A singer sung a song in my cathedral while I tried a cultural game. This fact produced a GA that otherwise would have cost me 3000GPP. It WAS a big deal. I don't want a cultural award depend on such a thing. I don't want the all-times-worldwide-cultural-HOF-best-ever-date to depend on such a thing.
Events in BOTM
- Thread starter Nobikaigan
- Start date
A singer sung a song in my cathedral while I tried a cultural game. This fact produced a GA that otherwise would have cost me 3000GPP. It WAS a big deal. I don't want a cultural award depend on such a thing. I don't want the all-times-worldwide-cultural-HOF-best-ever-date to depend on such a thing.
No. Only 1 RE has ever upset me. And that was the free GA.
My point against RE in BOTM is not "I think I will have bad luck, so I prefer them out". We all agree that for BOTM the "new seed on reload" must be unchecked. Why? Because that reduces randomness. We all agree that the staff must remove the closest GHs. Why? Because it reduces randomness. We all agree that the most unbalancing RE are removed. Why? Because it reduces randomness.
My point is: without RE there will be less randomness in BOTM.
Ribannah
Fighter Druid
In a test game, I had a slave revolt in my capital (is it always the capital?) that simply would not end. With the capital shut down, I could not generate the 10 gold to make it go away by sacrificing a population head, and I quit the game in disgust.
All of your points, while valid if your idea concerning subsets was correct, are absolutely wrong because everyone has the exact same subset of random events that are possible.
As for not knowing what you are up against...its easy...there's always a chance of slave revolts..that one is always on. Many of the others depend on your, or the AIs, actions.
as Jesusin and others have said(and I believe I had said on the first page of this thread), all players are given the exact same set of 20-30 random events that can happen. From there, it is just another aspect of the game, and it is still heavily dependent upon player actions, as every action you make influences how the rest of the game will play out, thus what random events you might get out of that set.
as far as that GA event, jesusin, I'll check with Denniz and see if they are planning on disabling that one as well after the next patch.
MarkM
Cow Herder
Let's not mix apples & oranges please? I think most if not all people have no problem with a monthly WOTM. I think the main problem is limited staff time & resources that prevents running three xOTM every month, and the poll & submission statistics supported that if there was one series that should be cut back to a less frequent schedule it was WOTM.
All that is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
I don't think that comparison is quite correct.
The reason we keep 'new seed on reload' unchecked is because checking it would provide an additional motivation for players to cheat by reloading the game as soon as they have bad luck, eg. in a battle, in the hope that reloading and playing the same moves would give a different outcome (of course doing that would likely get their game excluded anyway but ISTM it's best not to put temptation in peoples way if possible
) Also, that flag would add additional randomness to the game in a way that reduces comparability between games (eg. it means that two people who play exactly the same starts will have AIs behaving in different ways) but which - unlike BtS random events - does not have any compensatory advantages (eg. making gameplay more fun).We remove the closest goody huts because they bring about a particularly dramatic form of randomness in which game-breaking events could occur within the first few turns (eg, popping several barb warriors 3 tiles from your capital when you have only 1 warrior for defence). That doesn't imply we consider all randomness undesirable, only that particular form of randomness. Personally I consider some randomness to be desirable when I'm playing because that forces me to play around and plan for what might happen, rather than around some particular sequence of events or AI actions that is guaranteed to happen (and which if I took the trouble to work it out, I could exactly predict). I think that makes for a more balanced game.
Conquistador 63
Deity
I know this is not a poll, but if it were I'd vote keep the RE. They are fun. I can't justify my opinion with better arguments than the ones DS just presented in the above post.
pigswill
fly (one day)
As has been pointed out there is a significant (i.e. game-changing) amount of randomness without random events. Like other people I've played parallel games from the same start. In one version of a game an AI builds the pyramids in 800bc, in another version of the same game the player builds the pyramids in 500bc. That's significant and nothing to do with random events.
Ronnie1
Deity
Is this really true? I don't even have 2 computers to check this out, I suppose I could get a couple friends together and try it. I really thought that every time the computer needed a "number", it rolled the "dice" and got a result. How would 10 different computers always "roll" the same number?
That is not said earlier in the thread (or at least it's not clear that everyone will be given the same subset). ORI's thread makes it sound like every game will be different, though it's not clear whether HOF or any other work done on BOTM would negate that (locking the seed would, I assume?)
That being the case, I don't know why people would object to REs.
da_Vinci
Gypsy Prince
I can see that every different game CREATION could be a different subset of available RE's, and yet XOTMs have the same set for all players because we are all playing a save from one game creation (that is what you are saying, Thrallia?)
If that is true, then RE's are no big deal, except for a few that are significantly gamechanging. So maybe the focus of discussion should be on identifying those gamechanging events that might be considered for being disabled.
What are the ones that have been thus disabled? That might provide a yardstick for what "gamebreaking" means.
dV
da_Vinci
Gypsy Prince
What device driver do you use for that item of hardware in your computer called the "die rolling cup"?
