Calculating Probabilities of Winning at Risk

  • Context: Undergrad 
  • Thread starter Thread starter alexbib
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Probabilities
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion focuses on calculating the probabilities of winning battles in the board game Risk, specifically analyzing scenarios where one player attacks with a certain number of troops against a defender with a different number of troops. The conversation includes theoretical approaches and practical programming methods for determining these probabilities.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Technical explanation, Mathematical reasoning

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests calculating probabilities by writing a computer program to simulate all possible combinations of dice rolls and their outcomes.
  • Another participant proposes evaluating whether it is strategically better to always use the maximum number of dice available for attacks.
  • A grammatical correction is made regarding the term "dices," clarifying that the correct plural form is "dice."

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants have not reached a consensus on the best method for calculating probabilities, and multiple approaches are presented without resolution.

Contextual Notes

The discussion does not address specific assumptions or limitations in the proposed methods, such as the impact of varying strategies or the randomness of dice rolls.

Who May Find This Useful

Players of Risk interested in probability calculations, game theorists, and those exploring computational simulations in game strategy.

alexbib
Messages
62
Reaction score
0
How could I calculate the probabilities of winning a battle in the game Risk (for example, if I attack 10 guys with 15 of my own)? For those who don't know the game, the attacker throws 3 and takes the best 2 dices, the defender 2, but a defence dice beats an attack dice on the same number. You cannot throw more dices than you have soldiers.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
-I- would do it by:

(a) writing a short computer program to run through all possible combinations of dice rolls to get the frequency of each possible outcome of each possible dice combination.

(b) Compute, in general, whether it's better or not to always use the most dice available to you.

(c) Write a short program to use the previously calculated frequencies to print to screen a table of probabilities for various attacker/defender combinations.
 
Grammatical note: there is no such word as "dices".

"Dice" is already plural. The singular is "die".
 
ok, thanks mates!
 

Similar threads

  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
3K
  • · Replies 14 ·
Replies
14
Views
4K
  • · Replies 41 ·
2
Replies
41
Views
6K
Replies
5
Views
2K
  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
2K
  • · Replies 4 ·
Replies
4
Views
3K
  • · Replies 8 ·
Replies
8
Views
2K
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
6K
  • · Replies 8 ·
Replies
8
Views
3K
  • · Replies 7 ·
Replies
7
Views
2K