"Getting Lucky" and the Quality of Competition in Public Games

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    • "Getting Lucky" and the Quality of Competition in Public Games

      I've noticed there's a bit of disparity in the way we refer to/think about other players in public games and the actual current allotment of players in public games.

      Not too long ago, I joined a game and a neighboring country was invading my homeland with multiple 10-stacks of Infantry and MBT combos on Day 1 just past 0300hrs. In addition to his multiple Level 2 Army Bases, he also already had Level 2 Air Bases (but I didn't stay long enough to see what aircraft he was building; I assume strikers). It was an unlucky coincidence that I found myself beside him and unable to match his forces at the very beginning of the game when he started invading.

      That happens sometimes, but it doesn't happen most of the time. In this case, I was a unlucky.

      In the game I am currently about to finish, my very first enemy was a neighboring nation and was the best opponent I faced all game and the best opponent I had faced in a large number of games. I enventually beat them, but it was an intense exchange for awhile, and I lost some troops.

      That happens sometimes, but it doesn't happen most of the time. In this case, I was a little unlucky to even have another decent player in my game.

      I've noticed that on the Forums we tend to say, "You must have gotten lucky" if the other players in our public games aren't very good, and we say "If you get lucky,..." when we're talking about hypothetical scenarios in which the other players in public games aren't very skilled. Saying it like that makes it sound as if it's a rare occasion that none of the other players in a public game will be very good/eperienced at playing CoN.

      It's not at all rare, though. In MOST CoN public games, not one of our opponents is a very good player. In MOST public games, a good player is going to end up in the #1 spot by 500, 800, 1000, or more VPs. We see screenshots that prove it all the time, and yet a good percentage of the time, someone makes a comment refering to the situation as "lucky".

      Don't get me wrong: luck is an element in whether or not a strong player ends up in our game with us or ends up right beside us; that's not the part we're getting wrong. What we tend to misrepresent is the frequency with which that happens. It's more like entering the game is guessing a number between 1 and 10, and getting that number correct is having another good player in your game. We don't usually consider that "lucky" because it's more difficult to have to face them, but it is the more infrequent occurance.

      So, I'm going to start refering to "luck" differently in the Forums, and I hope that you'll join me. Instead of saying "If you get lucky" or "you got lucky" every time I refer to someone not having strong competition in a public game, I'm going to assume that's the norm and refer to it as such. Additionally, when I mean to acknowledge that a situation could exist where more challenging competition might be present in a public game, I'm going to say, "Unless you get unlucky and... [there's another good player in your game, etc.]"
    • Right, like I said, I'm not denying that there's some small amount of luck involved in not ending up next to the greatest goldiest CoN player of all times in any one game, but I don't get the impression that's what's being suggested when it's said in the Forums. In the Forums, it normally sounds more like it implies, "You wouldn't have done that well if it wasn't for some extremely unlikely circumstances." In reality, though, the circumstances are very common and not unlikely at all.

      I was the solo leader in a 4x game of WWIII not long ago and playing as Chile. We were nearing the end of the game, and it was clear I was the person to beat. If the five best other nations of the world had pooled all of their assets at that point and attacked me, while I was offline, I have no doubt they would have gotten through my defenses and could have done critical damage to my homeland given enough time. Something came up in real life, and I was unexpectedly away from the game for more than 24 hours, which was more than 4 game days. So, yes, in that game, I DID get lucky that during that time I only received minor/poorly planned attempts to invade my homeland. That actually was "lucky".

      However, Brian generally wins 90% of the public games he plays by an average of 1000 VPs, and one day he posts a screenshot to make a point about something. Someone responds with "You just got lucky that game!" Is the spirit/intention of that statement really accurate? I mean, I guess he DID get "lucky" that it wasn't the 10% of games that don't go as well, but are we really saying that he gets "lucky" 90% of the time? Or is that just "the way that things normally are" and 10% of the time he gets "unlucky"?
    • It's like deja vu all over again.

      If I quote myself from a little while ago (without telling you anything you don't already know)

      ". . . if you factor in that a lot people who post opinions in Discord chats and in game forums
      • are just plain sloppy about what they write,
      • are just echoing what they read that someone else wrote,
      • are sloppy about distinguishing between typical public and alliance game opponents/strategies/tactics,
      • are sloppy about their analysis of game mechanics (vs their luck),
      . . . you should then feel like you understand why so many people write the things you read."
      [/quote]