I am not a computer expert by any means, but I am pretty sure that computer generated "random" numbers are not really random (computers are not quantum mechanical
). Rather they are generated by some algorithm, starting from some "seed" number (if there was some magical and truly random generator, there would be no need for the concept of a "seed"). So playing the same save on 10 computers, exactly the same, will generate the same sequence of "random" numbers (if the random seed is constant over the 10 plays).Now if you don't play all the moves exactly the same, then those same numbers will map onto different RNG-dependent events, so you might get different outcomes (does the sword attack before or after the axe ... did you have a sea combat before the land attack or not ... etc.)
In one of my crash recoveries (about a year ago now), I had lost my first two attackers in a combat that I had to replay after the crash. On the first replay, I did not lose the first two units ... because I attacked not in the precise order ... so I reloaded, consulted the autolog, and by attacking in the same sequence as originally, was able to reproduce the same losses of the first two units, and for the rest of the combat, each unit that survived suffered exactly as much damage as the first time ... proving the algorithmic nature of the RNG.
Which is an advantage of not having a new random seed on reload ... if you do have to replay after a crash, if you play it exacty as before, you will get the same results as before.
dV
Computer RNG doesn't (or at least didn't
) work that way.You roll dice once. That determines a whole series of numbers. It is those numbers you use as random numbers.
So the whole series of numbers for a game are determined at game creation. Now, if in your turn you attack and pop a hut and your predestined numbers were 0 and 100, you can either had good luck at the battle and bad luck at the GH, of good luck at the GH and bad luck at the battle, depending on the order you follow.
And if I do both things in my game but you avoid the battle in your game, then the second random number remains unused and it is used by the AI popping a hut in its turn. So in your game they pop Masonry and get the Pyramids in no time while in mine they pop barbs, build an army to protect from them and then use that army to conquer their neighbour. Yes, it quickly diverges.
EDIT: remarkable cross-post with @DV, we have said just the same with very different words.
To go slightly off-topic, that's actually another very important reason why we keep the 'new random seed on reload' option off for GOTMs. In fact that's arguably more important than either of the reasons I gave earlier.
da_Vinci
Gypsy Prince
Well, great minds think alike!
Except in CIV, your great mind thinks and mine struggles to keep up! Now for the "however" ...
You must have that same "die rolling cup" hardware that R1 has!
If you could really "roll the dice once" why have an RNG at all? Just keep on rollng the dice ... So how do you figure you get even that first die roll?
Don't computers number every day (or hour, or minute or second) sequentially from some reference time? At least in their mind of minds ... and then convert that to the forms we are familar with? If so, the number corresponding to this second would make a unique first seed, and the algorithm could branch depending on whether the number is even, odd prime, or odd non-prime (or some other initial divergence protocol).
dV
Conquistador 63
Deity
A RNG seed is fixed at the game creation. If 2 players/computers make exactly the same moves they will get the same result.
I remember from a previous XOTM spoiler thread, someone posted a recipe for getting a nice result from a nearby hut. Suppose there is one 3W from the initial warrior. Anyone following a fixed path from the starting save (e.g. settle in place, build a worker, research Agri, move 1SW/1NW/1W) would get BW from hut. Any deviation (e.g. build a warrior or move 1NW/1SW/1W) would yield a different result from that same hut.
I remember from a previous XOTM spoiler thread, someone posted a recipe for getting a nice result from a nearby hut. Suppose there is one 3W from the initial warrior. Anyone following a fixed path from the starting save (e.g. settle in place, build a worker, research Agri, move 1SW/1NW/1W) would get BW from hut. Any deviation (e.g. build a warrior or move 1NW/1SW/1W) would yield a different result from that same hut.
da_Vinci
Gypsy Prince
Assuming that the AI does exactly the same things as well (or is that what you mean by players/computers)? Or does each player get their own set of "random" numbers?
So were does that initial number come from? Since the computer can't randomly come up with one, doesn't it have to use a number that it already "knows"? And to make that unique for each game, some time number would seem to make sense ...
It strikes me that these are not random numbers but scrambled numbers ... like a word scramble game. You start with a real word, then scramble the letters. The resultant nonsense word may appear like a random collection of letters, but is it the product of a seed word and a scrambling algorithm. I am guessing that the goal is to generate a number within some range (maybe 1 to 100), so what we have is a scrambled sequence of the numbers between 1 and 100 (or maybe a scramble sequence of 1 to 1 milllion that then is mapped onto 1 to 100 ... ), rather than a random generation of a number between 1 and 100.
But a sufficiently complex algorithm can appear grossly random.
dV
Conquistador 63
Deity
I know nothing about computers' internal affairs. 
What I do know is that if I replicate the moves a russian or american player made days or months ago, I'll get the same rewards from huts, regardless of the AI's moves in that game interval. Which leads me to the conclusion that the AI will also be taking the exactly same moves and actions, so (let's say) Ramesses would be building the Pyramids in the same city/turn it did in the original game.
What I do know is that if I replicate the moves a russian or american player made days or months ago, I'll get the same rewards from huts, regardless of the AI's moves in that game interval. Which leads me to the conclusion that the AI will also be taking the exactly same moves and actions, so (let's say) Ramesses would be building the Pyramids in the same city/turn it did in the original game.
As dV says, that is the case...at game creation, the subset is locked in.
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