The AI CHEATS! (Admitted to by Sid) lol

r_rolo1 said:

To be honest, I find the oposite far more believable. C'mon, you should be old enough to have seen a couple Apache helicopters in Iraq during the 2003 offensive being taken down by a combination of bad luck, bad weather and some rather archaic gunpowder weapons... i also remember the that East Timor guerillas in the the time of the Indonesian ocupation using effectively as mock up muskets bamboo filled with gunpowder and nails ... medieval stuff at best ( and they won ). 100 % odds of something is simply not real. 100% odds are Hollywood stuff at best ( not even them do that as much nowadays ).

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Since the relevant effect is in the moment suspension of disbelief, not retrospective analysis, Hollywood is actually an argument in favor of 100% odds. People do watch Hollywood after all.

Sure, you can explain to yourself why your unit died, but you're still taken out of the moment and thinking "that sucked, and there nothing I would do differently to prevent it from happening again". Then you start thinking that maybe it's late at night, and you really should get some sleep...

And to add, like I pointed before, treating a less than 100% odds event like a certainty introduces errors in the game sequence probablilities that do not come from the combat engine in it self: the odds of winning 20 97% battles are of 54% , meaning that there is almost a 50% error if you treat those 97% battle as 100% ones. that, by any standart, is a lot . This things would cascade a lot, especially if you ( or a AI ) started in a high tech unit rampage ( it is the diference between a rambo styled action sequence with a pile of enemy corpses and a alive hero , and the unit losing after killing 20 of their weaker foes by just bad luck ).

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By the looks of it, it's not quite treating high odds battles as a guaranteed 0 damage kill. Those spear-men could still damage the tank, but never kill it.

I can live with a combat engine that makes odds of 90-99,99% extremely unlikely, that would be far more than enough to kill the ( and to be honest, it is pretty much dead in Civ IV as it is now ). I'm just against getting a 98% odds combat and treat it like it was 100% .

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So your ok, with 90% odds becoming 99.999% odds, but not 100% odds?

Earthling said:

So in short, civ5 has ZERO indications of actually being a simpler system with straightforward outcomes. All they did was lie about the odds past a certain point, which helps nothing except for people who really don't get math I guess. There's no evidence to suggest that at, say 80% odds there is less variance than before. If you can win 99% guaranteed, fine, but if at a reasonable 80% battle you could still have an invulnerable victory or crushing defeat the system is just as random (and annoying in the same way to players) as always.

A simpler system, someone else said something similar in this thread and I and others have said elsewhere, would translate combat odds into a reasonable range of outcomes. No multiple rounds of combat, nothing decided entirely by RNG rolls where the 1 in 50 chance crops up to much frustration. Units not having to die is a good thing with the rest of the combat and war system at least. And if they have clear hitpoint totals, creating the range of outcomes would have been very easy. So then a battle would just result in "unit 1 takes a-b damage, unit 2 takes x-y damage" determined by final strength analysis. The system where any unit could win with no damage or be defeated by random chance is what should go, and it doesn't appear it has.

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I think this is actually close to what they are doing with the stalemate/marginal/decisive/total victory expectations. They aren't using CivRev's system out of the box, just the lessons from it. So you never loose your unit in what you expect to be a total victory.

Ahriman said:

I strongly agree with the argument that just because some people can't understand probability is no reason to mess the game up for those of us who can.

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But who actually understands odds? I mean sure, we know math at a higher level. But it's only skin deep. People generally don't have a deep intuition about it. For instance, the birthday paradox. Intuitively it seems that the probability of two people in a crowded room have the same birthday should be small, but if there are more than 23 people there, the odds are greater then 50%. Yet that still surprises us, unless we step back and think. And Sid doesn't want us to step back and think. We might think it's time to stop playing then.

With a battle, players are going to have a small set of expectations of what might happen. We might group them into: I will loose, I am likely to loose, It's anyone's game, I'm likely to win, and I will win. With 99.9 odds we expect to win. Sid says that with 75% odds we expect to win.

On top of that loosing a high odds battle is hard to prepare for. You don't make many plans for that contingency. So when it does happen, you're left with not only a lost battle, but also a dent in your plans. And it sucks when plans go awry. Makes you want to reload some times.

Zechnophobe said:

While that may sound reasonable, I'm pretty sure that what you want is that the average player playing on average AI settings, should win 7 out 8, not lose that many.

