And sorry for black background, normally LaTeX works on standard white, but copying image does not include background.

I really hate arguments that end up in "oh, we actually agreed all along".

Any way, I'm not going to argue along since I'm sure I'll end up in the same situation, I'll just leave you with some general comments. One is that luck is perceived to be both a poor excuse for pointing out you're the winner AND for being the loser, though I admit that's not always the case. The latter is quite common. I myself absolutely hate that any attack of 13 or lower against neutrals of 2 with a luck percentage of 75% has a chance to fail. Most games last too short to have certain luck or bad luck even out. This means particular games with 75% luck can end up having a lucky winner instead of a skilled winner. But this is not really a problem. You play Warlight knowing there's a huge luck factor involved. Only if you set luck percentage to 0%, give everyone more starting positions, etc, can you almost entirely remove luck from the game and have it always be a skilled win. Unfortunately, only members can do this.

Another comment is that I don't think it's necessarily bad you never get first order. Usually you only want first order to quickly take out an army trying to gain access to your bonuses, taking a territory to stop an enemy's army in their tracks, or to transfer a big army in defense against your opponent.

szeweningen:
Just threw that first formula of yours into Mathematica. I'm getting

{
  {   0.000, 1}
  {   0.000, 1}
  {   0.000, 1}
  {   0.000, 1}
  {   0.016, 1}
  {   0.281, 1}
  {   1.809, 1}
  {  15.226, 1}
  { 119.902, 1}
  {1160.1  , 1}
}

when I use Timing[] to tabulate the values of n from 1 to 10. The first is the number of seconds it took for that row (20 minutes on the last one...), the second is, allegedly, a prime number...!? (Where it says "0" it originally said "1.46367*10^-17", meh.)

That second formula looks incomplete (did you cut of a quantor at the front?); the exponent (with superfluous brackets around the second half), cancels out to "1" so it can be removed, after which the "2*" and "/2" cancel out as well leaving us with just "2n+1". Assuming n to be a natural number, that claims that (among many others) 9 is prime... (Allowing integers, rational, ... obviously breaks even worse. Restricting n to primes doesn't work either, since 2*7+1 = 15.)

---

@Darkruler, second paragraph: ah yes, good point; the existence of the Order Delay Card nicely illustrates this.

My head asplode.

^^ All this right here is why I'll never be the best player. Math isn't strong with this one.

RvW, this [] means in programming language \floor{}, not a regular bracket

The second formula I believe is, as I remember, a nice way of using Wilson's theorem to make a tricky formula, which can be described as:

Let f be our function $f:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{N}$

$(\forall_{p\in \mathbb{P}} \ f(p)=p\in \mathbb{P})\wedge(\forall_{n\notin \mathbb{P}} \ f(n)=2\in \mathbb{P})$

I think I encountered that problem in 10th grade or so, it is pretty funny how you can make a closed formula using Wilson's theorem (without it it'd be pretty hard to give a closed formula if it was to be described as I did). Anyway I used LaTeX language, but if I remember correctly, mathematica uses the same symbol description.

The first formula uses straightforward floors and an absolute value to be exact, the second one uses [] as \floor{}.

The first formula uses straightforward floors and an absolute value to be exact, the second one uses [] as \floor{}.

Okay, then I did enter the first one correctly (wasn't sure about the absolute value bars; thought maybe those meant something different).
That second one (now I know it's supposed to be a floor) makes my head hurt trying to simplify it. :s

---

@noobschool:
Don't worry, we've gotten rather off-topic; the whole prime number business is unrelated to WL. (But it's indeed definitely possible to use other areas of mathematics to your advantage!)

RvW, which ones?
Well I know about counting, but besides that?

Actually a few:

- probability methods in game theory (that's a huge topic, maybe before I retire I'll write sth about that)
- income stream as Markov chains (or a simpler version of that to find optimal expansion strategies)
- optimalisation in terms of variables, incresing expected value while keeping variation under control (for example knowing you opponents income in 1vs1 and keeping 2 fronts with him, predicting full deployment on borders you want to use 2 attacks, which can be represented by X(a)+Y(b) where a+b is your income)

Those are of the top of my hat and I believe with those tools we could build a comprehensive (though complicated) method of analysing games in those terms. Those are of course theoretical mathematical methods and there are tons of related stuff in the field of IT, for example a well-built neuron-web would provide an incredibly strong AI granted it plays on one setting and gets to play only strongest opponents.

Dam i thought i was gonna get ya in a mistake yet u did mention stronger opponents,
well, i was gonna say, beeing unpredictable beats strongest players but works bad with ai since they play so badly that they are unpredictable themselves.
So if you play the normal ai as if ur playing a srong player you would basicly waste your time, whilst if the ai knows that you are a strong player and takes precautions and has specific options to use when he knows he is playing a good player then your style of playing is worthed. Up to now the ai proved to be weak so tryen to predict his movments as a strong player ends up wasting your time in actually killing him asap.

