RobertLumley comments on LW September WebDiplomacy Games - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Vaniver 25 August 2011 09:03PM

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Comment author: gwern 25 August 2011 09:38:47PM 4 points [-]

I spotted the lie!

there is no randomness. Players control a great power chosen at random

Comment author: RobertLumley 25 August 2011 10:24:39PM 1 point [-]

This is also not technically true. Powers are chosen by an algorithm wherein you are less likely to get a country you have played more often than other countries.

Also, randomness is found in other ways, depending on how you look at it. One frequently must guess whether another power will defend supply center A or supply center B, and you have a 50% chance at bouncing or a 50% chance at taking the center.

Comment author: Vaniver 25 August 2011 11:09:18PM *  0 points [-]

Powers are chosen by an algorithm wherein you are less likely to get a country you have played more often than other countries.

I was unaware of this, and strongly approve! (When you play with the unmodified board game, there is no such algorithm, as I'm sure you know). It would suck to draw Austria or Italy time after time, especially since you wager score to play.

Comment author: RobertLumley 25 August 2011 11:10:36PM *  1 point [-]

Yeah, that's why the algorithm was implemented. It used to not be that way. But that algorithm helped the balance a lot, and makes the expected value level out very quickly as opposed to taking hundreds of games to do so.

Comment author: Prismattic 27 August 2011 02:55:04AM *  0 points [-]

Ah, but there are algorithms for assigning players when using the physical board game. Take a look at this 1998 article from The Diplomatic Pouch. Scroll down for methods of assigning powers using maximin, minimax, or other optimization based on players making ranked preference lists.

Edited for clarity to replace the word "actual" with "physical".

Comment author: Vaniver 27 August 2011 03:04:30PM 0 points [-]

Replace "actual" with "unmodified."

Comment author: gwern 25 August 2011 10:30:07PM 0 points [-]

This is also not technically true.

:) So either I found a lie by contradiction, or I found a lie by apparent contradiction one of whose conjuncts is the lie, is that what you're saying?

Comment author: RobertLumley 25 August 2011 10:33:29PM *  2 points [-]

Well yes. My point wasn't really about the truth value of what you said though, but just trying to be informative about the algorithm by which WebDiplomacy sorts countries/the game itself.