Mind Hunting and Astral levels

[Agema]

When thinking about sending out your astral pretender to fight, you'd want to consider the astral capabilities of your opponent. If your enemy can get within 3 astral of you easily (e.g. S1 versus S4 pretender, S3 versus S6 pretender), don't.

After that, it depends on a simple cost/benefit analysis.

S3-4 mages are usually only rare, cap-only. I don't seriously believe anyone would expend them magic duelling an S+5 pretender, as they'd only have a 3% chance of success, and anyone desperate enough to waste that many expensive mages when the other guy can just call his god back (albeit with -1 all paths) is either doomed or so powerful it doesn't matter. It's quite possible your average opponent wouldn't even take the risk against an S+4 god: 8% chance means stastically you'd very likely lose more than half a dozen. On the other hand, someone might very happily expend a ton of cheap 60-100GP S1/S2 mages to kill a S+5 pretender, and certainly an S+4 pretender.

[Oparin]

I was just playing a 1 on 1 game where I had about 8 enchanters (1S2N) in a province scripted to communion master/slave, and my enemy's pretender was 9S and cast Mind Hunt one time on that province and lost. Since the pretender was an oracle and they had no way of healing him, it pretty much ended the game right there.

I've read over this thread but I still don't understand how that was possible. What are the chances of that happening?

edit: Hi Phonics!

[vfb]

Originally Posted by Agema

When thinking about sending out your astral pretender to fight, you'd want to consider the astral capabilities of your opponent. If your enemy can get within 3 astral of you easily (e.g. S1 versus S4 pretender, S3 versus S6 pretender), don't.

After that, it depends on a simple cost/benefit analysis.

S3-4 mages are usually only rare, cap-only. I don't seriously believe anyone would expend them magic duelling an S+5 pretender, as they'd only have a 3% chance of success, and anyone desperate enough to waste that many expensive mages when the other guy can just call his god back (albeit with -1 all paths) is either doomed or so powerful it doesn't matter. It's quite possible your average opponent wouldn't even take the risk against an S+4 god: 8% chance means stastically you'd very likely lose more than half a dozen. On the other hand, someone might very happily expend a ton of cheap 60-100GP S1/S2 mages to kill a S+5 pretender, and certainly an S+4 pretender.

I'd send an S3/S4 cap-only mage to Magic Duel an S5 god. You don't even need to slap on a cap to teleport. Disregarding friendly casualties, an S4 has a 15/36 chance against S5, an S3 has a 11/36 chance against S5.

When the god is called back, he'll have S4 and next time around it will be even easier.

I think I don't understand what you mean by an "S+5" pretender. Is that somehow different from "S5"?

[rdonj]

I think S+5 is supposed to mean 5 levels in astral above the magic dueler. I could be wrong.

[Agema]

Originally Posted by rdonj

I think S+5 is supposed to mean 5 levels in astral above the magic dueler. I could be wrong.

Exactly right. I should have made that clear, sorry.