assasination question / blood in the very long run question

[Boron]

first i have a question concerning assasins :
i never used them much so far .
but i want to try them now .
an assasination attempt is a battle where you can't retreat right ?
but if you set your assasins orders on retreat will he then assasinate an enemy commander when you give him the assasination command but if he is discovered by pd or patrolling troops retreat in another province ?
or does he die ?
how are the chances to discover scouts/spies/assasins with pd ? and is it the same for a pd of 10 and one of 125 or does it increase ?
finally what means a stealthrating higher than 0 ?


2. i like blood magic .
but a few thoughts came to my mind which now perhaps alter my liking for blood magic .
the problem is : you should take a growthscale with bloodmagic .
if you take a deathscale of 3 a province loses ~45% in 100 turns .
there are so many random events which reduce population and none which increases population .
so even if you play with growth 3 in 100 turns it is very possibly that you get quite a few -x% population events.
if you bloodhunt with patrolling you kill your population slowly but surely .

that's without enemy interaction .
the spells which masskill population of the enemies like volcanic eruption are normally a waste of gems. but against a bloodnation it will severly damage their blood economy.
and there is unrest :
normally only really evil in early-midgame but since it makes bloodhunting harder very evil for blood nations.
Last problem that enemy dominion further increases unrest . and you are almost forced to have a pd in addition to a castle in every blood hunting province. if you only have a castle a spell like call of the winds can stop the blood hunting for 2-3 turns at worst .

so in general if you aren't clearly winning in midgame your bloodincome will reach a peak and then slowly decline because of the before mentioned reasons .
while gemincome will skyrocket due to clam/fiever fetish hording .

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Boron:
first i have a question concerning assasins :
i never used them much so far .
but i want to try them now .
an assasination attempt is a battle where you can't retreat right ?
but if you set your assasins orders on retreat will he then assasinate an enemy commander when you give him the assasination command but if he is discovered by pd or patrolling troops retreat in another province ?
or does he die ?

He will try to retreat or will die if he is deep in the enemy's back and has no friendly province to retreat to.

how are the chances to discover scouts/spies/assasins with pd ? and is it the same for a pd of 10 and one of 125 or does it increase ?

It increases. I don't have the formula for it though. Generally PD 10 is not very efficient in catching scouts, and have very little chance of catching units with stealth>0. But it happened.

finally what means a stealthrating higher than 0 ?

Read above.

2. i like blood magic .
but a few thoughts came to my mind which now perhaps alter my liking for blood magic .
the problem is : you should take a growthscale with bloodmagic .
if you take a deathscale of 3 a province loses ~45% in 100 turns .
there are so many random events which reduce population and none which increases population .
so even if you play with growth 3 in 100 turns it is very possibly that you get quite a few -x% population events.
if you bloodhunt with patrolling you kill your population slowly but surely .

that's without enemy interaction .
the spells which masskill population of the enemies like volcanic eruption are normally a waste of gems. but against a bloodnation it will severly damage their blood economy.
and there is unrest :
normally only really evil in early-midgame but since it makes bloodhunting harder very evil for blood nations.
Last problem that enemy dominion further increases unrest . and you are almost forced to have a pd in addition to a castle in every blood hunting province. if you only have a castle a spell like call of the winds can stop the blood hunting for 2-3 turns at worst .

If you are bloodhunting you should at least make province capable of defensing itself against simple Call of the Winds. 5PD plus few "summon imps" on your bloodhunters shold be more than enough to do it.

so in general if you aren't clearly winning in midgame your bloodincome will reach a peak and then slowly decline because of the before mentioned reasons .
while gemincome will skyrocket due to clam/fiever fetish hording .

I still haven't seen the question in the 2nd part of your post, just number of statements. But here are my two cents - IMHO Death 3 is ok with bloodhunting nations in the game on short or medium maps, if you are hurting for points. I agree, on the large map it could become a problem in the long run. Although I would still not go for the positive growth scale, just neutral or even Death 1 would be enough most of the times. Money become much less usefull toward the end of the game, and population losses from bloodhunting on neutral or Death 1 scale are not too bad. Also usually losses from patrolling are much larger than from bloodhunting , so I am trying to avoid patrolling unless I have to. In a positive dominion you can usually have 3 lvl 1-2 bloodhunters with rods without any patrollers, while keeping unrest under control. That is often good enough for me, at least until I still have some poor mountain/forest provinces with low income but higher than 5000 population.

[ July 07, 2004, 19:55: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Kel]

Originally posted by Boron:
but if you set your assasins orders on retreat will he then assasinate an enemy commander when you give him the assasination command but if he is discovered by pd or patrolling troops retreat in another province ?
or does he die ?

As I recall it, he will retreat and, assumming he is successful, he will die if in the attempt, or retreat intoa province if its a PD discovery.

finally what means a stealthrating higher than 0 ?

I don't recall the numbers but the higher your stealth rating, the harder it is to be detected.

the problem is : you should take a growthscale with bloodmagic .

I have seen a lot of people say this. Maybe I don't know what I am doing but I usually take death scale when I play a blood nation (when I play them for blood, that is).

This is a question of strategy and probably varies according to what nation you play and what your starting strategy is.

Personally, when I play Aby or BF Ulm, I play fairly aggressively and with a early/mid-game rush strategy (alt-3, blood-5/6, const-4/6 is my target). My plan is to expand enough that the people dying from death scale are compensated for by the population I conquer.

and you are almost forced to have a pd in addition to a castle in every blood hunting province. if you only have a castle a spell like call of the winds can stop the blood hunting for 2-3 turns at worst .

This depends on a lot of factors, like how spread out your blood hunters are and what spells you are actually worried about. PD alone can take care of Call of the winds but stealth nations might be more of a concern. Whether or not you need to protect every blood hunter depends a lot on who you are facing and how cheap your blood hunters are.

so in general if you aren't clearly winning in midgame your bloodincome will reach a peak and then slowly decline because of the before mentioned reasons.

Either your income/population will decline or your slave income will decline if you aren't expanding, you don't actually have to be winning the entire game.

while gemincome will skyrocket due to clam/fiever fetish hording .

That's why I, personally, use blood as an early/mid game strategy. It's also why i don't bother with growth scale. When it gets into the late game, someone who has developed a late game strategy will have the advantage anyway. Better to concentrate on my strengths than try to play their game.

- Kel

[ July 07, 2004, 19:59: Message edited by: Kel ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Boron:
an assasination attempt is a battle where you can't retreat right?

You can retreat, but if you do, then you will be killed. You must set your assasins to orders other than retreat or they will be killed as soon as they leave.

but if you set your assasins orders on retreat will he then assasinate an enemy commander when you give him the assasination command but if he is discovered by pd or patrolling troops retreat in another province ?

He will attempt to retreat to a friendly province if patrolling units catch him. If he makes an assasination attempt then he will retreat and be automatically killed.

[Boron]

ah thnx
even if you set him orders ? like attack closest or something like this ?
doesn't he than fight instead against the patrollers who found him ?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Boron:
ah thnx
even if you set him orders ? like attack closest or something like this ?
doesn't he than fight instead against the patrollers who found him ?

If you give him an order other than retreat then he won't retreat. If you give him a retreat order, then he will retreat. If he retreats from an assasination attempt, then he will be killed. If he retreats from patrollers then he will try to move to a friendly province, otherwise he will be killed.