Why? Because 'average' still means that you win most of the time. People would get pretty angry if it was not so.

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People can then can play on easier difficulty levels. And since a balanced game is therefor a hard level, people wouldn't be complaining that the AI cheats. It won't be at the lower then balanced difficulty level.

Though really if you do achieve even odds of winning on a balanced difficulty, then you can start thinking about dumbing down the AI.

What makes me nervous about this thing is that the designers introduce an odd manipulation into an otherwise completely fair algorithm in order to prevent player frustration.

No one deliberately wants to frustrate the player, but in my opinion, the possibility of being frustrated is an inherent component of any challenge. The last game which I've experienced where the designers went out of there way to prevent player frustration, was Oblivion, and there, the removal of anything that could possibly frustrate the player ended up also removing the challenge and, ultimately, any sense of achievement.

However, I do realize that there's still a difference between a slight manipulation to combat odds, and Oblivion's level scaling. And I do have a lot of trust in Firaxis. Nevertheless the general direction of this change has me worried a bit.

The title of this thread doesn't seem appropriate though. If combat odds are calculated differently than they are displayed, isn't this an UI cheat rather than an AI cheat?

Psyringe said:

However, I do realize that there's still a difference between a slight manipulation to combat odds, and Oblivion's level scaling.

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You made me cry a little for using my first ever case of franchise loyalty (civ) and my biggest disappointment of all time (Oblivion) in the same sentence..

Souron said:

Since the relevant effect is in the moment suspension of disbelief, not retrospective analysis, Hollywood is actually an argument in favor of 100% odds. People do watch Hollywood after all.

Sure, you can explain to yourself why your unit died, but you're still taken out of the moment and thinking "that sucked, and there nothing I would do differently to prevent it from happening again". Then you start thinking that maybe it's late at night, and you really should get some sleep...

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Well, people watching Hollywood is debatable, but ...

You were talking of suspension of disbelief, right? In other words you are actually saying that is less damaging for the suspension of disbeleif a super rambo unit just because trashing left and right than a odd black hawk down ? Not even Hollywood thinks that anymore, otherwise we would not have movies like the with the title posted in the previous line

Anda about a reason to the loss of the unit, I have one that fits it all : Sh*t happens. Ammo goes out, weapons jam, major case of "montezuma revenge" among the troops ... , guy reads the map bad and goes far away from where we wanted to be... just pick one.

Souron said:

By the looks of it, it's not quite treating high odds battles as a guaranteed 0 damage kill. Those spear-men could still damage the tank, but never kill it.

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You are misunderstanding it. I did not talked about damage at all... but anyway, let me adress your point. So, grabbing your reference above regarding suspension of disbelief, you are arguing that it is less suspension of disbelief to believe that a a group of speamen being able of damaging a tank with the luck on their side, but never , ever , kill everyone inside and torch the thing out ( if I were TMIT I would start talking about magic fairies force fields protecting the tank ) than beliveing that normally the tank would roll over the spearmen with ease, but , sometime on a blue moon the guys would attack in the right time, at the right place ( or simply that the spear dudes caught the tank crew while they were taking a leak behind the bushes ) and took the thing out ? I need a suspension of disbeleif regarding your suspension of disbeleif, I guess....

On a more serious note, if it is a real combat, there has to be a chance of both sides winning. If only one of the sides can win and we can only discuss how much punches the champs will get at best, we are not talking of a fair combat, but of a rigged one. The mechanic on Civrev ( from where this came from ) is simply to make impossible that the weaker unit unable to win... aka rigging the combat. To be honest, I don't see where this adds to the game value, neither in terms of gameplay, balance or even fun ( for heavens sake, this is a strategy game. We are suposed to take risks ). I'm assuming, lacking the Civ V SDK, that it is the same thing here: no actual 100% oods, just pretending that there is a assured win above certain odds.

Souron said:

So your ok, with 90% odds becoming 99.999% odds, but not 100% odds?

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I never said that I said that it is perfectly possible to create a combat engine, that delivers comparatively few combats with those "problematic for some" odds, where some have issues with suspension of disbelief. For a unrelated example, the odds of getting any number besides 2 with a six faced dice are of 5/6, but the odds of getting the same "everything less a total of 2" with 2 dices are 35/36. Both are perfectly fair and none is making odds going elsewhere. They are just diferent algorithms. But the "let's roll a dice and see if it we get 2, but then , if we get a 1 we pretend it is as 2 as well" is in a completely diferent cathegory: your result of 2 is loaded ...

