Random Magic Paths - is it truly random?

[alexti]

Bummer_Duck said:
However, I find it strange that in each game I tested, the majority of the dwarves random picks are in 2 paths. I have testbeded at least 8 games, and have *never* gotten representation of all magic paths in 1 game. I find this, in and of itself, questionable. Perhaps I just don't understand RNG?

How many smiths (or any mages with randoms you had)? For example, probability that you'll get every random path in a sequence of 8 smiths is 7/8*6/8*...*1/8 = 7!/8^7 = 5040/2097152=0.0024 - not that likely to happen, isn't it? With more smiths the chances obviously grow, so the question is how many of them you had.

[The_Tauren13]

alexti said:
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.

Whether or not the bug is in the code of the implementation of the random number algorithm used or that algorithm itself, it still comes to the same effect: the randomess for that game is bugged.

alexti said:
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.

You are determined to think me the fool, simply by my choice of wording, when your English is not so perfect either. Lets just say, for it to not be 'poor', in my eyes, I should be able to observe the results of the RNG and accumilate reasonable statistical results.

alexti said:
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

Perhaps your Dom II experience differs greatly from mine, but I have noticed many examples of random magic paths following odd distributions. Allow me to look at my current games: King of the Hill: 32 sages, no astral. So... (5/6)^32 ≈ .00293, .00293 * 6 magic paths ≈ .0176 = 1.76%... quite a low probablitity. Now we are looking at nearly 6 tails in a row, which is of course still believable... Unfortunately I am now forced to finish this message on another computer, so when I get home I can look at Borrowed Time as well and see the distribution of my Sauromancers' paths. If that isn't enough data for you, I could run a test game and recruit a hundred random mages... Hell, you could run a test game if youre not too busy. If I come up with more reasonable results, I may concede the point that Dominions II is not another example of a poor RNG. But it would take much more for me to concede my other examples... but those games aren't half as good as Dom II, so who cares . If you give me your email I could send you my turn files and you can check my mage counting...

alexti said:
Of course, that doesn't prove that there's no problems with RNG, but this test, it passes very well.

Perhaps, which is why I am attempting to further testing. But I dont have Dominions II installed here so you will have to wait.

alexti said:
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

Indeed. If you dispute my deterministic view of the universe and my claim that everything in the universe comes down to gravitational, nuclear, electromagnetic, etc. (which are not random) forces acting on atomic particles, go ahead, and we can argue that as well . And while the subject may be considered philosophical, please don't bring religion into it... I'm a hardcore atheist. And thanks for adding the smiley this time so I know you're not just trying to be insulting.

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
Perhaps your Dom II experience differs greatly from mine, but I have noticed many examples of random magic paths following odd distributions. Allow me to look at my current games: King of the Hill: 32 sages, no astral. So... (5/6)^32 ≈ .00293, .00293 * 6 magic paths ≈ .0176 = 1.76%... quite a low probablitity.

And hardly outside of the realm of possibility either.

Indeed. If you dispute my deterministic view of the universe and my claim that everything in the universe comes down to gravitational, nuclear, electromagnetic, etc. (which are not random) forces acting on atomic particles, go ahead, and we can argue that as well .

So you are telling me that the moment when a particular atom of a radioactive element will decay can be determined before it decays? Because that's what you're claiming when you claim a deterministic universe. Of course people dispute your claim, because it's known to be false.

[Yvelina]

Here is some data for you number crunchers:

First game (three types of mages with randoms)

A: 0,3,0 - 3
E: 2,6,2 - 10
W: 2,8,0 - 10
F: 2,6,0 - 8
D: 1,1,0 - 2
S: 0,3,0 - 3
N: 1,4,0 - 5
B: 2,3,2 - 7

Looks pretty random to me.

