Defendo's Strategy Article: Statistics, Catastrophism and Roots Reggae

[diagonale]

Universal law: each event have a chance to lead to a catastrophe.

Be X the porbability that an event lead to a catastrophe.
Be Y the number of events to hapen
Be f the fnction which gives the probability that Y evets leads to at least one catastrophe.

0<X<1
Y>0
f(Y)=1-(1-X)^Y

Universal law: each event leads to another event

f(+infiny)=1-(1-X)^+infiny=1

In plane words: the conclusion of any stream of related events has nearly 100% to be unperdicted. This last dozen lines we used statsitics to prove that statitsics can't be succefully used for anything else.

Universal law: each catastrophe leads to another catastrophe

In civ as in life, expecting the things to hapens as planed will lead you to frustation. Optimal is a hard drug. Each time something contardict you current direction: take it as a signal, reconsider: leave things unfinished and start unplaned other ones. Don't get traped in the "Arg, I should have done this" thing. It's not too late: the time you're feeling this is the exact good time to proced; a catastrophe is backing you up!

In-Game Examples: Have several half-researched techs, have decaying units and half-done impvements all over your land. Start to build a wnoder when you don't needto. Don't let a long-term strategy survive more than 30 turns (normal speed). Set auto-save to 1500 turns delay to negate it (maraton) - reload is a lie. If you built a bunch of units to rush and you finally doubt it would make it, just give them to someone too far to atack you. Hide the
scoireboard. Et caetera...

In civ as in life, reducing the sources of uncertainty aiming to a full control of your environment is walking a boring way toward death. By dancing thru the unknow, you'll accomplish three important things. First, you'll radaite joy; Second, you'll help the bored ones to either fall earlier or reconsider earlier; Third, you'll learn to dnace very well. But it won't prevent you to die.

In-Game Examples: Several gaame option can be combine to reach maximum entropy - find them and use them all; Most imbalances will balance among themselves anyway. Don't leta town generate a great personae unless you have a bit of all in the pool. Sneaky create a colony on a far isle. Give your odd units to an opponen before attack her - either dispatch them on all the land or stack them on the target square. Settle a crappy ton 2 squares from a good site; Leave it undefended. If you're loosing a war, ask all your opponen a couple of cities each turn. Base your stategy on color analysis and psychological bias of your opponens. Gambit a play that you never heard about. Quit the game once you start to dominate the board (victory denial: the ultimate one). Et caetera...

Have no mercy - never let a normal turn hapen - and catastrophes will finish the job.

Never act according to a plan.

In this sweet life
We're comin' in from the cold

(Ho well well well well!)

Hey, it's you I'm talkin' to now
Why do you look so sad and forsaken?
When one door is closed, don't you know, other is open?

(Love don't reload! Life don't reload!)

Would you let the system make you hurt your sister again?
No, Dread, no!
Would you make the system get inside of your head again?
No, Dread, no!
Well, the biggest woman you ever did see was just a baby.

(No fear, no no no no!)
(Freedom waits you, hoooooo! Freedom needs you!)

 

[diagonale]

In this Strategy Article, robots mean Artificial Stupidity and catastrophe is to be understood as a brutal change in the board topology rather than a disaster to be considered as a bad event.

This article was the conclusion of two years of strategy-related research with civ. It's based on the observation that each thing that happened had at first negligible chances to, but finally did it. It doesn't include the list of all the things that gone this way (that is, all the things). It would be too long and evidences doesn't prove anything anyway: one see no more than what (s)he believe... until life strike, of course.

I want to thank the kind anonymous who sent me hes copy of this article even if I would like to know how s(he) got my mail address. Sadly, my friend didn't recovered anything from my crashed disk (somehow it got overwritten by meaningless data) so it's likely to be the last Defendo strategy article I post here. I didn't post it in the Strategy Articles section because for some reason I felt it would have been censored. I'm sorry for Defendo about this. I sincerely hope that someone with a backup will share more with you in the future. It would be a shame that all the good Defendo stuff got lost in the past.

Well. A lot has been lost but a least a few has been saved.

 

[goldys_lackey]

Sadly, my friend didn't recovered anything from my crashed disk

Its too bad your disk crashed. No, its catastrophic?

Diagonale, do you have any of the Attacko articles still saved? If so, please share.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

I really enjoy reading Defendo's words of wisdom, I'm glad they could be recovered.
Even if I am a little sad that we won't be finding more.

 

[soundjata]

This is getting better

 

[Htadus]

I get most but this

"Universal law: each catastrophe leads to another catastrophe"

Both life and civ does not agree with this too oftern diagonal. had you said "may lead to", this article would have more weight. But I am guessing you are limiting the observation just for your experience.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

I don't think the theory is meant to imply that catastrophes are guaranteed or even common for some sample set, but simply identifies them as landmarks.

