On the effective early use of Pretenders in combat

[Graeme Dice]

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.

[AhhhFresh]

With that combo: etherealness, luck, 14+ protection, 20+ defense, regeneration... I think it might actually be numerically impossible to get afflictions from standard troops. It's at least very improbable.

Well My VQ gets them all of the time (weirdly) and she has protection in the 30's, is etherial, and regenerates. However her defence is no where near 20. Oh and silly me I don't give her a coin of luck most of the time (cuz I'm a tard).

Yeah, luck is pretty crucial (an additional 50% miss rate beyond the 75% from etherealness)... and so is defense... since the only 100% sure way to not get afflictions is to not get hit!

The reason why you are getting more afflictions is because the chance is related to what percentage of your HP the damage you receive is. So the lower your hit points, the more likely you are to get an affliction.

Not a big deal for a VQ though.

I feel that things like Astral Shield and serious Fear effect are very important, because they reduce the number of attacks that come at you dramatically...

Being a walking blender is helpful too (understatement)... but that's hard to balance with not falling unconcious due to fatique... because I'm not sure what the exact numbers are for what that does to your defense and protection, but I'm certain it's really really bad.

Oh, and I never invade a Lizardman province with my SC... curse is, uhm, irritating.

[ March 31, 2004, 03:22: Message edited by: AhhhFresh ]

[Huzurdaddi]

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

Let's see what happens against a cheap astral 1 mage. Let's assume that on a tie the attacker wins. Let's also assume that the die is not open ended (if it is open ended, and I hope it is not, then the chances of dying are always quite high and there is no defence).

Given you roll a 1, then if he rolls a 5 or 6 you die.

Given you roll a 2, then if he rolls a 6 you die.

Total probability of death: 3 / 36 or 8% of the time your SC will die. Or put another way it takes on average 12 level1 astral mages are required to kill you.

For level 2 astral mages the chances of dying are 6 / 36 or 16%, and it takes on average 6 mages to kill you.

If on a tie nothing happens then you are pretty safe, only a 1 / 36 chance of dying against level 1 mages and 1/12 chance of dying against level 2 mages.

So level 5 is not great defence. Level 6 defence is great. And level 7 is SUPER.

[Huzurdaddi]

since the only 100% sure way to not get afflictions is to not get hit!

LOL. I agree. And the astral shield really helps too.

The reason why you are getting more afflictions is because the chance is related to what percentage of your HP the damage you receive is. So the lower your hit points, the more likely you are to get an affliction.

I did not know that it works this way. If so well that makes a big difference!

Being a walking blender is helpful too (understatement)... but that's hard to balance with not falling unconcious due to fatique...

Actually this is a big one IMO. I find that many times my SC's (not the vamp queen) go unconcious due to fatigue. This is one of the main reasons I like her. Perhaps I do too much buffing. You really should see if you can work earth into your pretender for Earth Might. But your fear of +10 probably saves you from really long fights.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

---

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.

---

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 ]

[Firebreath]

Forgive me for asking. But is it really likely that someone would bother building lots of astral mages and telling them all to mind duel....when most of the time that your fighting the enemy won't have any astral mages in their army, or if they do - you can't be sure of it beforehand ,so you'd be wasting your time (unless you're at war with an astral nation, but there arn't many of those...)

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Firebreath:
Forgive me for asking. But is it really likely that someone would bother building lots of astral mages and telling them all to mind duel....when most of the time that your fighting the enemy won't have any astral mages in their army, or if they do - you can't be sure of it beforehand ,so you'd be wasting your time (unless you're at war with an astral nation, but there arn't many of those...)

If I knew my enemy had an astral 5 Wyrm, you can damn well believe that I would attack the army where the Wyrm was with an astral squad of death. Killing off the enemy pretender god is nearly always an exceptionally good idea and worth a lot of casualties, even more so when it means knocking magic points off a unit with decent magic skills.

And if I do not know the stats of an enemy combat pretender god before it comes to serious battles between our forces, that should be reckoned a serious failure of information gathering on my part. Forewarned is forearmed.

I am not advocating having all your low-astral mages constantly on mind-duel as action #1 (though that does make sense at times), but certainly as a viable strategy when defending a province the medium-skill astral unit is moving through or when attacking the province it is stationed in. Worst case, there are no astral opposition in the province you attack, and your astral mages will use other magic than mind duel sinse there is no legal target for the spell.

Astral 5 (against human opposition) is just too little to feel safe unless you are an immortal for whom dying is just a way of life... Or death, as it may be.

Now, if the astral 5 Wyrm is equipped with a Starshine Skullcap and a Crystal Coin (taking up two out of its four precious equipment slots, but needs must when the enemy can field astral mages), and casts Power of the Spheres and Light of the Northern Star, THEN it can probably mind duel just about anything (except for a high communion) to death and a low-level astral death squad would get a nasty surprise.

[AhhhFresh]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
Now, if the astral 5 Wyrm is equipped with a Starshine Skullcap and a Crystal Coin (taking up two out of its four precious equipment slots, but needs must when the enemy can field astral mages), and casts Power of the Spheres and Light of the Northern Star, THEN it can probably mind duel just about anything (except for a high communion) to death and a low-level astral death squad would get a nasty surprise.

If fighting an astral pretender, is there any reason not to have every astral mage you send at it scripted:

(Communion Slave)(Communion Master)(Mind Duel)

Besides being 3 actions, increasing the chances that you mage will be dead before he can mind duel...

Other than that, the only reason I can see not to do it would be if the "spell affects every member" effect of communion had meant that if one member of the communion died from a mind duel, they all did.

But I don't think that's the case is it? I can't seem to find much information on it...

[Huzurdaddi]

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.

I have heard it said on these Boards that for purposes of mind duel communion does not raise astral level.

adding 1d6 (closed)

I *really* hope this is true, or as I said there is no defence against Mind Duel.

Note that the risks are very slightly off

That's funny! I think that Saber Cherry has become addicted to Monte Carlo simulations! It's only 2 dice, which means that there are only 36 possibilities. It's not horribly difficult to calculate the exact odds! But the chart is good enough for most purposes.

Anyway this is why I was saying taking astral 7 on your original pretender was a good choice. Was there any other reason that you did it? Of course you are stuck since that pretender chasis has astral already built in.

[Scott Hebert]

For my part, as far as a Magical Attack pretender, I have yet to see a better one than the Phoenix. I typically go for a Fire9/Air6 Phoenix, especially if I have sacred troops. In any event, once you have Flame Darts, you're pretty much good to go. Air Shield goes up first round if there are archers, and then you just wade through them. If they get to you, you have nice 'personal range' effects to deal with them like Burning Hands or Shockwave (is that what it's called?) and whatnot.

After getting Flame Darts, you can either continue to get better options, or you can switch to get Flame Shield or more defensive options.

Anyway, my thoughts on Artillery Pretenders.