Various questions
 

Having spend awhile reading through and searching this forum there's a few mechanics that aren't fully clear to me, was wondering if anyone could kindly answer them for me:

a) For precision, what is the actual hit %? would 10 precision hit 46% of the time and follow the standard progress (11 precision = 54%). I am wondering about the dimishing utility of throwing eye of aiming on top of eagle eye/ aim / guiding wind.

b) In Edi's excellent DB in regards to site. I read somewhere that a frequency of roughly 0=60%, 1=30%, 2=10%. However in http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...t=38133&page=2 #11 It seems that lvl 1-4 sites each have 0,1,2 (common, uncommon, rare), is the distribution of lvl 1-4 site all the same? Meaning 25% of each level?

c) working from b), how does the game spawn the sites in a province and what the terrain effect is? I know there's 4 sites max, and only the best terrain apply. in a 45% spawn setting, a forest farm mountain province (+20 -30 +20) should give +20% as it's the best? given a 65% to spawn site, does it roll 4 shots of 65% or does it roll one and see pass or fail (if fail it stops right there). Is there a list of terrain with % chance to spawn which path? (I've seen some good analyst on total 0/1/2 by path by terrain already, but nothing on the spawn% of each path's site by terrain)

d) Ring of regen (or N4 + saint cloth) can counteract disease completely? So a scout with bane venom or fetish can last indefinitely?

e) Buff sequence on army, I've had a lot of trouble to direct my buffs (const 5 armor buff, body eth, luck ...etc) as my mage either buff the wrong thing or the army charged ahead (on hold and attack cmd) before I got around to them. I've read some tactics and the closest I got is having units guard mage while keeping others out of range, and have mage retreat after full cycle of buff. Of course you need another commander left and some chaff to distract. Are there any better way to quad/penta buff a set of elite more efficently? Having to move my mages in and out gets annoying really fast.

f) If I key a mage with "Return", is he/she immune to horror and assination? She should go 1st everytime?

g) Are domes the best way to protect your research center vs map spells? Does it intercept assassin spells like infernal disease, earth attack ...etc or only the DD spells like firestorm / seeking arrow?

h) is having a lab without fort in any province (for MP game) asking for it? as things could jump in and jump right out after?

I) For improved cross-breed, what are the monster list? Other then the bunch of variant foul spawn I've seen the cockatrice, grotesque and dracolion, are there anything else? (maybe something worth GoR on?). I personally love this spell, and also LA R'yeth's void gate.

J) I've noted that when I take luck +3, if I have provinces outside of my dom and have misfortune, I tend to get bad events for those first before I can any good event in a turn. Is this an actual mechanic or is it gambler's folly on my part? (I have had around 12 provinces with +3 luck, and 3 with -2 or -3 misfortune, and I score 1-2 bad event almost every turn on those 3 provinces)

L) EA Sauromatia has a caster hero with air, but after I used her for about a dozen turns she dissappeared into thin air. Is this due to her discription? So she has to sit in the capital? (Much like hama dryad have to stay in its province or risk getting wiped?). I assume its the same mechanic as the blood guards, which is a shame consider how awesome blood guards are in EA.

M) when I have mages in the castle forging or research, is there a way to set it to respond to attacks without setting it to patrol and waste its turn? I keep getting my recruiting locked down by weenie armies at the gate but unable to take my mages off forge / research / ritutal duty... Until I pushed the border back.

N) When sending horrors (Blood) and your stealth army joins the fight, does the horror turn on you?

Phew that's the lot, any input would be very welcome. I searched most of them but it could very well have slipped pass me :o so apologies in advance if there's big neon signs elsewhere that answered any of these.

Re: Various questions
 

a) The mechanism in the manual explains this quite accurately, although as I don't have the manual to hand I can't type it out. It isn't a case of diminishing returns, though.

b: No. There are less high level sites. Search level is not directly linked to rarity.

c: Sites are determined at game start. The game more or less rolls sites in each province until a roll fails to generate a site, IIRC.

d: Regen reduces hp loss to 1/year, rather than completely negating hp loss.

e: Welcome to spellcaster AI :) Making sure there's only one group of soldiers in range of a buff helps a lot, as does the hold and attack order.

f: Yes.

g: Domes have a chance to intercept any spell cast directly at the province they inhabit. So assassin spells like Earth Attack can be stopped. As can friendly units trying to get in via teleport.