Second game: (three types of mages with randoms)
A: 0,0,1 - 1
E: 2,3,8 - 13
W: 1,6,2 - 9
F: 2,3,2 - 7
D: 2,2,2 - 6
S: 4,4,2 - 10
N: 4,0,1 - 5
B: 2,3,2 - 7

A bit light on air... and frankly, I had not noticed, because I am Vanheim in both games (the mage types are smith, vanadrott and sage, of course)

Speaking of things I just realized, I guess I am hurting for cash in the first game

[The Panther]

Graeme Dice said:
So you are telling me that the moment when a particular atom of a radioactive element will decay can be determined before it decays? Because that's what you're claiming when you claim a deterministic universe. Of course people dispute your claim, because it's known to be false.

You should at least be accurate here. The correct wording of your last sentence ought to be "Of course some people dispute your claim, because many believe it to be false."

Just because some scientists believe that radioactive decay is totally random does not make it so. I work at a nuclear weapons research facility in the field of radiation detection, and I can assure you that this question is far from settled.

In fact, I personally believe that if the means to observe a single nucleus WITHOUT interference were to ever be developed, one would likely be able to predict when a particular radioactive atom is about to decay. But Heisenberg has a theorum which makes this a very difficult thing to achieve, even in a Gedanken experiment.

Be very careful with making sweeping judgements about the universe. It will likely bite you in the end.



On the subject of random paths for your mages, I used to think it seemed biased towards elemental over sorcery. I still do, but less severe than I used to think.

I also think that my opinion of seeing bias in my mages can perhaps be traced to such things as in my current Atlantis game, where I was REALLY wanting an earth King of the Deep, and had none after about 30 mages had been recruited. I then used my first earth mage to chain summon troll kings and now I have all the earth commanders I need.

Of course, I have since bought several Kings of the Deep with earth skill at a significantly higher rate now that it is less important to me. This may just be yet another emample of Murphy's Law!

[The Panther]

All right, I just went back in this thread and added up the four cases where people posted details with a decently high total to give us some meaningful statistics. On the conjecture of a bias of elemental over sorcery, here are the totals of elemental vs. sorcery picks.

Yvelina Game 1 : 31-17
Yvelina Game 2 : 30-28
Alexti Trial 1 : 51-45
Alexti Trial 2 : 48-48
Elemental seems favored in this to the first level.

This matches many of my own earlier trials on this subject. In fact, I can't seem to rcall of a decent-sized trial where the total sorcery randoms exceeded the total elemental randoms. The Alexti Trial 2 above is the first one I have seen where they were even equal.

Random or bias? I have no idea at this point, for one can argue either way based on the sparse data.

Later today, I will add up my Atlantis King totals and post that. I know I have not lost one as yet, so it will be a fair total. However, the game is early enough that I do not have as many Kings as any of the above four cases.

[Alneyan]

Another sample if you want, rather small, but I should be able to increase the number of these mages if my neighbours leave me in peace (those are my sages in the Yarnspinners game):

Air and Blood: 4
Astral and Fire: 5
Death and Nature: 7
Water: 9
Earth: 10
Total: 51 sages, 28 in Elemancy and 23 in Sorcery.

[johan osterman]

Duck: The random generated paths use the same function for all units with randoms odf the same kind. So if a unit has any random paths it will not have more or less of a problem than any other unit using the same allocation of randoms.

Panther: All randomly generated numbers in the game are derived from a large set of pregenerated numbers. These numbers are cycled through. While it is possible that there might be a very slight weight in the numbers towards the lower or higher range of a die, it is not a weight that should be readily perceptible.

Edit: I reread my post and realised it wasn't very clear what the point of my response to panther was, so here comes the explanation. A weight of the numbers to the lower or higher half of the distribution would be by far the likeliest cause for a predomince of either elemental or sorcery. If this was the case it would also mean that all other 'random die rolls' in the game would show similar tendencies, ie the bottom half of the distribution would show up more htan the tophalf, obviously most of those 'rolls' are not quite as readily accessible to the player though.

[Alneyan]

Another test, with Spectres this time (there are 97 of them). Here are the results:
Fire:22
Air:22
Water:25
Earth:28
Astral:22
Death:31
Nature:17
Blood:27

It gives 97 elemental picks against 97 sorcery picks. Hmm, I guess I will run another time to try to get more Sorcery than elemancy.

