It is a statistical anomaly, as you presumably guessed. And actually, the probability of getting 1 country 4 times in your first 8 games is at 0.1245, which means that it happens to about 1 of every 8 players.

The next update to phpDiplomacy will implement country-balancing, though, so this kind of thing should be less common.

It's a statistic common happening.

in 70+ games ive only been assigned germany 4 times

There will be, I believe, in the next patch a system whereby the balance gets redressed, but in such a way as recent games are more significant. 10/37 of my completed games are with Russia, my worst nation by a long, long way, so I understand the frustration particularly well.

Russia sucks... No question there, especially if you are starting a game where some of the others owe you a kick or two.

Mind you, 7/8 with France or Turkey Dave H? You should be Number One soon.

It'll get trickier for the stats guys here to say "you had a 0.1245 chance" after the update I think

I don't want to think about calculating the probability of getting a country n times out of m consecutive games when the order of previous countries affects the chances
(Though it would be great to put a number on the effectiveness of the balancing algorithm, if a stats whiz is feeling bold: http://forum.phpdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?p=699#p699)

you should try playing poker - any card in the pack that could hurt you will be dealt - any card that could help you will stay hidden!

You're going pretty good considering you've only completed 4 games.

I'd be lucky to get over a 20% win rate...

> in 70+ games ive only been assigned germany 4 times

awwww

but ive done well with what i have been given....

as long as it starts on the west side of the board

i won 6/39 and survived 26/39 when starting with a western european nations(includes italy) but ive only won 1/34 and survived 13/34 when playing as eastern nations.

I don't like the idea of country balancing. I like the random factor.

It will still be random to an extent, but you won't have the anomalies. You probably wouldn't notice it without being told, because it will stop itself from reaching a near-certainty state.

I feel you on the Russia thing, ghost. My only outlier game was as Russia, and it was a disaster of rather epic proportions.

The balancing will never become a dominating factor don't worry. No matter how unbalanced your stats will be, you still won't just be given the nation you 'need'.
The issue comes because on the scales we're reaching a random model just isn't enough for statistical anomalies to balance out. This is just a factor in reducing the affect of this. The only slight issue may be in the very short term when it is applied, as players with noticably unbalanced counts will be unskewed as it were.