But, let me teach you something: 100% is not odds, is a certainty 99,99% ( or whatever number of decimals with 9 you want to ) and 100% are fundamentally diferent exactly because of that.

P.S This one was not for me but I really need to respond to this.

But who actually understands odds? I mean sure, we know math at a higher level. But it's only skin deep. People generally don't have a deep intuition about it. For instance, the birthday paradox. Intuitively it seems that the probability of two people in a crowded room have the same birthday should be small, but if there are more than 23 people there, the odds are greater then 50%. Yet that still surprises us, unless we step back and think. And Sid doesn't want us to step back and think. We might think it's time to stop playing then.

With a battle, players are going to have a small set of expectations of what might happen. We might group them into: I will loose, I am likely to loose, It's anyone's game, I'm likely to win, and I will win. With 99.9 odds we expect to win. Sid says that with 75% odds we expect to win.

On top of that loosing a high odds battle is hard to prepare for. You don't make many plans for that contingency. So when it does happen, you're left with not only a lost battle, but also a dent in your plans. And it sucks when plans go awry. Makes you want to reload some times.

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First, if you can't stomach the concept of a unexpected loss, you are unfit for a strategy game that involves odds of any kind ( anything more complex than tic tac toe ). Better said, any game has some kind of randomness inside, otherwise it would be a movie or a book

Second , i don't need to understand odds like if I had born in Mathland to understand that things sometimes go south for a lot of possible and sometimes just lightly related causes. If you can't understand that, you probably were in a capsule since when you had born. Most of the people on this world hasn't

Third, if your plan is so highly reliant on a particular win, maybe it was just a bad plan, no ? Any planner in any area will say to you that the best plans are the ones that give you a margin if things don't go exactly as in the best case scenario ...

Fourth, it is not said that battle plans only survive until contact with the enemy ?

What I don't understand is why they can'y just make solid values.

I have 10 strength. I do 10 damage.

Toss in modifiers that increase or negate this damage, but otherwise keep it simple. A hit is a hit, after detirming how much damage is actual dealt, deal the damage. the Probability and RNG nonsense is irrelevant. Just give units a value that act as str and one that acts as def. If I have 10 str and you have 5 def, in any regular unmodified situation, I will always do 5 damage to you. In return, you will do X damage to me based off your str and my defense. So if we're the same unit and I engaged you, we both deal 5 damage to eachother. You're on a hill? Okay, I do 3 damage to you and you do 5 to me if I'm the attacker. End of story.

An example of games that use this system are TCGs.

Because maybe ... that would make the game be even more a lab rat race to get the biggest damage deliver units ?

*resists to make a Simpsons reference on a alien invasion with a board with a nail with primordial weapon*

I don't like this one bit. It cheapens the game. It makes my victories that less glorious. It basically turns this into a kiddie game. I doubt other games of this genre or the RTS genre have this feature.

And in no case have I ever lost 3 times in a row with over 95% odds. I have lost once in a while, but never consecutively. Sure it sucks, and you curse at the screen, but then you move on.

If the game is that close and I lose because of one or two unlucky battles, then I deserve to lose.

in summary. I don't want to play a preschooler game where they have to hold your hand in route to victory. Hopefully this is something that is not hard coded in, and can be modded out.

@rolo.
Gee how many times have we gotten into these sorts of discussions and gotten nowhere.

****
@Everyone...
Allow me to make 2 points here.

First, before we get so worked up about how civ5 combat has changed why don't we wait a tad til we see how it actually works. There are things still unconfirmed. The criticisms I've been making are laregly about the odds interface and that's quite a bit different to criticising the combat engine where the RNG actually does its work.



**********

Secondly,
It's no wonder they're getting rid of the probability of winning statistic in civ5 when we consider the admissions of people in this thread. I've always said, if you don't want to lose a unit in battle, then don't send it to battle.

Seriously, if I had even a 0.1% chance of being involved in a serious accident each time I hopped in a car then I would never get into a car (unless it was because of some other threat to survival like fleeing a terminator robot ).

Even 99% is a long long way from certainty.