*Grumbles* 110 for elemental picks, 86 for sorcery. The elements win once more.

[alexti]

The_Tauren13 said:
You are determined to think me the fool, simply by my choice of wording, when your English is not so perfect either. Lets just say, for it to not be 'poor', in my eyes, I should be able to observe the results of the RNG and accumilate reasonable statistical results.

I don't claim the perfect knowledge of English, it's not even my native language, but I don't see any other possible meaning of your over half of all PC games have poor random number generators, but to think that you have either found somewhere a research that studied in details RNG in more than a half of PC games or you've conducted such a study yourself. Considering amount of time and effort required to perform such a task I find it hard to believe that your statement was based on facts and not on a wrong expectations from RNG. Another doubt comes, because RNG for uniformly distributed numbers is included in CRT and most games are likely to use it. Those RNG are not perfect, but you won't find their faults without collecting massive amounts of data.

The_Tauren13 said:

Perhaps your Dom II experience differs greatly from mine, but I have noticed many examples of random magic paths following odd distributions. Allow me to look at my current games: King of the Hill: 32 sages, no astral. So... (5/6)^32 ≈ .00293, .00293 * 6 magic paths ≈ .0176 = 1.76%... quite a low probablitity. Now we are looking at nearly 6 tails in a row, which is of course still believable...

Now, am I missing something? Sages have complete random, right? So the probability of never getting one particular path in sequence of 32 sages is (7/8)^32=0.014 and the probability of never getting unspecified path in sequence of 32 sages is 0.11 - 11%. (That is 10.8% rounded to 11, not 0.014*8, because possibility of 2 missing paths needs to be taken into account). I assume that you would have made a similar observation if your 32 sages were missing some other path. So the probability of making your observation is any particular game is 11% (it's close to the probability of getting 3 tails in a row).

The_Tauren13 said:
Unfortunately I am now forced to finish this message on another computer, so when I get home I can look at Borrowed Time as well and see the distribution of my Sauromancers' paths. If that isn't enough data for you, I could run a test game and recruit a hundred random mages... Hell, you could run a test game if youre not too busy. If I come up with more reasonable results,

That again goes back to my question of your usage of "poor". What do you expect as "reasonable results"? Any particular result that you'll get has quite low probability of happening. However, when you play the game, some result *has* to happened. There isn't any "highly probable" result. RNG would start looking suspicious if you were repeatedly getting the same lowly probable results. (For example, missing astral in 32 sages in every game you've played).

The_Tauren13 said:
I may concede the point that Dominions II is not another example of a poor RNG. But it would take much more for me to concede my other examples... but those games aren't half as good as Dom II, so who cares . If you give me your email I could send you my turn files and you can check my mage counting...

I don't doubt your counting and I don't suspect your data, I just questioning the conclusion you make from those observations...

The_Tauren13 said:

Perhaps, which is why I am attempting to further testing. But I dont have Dominions II installed here so you will have to wait.

This is well intended effort, but you need to understand what you're looking for. Let's say you look into some saved game and do the count. You can find some "unique feature" there (like 32 sages without astral). By itself, that doesn't indicate anything (because some result had to happen). However, if you can find the same "unique feature" in many other games, that will start to look suspicious. So I suggest you to list "unique features" you want to consider, then I will look for the same features in my games (I have few dozen of saved games I can check).

The_Tauren13 said:

Indeed. If you dispute my deterministic view of the universe and my claim that everything in the universe comes down to gravitational, nuclear, electromagnetic, etc. (which are not random) forces acting on atomic particles, go ahead, and we can argue that as well .

No... I'm disputing your ability to know every aspect of the universe To my knowledge deterministic/stochastic nature [of nearly anything] have not been established by the science and I haven't heard about anybody getting anywhere closer to understanding of those things. It is not even clear what kind of methods one can use to reliable establish deterministic/stochastic nature of something.