A possible solution to the RNG problems in MULTIPLAYER

[A+ombomb]

Okay, so a few days ago I was playing a 1x1 multiplayer against a very weak 0-16 record player. It was a duel sized map and we started very close, and he sent his first warrior straight to my city and attacked with only a small chance of victory (roughly 10% ignoring decimals). To my chagrin, that 10% was enough to give him victory - long before I could possibly have more than 1 warrior defense. I feel this is a major problem with the rng, at least in multiplayer, where early battles with small quantities of units will never equal out and a bizarre rng can cost an entire game, regardless of skill. So it set me thinking of possible solutions.

My idea is that if a unit has less than a 50% chance of winning, it can't kill the other unit, it can only maim it. Before you single-player people go crazy on this idea, hear the whole plan out - it's a little interesting. If a unit with below 50% chance of victory would win, the two units both live instead, and the "losing" unit is set to .01 health with a "sickness" condition. If a unit is in "sickness" it can not move until it has risen above a certain amount of health ( say 1 ). A defender of a city with sickness is immediately given +20% max health and sickness removed on the next turn. In this way the unit is not lost by a bad rng, and cities can't be sacked quite so easily by a bad rng, but it is certainly still kept in a bad position by it's restrictions and low health.

 

[akots]

Yes, this is indeed a very weird problem which makes me actually almost completely stop playing MP games on a random map.

Another solution would be to decrease cost of warrior in hammers and to increase minimal required distance for random maps.

Or play with nice people in a nice company and make first 50 turns (on normal speed) mandatory peace.

 

[werdna]

I've had instanced where I attacked a unit with 99% odds and lose, and attack the same unit on the same turn with different unit at 99.9% odds and lose too.
It just seems unfun.

 

[monkspider]

Here is an easy solution: Don't play scrubby players with 0-16 records.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Just feel content that his record will almost always be at 1-9 odds or worse.

 

[Programmer Yare]

Complaining about the random number generator is a sure sign of somebody who knows absolutely nothing about RNG's or computer programming.

Without getting really techincal, there could be two reasons for what you experienced:

1) The human brain is designed to notice patterns... even when there are none we'll imagine that there are. Moreover, we only commit to long-term memory things that we deem particularly important or upsetting. Short term memory is lost when you sleep. This means that you will tend to forget all the times that the RNG pulls strings of numbers in your favor, and remember all the times it pulls numbers that screw you over. It averages out, but your brain only stored the times you got screwed -so you can't remember it. This is a well-documented phenomenon.

2) The difficulty setting might be skewing the RNG results in the background to give your enemies an invisible bonus. I'm not sure how CIV4 handles this, though.

Most random number generators used in games are just a wrapper around the standard rand() function. It's more than random enough.

 

[kcbrett5]

Who cares? If you didn't even have time to build a 2nd warrior then you wasted almost no time on the game. Just play somebody else next time. Its a dumb strategy anyway.

Besides, the game worked exactly as it should work. Play the same guy with the same tactic 10 more times and you will most likely win every time. But every once in awhile you should lose. Are you complaining that he is now 1-16?

 

[CiverDan]

I does appear the RNG is more random in WL. Recently I lost a 100% battle. Odds after bonus was 4.0 vs 0.59 (Spear vs wounded Chariot) in an MP game. That never happened to me before WL. IMHO this makes making one super units out of your GG hardly worth it. Too many times he has died on my the first 90% win battle I use him on.

 

[Beamup]

Complaining about the random number generator is a sure sign of somebody who knows absolutely nothing about RNG's or computer programming.

While this is often true, it's unfair in this case. The OP's point is pretty clear. He's not claiming that the real odds were different than 10%, he's saying that the possibility of a 10% chance in such a situation is too much. That an MP game should not be able to hinge so decisively on a single roll.

 

[Mr. Do]

I does appear the RNG is more random in WL. Recently I lost a 100% battle. Odds after bonus was 4.0 vs 0.59 (Spear vs wounded Chariot) in an MP game. That never happened to me before WL. IMHO this makes making one super units out of your GG hardly worth it. Too many times he has died on my the first 90% win battle I use him on.

I've noticed this a lot too, it's a bit of a shame. I've had more than a few "funny" results in the 12 hours I've had Warlords, but in single player too... I look at the combat log and nearly always the resulting loss is from the stronger unit losing about seven rounds in a row. I don't mind losing, and I don't mind streakiness- but surely the majority of times you lose a 90%+ fight (Or win a 10%- fight- I've had two such victories today), the survivor should be on almost no health rather than almost full health (First strikes do the damage they're meant to, at least)... certainly, it should take hundreds if not thousands of individual fights before you see a city raider three axeman losing to a fortified spearman, the spearman taking no damage...

 

[Fetch]

He took the risk (losing his only warrior on a battle he probably wouldn't win) and it worked. Good for him. Bad for you.

 

[Todd Hawks]

I think it would be way easier to simply restrict player-player combat/wars until a fixed number of turns (so that everyone will have time to build up at least a little) than to use some weird mechanics like the one you propose.

Other than that, I agree with most of the others (especially kcbrett5). No need to change it really.