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Comment by Fizzer | Hacker News Reader

"Civilization Revolution" does this.

Say the player loses a 75% roll, then attempts another identical 75% roll. The game will actually give you better odds for the second roll. I think it's silly -- the game basically lies to you about your odds on the second attempt.

Sid Meier talked about it at length in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY7aRJE-oOY. It starts around 18:25.

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It may be deceitful, but it makes for a better game. Seeing your five hit attack miss five times at 5% miss chance per attack will induce true frustration. Battle for Wesnoth doesn't care. It will be honest, and you will scream in anger.

  > Seeing your five hit attack miss five times at 5% miss
  > chance per attack will induce true frustration.

I was curious, so I worked out the chances of this happening. For a given five hit attack the chance is 0.00003125%, or 1 in 3.2 million. So yes, I imagine it is very frustrating, but it happens incredibly rarely.

you can link to specific times on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY7aRJE-oOY&t=18m25s

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