What amazes me is that with civ4 the devs made it very clear what your odds of winning every battle were but people still want to complain when they lose high odds battles. You know, there is a reason why the gambling industry is so successful. There's also a reason why I, a person like many of you with a better-than-average appreciation of probability, don't gamble for money.

Really, I imagine the conversation between a civ5 beta tester and Sid Meier about a probability figure being included in the interface, went something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXoNE14U_zM (Sid Meier is Jack Nicholson)

r_rolo1 said:

Because maybe ... that would make the game be even more a lab rat race to get the biggest damage deliver units ?

*resists to make a Simpsons reference on a alien invasion with a board with a nail with primordial weapon*

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To this I would say hardly. It wouldn't be more of a chase to the best units than it already is.

It would also end the spearman vs. tank debacle absolutely. As, given the str. Vs. Def. value, it would become impossible for a spear to even deal damage to a tank; which is appropriate with such an obscene difference in tech level. If you're fighting tanks with spears and archers, you've lost.

I'm disappointed... I'd rather have the possibility that one of my ancient units would have a "Return of the Jedi" moment and totally tromp the advanced units.

They'll be some sort of inter-era balancing I'm sure. I just don't want the computer cutting me slack and not telling me about it- I understand odds and am OK with taking a loss.

I've lost with 95%+ chance of success more than once in the same session of Civ IV. That's cheating!

King Jason said:

It would also end the spearman vs. tank debacle absolutely. As, given the str. Vs. Def. value, it would become impossible for a spear to even deal damage to a tank;

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Doesn't anybody feel for the poor spearmen, who may end up heroically bringing the tank to almost zero health, only to then be denied the victory?

If this turns out to be true, then I think we need a new smilie, since this one won't be accurate anymore:

How about several Spartan 0.03 Hoplites (3%) surrounding a battered tank, thrusting their spears at the exposed driver, only to see all spears break at an illusionary wall showing a Firaxis sign and the magical formula "97 = 100", and spring backwards into the hoplites that thrusted them?

When I make my long dreamed Civilization movie, intended to be the first *good* video game movie ever, the climatic scene will definitely be "how the spearman beat the tank". Just to give some context, the story is that the good guys are a group of civilizations that seeks a new beginning in Alpha Centauri, so they built the good old spaceship. The bad guys are the rest of the world who think human nature won't change, and would rather see mankind perish in the world they destroyed (global warming wink-wink, cuz that's the thing to do with movies nowadays...) rather than having humanity's sins ruin another world. So total war ensues. In the end, the good civ makes thier last stand defending the city where the ship will launch. Against all odds, they throw their whole army repelling the enemy's forces and prevail. But alas, an enemy tank remains. Then, the hero of the story, played by SNL's Seth Meyers (*Sid Meier's* wink-wink), goes araound the blown-up city looking for some way to keep the tank from reaching the spaceship. Since the defenders went out all guns blazing, there's no bullets left, no modern weapon to fire. Finally, he finds himself in the museum of natural history, and bam! He finds the answer to his prayers in the bronze age exhibition. I won't tell the actual fight scene so I won't spoil the movie for you, so you'll just have to trust me...

@r_rolo1

Alright, lets parse this wall of text.

Firstly, you are confusing suspension of disbelief with realism realism. Suspension of disbelief is about in the moment perception, not later analysis. And in the moment, people aren't quite rational.

Secondly, I do agree that the combat system should be somewhat transparent, and so that the fact that really weak units can't win against really strong ones should be apparent to the player if that's the case. It looks like it will be though.

Thirdly, to a large extent, games are supposed to be easier than real life. It's easier to lead an army in video games, then in real life. That's a good thing. Now sure, you don't want to remove the challenge, but you do want to avoid un-fun events.

StStutter said:

So you're arguing that you should be given a range of damage that a unit may inflict and a range of damage that unit may take before attacking. I assume you want a relatively narrow range since you didn't like the "randomness" of civ 4. Am I correct?

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That sums things up perfectly, thanks for trying to understand, I know people may not agree. But we do know some things already:

-As always, relative strength of units after bonuses (fortification, promotions, etc...) will be compared, but just to be clear that still makes sense
-units will have hitpoints, hopefully easy to see/check
-units won't HAVE to die in combat, like they mostly did in previous civ versions, instead they will be able to just take damage.

