Frequent Faces?

Nkot

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 2, 2007
Messages
58
Location
East Coast, US
Does anyone else ever notice that many of the leaders in your current game are the same as the leaders of your last game? It almost always seems like 50% of the leaders in my current game are from the last game as well. For example, I will have Shaka in my game for five games in a row, but then not see him again for awhile. I know some people will just say its a RNG trick, but it seems to happen so regularly that I have begun to think that this is programmed into the game.
 
Reminds me of the birthday paradox (have a look in Wikipedia). In a set of 30 pupils, the probability that 2 pupils have the same birthday is around 2/3...
With only 30 leaders or so, I guess the probability to have one leader many times is quite high ...
 
Does anyone else ever notice that many of the leaders in your current game are the same as the leaders of your last game? It almost always seems like 50% of the leaders in my current game are from the last game as well. For example, I will have Shaka in my game for five games in a row, but then not see him again for awhile. I know some people will just say its a RNG trick, but it seems to happen so regularly that I have begun to think that this is programmed into the game.

Your personal experience does not say anything about how the game's RNG works.

As has been discussed on this forum many, many times, there are no "hidden" mechanisms of the RNG. Streaks will happen, and many people will consider these streaks as suspicious rather than accepting reasons of probability.
 
I haven't noticed anything suspicious considering the leaders. I don't remember the details, but someone claimed they had never seen a leader in months of playing that I seem to encounter all the time. Allowing for the fact that true randomness gives less 'even' results than one would expect intuitively, I didn't notice anything suspcious.

I don't know how it works for leaders (for example, is Shaka more likely to show up than Stalin because there is 1 Zulu leader and there are 3 Russian ones?) so I can't really outline the maths behind it.

Combat chances seem to differ from those stated; the underdogs are less disadvantaged than advertised.
 
I thought this also, but I really think that i just notice leaders I have had before. So on a standard map (6 rivals), if one or two are a repeat they stand out. I am not good with odds, but I bet there is a better chance you will have some repeats then have all new leaders every game. And like me, you will probably take note of that and attribute it to weird RNG voodoo.
 
I actually did a experiment on this a while ago, starting lots of games ( 10 Civs each) and just using WB to count the appearances of each leader... In the beginning there appeared to be 'prefered' leaders, but after "only" 46 starts it evened out, almost every one of the 52 leaders having appeared 7 to 10 times, which is actually very close to the Expectation for a even Probability (which is something around 8.8) distributuion. There were three "outliers": Saldin, Peter and Sitting Bull. But given that my test row was rather short for 52 leaders i think its normal. The overall result clearly - and sooner than i expected - speaks for a even distribution.
 
I'd like to have exclude option for both AI leaders and in random leader selection for player.. meaning, i might want to some leaders but i do not want to pick opponents myself. Also, i'd like to make sure that in this semi-random game start i wouldn't have leader that i just played. It's not a big deal, but is definetly on would-be-nice-to-have list.
 
Because not all civs have the same number of leaders, you will see some more than others. Mansa Musa or Montezuma, as they are the only leaders of their civs are therefore far more likely to show up than Catherine or Churchill, who are each from a set of three.

Consider a map with every civ present. Mansa and Monty will always be there, but Churchill or Catherine only have a 1 in 3 chance of appearing.
 
Because not all civs have the same number of leaders, you will see some more than others. Mansa Musa or Montezuma, as they are the only leaders of their civs are therefore far more likely to show up than Catherine or Churchill, who are each from a set of three.
So you're saying that first the game picks random civilizations and then a random leader of the chosen civilization, if there's more than one?

That sounds plausible, I could swear that Montezuma and Shaka have a much larger probability to be in the game than others. I always suspected that the RNG is programmed to put at least one of the warmongers into almost every game.
 
I always assumed that this was a random thing and apparently it is.

One thing I do notice is certain leaders tend to produce similar starts.

Example:
Mao almost always has Toku in the game. The French always seams to be in my English games. Others I cannot rmemeber.

Also certain civilizations tend to have moreproximal resuources. Example Germans always seam to have copper, Khans always have horses nearrby, etc...


I am sure these are random things but when seeing it while playing a game, I somethings get the impression it's not random.
 
IronCrown said:
So you're saying that first the game picks random civilizations and then a random leader of the chosen civilization, if there's more than one?

Well it couldn't really do it the other way round or you'd either end up with duplicate civs or an inconsistent number of civs at the end of it.

There's nothing more complicated in the leader selector to ensure warmongers or anything like that though.
 
From my expirement it seems, that it actually does pick the leader first.
 
I think maybe some leaders just stand out, therefore if they are in your games, you notice them more and think they are ALWAYS there.

Like Monty or Mansu. Other leaders, like Kubai Khan for me don't seem to stand out and therefore you think you never see them.
 
From my expirement it seems, that it actually does pick the leader first.

Its good to have some actual stats on it
My impression was leaders who were the sole rep of their civ were turning up more often but impressions are frequently inaccurate
 
I have noticed this lots of times in my games.

For instance, I don't know why, but I never get Napoleon or De Gualle as the French. I only get Louis XIV if the French are in the game (which happens a lot).

I also seem to have Shaka, Saladin, and Montezuma very frequently.

And I have never had Boudica, any of the Ottomans...
 
The Khmer have been in all my games lately. Before that, it was Isabella. Unless someone finds code that governs this, I can accept that it's random, but that doesn't stop it from being weird.
 
Well the single leader civs would obviously turn of slightly more often since having another leader from that civ already on the map means you can't get another from the same civ but it would be a too small difference to be noticable. Something that is noticable however is that it is way more likely to get english or russian than mali or aztec's on your map.
 
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