Peasants are never happy, or EU Random Number Generator

[mueller]

Played a couple of games for 50-100 years under 1.07beta (apr18 patch). Some observartions on random events:

Timurids:
3 "Political Crisis" in a row.
Followed by 4 "Plague!" (which under Apr18 patch was not a bad thing, as Isfahan became mongol-cultured);
Followed by 2 "Bad government policies";
Followed by 5 gifts.

Venice:
3 "Unhappiness among the Peasantry" (???! I was one tick towards Free Subjects";
Followed by 3 "Rush of merchants";
Followed by 5 "Support for dissidents abroad".

Russia:
3 "Unhappiness among the Peasantry";
Followed by 3 "Exceptional Year" (within 3 years);
Followed by 5 "New Land Claimed", all in Moscow;
Followed by 4 "Enthusiasm for the Navy", all in Greenland (which I've got off Norway).

Small sample, of course, but it just seems like random number sequences are heavily autocorrelated.

Could be bad random number generator (actually, default C rnd() function is notoriously bad)

Or maybe random events are not random at all, i.e. the code looks something like


i=1; // event counter
j=1; // province counter
for (; ; ) { // eternal loop
target_country=GetOwnerCountry(j);
wait(rnd());
TriggerEvent(target_country, i, j);
i++; j++;
if (i>MAX_EVENTS) i=1;
if (j>MAX_PROVINCES) j=1;
}


Since provinces change hands over time, their owner countries would be eligible for different events in a fairly unpredictable way, so this would create an illusion of randomness.

However, if political situation is relatively static for a long time, target_country would not change much and you will get the same random event over and over again, which seems to happen often.

What is your experience?

[Edit: modified code slightly]

[Alkar]

I am having similar experiences as well in my games, for example I have 30 years of no negative stab random events followed by a decade of massive upheavals having 3 unhappy peasantry events in a decade and some other nasty events thrown in for good measure. One of my most recent games under 1.07 beta saw me getting hit with 10 unhappy merchants events in 50 years time, I know this event is dp-related, but still this is quite a lot. I made hardly any progress in trade during that period.

[MJames]

I've had 6 "fires" in 100 years. For some reason my art academy in Anglia must be made of gas-soaked rags. After the 4th one I got so annoyed I just edited the file and gave it back. Then it burned down again.

My last game I kept getting plagues. Probably over a dozen during the entire game, but not one fire. Now, not a single plague but fires every other decade. I'm guessing they are tied to something, but not sure what.

[KwangTiger]

The worst are the political crisises. In my current game as Russia I have 4 out of my 5 slider religions, and being at -6 stab isn't very fun.

[Quizzical]

The big random number generation problem that I've seen is in discovering provinces with an explorer at naval tech below 18, which is not random at all. One in ten provinces that is sailed by will be explored, though this can be thrown off by the AI also sending explorers around. To demonstrate this, save a game with an explorer one day away from reaching a seazone that is adjacent to an unexplored province (and not more than one), and repeatedly load the game, let him reach the province, note whether he discovers it, then reload the game and try again. Unless some other explorer also tries to explore something, he'll discover the province every tenth time, though the first one could take fewer than ten tries.

Fortunately, it's not that hard to make a random number generator with properties suitable for the game. It's not absolutely vital that no one can discover what the random number generator is, as is the case, for example, with online gambling. Here's one that I use in a game I'm making in Visual Basic:

Public Prime As Long = (some prime number)
Public Root As Long = (some primitive root of the prime)
Public RSeed As Long = (a positive integer less than the prime)

Function Rand() As Double
    RSeed = (RSeed * Root) Mod Prime
    Return CDbl(RSeed) / CDbl(Prime)
End Function

I use a nine digit prime number so that it doesn't repeat quickly. You could also have the random seed saved in the save game file so that repeatedly reloading a game might give the same result every time unless you change your behavior. If you don't know what a primitive root of a prime number is, then take a number theory class.

[Neuro]

Playing Scotland right now... it's 1500 and within the last 20 years I had 5 or 6 Political Crisises... earlier I had massive Rush of Marchants (3 or 4 times)....

Obviously there's something wrong with the random number generator... and there's nothing we can do about it... but there's someone who can

[DGuller]

What do you mean, -6 stab? Aren't you limited to -3? Also, I noticed the same thing playing Manchu, political crisis was the norm of these days, I've had at least 5 in close succession. If those events really are random, then random generator needs a good upgrade.

