Some joy with Mictlan

[Endoperez]

(edit: I think that) Cherry meant the the one getting the devils does not have to be a blood mage. IIRC the text says something about blood mage writing his name on it, so it might not be clear...

[ January 06, 2004, 11:53: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

[Truper]

[quote]Originally posted by General Tacticus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:

So at misfortune 2 you have a 5% chance by of getting a hero, by turn 10 10%. If you haven't got one by turn 20 you would feel rather unlucky. Considering how good they are this is worth thinking about.

cheers

Keir

At misfortune 2, you have about 50% chance of getting your first hero by turn 11, and 90% by turn 20.
Misfortune 1 means 50% by turn 8 and 90% by turn 14
Fortune 0 : 50% by turn 6, 90% by turn 11
Fortune 1 : 50% by turn 5, 90% by turn 10
Fortune 2 : 50% by turn 5, 90% by turn 8
Fortune 3 : 50% by turn 4, 90% by turn 8

Of course, misfortune 3 means no hero. As you can see, going over fortune 0 will give you your heroes only marginally faster (on average).

---

There must be something wrong with these numbers, or I've set some sort of record for unluckiness. In my current SP epic (Oriana all ai at difficult), I took misfortune 2 rather than 3 with the hope of getting heroes. Its now turn 77, and none have shown up. Perhaps order has some effect as well?

[atul]

Originally posted by Truper:
There must be something wrong with these numbers, or I've set some sort of record for unluckiness. In my current SP epic (Oriana all ai at difficult), I took misfortune 2 rather than 3 with the hope of getting heroes. Its now turn 77, and none have shown up. Perhaps order has some effect as well?

I've gotten the same feeling also. Been playing quite a lot with luck3 (MP game playing a nation/theme with enforced turmoil coming up, gotta practice) and by those numbers I think that I'd usually have all three of my national heroes quite soon. Often by turn 30 I've gotten only one, rarely two, never three and on some tries none.

Is it certain that the chance to get heroes is cumulative?

[apoger]

>Perhaps order has some effect as well?

Of course it does. Order reduces the number of events. With order+3 you won't see many events at all.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by apoger:
>Perhaps order has some effect as well?

Of course it does. Order reduces the number of events. With order+3 you won't see many events at all.

That can't be correct, or I wouldn't almost always be getting R'Lyeh heroes in the first few turns of the game.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

---

Originally posted by apoger:
>Perhaps order has some effect as well?

Of course it does. Order reduces the number of events. With order+3 you won't see many events at all.

That can't be correct, or I wouldn't almost always be getting R'Lyeh heroes in the first few turns of the game.

---

My understanding is that your chance of getting a national hero is not affected by order. On the whole I seem to have got hero's very fast playing luck (2 by turn 10 is not uncommen). Otherwise i mostly play misfortune3 so I don't get them.

PvK the Dwarven hammer is con4 and you also have to get the earth gems. I gave an Abysian contracts race a whirl Last night and never found any earth gems with my earth9 fire4 Scorpian King so didn't get to make the hammer. Once I gave up looking I did massacre everything in sight making the whole blood thing redundant again.

Cheers

Keir

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
PvK the Dwarven hammer is con4 and you also have to get the earth gems. I gave an Abysian contracts race a whirl Last night and never found any earth gems with my earth9 fire4 Scorpian King so didn't get to make the hammer.

With Iron Faith Ulm, you get Black Priests with a Forging bonus and a random magic pick, so some of them will be Blood. With enough research, you'll be able to give one a Brazen Vessel and Blood Thorn, and then are two Empowerments away from being able to make Contracts for 40 slaves each (the Dwarven Hammer is easy: any Black Priest with Earth as his random pick needs just Earth Boots to make it).

The only problem with starting this "snowball" effect, is of course finding the slaves. With no native Blood mages, you have to rely on random Blood picks, or lucky finds, for your hunters. I've got a World War game going on, where I get about 14 Devils each turn, but that's 160 turns into the game and I've been mostly toying with the AIs for a long time.

Originally posted by atul:
Is it certain that the chance to get heroes is cumulative?

2 months ago Johan wrote that "It is not cumulative, turns out though that I was way off on the numbers. Which became obvious after I thought about how often you do get heroes even with negative luck scales. Base chance is 3% +1% per luck scale. So with luck 3 you still have 0.94^30 appr.=29% to not recieve a hero after 30 turns".
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=74;t=000081

Cheers

Correction: 0.94^30 = 16% instead. So after 30 turns with Luck 3 you have about 84 % to see at least one hero, 60 % with Luck 0 and 26 % with Luck -2 (0% with Luck-3).

[ January 08, 2004, 15:13: Message edited by: Sunray_be ]

[PvK]

Ah, I have been playing Ulm, so I didn't realize others needed to get to Construction 4 before getting hammers. I still sense potential from the devil contract - one just needs to overcome a few hurdles. Ulm (multiple forge bonuses) and Mictlan (cheap blood priests) both have some nice advantages for this, each unique and not entirely breachable by pretender design, though you can of course solve part of the difficulties with pretender magic. Which is all as it should be. It's good it's not easy to make a devil generation factory.

PvK

[Bowlingballhead]

Re: Soul Contracts

I've been playing around with building them on the cheap recently, so I can answer these questions.

Yes, the contract goes to the lab when made, and can be slapped onto any commander at all - who then gets a Horror Mark (bwa!) and becomes a devil factory. Obviously, if you can get this going with decent forging bonuses, you can produce an immense army of devils for really cheap. It's not that easy a circumstance to set up, but if you're playing a strategy you can fit it into (construction-heavy, say, with some access to blood magic) it's definitely worth your attention.

All you have to do then is find either a demon or somebody with necromantic leadership (WHY demons count as undead I have no idea) to guide your gigantic army into battle! Yay, demons!