It is my personal preference that randomness is reduced but I'm ok with reasonable amounts, so what you've summarized is rather what I hope more to see. Again, from various reviewers I think we've seen phrases like "expected outcome was a total victory and instead we got a major defeat" so for all they've done to eliminate "randomness" at "99% battles" or whatever I don't think it solves that problem.

If they are going to have the randomness of civ4 or something similar again, just flat out tell it like it is, faking the odds at a certain point against how math should really work is rather silly.

I actually had some more things about civ4 but none of it is my original work, retelling things posted elsewhere on the forums. Randomness in civ4 is ok but a few near-broken problems was what hurt - the best example again that units at even strength may fight 50-50 odds, but even a slight change in strength doesn't result in, say, 53-47 but major jumps to 66-34 and breakpoints like that. So the odds when you looked at multiple units fighting could get really off from what anyone's intuition would say, and more features like the healing system were wonky and at the least counterintuitive (witness how many players are just always genuinely confused about how to stack healing effects and so on).

In short, if they wanted a system rather heavy on randomness like civ4 I'd still be ok with that, but it needs to be honest and any broken/weird elements ironed out. Not sure where we stand at all right now on anything.

Edit:

King Jason said:

What I don't understand is why they can'y just make solid values.

I have 10 strength. I do 10 damage.

Toss in modifiers that increase or negate this damage, but otherwise keep it simple. A hit is a hit, after detirming how much damage is actual dealt, deal the damage. the Probability and RNG nonsense is irrelevant. Just give units a value that act as str and one that acts as def. If I have 10 str and you have 5 def, in any regular unmodified situation, I will always do 5 damage to you. In return, you will do X damage to me based off your str and my defense. So if we're the same unit and I engaged you, we both deal 5 damage to eachother. You're on a hill? Okay, I do 3 damage to you and you do 5 to me if I'm the attacker. End of story.

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I agree with the idea here, and find counterarguments so far pretty weak. The race to get stronger units is no different than ever before. Even if you always knew exactly what damage to expect, unit composition (ranged and siege units, etc...) positioning and so on matters just as much. Units can have different attack and defense modifiers and so on, it's not like this would just cause the whole concept of war to turn into just building one type of unit.

However, I think there is a need for some random element in the system, for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, is that without randomness the AI is more utterly screwed. A human could exploit perfect knowledge to lure the AI into traps, even if it thought it could calculate well enough for immediate short term battles (knowing it could successfully kill one unit, but being lured into a dangerous position.) Allowing some randomness (but not too much to be silly) means that your average, poorly organized AI assualt could still luck out and succeed.

Randomness is also important to minor skirmishes, like against barbarians. If perfect exactness was possible for a player to abuse, then one could definitely make a set-up to never ever lose anything to barbarians/city-states or similar minor conflicts, removing all risk from those interactions and rendering some of it kinda pointless.

Likewise, I think many players would enjoy some random elements in multiplayer games/battles they fight just for the excitement - though others probably wouldn't, it's hard to say who the majority is. And it probably will not be a toggle-able option, which is rather unfortunate.

So I can see the appeal of the absolute perfectly non-random system - but I think reasonable variation is ok.

But again, we'll have to see what they really did in the actual game. Reviewers certainly have provided some different and possibly conflicting viewpoints, the article in the OP not helping things.

Psyringe said:

Doesn't anybody feel for the poor spearmen, who may end up heroically bringing the tank to almost zero health, only to then be denied the victory?

If this turns out to be true, then I think we need a new smilie, since this one won't be accurate anymore:

How about several Spartan 0.03 Hoplites (3%) surrounding a battered tank, thrusting their spears at the exposed driver, only to see all spears break at an illusionary wall showing a Firaxis sign and the magical formula "97 = 100", and spring backwards into the hoplites that thrusted them?

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Previous page, top post:

Souron said:

Well there may still be a chance with such a strong unit favoring system, that the defender will survive every attack, even though the strong unit doesn't die.

But it's easier to suspend disbelief of with spearmen always 100% loose to a tank, then to have 99% odds, but the lucky spear men happens to overcome a crucial offensive.

So Sid is not going to go back on his realization that player intuition matters more than mathematics. There will be no spearmen beating tanks in civ 5. At least not in a single turn.

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Calm down people, everything is going to be fine. Drama Queen performance everywhere...


