New "Intensity Cubes"

[lackattack]

We haven't touched the dice... erm, intensity cubes since February 14, 2006 because they were pretty darn random (see here). However, thanks to some prodding and advice from Dako, sherkaner and jakewilliams I became convinced that it is worthwhile to make some alterations.

This is how the intensity cubes now work:

• We have a series of 50,000 high quality random numbers from random.org
• Each time the game engine generates a random intensity cube, the next number is read in sequence from the series (e.g. in a 3v1 attack 4 numbers are read sequentially)
• When the last number in the series is read, we "rewind" and continue with the first number in the series

The advantages are twofold:

• Each individual number in the series is used for both attacker and defender, so our intensity cubes cannot be biased for either side.
• The series is stored in memory so the dice perform much faster. This makes a huge difference when auto-assault is used with large numbers of troops on both sides.

An interesting note - as of June 2010 Conquer Club processes 1,000,000 assaults each day!

[Optimus Prime]

I'm not understanding how it works differently from before. Any chance of further clarification?

[lackattack]

Sure, before it worked like this:

The intensity levels are based on high quality random numbers from Random.org. The numbers are read from a large file containing columns of numbers from 1 to 6, in the format A1 A2 A3 D1 D2. When the intensity levels are generated, the game engine reads a line from the file and discards it. The appropriate numbers are used and the others are ignored. The file contains 500,000 lines of intensity levels and is re-loaded when all the lines are used up.

[Dako]

Wow, that was rather quick. Too bad I don't have a stacking game to test out 10k attack.

[lord voldemort]

*head explodes*

[Dako]

By the way, on the Home page feed (right column) the quotes are escaped to " :D.

[Ace Rimmer]

I'm not understanding how it works differently from before. Any chance of further clarification?

I'll try to help

Old format:

500k lines each with 5 random numbers. The first 3 are attacker, last 2 defender. When you roll, it pulled a line from list and dropped any attacker/defender dice that weren't needed. For example, if you rolled a 2v1 it would drop the last attacker and last defender. When it reached roll 500k, it would start back at line 1

example:

6 4 5 2 1
4 6 1 6 6
3 4 3 2 3

New format:

50k numbers between 1 and 6 (inclusive) in random order. Now it pulls the number of rolls needed from the file without discarding any. This makes it "more" random because there is no duplication and all the numbers are used (none are discarded). After those 50k are used, a new batch of 50k random numbers is retrieved from random.org

example:

6 4 5 2 1 4 6 1 6 6 3 4 3 2 3

Hope this helps.
Jake

[TheSaxlad]

nice...

EDIT: Actually Take That Back, I just lost 9v1...

[musicalmaven]

not that i fully understand the change (the term "intensity cubes" means nothing to me), but i can always be hopefull that this will help change my luck.
as a person who has kept track of all my wins and loses from all my attacks for over 2 years, and have the numbers to show that the dice were never good to me, i can only hope this will get me back to average.
and to give it a clean slate, i'll start a new sheet and see how good or bad my results are with the new dice system.
i will let you guys know the results, after a reasonable length of time.

[TheForgivenOne]

Nice. I was secretly hoping the little bunnies with the cards that would pop up got put through

[jammyjames]

Nice. I was secretly hoping the little bunnies with the cards that would pop up got put through

Yeah i was thinking that when i read it

[qwertylpc]

i have both dice analyzer and dice streaks and my dice just took a turn for the worse go back please

http://www.conquerclub.com/game.php?game=7177849 http://www.conquerclub.com/game.php?game=7178880 they sucked

[Lindax]

Wow, that was rather quick. Too bad I don't have a stacking game to test out 10k attack.

Sure sounds good lack.

Dako: I have some nice stacks I can try it out with, gives me an excuse to attack, lol

Lx

[Bruceswar]

hmm lets see how this goes over a week or so. I will report back with my findings. Looks like it is time to total rethink how I play CC.


Here was a first test... 64(Attacking) vs 600.... Which stopped at 3 vs 503 What I did notice right off the bat is lots of streaks.

show: Dice

[wisemanpsemc]

I thought something was different in my attacks today. Now it makes sense. Hopefully this change will get rid of the seemingly long streaks of bad "intensity cubes".

[carlpgoodrich]

This makes it more random and makes it much less likely to duplicate a roll. Jake

No, this does not make it "more" random (random is a binary state, you either are or you aren't). In a list of random numbers, there is the same correlation (i.e. none) between the first number and the second as there is between the first and the third. Throwing away some numbers does not affect the randomness of the dice. The only advantage I can see is that the new way is slightly more efficient, but if that was really a problem that could easily be solved with a combination of a sudo-random number generator and the "true" random numbers from Random.org.

However, I do have some concern with the new changes (maybe I am not understanding Lack). It sounds to me like the same list of 50,000 numbers is used repeatedly. Is this within the same game or over all games? And how often does it get changed? My concern is that when you start repeating numbers you open yourself up to abuse. I doubt anyone would go through the trouble of mapping the list just to win at CC, but it is certainly doable.