What the ai needs is the ability to predict the enemy(us) level and act accordingly like we do. If that is done then the ai can be unpredictible itself.

What the hell are you talking about? 10000 miles away off topic :D

Replying to the original post, i didn't see any real bad luck in the game.
What i saw, was real bad picks and bad tactics in tryen to guess the enemy attacks.

Also if you want so see bad luck look at this game:
(eighter BUG, Cheat or insane bad luck)

I won the game at turn 4 !!!! Yet the Unluckiest game of my life.

Game settings:
-Def and Off luck are standard(60% offense and 70% defense).
-I hosted game and its in my templates and played several times with it(any of these NEVER ever hapened before).
-I'm not a member.


http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=2971170

(for who is wondering why i started in caucasus, i didn't. Chose my first in w.russia and second caucasus, yet with my luck enemy chose with his first w.russia too and won it :( )

Crazy; Bug/Cheat/Luck:


• 1-Enemy attacking with 12 vs 9,(ofc) LOST, but he had 7 losses ONLY and I lost 8 :S (Dam lucky), according to average he should have lost nearly all.
  
  
• 2-Enemy attacking with 10 vs 6, WINS :O, with only 2 losses(speachless with jaw on the floor)(ffs impossible)
  As average you need 4 to beat 2(around 80% chance) in a normal game, so to beat 6 you need 12 when attacking. When you attack with 10 only, on average your chances of winning are slim (maybe 35%-40%). Though even if you win your losses should be high and the 10 become 2-3 on average, if your very lucky maybe 4. However here he was 8 !!!!!!!!!!!! I mean 10 vs 2(ai) you get 8 left, not when defending with 6 ffs!!
  
  
• 3-Enemy attacking with 4 vs 2(AI), WINS, with 0 losses, WTF, this was a first for me, but its not impossible.(i could have accepted this if the previous didn't just happen :o)
  
  
• 4-(Well this one really deserves some description)
  Since I am a man that checks for every possible solution I thought of one that fits.
  Here i was starting to think that maybe our luck in offence was beeing boosted just in this game and because i haven't attacked yet, I was getting this dam badluck feeling only on me.(maybe a bug)
  That made sens to me at the time, so I changed tactic instead of defending then attacking, i went on attacking first since I had bonus advantage now.
  -I attacked 21 vs 9.
  Since the 10 vs 6 had only 2 losses and it was below twice the army of 12 to beat 6, it was logical that if i had 21 vs 9 i would get 2-3 losses and maybe with some bad luck also 4, and to the very extreem bad luck, at most I would get 5 losses. Also 12 vs my 9 gave 7 losses so 21 vs 9 should be much less at least half, like 3-4.
  Guess what, I get 6 losses :O (although in a normal game its not a bad loss).
  It just proved to me that the enemy was at least twice as lucky in offence and in defence.
  There is no way this game was fair.
  Only won because the guy was bad enough not to realise he had this huge advantage and surrendered. If he continued(with that low losses) he would have won for sure.
  Although I did demoralise him by knowing where he was from start, playing better, picking better starting locations and having tactical advantage in antartica. The fact is, I wasn't tryen to demoralise him but beat him and yet I couldn't, although I did no mistakes :O.
  

The probability of all these 4 things to happen in a single game, to the same guy, in 4 turns, on every of his attack or defence, without a bug or cheat but by simple incredible luck, is less then 1/∞.
Which make me not the unluckiest person:
on the continent
or on the planet
or of the galaxy
or of the universe

but of the MULTIVERSE!!!

Yea not getting the first move is bad however first move is not everything in a game, however important in the beginning though.
Just a suggestion, when you suspect that you might not get the first move just reinforce where the enemy would not predict you will reinforce and attack only with a few the enemy location. So when the enemy attacks the reinforced location he will loose down to 1 and you little attack takes down the one. It usually works even if you loose, ur enemy would have lost its strength, its harder to beat big numbers on defence even if you get the first move.
This way at least you weakened the enemy even if your plan didn't fully work.

Last 2 posts are so inaccurate and senseless, they gave me cancer...

one of them is way to long to read so ill take your word for it

lol yea don't bother yourself with such nonesense, its too much for ya to handle anyway

i think i can handle nonsense, i pride myself in my ability to handle nonsense. in fact i believe handling nonsense is the thing i am best at

but i still wont bother myself

Completly agree with ya
since i was talking on szeweningen (retiring) post to be the nonsense :) lol