.

Anyway i'm not writing down every roll. I'll keep track of triples and total rolls.

As you like.

The easiest way is to enter a long string of dice rolls in Excel. If you have a series of say 1000 dice rolls you can analyze it regarding doubles, triples, quadruples,... Obviously your human eye will spot other patterns - thus you might come up with other theories what might be wrong. If you analyze them with future games you will see that they do not occur more frequently as they should - but in a short sequence of 1000 dice rolls everything can happen ofc.

[edit: The advantage of writing down each roll and analyzing it afterwards is that you will not forget to count every roll. Otherwise you might miss some of the battle rolls if you keep the number of total rolls and the number of doubles seperately. It is easier to miss rolls that way...]

[Mister Salami]

Haha, this thread got derailed quickly. Getting back to what the initial poster asked, I see two issues:

1) The forced-distribution option is an official, 36-card deck sold initially as the expansion "Catan: Event Cards" and later as part of "Catan: Traders & Barbarians". As the second post stated, even if there's demand for it, BGA would need to obtain the rights to implement it first.

2) The variant would do nothing to assuage the concerns of RNG conspiracists. You'll still see them starting threads, complaining about how all of the 8's were clustered towards the end of the deck last game omg, BGA needs to do something about etc. etc. etc.

[Wistama]

Haha, this thread got derailed quickly. Getting back to what the initial poster asked, I see two issues:

1) The forced-distribution option is an official, 36-card deck sold initially as the expansion "Catan: Event Cards" and later as part of "Catan: Traders & Barbarians". As the second post stated, even if there's demand for it, BGA would need to obtain the rights to implement it first.

2) The variant would do nothing to assuage the concerns of RNG conspiracists. You'll still see them starting threads, complaining about how all of the 8's were clustered towards the end of the deck last game omg, BGA needs to do something about etc. etc. etc.

My general belief, applicable to Catan die rolls and to much else in life, is that people tend to underestimate variance. As others have said in this thread, truly random die rolls (with physical dice or RNG) will often seem to generate patterns or biases, until you get into the long run. And the long run takes a lot longer than many people think. I completely agree with your second point.

Your first point, however, seems dubious. I’m no programmer but it shouldn’t be hard to write code that, for the first roll, randomly selects one of the 36 possible outcomes. Then that outcome is removed from the universe of possibilities and the second roll is randomly selected from among the remaining 35, and so on. This is simply sampling without replacement, a mathematical concept that’s been analyzed for, literally, centuries. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergeom ... stribution for an extremely detailed discussion.) I don’t see how a modern game designer could demand payment from someone for an implementation.

A question for anyone who’s played using this deck: As the game goes on and the deck dwindles, players could make increasingly accurate predictions about future results. Does this affect gameplay?

[Jontia]

A question for anyone who’s played using this deck: As the game goes on and the deck dwindles, players could make increasingly accurate predictions about future results. Does this affect gameplay?

Yes, it absolutely affects gameplay. It means there are times when you know it's worth/not worth moving the robber to a specific location based on the cards remaining.

It changes the value of the resources as you can predict gluts or.droughts more easily.

[BarnardsStar]

Your first point, however, seems dubious. I’m no programmer but it shouldn’t be hard to write code that, for the first roll, randomly selects one of the 36 possible outcomes. […] I don’t see how a modern game designer could demand payment from someone for an implementation.

BGA can’t just completely alter the gameplay of somebody else’s games, somebody else’s intellectual property, willy-nilly without their permission! Nobody said anything about difficulty or demanding payment; what was said was

1) The forced-distribution option is an official, 36-card deck sold initially as the expansion "Catan: Event Cards" and later as part of "Catan: Traders & Barbarians". As the second post stated, even if there's demand for it, BGA would need to obtain the rights to implement it first.

and to be clear, it’s not about the rights to the algorithm, it’s the right to make a fundamental change to how Catan works. The game is here under a licensing agreement, and the publisher has to okay any such changes.

[Settler of Canton]

The higher the ELO the more rolls a player gets especially when they need it. This game is so obviously rigged with the rolls it is crazy. I don't know how anyone can play more than 5 games and not see it. Why can't they just actually make it random.

[Tisaac]

The higher the ELO the more rolls a player gets especially when they need it. This game is so obviously rigged with the rolls it is crazy. I don't know how anyone can play more than 5 games and not see it. Why can't they just actually make it random.

LOL. Sure, there are no link between ELO and actual skills, let's just pretend they get good rolls instead.