But your point is taken, the interpretation of the theory does suggest that catastrophes are a frequent occurrence, which could be debatable.

 

[Revent]

Well this depends on what you define as catastrophe. Catastrophe can be something as simple as one tiny molecule not in the place that it is expected for example or a bus service that is one minute slow. In the world of Civ, it could mean that one different move could lead to a completely different game or even no different moves as a matter of fact!
*Not sure if the example below would suffice as I personally don't understand the mechanics of tech research*
If in the beginning, your third tech is Mining on a large Pangea map (after researching Agri and AH) and you may run into 6 AI that haven't researched mining and that may end up taking you longer to research it. This leads to a slower BW and may ruin your chances of an Axe rush in a certain game on a difficulty level high enough. However, let's say you reload from 4000BC and you you go the same direction as before but because you don't know how the AI move, this time, you run into 6 civ's who have mining (making 12 AI's in total), this in turn speeds up your research of mining I believe and can be a game changer.

Correct me if I'm wrong though I'm just a guy who loves chaos theory hehe

 

[Htadus]

See Revent, as you worded it "could" several times, you made it universal. Since I have been told that I cause chaos, however playfully, I had to bring it up.

 

[Revent]

Well to be fair, everything is possible (except a few things such as the Pauli exclusion principle hehe my school studying for exams is rubbing off on me too much :$ ). But there are some events, despite their possibility are so unlikely that we can just write them off as impossible. Take one being that Civ generates the same exact map for two players in it's lifetime. I personally don't know the odds of the same map being generated with all settings set to random (or even if the settings are rigged to match which makes it more likely, but still incredibly unlikely). If we assume that the probability is in the order of 1 in one septillion (10^24), which is fairly reasonable I think if not an undervalue of the probability of two maps ending up identical. Multiply this by the number of games that have been played since the beginning of Civ IV. Assume a fanbase of 1 billion people (extreme exaggeration) and each person has played 10,000 games. The probability of these very rough extreme estimates gives the chance of two maps being exactly the same as one in 100 billion. So unlikely that we can call it impossible for the sake of practicality.

Likewise, if you give the two of the best players here the same exact map with every single setting the same and told them to play every single move the same initially (which is generally the case for the best here anyway, ie worker first, send the warrior around scouting for new city spots), it's almost certain that something different will happen in their games which will cause the respective player to make a change to their play set. This could be something as small as a bear severely wounding the warrior so the player has to heal before moving. Or it could even be that in one case, the player pops a tech from a hut and when it comes to going to the hut for the other player, he will find that an AI beat him to it. Every single little thing that doesn't go as follows can be considered a catastrophe and for the sake of practicality, we can say that it's certain.

 

[goldys_lackey]

For anyone else curious, Diagonale is almost certainly a bit by the fabled Troytheface:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=275545&highlight=defendo

 

[Revent]

I don't know, I personally find some sense in troytheface's article Yes, it has some mistakes in it/a lot but the general concept of it has some sense behind it (in MP games though. It just won't do in single player haha) It probably wouldn't work on the better players here, but imagine this game in its prime full of noobs online (including me hehe) These kind of tactics would make one just want to ragequit haha

 

[Htadus]

Likewise, if you give the two of the best players here the same exact map with every single setting the same and told them to play every single move the same initially (which is generally the case for the best here anyway, ie worker first, send the warrior around scouting for new city spots), it's almost certain that something different will happen in their games which will cause the respective player to make a change to their play set. This could be something as small as a bear severely wounding the warrior so the player has to heal before moving. Or it could even be that in one case, the player pops a tech from a hut and when it comes to going to the hut for the other player, he will find that an AI beat him to it. Every single little thing that doesn't go as follows can be considered a catastrophe and for the sake of practicality, we can say that it's certain.

Ok lets look at your example with a slightly different outcome.
Player A move his warrior next to a GH on Turn n and hoping to get something from it next turn. But IBT damn Mansa's scout pop it and the player is bummed-> Catastrophy?
Player B also waited to pop the GH and IBT no one show up. So on Turn n+1 he move the warrior to open the GH only to find 3-4 barb warriors pop up.
Catastrophy?

So sometimes what may have been persived as a catastrophy may have been a blessing. This is all because what "may and "could" happen may or may not be catastrophy. it is all about the glass being half full or half empty. They are both true.

With that I bow out of this discussion since it is all about word usage and it is not universal. Sort of like; is it bad or bad?