h: It's a risk, yes.

i: There is probably a list, but I don't know it.

j: Interesting - I don't know the answer to this one.

l: Don't know off the top of my head.

m: If you want researchers to respond to attacks on their province, don't build a castle for them to hide in. Cross-reference with h: above :D

Re: Various questions
 

Thanks a ton! a lot still flew under my radar even after I read the manual (especially the precision :doh:)

Re: Various questions
 

a) Precision isn't quite so simple, though the mechanic is clearly defined. Precision affects the chance of hitting the target square and that chance drops with range, so it's not as simple as x% chance to hit. More importantly, since a range attack will affect whoever is in the square that it does hit, precision doesn't even directly control the chance of hitting someone. If you're aiming for the center of large army and your shot is off by 3-4 squares who really cares?

c. It's 4 separate rolls of whatever the chance is for that province. The mechanism doesn't pick which path and then pick a site, rather sites have restrictions on which terrains they can appear in. Forests do not have a higher percentage chance of having nature sites, there are more nature sites that can appear in forests. It works out pretty much the same though.


d. I don't believe regen completely removes the chance of getting further afflictions from disease either, though it does reduce them.

Re: Various questions
 

I don't know the exact answer to this, but it may have something to do with the province numbers. Meaning that the game may check for random events starting with the lowest province and moving up or something like that. Province numbers are generally lower in the bottom left corner of the map so depending on where your war is taking place, all the provinces with the lower numbers may have misfortune and be picking up the events. Again, just speculation but that could be a possible reason for your luck scales not working well.

Re: Various questions
 

Interesting, so basically the game checks from lowest to highest # province to generate events until it fills the 3-4 events quota per turn. I should start another game with Turmoil 3 luck 3 and expand north to see. In my current game I jade dagger blood rushed my new provinces so the problem has gone away, a 3k gold event came right after :happy:, sacrificing virgin works!

Re: Various questions
 

I doubt that in this case. It's a common randomizing mechanism in the game, but it would be too blatant here. Easy enough to check on in a big empire. Events would cluster top or bottom each turn (most of the id number order "randoms" randomly switch from top-down to bottom-up.)

Re: Various questions
 

Well I'm not saying for sure that it does it from lowest to highest, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is a mechanic that is something like that. For instance, when you build your empire out, you often get events on the fringes of your empire and you less frequently get events in your capital and your core provinces. I have definitely experienced what you are talking about when I am expanding in a certain direction into a misfortune dominion and get a disproportionate amount of bad events in newly conquered provinces.

Re: Various questions
 

You are getting comparatively more events in the enemy provinces you are expanding into because of the way the game handles scales and dominion. As you will mostly always have a greater chance of events occurring in enemy misfortune dominion than your own if you have Order scales. This is because bad scales affect a province regardless of whose dominion is there, but good scales only affect a province (in your favour) when there is (your) positive dominion in them.

As an example, your nation, and the nation you are invading, both have the popular combination of Order 3 Misfortune 2.

In positive dominion this gives (values are for CBM 1.6)
- Chance of event happening = -15% (Order 3) + +14% (Misfortune 2) = -1%

In negative dominion this gives
- Chance of event happening = 0% (Order 3) + +14% (Misfortune 2) = +14%

Chance that event is good = -30% in both cases.


So you will get more events when expanding into enemy misfortune dominion because that is how the mechanics work. I can't say I have personally seen any evidence to suggest that which province gets events each turn has any connection at all with the province numbers.

(Edit2: Now I think about it more, I guess the game has to have some sort of order for deciding on which province gets events. So perhaps, as many things in the game, it's random each turn between cycling in order through 'high-low' or 'low-high' province numbers. Maybe Edi can shed light on this due to his recent excursions into the event code)

Re: Various questions
 

c: Actually, forests *do* have higher density of nature and death sites. Somewhere I did a statistical analysis on all sites and determined the median gem likelihood on each type of terrain. search the threads and you'll find it.
f: Only if you are on defense.
l: Sauromatia has two heros, one kills and eats the other if they meet.
on the sites more or less it rolls a site, based on the site %. If the site is rare it has to be confirmed with another rare roll.

Sites are selected according to a mask filter for the territory in question. Finally, sites continue, up to 4, until it fails the site% roll.