RNG getting stuck when using armies?

[morchuflex]

Hello.

Everything (including a lot of rubbish) seems to have been said about the RNG, but I want to add my 2 cents, because something strange just happened to me for the third time: the RNG getting stuck when I use an army.
Here's the problem: I attack with an army... and I sometimes get so bad luck that it seems almost impossible.
Most recent example:
A knight army attacks an enemy Ancient Cav on grassland; the enemy isn't fortified. That's a 6 attack (this is C3C, armies get an attack bonus) against a 2.2 defense.
And... I lose 7 HP in a row.
Probability is 0.0001%.
I'm not a warmonger and rarely use armies. Yet, in about 15 months of civing, this happened to me 3 times in maybe 100 battles involving armies. That's a lot of very unlikely bad luck, isn't it?

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Welcome to the random number generator.

It is normal. Eventually with enough attacks you win 7 HP in a row.

The RNG does not change for each unit.

 

[morchuflex]

I KNEW someone would say that...

 

[IbnSina]

Yeah, it -is- normal, and my former opinion on the subject is well-known. My new opinion is that it is an international conspiracy to remove entropy from computers and put it to use in the operation of governments around the world.

In a slightly more serious vein, it is a sad fact of uniformly distributed pRNGs that while the probability of getting e.g. 3 in a row in the next three rolls of a die is small, the probability of getting 3 in a row some time in the next ten rolls is -much- higher. The thing to do is mod your game so that the base hit points of all units are higher. That gives more rolls of the RNG for the central limit theorem to work its magic.

 

[morchuflex]

@IbnSina: the problem of modding the game as you suggest is that it makes battles even longer. Unbearable in the late game, unless you turn off animations, which is a shame.

 

[IbnSina]

Eh... it's not so bad - works for me. Battles are about 50% longer, but battles are only about 5-10% of the time required each turn (worker assignments and build instructions - now there are some time sinks), so it doesn't seem bad. Besides, now that I can plan properly for battles, that is the enjoyable part of the turn.

 

[Turner]

It does make the battles a bit longer, but like IbnSina said, it's not that bad. It does tend to level out the streakiness of the RNG.

Just be careful you don't add too many hps to the unit levels.

 

[morchuflex]

But what about experience gains? If I double base HPs, but promotions still only add 1, then becoming vet or elite is no longer as important as it was.

 

[Turner]

But look at it this way.

Let's say you set up the following hit points for a unit:

Conscript - 2
Regular - 3
Veteran - 5
Elite - 7

Is not a 7 hit point unit better, more valueable, than a 5 hit point unit? The promotions are just as important, because you increase the hit points across the board. Now if you were going to leave Elites at 5, then yes, it wouldn't be as important to increase the hit points. But only Elites will still create leaders.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

i would just double all of them

conscript 4
regular 6
veteran 8
elite 10


doesn't change anything in the game other than reducing the variation in rng results.

If you think that is too much i'd probably go for 3-4-6-8

 

[The Omega]

Only losing hp? You should consider yourself lucky. I lost a full modern army army to a rifleman, and another was redlined by a spearman.

 

[IbnSina]

Mine is conscript -3
regular - 5
veteran - 6
elite - 8
I like it. Remember to increase the damage from artillery units (but not bombers!) somewhat if you do this.

 

[Moonsinger]

Most recent example:
A knight army attacks an enemy Ancient Cav on grassland; the enemy isn't fortified. That's a 6 attack (this is C3C, armies get an attack bonus) against a 2.2 defense.
And... I lose 7 HP in a row.

I know the feeling...last night, I just lost two elite cavalries to a 1 HP archer sitting duck in the meadow. My artilleries did pretty good job on the archer and reduce it to 1 HP, but he somehow managed to take down two of my best cavalries in the row. My third elite cavalry almost died against that archer too; he barely won (lost 3 HP) and generated a great leader.

 

[morchuflex]

I know the feeling...last night, I just lost two elite cavalries to a 1 HP archer sitting duck in the meadow. My artilleries did pretty good job on the archer and reduce it to 1 HP, but he somehow managed to take down two of my best cavalries in the row. My third elite cavalry almost died against that archer too; he barely won (lost 3 HP) and generated a great leader.

Pretty impressive. That's some bad luck too! But eventually you were rewarded!