[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
Fine in SP, less fine in MP where one of the astal nations will have a lineup of 6-10+ cheap L1 astral units all with orders to mind duel.

Astral 5 vs astral 1 is a near guarantee that the wyrm will win every duel.

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Not really.

I have a hard time imagining anybody massing mind dueliests without somebody carrying a Banner of the Northern Star or casting Light of the Northern Star to boost the horde of duelists to astral 2.

Which gives you a 5 to 2 situation. As Astral duel is determined by adding 1d6 (closed) to the astral rank with ties killing both duelists, the odds of killing off the Wyrm are actually pretty good.

Using this comparative chart, we see that with the +3 advantage, the Wyrm has a 16.725% chance of dying each duel, for a 1-(1-0.1675)^n risk of dying against n duelists. For n=6 that is 66.7%, for n=10 the risk of the Wyrm dying is 84.0%.


On the other hand, we might be in the situation that there was no Banner of the Northern Star or (more likely) one in which the Wyrm also boosted by 1 (e.g. Power of the Spheres, Light of the Northern Star), leaving the Wyrm with an effective +4 advantage, which translates into a 1-(1-0.08402)^n risk of dying when facing n mind duelists. For n=6 that is 40.9% risk of dying, for n=10 it is a 58.4% risk.


Near guarantee that the Wyrm will win every duel? I think not. And if the side massing low-level astrals began using communion before mind duel, I really don't know what would happen.

An advantage of 6 makes you immune (until the opposition communes or boosts), an advantage of 4 on an extremely important unit (such as your pretender god) makes you a target.

(Note that the risks are very slightly off, as the percentage chance of dieing was based not on actual probabilities but Saber Cherry's statistics based on 2,000,000 tries)

[ April 01, 2004, 05:26: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]