Why would you complain about that? Austria is awesome. It's when I draw Germany that I curse my luck.

You have 50 finished games - that *should* be 7 games as each country plus one extra. As I understand it the balance algorithm only looks at completed games, so for your latest games it would have seen something close to a balance, so no bias toward or away from any country, so it would just have rolled a D7 and given you Austria by dumb luck.

Was it 7 games as each country or is there a discrepancy? Have you played Austria less than the others in those 50 games? That would influence the selection algorithm towards Austria too.

I have 34 games with 9 Austria, 5 of the last 6 classic. Pretty bad, eh.

iirc, the algorithm only takes into account your finished games. So before you joined all these most recent games, there was probably a good probability that you would draw Austria. And since you joined all of these games in a short time period, your 5th active game as Austria does not take into account the 4 active games you are playing as Austria.

Someone correct me if I am wrong.

^ I hadn't known that, thats interesting.

I drew several games in a row as Italy a while back, playing Italy every once in a while is fun, but it gets really boring when you have a bunch of them going on. At least Austria is variant and action packed.

It could be wrong. But until someone says so, I'm standing by it ;)

You shouldn't have posted this d33...

No kidding.

The algorithm also takes into account the other players chances. If everyone else had an inordinate amount of Austria's, you become more likely to get it.

Stinks. Though what is your point mr. crispy. Im playing in over 10 games right now. I might not be Austria in the one with you...

Well conveniently the Austria in that game is also whining about being Austria. Coincidence? Probably not. Way to reveal yourself.

It is not me. :-) Though others may have the same problem.

I would happily get Austria every time. I like playing as Austria.

It can be fun at times. Good test of your diplomacy skills. But 5 times in a row! A bit much.

Okay everybody who is reading this and who has Austria start complaining about having it please. Let's drown out D33 :-)

"I have Austria in all but one of my current classic games, 5 out of 6"

"Though what is your point mr. crispy. Im playing in over 10 games right now."

Hmmm. Clearly one of these is not true Dip.

I can be in games that are not Classic. :P

I just said "games".

But those other games don't really apply at all to the conversation. So only the 6 matter and because of that, I agree that you should not have revealed who you are in those games.

I did not reveal who I was in those games. There is the one not. And all but one of those are anon where people don't even know I am in the game.

FYI: The odds are dealt with when the game begins, and at no other time. When the game begins your odds are used to randomly assign you a country, but whatever country you get your odds are halved for next time.

D33 your current odds are: 0.093 0.382 0.19 0.049 0.047 0.048 0.191 (EFIGART)
So you are least likely to be Austria next time (all else being equal), and most likely to be France, but you are almost as unlikely to be Russia or Germany as Austria

Your scenario could come about in various ways, but they all involve a portion of bad luck.
This is the one place where, for better or worse, luck is built into the game, and although we try to smooth things out a bit the randomness of country allocation is built into the rules, and that means people will be unlucky

That is good to know. Then I expect some French games soon. Kestas, I wish we could see the odds all the time on our profiles, or privately. Would be useful.

@Kestas - correct me if I'm worng, but wouldn't the odds of the other players in the game also affect the random outcome. For instance, D33 may be least likely to get Austria from the 7 nations, but if the other 6 are even less likely, his odds go back up on getting Austria. Correct?

Other players do affect the outcome Draugnar, but there's a subtle difference: It's not about this or that country, but about who needs to be rebalanced the most overall:


D33 has a 5% chance/score for Austria and 40% for France, but if someone else has a 90% for France they'll go first and probably get France, leaving Austria as a much more plausible possibility for D33.

(If they had a 90% for Turkey they'd still go first, but they'd likely get Turkey and it wouldn't affect D33's odds that much; it's only when two people are unbalanced *in the same way* that the system can't make a good choice)


Basically with the balancing system the priority goes to whoever has the most urgent need for rebalancing

@Diplomat: It might be a bit of a problem if people bought into low stakes games for their least favorite countries, then bought into high stakes games when their odds of getting their favorites was higher. Perhaps unlikely, but we put the system in just as a subtle correction for people who complained of getting the same country over and over, and I don't think that information would do any good overall

Thanks, Kestas. That makes understanding the way the system works even more clear. Much appreciated. I coudl have figured it out from the code, but don't have time at the moment to pour over the PHP behind the site. :-)

kestasjk: I feel like I may have asked this question many months ago, but joining games in progress doesn't affect these odds, does it?

And this is an extremely random question which I happened to just get: do PM's which are too old to view still exist? It would be nice to have access to them just like we have access to all our forum history.

@Kestas: I dont mind some sort of correction (even though flat probabilities over time should be enough on its own), but isnt it a bit flawed if only finished games are corrected for? it would give a lot of situations where players join several games at once, and thus have high odds for playing the same country multiple times at once - even if your system was intented to even out countries, it actually ends up clustering your games, which for most players is not positive.

@Per O. - Kestas said it happens the moment the selection is made, *not* at completion time. He posted that above.

Kestas said: "The odds are dealt with when the game begins, and at no other time. When the game begins your odds are used to randomly assign you a country, but whatever country you get your odds are halved for next time."

Nothing about that indicates the halving is done at completion, but in fact would lead one to believe the halving immediately upon assignment. Of course, if the game cancels, immediately, then the numbers are still halved...

I read Tom Bombadil's first post, and took it for the truth - I would like to have a confirmation on whats the correct interpretation though.