50% chance my A**

[alahorn]

A question for the stat majors in the room. If it says you have a 50% chance at something. But you fail but then I reload the game and fail again and again for 12 straight times. Is it still a 50-50 chance or is paradox F'n with me?

[Aurumworks]

It's a "We rolled the dice before we needed them and no amount of reloading will change those results" situation.

[Balekai]

It may be the latter in that this game uses game seeds (anti save scumming) in many mechanics. So simply reloading doing the same thing over and over the same way will never work in many cases. Some good results can be lost forever on loading a game, because the saved game itself changed the seed locking you out of that good result on reload (sometimes it's reversed and on reload you do get a good result, but its basically locked thereon out the same way). Now I'm not sure if that applies to AoW4 those last two points about reloading. Haven't tested that.

In order to get around that you have to go back a few more saves or actions and do things in different orders to produce a different seed. In the case of a battle if you're getting a miss every time (not sure if there's seeds in batles), you would likely have to attack with a different unit in different orders. That should be enough to get a different result. If not restart from battle turn one or the battle entirely.

Edit: For example, I know from 2-3 nights ago I changed the result of an auto battle I kept losing 1 unit on load, by loading the save and doing another auto battle first, then the one I had issues with. That time I got the result I wanted with no units lost. Saved.

I went back to the save before the newest one, did things the old way where I would lose 1 unit. Lost the unit again. Likely seeded. :p

[Aurumworks]

To rephrase our favorite Vorlon: "The dice are already rolled, it's too late for the player to reload."

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Aurumworks:

To rephrase our favorite Vorlon: "The dice are already rolled, it's too late for the player to reload."

What is this? A Babylon 5 quote? Dudes in the suits?! :D :D

[Razamanaz]

If you flip a coin 1 million times, each time you flip there is a 50% chance for a head or a tail, regardless of prior flips. That doesn't change, however, over such a large sampling you should end up with somewhere near a 50/50 split. If you looked at the actual data you would see large runs of heads and large runs of tails. Odds are a fickle thing.

[Sirius]

Originally posted by Razamanaz:

If you flip a coin 1 million times, each time you flip there is a 50% chance for a head or a tail, regardless of prior flips. That doesn't change, however, over such a large sampling you should end up with somewhere near a 50/50 split. If you looked at the actual data you would see large runs of heads and large runs of tails. Odds are a fickle thing.

This.

[Supay]

Originally posted by alahorn:

A question for the stat majors in the room. If it says you have a 50% chance at something. But you fail but then I reload the game and fail again and again for 12 straight times. Is it still a 50-50 chance or is paradox F'n with me?

Random is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and its ugly in most games. 50% + developers idea of random equals to pain sometimes. You are also going to have those folks who are like getting 100% and they will talk down to you as well sometimes making you feel even worst about your bad luck streak.

Fun fact is random in video games isn't true random and most are crap.

[Midas]

Originally posted by alahorn:

A question for the stat majors in the room. If it says you have a 50% chance at something. But you fail but then I reload the game and fail again and again for 12 straight times. Is it still a 50-50 chance or is paradox F'n with me?

It's seeded. That's pretty common for modern games with RNG. You have to change what you are randomizing in order to get different results. It prevents save-scumming.

[Pantagruel]

It's generally not very hard to force the seed to change, but simple reloading won't do it.

[Razamanaz]

Originally posted by Midas:

Originally posted by alahorn:

A question for the stat majors in the room. If it says you have a 50% chance at something. But you fail but then I reload the game and fail again and again for 12 straight times. Is it still a 50-50 chance or is paradox F'n with me?

It's seeded. That's pretty common for modern games with RNG. You have to change what you are randomizing in order to get different results. It prevents save-scumming.

It's my understanding, from a developer, that it is seeded for troubleshooting purposes rather than to stop save scumming. They go on to explain how you need to do some other action that needs randomized before trying again.

[Pantagruel]

Originally posted by Razamanaz:

It's my understanding, from a developer, that it is seeded for troubleshooting purposes rather than to stop save scumming. They go on to explain how you need to do some other action that needs randomized before trying again.

I suspect that's being a bit disingenuous. While it does mean that you can take someone's save file, replicate their actions, and replicate their bug, there's no way they aren't aware of its effects on save scumming.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Razamanaz:

Originally posted by Midas:

It's seeded. That's pretty common for modern games with RNG. You have to change what you are randomizing in order to get different results. It prevents save-scumming.

It's my understanding, from a developer, that it is seeded for troubleshooting purposes rather than to stop save scumming. They go on to explain how you need to do some other action that needs randomized before trying again.

That could be a reason too. It would definitely help with debugging. As for which is the main reason and which is just a perk, who knows?

[Azunai]

Originally posted by Pantagruel:

Originally posted by Razamanaz:

It's my understanding, from a developer, that it is seeded for troubleshooting purposes rather than to stop save scumming. They go on to explain how you need to do some other action that needs randomized before trying again.

I suspect that's being a bit disingenuous. While it does mean that you can take someone's save file, replicate their actions, and replicate their bug, there's no way they aren't aware of its effects on save scumming.

I call BS. The game not only allows you to redo battles, there's even a button in the UI to do it - you don't even have to manually save and reload like in previous games. And there's another button on the world map to manually replay battles when you don't like the result of the auto batle.

The devs clearly have no hidden anti cheat agenda.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by Azunai:

Originally posted by Pantagruel:

I suspect that's being a bit disingenuous. While it does mean that you can take someone's save file, replicate their actions, and replicate their bug, there's no way they aren't aware of its effects on save scumming.

I call BS. The game not only allows you to redo battles, there's even a button in the UI to do it - you don't even have to manually save and reload like in previous games. And there's another button on the world map to manually replay battles when you don't like the result of the auto batle.

The devs clearly have no hidden anti cheat agenda.

They probably are aware of the effects, but they dont care about us savescumming.


Though, to explain the seed a bit further, it only saves the next X rolls. So if you happen to use all up inbetween the failed Action and loading, you can get a different result.

Noticed that when watching ai battles and reloading. First battle Was identical, second between ai had a vastly different outcome where the other side won.

[PhilipWiseman]

I dont believe in random chance in this game, players are complaining that AI is cheating, In my case AI is always stronger than me. they recover army much faster than me, when you are attacking cities they overwhelm you with army, dunno how is that possible,
when I try to defend my city i need like 5+ turns only to return back to the attacked city lol
but its ok, I like game so whatever