"Working Out the Odds" Topic

TMP member Timbo W once wrote:

I've always thought that its somehow unethical to work out the odds before committing to an attack. Of course one has a vague idea, eg the veterans will likely beat the raw unit, but to calculate the percentages seems dreary.

TMP link

Do you agree?

I think that is a silly position, good generals never fight "fair". They stack the deck as much as possible.

Never tell me the odds.

Ivan DBA for the win

I have read that a kitten dies a horrible death every time you necropost.

Now that you've opened the can of worms, however, I'll be happy to comment.

In real life, you can never know the real odds. One of the things I like about games with opposed dice rolls, like GZG games, is that you have a good understanding of your chances without the ability to come up with numbers on the fly, unless your mental math skills are superhuman.

For example, if I have to beat your 1d6 on two dice and I can roll either 1d6 + 1d10 or 1d6 + 2d10, I think I'm throwing the extra d10 into it, even though I can't come up with numbers. The feeling in the game is that you're behind some cover and I can either fire rifles with one support weapon (such as auto grenade launcher or SAW), or rifles and both the auto grenade launcher and the SAW.

That feeling is what I want when I'm playing. I don't want to feel like this: "chances of eliminating enemy unit are 38.3% with all three weapon types; 24.1% with only two weapon types; 11.8% with rifles only."

Ivan DBA beat me to it too.

If I am ordered to attack, I'm not allowed to tell my general the odds.

Had to look up that quote, Google to the rescue. I'd better brush up on my Star Wars lore.

Poppycock.

Don't like it, play a different game.

As with all these things, it depends. Some mechanisms make it easier to have a rough idea of the odds than others.

In DBA, if I'm on +4, I've got a pretty good idea who is likely to win…

Buckets of dice systems are the easiest due to the averaging effect. Whilst it is possible to throw 30 dice and score 1 on all of them, the odds are vanishingly unlikely. Much more likely to throw five 6s, five 5s etc (or thereabouts).

But is adding the extra resources into an attack worth the opportunity cost of not using the resource elsewhere? Only calculation will tell!
And Winston, I am the general: sometimes I need a futile gesture, and sometimes I need to be sure: but overkill is a waste.

Yep, still agree!

WW1 began with the odds closely calculated and the timetable worked out to the day, 39 iirc. Germany was following the "Schlieffen" plan. And then those who thought that following the odds was not cut and dried, messed with the plan and moved units around, until there was nobody on the extreme right to drag his sleeve in the Channel. So minutely did the plan delineate how many and where the troops were to go that it is a textbook case of going into battle "by the odds". Then "they" screwed it up. Arguably, had the Germans adhered strictly to the Schlieffen plan, they would have won by day "39 and been in Paris….

Interestingly, the French, aware of the Schlieffen plan, stacked their main strength for an assault on the "weakened" German center; also playing with the odds, and claiming that the more corps the Germans committed to their right, the more certain of victory the French attack in the center would be. As wargames both strategies worked time and again, assuring both sides that their approach was the best one. Then the German wargames showed that a "Cannae" could be achieved with a stronger left wing, which worked even more dramatically than a stacked right wing. So they went for that instead. That, plus the removal of two corps from the right wing to send to the "Russian front", destroyed the odds worked out by Schlieffen and made him turn over in his grave.

Wargamers love the odds. Those in the military, arguably, have their wargaming odds in mind when they send their armies into real battle….

I disagree that working out the odds is unethical.

I disagree that you don't know the odds in combat, you just don't know them as precisely as you do in a wargame. That's both numerical precision of individual events and how chains of events will link together to create an outcome.

Part of QILS turning dice into three (or four) codependent non-symmetric discrete distribution engines was to make the precise odds a bit of a stretch during the game (though certainly not uncalculable, especially a priori if you know all the dice before the game), to (hopefully) focus player attention on other things.

I have read that a kitten dies a horrible death every time you necropost.

I should necropost more often. You know … just in case.

The secret is to attack ten to one and in the rear …

A well-designed gaming mechanic is simple and transparant enough that you can get a rough idea about probabilities involved, but at the same time obfuscating and unpredictable enough that you cannot perform an accurate analysis such that you'll have to rely on your intuition.

Players who insist on calculating exact odds take the soul out of the game.

Arithmetic in wargaming is only a proxy, and you should not base decisions on the arithmetical abstractions, but rather on the situation on the table. There's always some blending of the two, though. We, as players, do not have the intuition or experience or emotions of being a commander on the real battlefield, but the real commander also does not have a mathemtical procedure to base his decisions on. So, the wargame should aim for the intuitive approach, but it needs the mathematical engine to work out the results, and hence, some cross-over effects are unavoidable.

If you want pure arithmetics, go play with an excell sheet instead.

A well-designed gaming mechanic is simple and transparant enough that you can get a rough idea about probabilities involved, but at the same time obfuscating and unpredictable enough that you cannot perform an accurate analysis such that you'll have to rely on your intuition.

I agree, but the overwhelming majority of mechanics are linear combinations of one, two, or three simple discrete distributions. Exact odds are pretty easy.

Players who insist on calculating exact odds take the soul out of the game.

Arithmetic in wargaming is only a proxy,

I disagree. The maths are not a proxy for decision making, they only describe a small part of the overall interactions. If you can use only the odds to determine the outcomes of tactics and strategy, as opposed to specific player actions during their turn, then your game had no soul to being with.

We, as players, do not have the intuition or experience or emotions of being a commander on the real battlefield

Some of us don't. Some of us do.

Those that do, probably don't have the breadth of experience that is representative of the breadth of decisions we make on the tabletop. Those that don't, may well have other life experience that is highly relevant to certain types of military decision making.

the real commander also does not have a mathemtical procedure to base his decisions on.

Some do. Some don't. Generally, though, mathematical procedures commanders have only provide partial input to the decision process.