[KwangTiger]

Whoops! I meant -3 stab.

[DGuller]

Originally posted by Quizzical
The big random number generation problem that I've seen is in discovering provinces with an explorer at naval tech below 18, which is not random at all. One in ten provinces that is sailed by will be explored, though this can be thrown off by the AI also sending explorers around. To demonstrate this, save a game with an explorer one day away from reaching a seazone that is adjacent to an unexplored province (and not more than one), and repeatedly load the game, let him reach the province, note whether he discovers it, then reload the game and try again. Unless some other explorer also tries to explore something, he'll discover the province every tenth time, though the first one could take fewer than ten tries.

Fortunately, it's not that hard to make a random number generator with properties suitable for the game. It's not absolutely vital that no one can discover what the random number generator is, as is the case, for example, with online gambling. Here's one that I use in a game I'm making in Visual Basic:

Public Prime As Long = (some prime number)
Public Root As Long = (some primitive root of the prime)
Public RSeed As Long = (a positive integer less than the prime)

Function Rand() As Double
    RSeed = (RSeed * Root) Mod Prime
    Return CDbl(RSeed) / CDbl(Prime)
End Function

I use a nine digit prime number so that it doesn't repeat quickly. You could also have the random seed saved in the save game file so that repeatedly reloading a game might give the same result every time unless you change your behavior. If you don't know what a primitive root of a prime number is, then take a number theory class.

LOL, somebody's trying to impress with his mathematical knowledge today.

[mueller]

Originally posted by Quizzical
The big random number generation problem that I've seen is in discovering provinces with an explorer at naval tech below 18, which is not random at all. One in ten provinces that is sailed by will be explored, though this can be thrown off by the AI also sending explorers around.

It is fairly common that some allegedly "random" effects are not random at all. As an example, in Civ II switching governments triggered a period of "anarchy" for a (presumably) random number of years. Well, it was eventually discovered on Apolyton forums that the length of the anarchy period was a simple function of the game turn number. Since each game turn in CIV corresponds to different number of years, and since the turn number was not displayed anywhere in the game, this was not an obvious thing to find out... Once it was discovered, though, tables were made for "safe" years to switch governments, and anarchy became a non-issue...

I suspect it might be something similar with random events in EU (as per code in the first post...)

[Johan]

Plenty of stuff are not truely random, simply because they are processed locally and not on the server.

[mueller]

Originally posted by Johan
Plenty of stuff are not truely random, simply because they are processed locally and not on the server.

Wow! A reply from Johan! Now if I could only understand what does it mean, maybe there is a chance to pacify these peasants after all

[DarthMaur]

Originally posted by MJames
I've had 6 "fires" in 100 years. For some reason my art academy in Anglia must be made of gas-soaked rags. After the 4th one I got so annoyed I just edited the file and gave it back. Then it burned down again.

My last game I kept getting plagues. Probably over a dozen during the entire game, but not one fire. Now, not a single plague but fires every other decade. I'm guessing they are tied to something, but not sure what.

The game doesn't like you?

[clb]

Originally posted by Quizzical

Public Prime As Long = (some prime number)
Public Root As Long = (some primitive root of the prime)
Public RSeed As Long = (a positive integer less than the prime)

Function Rand() As Double
    RSeed = (RSeed * Root) Mod Prime
    Return CDbl(RSeed) / CDbl(Prime)
End Function

I use a nine digit prime number so that it doesn't repeat quickly. You could also have the random seed saved in the save game file so that repeatedly reloading a game might give the same result every time unless you change your behavior. If you don't know what a primitive root of a prime number is, then take a number theory class.

Actually, the selection of the values for a random number generator is not simple, and the geekly are referred to Knuth's _The Art of Computer Programming_, Volume 2.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Quizzical

I use a nine digit prime number so that it doesn't repeat quickly.

Considered using a Tausworth generator instead, or is that too periodic for you? ()

[boehm]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen
Considered using a Tausworth generator instead, or is that too periodic for you? ()

ok I feel lost....anybody else?!

(I should probably stick to the threads talking about economic issues...not programming issues)

[Quizzical]

My point was that a good random number generator for various purposes didn't need to be complicated. What I posted would work for some purposes, and most likely for EU2, though it would be quite bad for others. In particular, the values it generates at once step would be uncorrelated with the values any reasonable number of steps later. For the purpose I needed it for, repeating quickly would have been quite bad, hence the choice of a primitive root.