Introducing Country Weighting

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Expand view Topic review: Introducing Country Weighting

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by CAPT Brad » Wed Feb 21, 2018 5:53 am

I just don't want Europe anymore. I have had it with Europe.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by CAPT Brad » Wed Feb 21, 2018 5:49 am

I love France I will take France

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by President Eden » Tue Feb 20, 2018 6:36 am

Durga wrote:
Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:17 pm
Yeah, I'm sick of having 20 games as France when I fucking hate France.
leave me the France games in ur will bb

edit: fml late to the joke by 6 hours to bo

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by bo_sox48 » Tue Feb 20, 2018 2:30 am

I'll take your France games, Durga. Want my Russias in return?

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by grumbledook » Tue Feb 20, 2018 12:49 am

Yay! Thank you to all the developers for their hard work!

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by dargorygel » Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:47 pm

Thanks to the developers apparently random letters instead of names... (ATC, rcmcf) ok, that was funnier in my head than when I typed it.
Seriously, THANKS for the hard, detailed, tedious (?) work to make this site better.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by jmo1121109 » Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:36 pm

This conversation is absolutely absurd. Some points to consider:

1. This makes a decision based on everyone in the game. So even if you "game" the system, it still might not have any impact if the other people on the site are already unbalanced more then you. Which is very possible since we didn't have a valid weighting system in place before this.

2. Gaming the system like you said is harder and harder the more games you have played on the site since it considers your entire game history, and each new game you do will now be weighted to keep your overall game distro even, so you can't actually get enough games of one country to have a meaningful impact on the overall algorithm for this to be a concern.

3. Nobody is going to wait for you or any other idiot to join 50 games to attempt this before they do a high point game.

4. Before this change players who joined the site before 2013 or so could actually game the system far more easily then after this fix.

5. Everything Tom Bombadil said.

6. I'm sorry if I gave the impression in this thread that we were asking for opinions on this change. It was needed, we very much appreciate ALL development work that is done for the site, and this is not being rolled back.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Durga » Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:17 pm

Yeah, I'm sick of having 20 games as France when I fucking hate France.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Deeply_Dippy » Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:00 pm

Well said, sah!

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Tom Bombadil » Mon Feb 19, 2018 7:31 pm

I won't speak for everybody, but I don't really care if someone goes through that effort to try to get a "better" country in a big game.

For starters, people have different country preferences, which shows that no country is inherently better than others. So you may start 100 games to try to join a big game as France, while I do the same thing with the hopes for Austria.

Second, I, like most people I'm sure, play on this website for fun during my spare time. I'd much rather have a system that weights so avoid repetitive games as the same country over and over. Variety is fun.

I think its a great system. Much appreciated to rjmcf, ATC, jmo an others who helped fix this system.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Yonni » Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:58 pm

Nobody worth their salt is gaming the system like that and the effect it would have is minimal. Stop building strawmen.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Octavious » Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:57 pm

That would be a remarkable amount of effort for very little gain. Can we not assume that it won't happen on the basis that no one here is sad enough to actually do it?

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Condescension » Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:31 pm

You don't need to guarantee a country in order for it to be exploitable. You can just make it LESS LIKELY, even marginally, to pick a given country (Italy), which is clearly gaming the system. If a player were to play meaningless games until they drew Italy, then play an important one, they would be less likely to draw Italy. That's exploitation, and that's a factual consequence of this decision.

Just use the php random.org API and distribute the countries randomly. I don't think anybody in the world would claim that a random distribution is unfair.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by CommanderByron » Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:14 pm

At the risk of being wrong I think the thing that Claesar is saying is that you'd have to play a lot of games to affect the algorithm to the point where you could guarantee any ONE country. Even then you'd have to draw the country you are trying to avoid in a higher percentage of the "less important" games; which you also can't manipulate. So it's very hard almost impossible to game this system but if you put the effort in and can also predict what the algorithm will do with the other 6 players histories than by all means feel free to.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Mercy » Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:02 pm

I agree with Condescension.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Condescension » Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:44 pm

Claesar wrote:
Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:09 pm
Condescension wrote:
Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:15 pm
I disagree with this! Conceivably you could manipulate this by playing a lot of unimportant games until your favorite country gets skipped a few times, then joining a more important game. It should just be totally, independently random.
That doesn't really work the way you decribe it. There's a chance you could have a lower chance to draw a centre power if you're regularly starting 100+ games. But that strategy may also backfire, forcing you to start another 1000 games.

And even then, you could not get the country you want. If you think it's worth the effort, go for it.
Why do I need 100+ games? If this is the case, then it's not actually impactful, right? The only way this system would benefit players if it meaningfully decreased the odds of playing the same country multiple times in a row or close to each other, right? Does it do that or does it not do that?

If it doesn't do that, what does the system do? If it does do that, can't I wait until I get a game playing as Italy before starting an important game, decreasing the odds of drawing Italy?

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Claesar » Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:09 pm

Condescension wrote:
Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:15 pm
I disagree with this! Conceivably you could manipulate this by playing a lot of unimportant games until your favorite country gets skipped a few times, then joining a more important game. It should just be totally, independently random.
That doesn't really work the way you decribe it. There's a chance you could have a lower chance to draw a centre power if you're regularly starting 100+ games. But that strategy may also backfire, forcing you to start another 1000 games.

And even then, you could not get the country you want. If you think it's worth the effort, go for it.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Condescension » Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:15 pm

I disagree with this! Conceivably you could manipulate this by playing a lot of unimportant games until your favorite country gets skipped a few times, then joining a more important game. It should just be totally, independently random.

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Yonni » Mon Feb 19, 2018 2:55 pm

Fantastic, great work.

I assume your assignment history is agnostic to press type? (e.g. drawing Germany for a GB game also affects your chance of drawing Germany for a diplomacy game?)

Re: Introducing Country Weighting

by Claesar » Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:38 am

We regularly had forum posts complaining about country weighting, but that should be fixed now that we outsourced it to Hungary!
Thanks for the work, this one was very high on our list.

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