Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.

[chrispedersen]

I wrote up a long post that seems to have gotten eaten.
But events seem to occur in clusters in provinces, far more than chance would indicate.

For example, I have gotten the *temple made, and temple destroyed events* in the same province, in the same turn.
Same things with labs.

This means that the events follow sequentially from each other.
Ie., events are not rolled randomly on a table and then applied.. its event 1 apply, event 2 apply et.c

I personally think it goes like this:

1. Determine number of events.
2. Randomly choose province for event
3. Determine what events can happen (scales etc).
4. Check each possible event see if it happens.
5. Still have events remaining.. go to 2.

I say this because very randomly in old versions you could get more than 4 events in a province. Which if you had a province with a lot of potential luck events, they might have missed the programming loop to check that (ie., only check at step 5 instead of step 4.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

1. Determine number of events.
2. Randomly choose province for event
3. Determine what events can happen (scales etc).
4. Check each possible event see if it happens.
5. Still have events remaining.. go to 2.

1 is almost certainly wrong based on the data I have. If it predetermined the number of events, you'd be unlikely to see a binomial distribution (which you do see). (I mean, I suppose it could calculate the number of events based on a binomial distribution, but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing JK would have bothered to do. In fact, the only reason to do that is to fool people trying to figure out how events are generated.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

1 is almost certainly wrong based on the data I have. If it predetermined the number of events, you'd be unlikely to see a binomial distribution (which you do see). (I mean, I suppose it could calculate the number of events based on a binomial distribution, but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing JK would have bothered to do. In fact, the only reason to do that is to fool people trying to figure out how events are generated.

how is rolling four times (step one) not binomial?

[LDiCesare]

The issue with this:

1.Determine number of events.
2. Randomly choose province for event

is that it would take the order/turmoil probability factor out of the equation, or use that of one predetermined province like the capital.
To test it, we'd have to put a capital with +3 order and another province with +3 turmoil and see
- if events are evenly balanced between the provinces
- if the overall probability of events is that of an order 3 province or an order 0.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

how is rolling four times (step one) not binomial?

But why would you check that way if you're determining number of events all at once? It only makes sense to determine them independently if you're checking for the event after some other step 1. (Especially given what we know of JK's programming style)

In addition to the problem LDICaesare points out, your method also predicts that empire size has no effect on the number of events seen. I'm pretty sure this is wrong, but I haven't recorded data to test it specifically.