Lou Wigman Posted December 13, 2002 Share Posted December 13, 2002 We have played about 12 games head to head, mostly 1.05 but the last one 1.06. My level of frustration has reached boiling point and I have to stop playing this game before I damage my computer. For some reason research in TCP/IP is much slower than in single player. Indeed as the Axis player I can go an entire game and get only 1 or 2 advances. The Allies are usually not much better off. Our 1.06 game was the straw that broke the camels back. As the Axis player by mid 1942 I had gained just 1 advance. Nothing unusual here since that seems to be the lot of the Axis in TCP/IP. What really got up my craw was that the Allies had 8 advances in the same time. So tell me. If there is a 5% chance of getting a an advance and you have 5 level 1 research chits then simple mathematics says that you can expect an advance every 4 turns or so. Clearly this is not the case. I am fuming, thats how frustrated I feel. Research is just simply broken and destroys any game balance that might exist. I would suggest that the longer an item is researched, the greater should be the chance of getting it. So if after, say, 5 turns, no advance has been gained then the probability should rise from 5% to 10% (or whatever) so that EVENTUALLY you will actually get an advance. Something which I seem destined never to achieve. Until something is done about this I cannot see me playing this game any more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Rock Posted December 13, 2002 Share Posted December 13, 2002 Originally posted by Lou Wigman: So tell me. If there is a 5% chance of getting a an advance and you have 5 level 1 research chits then simple mathematics says that you can expect an advance every 4 turns or so. Clearly this is not the case. While I understand your frustration, your maths are out. Look at it like this: a 25% chance of breakthrough is a 75% chance of no breakthrough. The chance of getting no breakthroughs after two turns is 75% (odd for failing turn 1) x 75% (odds for failing turn 2) = 56.3% chance of no breakthroughs. After three turns it's 75% x 75% x 75% = 42.2% (rounded). After four turns it's 31.6% of no breakthroughs. QED by turn 4 the chance of at least one breakthrough is 100%-31.6% = 68.4%, or about two out of three. Not bad, but not 100%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon_j_rambo Posted December 13, 2002 Share Posted December 13, 2002 My worst "got screwed" tech luck was a game on patch 1.05. I spent every dime on IT for the Brits. I sold the bomber, didn't help France, & had 5-chits on IT. I didn't get jack-crap in a year & half. Oh well, the dude I was playing didn't have a clue & got stuffed inside the Russian border. Rambo >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Forever Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewT Posted December 13, 2002 Share Posted December 13, 2002 Actually his maths isn't out. Given a 25% chance of an advance every turn he can expect one every 4 turns, on average. Certainly it is not guaranteed exactly every fourth turn, as you correctly point out, but if a 1/4 chance means anything it is that it happens 1 time in 4 overall! It is not unreasonable to suspect a problem in remote play that doesn't happen in solo play, things can get out of sync between machines very easily. I wonder if if your worst example there the Allied player was the host? If this hypothesis is correct it would happen to the client player but not the host. I also agree that it makes sense for the chance to increment if nothing happens in a given turn; say just add a percentage - perhaps quite small, 1 or 2 % points - to all chances for every turn when nothing at all happens for a given player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Friedrich_der_2 Posted December 13, 2002 Share Posted December 13, 2002 With patch 1.06 installed research is complete worthless. I spend a lots of MPPs and get one or two advances in three years. So in my last game as axis I spend all my MPPs for armies and I defeated England in winter 1941. The game balance for researching is lost. Perhaps research now is realistic (I would disagree in this point too) but it is worthless. You do not get any advances. :mad: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otto Posted December 13, 2002 Share Posted December 13, 2002 Anyone who has played Axis & Allies or another similar game based on certain probabilities. (dice or otherwise), know how frustrating these "expected" probablilities can be. Simply put, the odds of you getting exactly what the probability states is minimal. Even if you flipped a coin 1,000 times, the chances of you getting 500 heads and 500 tails are very low. What this 50/50 probability means is that the results from all the millions of coin flips in the world will average somewhere near half and half. It does not mean that every time I flip a coin twice, once will be heads and once will be tails. A 25% chance at a tech advance does NOT mean one advance every 4 turns. It means that over the course of hundreds of turns the average of all the tech advance will hover somewhere around 1 in 4. Think about it: the fact that you get an advance one round does not in any way affect the chance of getting one next round, the chances are the same. Even if I flipped a coin 10 times and got 10 heads in a row, the odds of me getting heads on the next flip is again 50/50. There is no magic SC code that ensures each games' tech advances comply with the alloted percentage of that game. I know I'm covering well trodden ground here, but I just wanted to perform an exercise in my own insanity. While I'm not positive, with the 1.06 patch, I'm pretty sure tech advances do increase with each turn you fail to get an advance. I think we might need some clarification on this. I also agree that there should be some increase in probablility each turn, but it really doesn't bother me too much. As long as the chances are equal for each side, I'm not too concerned with tech, and in my experience, I have found the tech to be balanced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otto Posted December 13, 2002 Share Posted December 13, 2002 **double post** (delete me) [ December 13, 2002, 03:20 AM: Message edited by: Otto ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RicKhan Posted December 13, 2002 Share Posted December 13, 2002 Playing TCPIP I asked my opponent what his tech was looking like, so we could compare. It is Aug 44 he is the allies. UK Tech 4 Industrial, armor. Tech 3 Fighters Tech 2 Anti-tank USA Tech 4 Industrial, Long Range Tech 3 Fighters, Armor, Anti-tank USSR Tech 2 Fighters, Anti-Tank Germans Level 4 Fighters, armor, Long Range and Industrial Level 2 Anti-Tank Level 1 Anti-Aircraft Italy Level 3 Fighters, Anti Tank, Industrial tech I do not know the details of Allied tech but this was mine. Axis sci breakdown, Germany Antitank 2 Tanks 2 Longrange 1 Anti Aircraft 1 Fighters 2 Industrial 2 Italy Anti-tank 2 Fighters 2 Industrial 2 There were times of drought but over all during the game we were close. At one point UK had tech 3 Fighters while Italy and Germany had tech 1. Most of the time 1 tech level difference prevailed. For information purposes, my machine hosted and game was played for 3 sessions. 1 Retrival error caused Germans to lose a tech level in Anti-Tank, When reloaded with autosave. Remember without bad luck some of us would have none. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts