League General Discussion Thread

I think the point is to have a note at the end of the battle report indicating + x ipc in tuv or - y ipc in tuv, where x and y is the difference from the expected outcome. Now, if you sum up the + and - throughout the game and end up with say + 120 ipc it indicates that the person overall has had dice luck over average. I have tried in some situations to do this math by hand and it is tedious. Obviously this number must be used with caution and I expect most games will give very small differences. I really don’t see the harm, it is just a number that is interesting to know I think. I would welcome this.

If I remember correctly I did this manually in a game I felt I had very poor dice. My calculations ended up with - 60 ish ipc, meaning I lost units worth 60 ipc more than I was supposed to throughout the game. Note, this was for axis combined. I believe this is hardly important over more than 10 rounds. Luck is such a subjective term and if overall dice luck was important to win games I am surprised that the same people are top of the league year after year. Again I don’t see the harm in adding this and my prediction is, everyone is equally lucky over time. I think it will “prove” to people claiming bad luck that there luck is pretty good after all……

The other limitation of a hit differential calculator is a variation in the first round of a four round battle means some rolls don’t even happen, even though they would if the dice came out even.

Anyway, it seems that it has been included in the latest pre-release of Triple-A. Go nuts!

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases

@oysteilo:

If I remember correctly I did this manually in a game I felt I had very poor dice. My calculations ended up with - 60 ish ipc, meaning I lost units worth 60 ipc more than I was supposed to throughout the game. Note, this was for axis combined. I believe this is hardly important over more than 10 rounds. Luck is such a subjective term and if overall dice luck was important to win games I am surprised that the same people are top of the league year after year. Again I don’t see the harm in adding this and my prediction is, everyone is equally lucky over time. I think it will “prove” to people claiming bad luck that there luck is pretty good after all……

Dice becomes important when the skill difference is small, or if you’re playing Allies in vanilla G40  :lol:.

@simon33:

The other limitation of a hit differential calculator is a variation in the first round of a four round battle means some rolls don’t even happen, even though they would if the dice came out even.

Anyway, it seems that it has been included in the latest pre-release of Triple-A. Go nuts!

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases

cool with the expected hit calculation, but that isnt exactely rocket science. For this to be of any real value the actual TUV difference based on the hit value difference should be calculated to I think

I like it. You can easily calculate the expected hits but this means you don’t have to do that leg work.

Hit differential is just 1 way of trying to have some sort of measure of “luck”. Its far from perfect but better than nothing IMO which was why I decided to add it. Each dice roll and battle have different strategic importance which is close to impossible to capture in any automated way.

I have considered adding a sort of TUV differential as well (actual TUV outcome of all battles - expected TUV outcome of all battles) but one problem with this is that its no longer a purely mathematical statistic as it takes into account casualty selection. Example being if you attack a stack of units that has say bombers then the battle calculator is optimized to try for best win percentage not best TUV swing where as a player may choose to save bombers longer than the battle calc chooses. This can cause somewhat subjective choices in casualty selection and the battle calc may not select the best which skews the TUV differential. This is even more drastic for maps that are more complex than Global such as Total World War as casualty selection is much less automatic and requires more thought.

Np. You can also thank Garg who made the request to add it  :-D

All ideas and feature requests for improving TripleA are welcome and that can be done by creating a thread here: https://forums.triplea-game.org/category/42/feature-requests-ideas.

And as always, I encourage players to try out the plethora of custom TripleA maps. I have to imagine most of you league players need some variety by now  :-D

@redrum:

Hit differential is just 1 way of trying to have some sort of measure of “luck”. Its far from perfect but better than nothing IMO which was why I decided to add it. Each dice roll and battle have different strategic importance which is close to impossible to capture in any automated way.

