Saber Cherry...an astral favor if you will.
 

Any chance you can run your combat sim with astral duels? Or does it only sim things that you know about already without using the game's internal engines?

I would love to know that chance folks have of winning astral duels as attacker and defender with astral picks of 1-10. I seems the more powerful astral mage almost always wins. But this may not always be the case.

Re: Saber Cherry...an astral favor if you will.
 

Well... I kind of forget how they work. I think it is just astral skill + 1d6 (not open-ended) but I'm not really sure...

Re: Saber Cherry...an astral favor if you will.
 

Maybe one of the nice devs will come and tell us. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Saber Cherry...an astral favor if you will.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes. Both die on tie.

Re: Saber Cherry...an astral favor if you will.
 

Mind Duel Death Rates.

Differential Rolls for Opposing 1d6 Closed:

-6 : 0.000%
-5 : 2.788%
-4 : 5.539%
-3 : 8.342%
-2 : 11.119%
-1 : 13.866%
0 : 16.628%
1 : 13.862%
2 : 11.131%
3 : 8.323%
4 : 5.595%
5 : 2.807%
6 : 0.000%

Cumulative Death Probability:

-6 :100.000%
-5 :100.000%
-4 : 97.212%
-3 : 91.673%
-2 : 83.331%
-1 : 72.212%
0 : 58.346%
1 : 41.718%
2 : 27.856%
3 : 16.725%
4 : 8.402%
5 : 2.807%
6 : 0.000%

The minor asymmetry is due to small sampling size (2,000,000) so it seems to be good to 2.5 figures.

Those are rolls for opposing 1d6. The "Cumulative" figures give a mages chance of death in a mind duel with the listed skill (ignore the plus signs). In other words, if a mage's skill is 5 lower, he always dies; 4 lower, he dies 97.2% of the time... at equal levels, each mage has a 58.3% chance of death. +5 gives you a 100% chance of killing the opponent (but you still die 2.8% of the time) and you have to be 6 levels above or higher to always win and never die.

Note that communion-induced magic levels are not displayed on the screen.

-Cherry

P.S. I'll post this in a new thread too.

Re: Saber Cherry...an astral favor if you will.
 

Thanks, Saber Cherry.

This is good to know. I'm surprised these rolls are not open-ended as all the other rolls in Dominions are, and that would give lower-astral folks a small chance to survive attack.

I can also see why folks advise to take at least 6 astral with your pretender.

And I can also see the wisdom of using communions. Pythium would be an awful nation to face with a SC astral pretender.

And using astral duel as an automatic defense tool would be dangerous as well depending on whether the attacker had a crystal matrix.

Suitable complex. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Saber Cherry...an astral favor if you will.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This only confirms that Mind Duel needs to be adjusted in some way in my mind.

Lets just look at race/themes with Astral mages and lowest costing blood/astral mage for communion slaves

Abysia
Warlock 2 Astral, 1 Random, 3 Blood. 270G
Warlock Apprentice 1 Astral, 2 Blood. 150G

Atlantis
Deep Seer 2 Astral 180G

Pythium
Arch Theurg 3 Astral, 1 Random 380G
Theurg 2 Astral 150G
Theurg Acolyte 1 Astral 90G
Theurg Communicant (Slave) 50G

Ulm (Black Forest)
Fortune Teller 1 Astral, 1 Random 90G
Member of the Second Tier 2 Astral, 1 Blood 160G
Illuminated One 1 Astral 80G

C'tis
Shaman 1 Astral 110G

Arcoscephale
Astrologer 3 Astral, 1 Random 180G
Mystic 2 Astral, 3 Random 180G

Ermor (Base)
Grand Thaumaturg 2 Astral, 1 Random 340G
Thaumaturg 1 Astral 130G

Marignon (Base and FoF)
Grand Master 2 Astral 1 Random 270G
Witch Hunter 1 Astral 150G

(CotS)
Royal Navigator 2 Astral 1 Random 200G
Chartmaker 1 Astral 90G

Jotunheim (Utgard)
Norna 2 Astral 1 Random 220G
Seithkona 1 Astral 90G

R'lyeh
Starspawn 3 Astral 2 Random 280G
Starspawn 1 Astral 1 Random 150G
Star Child 1 Astral 85G

Mictlan
Moon Priest 2 Astral 230G
Mictlan Priest 1 Blood 80G

T'ien Ch'i (Base and BK)
Celestial Master 1 Astral 1 Random 250G

(Spring and Autumn)
Celestial Master 1 Astral, 2 Random 250G


As we can see, there are a few discrepencies. Also you can tell the % chance that the mages die (and thus a loss of income).

Ones that I can safely say might need to be looked at are: T'ien Ch'i, Marginon (Base and FoF), Ermor (base), Atlantis.