This really needs to be in the FAQ.

Am I missing something? Oh Great ATC, please share your infinite knowlesge with me

"At this point, my country drawnig should be fair equal, right? "

No, that's not how that works.

However, there is a slight (slight!) weighting designed to even out the country draw. It works by rolling the most unbalanced player first, so if you're playing with people who've had a run of one country over another, then they'll get their country drawn first.

I haven't worked through it yet, but I suspect that this might make things worse.

"...after this one game got canceled...."

The country weighter remembers what countries you've started games as. So if you get shuffled, CD or have a game cancelled, that country still counts.

Thanks! A +1 for your time

Also, your stats look fairly balanced to me. A slight underrepresentation of Austria, but other than that well within the expectation of statistics.

Funny story. I think the country balancer has been broken for everyone with a userID higher than 54227, or since July 2013.

It looks like everyone who registered after July 7th 2013 has had random country selections.

misrepresentation of Austria by 3 standard deviations.

The point is more that we don't actually expect your country stats to even out over time given random selections.

^lol disregard that, miscalculation. It's late but it is misrepresented by a lot. I guess with the added canceled game it's not as bad.

Also true. Just wanted to get a good picture of how the drawing process works and why that might be. Thanks again.

I expressed that badly. The law of large numbers suggests that yes, over a sufficiently large number of games, you'd expect reasonably proportionately even country statistics.

However, I don't expect that you'll play a sufficiently large number of games on webDiplomacy. I think the number of games required is more in the 1000s than in the 100s.

Probability isn't really my area though - maybe someone with more knowledge wants to correct me.

Unfortunately, it looks like the weighting process is broken for both of us (and everyone above userID=54277) -there's a bug that causes our weights to be initialised even every time. I discovered this when I was looking up your country weights.

However, this in turn means that since it IS working for users with a lower ID, if you're playing with them, you're being pushed around a bit by their unbalanced weights.

We should probably fix this.

There will be a detailed explanation in my my new FAQ once we figure out how it actually works in practice.

"misrepresentation of Austria by 3 standard deviations."

Shouldn't that also be expected.

In fact, for a large enough player base, some players will be expected to have a few standard deviations off... Because that is also how statistics work.

Now if all players are unbalanced in their country draws, then something is wrong. But there ahould be a way to measure the distribution of how unbalanced... Yeah.

So players who joined before July 2013 should have a fairly equal number or draws for each country?

Lol at the expense of the newer player. Is this some sort of pecking order?

Actually yozo, i think the newer player just ends up with a random country. Which will still balance out over time... Just more slowly than the intended algorithm.

I don't think it is unfair - but it is a bug.

@orathaic
but it's not random. If you have a game with old players and new players, the older player get their countries first, which may or may not have an effect on the countries that are drawn by the new players. So, no not random.

Yoyo is correct- this bug makes it worse for newer players, although not predictably (unless you know who you're playing with ahead of time).

No, the old players will also have a random distributiOn of countries, so unless you pick and choose opponents based on which countries they have played...

All the factors are still random.

I'd imagine newer players will have their results more skewed away from average, and once a fix is made will he pushed back towards it fastest of all (which may result in non-random behaviour, like the example above of 2 austrias out of 53 games could get austria three times in a row)

So technically this could be exploited... But the amount of work to payoff isn't worth it.

*be, not he.

The old players don't have a random distribution. The chances are slightly altered so that the chances of you draw a country that is underrespresented is higher. Therefore, depending on the player, the old player could be "taking" the country away from a new player, even if the old player's country distribution is only slightly off and the new players are WAAYY off (because the new players do not have the country-draw balance mechanism)

Think about it this way, if I play a game with 6 old players (I am a new player) and just 1 of them is underepresented in Austria by a certain degree, They will take Austria and I will not take Austria, even if I haven't played as Austria in over 30 games.

That's not how the system works.

If they have a slight weight towards austria, they will have a slightly higher chance of picking austria, and you will have a slightly lower.

But you're also missing my point. If they all have a certain weight towards some country and select first. Maybe you are then guaranteed turkey (based on their weights, and picking last.) but if they have been picked at random from all the older players, the which exact weights they have will be random. So whether it is turkey or an other country you are forced into playing, it will still be random. And eventually your forced picks will balanced each other out in this random process (but over many more games than it would take with the algorithm working)

OK. I just got Austria like 4 times in the past 5 games. My ID is high enough to be reinitialized every time. :/

You can Only make the players non-random by working out their weights and selecting them - but because of the algorithm, they should all be close to balanced and you will find it hard to pick opponents who actually force a country...

In fact, even if the algorithm is working perfectly, you could choose opponents who had a certain weight for certain countries and guarantee that you had a lower than average run of any given country. (Though in the long term, you'd eventually be the most unbalanced player on the site and there would be nobody left to choose...)

That was an oversimplication.
The point of what I was saying is that the old players distort the chances of getting countries by new players.

Yes, and distirted chances mean it is a weighted random... Which is still random.

You mean like this?

http://imgur.com/iDonxJR

Lol you and your technicalities. Whatever you want to call it, it caused a distorted country draw distribution.

But am i right in saying an immediate fix will dramatically change country choices for a while?

I don't even know if that is better.