EDIT

Psyringe said:

Umm, actually I was trying a humorous, light-hearted approach to the issue, exactly because we can't know yet how things will play out in the end. And as I said in a previous post - while the decision to manipulate odds worries me a bit because I see it as a step in the wrong direction, I do have a lot of trust in Firaxis to create an enjoyable and challenging game.

In which way this post (or some of the others) qualifies as a "drama queen" approach (which I regard as a pretty judgmental statement) really isn't clear to me. I think you may have misunderstood my post, I don't really see how the post you quoted is an answer to mine either. Surely you didn't think that my exclaiming "Doesn't anybody feel for the poor spearmen" was meant in earnest? Anyway, sorry if my attempt to lighten things up created any confusion.

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If that's the case, I apologize for misunderstanding. Looking at it this way, your post was pretty humorous, I'm sorry

Guardian_PL said:

Calm down people, everything is going to be fine. Drama Queen performance everywhere...

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Umm, actually I was trying a humorous, light-hearted approach to the issue, exactly because we can't know yet how things will play out in the end. And as I said in a previous post - while the decision to manipulate odds worries me a bit because I see it as a step in the wrong direction, I do have a lot of trust in Firaxis to create an enjoyable and challenging game.

In which way this post (or some of the others) qualifies as a "drama queen" approach (which I regard as a pretty judgmental statement) really isn't clear to me. I think you may have misunderstood my post, I don't really see how the post you quoted is an answer to mine either. Surely you didn't think that my exclaiming "Doesn't anybody feel for the poor spearmen" was meant in earnest? Anyway, sorry if my attempt to lighten things up created any confusion.

Souron said:

@r_rolo1

Alright, lets parse this wall of text.

Firstly, you are confusing suspension of disbelief with realism realism. Suspension of disbelief is about in the moment perception, not later analysis. And in the moment, people aren't quite rational.

Secondly, I do agree that the combat system should be somewhat transparent, and so that the fact that really weak units can't win against really strong ones should be apparent to the player if that's the case. It looks like it will be though.

Thirdly, to a large extent, games are supposed to be easier than real life. It's easier to lead an army in video games, then in real life. That's a good thing. Now sure, you don't want to remove the challenge, but you do want to avoid un-fun events.

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You need a wall of text to respond to a wall of text ... unless you want and can be of short words

1) No, I'm not confusing suspension of disbeleif with "realism realism". I was just comparing 2 stories and commenting on what one would be more credible in general. A tank with a life line from Vanhalla regarding combats againt spears is a huge suspension of disbeleif, IMHO far bigger than beleiving that sometimes things can go wrong to the stronger unit. It is is just more spread out, but , as this is a game where you actually are suposed to think for hours to play it, it is far more damaging for the supension of disbeleif a steady attack to it than a short exposition to a strong corrosive, and this especially if you actually find yourself on the short side of the stick

2) If they are clear regarding this issue it is less bad , indeed. But that doesn't change the fact that a combat where only one can win hardly deseves the name of combat In fact, if there is no combat ( aka you know the result before the battle ), why lose processing time doing it at all ?

3) The RL vs game worse dificulty is completely irrelevant for what is being discussed ( I just spoke of it because you brought it , not consciously maybe ) and I only pointed that you should expect in a strategy game with a random element that you need to do risk assesement ... and that if you can't stomach that, you maybe should be playing something else more suited to your tastes.

Second, the fun element ... full circle on this issue, no ? Like I already said a lot of times in here, some people might actually find unfun to play a game where you have 0 chances of winning a combat if you are in the short side of the stick. It is already highly frustrating in Civ IV to be invaded by a technologically superior force because they are hard to stop even if you can zerg the enemy, so i don't want to think how frustrating it would be to being completely unable by design to stop a technologically advanced invasion just because the designer didn't wanted to expose people to a odd from time to time ... you must agree that is pretty much a "shelf game, never play it again and loudmouth it if possible" event. And, like I said, a compromise could had been acheived between avoiding both the and the scenarios as much as possible, instead of pretending that no one will ever try to play a level higher than their current skills

@ PoM

True, been there, done that ... but who cares, this is the internet forum ... it is suposed that arguments come back from time to time

And on your "don't gamble for money" ... well, then you surely agree with my Probabilities and Statistics I teacher in college, when he said than the odds of winning the average lottery were the same regardless of buying the lottery ticket or not if you rounded them to the seventh decimal