I have considered adding a sort of TUV differential as well (actual TUV outcome of all battles - expected TUV outcome of all battles) but one problem with this is that its no longer a purely mathematical statistic as it takes into account casualty selection. Example being if you attack a stack of units that has say bombers then the battle calculator is optimized to try for best win percentage not best TUV swing where as a player may choose to save bombers longer than the battle calc chooses. This can cause somewhat subjective choices in casualty selection and the battle calc may not select the best which skews the TUV differential. This is even more drastic for maps that are more complex than Global such as Total World War as casualty selection is much less automatic and requires more thought.

Casualty selection difference is such a small difference on the scale of a match. Only a handful of battles require different casualty selection, and of those only a few changes the TUV swing significantly.

@Adam514 - For Global and other standard A&A maps, I’d probably agree with you as the OOL tends to be fairly standard and doesn’t deviate that much. There are other TripleA maps where it does due to the complexity of the unit sets. That being said since the standard A&A maps are pretty popular on TripleA, it probably would be worth adding TUV differential as well.

@redrum:

@Adam514 - For Global and other standard A&A maps, I’d probably agree with you as the OOL tends to be fairly standard and doesn’t deviate that much. There are other TripleA maps where it does due to the complexity of the unit sets. That being said since the standard A&A maps are pretty popular on TripleA, it probably would be worth adding TUV differential as well.

I think this is a good decision! Also if it meets massive protests from other map useres it is always possible to remove it later? It will also be interessting to see if it adds any real value or not when it comes to analyzing the games. That I do not know. I just dont see the harm in trying it out!

As a software developer, I wouldn’t be too keen on the idea of removing it later if some users don’t like it. Why do the work if you are thinking that way? I don’t see the harm to other map users. They can just skip over the info if they don’t find it useful.

Adam514 - asked for this game to be reviewed

This one was up and down, your statistic will say that Allies had the luck advantage, while a few key battles went in favor of the Axis:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=40627.120

I just ran this games UK10 through my parser.  Axis is -4 Allies -3  so luck, despite being a bit under par for both sides is almost equal between each other!  The handicap in this game is +1 allies, exactly what you said it would be! :P

Great overall guess Adam! :)

If the trend continues, this game will be an epic judge of skill.

Two masters, playing their preferred nations, with near even luck when the rock drops; who knew such a thing was possible at A&A.org! :)

@Gargantua:

Adam514 - asked for this game to be reviewed

This one was up and down, your statistic will say that Allies had the luck advantage, while a few key battles went in favor of the Axis:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=40627.120

I just ran this games UK10 through my parser.  Axis is -4 Allies -3  so luck, despite being a bit under par for both sides is almost equal between each other!  The handicap in this game is +1 allies, exactly what you said it would be! :P

Great overall guess Adam! :)

Was it a guess though?  :wink:

@redrum:

@Adam514 - For Global and other standard A&A maps, I’d probably agree with you as the OOL tends to be fairly standard and doesn’t deviate that much. There are other TripleA maps where it does due to the complexity of the unit sets. That being said since the standard A&A maps are pretty popular on TripleA, it probably would be worth adding TUV differential as well.

I think the TUV differential has to be added for this to be useful. Look at this:

Russians attack with 3 fighters, 2 infantry and 1 tactical_bomber
                Germans defend with 1 infantry
                    Russians roll dice for 3 fighters, 2 infantry and 1 tactical_bomber in Baltic States, round 2 : 0/6 hits, 2,50 expected hits
                    Germans roll dice for 1 infantry in Baltic States, round 2 : 1/1 hits, 0,33 expected hits
                    1 infantry owned by the Russians lost in Baltic States
                    Russians roll dice for 3 fighters, 1 infantry and 1 tactical_bomber in Baltic States, round 3 : 4/5 hits, 2,33 expected hits
                    Germans roll dice for 1 infantry in Baltic States, round 3 : 1/1 hits, 0,33 expected hits
                    1 infantry owned by the Russians and 1 infantry owned by the Germans lost in Baltic States
                Russians win, taking 106 Sea Zone from Germans with 3 fighters and 1 tactical_bomber remaining. Battle score for attacker is -3

Then the summary:

Combat Hit Differential Summary :

Germans : 1,33
    Russians : -0,83

The game is now counting all my hits in round 2 as a good thing, but the problem is they are not needed. Obviously if a TUV differential summary was given it would be about -5 for Russia (expected is about +2, ended up beeing -3). This is more accurate I believe as it also indicates that this is a smal battle and probably not decisive over all. Is it possible to add this to the summary?