[edwinissweet]

*head explodes*

yea, my mind is pretty blown. Im not bright enough to understand how it works.

[Knight2254]

This makes it more random and makes it much less likely to duplicate a roll. Jake

No, this does not make it "more" random (random is a binary state, you either are or you aren't). In a list of random numbers, there is the same correlation (i.e. none) between the first number and the second as there is between the first and the third. Throwing away some numbers does not affect the randomness of the dice. The only advantage I can see is that the new way is slightly more efficient, but if that was really a problem that could easily be solved with a combination of a sudo-random number generator and the "true" random numbers from Random.org.

However, I do have some concern with the new changes (maybe I am not understanding Lack). It sounds to me like the same list of 50,000 numbers is used repeatedly. Is this within the same game or over all games? And how often does it get changed? My concern is that when you start repeating numbers you open yourself up to abuse. I doubt anyone would go through the trouble of mapping the list just to win at CC, but it is certainly doable.

You could never do this as there are hundreds of attacks happening all at once.

[danfrank]

I really do not understand this concept either. BUT.. Lets just do some simple math...


If the attacker has 3 dice and the defender 2 then at most there are 7776 different combinations... I come to this conclusion by mutliplying 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 .. So why is there a list of 50,000 thousand numbers which would logically suggest duplication ?


Also what is intensity level, and what determines this factor.. My belief is, this is a script that is written by said master and fused with random. org number generator. If this is the case then it is fair to say that certain members can have a more favorable equation in said script then others .

[stahrgazer]

I really do not understand this concept either. BUT.. Lets just do some simple math...
If the attacker has 3 dice and the defender 2 then at most there are 7776 different combinations... I come to this conclusion by mutliplying 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 .. So why is there a list of 50,000 thousand numbers which would logically suggest duplication ?

Agreed. The most random would be each roll generates one of 7776 combinations; the next number would pick from 7776 combinations.

However, the way they're doing it does help identify why people get series of really good rolls and series of really bad rolls; and for some, the 'randomness' doesn't necessarily equal out. Basically, the accusations that someone else got all the good dice can fairly true, if all the "good numbers" got used up before they reload the entire 50,000 combinations.

[carlpgoodrich]

This makes it more random and makes it much less likely to duplicate a roll. Jake

No, this does not make it "more" random (random is a binary state, you either are or you aren't). In a list of random numbers, there is the same correlation (i.e. none) between the first number and the second as there is between the first and the third. Throwing away some numbers does not affect the randomness of the dice. The only advantage I can see is that the new way is slightly more efficient, but if that was really a problem that could easily be solved with a combination of a sudo-random number generator and the "true" random numbers from Random.org.

However, I do have some concern with the new changes (maybe I am not understanding Lack). It sounds to me like the same list of 50,000 numbers is used repeatedly. Is this within the same game or over all games? And how often does it get changed? My concern is that when you start repeating numbers you open yourself up to abuse. I doubt anyone would go through the trouble of mapping the list just to win at CC, but it is certainly doable.

You could never do this as there are hundreds of attacks happening all at once.

Give me on the order of 50,000 rolls (they don't have to be consecutive) and a day or two to write the code and I'll do it (note to the mods, I'm not going to:) ).Like I said, I don't know how often the list of 50,000 numbers is replaced, so if its often this won't be relevant. But if it is not replaced regularly, it doesn't matter that there are hundreds of attacks happening all at once. All you need is a large number of samples from that set of 50,000. For example, if there are a larger than expected number of repeated numbers in the set than defending is slightly more favorable than it should be. There are tons of things like this that you can write a program to analyze, and if you have enough statistics it can tell you things like "be aggressive" or "don't be aggressive".

[hulmey]

Wow, that was rather quick. Too bad I don't have a stacking game to test out 10k attack.

true randomness cannot be judged with such a small amount. test a couple of million

[jleonnn]

big words!!!!! ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!1

[n00blet]

Awww mannnnn

Don't get me wrong, this sounds nice and all, but when I read the headline's title I was for a moment convinced that Lack had taken the "bunnies holding up placards" idea seriously...Needless to say, I was ecstatic.

[MadagascarAdam]

Yeah, seriously, I'm wondering why they have to choose numbers consecutively in a sequence? Is it really that hard to get it to choose one random set from the sequence and then another random set from the sequence? Why does it have to choose the number in order?

Anyway, I'm definitely confused now. All along I thought my dice really were random, i.e. no one would ever know what was coming next. But now I'm thinking it is a bit rigged.

Then again, I don't know what kind of feats of processing strength are required to make this thing random, and I guess a list of numbers that were generated randomly is at least better than nothing. Can the starting point in the list not just be randomly selected for each individual set of rolls though? Why does it have to cycle through sequentially for the sum total of all ConquerClub rolls?