random generator should be guarenteed to give you italy three times in a row at some point, if it's right.

I've played in six games since I last played over a year ago and I got Germany consecutively in the first four then Turkey in the other two.

I like Italy

Fuck Italy. It is the worst. And even so, it is unfair. Dip mods in the past have admitted 3 times in a row is not random IIRC. And a bug.

Three times in a row is random. You have one chance in 343 for any set of three matches if the odds are even.

well then the mods must be wrong, because Random by neccesity means it should include 3 in a row.

You could remove such patterns. Also Italy is a challenge, but so is soloing with anyone else... that said maybe if you spent more time diploming and working with italy instead of whinging on the forums...

OK, I shall keep tabs. I am pissed. Italy sucks for everything in this game, although I love me some Italian women. ;)

What about Italian wine?:] Italian food?:] Italian football?:]

nah, italy is not a ood target for anyone, they all have better places to go first. That puts it's survival into mid-game pretty high.

also rocky lepanto is a great opening...

@Captain I have long maintained that there is something weird abou the randomizer that assigns countries. It seems that if you sign up for several games on the same day, or within a few hours of each other, you get the same country. If you wait a few days, the randomizer works great. So I have long maintained that there is something in the random algorithum that has date or time as one of the inputs . But no one believes me, everyone insists its purely random. But I know it's happenned too many times just like you say Captain, and it is always when a player signs up for several games within a few hours of each other.

And I felt bad getting Italy twice in a row.

I've only ever gotten Italy, Austria or Turkey. It'd be nice to play as one of the northern powers for a change.

The odds are 1 in 343. Some folks are lucky and some ain't ;)

The odds change every time you join a new game.

life, how many games have you played? 3?

" It seems that if you sign up for several games on the same day, or within a few hours of each other, you get the same country."

I have generally found that if you cross both fingers and say "please God don't let it be Italy" three times before joining the game - then you won't get Italy. At least that's what happened to me the last time I joined a game. You have to really believe for this to work.

Crazyter, it's open source, isn't it? Someone who can bear to look at PHP find out.

Your current chances are:
England: 21.6%
France: 5.4%
Italy: 1.4%
Germany: 6%
Austria: 43.8%
Russia: 11.1%
Turkey: 10.7%

So the algorithm definitely is factoring in that you've been Italy too often and will correct for it, but unfortunately it's impossible for country selection to be non-deterministic (as the rules require) and also guarantee that you won't be a country 2-3 times in a row. It just gets less and less likely the more times you get a certain country

Get StevenC to sit for you, until your 3 italian games are done. he seems to love it so much, lol! :)

...and at least be happy it wasnt all league games !

@Crazyter: The country selector doesn't work like that, it doesn't matter how often you get selected. Basically you have a certain chance of being a country stored within your account (starts at 1/7 for each country), then if you get selected to play as a country your chance of being that country next time is halved

The problem is choosing which of the starting 7 players to "roll the dice" for first. If two players have an 80% chance of being Italy, say, who goes?
Well what happens is it chooses the country that is the most "unbalanced" to go first. A player who has a 1/7 chance of being either country will go last, after all other countries have already been chosen, the player that has a 80% chance of being Italy will go first (and probably be Italy)

This means that if Kirk joins another game and by some miracle he's playing against six other people who have a 100% chance of being England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Turkey respectively he'll be Italy, even though his "chance" is only 1.4% currently.

In general though the lower your chance value of being a certain country the less likely you are to be that country, so Kirk would be very unlucky indeed to be Italy next time, and is most likely to be Austria (but that doesn't mean it's guaranteed, he's more likely to not be Austria, but of all the countries he could be Austria is the most likely)

@Perry: there's also a country selector that mods have access to which can reallocate your country after the game has started, I'm not sure how it works in leagues because I don't manage them, but I don't think they're left to chance

I think the country allocation as it now goes is great! It is so much better then any other allocation method i've seen! (preference list, 100% random )

I found this comment in the "Current Code" from the forum:

/*
* - Order the players so that the player which has the most difference in their
* chances from country to country gets to draw first. (So that large differences
* are reduced quickly)
*/

If I understand this comment and the code from balanceChances() correctly, this means that it's pretty likely that he'll get to draw first, and so it's more likely that he won't get Italy. (This is assuming it's rare to find someone with a 43% chance or a 1% chance for a country.)

@Perry: Thanks :-) As with anything random people are very superstitious about it, and before the new system we got many more "I'm jynxed/there is a bug" threads than we get now

@Galt: Yup, as long as other players have had more evenly distributed country allocations recently Kirk will get first choice, giving him a chance of being Italy that's true to his 1.4% stored chance

I think everyone says they like Italy but they just dont want to conform to others when in fact you know you hate it.

I like Italy, and have had it in my last two games.

I got Russia two times in a row ......in a league.......fuck the system

No you dont. stop trying to lie to your self.........you are trying to be like the "cool kids"

I like Italy, Austria i hate

Why do you like Italy the game you shown us was very badly played by you and you gave dave bishop the win.

oops wrong thread.

gameID=16156&msgCountry=Global&rand=29246#chatboxanchor

Here is a game that doofman posted in the best allaince thread.......wasnt really that good.

if Player.Name = "Captain James Tiberius Kirk" then
Player.setCountry(this.Game, "Italy");

/*
* Nope, not a bug. Working as designed as far as I can tell.
*/

lol PV

but tilMletokill, it was undeniably a strong alliance, that managed to defeat Turkey and Russia without outside help and without giving away the alliance until it was too late...
Then we were in a position to conquer the whole board, but it was 5 a.m.

Considering Italy and Austria are widely considered (and statistically are proven) to be the worst countries (and it seems to me they do especially badly in live games) I think it was a very good alliance.

@PV - you a dev geek too? Or is it just a hobby for you?

@Kestas-thanks for the explanation. I do admit that since you changed to this new system a few months ago, I've been pleased that my country assignments have been varied, and I've gotten all the countries several times now. Before this recent change, I did get the same country two or three times in a row, and it always seemed to happend when I signed up on the same day.

Before that Crazyter it was purely random.

@Draugnar, former professional programmer, but I still remember some code. I am getting rusty, however, so I'm happy to leave the programming to kestasjk et al.