Random Magic Paths - is it truly random?

[Bummer_Duck]

Hi!

So...I'm in my first real game. I have played a bunch of test beds, and sims to get familiar with the combat system, and what to research when. I have been concentrating on Vanheim for now, and I have noticed that the random magic picks don't seem to be that random. Each game is different, though. In one testbed/game, I may be flush with earth3, blood1 and earth3, Death1 Drawfs, and never get Fire or Astral. In the next game, I don't get any Blood or Death, but get earth3, air1 and earth4. I'm talking about a fairly good sample, of 14+ dwarf mages. While it isn't a huge sample, IMO it shows a pattern of non randomness.

Above and beyond this, the Sages that I recruit seem to follow the same sort of nonrandom distribution that the Dwarfs share per game. Is this a known bug? or is it just me. :-)

[Chazar]

There are three types of random picks: Elemental, Sorcery, and totally random. Otherwise chances should be equal.

[Alneyan]

Random paths are as random as they came, at least in the examples you give. Only the following characteristics can alter the distribution of random paths:

- Some units have Sorcery (Nature, Astral, Death, Blood) randoms, others have Elemental randoms, while most randoms are full randoms. A few units have both randoms (the Celestial Master among them, if memory serves).
- A few units do not have two randoms, but instead a random +2 level in the same path. This random could also be Sorcery, Elemental or a full random. Atlantis has a mage with this pattern: 3 water, and 2 randoms in the same path.
- Murphy's Law, obviously. If you need a fire random badly, you will never get that random. Ever. Your neighbours, of course, will have their hands full of Garnet Amazons, sages with a pick in fire, and things of the like. Should you attempt to "convert" their mages, you will end up taking their non-fire mages away.

[The_Tauren13]

Well, it is an obvious fact that over half of all PC games have poor random number generators. I'm sure this is just another example of that.

[alexti]

The_Tauren13 said:
Well, it is an obvious fact that over half of all PC games have poor random number generators. I'm sure this is just another example of that.

I assume that you talk about pseudo-random number generators (because all software RNG are totally deterministic), But then that is some statement. Obvious why and to whom? Over half - where this number comes from? poor - how do you define "poor"?

To find a fault in most current pseudo-RNG (usually they have one fault or another) one needs to do quite a bit of research, which doesn't look possible by observing game's behaviour, because it would take too much time to collect meaningful statistics.

[The_Tauren13]

alexti said:
To find a fault in most current pseudo-RNG (usually they have one fault or another) one needs to do quite a bit of research, which doesn't look possible by observing game's behaviour, because it would take too much time to collect meaningful statistics.

Oh I quite disagree; it doesn't take long to realize. Examples of incredibly poor games: Disciples II: The hit percentages never worked well. Most notably paralyziation; you would frequently hit 10 in a row, and then miss 10 in a row. Warlords IV: A low combat creature is fighting a high combat creature and the weaker hits, nearly every time the high combat creature would then miss his next attack. Odd behavior like that is hard to miss.
The use of the term pseudo-random is pointless; there is no randomness in our universe. None. It is similar to when people argue that everything humans do is also natural because we are natural; the term becomes meaningless by its own definition.

By 'poor' I simply mean they simulate statistical results with less accuracy than one would expect. Perhaps I should say: 'less accuracy than I would expect', since you seem to be argumentative. Perhaps that was not meant as a flame against my intelligence, but it sure sounded like it.

[quantum_mechani]

The_Tauren13 said:


there is no randomness in our universe. None.

Er, so you are saying quantum mechanical probabilities are pre-determined?

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
The use of the term pseudo-random is pointless; there is no randomness in our universe. None.

Here. Take this atom of U-238. Please tell me exactly when it will decay.

[alexti]

The_Tauren13 said:

Oh I quite disagree; it doesn't take long to realize. Examples of incredibly poor games: Disciples II: The hit percentages never worked well. Most notably paralyziation; you would frequently hit 10 in a row, and then miss 10 in a row. Warlords IV: A low combat creature is fighting a high combat creature and the weaker hits, nearly every time the high combat creature would then miss his next attack. Odd behavior like that is hard to miss.

I'm not familiar with those games, but generall I doubt that you can distinguish RNG problem from the bug in the code. For example, Dom2 had a bug with mind duel, where it was OE D6 instead of simple D6. By monitoring statistics you could have thought that the problem is in RNG.

The_Tauren13 said:
The use of the term pseudo-random is pointless; there is no randomness in our universe. None. It is similar to when people argue that everything humans do is also natural because we are natural; the term becomes meaningless by its own definition.

By 'poor' I simply mean they simulate statistical results with less accuracy than one would expect. Perhaps I should say: 'less accuracy than I would expect', since you seem to be argumentative.

RNG are not designed to simulate statistical results. They're simulating stochastic processes. Statistics are result of observation of the stochastic process. Any statistics resulting from the observation of stochastic process is a stochastic process itself. That's what make it hard to make reliable conclusions about stochastic process from the statistics.

Consider the original post with those dwarven smiths. Assuming that randoms are uniformly distributed, probability that 2 particular paths won't appear in a sequence of 14 smiths is (6/8)^14 = 0.0178. There 7+6+...+1 = 28 different pairs of 2 paths. So probability of not getting some 2 paths in a sequence of 14 smiths is 0.0178*28=0.4989. Just about like flipping that famous two-sided coin. So the examples that the poster has shown falls well within expected results. So after doing these calculations, original example looks like: "I've flipped coin and got tails 4 times in a row. Is it a buggy coin or am I missing something?" Now consider that there're few hundreds people playing Dominions here (some of them are quite familiar with probability theory, so we exclude them from this consideration) who do our "flips". It is very probable that few of them will get quite a few tails in a row. So one of them has posted his question (remember that in the actual case it is not immediately obvious that the probability of that outcome is 50%)

The_Tauren13 said:
Perhaps that was not meant as a flame against my intelligence, but it sure sounded like it.

It was meant to question your knowledge of probability theory. You've jumped on Bummer_Duck hyphotesis/question claiming absolute knowledge (please reread your post) without any kind of backing. On top of that after closer examination Bummer_Duck's example is likely to be observed with ideal RNG. Of course, that doesn't prove that there's no problems with RNG, but this test, it passes very well.

Btw, I've noticed that you were not losing time meanwhile and have expanded your knowledge from over a half of PC games to the whole universe

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
Well, it is an obvious fact that over half of all PC games have poor random number generators.

It's also an obvious fact that 76.45% of all statistics are made up on the spot.