Countdown to Battle

[Sean Clark]

To play devil's advocate, and in the interest of academic discussion, I also think you hit the nail on the head! 😊

The system is a one off, and therefore prone to extremes. Similar to the on table game. How many times have you had a massive advantage in dice for an assault, only to lose? Simulate that assault 10,000 times and you'll see on average that you should win the assault. But you can never legislate for that one off roll where 2 dice beat 10.

Secondly, I'm rather pleased that there is no one sure way of influencing the outcome. If there was, everyone would use it and you'd be back to square one. Say the statistically proven way to get the best outcome was 26242. Wouldn't everyone use that? And at that point you may as well flip a coin.

In my experience, players either go for the 33433 middle of the road type approach, or else the highs and lows approach, stacking dice on certain days, leaving other days vulnerable. That is their own decision and attempt to influence the system to gain best advantage on the results table. Whether it works is a gamble and down to the vagaries of lady luck because it is an imperfect science when making a one off opposed dice roll, no matter how much it is stacked in your favour.

Regarding the ability to influence whether you are the attacker or not, your stats say that rolling over to the next day is a surer way of becoming the attacker than how you distribute your dice. It appears to be marginal, but over 10,000 run throughs that is proven statistically. But again, in the actual game it is prone to swings of fortune. Maybe a piggy chase to decide attacker defender, would be better and then the 15 days to war can be carried out to provide narrative and some bonuses or disadvantages to the army?

All of the above is advocacy for the devil and points for further discussion. It is not intended to be combative, or to defend to my last breath what we have now. As mentioned previously these discussions fascinate me, mainly because i marvel at people's understanding of statistics and their ability to write code to run these simulations 😊

[Sean Clark]

it keeps everyone on their toes and you never know what you're going to get

A bit like a box of chocolates 😅🤣

[Colonel Kilgore]

Exactly. Just don't give me the coffee creams though, please

Simon

[SimonC]

All of the above is advocacy for the devil and points for further discussion. It is not intended to be combative, or to defend to my last breath what we have now.

thats absolutely fine Sean - I'm taking it in good spirit.

The current system has been in place for 10 years, so should all be OK. But if it is time for change then lets understand where we are starting from :-)

[Sean Clark]

Exactly