@froodster:
Argh. What you don’t get is that I am defining a hypothetical. You can’t change my hypothetical on me, make your own. In my hypothetical both players have amassed forces of equal strength. That can happen, no? Granted it might be dumb to pull the trigger in that situation, but remember my players might be equally stupid, not equally brilliant. But even if equally brilliant, if neither player can gain an edge as DEFINED IN MY HYPOTHETICAL, eventually one or the other will have to decide to let the dice decide.
Between relatively equally matched opponents, luck will make a much bigger difference, because the other differences are not as big as they are between unmatched opponents.
You can be “relatively equal” can’t you? Or does every single game prove that the winner is the best and the loser is an idiot? Would you say that about the game between Switch and JSP?
Yes, people can be “equally good.” But how does that eliminate mistakes??? The best player alive will still make mistakes.
You cannot sit here and say in every game between 2 people no one ever screws up or makes a mistake. It doesnt have to be a big one. Maybe only 2-3 infantry are out of place. But that infanty is the difference between deciding to attack or not. The infantry not being there, the attack has a % outcome, the players decides to attack.
For instance:
Player A left 2 infantry “out of place”
With that 2 infantry, Player B has only 55% chance of success. Without that 2 inf, his success rate is 70% or better.
Player B attacks. He wins.
That misplaced inf caused player B to attack. Without it, he (a conservative player) would not have attacked.
Was that dice? luck?
No, it was your mistake that caused the attack.
If 2 players are “equally horrible”, then there are SO MANY mistakes, how can you justify the dice being the factor?
If 2 players are “the best”, sooner or later one guy will make a mistake. That usually leads to victory.
Only if these players were “perfect” and NEVER made a mistake would luck be “the” deciding factor. This is your computer example. Except no computer AI like this EXISTS. No AI is good, let alone perfect. If ever that changes, like I said, let me know.
Of course dice/luck has some influence. But strategies should be designed to compensate for them. If one cannot compensate for “some” bad dice, then their loss is due to that failure to compensate, not the dice. At some point, like i said earlier, bad dice will be unable to be overcome. Such is NOT the situation after G1, and certainly not due to the 2 examples posted above (Egypt and the BB).
If you can “never ever recover” from that situation, then you either quit to easy, or have a bad strategy.
And, finally, if a 100 tank vs 100 tank battle occurs, yes I say the loss was strategy. Why did I match you tank for tank. Why didnt I try something more cost effective. Sure the dice “could” have been mine, but a better strategy would have given me a better dice chance. You have to agree on that.