Something about me screams France Austria or Turkey. I like Austria, am ok with France and HATE Turkey.

I have also played in 8 games from the start (not counting games I've picked up CDs) and I have been Italy once (12.5%), Turkey three times (37.5%), and France four times (50%).

It is random right now. But when you have as many players as this site has, statistically there will be folks like you and me who get the same country half the time for the first 8 games.

In the next version of the software, which won't come out for awhile, they are updating it to add some weighting so you'll be less likely to get a country you've been recently, or so I've heard.

Caveat, it is as random as it can be.

I dislike the idea of country balancing. I like the idea that it is completely up to fate... and if I get Austria 5 times in a row, so be it.

When I first played diplomacy with my co-workers years ago we drew lots for the order that we would draw country names from a hat and we would each have one right of refusal. So if we drew a country we didn't like we could refuse it and take whatever our second draw was for better or worse. Still random but some mitigation for someone who draws the same country over and over.

i've had Germany 5 of my last 6-7 games I think... kinda funny.

I'd like something put in place like the judges have where you can prioritize your country choices so that You get your first choice if it isn't someone else first. Then second choices are compared, then thrid, etc.

oops third

8 games is a pretty small sample to be judging randomness. If I flip a coin 8 times and it comes up head 6, it doesn't mean it's weighted. If I flip it 800 and it comes up heads 600, OTOH...

I don't like the idea of weighting, although I understand the idea. I think random is the right way to go.

And yes, I know it's pseudorandom. It's random to any degree that you can imagine.

It is random, but won't be random in the next release

Sent from: Draugnar (50 ) Sent: 10:04 PM
I'd like something put in place like the judges have where you can prioritize your country choices so that You get your first choice if it isn't someone else first. Then second choices are compared, then thrid, etc.
thats a nice idea....

well i got one that is basically the opposite of everyone else. out of 40+ games i have had germany given to me once randomly and the other two were cd takeovers. though i still dont think it should try and balance the chances of you getting a country because i will end up Germany many times in a row and i really don't want that

This thread goes up every few weeks, it seems.

I always found it odd that in my first 15 or so games I had every power BUT Austria and France, and then games 16 and 17 I had both of them in a row.

Anyway, there've been a thousand explanations for why this happens. I don't remember any.

There will soon be a balancing mechanism, which is good imo, because we don't care whether its purely random, but whether its even and non-deterministic, which it will be.

Won't the balancing mechanism screw things up for the league/cup games? Surely there we want it to be purely random?

Not really- because it balances itself, you always get a pretty even chance. In fact this makes it less likely that you get 3 of your 4 League games all with the same power (like I did last season).

I just did the chi-square math, and it's impossible for him to be Austria half the time and still be random.

I just did the common sense, and it's possible for him to be Austria half the time and still be random.

@rlumley- the equations for randomness are not random, but the variables in the equation(atmospheric noise, number of people logged onto the site, number of letters on the forum etc etc...)are random. By the way, those things in parenthesis are just examples of what other sites use.

play roulette and see how often you actually have red in a long row it will amaze you probably
or poker, and see how often you loose with AA on HU, its all random
but random means it can be 7 times austria :(

let's petition against country balancing.

btw weighting sounds ok, it should still get the same results as random on a large sample size

I played 16 games, and just drew austria for the first time

diplomat, that is utterly absurd. Don't you expect some of the over 1500 people to have played 8 games to have had an unlikely event?

About 3000 have played 4 games.

The chance of getting the same country in the first four games is 1/7^3

So you'd expect 9 people to have had the same country 4 times in 4 games, never mind in 4 in 8.

Okay, I'm up to 4 Frances, 4 Turkeys, and 1 Italy now.

When I started as Friendly Sword I had Five Austria's and one England :P

It wasn't too torturous though. If you get a sane Italy it can be very rewarding to occupy the centre of the board.

@The Ghostmaker: What I was thinking is that if before the league games started you had played Austria a lot - say 3 in the previous 5 games, I don't know how many games the weighting will take into effect - then that makes it more unlikely that in the league I will be given Austria - an (often) weak country. This doesn't seem fair, although the effects might not be too strong depending on how much effect the weighting will have.

Personally I think all countries have strengths and weaknesses and picking a "strongest" and "weakest" country is difficult, but it just seems to me that league play oughtn't depend upon outside factors. As I said, it's not a massive issue unless the weighting is made a very strong factor, btu considering over time the distribution with both systems ought to tend to an even spread, is there much advantage to the weighting system anyway?

Perhaps it could be an "opt in" thing for each individual game. If this were the case it could be made stronger and then if you do get fed up of playing one country recently you can join a "weighted distribution" game to be almost guaranteed not to be given it. Is this a possibility? Not only would it allow the best of both worlds but it would allow the weighting to be stronger and therefore it would suit its purpose better.

Although I'm not certain which method was chosen, when discussing how to weight the decision, timescale was a factor (so old games don't have too greater effect) , and more importantly so was making sure it's non deterministic. Thus even if you'd played 1000 games and never been Austria, you still wouldn't be sure who you'd get next game

At the moment it is completely random which country each player will get, a player's chance of being each country is 1/7

In the next version a user's chance of being each country is stored. When they first start it's 1/7, but whenever they get a country their chance of being that country is halved. Then the chances are all readjusted so they all add up to 1

I realize this has been a very common subject here in the forum.
Even thought this situations can happen I share the same opinion as DingleberryJones. If my fate/luck tells that I have to take Austria 4, 5, 6 or 7 times I will take it.

In this game it is the only moment where the luck factor is present. It was created that way and I think it is the way it should stay, because all the games are independent, so whenever you start a new one it should all go to zero, even the probabilities of getting one of the seven greatpowers.

Quite possibly, but there are also a number of reasons why it should be balanced and I think a slight weighting would be a good idea.
Have to admit I'm not sure that the system being implemented will be even enough, but lets give it a try first!

@Troodonte - That factor of luck was never part of the original game. Although depedning on how you chose who would play what, I guess there could have been an element of luck. Nothing I see at a glance in the rules lists anything about determining who will be which Great Power.

I'm still fond of the way the Judges work by allowing you to list your order of preference and using all the players lists to determine who gets what with randomness coming into play only at the end if all things are tied. It also allows for controlled starts by assigning Powers to players and then those players submitting their game join request with those Powers as their first choice.

I'm hoping that can be added in the future, but it would be quite a step onwards.
Fitting the current system to what humans perceive as random is far more useful in my opinion because, whilst obviously people shouldn't know who they are, the powers should be evenly spread.