Whilst I like the TUV reporting,  it doesn’t always do a good job of representing “dicing”.  Maybe we should who both?

Example 1:
You are having a horrible dice game, so you have to stack up your forces when you attack just to get a breakthrough.  You attack with 10 bombers against a cruiser.  All 10 miss.  The cruiser hits.

Round 2, you attack with 9 bombers and score only 1 hit.  The cruiser misses.

TUV differential would show -6 from expected result IPC’s.  But the hit differential would be you -11.667 expected hits, opponent 0. Showing that you def got diced, regardless of the result; because 10 bombers should blast a cruiser anyday.

Example 2 (this actually happend for me):

You are defending London against sealion!  You roll AA for 10 planes and score 9 hits.  Germany concedes.

TUV swing should be 3.4; actual result 90+ IPC.  This will also be +8 in the dice differential.  Good to show both IMO.

I am all in for showing both. Your examples illustrate the opposite point of my example so by all means. You just add a dice differential summary and a TUV differential summary. It wont get more accurate than that

I like the idea of including both dice and TUV and I think they would complement eachother. I haven’t downloaded it yet (waiting for the official update) but I am looking forward to using it.  And thanks for doing the work of getting this started.

I would quibble a bit with how we read the bomber example. Apologies in advance if I am completely misunderstanding this, but … If all 10 bombers and the cruiser hit in the first round the TUV calculator would show that the defender beat the average TUV differential, whereas the dice would tell us that the attacker was very lucky. If only one bomber hit instead, the TUV would show the same but the dice would tell us that the attacker was very unlucky.

But in each case above (and in the example Gargantua gave), the outcome in game terms is exactly the same.  A cruiser was destroyed which should happen 100% of the time and a bomber was destroyed which should happen 50% of the time. 1/10 is a terrible roll but not meaningfully unlucky when you only need 1 hit. 10/10 is a great roll but is not meaningfully lucky when you only need 1 hit. 0 hits is consequential but only if the cruiser gets a hit in the 2nd round.

Or suppose only 2 bombers hit and the cruiser misses, the hit differential would tell us that the attacker had very poor luck (missed 4.67 possible hits) and the defender had poor but better luck (only missed 0.5 hits). But the consequence in game terms is clearly worse for the defender than for the attacker.

While it appears that 10 dice have 11 outcomes (0 through 10 hits) in game terms, when there is only one opposed unit, there are only two meaningful outcomes. Either they get at least one successful roll or they don’t.

In individual battles, this is not a big deal since one should be able to understand the significance of the hit differential in the moment. But at game’s end, the cumulative count might produce a narrative of the game that is far removed from what actually happened. If one player had more rolls that beat the average where they could under-perform, it will appear that they got more hits. If the other player had more rolls that were below average, but sufficient to win the combat round, they would appear to have gotten fewer hits. It might then appear that one player was much luckier than the other, but in game terms that dice luck had no bearing on the game outcome.

A TUV differential helps correct this but is it possible to also get a hit differential count where inconsequential luck wasn’t included?  If the hit differential doesn’t count rounds where both the expected and the actual number of hits exceeded the number of casualties, that would remove most of the inconsequential dice luck. And I think the remainder would be addressed if the combat differential only counted whichever number was smaller, the number of actual hits, or the number of actual casualties. If this could be done, it would get closer to a measure of only the dice luck that had game consequences and the number of hits above or below the expected hits would also equal real (rather than hypothetical) units saved or destroyed in the game.